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by pyre 4709 days ago
You lack imagination. :P

If the NSA is collecting everything, then it's possible to go back in time once you become a person of interest. This doesn't necessarily help you if you are actively planning something that the government is interested in, but if you become a political opponent to the NSA, they could look into your past for skeletons to blackmail you with. Who you are talking to may not give them enough information to do anything without the content of the conversations.
1 comments
dkhenry 4709 days ago
I don't think they need the content if They can identify the participants it works even better.

""" I see in 2013 you had many long encrypted conversations with someone we now know to be a pedophile, what were you talking about exactly """

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pyre 4709 days ago
On the other hand, if you're having an affair with someone that you have a good excuse to talk to all of the time (family friend, co-worker, etc), the content matters.

Also, that "OMG you were talking to a pedo!" threat doesn't mean much of the conversations were innocuous. To make that threat, they would need a good confidence that you couldn't (for whatever reason[1]) just turn over chat logs proving that nothing was amiss.

[1] E.g. The chat reveals something you want to keep hidden, even if it doesn't relate to the fact that the person is a paedophile, or maybe the logs just don't exist, etc.

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