Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
Whilst you were sleeping: Congress approves spooks retaining data forever (meanderful.blogspot.com)
4 points by sumohurd 4202 days ago
1 comments

I think this is a great idea.

We as citizens of the world should also be allowed on the same terms to keep government communications on record as well.

As soon as government emails (eg like sony emails this week) start appearing in public and torrented in a "never to be private again" format then I think politicians may choose at such time to vote that perhaps keeping emails/phone calls/meta data on record indefinitely....isn't a good idea.

Maybe it has already happened but somewhat privately?

It should be easy for the spooks to apply pressure, perhaps indirectly via lobbyists, based on known personal or familial communications to anyone in Congress or the Senate.

Thus Sec 309 gets passed.

This seems a far fetched conspiracy fantasy until you realise it has already happened many times before: Hoover, Nixon, etc

I'd imagine a patriotic spook could be confused that they are just doing the right thing by their country.

Apathy wins at the end of the day. People get periodically interested but then move on with their busy lives. We've kind of got disinterested and moved on from Snowden. Plenty of other things in the world to worry about. The security apparatus wins by being relentless.

Sec 309 is a good example of such a lack of vigilance from a disinterested community.