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Nationwide Snooping System Launched In India
knwny writes "The Times of India reports that 'India has launched a wide-ranging surveillance program that will give its security agencies and even income tax officials the ability to tap directly into e-mails and phone calls without oversight by courts or parliament, several sources said.'" Adds an anonymous reader: "What's chilling is the comments from senior officials indicating that parts of the program are already live, without absolutely any discussion in public about it."
Outlook.com has NEVER given emails to any agendy to read. When you get Microsoft Outlook, your data is safe.
Cheers,
David Futura
The U.S. sets the international standard. If the U.S. is doing it, it must be okay.
Exactly.
It will be quite interesting to see if people in other nations take to the streets in protest while most USians have shown they'll continue the status quo eating cheeseburgers and watching wrasslin'.
"Snooping" is when your harmless 80-year-old neighbor peers out between the blinds to see who you've invited over to visit. The term "snooping" implies harmlessness, whereas government (and its fundamental tool of physical force) is anything but harmless.
What government does is called spying, because government is a coercive authority, not an equal.
This is similar to how the media constantly uses the term "cracking down" to describe oppression. The term "cracking down" not only implies good intentions, but necessity -- yet the victims of the "crackdown" tell a completely different story, every single time.
This is the real damage the NSA has done in spying on the American people. Now every other country feels like they need it, because the US does. In the west, it used to be bashed as something only oppressive regimes did. Soon it will be everyone.
The whole NSA spying is the knee-jerk reaction to terrorism and the stupidity of the US electorate who elected the politicians who enabled the NSA- every asshole in Congress who voted for the PATRIOT Act is as fault here and every person who keeps voting for those assholes is at fault too.
BUT, our assholes wouldn't have been able to do it if it weren't for other assholes who are under the impression that indiscriminate violence against people (terrorism) will allow them to achieve their goals. I mean, since 9/11, has ANY of Al-Qaeda's goal been achieved?
No.
The only thing they caused was further hardships on their Muslim "brothers", increased contempt of the religion they think they follow (Muslims, many look down on you because of Al-Qaeda and their ilk.), and more power to the despots that control their home governments.
Or let's look at the IRA. The best they got out of the English was a bone thrown to them.
Who's doing it right? Tibet.
No matter how hard the Chinese try, they just can't seem to make Tibet look bad. And why is that?
The Tibetans aren't blowing up towers filled with innocent people.
This is the real damage the NSA has done in spying on the American people. Now every other country feels like they need it, because the US does.
Ah, cultural chauvinism.... how on earth could those other people find the way if they didn't have an example to follow? I'll break it to you gently: Neither the terrorism by al Qaida nor the alleged surveillance by the Indian government has much of anything to do with the US. They each have their own independent values, ideals, goals, and work to achieve them. Spying by government and terrorism existed long before the United States, and it wasn't psychic powers anticipating the United States that induced people to engage in those practices then any more than it does today.
Al Qida wants to restore what they believe to be the lost glory of Islamic civilization of a 1,000 years ago, recreate the Islamic Caliphate that was dissolved in 1923 after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, conquer the world for Islam, and convert the world's peoples to Islam. They want to overthrow pretty much all of the existing governments in Muslim nations for not following their strict interpretation of Islam. You may think it is unrealistic, but that is their goal, even if it takes 1,000 years. The existence of nonexistence of the United States has little to do with it. If you want to blame anyone, blame Europe for repelling the Muslim invasion at the gates of Vienna in 1683.
And when it comes to India, the largest democracy in the world, as a rapidly modernizing country that is supplier of IT talent to the world, why should they be left out of the surveillance sweepstakes? They might have a reasonable concern or two at home, given they have an active Maoist communist insurgency, which conducted 351 attacks in 2011, and a bit of a terrorism problem arising from both their neighbor Pakistan and a small fraction of the native 100,000,000 Indian citizens that are Muslim. Maybe you've heard of the Mumbai attack? As it happened: Mumbai attacks 29 Nov - 195 people dead and hundreds more injured.
The Indian people and government will have to find their own way, and strike their own balance to match their own conditions, traditions, and laws.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell