Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Why Isn't There More Public Outrage About NSA Revelations?
Nerval's Lobster writes "This morning we discussed news that the National Security Agency (NSA) has siphoned up millions of online address books and contact lists. The Post drew its information from top-secret documents provided by government whistleblower Edward Snowden, who spent the summer feeding information about the NSA to a variety of news outlets. Snowden's documents (as outlined in The Guardian, Spiegel Online and other venues) have detailed a massive NSA program that's siphoning all sorts of personal information from a variety of sources — and yet the public seems to have greeted each new revelation with weakening outrage. Whereas the initial news reports about NSA splying in June kicked off a firestorm of controversy and discussion (aggravated by the drama of Snowden seeking asylum in pretty much any country that would have him), the unveiling of the NSA's Great Contact-List Caper has ranked below the news stories such as the government shutdown, negotiations over Iran's nuclear program, and invites for Apple's upcoming iPad event on aggregators such as Google News; it also didn't make much of a blip on Twitter and other online forums. There's the very real possibility that Americans, despite the assurances of government officials, are being monitored in a way that potentially violates their privacy. Surely that's an issue that concerns a great many individuals; and yet, as time goes by, it seems as if people are choosing to focus on other things. Are we suffering from 'surveillance fatigue?'"
With the internet to remind me of everything else I should be violently outraged about (global warming, abortion, Kony, Miley Cyrus twerking), it's hard to fit time in to be outraged about this.
I think maybe I can pencil it in for Thursday at 3am. Does that work for you?
Conspiracy theorists' version: it's all part of the plan. Tank the economy so that citizens have to work their fingers to the bone just to survive and they'll be too busy and tired to care.
Russian operatives were far more successful, some escaping detection for multiple decades.
Interesting use of the past tense there, comrade...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
You could try "Other Russian operatives are even more successful still".
Short of assembling a rebel force and storming the capitol... there's no amount of outrage short of that that will budge these people.
That was done this weekend. By veterans and common Americans tired of the emperor walling off our national monuments because no one was available to change his diaper.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
In Soviet Russia, detection escapes you!
READY.
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