The NSA Is Viewed Favorably By Most Young People

cstacy writes: A poll by the Pew Research Center suggests that Snowden's revelations have not much changed the public's favorable view of the NSA. Younger people (under 30) tend to view the NSA favorably, compared to those 65 and older. 61% of people aged 18-29 viewed the NSA favorably, while 30% viewed the NSA unfavorably and 9% had no opinion. 55% of people aged 30-49 viewed the NSA favorably. At the 65+ age bracket, only 40% of people viewed the NSA favorably.

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Re:In other news...

[kheldan]

Alternate subject line for you: "Naivete inversely proportional to age", or "Young people proven yet again to be generally unwise, don't know the difference". The NSA has it's own propaganda machine, and guess what? Apparently it's working, what a shocker. There is an entire generation out there who have been raised to believe that 'not sharing' is anti-social and a symptom of some sort of mental illness, and that only people with something to hide want 'privacy'. Organizations like the NSA, and companies like Facebook and other so-called 'social media', which really are just data collection services for the government and marketers, are playing the long game of indoctrinating young people into the concept that their natural, normal need for privacy is wrong, bad, and an illness; if they're allowed to continue this, the next generation may not even know of such a thing as 'privacy', and maybe even react violently to the idea, like someone is, ironically, trying to take something away from them. They don't get that the world they live in is becoming more and more like a prison or a zoo, with them being the ones behind the bars, being watched 24/7/365. Meanwhile they're also being taught to not think, not question anything, to not work things out themselves, to ask an 'authority figure' instead; someone I used to work with had a phrase for people like this: 'Monkey button-pushers', people who can be taught to do a task, but that don't (or can't) understand really what they're doing. People have too much done for them, are less and less incentivised to actually learn how things work, learn skills, or to think creatively.