Comment by inigyou
1 day ago
Has this happened before?
The NSA wiretaps all phone calls - do they extort random citizens for petty crimes that in any other case nobody would ever know or care about?
Microsoft has your browsing history - we know this because of the recently unsealed court case. Do they do it?
Facebook already ignores this law and scans the content of all private messages anyway. Are they doing what you predicted?
I don't think even the actual Stasi was stopping people at random for petty crimes, right?
So you specifically are rebutting the petty crimes however the real risk is leverage that the government and orgs gain by having asymmetrical access to information that no one else does at scale. This can be used for a variety of reasons but see below some examples of internal corruption by employees and what I would argue is the exact misuse of this power to gain political leverage. https://www.reuters.com/article/world/uk/nsa-staff-used-spy-... https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/prospect-blackma...
These are what leaked. Which is to say that it is very naive to assume that large powerful organization is not going to use its power for gain.
Microsoft and Facebook both use the scanning to network your connections and to build profiles of users to better manipulate your behavior. Hence the Cambridge Analytica Scandal let alone what we dont know about.
Why hand over power to these super powerful and large orgs? What do we supposedly gain as a society? I mean look at flock and Palantir, all it takes is for the political winds to change and the power is there because of these bills.
Yeah it's a risk. But if X is happening right now and Y is not happening and you claim Y happens whenever X does, you really need to explain why the current situation is different or your argument falls apart.
I absolutely believe that if the NSA wants something from you badly enough and has the dirt to blackmail you than they will do it.