I'm not so sure about that. Roughly 90% of Americans use illegal drugs at some point in their lives[1], and supposedly the average American commits 3 felonies per day.[2]
[1] http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/pubs/monographs/vol2_2009...
[2] http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/...
As the quote goes, in a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. And when the government already has all the evidence it needs to convict everyone, then anything can essentially be made illegal by selective prosecution of unrelated crimes. Have you been protesting against the government's foreign policy? Suddenly you're in jail for the mistake you made on your taxes 5 years ago. Have you been active in an alternative currency like Bitcoin? Surprise, you're in jail for that movie torrent you seeded a few months ago.
[0] http://nymag.com/news/9-11/10th-anniversary/patriot-act/
How can we say that though, when we don't really know what the NSA is collecting, what they are doing with it, who they are sharing it with, etc.? The actual data collection per-se aside, one of the biggest problems with this whole setup is that we have allowed the development of a "shadow government" (not in the conspiracy theory sense, mind you) that lacks effective oversight (Congress is not sufficient oversight in my book), and is barely - if at all - accountable to the American people. Between the NSA, the CIA, the FISA courts, and FSM knows what other agencies - as well as "National Security Letters" and "gag orders" - we have a monster on our hands that we barely know anything about.
I would call them complete morons but that is unkind. Incurious and ignorant and perhaps far too trusting is perhaps more polite.
Most people who meet me find me rather average in pretty much every respect. Probably below average in quite a few. We all have choices we can make with our time and I know nothing about spectator sports, for example.
Given that, I don't really care so much what the NSA tries to do... I now realize that the real answer is promotion, advocacy and education around technological tools to evade their snooping (assuming, for the sake of argument, that they can't break strong crypto). My goal going forward is to dive into helping promote the use of, and education regarding, Tor, I2P, PGP, and their ilk. Part of that is going to mean educating myself to a considerable degree as well, as I've admittedly been too cavalier about this stuff in the past.
EDIT:
Or with even less mental effort they saw a question about privacy and didn't have an answer at hand so just substituted it with the question: do you like the President?
It's not double think if they never had an opinion on privacy :)
But I want to know about these trade-offs, and I don't care if that makes them less effective.
There's no way NSA should be looking at private email, phone, VOIP, social networking communication en masse.
Why? Someone looking to do harm doesn't use phones (maybe Burners) or other communication methods where they know they'd be easily tracked.
Maybe there needs to be special protection for certain classes of cloud service, computing service, or communication. Certainly allowing people to use an "exocortex" without fear of seizure would make people smarter. It might make some crimes harder to punish.
Luckily, technology gets a vote, too.
I think a clear/easy line is that anything which is "personal thought" or approximates thought should be immune to search, ideally though technical means. Notes (for yourself), a journal, etc. Maybe "quantified self" measurements. etc.
The line is probably in a different place than in the telephone era, or even the disconnected Internet era.
I'd prefer it be defined through legislation (and maybe through constitutional amendment) vs. through legal decisions. The problem with legal decisions is they tend to involve criminal cases, and "a person was keeping a personal diary of his child rapes" is an exceptionally hard thing to argue privacy for, even if that's only 0.001% of the use case enabled by making personal notes private.
The bit that really bothers me is the total lack of transparency and accountability.
It's meant to calm the masses.
"The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0430484/
Seems fear, ignorance and apathy is still working out just fine unfortunately.
I'm sure it's possible for people to be a bit apathetic and support widespread data snooping, but I'm wary of the inevitable attacks and possible drummed up support for current policies.
that yeah. its like if i had the right to sentence anybody on earth to death, but i wasn't doing it too often, and when i do it, nobody has any idea it happened. So people would think its ok.
