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Comment by andy_ppp | Hacker News Reader

I don’t understand why politicians don’t worry that if the NSA are allowed to do this they will have a lot of information on many people in public life including them. Do they not understand the NSA will be harvesting representatives data together with the rest of the citizens?

Personally I would struggle to resist reading Biden’s/Trump’s emails, whereabouts and digital footprint for a day, it would be pretty interesting to say the least.

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My guess is that they think they're above the rest of everyone. There's a bigger national security issue here than what you suggested (blackmail of politicians) and that's manipulation of a country's populous. Selling ads is selling ideas and psychological manipulation, at the root of it (convince people to buy something, often things they don't need). Many ads sell feelings (e.g. coke and car companies don't sell you products, they sell you feelings and prestige, respectively). Or there are political ads. Politicians may like this because they get control over their populations but the problem is that adversaries also can get this control. It is a dangerous game to play. Worse, politicians are not immune to these same manipulations. People often overestimate how good they are at defending themselves from propaganda because they are only counting the propaganda that is not targeted at them and not the propaganda that does work (propaganda doesn't mean bad either). Since native advertising is so prolific these days most people don't know how they're being influenced and just think propaganda is the standard old Army ad or Uncle Sam and not things like Kurzgesagt or Vsauce (again, propaganda doesn't mean bad, but rather influential).

<< selling ads is selling ideas and psychological manipulation

Yep and social media got unfettered access to real thoughts and patterns of almost entire internet population for a while. I would be stunned if they were not able to distill a way to determine when a given message works best ( not just what message works best for a given task ).

Marketing always had people divided into various groups they could sell to. Adtech, made into real science.

<< People often overestimate how good they are at defending themselves from propaganda because they are only counting the propaganda that is not targeted at them and not the propaganda that does work (propaganda doesn't mean bad either).

Being aware helps, but you are right. I found myself nodding, when upon reflection it was clear I was being manipulated based on later facts.

> I would be stunned if they were not able to distill a way to determine when a given message works best

This is called microtargeting[0].

> Being aware helps, but you are right. I found myself nodding, when upon reflection it was clear I was being manipulated based on later facts.

Well I can't stress enough that this isn't always a bad thing. Propaganda can even be beneficial. It can help people band together for important things (e.g. informing people about climate change). But we also should be aware that we are often manipulated. I think it is fine when it is for the good (hard to define though, which is problematic) but not okay for bad purposes. Paved with good intentions after all.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microtargeting

I think they understand it very well and it's part of the reason they don't push back on NSA power grabs. As Chuck Schumer said "let me tell you - you take on the intelligence community - they have six ways from Sunday of getting back at you."

I thought the whole shitshow in 2016 with Obama accidentally spying on the Trump campaign would have, at the very least, lit a fire under the GOP's feet to reign in the government's surveillance apparatus.

Who am I kidding? They don't want the boot off their face, they want it on their foot.

Why would they do that?. The swamp part of the GOP and the swamp part of the DNC are within a hairs breath of being the same establishment. They just market different things to different customers. They're like a megacorp selling all natural bullshit under one brand and rot your organs energy drinks under another brand. The Bernies and the AOCs and the MTGs and other "out there" politicians they let make noise are just market research so the swamp people know what positions they may need to adopt in the future to keep their products marketable to the masses.

The GOP has classically been stronger by leading from behind. That is, playing victims. They often garner more strong support this way. DNC just is ineffective when in power (they win when they have popular candidates because higher turnout but reps are more consistent voters). There's an old Simpsons joke here. Both sides do talk about government overreach and happily expand the military industrial complex and expansion of spying on US citizens (US is not alone or particularly unique here albeit the most powerful). There are outliers on both sides, mind you, but there is a common trend (that leads to conspiracy thinking). Some might call this Bread and Circus or Divide and Rule, but I think we can all recognize that there are political games being played.

"accidentally"

Partially reiterating a sibling comment, but the GOP hates Trump. All of the Trumpy elements of the current House just refused to confirm the speaker in return for holding a new "Church" committee, so I'd say that faction of the Congressional GOP is as suspicious of our spy agencies as it ever has been.

https://theintercept.com/2023/01/05/mccarthy-speaker-republi...

This is not a cynical enough point of view. Right now, the intelligence community pays attention to the opinions of Congresspeople and other officials, and runs operations to monitor their activities and weaken (or strengthen) their power or influence.

US intelligence agencies are political entities masquerading as law enforcement, and their motivations are largely internal, rather than controlled by the executive (as we saw during the Trump years.)

Any reasonably smart politician these days has upped their OPSEC and switched up their coms. The same goes for most people in power. I doubt they use the same consumer grade stuff your friends and family use.

But they do use consumer tech (Trump famously refused to use a secure cell phone), and they constantly get caught out by it.

Yes but they are learning and have more reason than most to up their game. After it was shown that Hilary's campaign was trying to spy on Trump's office, I am sure this was a lesson to them and others.

Surely various gentleman agreements are in place.

You can agree things behind the scenes but who holds all the power in that situation?

This could be precisely the reason various groups seek representation not just in parliament, but in important three-letter agencies as well.

In the end, the amount of power in the world is finite, and natural power-strivers participate in exercises in game theory over it.

> Personally I would struggle to resist reading Biden’s/Trump’s emails, whereabouts and digital footprint for a day, it would be pretty interesting to say the least.

This law doesn't allow them to do that. It allows the NSA to collect stored communications between people who are not US citizens who live outside the US without a warrant. Biden and Trump are both US citizens living in the US, so they fail both criteria. The scandal in 2019 was that the FBI could search for mentions of Americans in these foreigners' communications.

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