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Do you think that half the US citizenship will ever express an opinion on any specific topic at all? Or even one tenth?

Alright, half is hyperbolic--but you can get a fairly-large portion of the population aping all sorts of crazy messages by putting them in the mouth of a candidate during an election. I'm guessing there'll be a whole lot of "disgust" coming from the Republicans in 2016.

"If half of the US citizenship..."

Only, that's not going to happen, is it?

It is of course an exaggeration, but my point was more that the technology is now there to make that list.

As a foreigner, this list could prevent me entering the United States. Comments posted on Twitter and Facebook have been used as reasons to reject people from entering the US in recent times.

Remember that US citizens get different rules to everyone else. UN charters such as those on prisoner's of war, human rights and torture have been ripped up by the last two US administrations. It is pertinent to note that the US does it's brutality outside the US and generally away from the eyes of its own citizens. Other brutal regimes tend to fall quickly because they do that to their own.

As I see it from the outside, your country has been stolen from you without your knowledge. It is organisations like Wikileaks and people like Edward Snowden that have started to tell us all the truth. This is why they are so important, and so very very dangerous to the powers behind the throne.

Ok, tin foil hat time:

  Imagine for a minute that Obama and Bush both entered
  into power without nefarious aims. Imagine that you sit 
  in the Oval Office on day one of your presidency when 
  some guy in a black suit gets shown in. 

  He says "Good morning Mr President" and presents you 
  with a little black folder. You open the folder and flick 
  through the pages and pages of documents, reading it slowly. 

  You look up and say to the man, "Who are you? What do you want?". 

  The man gives you a cell phone and says, "You keep this phone 
  with you at all times. You do not question the person at the 
  other end. You do not speak about this to anyone else. You'll have 
  some wins as president if you play ball, but otherwise we own you".

"I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the President, if I had a personal e-mail,"

That kind of power makes sure that politicians do their bidding. Whoever "they" are.

Ok, tin-foil hat back in the drawer...

I do love a good conspiracy theory.

Me too! One of favorites was the 90's BBC television series "House of Cards" and its sequel "To Play the King".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Cards_(UK_TV_series)

New Netflix-only "House of Cards" is too very good. Set in US Congress as a bonus.

Prison Break, anyone? :-)

I hope pg really likes what he's let hn become by indulging threads like this. Wouldn't this submission be [dead] in about 5 minutes six months ago?

Instead, it gets to be front page material for hours while goofy comments like this accumulate.

Maybe I'm not on HN for years now, but about 6 months ago, I assume it wouldn't have been dead that fast. I remember some articles during this hole SOPA / PIPA thing that went along similar lines.

And this "goofy" comment was marked as "tin hat" by the author himslef, so I only took it half serious.

As the poster of the original comment, thanks for this. It was indeed supposed to be tongue-in-cheek.

The scenario was intended to be completely fictional. It doesn't necesarily need to be the US and could just have likely to be somewhere like the UK. This could be 20 years down the line.

It was intended to demonstrate an extreme, where the intimate knowledge of someone's entire personal life by the state is exploitable by a malicious entity. Snowden is an example of a whistle-blower. His ex-co-workers could just as easily be blackmailers.

You're welcome! But basically, there's no gauarantee that the data collected in advance on people, you know in case a name comes up later and you don't want to do a ton of investigations to uncover the dirty secrets, aren't used in these ways.

Maybe that's Hoover 2.0?

I know a guy (that I obviously cannot disclose who) that once a similar thing happened, not as president though...

Someone that noone knew, a woman to be more exact, once showed up with some documents, showed some to him (without allowing him to read them all or too much), then asked: "Do you want to become mayor?"

The person I knew replied: "Yes, why not?"

The woman: "Alright. I call you later." (mind you, she never asked for his phone).

Indeed, she called, and told him that if he wanted to become mayor, to do what she told him to do, and talk with her in a certain place at a certain time.

He asked why, and tried to convince her to do it in a manner that is less weird and shady...

Then she told him: "Your call, if you want to become mayor, do as we tell you, otherwise we will choose someone else."

He gave up.

And I wonder who will win the elections next year in that town... (there are currently no obvious candidates or popular politicians, the only would that would be a automatic win is the current mayor that is already re-elected and thus cannot be a candidate at all)

At some point, 1 in 6.5 citizens of the GDR were STASI informants (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi)

And yet, that was not enough to topple the regime, that only happened later. You'll probably find that the phonebook can become very fat indeed.

There is always the IRS, but of course no one in the government, let alone the IRS, would ever use their position to stifle freedom of expression. Oh wait, Congress is having hearings today on that.

They are already doing what your claiming they cannot possibly do. Its time to acknowledge that there is very little they cannot do, or worse are doing that we still haven't found out

The evidence and reports that have thus far been released and discussed regarding the IRS's actions leave very little room to suggest they used their position to stifle freedom of expression.

Oppressive governments are notorious for killing off large percentages of their populations to eliminate dissenters and dissuade survivors from even contemplating dissent.

Given what the NSA is doing, it is the phone book.