Marc Andreessen says Snowden is a traitor

This is now the bog standard reply of the closet fascists who support the NSA and their rampant spying. They've had to switch to this response because their previous response "You're just being paranoid", has been utterly blown apart by the Snowden revelations and thank god for that.

Both replies avoid grappling in a substantive fashion with the question of whether or not these activities are moral and something we should accept in our society, but at least the second reply doesn't actively shut down the conversation. Whereas before they could claim that we are being paranoid and there would be no real comeback to that, and thus our points could be safely dismissed, at least now one can reply "No we shouldn't be surprised, and now let's discuss whether or not it is something that should continue."

I'll add finally, that yes apparently we should be surprised because the same closet fascists now adopting this whole grizzled "wise to how the world works" persona have previously spent the last few decades strongly claiming that the NSA would never flagrantly violate the constitution in this manner, that they were stalwart defenders of America and apple pie. You can see the same sort of evolution with torture, where the people proclaiming that it is a "necessary" action in today's ruthless dog-eat-dog world were the exact people talking about how not torturing was what separated our good hearted security agents from those savages employed by "evil empires" such as Russia or China.

At the end of day, I am heartened because now at least the cards are on the table and these activities can't just be denied as the figments of paranoid imaginations. The conversation is moving along a bit, however slowly.

I remember reading years ago about a giant data center being built in Utah for the NSA with the express purpose of collecting electronic data sent in the continental US. It was in Time magazine or something similar, and it wasn't really that big of a deal. Honestly, I think the reason that people cared so much this time was because of the drama of the story: the inside man who revealed thousands of secrets and then bolted to Russia, and the subsequent continuing drama where more information gets periodically released, etc.

Why are people so shocked and upset about the NSA, when they could have expressed the same outrage at the PATRIOT act, which has been around for a decade, and which is responsible for the legality of much of the NSA's recent history? The NSA is a spy agency. That's what they do. They're using every legal avenue they have to collect as much information as possible. To assume that they're doing anything less than everything possible within legal limits is naive.

Without corroboration, you couldn't really talk about this too much in a public setting, because you'll sound like a conspiracy nut.

There were enough hints out there to realize that there is mass surveillance, but if you suggested the size and scope of what is actually happening in say 2008, people would think that you are a nut.

There are a lot of novelties in the Snowden leak for people, like me, who are interested but try to stay on the sane side of paranoid.

First and foremost, it's evidence with details. Echelon was more or less an open secret for a while, but even then there wasn't much information available about how it was being used -- just that communications were being collected and searched. It's the difference between, "There are data centers monitoring internet traffic," and, "here's a slide on an NSA presentation for software that will give you any person's entire browser history."

Second, there's the extent to which communications systems were being compromised. Taps on undersea cables and major backbones? Sure. Direct access to data at Google and Facebook and elsewhere? That was surprising.

Third, there was the scope. The assumption was always that it was impractical for the NSA or other agencies to store a lot of data about every person. But, now we know they don't store it -- they just exploit other databases.

There are the methodologies: I might assume that "they" are infiltrating the communications systems of certain foreign states, but to find out that they were doing it in part by hijacking Cisco equipment in transit and chipping them was surprising, mostly because it seems like such a stupid tactic in the event that word ever gets out.

And, there's the not very small matter of the targets involved. Spying for the sake of the War on Terror and against enemy states and all that is one of those things you grudgingly accept as part of the real world. But spying on our allies? What are they trying to accomplish there? What are they trying to gain that's worth the risk of being found out and pissing off your friends?

So, for me, the Snowden leaks moved the NSA from, "spooky, secretive, well-funded spy organization filling a necessary role," to, "totally out-of-control freaks that lost the plot years ago and seem to have set their hooks into the topmost levels of government."

Thank you. Burying this one as dupe. ("Burying" means lowering in rank, but not killing the item, so conversation can continue in the thread.)

Knowing that someone is spying on you is worth much less than knowing that they use Camera Model XYZ, which transmits on XYZ frequency and the camera is located at coordinates XX, YY.