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Comment by amirmc | Hacker News Reader

There's a distinction to be drawn between James Bond-style spying ("Humint" - which is the kind you're actually referring to) and the large-scale, indiscriminate, archived, mass-surveillence of otherwise ordinary people ("Sigint" - which is what we've learned about over the last couple of years).

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Sigint has been around signals signals were around.

The only reason I see a reason to distinguish is what the info collected is being used to so America can blackmail German citizens, that is shitty. But if we are just trying to collect information about Germany or people who just happen to be in German who are people of interest? That is the NSA mission.

The real issue is the potential for abuse. But the US government has plenty of stuff it could really abuse.

> "... who are people of interest?"

I think you've missed the part where everyone is now (effectively) a person of interest.

That is just not true. Sure, they are collecting some limited information on every, but mostly because its harder to collect targeted information than to just get it all.

So maybe the US has a record of every call made in Germany, but nobody is tracking some random bus driver in Bavaria.

Right now there aren't is the manpower to actually look at even a tiny fraction of what is collected.

I guess in the future, if an AI with human like ability is created, the actual monitoring of every person could occur. But it just isn't a fear right now.

I'd call it psuedo-pirvacy.

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