How do your friends feel about the NSA's recent activities?

7 points by ac1294 13 years ago | 10 comments

I was furious (as were many of you) when I initially read that the NSA had taken phone call metadata from millions of Verizon customers. At the same time, I was thrilled to see the news make media headlines; as a libertarian, I'm typically disappointed by what the establishment reports. But this time, many individuals from all sides of the political spectrum were slightly outraged.

Unfortunately, the passion died down much quicker than I expected. A few journalists disagreed with Snowden's cause and called him a traitor, and news was quickly back to normal again. It seems as though the general public has forgotten about the NSA. Warrantless wiretap doesn't even concern most of my friends.

Hacker News consistently pushes NSA headlines to the front page, but my other news sources don't. Has everyone else seen a similar drop in passion against the NSA among their friends and family?

LoganCale 13 years ago |

Many are still upset, they just have a sense of futility about it and go back about their daily business with a "well, there's nothing I can do about it" attitude.

DanBC 13 years ago |

People just don't care - Facebook's changing privacy policies but continued popularity proves that. Taking someone's communications metadata doesn't appear to have any affect on their lives at all.

There's some vague tut-tutting, but most people know it was going on for years.

I live in Cheltenham, so I know many people who work for GCHQ, but they don't talk about it at all. I have no idea if they were aware of the scale and depth of intercepts.

stephengillie 13 years ago |

I was upset to hear that the spying was actually taking place, and was not just a tinfoil-hat-based conspiracy.

One of my close friends has never used facebook, and grudgingly uses gmail for business but not personal email. He now feels justified in his choices. Another close friend has been calling me paranoid for years, and he's disinterested with the whole NSA mess except for partisan mudslinging.

krapp 13 years ago |

Either indifferently, or else they blame it entirely on liberal corruption.

You can't really blame the public for putting it past them, as for the vast majority of people this is just another scandal playing out on television, not a sudden shock that impinges on the cycle of their lives.

LoganCale 13 years ago | |

Most people don't care about anything if it doesn't immediately affect them. The fact some people smoke or have a terrible diet is proof of this. Objectively they know it's bad, but there aren't any real noticeable effects in the short term, so they don't bother trying to change anything. Everyone is susceptible to this, but I think it's worth the effort to avoid such a mindset.

mcarrano 13 years ago |

I am still upset over the whole situation, more so now that the US has formally charged Snowden with espionage.

I have not personally talked to any of my friends about this but judging from my Facebook/Twitter stream, about 2-3 friends are actively posting about the NSA activities.

Ihmahr 13 years ago |

My spouse, most of the people I know, they dont care enough. Most of them 'have nothing to hide'... Some even show disregard I started working on a privacy tool. 'Bad people might use that.' It's somewhat depressing. I feel lucky to have a few friends who are more aware though. And hn of course.

gesman 13 years ago |

You're trying to control forces outside of your control. The result of this are your emotions that are destructive to your health. From your post, in order listed:

furious, disappointed, outraged, unfortunately, died, disagreed, forgotten, drop in passion.

You keep feeling this way - you're going to kill your health.

LoganCale 13 years ago | |

So we should just be happy and accept it, in other words?

e3pi 13 years ago | | |

That steak eating guy in the Matrix, right?