re: #292 erik_t

Bullshit. Patriot Act jokes have been low-hanging fruit for a decade. Absolutely nothing that Snowden revealed has been in any way surprising to anyone paying attention.

Vehemently disagree, I’ve been following this closely, and I didn’t even think the level of NSA activity was viable or would pass the smell test.

We had someone interview at my old job for a QA position, and he had come as a civilian contractor that had worked on some of the NSA systems. He came in bragging about some of the things the system could do. We didn’t hire him, why? because we all thought he was full of crap and a braggart. And as such wouldn’t make a good team member, (and if by some miracle he was being truthful, we thought, he showed poor judgement talking about stuff that was classified and probably shouldn’t be talked about).

So no, people who have been paying attention didn’t assume, oh the NSA is collecting everything and anything possible, and has figured out how to hack computers and get information not connected to the internet.

That’s approaching what I’d call ‘movie magic’ kinda like when the hero sits at a computer and breaks into the secure instillation 5 seconds later. That the NSA can do all of this stuff is horrifying, not the least because if they can do it, then so can other groups, and they may not be so friendly to the US.