Question for you Political Atheist.

If the government gives up meta data collection, is there really any change in how much less of an intrusion the data represents to anyone’s privacy concerns?

You have two students, without any government help, able to demonstrate the meta data they can get from an email and do pretty much what the government can do with the same data. Isn’t that as troubling as what many fear the NSA is doing?

In other words, the meta data still exists. It can still be used. Why would the government need to run a program when “others” like Amazon, credit reporting agencies, banks, license bureaus, stores, etc. can all team up and do a complete profile of an individuals life.

I know I am simplifying my argument, but the bottom line is the data is a part of the digital world. It exists. Should anyone feel safer knowing the NSA isn’t using the data, but the data is all still out there?

It almost sounds like what some want is a false sense of security. Sleep better at night knowing the NSA isn’t collecting all that data, but knowing all the data is still there to be collected by ‘others’ isn’t really all that private is it?

If everyone is concerned about their privacy, then a fundamental change in the entire digital world is in order. Computers are data. The internet is data. Your phone is data. Your credit card is data. How would you ever reverse digital machines from not storing data and then relating that data to other computers?

Everything would have to be a complete dump of any data storage transaction as soon as you stopped a process, completed a command, changed a page view, left a program, hung up the phone, paid a bill. But then how would you be able to go back and check your accounts, remember all those phone numbers that are no longer able to be stored, etc.