[Wikimedia-l] NSA

[Peter Southwood]

And "non-western" countries probably go further if their technological 
capacity allows it. If you are not being spied on by "somebody" it is 
because no-one could be bothered or they havent got around to it yet, not 
because any law protects your privacy.
P
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Nathan" <nawrich at gmail.com>
To: "Wikimedia Mailing List" <wikimedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, August 01, 2013 12:01 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] NSA


> On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 5:53 PM, Matthew Walker <mwalker at wikimedia.org> 
> wrote:
>>>
>>> What surprises me is that anyone is surprised by any of this 
>>> information.
>>
>>
>> It's one thing to have suspicions and theories about it; but if the third
>> party is constantly denying the allegations and with no recourse there's 
>> no
>> point in getting angry. Now that we have reasonable doubt, I hesitate to
>> call it proof, we can start making tremendous amounts of noise.
>>
>> ~Matt Walker
>
> I think that's just naive. Of course it was always denied until it
> became impossible to deny it. That's how these things work. But I have
> honestly assumed for many years that virtually everything transmitted
> over almost any electronic medium was collected and analyzed in some
> way. That appears to be the case, and in fact, I expected them to have
> gone further than they have. It seems that most of the data they
> collect is wiped within 3 days; that the data itself can only be
> analyzed under a fairly specific set of minimization rules after the
> approval of a senior executive in the administration, that the rules
> are drawn from generally accepted 4th amendment jurisprudence, etc.
>
> The cynic in me is also convinced that virtually all Western countries
> do the same sort of thing, if probably on a smaller scale. I would bet
> all the money I have that at a minimum the French, the English and the
> Germans maintain roughly similar intelligence gathering programs. But
> of course, they will deny it until it becomes impossible to deny it.
>
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