Woke up this morning to find out the Government has my phone records...

[alcibiades_mystery]

109. I'm not "sure"

I live in the real world. I deal in probabilities. Even if the government collected every email and web site and phone conversation I ever had, the probability that this would have any effect at all on my life are so close to zero that it's scarcely worth thinking about. And they're not doing *that.* Am I SURE? Of course not. I'm not a child, and I don't look for certainties. I am of the practical/actionable type, and here's what that tells me: 1) the US government is not going away any time soon; and yet, it is limited in all kinds of ways that paranoid fantasies about government power ignore; 2) Data collection is in its literal infancy - computer scientists and everyone else are just now discovering the true import of collecting trillions of pieces of data and running operations on giant data sets; what we've seen to date is child's-play in this regard; 3) Data collection and analysis is mostly a matter of aggregates and patterns; it remains largely unconcerned with individuals.

So, do I want "the government" doing this stuff? I really don't care that much, because it affects my life in ZERO negative ways. Do I think it can be "abused?" Of course, anything can. What do I think is mostly going on: career civil servants charged with building intelligence are doing that. I neither trust nor distrust government - it's mostly people trying to do the right thing. Frankly, I don't really care if the government knows all my associations: hell, I give that information to Mark Zuckerberg and all his advertiser clients for free, and so does mostly every else on this board.