Yet Another NSA Program Raises Questions About Obama's Statements to Charlie Rose

[leveymg]

77. I have to agree with about 99% of that. However, they have much more than metadata on which to

base their terrorist (I like your term "insurgent" better) scoring and predictive profiles. They have all those vast trove of data acquired from Google, MS, Apple, Yahoo, Facebook, and the rest, including credit records, shopping habits, social networks, personal interests, politics, and reading materials, and everything else that goes to make up our virtual selves.

Personally, I find that profiling is most offensive and dangerous as it includes the built-in biases of the system's designers, and frankly, a lot of those people strike me having very low tolerance for political and social difference. Their norms are probably very narrow, as result, a lot of people who otherwise view themselves as patriotic and lawful are categorized as suspect, and that labeling (even if secret) has vast repercussions for lives and careers, particularly the ability to obtain public or higher-paid private employment, almost all of which requires some sort of security clearance or background check these days. That makes all of society much poorer, and creates potential conflicts and insurgents.

We need to think creatively about changing the models of politics, resistance and insurgency to overcome these challenges. But, most of all, we can't allow this to chill or terrorize us. The best defense of our liberties, I believe, is to let them know that we know what they know, but will do what we see is just and right, anyway - but, not in the way they predicted it.