Glenn Greenwald: "Detaining My Partner: A Failed Attempt at Intimidation"

[JDPriestly]

289. How do you prove the chilling effect?

The fact that the government tracks who communicates with whom in what political faction or party does chill speech. It may be hard to prove, but it will happen. Sooner or later, someone will be able to show an injury. That's how intrusive the collection of metadata is.

Based on your post, I assume you don't mind if the Chinese or the Iranians or the Russians or the North Koreans read your e-mails. I assume that as long as someone is foreign they are welcome to read your e-mails.

I would like to see an international protocol and agreement that would require all nations to protect the privacy of all citizens in all countries. That is what the Germans have been trying to get (at least that is what they claimed when this scandal first came out).

The metadata does not need to have names and addresses attached in order to enable government and private contractor employees to figure out who we are. Many of us use our own names on the internet especially on certain of our accounts.

And the metadata itself often gives away our identity. Whitehouse.gov for example is the address for a limited although good number of people. The name of a law firm will also limit the number of individuals who wrote an e-mail. So will the identification in a university e-mail -- let's say from the account of a scientist.

The phone numbers of members of Congress are easily identified or found out by people in D.C.

Lawyers' numbers, doctors' number, those are all published.

So the fact that only metadata is collected does not adequately protect the privacy of a lot of people.