I hate to repeat a post, but the latest NSA revelations are more profound than I can describe

[joshcryer]

19. I'm going to make an admission no one would like.

If, and it's a big if, they're only collecting metadata of foreign-US communications, then that is an epic and amazing effort. I don't think they are. They can get more clear data looking for stuff that takes an entire snapshot.

Look at the post I linked. I didn't have it bookmarked, I just googled it, and I even used a shitty search query (I asked about myself and NSA data, but it was more than that). It was the first hit. Google knows what shit I look up though (I've looked that post up before to share it) and has decided what I'm looking for without me trying.

Metadata proves some spurious connection, but it doesn't get to the nitty gritty of behavioral analysis. Google knows more about my behavior, about my likes and dislikes, about what I want, more than anything else on this Planet. Google knows me better than my mom, brothers, or even my most intimate lovers. It has never been wrong about me the past few years (when looking up searches about myself, with shitty keywords). And I even turned off its search history for me. It's remembering!

Now, they might sequester whole searches against a metadata search, and then only "look" at metadata transactions, but I don't think that counts. All it takes is one intelligence official to basically promote a metadata search to the higher level background search and ones entire human personality and psyche profile is revealed!

But even if they did that it wouldn't prevent abuses or massive privacy violations. All it takes is one person in the position to promote some data to searchable and your entire life is consumed and observed and analyzed.

I reread your post after typing this (I tend to do that before submission) and I agree that metadata was a "baby step" but I think we can both agree, after digesting your post some more, that they're not just looking at metadata, these fuckers are spying on the entire internet and what I post, what you post, what everyone posts here is going through some filter, some algorithm. We might even be triggering it at this very moment for someone to look over.