Everyone is under surveillance now, says whistleblower Edward Snowden

[JDPriestly]

142. No. Putin looked bad. Putin always looks smug, etc.

But for a moment there he was very flustered. Well, we shall see how this develops.

Putin would not dare throw Snowden out because Snowden is for Putin a prize to wave in front of Obama's face. The Obama administration was caught in some dirty tricks that are offensive to many knowledgeable Americans. Obama should have simply told the American people what was going on. If the NSA had a really good reason for doing what they are doing then the American people would not be so offended by the program. But to take money out of the food stamp and unemployment insurance programs when we already have so many, so shamefully many homeless people on our streets and to continue to invest money in this huge boondoggle program of collecting personal, some of it very personal, electronic data on American citizens (voters) is just shameful. Absolutely horrible.

For what purpose is all this data being collected and stored?

They are creating the proverbial haystack in which no pin will ever be found.
They are hoarding.

As an old lady who is constantly struggling to clean house and get rid of the stuff I have managed to collect in my life (I'd like to finally get rid of at least half of what clutters my closets) not knowing what my children might find valuable and what they will think is junk, I really do not understand why the NSA is hoarding so much data. I think it is kind of crazy. That is unless the purpose is to have control over the population. That was the case in totalitarian countries like the USSR (possibly Russia today. I doubt that they cleaned all their closets when their satellite countries separated from them), NAZI Germany, etc. It would be foolish to say it could never happen here. It could.

On edit: Have you read this?

We need to preserve the right to privacy. We cannot have representative government without the right to privacy. We also cannot have a functioning economy without privacy. This report explains just how difficult preserving privacy will be.

In an earlier post you spoke about the disregard for privacy in this time in which people talk loudly on their cell phones in public. But isn't that one of the most important aspects of privacy. The person who wishes to claim privacy limits what he or she says in the presence of others and chooses to say other things in the absence of others (of third parties).

Californians consider privacy to be very important.

Check this out: Just browse the list of laws that protect privacy in California. We even protect it in the California Constitution. Personal privacy is not dead. By no means. Eavesdropping is without a warrant particularly heinous. Recording a conversation without the consent of the person being recorded is also abominable.