McCain, Schumer On Snowden: Russia Should Pay

[JDPriestly]

21. I am most concerned about the information that Obama has confirmed --

that the government is studying and recording our metadata.

If you belong to any minority religion or other minority group, you should be concerned. That affects me personally very much -- as well as many others on DU.

Some who would be affected are gays and lesbians, Muslims or Jews, immigrants from anywhere in the world, people with dual nationality, people with a lot of friends or family living somewhere else in the world, people with unusual hobbies or political or social ideas, people who work in certain scientific fields, basically anyone who has an unusual interest. That would include people with a hobby of collecting guns or studying military history. People who watch endless videos on certain wars or military equipment. People who read a lot and use the internet a lot to research things like military history, military equipment, certain periods in history, foreign languages.

A lot of people will have networks that are unusual and can be discovered by analyzing their computer searches, e-mail tos and froms, telephone calls, etc.

If you don't have any interests or social ties that might cause some administration to study your metadata and maybe target you, then you are very lucky.

But if you think about the number of claimed agnostics or atheists on DU, if you think of the number of abortion rights supporters, anti-discrimination supporters, etc. on DU, you realize that any one of us could be the target of some right-wing fanatics in some corner of the government.

This surveillance is incompatible with freedom.