General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Re: Attacks on Snowden, Greenwald. How the fuck do people like that sleep at night? [View all]JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)no one would complain. But the fact is that these programs are constituted so as to collect a vast range of information.
Most recently, we learn that the NSA has been collecting information on, if I understood correctly, 70% of the electronic communications in Vienna, Austria. I used to live in Austria. I know the Austrian people. I assure you their communications for the most part have nothing to do with our national security interests. The NSA can limit and target its information gathering better than that. No one objects to information gathering for national security purposes. But the broad programs of the NSA collect all kinds of other information such as commercial information that serves no national security purpose or should not.
Who is meeting whom at the Stammtisch tonight in old Vienna is of no interest to the American government. So why are they collecting it?