I would have put the probability of the government having recordings of all phone calls at about 75%. I’m slightly more surprised at emails and online chat messages, but not overly so. The U.S. government has gained a lot of power in their surveillance ability, there was even a time where the government interpreted the PATRIOT act as allowing them to put a wire tap without a warrant, though that was overturned by the Supreme Court.
I know there are a ton of things the government does that I am completely unaware of, and that I wouldn’t approve of a lot of it. But I don’t think it’s much worse now than it was in the past. Random example I found with 5 minutes of googling: http://www.aclu.org/aclu-history
Thousands of people were arrested and treated badly by the police without a warrant. This sounds far worse in terms of violated rights than anything they do today.
Incidentally, this link describes the ACLU, a group dedicated to protecting civil liberties.
I misread your first comment as arguing that society was becoming like an Orwellian dictatorship, I apologize for that.
I would have put the probability of the government having recordings of all phone calls at about 75%. I’m slightly more surprised at emails and online chat messages, but not overly so.
Why? The former takes much more storage, so all other things being equal I’d expect it to be less likely.
My thought process was that wiretapping is a well-known tool used by the government, and I wasn’t surprised that they would have created a mechanism by which they could wiretap everyone.
As for why I expected phones more than online communication, that’s was availability bias on my part. I’m used to hearing about wiretaps, while similar news with emails either a government employee, who I would expect them to monitor, or a private individual hacking into an email account.
I would have put the probability of the government having recordings of all phone calls at about 75%. I’m slightly more surprised at emails and online chat messages, but not overly so. The U.S. government has gained a lot of power in their surveillance ability, there was even a time where the government interpreted the PATRIOT act as allowing them to put a wire tap without a warrant, though that was overturned by the Supreme Court.
I know there are a ton of things the government does that I am completely unaware of, and that I wouldn’t approve of a lot of it. But I don’t think it’s much worse now than it was in the past. Random example I found with 5 minutes of googling: http://www.aclu.org/aclu-history
Thousands of people were arrested and treated badly by the police without a warrant. This sounds far worse in terms of violated rights than anything they do today.
Incidentally, this link describes the ACLU, a group dedicated to protecting civil liberties.
I misread your first comment as arguing that society was becoming like an Orwellian dictatorship, I apologize for that.
Why? The former takes much more storage, so all other things being equal I’d expect it to be less likely.
And text (email, chat) is also much easier to parse and search with computers than voice recordings.
That was miscalibration on my part.
My thought process was that wiretapping is a well-known tool used by the government, and I wasn’t surprised that they would have created a mechanism by which they could wiretap everyone.
As for why I expected phones more than online communication, that’s was availability bias on my part. I’m used to hearing about wiretaps, while similar news with emails either a government employee, who I would expect them to monitor, or a private individual hacking into an email account.