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 Jimsolo wrote:

 daedalus wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:


Mail sent through the USPS, no.

Full stop.

Why?

Because there ARE explicit restrictions against people opening your mail (government employees included). So 'no,' the government shouldn't be able to just open my mail without my permission.

So, and this is something I've wondered since we started passing what should be overlapping laws prefixed with "cyber-" in the name, because it's "on a computer", it becomes different?

Why?

Well like it was mention to me. Anything you send out on the internet is fair game. Remember the "Meat Tag" with the guy last six of his social tattooed on him? So NSA cracked the encryption. Now you have to trigger key words and go through the filter for your name to be flagged.

I don't really care if my government spies on me. I have nothing to hide. My darkest digital secret is that I stream (legal) porno often. Big deal.

As far as phones go, when I have to discuss something important, it's always face-to-face. I never text or call sensitive information, that should be a no-brainer for any human being who can breathe by themselves. LOL...

I don't know, I don't get all the freakout happening over this NSA stuff. Intelligence agencies exist to . . . gather intelligence. What did the public think they were doing all day inside those buildings, playing minesweeper? All these years in the media and public, people have said ''The Government knows this and that, everything we do, etc, etc!". Now that it's suddenly been proven (LOL), it's a big scandal? Personally, I'm happy they have this capability. Maybe I'm missing something.

Why I think most of everyone is on the fence about it. They have nothing to hide. Also think a majority of us know how to get put on the radar to. No way, even with Imperium Administration, can they track everyone individual emails. Hence the word triggers. Though I wonder how many hits DakkaDakka have had when we discuss the Imperium, Rebellion, Dark Eldar and Chaos. If NSA came out tomorrow and say DakkaDakka had the most hits for questionable "topic" 99.9% of us will go through the day with a smile and some serious pride

 daedalus wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:

 daedalus wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:

Mail sent through the USPS, no.

Full stop.

Why?

Because there ARE explicit restrictions against people opening your mail (government employees included). So 'no,' the government shouldn't be able to just open my mail without my permission.

So, and this is something I've wondered since we started passing what should be overlapping laws prefixed with "cyber-" in the name, because it's "on a computer", it becomes different?

Why?

Agreed. Laws are there for a reason; they are intended to serve a purpose; not just to be followed blindly, by rote, regardless of their utility or rationale. All the same rationales and principles which underlie the protection of our privacy in our physical mail apply equally to our email. If it's a federal crime for someone other than the intended recipient to open and read my mail, the medium (paper or electronic) should make no difference whatsoever. Drawing a distinction between them seems bizarre. For practical purposes, I can understand there being somewhat different guidelines, but if our laws are designed to protect the privacy of our mail, it'd be asinine to have those laws stop working just because we send our mail a different way.

 Col. Tartleton wrote:
If the terrorists were smart they'd try to blow up some of the seven internet central hubs that run the majority of the world's internet. Or so my limited understanding tells me.

It'd be like Fight Club but more super villain.

Good luck being intelligent with no internet NSA. You'll be back to index cards and binoculars.

On the other hand we'd be totally at the mercy of the bad guys, and out of an internet... So it'd be bad.

IIRC those hubs are pretty well guarded, with plenty of backups.

Though they are most vulnerable to overheating. destroying the ventilation could cause an internet meltdown, literally!


But yeah, this is one of the ways which the modern world could conceivably have a collapse.

All that commerce conducted over the internet, gone. All banking done online, gone. Any transaction that's been recorded in an electronic medium, gone.

That would be a massive chunk of the global economy totally erased.


Frankly, when you think about how much the modern world relies on the internet its scary how vulnerable we would be to something as simple as a cooling malfunction in the wrong place.