Why you should care about NSA surveillance
by digby
This short film by Brian Knappenberger about why you should care about the surveillance state is a must see.
Yes, yes, yes. This is the point civil libertarians have been trying to make from the beginning. You should care, particularly since the government has been lying about what it’s using this information for and the results it’s getting from collecting it.
I had a talk on Sunday’s Virtually Speaking with Marcy Wheeler that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. This isn’t an abstract issue. The NSA lawbreaking that has been going on for over a decade is overwhelming, under both administrations. And the scope of the dragnet combined with the process they use to entrap and coerce witnesses makes anyone with a few degrees of separation from a suspect a target. (Which means all of us …)
And that doesn’t even get into the extreme danger to democracy discussed in the film. The history of government misuse of these powers is clear for anyone to see. Unless we truly believe that humans, Americans in particular, have been perfected to the point where there’s no reason to ever mistrust them, the scope of this spying power and the reckless assumption of authority by the people wielding it should make everyone care about this.
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