Why (Most of Us) Don’t Really Have to Worry About the NSA

Posted on June 27, 2013

I’m sure most of us have already heard about the NSA Scandal. Either from your friends, from the news, co-workers, etc…

This being said I will recap in case anyone reading is not familiar. Basically, an NSA contractor, Edward Snowden leaked information about a secret government surveillance program called “PRISM.” This program was allegedly collecting electronic data on a massive scale. The data collected was on not only on United States citizens but also foreign citizens. [1] According to President Obama the program has stopped over 50 terrorist plots (this is contested however) and was supervised by the courts. [2]

But now for the real reason I am writing this blog entry. I keep hearing things from my friends and my co-workers how the NSA is watching them through their web cams, don’t buy the Xbox One because the NSA will use the Kinect to watch you. Some people say it as a joke, others say it like it’s true.

For arguments sake I’ll just talk about United States surveillance. It is not possible for the NSA to watch everyone all the time. It would take a significant amount of main power to hack every web cam on every computer in the United States, to go through the millions of e-mails, to go through the millions of facebook statuses, to go through the millions of tweets that are sent and received?
Not to mention the United States government wouldn’t even care to. Regardless of what it might seem the United States is run by rational individuals. They would see no utility in listening to the day-to-day conversation of ordinary citizens. Think about it this way, do you see any benefit from stalking everyone of your facebook friends? Or do you just stalk those of particular interest to you?
The government’s people of particular interest are those that wish to do the United States harm. They are looking for terrorists. The data they collect is filtered to look for keywords, and they look at those who use enough keywords.

Granted, it is very possible that the government gathered many pieces of data that included your day-to-day conversation but chances are, if you are not talking about bombs or such, that the government has not even looked at it.

At any rate, I guess that’s all I have for this tirade. Comments are encouraged whether you agree or disagree and if you like what you read or you don’t but still want to hear more (because you love to hate) then feel free to follow my blog.

Thank you for reading.

Sources:
1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)
2: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-lives-saved-nsa-programs-114733804.html