@sismoc I hate it when people trot out quotations from the founding fathers every single time an issue like this comes up. For some reason everyone gets the impression that they were these pure and noble souls who would never do anything like whatever the hot button issue of the moment is. In this case you're dead wrong. Every government since time immemorial has had an interest in intercepting data from antagonistic elements. The British did it to the French and vice versa during the Napoleonic Wars and you can bet we did it too. Our nation was not founded by an act of mutual agreement amongst the citizenry. There were still pro British elements amongst us, spies if you will, and our nation at the time was in a very precarious position. It is sheer folly to think they did not intercept data, granted that was back when you had to catch the messenger and then find the sealed letter but, the point remains that all governments were doing it and still are doing it to this day. The only difference between then and now is that the messenger is a global network and the sealed letter is encrypted data. It still baffles me how, in this day and age of social networks and cloud computing, we still expect data privacy.
This is just a classic case of wanting to have your cake and eat it too. You can have as much privacy as you can possibly get just by disconnecting your computer form the internet and cancelling your phone service. There you go privacy but, if you want to utilize the modern conveniences of this day and age then you have to accept the fact that your data is being tracked, not just by the government but by corporate America as well.
Now for my quote, the author of which is unknown but that sums up this whole ridiculous discussion nicely
"In the war for individual rights, common sense becomes the first and major casualty." An unknown but apparently very wise individual.
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