The argument that there is some steady march toward tyranny and erosion in our f... | Hacker News

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		leot on March 21, 2011 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: AT&T has a fiberoptic splitter copying our data to... The argument that there is some steady march toward tyranny and erosion in our freedoms would make sense if it weren't for the fact that these programs have existed in one form or another since WWII (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echelon_(signals_intelligence)). Furthermore, when, exactly, were the good ol' days, those days from which we are presumably descending into tyranny, when we (all, not just white folk) were truly "free"?

forgottenpaswrd on March 22, 2011 [–]

Today a big computer room could transcribe the entire telephone communications of all America, and store it for later view.

You can use computers to search for whatever pattern you want in milisecons. I think this makes it different from the past.

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