Oct 4, 2018: rehobothfarm

@derek I am totally in favor of people being able to express themselves and love the ideals of privacy. I also understand that certain agencies are tasked with keeping Americans safe. I'm not sure if there is room at the adult's table for some people to discuss where these sorts of issues intersect. Some people respect that these are issues of national security and some people are myopically concerned with only their own selfish interests and forget that Iranian terror cells inside the United States right now would love to communicate with one another and the outside world in total secrecy without fear and would use any tool available to them to do so. I hate that the world is this way. I wish it weren't. I also hate that those in power have foolishly used the tools at their disposal for political ends and to spy on people for draconian reasons. However, if we truly lived in a repressive regime like China people would be rounded up and charged with crimes when they post pictures of themselves smoking dope or simply express views contrary to the sitting government. We actually do live in a relatively free society and we should be fighting the war of culture to keep it that way. I don't like the idea that our government spies on us but I at least understand why and why it may be better that way despite my personal preferences. My biggest concerns lie in how the oversight of these agencies has failed. I'm aghast that we are right back where we were with the Hightower and Church committees, worse really, much worse. From a military perspective, to put on those goggles, in warfare you have to control 3 things. An enemy's ability to move, shoot and communicate. Do you believe that the government is going to give up their monopoly on control over the telecommunications grid? With increasing controls over SCADA devices via internet which can entail everything from valves on high pressure natural gas pipelines to commuter trains could some argue that not maintaining this sort of control amount to malpractice and dereliction of duty? I sure am glad that I'm not responsible for any of these systems. I have SCREAMED for years that allowing critical SCADA devices to be controlled via internet was a huge mistake and that they should only be accessible over completely segregated physically airgapped networks but for some reason nobody listens to what I say. The argument seems to be that wire is expensive therefore we must allow our critical systems to be susceptible to attacks by the Chinese military. I respectfully disagree. Some people would say that they should be able to look at camera feeds from secret and secure Air Force bases because they 'wannit'. I disagree. Some people get upset when they learn that their employer records all of their phone calls that take place over VOIP networks. It is their phone network that you are using on their time. Likewise, if you have ever been in one of those come to Jesus meetings with an employee related to their browsing history you have probably heard a lot about privacy. Not on their time with their equipment. Their equipment. Who's equipment are the backbone switches that run the internet? AT&T? Mr. Verizon? All of these companies have been on some level funded by the government and have been given at least local monopoly power by the government. If you don't like the way the government runs their network build your own. I hate that it is this way. I really do. It just is. To keep things in perspective we need to remember that the internet was created by the military for the military but they were so magnanimous that they let us post pictures of our dogs on their system. Call it sympathy for the devil if you like but I'm not going to try to start rearranging their chairs without permission. Why is it that people who want privacy on the internet don't even own their own servers? How many people screaming for privacy run their own mail server? If someone else has root access to the server your email runs on how do you expect privacy? I don't run my own email server right now. Some big tech giant can rip open my email like a bag of chips right now. Whattaya do? I'm not going to pretend it isn't so. Embrace the unicorn network. Embrace it! LOL. Thanks for the great site @derek