How do you feel about the NSA spying?

[D. Strout]

How do I feel? Meh... Government is government. TBH if I were in charge, I'd do this just 'cause I could If I was bored one day. This is not the "if you have nothing to hide..." mindset, it's the "they have way too much data now to be bothered sifting through it for my junk" mindset. I'm not surprised and definitely not concerned. Mildly annoyed they can't find anything better to do though.

Perhaps they could cancel this project, lay off the employees working on it, and put the money in to the federal debt.

 

[mitgib]

I'm comfortably in the middle of it all, I find it easier to put all my info out there publicly than to try and hide it and at the same time I keep the curtains closed and my webcam unplugged when I'm not using it. I do use VPNs 99% of the time, but that's because it's always on and I'm too lazy to turn it off when I don't need it.

You do have private info you do not share with anybody other than your wife I would imaging, nor should any of us care about that info, but watching the video @jhadley linked the concern was put before you, someone evil dials your number by mistake, now there is something to scrutinize you over, and wrongly accuse you by digging in your past in all the data being stored.

I would like to share your view of remaining in the middle, but growing up pre-internet and the forward push to less civil liberty over the past 4 decades  has shown me our freedoms as Americans are eroding.  My usual action is to stay out of anything, head in sand, if they don't see me, they won't bother me, but sometimes enough is enough, but what action must we all take to gain attention that this has gone too far for too long.   

 

[acd]

All nice and dandy, but try getting the vast majority who struggle with day to day computer tasks to use that. They simply can not and will not. Unless a solution applies to everyone, not just the most technical savvy and paranoid, I don't consider it a solution at all. I'm sure there are plenty of ways to secure oneself from prying eyes and you've neatly listed several of them, but you also have to consider the value of such practice in comparison to the practicality. Personally I have nothing to hide so I'm not going to sacrifice a major portion of usability for the sake of keeping my trivial activities secret. Once you reach the stage where you go full-out tech hermit, you realise that you sacrificed most of what you were trying to protect in the first place.

On re-reading what I wrote I feel like I came off as more dickish than I intended.

Turning on forced ssl mode on your websites is something you can easily do that is transparent to your users, as is using or offering federated services like xmpp, email, or social network stacks that have an emphasis on security. Both of these provide significant privacy advantages to your non-technical users without any effort on their part and minimal effort on yours.

Automatic vpn sign-in in windows (both ipsec+l2tp & openvpn) is pretty much transparent as well, from a user perspective, once you get it set up the first time.

What I mean to say is there are options that have low maintenance effort that you can (and I believe should) do to increase your privacy level and that of your users without compromising ease of use.

 

[netnub]

Lol they can't spy on me. Even it they can I got noting to hide so they can do it all they want.

 

[KuJoe]

You do have private info you do not share with anybody other than your wife I would imaging, nor should any of us care about that info, but watching the video @jhadley linked the concern was put before you, someone evil dials your number by mistake, now there is something to scrutinize you over, and wrongly accuse you by digging in your past in all the data being stored.

I would like to share your view of remaining in the middle, but growing up pre-internet and the forward push to less civil liberty over the past 4 decades  has shown me our freedoms as Americans are eroding.  My usual action is to stay out of anything, head in sand, if they don't see me, they won't bother me, but sometimes enough is enough, but what action must we all take to gain attention that this has gone too far for too long.   

And at the same time I share info online in public forums that I would never tell my wife. :X