Sunday, October 12, 2014

A question for Glenn Greenwald

I just watched Glenn Greenwald's TED Talks video on Why Privacy Matters. In it, he spent quite a bit of time explaining that the goal of the "surveillance state" is to control the population by generating an assumption that we are being watched.

If that were the case, one has to wonder why NSA took such elaborate measures to keep their programs secret. Shouldn't they have celebrated Snowden's revelations instead? After all, how can we be controlled if we don't know we're being watched?

If I was in the mold of a Glenn Beck conspiracy theorist, I might assume that Greenwald/Snowden are really agents of the surveillance state who's job was to get the word out.

Just saying...

;-)

3 comments:

  1. I think Greenwald's main purpose is not to inform but to draw attention to himself and appear to be the smartest person in the room. Surely, he can't be as naive as to think that our government only began to spy on us after January 20, 2009. Even one of my senators, Saxby Chambliss, admitted that the NSA domestic surveillance program began in 2006, but if one listens to Greenwald, the NSA only recently became a threat to our existence. Greenwald has established a double standard for President Obama and President Bush. While he had no major objections to the NSA's domestic surveillance activities between 2002-2009, he's found plenty of reasons to be against them now. I've always believed that Greenwald's opposition to anything having to do with this president is personal because no matter what President Obama does, we can always count on Greenwald to be adamantly opposed to it.

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  2. I thought it was interesting that you recommended to him on Twitter that he watch Kill the Messenger...a true story about a real, live, actual conspiracy by the CIA. Guess he can't get any street cred or attention for that. Did he ever convince you of his premise: that privacy is important?

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    Replies
    1. I already thought that privacy is important. But not for the reasons he outlined. The whole concept of privacy has been changed via our embrace of the internet. Greenwald only sees that as a problem with government surveillance. Its MUCH bigger than that!

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