****UPDATE**** Upon much discussion and input from those who know better than I it seems that in this instance *I* am the ill informed jerk, not the guy spouting crazy sounding claims. As it turns out, sometimes the crazy sounding claims are true. *Insert foot in mouth* Im leaving this up and undeleted, even if it is a blow to my ego, for the enlightening conversation which follows. I suggest skipping the rant and going straight to the comments. ******************* So I got into a rather heated (on my part at least) debate today with a guy at work. An educated, genuinely intelligent co-worker and I were discussing the correlation between George Orwells 1984 and modern US society. He mentioned the camera on every street corner aspect. I replied well, as soon as they want to put one in my home, then well have an issue. He said they already have. He then proceeded to tell me how each and every router that is sold today has some form of software built into it that creates some sort of informational back door so the government can monitor everything you do through that router. Ok... lets stop and think about this for a moment. Assume this is true. Where are the majority of routers (as well as all other computer hardware components) produced? If you said Not in the US then you win a cookie. So, not only would EVERY SINGLE manufacturer of routers have to be IN ON THIS little conspiracy but they would also have to be ok with disturbing this product with a glaring security issue *designed to allow the US government to snoop* to all of their non-US costumers. OR... do they have two makes of each model? A US model with the built in government surveillance and another without it? If I call the company and say I want to buy a router do they look to see that Im a US customer and thus must get the one with the Big Brother software in it??? Oh, but it gets better! This fellow then proceeded to tell me that the US government has been recording your phone conversations for the past 10 years. ALL of them. Lets let that sink in for a moment. Every single phone call made by every single American in the past decade has been recorded and filed away in some government stronghold. Can you imagine the MIND BOGGLING amount of storage space such a database would require!?!? Is there an entire city somewhere that is a front for nothing more than hundreds of thousands of terabyte hard drives? Let me say that I DO understand that it has been proven that the US government has records of cell usage citing what numbers you have called and how long the conversations were. I get that. That may be an invasion of privacy in and of itself but that is a FAR cry from a recorded copy of all phone conversations. I also understand that the US government has done, are doing, and will continue to do some seriously questionable things. Im not naive. But Im also not ready to strap on my tinfoil had and start spouting unfounded and entirely irrational conspiracy theories either. *End Rant*
Posted on: Tue, 27 May 2014 21:54:26 +0000
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