Details of Microsofts collaboration with NSA on spying

Barring the interesting tinfoil hat theories, what irks me about the NSA spying is that it's practically pointless.  Governments the world over will spend billions on surveillance and trample over the idea of rights and personal freedoms and for what?  A marginal decrease to the safety of the average citizen?

It's statistically more dangerous to drive your car than to worry about being killed in any terrorist event. 

I'm not saying that all surveillance is pointless, but governments now are way past the point of dimishing returns on increased safety, dollar for dollar.  No matter how is spent or how many of our personal liberties are thrown under the bus of "if you don't do anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about", it still won't prevent anyone from dying or being injured.  Even a Minority Report sci-fi scenario could never prevent all crime, just from the fact that someone with mental illness could literally act on base impulse and push a stranger into a train.

If there's one issue for which I'll go stand next to those right-wingers I usually label "nut-jobs", it's the idea that I don't need the government to keep me safe.  I could die to a piece of falling space debris; choke on a piece of undercooked potato; have a heart attack walking up the stairs.  Ugh.

Personally, I think Snowden is a hero.  Secuirty be damned; spoiler alert, you die in the end. 

Also, for every "it keeps you safe" argument, I question why then doesn't the government require proof-positive that new industry techniques or innovations are completely safe before use.  Nicotine-based pesticides? Arguments on both sides as to whether those cause the mass fatalies in bee colonies, but instead of requiring proof that it's not, industry is allowed to argue for proof that it does.

Safety regulations?  Same week as Boston, a plant accident in Texas levelled a not so small area.  Everything's gotta be bigger in Texas, right?  Don't see the owners - who were previously warned about plant conditions - being carted off on mass murder charges facing the death penalty.  /facepalm

Yeah, maybe the whole NSA-spying thing gets me going a bit ... that can't be good for my heart.  Increased risk of heart disease due to stress, and all.  Heck, I don't even have anything to hide, other than I'm a Canadian that doesn't like hockey.  I don't think that treason.  I hope.

I'm guessing my simmering rage at the whole situation is due to the double-standard of policing and government in general, especially when it comes to expense scandals.  Seriously, if they had nothing to hide....[insert something about goose and gander here]

I'm going to go out for a ride, it's good for the ole' blood pressure, though in my city it's a pretty dangerous proposition - drivers here are crazy!

Cell phones, tablets and webcams. Billions of them in service right now. I'm not worried about XB1 and Kinect.

Why would anyone be concerned about the NSA spying now? That's history. It's what you don't know about that bites you. There's a lot going on that are yet to know about.

the thing with cell phones is a non-issue.  If I wanted to be untraceable, I could pull the battery on my phone.  Get off-the-rack sim cards.  Postal box address.  It's ultimately my choice how paranoid I want to be.  Heck, it's easy enough to get an "untraceable" phone; remember, someone has to *know* it's your phone to track you.

Besides, just saying "there's so much we don't know" isn't a reason to dismiss the issue out of hand; for me, it means we need to demand more access.  Again, it's a double-standard: government gets to say "you don't need to know" and then can hide whatever it wants behind a "national security threat" card, but we can't claim due-process if you're caught up in a dragnet?  Think of the implications of false positives: just because a charge is dropped because you're not doing anything wrong, if it gets out that you were investigated these days the implication is enough to ruin your life (professional, for example) because of the loose standards of journalism these days.

I realise that I have just as much to worry about from NSA spying as I do from terrorism (it's like the argument you made in the Halo forums about people whining about that secondary weapon that didn't really kill people as much as they thought it did), but I get just as ... passonate? ... in my arguments for against terrorism, and outside of the odd bit of news like this hitting my radar and inspiring a rant, I don't actually give it much thought.  Except for when I do.  :D

Welp, add that to my list of reasons not to purchase the xbone.  

You know what's funny Northern, there was an article I had read where the victims of the West Fertilizer explosion didn't want the government to start investigating what was going on in the area in terms of a criminal one. But had absolutely no problems asking for help from the government for assistance to rebuild their homes and feed their children past the millions that FEMA had already given them.

Can't have the bad part of government around, but sure as hell they want the part that makes the suffering easier....

alarmist peoples.....

WTH is peameal bacon? Is that like corn fed beef?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peameal_bacon

That stuff looks good to me and I'm not even Canadian!

Just needed to add this too, because it looks good and I'm not Canadian!

Peameal bacom is what we Canadians call bacon, as you can see from the pictures above. (fyi, that stuff looks delicious!)

We can't just call it bacon, because well:

[img]http://www.shockinglydelicious.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Is-anythin...

bacon ^

So OT but I'll go there. The only thing I don't like about Canadian Bacon (Peameal bacon) is that outside of Canada, it's thought that we Canadians call it Bacon. I never heard of Canadian Bacon before 2005, when I joined 2old2play. Non-Canadians, well, mostly Americans, think our bacon sucks because it's not like their bacon. Except, that's not true. Images of bacon in my head and the stuff I eat is the same as what Americans think bacon is. Peameal Bacon, is something I rarely if ever had.

In an offtopic forum, can anything really be offtopic? 

Besides, the original topic is best ranted, I mean discussed (I meant ranted) over drinks at a backyard BBQ or in the lounge of a hotel during LAN. 

Bacon is bacon, Canadian bacon is breakfast ham, and peameal bacon is something else? Looks like ham with something on it, peameal I'm guessing and have no clue what that is...

Breakfast ham is ham, no one calls it bacon.  Canadian bacon is pemeal bacon.  It's leaner portions of pork loin cured in corn meal.  That's what the outer edge is.  It's more popular in Ontario, we never used it in the east coast very often.

Maple flavoured pemeal bacon poutine, now there's a winning combination.  I'll have to run up to Smoke's and see if they have that on the menu.

Doublepost

Looks like a tenderloin. Any part of the pig is delicious... excpet ear and snoot sammiches... those are gross. Chitterlins are gross beyond gross.

I like bacon.