Should You Be Afraid of the NSA? – Learn Liberty

You should be worried
about NSA Surveillance. For a very long time the government’s
position was, this is all too secret for anyone to ever talk about,
and it’s all too secret for the courts to decide whether it’s legal. And it’s too secret for you to know what the government was
doing with your communications. We know that the government is
collecting your telephone records. We know that the government is
tapping into the fiber optic cable infrastructure and siphoning off a copy. So that’s your web browsing, that’s
your searches, that’s your Facebook. All of the social networking that you
might do along with uses of Skype and things like that. Collecting everything that they
possibly can, and then after they have custody of it,
sorting out what they actually need.>>You’ve been lead to believe the NSA is
somehow scoping up basically everything in the world’s communications. In actuality,
according to a recent study, NSA analysts reviewed 0.0004 percent of
the worlds daily traffic. Put another way, if a standard basketball court represented
the global communications environment, NSA’s total collection would be
smaller than a dime on that court.>>Do you know what 90% of the email
traffic is on the internet? Spam.
By the time you de-duplicate what happens on the internet, and
you get rid of all the spam, you’ve got a very small
percentage of the real content. And what the government isn’t telling
us is how much of the actual content your communications back and
forth they’re getting custody of.>>Who has time to listen
to all that stuff? Do you really think we care if you or anybody else are fighting
with your girlfriend? Do you think we really care if
you’re criticizing Barack Obama or the policies of the U.S. government? That stuff’s on 100 cable
news networks every day.>>Do you believe that all the governments
that we’re gonna have in the future, and all the people in charge of this
awesome power in the future, are gonna exercise the same judgment? Because if you’re not, then we need
to start talking about checks, and balances, and transparency.>>If 9/11 taught us one thing, it’s that
we live in a world where people wanna kill us simply because we’re Americans. Anytime there’s an attack
on the United States, the first thing you hear is why didn’t
the government do something to stop it? Why didn’t they know about this? Why did the intelligence
community let us down? Why did they fail? Why are you trying to stop those programs that could help us
prevent attacks from people who hate us? When no one out here can sit there and
say that they don’t have free speech, or that the NSA has has arrested them for
no good reason.>>Should we be worried about
the NSA recent activities? There are two sides to this debate.

32 thoughts on “Should You Be Afraid of the NSA? – Learn Liberty

  • Wow! The man with a lisp is a moron. 9/11 taught us that US's meddling in international affairs will affect all its citizens, even domestic.

  • The statistic that the NSA reviews only 0.00004% of the worlds traffic is proof that the program is innefective. If the NSA is only able to review such a small amount of information, why do they need steal information from us and violate the 4th Amendment?

  • 2:05 – Really?  9/11 taught us that people want to kill us simply because we're American?  That's the stupid crap Giuliani was preaching at everyone, and it's simply not true.  Assuming that 9/11 wasn't an inside job (and I'm really tired of the argument), we were attacked because we kept intervening in that area.

    When Clinton bombed Iraq back in 1998, killing hundreds of innocents, probably to distract from his impeachment, Ron Paul came out and said that the president had just provoked them and that we should expect a terrorist attack on our soil ( )

    Osama bin Laden said himself that this is why it happened (using one of Aesop's fables as an illustration), because we keep going over there and messing in their affairs.  He claimed that we bully them but then cry foul when they retaliate.

    No, that simplistic statement in the video results in the spreading of ignorance when it comes to such a complex topic.

  • This makes me worry about the future. Dependent on who is in power will determine who or who isn't in the Government's good graces.

  • The risk of crime or terrorism is slim to none for individual people. The government shouldn't be watching us, they should keep their eyes on the people who need to be watched.

  • I'm not afraid of the NSA. I'm not afraid of my government. I simply despise it, the secret (and highly illegal) FISA courts that "oversee" (READ: rubber-stamp) its approval of every action it takes, the legislators that have kept these illegal spy operations going, and the voters who put those assholes in office.

    My government is obviously afraid of me if it feels the need to do this, and it damn well should be afraid of me. That is exactly what was intended from the word "go".

  • Those who are willing to give up some of their freedoms to obtain some security deserve neither.  I believe that no American citizen should be subject to unreasonable search and seizure and what the NSA is doing is just that.

  • the us goverment locks up an absurd amount  of people every year inusafe or otherwise unfair conditions  and this is what everyone is so concerned about?

  • What are the psychological effects of any two people having a conversation knowing in the back of their minds that they're being listened to? every point in the video is great, I'm simply suggesting that the violation of not being able to speak freely with another human being on a 100% private line has far more reaching devastating effects on the individual human psyche, and on the social psyche as a whole.

  • The problem is not the surveillance per se, but the laws that lurk behind and are made by fascists bureaucrats who wish to eliminate people they don't like.

  • What is amazing to me is that this vidro gives both sides. Personally, I dislike it because it is a violation of privacy. That being said I would aldo be okay with it going on because it has actually prevented a few terrorist attacks and it is mostly just data minning, very little of it is real. I am definitely not for it as is, we need some checks and balances to make sure the 4th ammendment is not violated.

  • Have any of you ever read your internet or cell phone contracts?  Most of them have clauses that your use of either constitutes your authorization for others to collect your data and use it.  I'm more concerned that some marketing agency gets my data than the NSA. The TV show Person of Interest is not too far from the truth.  The computers just look for key words that can flag you for possible investigation. 1984 is long past. Statistical analysis has been running your lives for at least the last 20 years or more. 

  • If you gather up enough facts, you can prove that anyone is planning anything just by cherry-picking whatever facts and patterns line up to support your thesis. With an infinite amount of gathering you have an infinite number of chances of finding the results you're looking for. A suspicious detective will always "find" the perpetrator, or some poor soul who's situational pattern is a close enough match so they can pin it on him. But it's not malicious. The detective really believes he caught the criminal because everything seems to match up.

  • this emotional BS argument "everytime there is an attack, people ask 'why diddnt the government know about this' (jadajadajada)" 
    almost every time the DID KNOW,
    the Government in France had surveiled the 'Charlie Hebdo' attackers for a long time, 
    the US agencies were informed of them as well (they were on every no-fly list)

    they diddnt do anthing because their IMBICELS,
    the more Data they gobble up the less they can evaluate!
    more Surveillance makes us more unsafe!

  • bullshit. the nsa has super computers evaluate communications and threat level. maybe, the 0.00004% is the return human assessment but it all is reviewed.

  • The problem with these government surveillance programmes is that even if the NSA is at present not corrupt, it will be as it's only a matter of time. The more power any organisation has the greater the damage it can cause.

    It's a proven fact that the US government had all the information on its computers about the 9/11 attacks ahead of time but this information became lost in the sea of other data. I'm not saying that the US government knew about it and were actively participants in those attacks or that they knew it was going to happen but did nothing but that those in charge chose a brute force approach to accomplish their mission instead of following a perhaps less glamorous approach of intelligence led investigations.

    If the analysts had only that data they needed to do their job they'd be better at it and the people would be safer. That is always assuming those that claim the government's using its intercepts to blackmail opponents or to control the people are just spreading baseless conspiracy theories. If mass surveillance is as effective as the government would have us believe then why is it that the Boston bombing still occurred?

  • 9/11 was an inside job created BY OUR (the USA) government and blamed on "terrorists" in order to 1) get us into a war we didn't wanna be in and 2) get "the patriot act" in place so as to grow the cancer we call "government" bigger and take away more and more of our rights

  • Holy hell… This is really called Learn Liberty?  Why is this hack with the lisp on here spouting MSM garbage?

    No one wants to kill us "Because we are Americans".

  • I'm getting angry at people who say "But we need to save lives."  Fuck you, seriously.  If you want to sacrafice YOUR liberty, go right ahead.  I never volunteered mine but if you want to have virtually absolute security then shoot someone and go live in a prison.  Don't turn the US into a prison state because of your insecurities.

  • If we can be afraid of the NSA, how about the criminal organization who also might be spying our data right now?

  • It is only a matter of time before this debate fizzles out and we get more people willing to support surveillance (oops, this comment is already outdated after Paris and San Bernardino). History proves that people care more about personal safety and prosperity than high-spirited ideals like democracy and liberty. All the bleeding-hearts crying against the NSA are only doing so because they or their families have never been endangered in their lives. If they had been, they would support the government more. Take Russia, for example; where was all the post-Soviet, democratic liberalism when bombs went off in Moscow apartments and theaters? Now the majority of Russians support their authoritarian leader. Take Singapore; their regime is much more authoritarian than the US, but no Singaporeans complain because they have developed at one of the fastest rates in history.

    Don't mistake me for an authoritarianist. I'm just a pragmatist that thinks about results and national interests more than emotional comforts; the NSA is nowhere nearly as bad as Russian, Chinese, and other Middle Eastern and East European surveillance services. Too many (young) Americans cry "1984!" at any disagreement they have with the government without having a clue of what the world outside is like.

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