First, if you followed the clues from Gawker, congrats. Yes, I left that message on the Zuckerberg-Prism story. Well, Nic did. I'm writing for the both of us here now.
Second, I understand the fear of a surveillance state. I am terrified someone is watching me every time my iPad is on a wireless network because of the front and back facing cameras. With that said, I can usually get around this paranoia by covering it up with my thumb should porn magically appear on my screen as it does at random times in random intervals. So--so strange...
Third, I have no problem living in a police state, none. I have done nothing illegal, and I can fight injustice easily, be it corruption or sheer stupidity, through wits or brute force, and I know how to run and hide or fight. But life isn't a movie, and even if it were, its far from "V for Vendetta".
Conspiracy nuts always have it in their heads that THEY, out of everyone, just get it, maaaaaaaaan. It all makes ######6 sense now. Why doesn't everyone just wake the ###$ up, and see that they are just sheeple being systematically murdered by the government war machine?! Etc. etc. etc.
Look, I'm not ignorant. Not by a long shot. I realize there is a prison industrial and military complex, that pot puts more people away for no legitimate reason, and that most incarcerated people are minorities. Beyond that, I understand why people get scared when the idea of a police state pops up. No one wants to be watched 24/7 by an authoritarian figurehead, judged for everything we do. And they always point to Britain, which has cameras everywhere. But... It's Britain. It's a super industrialized country. It's GDP was 2.445 TRILLION. The only thing wrong are the radicals, like the English Defence League, who are making a surveillance state seem shitloads worse than it actually is.
Look, let me show you how surveillance works for the shops I helped install cameras at in Boise. I know its a pretty big generalization to assume, worldwide, this is how it ######6 works everywhere, but just hear me out. You have hours of video constantly recording, or you have a system that only takes pictures every 7 seconds or whenever, or just a camera that records when it detects motion. All that footage is stored, and if nothing happens, most owners throw that $#%^ away or delete it, or they archive it. The problem then is that they only have a finite amount of space, so they either destory or delete archives, unless its something serious like a kidnapped girl shows up on screen or a robbery, shooting, suspect enters, shoplifting, or, in this day and age, funny accident. Then that gets kept. But odds are great that you going to the Cum N' Go (real store, I swear) is not compelling footage.
Also, people forget that someone has to watch all this $#%^ for key moments. And that's a boring ######6 job, even for hardcore archivists like myself and Nic. We love preserving film and video and all, but ###$ can surveillance work be ######6 boring.
So, from an insiders perspective, I'm not all that concerned. But the NSA had 5 Zettabytes of info. 1 Zettabyte is 1,099,511,627,776 GB large. Multiply that by 5 and you have a LOT of storage to archive surveillance for everything... And? Who the ###$ gets the great (possibly union) job of going through 1 Zettabyte of surveillance video, Facebook posts, tweets and Youtube Videos?
That's probably why the story got leaked. Cause they got the job, went "###$ this" and told the Post and the Guardian.
Therefore, (and this is just my personal theory) If the people running the police state, therefore, have no interest in running the police state, then why the ###$ should I be worried? Simple paranoia is healthy, but letting it consume you turns you into Alex Jones, and if you don't know who that is, congratulations. Never look him up. He's a ######6 moron who says "Wake up, America" so much I want to throw an alarm clock at his head. And I'd probably nail his face, because his head is MASSIVE. Seriously, if your brave, look up his photo and tell me he doesn't have a blimp head.
-C.Nic