It’s my opinion that to be truly outraged at the NSA you must have virtually no perspective or inkling of what the private sector does with your data. Data that is far more detailed than what the NSA would ever dream of collecting. And the private sector markets your data.
Apparently some congressmen and women agree and they’re beginning to push back.
“It’s just the irony of this whole debate,” said Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a prominent defender of the NSA.
“I mean it’s unbelievable what private companies collect from individuals and how they track them and track what their shopping habits are and where they may or may not be and how they shop,” he said. “All of that is collected. The NSA doesn’t do anything like that at all.” [...]
“Databases are enormous and they’re connected,” Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence panel, said of private company data bases. “And there are all sorts of new techniques to bring about more, like facial recognition. You’re shopping in the hardware department and somebody takes a picture and you’re identified and they can use it for promotions of hardware products.”
The information the private sector collects is not only far more detailed, it’s also far less secure.
It was revealed yesterday that the person responsible for the theft of detailed personal information, including credit card numbers, from over 70 million Target customers was a 17-year-old Russian hacker.
For some reason the massive amounts of unsecure data retailers and social networks collect on us is considered noncontroversial while the collection of phone numbers as a matter of national security is seen as some nefarious conspiracy.
Not-coincidentally, the harshest critics of the NSA are libertarian wolves masquerading as liberal sheep. They don’t have your best interests at heart. They stand in opposition of government itself.