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Am I overly concerned or do you agree that almost 6,000 separate requests for user information is excessive?
It was bad enough previously, but all that talk after 2001 about not letting the terrorist win was just that: talk. They won right out of the gate, and we've allowed the gov to infringe on our freedom, spy, execute warrantless information gathering, and act on really poor rubber-stamped warrants, not to mention retroactively make immune companies which assisted in illegal gov activities. That isn't us winning by any stretch.
So what's 6000 requests to Google between friends?
So what's 6000 requests to Google between friends?
I don't trust Google nor this government. I write to my representatives all the time to complain about the Patriot Act. At first I thought it was necessary but now it is out of hand. We citizens have lost our fourth amendment rights and need to take them back. It used to be that authorities had to get a court order and had to follow due process. When you give too much power into the hands of a few people it will always lead to trouble.
I don't use cloud services much. I have 8 machines in my house and plenty of disc space. I will soon have a NAS. I am quite capable of doing my own back-ups.
I usually surf with Firefox with add-ins like Ghostery so I can control what sites can see what information about me. I also use the scroogle ssl scraper for Google alot. They don't need to know what I am doing on the web !!!
I don't use cloud services much. I have 8 machines in my house and plenty of disc space. I will soon have a NAS. I am quite capable of doing my own back-ups.
I usually surf with Firefox with add-ins like Ghostery so I can control what sites can see what information about me. I also use the scroogle ssl scraper for Google alot. They don't need to know what I am doing on the web !!!
On what basis do you declare that 5950 requests from the United States is excessive? That works out to 1 request for every 51509 people in the US. Western Europe (France, Germany and the United Kingdom) isnt that far off, at 1 request for every 57472 people. (See http://www.google.com/publicdata for the 2010 population numbers.) These are also the countries with the biggest terrorism bulls eyes painted on them.
There are a myriad of reasons why data can be requests besides terrorism: criminal, child porn, cyber bullying, to name a few, and there are several levels of government: federal, state, county, local, all of which can issue requests. Lastly, private citizens, that's you and me, can also subpoena such information. These would also presumably be included in the request totals.
Something that never seems to come up in these discussions/rants: the government isnt psychic. If a law enforcement agency, or an intelligence agency for that matter, gets a tip or a lead, it's obligated to follow it up. Sometimes it turns out to be real, sometimes it doesnt, but this isnt known until after the follow-up happens. Frankly, I'd rather the FBI read my email to find out I hadn't actually plotted anything than to have an airliner blown up because they didn't read the email of someone who was.
There are a myriad of reasons why data can be requests besides terrorism: criminal, child porn, cyber bullying, to name a few, and there are several levels of government: federal, state, county, local, all of which can issue requests. Lastly, private citizens, that's you and me, can also subpoena such information. These would also presumably be included in the request totals.
Something that never seems to come up in these discussions/rants: the government isnt psychic. If a law enforcement agency, or an intelligence agency for that matter, gets a tip or a lead, it's obligated to follow it up. Sometimes it turns out to be real, sometimes it doesnt, but this isnt known until after the follow-up happens. Frankly, I'd rather the FBI read my email to find out I hadn't actually plotted anything than to have an airliner blown up because they didn't read the email of someone who was.
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