Overflight, 99

In reality, that defense is totally false. The US Government has the ability to get not only metadata, but the actual content of your emails or what you say on the phone, the words you type in Google searches, the websites you visit, the documents you send to colleagues. This system can track nearly everything that every individual is doing online. So if you’re a journalist investigating the American government, if you work for a company with American competitors, or if you work in human rights involving the American government, or any other field, they can very easily intercept your communication. If you’re an American living in the US, they have to seek permission from a court, but they always get it. But if you’re not American, they don’t need anything, no special permission at all. I think the consequences of eliminating privacy are difficult to predict, but we must understand that this will have an enormous impact. The population’s ability to make demonstrations or to organize is greatly reduced when people don’t have privacy.» Glenn Greenwald, Brazilian Senate hearing on NSA spying
«Who here actually feels like they are under surveillance pretty regularly? Everyone inside of Occupy… [the Occupy Wall Street movement, author’s note] How many people have been arrested, and, at their Court day they had their phone taken into the backroom? How many people here had their retina scanned? Wow. … This is the concept that is key to all that we’ll talk about today. And it’s called linkability. Take one piece of data, and link it to another piece of data. So, for example, if you have you metro card and you have your debit card, if you have those things you can draw a line between them, right? So that’s not a scary thing. Except your debit card is linked to everything you do during the day. So now they know where you’re going, when you make purchases.

Overflight