If the NSA were not building an enormous computing facility in Utah, we could rightly accuse them of being incompetent.
The government requested three months of Verizon's phone records right after the Boston bombing, not right after say, a derogatory article was published on Michelle Obama.
The government's actions must be viewed in light of the law enforcement agencies continuous drive to use technology to solve crimes and catch perpetrators. Most people celebrate this when they watch the CSI TV shows. Consider how DNA technology has made it more efficient to convict murderers, and how DNA has exonerated people on death row. Now consider how many people are eliminated as potential murder suspects because an early DNA screen clears then and consider how many people are eliminated as potential suspects in other crimes because their phone records put them in another place -- now I know that's a two edge sword, but technology is more illuminating and less bias than eye-witness testimony.
Hey I've got an idea! Why don't we all register with the government at birth and provide tissue samples each year to verify our identity. Better yet, let's all wear ankle tracking devices or even better still just embed them in the back of babies necks Matrix-style.
These kinds of dragnets suck, for more reasons than I care to admit. The fallacy of your argument is the idea that catching a few bad apples justifies the good ones that get caught in the same net. The people on CSI have due process, few of the NSAs targets will ever see their day in court.
Technology is neutral. Its application is decidedly not.
But you hardly provide tissue samples as you age. Your point has little to do with my argument :/.
Registration at birth is a choice we made because of the social values of planning. It's unlikely that those same people, as adults, would consent to yearly tissue exchange or other undignified spying apparati.
"Your point has little to do with my argument" - It's unclear what your argument is.
In addition to registering for an SSN, we provide images of ourselves as we age for driver's licenses, and some interactions with law enforcement end up with one's DNA being collected. Allegories to your dystopian state you feel people would balk at are already standard practice.
Bad stuff can be (and has been) done with this information (and that sucks), and as was stated above, so has exculpatory stuff (which is great).
The government requested three months of Verizon's phone records right after the Boston bombing, not right after say, a derogatory article was published on Michelle Obama.
The government's actions must be viewed in light of the law enforcement agencies continuous drive to use technology to solve crimes and catch perpetrators. Most people celebrate this when they watch the CSI TV shows. Consider how DNA technology has made it more efficient to convict murderers, and how DNA has exonerated people on death row. Now consider how many people are eliminated as potential murder suspects because an early DNA screen clears then and consider how many people are eliminated as potential suspects in other crimes because their phone records put them in another place -- now I know that's a two edge sword, but technology is more illuminating and less bias than eye-witness testimony.