The filters may well be opt-out but given the recent revelations on global surveillance who in their right mind is going to tick the box that says 'YES - I do want access to extremist content'
'And these are your reasons, my lord?' 'Do you think I have others?' said Lord Vetinari. 'My motives, as ever, are entirely transparent.' Hughnon reflected that 'entirely transparent' meant either that you could see right through them or that you couldn't see them at all.
I was watching an episode of NCIS this weekend - Agent Gibbs was leading his team in the pursuit of a very nasty killer and it was all like:
"Take a look at what numbers he's been calling"
"I'm seeing 8 calls in a short timeframe to the same number"
"Do we know who's number that is?"
"It appears to be a burner phone, tracking its location to its last use"
"OK team move out"
It dawned on me that this is exactly the kind of information being used that everyone is up in arms about - but no-ones batting an eye at this, presumably because a) its a fictional program but I think probably morelike b) Gibbs is the hero and we want him to be able to catch the bad guys because that's what good guys do.
This got me thinking that maybe what the NSA really needs is some kind of image overhaul - show them to be the good guys again and then people won't object to them having access to resources such as metadata in order to do their job just like agent Gibbs.
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The filters may well be opt-out but given the recent revelations on global surveillance who in their right mind is going to tick the box that says 'YES - I do want access to extremist content'
To quote Terry Pratchett's 'The Truth'
'And these are your reasons, my lord?'
'Do you think I have others?' said Lord Vetinari. 'My motives, as ever, are entirely transparent.'
Hughnon reflected that 'entirely transparent' meant either that you could see right through them or that you couldn't see them at all.
NSA Access in General
I was watching an episode of NCIS this weekend - Agent Gibbs was leading his team in the pursuit of a very nasty killer and it was all like:
"Take a look at what numbers he's been calling"
"I'm seeing 8 calls in a short timeframe to the same number"
"Do we know who's number that is?"
"It appears to be a burner phone, tracking its location to its last use"
"OK team move out"
It dawned on me that this is exactly the kind of information being used that everyone is up in arms about - but no-ones batting an eye at this, presumably because a) its a fictional program but I think probably morelike b) Gibbs is the hero and we want him to be able to catch the bad guys because that's what good guys do.
This got me thinking that maybe what the NSA really needs is some kind of image overhaul - show them to be the good guys again and then people won't object to them having access to resources such as metadata in order to do their job just like agent Gibbs.