{"id":2899,"date":"2013-08-10T15:33:01","date_gmt":"2013-08-10T21:33:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/?p=2899"},"modified":"2013-08-10T15:40:19","modified_gmt":"2013-08-10T21:40:19","slug":"it-depends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/2013\/08\/10\/it-depends\/","title":{"rendered":"It Depends"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maybe it’s cause for hope that notable politicians and tech experts are starting to speak out about our government’s surveillance policies. Bruce Schneier is one. A top computer security expert with a knack for communicating, he writes books<\/a>, he blogs online<\/a>\u00a0and recently he has been publicly … shall we say … skeptical of what the Internet has become and what we’re learning about our government.<\/p>\n

Recently, he wrote this<\/a>\u00a0in a discussion of how government and corporate pronouncements have completely lost our trust:<\/p>\n

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NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander has claimed that the NSA’s massive surveillance and data mining programs have helped<\/a> stop more than 50 terrorist plots, 10 inside the U.S. Do you believe him? I think it depends on your definition of “helped.”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The whole thing is worth reading. But this one sentence pushed a hot button that I was trying to describe to the fair and industrious and infinitely patient <\/em>Trudy.<\/p>\n

Whether we believe the good director general or not does not only depend on the definition of helped<\/em>. It depends on<\/p>\n