User blog comment:Brandon Rhea/The Day We Fight Back: A Digital Protest/@comment-71.211.4.172-20140212042353/@comment-5448890-20140213011700

I must be blunt here: you don't seem to quite understand the concept here. In fact, it seems as though you half-glanced at the blog and jumped to instant conclusions that the government was targeting only bad people, and that they'd leave these theoretical "good people" alone. You're simply incorrect, that's the best I can say. For one, your statement concerning the "busting" of "racist, or republican, ... member of some cult" peoples is so blatantly wrong that its wrongness cannot be described in words. There are few "cults" that are banned in the States, as far as I am aware; Republicans are a political party and so far the government hasn't went Stalin with eliminating every opposing political party; racist people are bad, to be fair, but even the government can't arrest/try someone for simply being racist. The NAACP and other such organizations can, of course, file lawsuits if they feel inclined; but the government itself has no authority in matters like that, because we have a right to free speech and our own opinions.

Anyway, the efforts to end mass surveillance are due to the fact that groups like the NSA are overstepping their power by a longshot--gathering information that they simply do not need. And it would be very, very wonderful if they actually caught terrorists; however, it doesn't seem to me that they have yet. They are wasting precious time and money guarding the internet--a place where you can cuss someone out like a dog and get laughed at by thirty people. A place where real life and onlife is simply different. No terrorist organizes over the internet, and if they do, it is likely to be over some excessively encrypted connection and the likeliness of them being caught--or at least found--is low anyway.

Truth be told, the NSA is becoming a useless, stupid waste of time and money, both of which our government could spend much, much more productively.

Why do I value my privacy?

Because no NSA fool or any other government dingbat needs or deserves to know every bit of my life. I have a little to hide, yes--like my Google, Facebook, Wikia, PC passwords; my favorite books; some of my best stories I have to hide; but all of those things are actually of low importance to anyone save me, but because of that reason, I should like all of my privacy preserved. I, at least, deserve privacy at least for my personal documents and things. What I say to others is different; if it's something that needs to be kept truly secret, rest assured I shall not say it online, and I rarely if ever need to say something that is that secret. To date, I've never had to go offline to say something. I'm an open person, but no one--including the government--needs to know about, say, my unpublished stories still on my computer, being written.