Letting your fascination for technology lead you like this is a very dangerous thing.
More than anything such a fascination or simply the lure of money allows one to be controlled in ways that could easily lead to serious regret in the longer term.
How is it leading me anywhere? If anything, it's probably my belief in the obsolescence of privacy that makes it easier for me to appreciate what the NSA is capable of, rather than the other way around.
It's the same kind of fascination that gets people to work on bio-weapons and other singularly negative items.
I'm a bit less cynical than you by the looks of it and I definitely do not believe in the 'obsolescence of privacy', in fact I think that privacy is one of the most important rights that we have.
Appreciating what the NSA is capable of technologically whilst at the same time despising them for what they do to the world at large is entirely possible.
To me it is very clear that all these politicians and their plans would go nowhere without enablers.
I don't see your point. Most large projects require the combined effort of many people, especially if you want to be confident in their quality and get them shipped on time, as I'm sure the NSA does. Is that supposed to be a bad thing? Or did you just want to have fun by calling people enablers because they do something you disagree with?
As for your views on privacy, I don't expect that most people can change their fundamental beliefs like what constitutes a human right. Especially not as the result of anonymous internet comments. As always, progress depends on people with outdated views dying out naturally.
> Most large projects require the combined effort of many people, especially if you want to be confident in their quality and get them shipped on time, as I'm sure the NSA does. Is that supposed to be a bad thing?
Not in and of itself, it all depends on the goals and the side effects.
> Or did you just want to have fun by calling people enablers because they do something you disagree with?
No, I call them enablers because by themselves politicians typically can't do much. They need others to do the work for them.
> As for your views on privacy, I don't expect that most people can change their fundamental beliefs like what constitutes a human right.
Maybe they don't have to. Maybe we could set up a universal declaration of such rights. And maybe we could give it a sexy name, such as 'Universal Declaration of Human Rights'.
More than anything such a fascination or simply the lure of money allows one to be controlled in ways that could easily lead to serious regret in the longer term.