Is it supposedly surprising that the government can monitor statements made in public? It would be a shame if Al Quaida could have a meeting on Twitter or set up a Facebook Group, and the government wouldn’t have any clue.
Good grief.
SnakeDoc
I agree with you. They’d better not waste money and time on counting grandbabies’ pictures or looking for the next Tea Party, and they’d certainly better not hack into private sites or pages, but public is public.
How much time would they spend differentiating between references to “Tea Parties” and that other, nasty term used for us?
The article seems to suggest that they’re more interested in keeping tabs on US citizens than foreign citizens. They seem to be watching us, not them. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I’d say Uncle Sam is mostly interested in listening for the jingle of coins so he knows who to shake down.
It would be desired, I believe, by the public, to have the Government monitoring public statements for the purpose of trying to locate and stop Al Queda and other terrorists before they could implement their attacks in or outside this country. Unfortunately, I for one, do not believe that this administration is monitoring “public statements” for the purpose of locating and stopping terrorists. Recall that the article mentions tax deliquents, copyright infringement, and political protesters - nothing regarding safeguarding Americans against attacks. Now, didn’t I read that Hassan had posted numerous times on the net his hatred against his fellow soldiers prior to his gunning down a number of them at Ft. Hood? Where was the Government on that one? We know they were monitoring him because the media widely reported that that was the case. And, yet . . .????? Nothing. No, I don’t trust this admin with respect to their monitoring websites for enemies of freedom and democracy. I see them more likely to monitor websites in order to take people down who threaten their socialist agenda. Namely, American Citizens.
I think maybe you’re missing the point:
electronic surveillance by W administration to detect and prevent terrorist attacks: BAD
electronic surveillance by Zero administration to detect and confiscate unreported or underreported income: GOOD
Here’s a question.... Facebook has privacy settings. You can set it so only friends see things or friends of friends or everyone. Are they monitoring what everyone can see or are they going in to private setting accounts?