I just keep hearing “they have all your data” and I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean.
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Edit: thanks to everyone whos contributed, although I still remain confused and in disbelief over some of the things in the comments, I feel like I have a better grasp on everything and I hope some more people were able to learn from this post as well.
In: 19605
Not only did the Snowden leaks reveal that the US government was spying on US citizens in illegal ways, it revealed that our government was using absolutely any conceivable means of skirting its own rules to try and justify its actions.
For example, when the government discovered that some of the tapped phones it was distributing were ending up in the hands of US citizens, which it doesn’t have the authority to spy on, it simply outsourced the monitoring of those phones to the Australian government and received that intel “from an allied resource.”
Literally, our government pays allied governments to spy on us and accepts that intel from them as “allied intel” because that, technically, gets around the rules about our government not spying on its own citizens.
Extra fun fact: The prison in Guantanamo Bay was started because a federal judge once noted that if we had a prison outside of the US then we wouldn’t have to follow our own rules about the fair treatment of prisoners.
Extra fun fact #2: Under the Obama administration, the “indefinite detention” rule was passed which, essentially, says that American citizens accused of terrorism can be held in prisons like Guantanamo Bay indefinitely, without being charged with a crime.
For that reason, I always give a new President who promises to close “Gitmo” exactly one term to do so before I label them a war criminal.
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