The Security Mentor

The people in government who want to conduct mass wiretapping say that we need to decide the tradeoff between privacy and security. By implication, they say they are offering security.

They'll start with an unimaginable load of data, apply sophisticated computer programs, filter the output through their common sense, and then take action to improve our safety. Right?

The Department of Homeland Security parcels out grants for anti-terrorist programs based on "a powerful new matrix that crunches millions of bits of data to figure out where money is most needed". At the end of that, the government presumably applies their common sense. What was the result? They cut New York City's anti-terrorist security funding almost in half. NYC, you see, has no "icons" or "national monuments" according to the government.

So now we know what happens when large amounts of data hit government common sense. We know that security actually goes down as a result.

The government says we have to choose between safety and privacy. Wrong, because they are not offering us safety.