Government Surveillance: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

What people said

LinuxBender · 2021-06 · Strong recommendation

That is a good question because it comes up a lot and people start explaining ideologies rather than showing real world examples. I believe John Oliver provided the best example when he interviewed Edward Snowden. John walked around town asking people how they felt about the government monitoring their phone communications, text messages, etc... People were mostly indifferent until he rephrased the question asking if it was alright if someone was monitoring the pictures and videos (sexting) between they and their spouse/partner. When that topic came up, the nearly unanimous answer is that they would be furious if someone was watching their sexting content. [1] So in summary, I believe the answer is to find something that people actually wish to keep private when discussing it. [1] - [VIDEO]

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harryf · 2018-03 · Strong recommendation

Last Week Tonight did this bit brilliantly when they interviewed Edward Snowden - [VIDEO] - in essence we need to get dramatically better at telling this story so everyone understands.

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jerf · 2017-04 · Recommendation

"(Likely an overabundance of trust or a lack of understanding of all the real implications and potential for exploit.)" I think that's a lot of it. People aren't trading privacy for convenience... people are taking convenience. It makes a lot more sense when you think of it that way. You can do an experiment yourself to show this; take 5 non-techie/non-HN people and explain to them exactly what this thing does and how it works. You'll find people's attitudes change, rationally or otherwise, which I present only as evidence that they haven't thought about this and incorporated it into their worldview, not that they are right or wrong. Or watch this: [VIDEO] John Oliver on Government Surveillance. Perhaps ironically, mere nude photos of myself aren't really what I'm worried about. I mean, I wouldn't be happy if they got out, and since I'm not in the habit of texting them about I have questions about where they came from, but by and large, nobody would care and it would affect my life only briefly. I'm far more worried about the government scraping everybody's postings on Facebook and building up a GoodThink/BadThink database, which I know basically already exists, because our political parties (let alone our intelligence community) build voter databases that are probably at least 90% accurate on that front. A concrete list of Everyone Who Disagrees With Me, one accurate enough for someone powerful to decide the rest of the inaccuracy is acceptable collateral damage, is scary.

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