>> using an array of antennae and U.S. government satellites to capture up to 335 million pieces of metadata in a 12-hour period.

Among those 335 million pieces of metadata, how many of them actually pertain to anything related to terrorism? My guess..less than .000001%.

I call BS. Any agent of a corporation can be prosecuted for actions that are illegal. Further, the new game in town seems to be rather than pursue criminal charges, simply fine the corporation - this way the government gets a piece of the action and nobody goes to jail. The (serious) down side: just ask the Wall St. bankers how much of a deterrent that is.

Why has it been allowed to get this bad? Despite how much they like to pretend otherwise, police departments are still beholden to one or more elected officials. If people want the problem solved, they need to put the right people in office. That's how a democracy works - it's not something you can put on auto-pilot and expect it to fix itself.

> or vote them out of office

Indeed - I think it will be an interesting time when we see a) how many of our elected representatives vote in favor of this junk, and b) how many of them are still in office after the next election.

> I don't know about you, but 90% of the things I buy to live (Food, Toiletries, shelter) are owned and made by 13 companies

Maybe you can't stop buying from all 13, but try one or two. Seriously. I've done it. It's not that hard.

I understand the reason that people might want to consider this, but on the other side of the fence is a company that will benefit from all that extra cash from new customers who could not otherwise afford the service. What will the company who benefits do in return for all this extra revenue coming from tax dollars? If the answer is "nothing" then I'd be in favor of dropping the idea.

But they'll continue raising the specter of fear in order to justify funding for the $5 billion supercomputer anyway.

I sincerely hope that it all implodes an these provisions are left expired. Barring that, Mitch McConnell just introduced a measure that would remove one of the less evil portions that prevent further use of "secret interpretations" like we saw with section 215. Either he's trying to poison it, or he's just a complete asshole bordering on enemy of the state.

> Pilots with Bank of America and Deloitte have led to significant business improvements

Such as? Were they tweaks to processes that further objectify employees? Or did they improve the environment, thus inspiring employees to higher levels of achievement?

Highest *marginal* tax rates...not only that, but a signification percentage of companies (especially the largest ones) pay only a small fraction of that due to subsidies, tax breaks, and other perks that the average citizen does not get. This is nothing more than a talking point with zero substance.

I personally think you've missed the point. The point is that the cops shouldn't tagging *anyone* unless they are currently under investigation. If the cops happen to get a false hit, that data should be expunged *immediately* - immediately in the sense that they never even get to see it, because there is no reason they need it.

Why do we accept this argument that they must have and abuse the haystack so that they can find the needle? It was discredited the day that it became known. Now what we have is a completely corruption of our justice system.

This is absolutely a plausible scenario. Just because someone has an encrypted partition (or two, or three, etc), does not, without exception, mean that these partitions are accessible. A forgotten key is not beyond the scope of reasonableness.

Actually, I'm not so sure this is related to searching so much as the Third-Party Doctrine, which was created by the Supreme Court as part of a ruling in a drug case. It needs to be abolished. There is practically little we can do in our day-to-day lives that does not require interaction with a third party, and this will almost always leave some kind of data trail. Third party or not, the government should have no access to this information, and no reason to acquire it, unless a person is a legitimate suspect in an ongoing investigation.

> We have no representation in congress,

That is our own fault. As long as we continue treating candidates like items on a fast food menu, nothing will change. Voters need to get involved during the primaries, and select and support candidates who are not there to perpetuate the status quo. Business as usual is *all* you're going to get from seasoned, incumbent, and party-endorsed candidates, especially those on the national level.