Think of it this way. Let us take the number two reason for such breaches of personal privacy(money being the number one reason), i.e. terrorism.

If you were actually a foreign terrorist, and for some insane reason you did decide to discuss your "super secret plans" in email or over phone, unless you are completely retarded as well, you will use your local dialect instead of English. And you will use common words or phrase *in your own dialect* as previously agreed codewords. You will NOT communicate in English. So NSA might flag the foreign language conversation as suspicious, but I doubt there will be a perfect automatic speech translation in place that can immediately translate. And even if you had someone translate ever single piece of foreign language conversation, you still will have to deal with guessing what the code words mean.

In other words, a sweeping eavesdropping program will get you zilch unless you even for a second believe the other guys to be total morons. They might be insane, but they are not at least that. Only time you will have results by eavesdropping is if you already knew someone to be a terrorist, and were monitoring all their calls and tried to assume everything to be a terrorist communication.

The other situation where you will have results is, if we change the definition of results to "eavesdrop on our own troublemaker citizens and political opponents and have blackmail material on them to ensure we stay in power". Now *those* are the guys who will communicate in a language your eavesdropper program can listen to and collect material on. Think of collecting bits and pieces of info on every time someone mentions your political opponent's name and sifting through that to see if you can find anything on him to ensure his complete submission.

And unless you want to have a de facto dictatorship cemented even further and no chances of having even a semblance of democracy, feel free to sacrifice privacy. You will eventually sacrificing your freedom or liberty too.

What internet has really done is killed the middle men and studios. Your average professional musician was getting a miniscule fraction of the payouts anyways. Internet and computers simply allows them to record the music and distribute it, without needing the studios/middle men. Even they got a few cents off each copy purchased at app stores, they still end up earning the same for a million copies downloaded. Quality of studio recordings? Well people who want higher quality, will pay for it. But apparently public has already ruled on that. It is music studios and middle men, who are failing to adopt. The music studios in any case were fleecing both sides, first the artist for allowing him to record his music and then overpricing it for the public. And on top of that, only ones public got to hear were the musicians that studios selected. Much better musicians were ignored by them due to lesser "charisma" or whatever. Take Milli va Nilli case for example. The studios blatantly stole the song and presented it as the work of another, just because they thought that original musicians were not "presentable". And on top of that, digital media single song downloads ensure that I do not need to pay for the whole damned album when only one song in it is good. As such, even the musicians have to ensure that each of their songs is good, if they want people to pay for it. As such the music quality on average can only go up, instead of down.

The same way, news medias like to make "intentional mis-interpretation" for sake of sensationalism and more eyeballs. http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/announcements/2013/1230191_5502.html

NICNET (http://www.nic.in) has long been used in India for government mails and official data. You literally have dedicated VSAT connections etc. to it in offices, and it is a separate network in itself.

The Indian army too for obvious reasons, just like its counterparts everywhere, maintains its own nationwide network, and does not allows internet connections to it.

All they are asking is, that officials use these network, which are NOT public, instead of allowing the data to pass over any backbone that US has control over. And thus no classified data is expected to ever hit any backbone that is in US control.

Criticizing American government is racism? If you are talking about the stereotype of Americans being ignorant dumb-asses, well that does exists, but is largely due to your allowing the said politicians to be in power, and yet having delusional beliefs about yourself to be a democracy. Normally the world wouldn't care btw, except for your insane laws and policies being exported out to rest of us as well eventually via treaties.

His neighbor might think that he was carrying it for her.

Except that your same employers ARE at the moment, playing a nice game of "let us pretend" to allow you to go home early. If they are willing to let you go home early, while there is still daylight, all that is being said is that they can do the same without all this nonsense of pretending that clock starts early or late.

But the fact that you fail to conceive that your employer can simply be requested to simply change the working hours in winters and summers(And that IS what they are actually doing, genius!) without all this resetting of your watches/systems and trying to convince the world that planet earth magically skipped an hour ahead or behind.... well that failure explains why you thinks OTHERS are ignorant, instead of realizing how moronic your work-around is.

JUST HAVE DIFFERENT WORK-HOURS IN WINTER AND SUMMERS!!! THAT IS WHAT YOUR EMPLOYERS ARE DOING ANYWAYS, GENIUS!!!

Does he becomes a senator without your and others' vote? I thought the idea was that no matter how rich you are, you still get only 1 vote. So why does a guy who uses the votes of Johnny public to get his position, ends up working for Johnny rich instead? If you hire a plumber to do your work, will you be okay if he spends the time instead, fixing the stuff of the rich folks across the street?

Why shouldn't sony, BMG etc. fix their broken business model, instead of asking everyone else to spend time and money on their behalf?

Yes, because everyone *else* in the world even remotely/tangentially having anything to do with digital media, has an obligation to spend considerable time and money protecting Sony, BMG. etc.'s business.

Search engines must hire additional coders to ensure that internet is censored as per Sony 's whims. Hardware manufacturing companies must spend significant extra money on ensure DRM compliance. ISPs must spy on their customers to ensure that no copyright-infringement happens. Police which is funded by public tax money(you and me) must spend valuable time and effort on catching the nefarious "music stealers". Senators who are elected by the people and paid by public tax money, must instead ensure laws favoring BMG/Sony that make copying files a worse crime than rape or murder.

Whereas, the same "victim" companies, move their headquarters outside to cheat the American public out of the benefits of any tax money they might have had to pay. We have all the obligations to them. They have none to us or even the actual creators of the said music etc.

Soon doctors will likely be required to ensure that they perform free deafening procedures on everyone who might end up listening to "infringing music".

The solution is simple. Realize that lobbying is equivalent to bribery and force your senator to pass a law against it.

So splitting of a species based on "imaginary boundaries", into different factions and having world wars based on same, resulting in millions of deaths is a "useful hypothetical concept" to you? It seems like there is arse-about thinking and there is talking out of one's arse.

Indeed, so I notice. Pity. But at least you realize where you stand, which is a good thing.

If the concept of cyberspace is stupid, so is the concept of political boundaries. Both are merely hypothetical concepts devised by men. The author of the article is a moron. You cannot legitimately argue that "USA", "UK or "China" are any more real than cyberspace. We simply agree that there is an imaginary line dividing nations, much like we "pretend" that corporations are persons. If governments are willing to accept these, there is nothing less "real" about cyberspace either.