Snowden again...

2.5 months ago, I posted my thoughts about Snowden and his intentional spillage of classified data.

A few days ago, a friend of mine posted an article discussing how Snowden didn't make Google's top 10 most searched topics.

Today, a different friend posted (on Facebook...due to respect for his [and others'] privacy, I will not copy/paste or screenshot the discussion) that Snowden was filtered from Twitter's search engine.

Some musings and things to think about:

Firstly, I'm glad I'm not the only person out there that thinks this "Snowden is a hero" thing is ridiculous.  The fact that I saw several articles that mimicked my thoughts is a bit refreshing.  Here's one.

Secondly, there seems to be a lot of people on the web (and in real life) that think that the government is censoring the search content.  They don't have *that* much power and hooks into the systems to achieve that goal...no way.  Google (and more than likely Twitter too) wouldn't mess with such query results...what would they have to gain, and why would they do this when they're already pissed that the NSA was able to intercept much of their back-end data?  If the query results show that Snowden didn't make the top ten, that means that he didn't make the top ten...maybe people don't care so much about him.  Oh, they understand the implications of NSA snooping, but they don't need to read articles on Snowden to study up.  The only people that are concerned about Snowden are his supporters (and maybe the NSA and other 3-letter gov't orgs -- from the standpoint of never letting such a thing happen again).  Yes, I'll say it again:  The only people that are concerned about Snowden are the people wearing the tin foil hats...and, apparently, there aren't many of those types of people compared to the rest of the world, because their concerns didn't show in Google's top ten topics for 2013.  Thinking on that, that is rather shameful, yeah...people were more concerned with Miley Cyrus and her twerking than their privacy where the NSA is concerned. Again, I am concerned with snooping...I *am*, but, as I explained my my last post about all of this, the NSA isn't attempting to record the whole of the world's lives.  They're data-mining and looking for trends that tend to stick out like a sore thumb.  They aren't looking at you at a personal level every day (unless you've an anthrax factory in your basement).

Feds weigh expansion of Internet monitoring

Feds weigh expansion of Internet monitoring

http://tinyurl.com/ybd23bz (credit: cnet.com)

SAN FRANCISCO--

"Homeland Security and the National Security Agency may be taking a closer look at Internet communications in the future.

The Department of Homeland Security's top cybersecurity official told CNET on Wednesday that the department may eventually extend its Einstein technology, which is designed to detect and prevent electronic attacks, to networks operated by the private sector. The technology was created for federal networks.

Not much is known about how Einstein works, and the House Intelligence Committee once charged that descriptions were overly "vague" because of "excessive classification." The White House did confirm this week that the latest version, called Einstein 3, involves attempting to thwart in-progress cyberattacks by sharing information with the National Security Agency. 

Greater federal involvement in privately operated networks may spark privacy or surveillance concerns, not least because of the NSA's central involvement in the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping scandal. Earlier reports have said that Einstein 3 has the ability to read the content of emails and other messages, and that AT&T has been asked to test the system. (The Obama administration says the "contents" of communications are not shared with the NSA.)"

Read more by clicking the link at the top of this section