Big Brothers Big Sisters of America is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization whose mission is to help children reach their potential through professionally supported, one-to-one relationships with mentors. So is NSA that keeps its American children safe and secure from terrorists:
http://digitaljournal.com/article/352099
A new poll by the Washington Post-Pew Research Center shows that 56% of Americans support NSA accessing of telephone call records through secret court approval while only 41% find it unacceptable, Many Americans, fully 45 per cent, feel that the government should be able to go even further to investigate terrorist threats, A slim majority of 52 per cent find going further unacceptable. Even when news broke in 2006 that the Bush administration had been monitoring telephone and e-mail communications without court approval a slim 51 per cent majority still approved as compared to 47 per cent who disapproved. Considerably more Americans, 62 per cent, think that government investigation of terrorist threats is more important than privacy. Only 34 per cent think privacy should be the prime focus. With statistics such as this, Obama and NSA need not worry that much about the fuss made by ACLU and other supporters of privacy rights. American fear of terrorism trumps any privacy concerns. There are many changes in attitude since 2006 compared to the present. The changes are closely linked to party affiliations. Now, 69 per cent of Democrats say that terror investigations rather than privacy should be the main concern of the government. This is 18 percentage points higher than in January 2006 when Bush was in power. If Big Brother is a Democrat, Democrats do not worry about their privacy. On the other hand the Republican concerns about privacy have gone in the opposite direction with 22 per cent more now having concerns about privacy when the snooping is done under Obama. Even what worry about privacy there is concerns Americans rather than people in general. When the new debate about NSA surveillance programs began, immediately NSA and the White House were quick to reassure Americans: "Yes, the surveillance program exists, but it only spies on foreigners. Oh, we're only recording, tracking, and analyzing the communications of foreigners? Well, okay then. We just wanted be sure that the privacy abuses and Big Brother stuff wasn't being used on Americans." When it turned out that NSA was also gathering data on Americans then there was more concern. The same type of sharp distinction is found when there is debate on targeted killings on Americans versus foreigners. Other countries and their citizens may be even more concerned with NSA spying on their communications than Americans. An article in Der Spiegel shows German concerns with revelations in the secret data that appears to have been released by whistleblower Edward Snowden:" According to the document, which was allegedly leaked by former CIA employee Edward Snowden, the intelligence agency began seeking out direct access to servers belonging to American Internet companies on a wide scale in 2007. The first of these companies to come onboard was Microsoft. Yahoo followed half a year later, then Google, Facebook, PalTalk, YouTube, Skype and AOL. The most recent company to declare its willingness to cooperate was Apple, in October 2012, according to the secret government document, which proudly states that this access to data is achieved "directly from the servers" of the companies. " The companies involved have all denied that NSA has any direct or even indirect access to their servers. This brings up a crucial question as to who is lying on this issue. Why would a classified document on the program be lying rather than companies whose interest is in denying that there is such access? Obama plans to visit Germany soon. Angela Merkel the German Chancellor plans to discuss the NSA data surveillance program with Obama when he visits. A spokesperson for the German Justice Ministry confirmed that talks on the issue are already underway with US authorities. The talks include "possible impairment of the rights of German citizens." The German Green Party has demanded that the government investigate the circumstances of Prism immediately. The secretary of the Green Party group in parliament said: "Total surveillance of all German citizens by the NSA is completely disproportionate," While Americans might not worry about the NSA programs in terms of privacy, one would think they would be concerned about cost.The huge new storage facility being built in Utah at Camp Williams south of Salt Lake City housing super-fast computers will cost the taxpayer $2 billion. The computers will be able to store at least 5 billion gigabytes. Just the cost of cooling the servers will be a cool $40 million a year. Even if Americans are satisfied with the behavior of Big Brother, one would think that they might be a bit concerned about the cost of his upkeep given that state and federal budgets are supposed to be in budget reduction mode. Read more: http://digitaljournal.com/article/352099#ixzz2W2bsSZHq
Blog: http://kenthink7.blogspot.com/index.html Blog: http://kencan7.blogspot.com/index.html