I tried to tell my family about the Snowden leaks and the implications just a year ago. They are all university educated people.
They categorically did not believe that what I was saying was real, and when I showed them all the leaks they did not believe the content was true.
Billions of people simply don't believe it's true.
Did they not even investigate your claim? Or did they just settle with labeling you a crackpot conspiracy theorist?
They kind of settled half way between "I don't believe that's possible / I don't care".
For them, it makes zero difference in their lives, so they just don't want to invest time and energy into thinking about it.
While still billions of people believe in Allah, God or whatever without any evidence. I dont know how this can happen...
Isn't it obvious? In both cases people do the smart thing (which is not necessarily the "objectively correct" thing).
Faith in Allah, God etc, is a good social glue, and is personally comforting, helping regulate emotions, etc.
Similarly, not believing the Snowden story helps them fit with their social group (e.g. republicans), relaxes their mind from a whole lot of worries and concerns, helps re-enforce their personal beliefs (e.g. in good government), etc -- and most importantly, has no real disadvantage in their day to day life and work...
The leaks about mass-surveillance don't fit the criteria, as best I can tell. It's in their best interests not to, as you state.
You can very well waste all your life in pointless prayer, like the monk who basically imprinted his feet on the wooden floor by praying several hours a day for decades.
Even getting out of that room to help someone in a trivial task would have been much more useful than the praying.
Not to mention the huge amount of censorship over your own thoughts that some religions impose on your life.
So, IMO, if you get the wrong end of Pascal's wager, you can waste your only life, every infinitely valuable second of it (because there's no afterlife), over a non-existent afterlife.
That's a hell of a wager to lose.
The fact that the UK government recently passed a law[0] to make this legal makes it pretty clear that this is real.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/29/snoopers-chart...
(Not agreeing, just explaining.)
This is why it hasn't been ruled illegal. Do people actually believe that phone metadata collection is illegal but the crazy thing Greenwald misread PRISM to be is not? That's going to trip grecy's university-educated family's bullshit detector.
Sure - people in privacy circles may suspect this and sneer at the general public for thinking it is news, but it is a big deal to have it confirmed, to raise awareness of it and actually do something about it
The significance of that release was overblown because it helped support a narrative about Trump damaging national security that the media and people on social media liked. In reality it doesn't seem to have revealed anything about the US satellite imaging capabilities that wasn't already known.
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/02/756673481/amateurs-identify-u...
We've been developing very high level intelligence tools for years in private/public partnerships. It's all just highly secretive, and one of the areas that really does work, so it doesn't get any attention. Most of us, like yourself, just assume that because other areas here are awful, that our intel community must be to, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Lastly don't forget JZ himself was Head of Intelligence, so he always held it in high regard, and gave it the funding it required.
Didn't know about the precursor tech being developed in Stellenbosch as well, do you have any sources on that? I'd be interested to see who was involved.
Agreed on the intel community generally being in a grey area as far as the law is concerned, it's a struggle enough keeping them impartial and not meddling in domestic affairs - talking about JZ being head of the ANC's intelligence in exile brings back memories of his ultimate succession of Thabo Mbeki and former spy chief Billy Masetlha's role in that.
[0] https://mg.co.za/article/2011-09-02-sa-firm-helped-gaddafi-s...
Now parts of our country are literally burning, yet there's no crime intelligence about the very threats to the state that SSA should be monitoring for. There was an act of terror that was nearly committed 2 days ago, but we're seeing poor leadership from those involved.
Please can you provide a link to more info on this?
https://www.iol.co.za/dailynews/news/kwazulu-natal/two-truck...
Which I suppose suggests that they didn't pay for it, and another nation state 'helped out' via intermediaries.
Get out more.
Every telco has locked rooms full of kit for this job.
The company taking the risk gets a big fat government check every month, and the governments get to deny they're tapping anyone's data.
The key word, though, was "uplink." Go straight to satellite, and let the intelligence agencies sift through what they want.
I have no knowledge of this area but I always thought sat links can't compete with multi gbps cables.
Maybe I'm wrong though.
It's not easy to tap submarine fibre optic cables. The US Navy has a Nuclear Sub dedicated to the task. You can't just pick them up and stick a tap in them.
(BRB: making a pitch deck...)
People are not surprised, they are angry at people responsible. And rightly so in my opinion.
I think if you believe that any major country is not intercepting all undersea fibre cable traffic within their reach or even beyond it then you’re being very naive. I can’t understand how this news would surprise anyone.