I can say that the surveillance doesn't affect me because it's almost unheard of for Americans to get arrested with evidence that the NSA collected. The NSA is not a law enforcement agency. In China arresting people based on data from surveillance is the norm.
Edit: I am mostly addressing the organize against it part. USA has far better free speech protections than China
Do you ? As an outsider it doesn't really look that way. After watching events and protest around BLM, suddenly all those rights have gotchas in them.
Watching USA protesters and Honkong protesters, and goverment respones to them, there were far more similarities than differences. (Well china was still worse, but not by as much as most USA people seem to think).
The biggest difference in USA and china at the moments is that in USA some Politicians still listen to people (if only mostly out of self interest)
Ask those who wanted to protest against recent disproportionate police actions and those who did and became targets.
"All the stuff" that was either started or expanded while he was VP. Yeah, sure he wants to tear it down.
Biden is not going to change anything NSA-related, do not delude yourself and do not mistake electioneering frenzy for policy.
He seems consistent on this issue. Prior to his stint as VP, he complained about metadata collection by the GWB administration. https://youtu.be/h2qgU8kJt-0
So the question is not whether Joe Biden ever grandstanded on the topic - I'm sure he did, as every politician would. The question is what he had done about it when he was Senator and VP - specific actions attributable to him? Because if he has been consistent to paying lip service to the issue while not doing anything in practice - it is prudent to expect the same consistency to extend into the future.
I told you in the GP post. The email metadata program was shut down, and the phone metadata collection was reduced.
> PRISM still exists,
PRISM does not collect Americans' data.
> The question is what he had done about it when he was Senator and VP - specific actions attributable to him?
Again, I told that to you.
You haven't told me anything in fact except that some things supposedly happened while Biden was a VP.
There was only one in the leaks. That one.
> how do you know there's no other programs
If there were any, Snowden would have leaked those instead of a program that had already been shut down.
> how do we know it actually was reduced and not just changed codename?
Because laws were changed, and oversight was added that showed how many metadata records the NSA requested from the telcos.
> how you know Biden personally had anything to do with shutting it down
Does it matter if he was personally in charge or if he delegated? Collection of Americans'metadata shrunk while he was VP.
Living in Europe I have the pleasure of hearing these kinds of naive comparisons on a regular basis. Somehow it's always "the US is basically China and/or Saudi Arabia".
It's exhausting having to explain to people who are seemingly only capable of operating with a binary black and white worldview that there is a massive difference between certain shades of grey.
You can say, as a US citizen, that all this stuff doesn't affect you much. But I can tell you, from considerable first hand experience, that the average Chinese citizen says the same about China.