Well because it is basically at scale warrantless wiretapping, of almost every major communication platform(technically its on the internet, and not the phone system, I know).
You can feel free not to care if the government has backdoor access, without a warrant, to every major US tech company, I guess.
But a lot of people did not know that the government had this, and thus why they are glad that it was exposed.
If you don't care about at scale warrentless wiretapping, feel free to just say so. Just say "I don't care if the government has a warrant or not, before they spy on every major communication platform".
Other people, though, actually care about warrants and privacy protections, from the government.
How many ways do people need to tell you that it doesn't? It can send wiretap requests for specific accounts to tech companies, which needs to approve each individual request.
> But a lot of people did not know that the government had this,
It doesn't.
> and thus why they are glad that it was exposed.
Where? Which document says they have backdoor access to the tech companies. I'll give you a hint: none of them do. Snowden and Greenwald were both too stupid to read the documents they had obtained and claimed otherwise, but all the rest of the tech media, like CNET and the NYT, reported it correctly.
> Other people, though, actually care about warrants and privacy protections, from the government.
This is something I care deeply about. That's why I'm glad Snowden's documents and the declassified documents both agree it's being followed.
> both agree the law is being followed.
Notice how I didn't say that anything was illegal. The fact that it was legal, is entirely the problem!
I think it is very important for the government to get a warrant, before making these requests.
You can feel free to not care about warrants for these types of requests, but I care about them.
Not for people who aren't US citizens who live outside the US, no. Is this really news to you? Do you know of any country in the world that requires its intelligence agencies to obtain a warrant for surveilling non-citizens outside its borders?
Ok, well a lot of people care about warrants.
You can feel free to not care! But a lot of other people care about warrants.
Therefore, it is good that this stuff was exposed, according to the people who care about warrants.
Including me.
> Therefore, it is good that this stuff was exposed, according to the people who care about warrants.
Once again, no country in the world requires its intelligence agencies to get a warrant to surveil a foreigner outside its borders who has information relevant to national security. This is both legal and something we all expect, and we already knew this before Snowden's leaks. To reveal the code names of systems that ingest this data, Snowden also leaked compromised Chinese computer systems. Is that something we should celebrate?
Even Snowden (and probably 99.9% of all people) would disagree with your position. His statements show he thought he was revealing something other than what his documents actually said.
Apparently not for this situation. Because in this case, no warrants are required, and you don't care about that.
So the point stands. For a situation like this, there are people who care about getting warrants. And for this situation, you don't care that it does not require a warrant.
You can feel free to not care about warrants for this situation. But a lot of people do. So thats why they care.
> This is both legal
once again, the fact that it is legal is exactly the problem, and why exposing it with leaks was the only solution, if you care about the fact that no warrants were required.
Well, you don't for this specific circumstance.
So then you concede that for this specific circumstance, you do not care about getting a warrant.
You can have this opinion, but for people who care about getting a warrant, for this situation, those people would be glad that this stuff was revealed.
This is the government's job. Why do you feel it needed to be exposed?