How do you get Americans to care about government surveillance? Dick pics, according to John Oliver.
How do you make Americans care about government surveillance? Naked photos, according to Last Week Tonight host John Oliver.
Oliver traveled to Russia recently to sit down with former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, and explained that most Americans don't seem to care about secret National Security Agency (NSA) programs that snatch up huge amounts of your data without your knowledge.
As Snowden explains why mass surveillance is a critical issue, Oliver interjects. "This is the whole problem. I glaze over because it's like the IT guy comes into your office and you go, 'oh s**t ... don't teach me anything, I don't want to learn, you smell like canned soup,'" he quipped.
What to do? Explain it in terms that people understand: Dick pics.
Oliver showed a clip of New Yorkers reacting to the possibility that the government had access to the naked photos they email or text to people. All of them were horrified. "This is the most visible line in the sand for people," Oliver says. "Can. they. see. my. dick."
So Oliver asked Snowden to explain each of the NSA's more controversial programs in the context or whether or not they allow the government to sift through your more private photos. Here's what he had to say:
Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA): Yes. It allows the bulk collection of metadata that is one-end foreign. If you have Gmail, anytime that mail crosses outside the border of the U.S., your junk ends up in the database. Even if you send it to someone in the U.S., your domestic communication can go from New York to London and back, and get caught up in the database.
Executive Order 12333: This is what the NSA uses when the other authorities aren't aggressive enough or they're not catching what they want. When you send your junk through Gmail, that's stored on Google's servers. Google moves data from data center to data center, invisibly to you, so your data could be moved outside the borders of the U.S. temporarily. So when Google moves it, the NSA catches a copy of that.
PRISM: This is how they pull your junk out of Google with Google's involvement. The government deputizes tech companies to be their surveillance sheriffs.
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