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Danger Lampost

Futurist & Technology Consultant,

TEDCRED 10+

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Every email, phone call, text message, and video chat is monitored and recorded. Now what?

It wasn't all that long ago, that we could safely presume that our private conversations were not being monitored or recorded on a routine basis. That has changed now. It is safe to assume that every electronic communication that can be recorded is being recorded. This includes every phone call you make or pick up. This is mostly being done by the United States, using massive new data centers being built in places like the state of Utah, but many other countries are in the game too.

The official line is that we're doing this for national defense. Just in case some evil chatter comes across, we need to know if someone's planning to nuke a major city, right? And if you've got nothing to hide, then you've got nothing to worry about, right? All those thousands of drone aircraft flying over head in U.S. airspace now, never mind them, right?

With the National Defense Authorization Act in place as law now, it is possible that someone's personal emails will be recorded, interpreted as terrorist "chatter", and then a U.S. citizen could be held in jail indefinitely without any charges being brought and without any recourse. What's happened to my country?

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    Danger Lampost 10+

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    Nov 30 2012: It would seem there is an enormous business opportunity for someone to develop a solution to solve this. Just to test the market waters here: How many people would be willing to pay a small premium on your cell phone bill - say 2% - to ensure that no government agency could secretly record all your conversations?

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