The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #87316   Message #1780400
Posted By: TIA
10-Jul-06 - 12:39 PM
Thread Name: BS: Domestic Spying in the U.S.
Subject: RE: BS: Domestic Spying in the U.S.
Actually, if you have nothing to hide, you still have a great deal to fear. Suppose that the NSA can actually (based on your telephone, banking, email, etc. records) identify terrorists. Suppose that the test is 99% accurate (pretty optimistic, no?).

Nothing to hide? Nothing to Fear?

Suppose there are 2000 secret terrorists in the USA. The USA population is currently about 299000000.

At 99% accuracy, NSA will get 1980 terrorists, and only miss 20. Feeling safe?

At 99% accuracy, the NSA will not take any action against 296010000 innocent Americans. At 99% accuracy, NSA will also render, or arrest (or something) 2990000 innocent Americans. This makes the odds that a person, who is arrested due to domestic spying, is actually a terrorist about 1 in 1500. Sounds just like the prosecution rate at Guantanamo doesn't it? No coincidence there - just simple conditional probability.

So Nothing to Hide? Nothing to Fear?

Hardly.

More like naive, dumb, sheep-like, unpatriotic, un-American.