Will the NSA spying on video gamers affect your buying choices.

[Drummodino]

Uh... I don't care. Even if my country or another country monitored my gaming or internet activity, they won't find anything illegal. And I don't think a poor university student like myself has to worry about people trying to manipulate them. So how does it affect me? Not at all.

The problem is that you don't decide what's illegal. Or what they might deem suspicious, which is all that is necessary for them to lock you up forever without even charging you with anything. Or your friends and family, just on a whim.
Also, all surveillance systems get abused, and they leak, which places us way out of even "legal" territory.

Okay that may be a problem... if I lived in Nazi Germany 80 years ago or North Korea. I live in Australia however, a constitutional monarchy. The government, military and/or police can't just lock me up on a whim. We have measures in place to prevent that. The government has to answer to the public. Democracy and all that - we do decide what is legal (to a degree).

And why would they lock me away just because they could? It's not like they'd benefit from it, it would cost them money and resources to process and imprison me. I highly doubt my gaming and pornography habits are going to be judged a threat to national security that would justify those expenses.

Finally, if the problem of surveillance being leaked is so important to you... well you're shit out of luck I'm afraid. Unless you go live somewhere remote like a monastery or an Amish community, you are going to be monitored and there is not a lot you can do about it. You sound a little paranoid, no offence intended.

 

[chikusho]

Okay that may be a problem... if I lived in Nazi Germany 80 years ago or North Korea. I live in Australia however, a constitutional monarchy. The government, military and/or police can't just lock me up on a whim. We have measures in place to prevent that. The government has to answer to the public. Democracy and all that - we do decide what is legal (to a degree).

Well, I'm specifically referring to the NSA and how the US can detain people without charges forever if they feel like it.

And why would they lock me away just because they could? It's not like they'd benefit from it, it would cost them money and resources to process and imprison me. I highly doubt my gaming and pornography habits are going to be judged a threat to national security that would justify those expenses.

Even if Australian police can't legally lock you up on a whim, suspicions can paint anyone as a criminal by both human error and false inferences from unrelated circumstances. Police investigations are very often about just finding a suspect and then making the case stick. Solving more crimes helps the statistics, which increases police budget and gets efficient officers promoted.

This is a huge issue also because resources get allocated to arresting a lot of people for minor things instead of stopping more serious crimes.

Also, if it comes out that the NSA has arrested the wrong person for something, perhaps even subjecting him to torture on human error, admitting to that mistake could be both personal and career suicide. At that point it might seem better to more people to just bury and forget about you than facing the consequences of their mistake. And when it is within their legal right to do so, why wouldn't they?

Finally, if the problem of surveillance being leaked is so important to you... well you're shit out of luck I'm afraid. Unless you go live somewhere remote like a monastery or an Amish community, you are going to be monitored and there is not a lot you can do about it. You sound a little paranoid, no offence intended.

Finally, putting a system like this in place might seem like it makes sense at a certain time, a certain place and monitored by certain people. But you don't know what the next guy in charge might use it for. Monitoring journalists, political opponents, using it for racial profiling, etc. That is a power that noone should have access to, because absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Just because "someone might monitor me" doesn't mean that we shouldn't work against that happening to anyone. That's like saying "I'm going to die anyway, so why outlaw murder"?

 

[Dragonlayer]

Nope.

I'm sure the various world governments already have enough dirt on me to authorize my "disappearance" without having to resort to acting on their observation of my game wishlist.

 

[Drummodino]

snip

You clearly have your own beliefs about all of this and that's perfectly fine. I still think you're being paranoid, but I'm not going to be able to change your mind, so I'm not going to even try. I don't come to these forums to argue about things like this.

 

[MysticSlayer]

To the idiots who think if your not a terrorist don't worry about it, its a waste of my tax payer dollars and its ironic because American soldiers are fighting to protect rights that the NSA is violating.

Wait, how is someone an idiot because they buy a console or game without worrying about the NSA spying on them? If I'm not a terrorist, I can be reasonably certain that I don't have to worry about the NSA doing anything nasty to me. Sure, I don't support the NSA and I intend to oppose what they are doing, but I don't see why I have to change my buying decisions because I'm...worried about them figuring out about something I...never...did...Yeah...

Anyways, no, I don't plan on changing my buying habits for games. They can still track my phone, e-mail, Facebook messages, etc. What are they going to discover about me playing video games that they can't already learn from those sources? Absolutely nothing, except for the fact that most of my favorite characters in BlazBlue are female and that I can't aim virtual weapons very well.

 

[Nicholas Killham]

Will the NSA spy on gamers? They already have. The Young Turks have a pretty good video about it on YouTube

 

[cerebus23]

Wasting money to spy on people in wow cybersexing, they have not caught one single terrorist or any evidence that terrorists even use games to chat like all the govt brains insisted, and as blizzard and others have said they see zero evidence that terrorists use wow or any games to chat up since everything ia logged and users are traced by the game company themselves.

Spying on any video game is a tremendous waste of time money and effort, Nm how much of this stuff was done under the table and we need snowden to bring this stuff to light.

No it should not make you not play games but it should make you angry.

 

[suitepee7]

To the idiots who think if your not a terrorist don't worry about it, its a waste of my tax payer dollars and its ironic because American soldiers are fighting to protect rights that the NSA is violating.

english, my tax pounds are not paying for the NSA, and please don't think that the US army doesn't violate any human rights.

on a side note, even if i was american, i wouldn't care. i'm not a terrorist, and there's already enough i think my tax money is wasted on, the being in games would just be another in the list of many. if i want to play a game, i will. and i'm not doing any terrorist-y activities, so i don't have much to worry about

 

[tangoprime]

No- because if they've been monitoring my and my friends' EVE Online characters, they've already got everything they'll ever need on me, and I wholly expect a visit soon, either for termination or recruitment.

 

[Not Lord Atkin]

Slovak citizen living in Britain. SIS (as in Slovak Information Service, not MI6) doesn't have the resources (or the working brains for that matter) and GCHQ actually know what their job is supposed to be most of the time.

So no, I'm not worried.

Well ok, theoretically NSA COULD be spying in other countries but they would be risking an international scandal if they were and let that particular bubble burst. Even they aren't this stupid. I hope.

 

[SomeGuyOnHisComputer]

Yeah, kinda sorta. Not really, a little bit. ... I was already dead set against the xbone because of the abhorrent DRM bullshit. Finding out that they were one of the first companies to buddy up to the NSA definitely did not help.

The problem with the NSA is that companies can't really do much to stop their spying. It's going to take a hell of a lot more than "voting with your dollar" to tackle that beast. I could be wrong, but from my understanding we're already at the point where if the government wants info that a company has, they'll get it. I mean, I'm sure it would help if companies just stopped collecting data, but fat chance of that happening on a massive scale. The targeted advertising empire still exists, and probably pays handsomely.

 

[laggyteabag]

Not really, im not some pedophilic mass-murdering terrorist, so I have nothing to hide and I cant imagine that an NSA agent will be overly interested in what I take part in during my spare time. Anyway, I play most games either speaking to my friends via Skype, or I don't have my microphone on, so im pretty much indifferent/ not affected about the entire scenario.

 

[Artaneius]

This spying probably has been going on since computers and the internet have gone mainstream. Theirs nothing you can do about it unless you want to risk being killed or going to jail starting a mass multi-million people riot.

 

[Something Amyss]

To the idiots who think if your not a terrorist don't worry about it, its a waste of my tax payer dollars and its ironic because American soldiers are fighting to protect rights that the NSA is violating.

American soldiers are fighting for your freedoms in the same sense that Wal-Mart cares about you.

Not at all.

If you think not buying a console makes you any safer from privacy violations, you need to think again.

english, my tax pounds are not paying for the NSA, and please don't think that the US army doesn't violate any human rights.

But they only violate the rights of other people, not Americans.

...Unless you count the very serious rape epidemic, but once you get to "fighting for our freedoms" most people don't.

 

[Seracen]

Seeing as how I won't be using the camera on my PS4, and I won't be doing anything on it aside from gaming...no, I won't change my buying choice.

Now, if I were to actually use their crappy browser app, I might pause a moment.

 

[dl_wraith]

Post removed by author

 

[DarkhoIlow]

Not planning on getting consoles and I don't own a phone with internet access so have fun with that NSA.

This doesn't affect me in the slightest.

 

[Stavros Dimou]

I didn't liked these games anyway.

 

[J Tyran]

Uh... I don't care. Even if my country or another country monitored my gaming or internet activity, they won't find anything illegal. And I don't think a poor university student like myself has to worry about people trying to manipulate them. So how does it affect me? Not at all.

The problem is that you don't decide what's illegal. Or what they might deem suspicious, which is all that is necessary for them to lock you up forever without even charging you with anything. Or your friends and family, just on a whim.
Also, all surveillance systems get abused, and they leak, which places us way out of even "legal" territory.

Okay that may be a problem... if I lived in Nazi Germany 80 years ago or North Korea. I live in Australia however, a constitutional monarchy. The government, military and/or police can't just lock me up on a whim. We have measures in place to prevent that. The government has to answer to the public. Democracy and all that - we do decide what is legal (to a degree).

Don't count on the law to protect you from spying, they will find a way to either work within the law or completely circumvent it. Shitty things like allowing another nation full reign to spy in return for getting copies of everything on their own citizens. Another thing you should know is that while things are OK in your country right now that's no guarantee in the future, in the past even innocent methods of data collection have been subverted after a nation has either been invaded or taken over from within by political extremists.

Imagine Australia suddenly became an extreme left or right wing state and are conducting pogroms to remove any and all opposition under the slightest pre-text, would you suddenly feel comfortable with them having access to the records for all your e-mail and text messages over the last few years? You will probably claim you would be, its always the same but I think most people would really recognise that for the lie that it would be.

It is true that we cannot do much about it, even living in the wilderness without any electronics wouldn't achieve much now with how sophisticated and common drones are becoming.