The Guardian writes an expose on what should be the greatest political scandal of our lifetime- the fact that low level contractors and government employees can access all of our chat history, emails and browsing history.
The response? No one on social media is really discussing it, CNN America only has a passing mention of it on their front page (buried near the bottom) and America goes on with its day.
What does it take to get American's outraged about something?
"People do not react to abstractions. They only react to direct experience. Very few people are even interested in abstractions, and even fewer people can become emotionally involved or emotionally react to an abstract thing."
When this story brokeout, i had the idea that the best way to publicize this is to find an example of a private sexual conversation on record, which they obviously have. Would have been interesting for Snowden to get one of those just in case.
America is overloaded on stimulation. For something to get attention, it has to be extraordinarily sensationalistic. These stories are boring government spy stuff to average joe. The NSA would need to be eating babies, assaulting the family dog, promoting / blocking abortions, promoting / taking guns, or the equivalent.
I would argue that half of the country only gets fired up about something when they're told to do so by the party they vote for, the same one that dictates what they believe on any given issue. That's why it hurts that there is a Democrat in the Presidency right now, it has silenced a lot of the supposed civil rights advocates on the left.
I think most people assumed the government was always doing this , and just accept it will continue to do this. To most people its not that far from the police being able to get access to similar records. The whole secret court aspect flies over the heads of the masses
| What does it take to get American's outraged about something?
Americans can get outraged just fine. The problem is that many people just don't understand exactly what's going on. They're either not very technical, and/or don't understand through the context of history, the ramifications of mass state surveillance.
This highlights the problem with our news-as-entertainment media model. It gives us what the country wants (sensationalism, excitement), not what the country needs (facts, context). Until not-for-profit media organizations can give the private news industry (in particular: CNN, Fox, NBC, ABC, CBS) some legitimate competition, we'll be stuck in this cycle.
This should have been the first release. Unfortunately the media and average citizens have a short attention span for continuing coverage of anything..
Who knows what may be released tomorrow? On the whole, the timing of these leaks has been excellent, and appears to be calculated to maximize their effect.
The Guardian writes an expose on what should be the greatest political scandal of our lifetime- the fact that low level contractors and government employees can access all of our chat history, emails and browsing history.
The response? No one on social media is really discussing it, CNN America only has a passing mention of it on their front page (buried near the bottom) and America goes on with its day.
What does it take to get American's outraged about something?