I wasn't trying to say that at all. I am all for limiting the government's ability to subpoena or access data collected by companies about us. If we allow the government to use wide nets to try to catch criminals, they are going to catch innocent people, and that is bad.
What I am saying is that on an individual level, the risk seems low that my using google is going to end up in a bad situation for me.
It is all about which options I am choosing between. When you ask me "Is it better to allow the government to collect information about everyone, and then use that to target suspicious individuals they find in that information, or is it better to limit that data collection and risk possibly missing some criminals?", then my answer is it is better to risk missing some criminals versus most likely harassing and possibly arresting innocent people because of false positives in the massive data collected.
However, if you ask me "Is it better for you, as an individual, to use google services and let them collect data about your, or is it better to avoid google completely", then the answer to me is to use google. The direct risk to me is low enough for me to make the trade off.
> I wasn't trying to say that at all. I am all for limiting the government's ability to subpoena or access data collected by companies about us. If we allow the government to use wide nets to try to catch criminals, they are going to catch innocent people, and that is bad.
I think your trust in laws is naive. A law doesn't self-enforce. The mere existence of a law does not limit de-facto power. You can not limit an entity's power by telling it that it is required to limit its own power. That might make exercising the power illegal, but it does not take away the actual power. And you don't have to look particularly far back into history to see how governments don't care about enforcing laws against themselves when that would limit their power. A lot of the things the NSA has been doing was illegal--did that stop them from doing it? No. As a matter of fact, they could eavesdrop on google's fibers, so they did, whether legal or not. If you really want to limit the power, you have to use technical measures that actually remove the power.
What I am saying is that on an individual level, the risk seems low that my using google is going to end up in a bad situation for me.
It is all about which options I am choosing between. When you ask me "Is it better to allow the government to collect information about everyone, and then use that to target suspicious individuals they find in that information, or is it better to limit that data collection and risk possibly missing some criminals?", then my answer is it is better to risk missing some criminals versus most likely harassing and possibly arresting innocent people because of false positives in the massive data collected.
However, if you ask me "Is it better for you, as an individual, to use google services and let them collect data about your, or is it better to avoid google completely", then the answer to me is to use google. The direct risk to me is low enough for me to make the trade off.