NicoleMandel
Rookie
- Jun 18, 2015
- 5
- 1
- 1
Right off the bat lemme just say that I don't have a deep understanding of politics but I recently started reading and watching documentaries about Snowden and I have a couple of questions about politics in regards to our flow of information. Please forgive me if the questions might seem stupid to you.
Firstly, all of our communications and flow of information can be intercepted by the NSA. What I want to know is something that may never happen but it still makes me wonder -- What if a corrupt president is at the helm of the country or even the head of the NSA who has access to all the information about all the Americans. Can they sell this information to other countries or terrorist groups for personal gain? Another way to put this would be: Hypothetically speaking, let's forget about the NSA. Let's say there's a conspiracy in which a group of powerful people in the government devise a method to bug American houses. Now in this hypothesis, they have access to all our conversations and our daily activities and secrets and information. Would they be able to trade all this data and sell/give access to this data to another government of another country? Or to any other powerful person of another country?
Secondly, if they could, how would another country misuse this information about Americans? Let's say someone like China's president (or is it PM?) or the North Korean dictator get access to all our information because of some corrupt politicians/officials... what could they do with that information? Would it even be valuable to them? If so, then how?
I understand that these answers require speculation and because of the highly hypothesized scenarios, this knowledge may be redundant but please play ball with me. I would really like to understand this. Many thanks to anyone who's sweet enough to answer!
Firstly, all of our communications and flow of information can be intercepted by the NSA. What I want to know is something that may never happen but it still makes me wonder -- What if a corrupt president is at the helm of the country or even the head of the NSA who has access to all the information about all the Americans. Can they sell this information to other countries or terrorist groups for personal gain? Another way to put this would be: Hypothetically speaking, let's forget about the NSA. Let's say there's a conspiracy in which a group of powerful people in the government devise a method to bug American houses. Now in this hypothesis, they have access to all our conversations and our daily activities and secrets and information. Would they be able to trade all this data and sell/give access to this data to another government of another country? Or to any other powerful person of another country?
Secondly, if they could, how would another country misuse this information about Americans? Let's say someone like China's president (or is it PM?) or the North Korean dictator get access to all our information because of some corrupt politicians/officials... what could they do with that information? Would it even be valuable to them? If so, then how?
I understand that these answers require speculation and because of the highly hypothesized scenarios, this knowledge may be redundant but please play ball with me. I would really like to understand this. Many thanks to anyone who's sweet enough to answer!