US ToS

Many people today are talking about the recent NSA/Edward Snowden scandal.  Apparently the NSA just started spying on us and this hero/traitor to the American public has just foiled their plans.  Or is that the case?  In reality, the NSA has been intercepting at least some interpersonal communications of Americans since at least 2001, after the 9/11 terror attacks. In addition, they haven't stopped; we just know about it now.  At least, we KNOW we know about it.  People had always suspected, as Stephen Colbert had joked at the 2006 White House Correspondent's Association Dinner, "Before I get started, if anybody needs anything else at their tables, just speak slowly and clearly into your table numbers.  Someone from the NSA will be right over with a cocktail."

With the release of this information about the monitoring of Americans' internet use, I would understand the US Internet Terms of Service to look a little something like this:

US Internet Terms of Service
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You have the right to free speech.
You have the right to privacy.
We have the right to ignore your rights, as long as you don't care enough to do anything about it.
What are the chances you are going to read this anyway? Nobody ever reads the Terms and Conditions, just go click Accept.
Anything you Google can and will be used against you if we decide to give you a trial.
The Patriot Act is still around, so that's kinda up to us.
Any website or information you access may or may not be, but likely will be, monitored and stored for reasons you don't need to know.  If you would like to know, that's too bad.
There is no reason for us to take this from you, so there's also no real reason to be afraid, because you probably won't do anything wrong.  But if you do do something wrong, then you should probably be afraid, because everything you did was already wiretapped.  In fact, even if you didn't do anything wrong, you should still probably be afraid, because the government, regardless of how innocent its intentions may or may not be, does not have the authority to circumvent its own laws, that you are also required to follow.  Whether or not the NSA will do anything bad with the information, or get it in a bad way, it remains true that it should not have it in the first place.



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