f_salmon

> "[US political system] which is regarded as the best example of democracy, globally"

As far as I can tell, Switzerland has the best political system (with the most direct democracy) and it's really a shame that nobody seems to want to imitate it (which of course can be explained by the fact that it means more power goes to the People, not corporations/secret gvt agencies/etc, which are often allowed to buy politicians via "donations", accepted corruption called "lobbying", etc)

> A user simply sends a message, and it’s encrypted end to end, every time.

Anything that is not public key encrypted must be considered unencrypted.

And we must never forget that this is simply criminal.

Nobody should get away with that.

> Germans are especially sensitive about snooping due to their experiences in the Nazi era and in Communist East Germany, when the Stasi secret police built up a massive surveillance network.

I find it curious how this comment seems to appear often in NSA related articles. As if Germans had a degree of sensitivity (with regards to privacy) that's exaggerated. Makes no sense.

The other reason why this is no big deal (anymore) is that the Snowden leaks have shown that the NSA has total control over all iPhones.

Why should we even bother talking about bugs like this anymore? Pure distraction.

This may be nice for certain niche users.

But the trend I see is companies telling us to regularly buy stuff we really don't need (and obviously throw away our "old" solutions). The world has way more pressing issues than yet-another-gadget. And the planet's resources are not unlimited.

> David Miranda Detention Legal Under Terrorism Law

Nowadays, everything is "terrorism". It's funny, because before Bush, nobody knew that word. Nobody ever talked about such a thing. It was something that was talked about maybe once in every 5 years. Nowadays, you can't read the news 1 single day without something being labeled "terrorism". Yesterday, it was the Ukrainian gov't calling the people in the tents "terrorists".

It's become really easy to strike people down.

A US-based VPN provider? I hope you're being sarcastic.

It's "funny" how our western system hypocritically decries censorship in China, North Korea et al. when we do the exact same thing, just in a little bit more hidden/less detectable way.