The headline makes it sound like the fears are the problem, as if they're unfounded. But the fears are legitimate; it's the actual surveillance that threatens to break the internet.
The thing I fear the most is cyber retaliation. So many of us have accounts on the Internet that matter to us day to day. If they are reading this (I am damn sure they are), and if they don't like you, they will try to take over your accounts and make fun of you. Fear is the most destructive and most effective weapon and such weapon is most terrible when targeting at individuals.
But I still have to drop a line: please arrest these "hackers" / "crackers" / cyber criminals.
The internet does a lot of good but times like this it can be scary – or just plain wrong.
Once the wheels of motion are turning there is nothing anyone can do, even the way Hacker News behaved with it's mob mentality was absurd – two people got fired, SendGrid was brought offline, some poor lady received death threats, everyone was humiliated in some capacity, and by the looks of the comment thread on the SendGrid facebook page, equality in tech has been notched back a few decades.
Talk about blowing something out of proportion: some guy made a dongle joke to a friend of his at a conference. It's kind of terrifying if you think how easily you could have been one of the characters in this. You see so many times when some poor person has his personal details spread over the internet based on a rumour. What do you even do when this happens?
Considering the general insecurity and hackability of the internet, this is probably more of a symptom than a disease. It's the digital equivalent of the cure for cancer. 'cept the internet is printing too much money for too many peopke and no one wants to muck with that, even if it's the right thing to do.
His fear stems from the fact that most people believe they have a right to the Internet and are essentially anonymous.
To respond to your hellfire missile analogy, if I am in Canada or the US, I'm not worrying about it but if I'm in the middle east, it's a different story.
Care to explain what's worrying you though?
reply