I hesitated signing it for a good 5 minutes because I didn't want my name on the list of subversives, but then realized that since they monitor everything, I was already on the list.
Oh well, I'll let you guys know how good the food is in the secret prisons.
I made the subversive list, I kid you not, at the age of 12. Needless to say, I stopped caring long long ago. Didn't find out about it until years later, when I was silly enough to think about enlisting in the Navy's Nuclear Propulsion School.
Trust me, everyone who knows me has heard the story. But you do make a point, I should write it up and put it up on a website to educate others as to some of the abuses that have been occurring for so long.
I hope you're kidding too. However, the cynic in me suspects that most of the signatories to the petition might already have been identified by the likes of PRISM as potential subversives and put on a secret watch list. This petition is probably just a confirmation of the majority of the names on that list.
This petition is probably just a confirmation of the majority of the names on that list
It's far worse than "just confirmation." If the NSA is training a machine learning algorithm to identify subversives based on various features/activities of those people, they need a set of labeled (i.e. subversive = yes/no) training data for the algorithm to learn from. They now have 100,000 extra training samples to help the machine learning algorithm better tune its ability to identify subversives. So, not only have the 100,000 people moved from the "probably subversive" to "known subversive" column, but the NSA is better able to predict subversiveness for all of the people that didn't sign the petition by comparing their features/activities to those that did.
That's a perspective I hadn't thought of, and will try to apply to other situations.
On the other hand, if the 100,000 people who already signed have now identified me as a subversive, I'd better go ahead and sign, in the hopes that it will maximize the odds of reigning in the NSA before they come get me.
Not to the NSA! With no effort at all, they've gathered the names of 100,000 subversives to put on a secret watch list!
(I hope I'm kidding.)