Really nice, though the 'my marks' and 'tags' boxes don't load for me, meking it impossible to find back my cute little efforts at office procrastination :(

Truth and accuracy aside, why would her experience not be the center piece? I think the personal experience of 'everyday citizens' is enormously important in understanding issues of privacy and (self-)censorship.

In fact, highlighting the consequences for 'regular people' arguably contributes more to that understanding than the zillionth story about 'exceptions' like Assange/Snowden/RandomIranianBlogger. In the end those are (seen as) edge-cases.

Hackernews and other websites latching on to the 'technical' part of the story is understandable, but whether it was the quinoa or the pressure cooker or her husband's business dealings isn't the real subject of this story - the real insight provided by this story is the fact that she was left in a state of distress, leading to her questioning her every day communications/searches...

> "I think the personal experience of 'everyday citizens' is enormously important in understanding issues of privacy and (self-)censorship."

Which is what I said. "The writer's burying what should be a relevant example of "why even innocent people shouldn't like this NSA spying/profiling""

Her experience should be the center of her article. I'm talking about her pushing a silly theory that the NSA is doing a web search dragnet in an attempt to make her article the center of a fork from the larger story of NSA spying. And as the theory is generally silly, it simply distracts and detracts from the root NSA spying story, instead of reinforcing it and adding a direct human/emotional anchor for it.

... because the government is one person, unable of accomplishing multiple tasks at the same time?

Nobody is claiming all news is objective. I also think that the constant claims about 'msm' 'ignoring' important stories is annoying, incorrect and in fact distracting from the proper discussion to be had.

There is in fact a very distinct difference between opinion articles and 'proper' news articles. You see, journalism is not a claim to objective truth, but a procedure aimed at achieving a minimum level of validity where it comes to events. When you read a news article, you should (to some extent) be able to trust its contents on the merits of the journalistic method. Whereas with an opinion piece, it's not bound by this procedure. Note - nobody is arguing 'absolute objectivity' here. It's a matter of trust in a procedure. Of course, it's fine to distrust the journalistic method, to not see it as absolute truth, but to deny or entirely dismiss the distinction is annoyingly daft.

Also, afaik, this story is still everywhere. If you want it to remain that way, start working for change - newspapers report on events, not 'the truth'. Make events happen, and it stays in the cycle.

> I also think that the constant claims about 'msm' 'ignoring' important stories is annoying, incorrect and in fact distracting from the proper discussion to be had.

You're welcome to your opinion.

The Telegraaf has had a pretty public beef with the intelligence agencies over source protection and phone taps.

They're actually quite decent when it comes to investigative news into the police, justice and the AIVD.

You need an NSA and CIA simply by virtue of the fact that every other country has one.

Secrecy is also an essential part of negotiations - you can't reach middle ground if all your concessions are made public. There's a balance to be struck, though we're clearly far from achieving that atm.

A little secrecy by itself is not an issue, as long as the process built around it is as transparent as possible. That's the issue you're facing with this whole PRISM thing, lack of accountability and transparency.

That is not a mere thought, it is an actual thing called UKUSA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukusa

Nothing was 'given up'. Something was traded. European intelligence agencies regularly 'launder' intercepts through foreign governments ('hey NSA, we'll trade you some info, if you can get us some info on one of our own...').

I asked have they just given up, so in that context given up referred to stopped trying to protect us. Your comment seems to suggest that yes, they have given up on protecting Europeans' data.

Paxman's 'grilling' is as much an opportunity as it is a challenge to the interviewee. Dismissing it as an obnoxious, premeditated takedown underestimates Paxman's skill and as an interviewer. It's also a well known shtick of his.

It's only an "opportunity" if he stops interrupting you long enough to answer him.

You misunderstood the argument.

Finland has a merit-based system just like Singapore. And Singapore has, just like Finland, made a concerted effort to provide equal access to education to all its citizens.

The argument is not to drop merit-based tests and chances based on merit. Nobody is arguing that.

The argument is that society as a whole should focus on providing equal access and chance to citizens (in this context children that go to school/university).

So whilst Singaporean education certainly is far more focussed on rote learning and the typical 'Asian Tiger' approach to labor, the system built around those approaches is very 'euro-socialist', if you will: equal access for everyone.