SURVEILLANCE
It may be just as well Uncle Sam is watching
I read your coverage regarding the NSA leaks with a great deal of interest. I suppose people will complain. Perhaps they should be glad Uncle Sam is watching.
Many forget that the big telephone and Internet corporations use service companies in India, the Philippines, the Caribbean and Mexico. People in these countries therefore have access to our life histories, and our relatives’ and friends’ life histories. This is very dangerous, so it may very well be that if Uncle Sam is watching, it is for our benefit.
One might consider not complaining.
MAXINE MCQUAIG, DUNWOODY
No big surprise feds have phone, web data
With the recent revelation that the NSA has been collecting our phone and Internet data for years, we are being warned that because of a leak, it will be harder to detect threats against us, now that the two top-secret tools to target terrorists have been publicized.
Seriously? Is the federal collection of phone and web data really such a novel idea? The technology to actually undertake the collection and analysis is indeed very clever, but the idea itself? B-grade spy movies from the 1980s are more creative. You can just hear the panicked terrorists: “Oh, man — the U.S. has been collecting phone and Internet data. We never thought of that! Back to the drawing board.”
The chagrin expressed over the leak sounds more like “rear-end covering” to help justify why the U.S. public was never informed this data collection strategy was actually taking place.
ALAN FOSTER, ACWORTH
MULTIRACIAL FAMILIES
TV ad just reflects modern households
Sometimes when you least expect it, life provides you little gifts. The recent General Mills ad featuring a biracial couple and their offspring is one such present.
General Mills was not making a political statement. They were following data accumulated over a number of years. And for goodness’ sake, just watching television over the past 10 years, one could see that our society has changed — and continues to evolve. It will not change back, no matter how much some don’t like it.
Ad agencies and socially conscious businesses could teach demographers (and all of us) a thing or two. Then again, racists have a tendency toward being intellectually challenged, and (they’re) like a bad cold: impossible to cure, and hard to get rid of.
RONALD D. JOHNSON, AUSTELL
GOVERNMENT
Theories put too much faith in human beings
To enlarge on “A libertarian state? We tried that once” (Opinion, June 10), I add the following.
Libertarianism lies at the opposite end of the political spectrum from communism. Both are precisely based on the same flawed view of human nature: the assumption of innate altruism in human beings, that we will all behave nicely in the interests of all.
In reality, communism and libertarianism are both foolish theories.
BOB EBERWEIN, ATLANTA
