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Seriously. We've been saying this for decades. Secure it.

Top to bottom encryption, compartmentalization, etc.

Make it so the NSA just can't tap your communication.

Microsoft helped the NSA get around their encryption. Securing technology only works as long as the company securing it does so against everyone. How can you tell whether the company you're working with has a quiet deal with the government?

I know one response will be "open source!", but how many people actually go through OS code looking for hidden back doors? And it's not like we can all run our own infrastructure, you've got to trust someone at some point, and how can you tell whether or not they've got a quiet deal going on in the background?

Hussein was delivered to justice only because the air strike on the Presidential Palace in Baghdad on 19 March 2003, which was intended to kill him, missed.

Sure. Because at that point he was still the Commander of the enemy military and thus a perfectly legitimate target. But when Marines were dispatched to take him out of his rathole, they were not ordered to kill him on sight. Unlike the SEALs dispatched for Osama bin Laden.

I noticed that Hussein's heinous sons didn't get "delivered to justice".

Because those two gentlemen actively resisted capture. There was a firefight — and the two died with arms in their hands.

Now, bin Laden was not resisting. One of his wives charged the SEALs and was calmly shot in the leg — not killed. SEALs are professionals and would not just kill a human being willy-nilly. But they follow orders. Why did Obama order them to kill, not capture bin Laden, even though the same helicopter, that carried his body, could've just as well carried him out alive, is on the President's conscience.

That you defend him — is on yours.

I'd rather they come after them with a drone than with an invasion

Sure. And it is legal too, no problem there. But when it is done to simply stop the flow of new detainees into Gitmo (to fulfill, someday, Obama's 2007 electoral promise), then it becomes rather unethical, does not it? Because capture and detention (even if indefinite) is much better, than fiery death from the sky for both the subject and his family. If you had no problem with Gitmo detentions, then, fine. I don't blame you for accepting Obama's doctrine. But if you were among the media-whipped crowds condemning Bush for the mere detentions, then you can not be true to yourself, if you don't condemn Obama in even stronger terms for the extra-judicial killings of the same people.

I'm not saying there arent issues

Oh, there most certainly are issues! Because Gitmo was made into such a hot potato during the previous presidency, the current President, evidently, banned putting new detainees in there... Guess, which of the two alternatives to such detentions did he pick? Right, kill them on the spot — no judge, no jury.

That his supporters, after condemning Bush for the mere detentions, are a-Ok with the extra-judicial killings, is really telling any observer everything one needs to know about their attention spans. That the President is ordering the killings for political expediency (so as not to be blamed for Gitmo's existance much), never mind the possibility, however slight, that a few of them are innocent, is telling the same observer about his values and morals. That he does it despite the intelligence value destroyed by each killing, expands nicely on his priorities.

To sum up: the "village idiot" and "Constitution-shredder" Bush presided over Milosevic and Hussein being delivered to justice. Harvard-educated lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Obama presided over bin Laden and Qaddafi shot on the spot...

I don't think it's 'conspiracy' what the government's doing, they're behaving like every person and corp. Simply using legal and financial tools to get what they want.

1) Telecoms granted immunity.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/10/supreme-court-telecoms-win-immunity

2) Quest CEO claims retaliation by NSA for refusal (old)
http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/13/jailed-qwest-ceo-claimed-that-nsa-retaliated-because-he-wouldnt-participate-in-spy-program/

Here's my point in relation to Microsoft: That having won the case against MS, the DOJ had them 100% 'bent over the barrel' as it were. And in exchange for their continued assistance to the NSA, they were granted the 'consent decree' as a sort of 'released on probation', rather than breaking up the company at that time (or imposing other really draconian measures). As with all of the other secret FISC/DOJ agreements, just enter one for MS in relation to this case. MS would certainly have agreed to go along. Besides, monopoly is good for state control and Linux as an alternative would have looked bad to the NSA too. Method, motive, and opportunity.

Look what the facts of the case with the Quest CEO. The loss of the NSA contract (and the related mis-measure of income/profit as a result) directly created the situation he was charged with. I suspect that the government came to him looking for him to go along with the plan too. He didn't want to play ball, and when he tried to cash out and run away...they got him for insider trading. What's conspiracy about that? Method, motive, and opportunity.

Look at the ongoing investigation of Google now too. Not claiming that they're innocent, but DOJ gaining leverage with an 'ongoing investigation' of something or other is just their style. US Government wants into everyone's pants, any time they want too.

People did used to say I'm wearing a 'tin-foil' hat, but it's looking like the 'high fashion statement for 2013' these days.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data

"Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow usersâ(TM) communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the companyâ(TM)s own encryption, according to top-secret documents obtained by the Guardian.

The files provided by Edward Snowden illustrate the scale of co-operation between Silicon Valley and the intelligence agencies over the last three years. They also shed new light on the workings of the top-secret Prism program, which was disclosed by the Guardian and the Washington Post last month.

The documents show that:

* Microsoft helped the NSA to circumvent its encryption to address concerns that the agency would be unable to intercept web chats on the new Outlook.com portal;

* The agency already had pre-encryption stage access to email on Outlook.com, including Hotmail;

* The company worked with the FBI this year to allow the NSA easier access via Prism to its cloud storage service SkyDrive, which now has more than 250 million users worldwide;

* Microsoft also worked with the FBIâ(TM)s Data Intercept Unit to âoeunderstandâ potential issues with a feature in Outlook.com that allows users to create email aliases;

* In July last year, nine months after Microsoft bought Skype, the NSA boasted that a new capability had tripled the amount of Skype video calls being collected through Prism;

* Material collected through Prism is routinely shared with the FBI and CIA, with one NSA document describing the program as a âoeteam sportâ."

And you STILL want to do business with them? You STILL want to trust their OS with your personal files and/or communications?

What more do you need?

Read the one post above about how little actual flying time pilots get these days. Takeoff, get to cruise altitude, switch on auto pilot.

How much actual stick and rudder time, I mean actual handling the aircraft do pilots get these days? Not in simulators, but in the cockpit, actually handling the throttles, the flaps and all the other controls. For all we know those 10,000 hours were really more like 1000 in terms of actually taking control. You had other pilots in that cockpit and nobody saw the problem, typical. But at least they're still alive and now they can tell their side of the story and maybe something good will come out of this in terms of training or better automation, cockpit warnings etc. to help in these kinds of situations.

Not to be macabre, but this happens all the time in air disasters.
Look at the Airbus 330 crash from a few years ago.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/29/air-france-crash-pilot-error

[quote]
Captain, Marc Dubois, 58, was resting when the Airbus began encountering turbulance, leaving co-pilots David Robert, 37, and Pierre-Cedric Bonin, 32, in the cockpit.

Bonin was at the controls when the speed sensors failed. When the autopilot reacted to the confused readings by disconnecting itself and handing control of the plane to the pilot, he reportedly hauled the aircraft up to 37,500ft in an apparent attempt to slow it down. As a consequence the A330's stall warning sounded, meaning that the plane's aerodynamics were not generating enough lift even though its twin engines were working normally.

Robert, Bonin's co-pilot at the time, supposedly check-listing the emergency procedures, lost precious seconds calling the captain and failed to correct his colleague's error as the plane plunged towards the sea, said the report. Dubois had returned to the cockpit seconds before the crash but was unable to save the situation as it hit the Atlantic belly first.

A French pilot told Le Figaro newspaper: "This manoeuvre (the pulling up of the plane) is totally incomprehensible. My colleague must have panicked."
[/quote]

Inexperience cost all those people their lives. Yes there was a mechanical failure in sensing true airspeed but the guys in the cockpit didn't have enough experience actually flying the plane, ignoring stall warnings and were relying on the autopilot.

Somebody has to fly that plane and personally I'd prefer it to be somebody who's got experience at actual control vs. simulated runs or hours logged on auto pilot.

We seem to be moving to a merger of corporate and government security.
The private sector seems to be in the news wrt cybersecurity in the past few days.
A new view on cyber offense http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/?p=110420-ga
Terms like network hygiene http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/28/us-army-blocks-guardian-website-access.
The internet seems to be taking on a whole new role wrt to security from the desktop to corporate to the role of media.
The fun of "citation needed" to many of the bigger questions around private contractors just to 'look after' as in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A seem to have become more clear to many people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempora

Really? Your retort is just a variation of "yo Mama". This is /. for crying out loud, use some part of your brain cell to come back with a more sardonic or rapier response. "Go kill yourself" is just...childish, like your initial comment. You went beyond hyperbole (it has always been corrupt) as if each and every monk, priest, and nun are in on the crime. No fan of the Church here, but it has done good works over the centuries, done by good caring people so how about canning the over generalizations a bit.

Not to nitpick, but even Christianity has somewhat of a "middleman" in the form of Jesus such that "Christians" feel the only way to God is through Christ. Sure, the Holy Trinity can cover up that loop hole, but many of the major beliefs (even Islam) have a middle man, living or dead that represent the way to God. Christianity talks about a personal relationship with Christ (first, not God the Father), a slight but clear difference in semantics. The Church does not declare the Pope God, but God's representative on Earth. Big difference. Catholics do not pray to the Pope, they pray to God, or to God and the supporting characters and while they do have this quirky notion that only a priest (which by extension includes the Pope) can give absolution and entrance to Heaven, many Christians feel that if you do not accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior you will burn in hell. Corrupt? How about James Bakker or these types of churches that use Christianity as a drug and they are the pushers. The Catholic Church is not the only Religion with its dark side.

You opened the door to comment with the "everyone knows" and irrelevant statements like "the pope is not in the bible" without really making a valid point. So "Go kill yourself", instead of adding to your machismo, only diluted your initial weak thoughts. Perhaps you'd like to try again.

The Guardian disagrees with you.

The agreement, first reported by Crikey who obtained the documents, gave the US government permission to store "domestic communications" – with the possibility of using them for spying – using the underwater cables owned by Reach.

Domestic communications were defined in the agreement as communications within the US but could also extend to communications which "originate or terminate" in America, meaning Australian communications with America could have potentially been subject to the agreement.

The Slashdot summary is, as is usual, fails to highlight the really interesting part (not that two consecutive governments approved this isn't interesting)

Telstra also agreed to report to the US government every three months on whether any foreign non-government entities had asked for access to their communications, and complete a compliance report every year which could not be accessed using freedom of information laws.

Oh really? How is that global fight for freedom going for you guys?

The points of contact were to be American citizens and the agreement also stopped Telstra and Reach, which is based in Hong Kong, from complying with any country's laws that certain data should be destroyed.

51% sure, or how was that?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/mar/28/egypt-undersea-cable-arrests

"Egyptian naval forces have arrested three scuba divers who they say were trying to cut an undersea cable off the port of Alexandria that provides one-third of all internet capacity between Europe and Egypt.
However the navy who captured the men had no explanation of who they were working for, where they came from or why they would want to disrupt Egypt's internet communications."

I'm guessing they were planning on adding a bit of hardware in the line but messed up.

I say we petition Jesus to get back down here and flip some tables, for this and other things.

Thanks for the link. I think the following article is also worth bringing to Slashdot's attention:

"Snowden: I never gave any information to Chinese or Russian governments" [2013-07-10]

It seems The New York Times is participating in the US federal government's anti-whistleblower smear campaign by publishing such unsubstantiated bullshit.

Cryptanalysis is at a level you could not possibly comprehend.

A person confirmed by the US government of having a lot of inside information, recently said that our encryption is secure. So unless you can explain why you know more about the NSA's capabilities than him....

If he "explained" it to you, he would have another identity in a day, and you'd be forgotten.

Cryptanalysis is at a level you could not possibly comprehend.

A person confirmed by the US government of having a lot of inside information, recently said that our encryption is secure. So unless you can explain why you know more about the NSA's capabilities than him....

Show me those words in that order and proximity in that article. Kinda like your ability to argue from personal ignorance, non-existent.

something a fed would never do

Like reading a newspaper?
They're legally prohibited from informing themselves.

That's just the first one that came up in Google.

That's the first one that came up in Goebbel? I'm surprised even a single Slashdotter is still using that NSA-pipelined bullshit; even the unwashed masses know better.

The ease with which BHO will deploy drones to kill people without trial is scary, doing in countries we are not at war with is scary,
the number of Others that die in the attacks is indefensible.
They are not as accurate as they say. When the "Pilot" is thousands of miles away, they are a little quick on the trigger.

Possibly of interest: Out of Sight, Out of Mind: A visualization of drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004

UN to examine UK and US drone strikes [2013-01-23]

Excerpt from above article:

"Between June 2004 and September 2012, according to research by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, drone strikes killed between 2,562 and 3,325 people in Pakistan, of whom between 474 and 881 were civilians, including 176 children."

Cryptanalysis is at a level you could not possibly comprehend.

A person confirmed by the US government of having a lot of inside information, recently said that our encryption is secure. So unless you can explain why you know more about the NSA's capabilities than him....

But in this one you know that the NSA (and associates, around 5 millon people) all have direct access to everything put there. Should be ok if what i put there is public anyway, but for companies and private stuff this should be considered malware (trojan, ransomware, spyware, etc, pick your labels for it).

A week or two ago, a bunch of countries signed an treaty that allowed for publishing materials for the disabled.

So now various groups like HathiTrust (who won their lawsuit by The Authors Guild) can now share their work with groups from other countries. Unfortunately, the treaty had been modified to exclude audio visual works.

It might be that individual countries still have laws that apply (eg, the US does, but they still might not've been in full compliance), but we don't yet have an international treaty for doing it. My suggestion would be to host the website in Antigua.

The law the French government enacted to cut people off the internet, Hadopi, was basically unenforceable when the French Constitutional Court declared access to the Internet a basic human right in 2009.

The French judiciary has ridden to the rescue of the country's web users, striking down a controversial new law which would have allowed the state to cut off the internet connections of illegal filesharers for up to a year.

The ruling is a blow to French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who had characterised the so-called "three strikes" law as a crucial weapon in the fight against online piracy. The Hadopi law, named after the government agency which was to police the new regime, was also used by many in the content industry as an example that could be followed in the UK.

But France's constitutional council ruled today that "free access" to online communications services is a human right and cannot be withheld without a judge's intervention. The council also ruled that the method of policing the web envisaged in the law breaches a citizen's right to privacy.

The one who wants to limit peoples civil rights and thinks you can't get pregnant from rape?

Your civil rights aren't worth very much, if you are too poor to enjoy them — and we are steadily getting poorer on the Nobel Prize Winner's watch. And there is no denying that — there are more Americans receiving government's food assistance today, than there are working the private sector.

Oh, and the civil rights — whatever they are worth — are deteriorating even faster on his watch too: TSA is ever more inquisitive, the people Bush used to merely detain are now simply killed. Hunting for a sole teenager with one pistol, the government locked down the entire town and the literal jackboots were throwing people out of their houses at gunpoint.

So, you chose "civil rights" over prosperity and are quickly losing both. I would've laughed at you, if your choice did not affect me as well...

In sum: CIA ain't run by the military.

Ok then. Tell me, what part of CIA drone strike in Pakistan kills suspected militants and Support to Military Operations is not military? The CIA may have started out detached from the military, but what they do now certainly sounds to me like it's run by the same General Hotshit egomaniac brass you see on CNN.

It must be the work of teh terrorists.... Quick. Lock everything down.

and in their next breath, "See! We (as in the UK and Sweden) were right to veto democratic investigation and talk about the facts surrounding our illegal spy regimes.". How the hell can they veto such a thing and keep a straight face? It is as if all pretense of democratic freedom has been lost....

We have Snowden to thank for this change in attitude. Public sentiment is everything. And yet, the second part of his interview which addresses pretty much every criticism laid on him (before it was made) never made /. news for nerds, (it got modded down to oblivion on the firehose AFAIK), despite Snowdens story being highly relevant news for nerds...

OK maybe not mandated but there was the DfES Primary Schools Whiteboard Expansion project (PSWE) which resulted in whiteboards springing up in our local school. I am glad you have found yours useful but they don't suit every pupil still I take your point, there are much worse example of equipment problems like the scandalous contracts some heads have been duped into signing for IT and photocopier equipment.

I think a lot of the motivation for these changes comes from the criticism of the existing ICT course from Ofsted the education regulator but probably more from the speech Eric Schmidt made about the UK throwing away it's engineering legacy. He said "I was flabbergasted to learn that today computer science isn't even taught as standard in UK schools"

OK, I think they made another appearance in July 2011. This was around two weeks after a report of a NATO missile killing children in Libya. The British public were not keen on another war in the middle east. Then this appeared in the Telegraph. The strange thing is that this village is neither on the Heathrow nor Gatwick flight paths. I know the area quite well and there are no low flying aircraft there, no wonder the villagers were amazed, it was all arranged for the national press. Here is a good analysis of the story.

Rand paul has told so many lies it is disgusting. He KNEW about PRISM and the rest of it, just like the others (including Sensenbrenner who is a typical lying neo-con). The man continues to lie over and over. As it is, he is pulling nothing but BS.

Where is your proof? You accuse the man of lying, but you present no evidence whatsoever. Clapper has admitted to lying, are you still defending him?

He submits bills that make you neo-cons feel wonderful

Actually, it's your foreign policy stance that falls in line with that of the neo-cons - Rand Paul is a civil libertarian opposed to spying and drones. Seems like you are the neo-con.

BUT, back to the real issue. You have shown NO PROOF of the accusations that you have made because there IS NO PROOF.

Ha! Where's yours? The proof you're looking for is right here.

According to this Guardian article, the Instrument Landing System glide slope system was not operating at the time of the crash.

Asiana said mechanical failure did not appear to be a factor in the crash. Hersman confirmed that a part of the airport's instrument-landing system was offline on Saturday but cautioned against drawing conclusions from that, noting that the so-called glide slope system was not essential to safe operations in good weather. She said it was a clear day with good visibility.

I am fairly sure this means that the automated landing systems on airplanes will not work. Thus, the landing by the pilots would have been a fully manual approach. According to the article, the airplane came in too slow:

A stall warning sounded four seconds before impact, and the crew tried to abort the landing and initiate what's known as a "go around" manoeuvre just 1.5 seconds before crashing, Hersman said.

"Air speed was significantly below the target airspeed," she said.

From where I am sitting, this looks like full-on pilot error.

I am not a pilot but I used to be able to land the big iron planes fairly reliably on flight simulators. The simple principle is that you control your descent rate with engines and your airspeed with your angle of attack. You are at your slowest before touchdown when you nose up, and your angle of attack reaches its maximum. It sounds to me like the pilot had too large a descent rate and lost too much altitude before the runway. They probably started their flare too soon, and were not watching their airspeed. The fact that the stall alarm went on (indicating too low an airspeed and to large an angle of attack) supports this hypothesis. Their late effort to decrease their descent rate by throttling up the engines failed because it came too late (though likely saved lives by preventing the plane from nosing into the seawall).

The stall hypothesis is also supported by witness accounts of the plane looking "out of control". An airplane that is stalling might look out of control because it is in essence falling. Just google "Bagram 747 crash" to see what happens when a plane stalls. Also, the apparent fact that the pilot was able to throttle up the engines in the end indicates that the engines were functioning properly. The fundamental pilot error here was likely that the pilot did not throttle up the engines sooner to slow his descent rate.

This then leads to a discussion of the fact that many landings pilots make are automated, made possible by Instrument Landing Systems (ILS) on the ground and autopilots on the plane. How many pilots are in fact out of practice when manually landing airplanes? Did the lack of an ILS glide slope signal play a significant role in this crash? It shouldn't have, since the visibility on approach was unobstructed. Were the pilots out of practice? Was there something about the instrument data displays on the 777 that makes such a botched approach more likely?

Onyxruby, you are so full of it, you could make a killing as a fertilizer whole seller.

1) Going through the "proper channels"
There were previous NSA whistle blowers who did follow proper channels. Their lives were made hell and their leaks did not get out. One of them, Thomas Drake, had this to say about Snowden:

I differed as a whistleblower to Snowden only in this respect: in accordance with the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act, I took my concerns up within the chain of command, to the very highest levels at the NSA, and then to Congress and the Department of Defense. I understand why Snowden has taken his course of action, because he's been following this for years: he's seen what's happened to other whistleblowers like me.

[...] But as I found out later, none of the material evidence I disclosed went into the official record. It became a state secret even to give information of this kind to the 9/11 investigation.

The material evidence that Snowden was able to provide, only by going outside the proper channels, was essential for refuting the sea of lies that have been emanating from the highest levels of the NSA.

Those flagrant lies to Congress and the American public are one of the reasons Snowden chose the path he did. Whistle blower programs only work if the violations being reported are small and don't extend to the highest levels. Are you seriously suggesting that the director of the NSA would have allowed the release of material evidence that would have outed himself as a liar to Congress and the American people? That is certainly not what happened with the previous NSA whistle blowers. And without the material evidence it is just the word of an unknown underling versus the word of the director of the NSA.

2) The route of maximum damage
Snowden did not release any information directly to the public nor did he give any information to enemies or allies of the US. What he did do was release limited information to a legitimate news organization and let them decide what should be released to the public. This is widely recognized as the responsible course of action. For your claim against Snowden to be true then the Washington Post, The Guardian, Germany's Der Spiegel, and Brazil's O Globo must all be in on the conspiracy to cause maximum political damage. Just like your suggestion about going through proper channels, this claim of yours is not credible.

If you were in Snowden's position and had evidence that the NSA was lying to Congress and the American people about vast Unconstitutional spying networks, what would you do? Your idea of "going through the proper channels" is an obvious non-starter. The most responsible thing to do is exactly what Snowden did, release some of the information to a legitimate news organization and let them vet it to make sure it is both safe to release to the public and newsworthy.

3) Ad hominem attacks on Snowden's character
I believe a citation request is warranted for your attacks on Snowden's character. Everyone who I know of who has had personal contact with Snowden has given nothing but the highest praise when discussing his character. They are all convinced he is only doing this for the noblest of reasons; not out of ego and in an attempt to damage the US.

Your post consists of nothing but obvious outright lies and baseless character assassination. Sadly, it typifies the mainstream coverage of the NSA spying scandal. If you want to see for yourself how the vetting process worked and see appraisals of Snowden's character from people who were in

I'm not sure how, but you managed to get this badly wrong.

The US, UK, France, Germany, and many other nations are not terrorist nations, but they do have terrorists in them among the population. If a government is opposed to terrorism, but it has 5,000 terrorists among a population of 80,000,000, it has a terrorist problem, but it isn't a terrorist nation. It will be the terrorists, among other things, that will be of interest to the intelligence agencies.

At Least 4,000 Suspected of Terrorism-Related Activity in Britain, MI5 Director Says
'Mumbai-style' terror attack on UK, France and Germany foiled
Raids foil plot to bring 7/7 terror to Germany
NSA director: Surveillance foiled 50 terror plots

National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander told a House committee Tuesday that more than 50 terror threats throughout the world have been disrupted with the assistance of two secret surveillance programs that were recently disclosed by former defense contractor Edward Snowden

I hope this is becoming clear.

I'm not sure how, but you managed to get this badly wrong.

The US, UK, France, Germany, and many other nations are not terrorist nations, but they do have terrorists in them among the population. If a government is opposed to terrorism, but it has 5,000 terrorists among a population of 80,000,000, it has a terrorist problem, but it isn't a terrorist nation. It will be the terrorists, among other things, that will be of interest to the intelligence agencies.

At Least 4,000 Suspected of Terrorism-Related Activity in Britain, MI5 Director Says
'Mumbai-style' terror attack on UK, France and Germany foiled
Raids foil plot to bring 7/7 terror to Germany
NSA director: Surveillance foiled 50 terror plots

National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander told a House committee Tuesday that more than 50 terror threats throughout the world have been disrupted with the assistance of two secret surveillance programs that were recently disclosed by former defense contractor Edward Snowden

I hope this is becoming clear.

You don't really seem to be making the connection here. You admit that there is going to be a future terrorist attack, but you think the United States is conducting intelligence operations in other nations just to be jerks? Can you think of any other reason? Maybe to try and prevent that future terrorist attack? Do you see how that works?

At Least 4,000 Suspected of Terrorism-Related Activity in Britain, MI5 Director Says
'Mumbai-style' terror attack on UK, France and Germany foiled
Raids foil plot to bring 7/7 terror to Germany
NSA director: Surveillance foiled 50 terror plots

National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander told a House committee Tuesday that more than 50 terror threats throughout the world have been disrupted with the assistance of two secret surveillance programs that were recently disclosed by former defense contractor Edward Snowden.

Do you realize that the UK, France, Germany, Russian, other European nations, China, and probably most other nations in the world conduct intelligence operations (spying) in and on other countries? Are you bitter about them too? Or just the US? If so, why?

You don't really seem to be making the connection here. You admit that there is going to be a future terrorist attack, but you think the United States is conducting intelligence operations in other nations just to be jerks? Can you think of any other reason? Maybe to try and prevent that future terrorist attack? Do you see how that works?

At Least 4,000 Suspected of Terrorism-Related Activity in Britain, MI5 Director Says
'Mumbai-style' terror attack on UK, France and Germany foiled
Raids foil plot to bring 7/7 terror to Germany
NSA director: Surveillance foiled 50 terror plots

National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander told a House committee Tuesday that more than 50 terror threats throughout the world have been disrupted with the assistance of two secret surveillance programs that were recently disclosed by former defense contractor Edward Snowden.

Do you realize that the UK, France, Germany, Russian, other European nations, China, and probably most other nations in the world conduct intelligence operations (spying) in and on other countries? Are you bitter about them too? Or just the US? If so, why?

More than likely there is no need to move to "indulge" in cannibalism.

Victim of cannibal agreed to be eaten

I don't think that the Temperance movement believed that it would stop all alcohol consumption, but that it would significantly decrease it. And they were right. Not only that, once prohibition was lifted, per-capita alcohol consumption took about 40 years to reach its previous level. The decrease in alcohol consumption had a number of impacts on other public health issues.

Did Prohibition Really Work? Alcohol Prohibition as a Public Health Innovation

And Spain's Foreign Minister has said that Spain was told that Edward Snowden was aboard the Bolivian presidential jet, and that that was why the plane was diverted.

Slightly dated now that el Presedente Chávez has passed on, but I doubt much has changed since. I'm sure Snowden will be happy if he makes it there, although he should probably bring toilet paper with him.

Venezuela toilet paper shortage sends ordinary lives around the bend - 23 May 2013

Scarcity of toilet rolls seen as part of 'general malaise' in which Venezuelans have to use guile during shortage in many staples

Venezuela crackdown deemed worst in years

Chavez Wasn't Just a Zany Buffoon, He Was an Oppressive Autocrat - Mar 5 2013

Like an old-style dictator, he treated the state as his personal plaything but, unlike one, his power rested not on violence but on genuine popular affection. Venezuela's history since 1999 has been the story of that contradiction playing itself out across the lives of 29 million people.

Chávez's insistence on absolute submission from his supporters paved the way for the rise of an over-the-top cult of personality. As questioning any presidential directive was a sure career-ender for his followers, the upper reaches of his government came to be dominated by yes-men. Further down the food chain, too, extravagant displays of personal loyalty were required from every person in every nook and cranny of Venezuela's massive and fast-growing state apparatus, with state-owned factory workers required to attend rallies and clerical personnel fully expected to donate part of their salaries to the ruling party.

Instead of a police state, Chávez built a propaganda state, one that churned out slogan after slogan stressing the intense, personal, near-mystical bond between him and his followers. . .

Finding no resistance, Chávez gave free rein to his creative streak. He changed the country's official name, shifted its time zone by half-an-hour on a whim and added an extra star to the flag. At one point, he ordered the National Coat of Arms changed on his then 9-year-old daughter's suggestion. When an opposition satirist responded by publishing an Open Letter to the First Daughter -- reasoning that if she was now making public policy, people had a right to address her -- Chávez had the paper that printed the letter fined for violating a child's privacy.

Venezuela - 2013 Index of Economic Freedom

In 1999, Hugo Chávez won the presidency, vanquished the traditional party system, and launched his Bolivarian Revolution aimed at “Socialism for the 21st Century.” Chávez styles himself the leader of Latin America’s anti–free market forces and has made alliances with China, Cuba, Russia, and rogue states like Iran. He has persecuted his political adversaries and critics, restricted media freedom, undermined the rule of law and property rights, militarized the government, and tried to destabilize neighboring Colombia. The national assembly, which he controls, passed a 2009 constitutional amendment allowing him to seek yet another presidential term, and he won re-election in October 2012. Venezuela has Latin America’s highest inflation rate (currently nearly 30 percent); chronic electricity, food, and housing shortages; and skyrocketing crime rates.

The judiciary is dysfunctional and completely controlled by the executive. Politically inconvenient contracts are abrogated, and the legal system discriminates against or in favor of investors from certain foreign countries. The government expropriates land and other private holdings across the economy arbitrarily and without compensation. Corruption, exacerbated by cronyism and

Since CO2 levels have recently pass the 400 ppm level for the first time in "recorded history" (ignoring for the moment that nobody recorded this until last 50 years or so),:

You forget the well-known practice of extracting the air from bubbles in ice cores, for direct measures.

to confuse the C02 argument even further.

Or perhaps simply to overlook the CO2 (and by the way, it is C oh 2, not C zero 2) issue completely, in their quest to blame some specific activity.

Since CO2 levels have recently pass the 400 ppm level for the first time in "recorded history" (ignoring for the moment that nobody recorded this until last 50 years or so), the source of the clouds could be a natural reaction to the increased CO2, and the claimed increase in world temperatures.

Since the article says:

'A team of researchers looking for an expected decrease in the number of clouds in this layer, as solar activity and heating have ramped up,

Yet in years past they were predicting increases cloud cover at all altitudes as one of the outcomes of increased temperatures. So why were they expecting a decrease?

It seems far more likely to me that they have their model wrong than it is likely that the puny number of launches of late have dumped that many tons of water in the mesosphere.

According to this article, Britain and Sweden have vetoed EU plans to launch two working groups to look into the 'espionage debacle'.

It's a nice act, but isn't it a little on the hypocritical side considering France has just been exposed as having an equally egregious citizen-spying program in place? I'm glad the EU-legislation is doing something, but it sounds like they need to now pass a resolution condemning the program going on inside their own borders. Everyone should be outraged at PRISM, but everyone should also be outraged that France was condemning the United States for running a program they themselves were secretly running as well.

They are surely not concerned about what he has revealed, but more about what he might yet reveal (or confirm) in the future...

How is it anything other than pure whistleblowing to disclose secret documents proving that top government officials have been systematically deceiving the public about vital matters and/or skirting if not violating legal and Constitutional limits?

This narrative is being repeated by US military propaganda machine, which unfortunately also includes most of the worlds mass media corporations (I just watched a EU news presenter refer to Snowden as a spy in the same breath as feigning outrage over EU diplomat spying by the NSA).

It is unfortunate that shill accounts like cold fjord (826450) are being given increasing airtime on slashdot, with a long list of incorrect, misleading, and downright deceitful stories being promoted to the front page in this accounts name (with some infrequent light hearted ones sprinkled I for good cover/measure), all with the same or similar propaganda message. Not to mention the untold number of minion accounts used to harvest and mod up the posts.

My only question is, are the slashdot editors complicit? We have already seen multi million dollar propaganda software is up and running to manage accounts like Cold fjord (826450), what is the slashdot moderation system doing to counter such technological advances?

You mean money launderers like this, government agencies who provided drug dealers with weapons, and a US government that supported "terrorist" networks such as the contras?

Somehow I don't think that Visa and MasterCard are going to be stopping the big guys.

Yes, I believe the Bolivian president just made the whole thing up.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/03/edward-snowden-bolivia-plane-vienna

Officials at Portugal's foreign ministry and National Civil Aviation Authority could not be reached for comment. French government officials reached overnight said they could not confirm whether Morales' plane was denied permission to fly over France.

The Austrian president, Heinz Fischer, visited Morales at the airport in the early hours of Wednesday and later said that the plane had been cleared to leave. "The flight route is normal, as far as I am informed. Spain's airspace is also open for him. [Morales] will resume his trip shortly," he said.

When I read the news stories on the subject France had not yet denied the accusation. They are certainly denying it now. Although the wording of the denial seems a bit suspicious. It makes it ambiguous as to whether they did in fact deny the flight flyover permission initially and then allow it later.

Portugal seems to claim that they denied landing permission but that they did not deny permission to fly through their airspace.

Here's an interesting link:
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_23590259/snowden-france-denies-blocking-bolivian-plane

Portugal said it had granted permission for the plane to fly through its air space but declined Bolivia's request for a refueling stop in Lisbon due to unspecified technical reasons.

It seems unlikely that President Morales just decided out of the blue to humiliate himself and his country and spend an extra 14 hours in Vienna in order to, what? Just to make Latin Americans angry? If that is all they wanted they could have invented a much better story that did not also delay and humilate the president.

I've now also read some reports of responses from Washington. They are unwilling to explicitly deny that they contacted Portugal, France, Spain, or Italy about the Morales flight. That seems odd. That would be an easy thing to deny.

So, to me, the events are still unclear. A misunderstanding brought about by Portugal's refusal to allow a refueling and heightened by miscommunications with France is possible, but until/unless further evidence is revealed I find Bolivia's story more convincing than the alternative. It would definitely be in France's interest to deny the accusations. Portugal's answer sounds more like the truth. That they didn't deny a flyover. Just a refuelling stop.

Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen, was executed by the U.S. government in 2010 without being tried in a U.S. court. You don't have to be convicted of anything to be executed by the USG. I believe Anwar was primarily a propagandist for al-Qaida, al-Qaida is primarily a U.S. defined organization. Because al-Qaida is a U.S. defined organization it gives the U.S. a lot of power in deciding who is considered a member. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/22/white-house-drone-strikes-us-citizens

There is more than one way to pay for some things. NHS does well in many respects, and overall Britons seem to be reasonably happy with it, but there are problems there, as there are in Canada, and other government run programs.

Don't leave patients in ambulances to hit A&E targets, hospitals told
NHS starves 1,165 to death
NHS waiting times getting longer due to cuts, health chiefs warn
Surgeons raise alarm over waiting
NHS waiting times 'rise by 6 per cent for routine operations'
NHS Accident And Emergency Waiting Times Reach Nine-Year High
The frightening truth: NHS managers are incentivised to ignore problems

As usual, US officials and their acolytes who invoke "the law" to demand severe punishment for powerless individuals (Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning) instantly exploit the same concept to protect US political officials, their owners and their allies from the worst crimes: torture, warrantless eavesdropping, rendition, systemic financial fraud, deceiving Congress and the US public about their surveillance behavior. If you're spending your time calling for Ed Snowden's head but not James Clapper's, or if you're obsessed with Snowden's fabricated personality attributes (narcissist!) but apathetic about rampant, out-of-control NSA surveillance, it's probably worth spending a few moments thinking about what this priority scheme reveals.

What if the patent is entirely worthwhile and then sold to a troll?...All patents = bad is not driving the conversation forward.

Wow. Did you even read? My argument was, in bold mind you, "...right now it is too easy to file for and obtain frivolous, undeserving, non-novel or obvious patents...Cut down on the number of patents issued and you cut down on the abuse that follows." Show me where it says all patents are bad.

And as for those tech companies "abusing their patents" do you have a cite for abuse versus assert?

Sure. You only had to ask.

Motorola is guilty of patent abuse.

So is Apple.

So is Google.

Even Microsoft and Nokia are joining the bandwagon.

As an aside, I find it hilarious that someone posting as an AC is accusing others of being a troll. Man up and post under your own account.