Slashdot Mirror

I was also skeptical when I first saw the news articles (like this one) that said that RSA had published a statement where they supposedly refuted the existence of that NSA deal. The existence of the deal was originally broken by Reuters in this article, where they cite "two sources familiar with the contract" as their sources. But then, after more in-depth analysis of the RSA blog post where they supposedly "denied" the existence of the deal, it was revealed that actually RSA neither denied nor acknowledged that such deal existed in their statement. They are just using general wording to give an impression, that they would certainly never do such thing. But they are not directly denying the existence of the deal.

Now, thinking logically, it's pretty damn clear that they would have denied that such a deal was ever made, if they were in the position of making such a claim. But given they don't directly deny the claims presented by Reuters, it would seem a much more logical explanation that the deal indeed was made, and RSA just went into damage control mode after the publication of the Reuters article. Lying to the public would have meant more damage if Reuters would have later been able to present the actual paper of the deal, so I suppose we can take their lack of directly denying this deal's existence as an admission of sorts. This is also the reason why speakers are canceling their appearance in the conference ("Your company has issued a statement on the topic, but you have not denied this particular claim.")

So, I think we have grounds to believe that there is actually quite much truth to the original story by Reuters. As they say, the deal was "handled by business leaders rather than pure technologists". I am pretty sure that this is a yet-another example of a major manager-level f*ck up. Tech companies very often have all the expertise on the technical personnel level, while managers are a "necessary evil" who often have much fewer insight into the technical field where the company actually operates. Of course, anyone with even the slightest idea of how the IT security field functions, would never ever endanger their company's credibility (at least for such little reward as $10 million), because deals like this tend resurface in the public sphere sooner or later. All we can assume that someone in the management made a very major f*ck-up and made this secret deal with NSA without much consulting from the technical folks. But I am pretty sure that now that this deal has surfaced in the public sphere, it will end up costing RSA a great deal more in lost sales than what the "business leaders" anticipated they could gain in short term from making the deal with NSA.

Short answer: Pretty much yes.

Long answer: While legally it's "no" the truth is that minors have significantly less rights than adults. It's even worse than that since in America you're no longer considered a minor when you turn 18 or 19 depending on the state, but you can't drink or own a pistol until you're 21.

There are several cases where US schools have punished students for doing things which aren't illegal while off school grounds. Student's have essentially no rights while they are on school grounds. They can be searched without any justification. They're punished if they have something that even like a weapon. Even worse, school is compulsory, so it's not like any of this is opt out.

I thought they already admitted the caps have nothing to do with congestion?

I wonder how much it would cost a quasi-turn based action RPG dev like me to get no data caps for trickling in world-battle-map updates so you don't have to wait to get your game on. I mean, in the middle of the night streaming in a bunch of data isn't costing them congestion issues. The hardware has to be there whether anyone's using it or not. I bet it'll be too pricey for me. Guess folks will just have to play it on their wired connections. So much for "progress".

If we had a few more competitors this wouldn't happen.

'Anti-Propaganda' Ban Repealed, Freeing State Dept. To Direct Its Broadcasting Arm At American Citizens

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130715/11210223804/anti-propaganda-ban-repealed-freeing-state-dept-to-direct-its-broadcasting-arm-american-citizens.shtml

      For decades, a so-called anti-propaganda law prevented the U.S. government's mammoth broadcasting arm from delivering programming to American audiences. But on July 2, that came silently to an end with the implementation of a new reform passed in January. The result: an unleashing of thousands of hours per week of government-funded radio and TV programs for domestic U.S. consumption in a reform initially criticized as a green light for U.S. domestic propaganda efforts.

but managed to expose, endanger AND KILL sympathizers and spies working with the US and the UK on the other side.

Sorry cold fjord, but this is false. From here:

The military's position took another hit Wednesday, as the former brigadier general who headed the Information Review Task Force investigating the leaks said that he had never heard that a source named in the Afghan war logs was killed.

Though the Taliban had claimed that its review of the war logs led them to an Afghan whom the U.S. military named as a source, the supposed informant the Taliban claimed to have executed was not in fact named in the leaked materials.

Now-retired Brig. Gen. Robert Carr had wanted to testify about the Taliban's claim Wednesday, but Col. Denise Lind, the military judge presiding over Manning's court-martial, barred such testimony as inadmissible hearsay.

The revelation supports an assessment by former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates that the rhetoric about the supposed harm caused by the leaks was "fairly significantly overwrought."

I'm not trying to be an asshole here, but if you have to ask "did they break the law?" then you are absolutely right that you haven't been paying attention.

The courts and congress, prior to Snowden's leaks, did allow it. You are correct there. But what they allowed was not the same as what the NSA was actually up to. They flat-out lied to get authorization for some things, then went off and did others so when/if they got caught, they could say, "But we were told we could do that!" It is a well-documented fact at this point that the NSA lied to both the courts and congress. That, in itself, is not legal.

Then, we have the fact that they are definitely violating the 4th amendment. They are not "just" collecting "metadata." They have the content of every phone call or email you make, your browsing history, etc. and they intend hold it for at least 15 years. As American citizens have the right to not be unreasonably searched without warrant, they have violated the constitution in billions of instances over the last decade.

First amendment rights have also been under attack. Some members of the media have stated that they've been under pressure (not clear if it's from their employers or otherwise) to not run any anti-NSA stories. Some businesses, such as Lavabit and Silent Circle, have had to shutdown because of ridiculous legal pressure to completely legal businesses simply because they did not want to provide all of their information in bulk and instead said they would comply with the law and turn over any information related to suspects. In the case of Lavabit, the FBI demanded they turn over their SSL public & private keys; this is not needed to unencrypt stored information on users, but instead to create a MITM attack on their network. I got a bit off-topic here, but the point is simply that people are forced to behave differently, including limiting their speech, out of fear of government backlash. It is a clear violation of the first amendment.

Then, we have the fact that the NSA is participating in hacking and distributing malware. You know what that's called? Computer fraud. And it's very illegal. If you have some time to waste, go ahead and watch this presentation from 30C3.

But, most importantly, remember that government propaganda is legal now so keep an eye out for their bullshit.

Canada has problems just like this. In fact it's so bad a lot of e-commerce companies won't do business there.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110321/00490713569/zappos-gives-up-canada-due-to-customs-problems.shtml

I agree Philip. I'm a scripting expert (Bash, Perl, Awk, Sed, PHP, Python, VBA, etc.), and I'm just wondering whether or not this is f*ckin' satire.

Anyways, I've discovered Techdirt (Wiki article), which is also hosted on Slash. If you feel as abandoned as I do by this onslaught of facile nonsense and steady decline of comment section intelligence (and wow, that new ./ beta is ugly), my suggestion is to move there. It's small-scale, but it exists and it doesn't have any pretentions (yet).

Well here's at least one reason this is happening. Essentially when confronted with a question of the form "should we permit X to do Y upon Z in order to keep us safe ?" the individual answering that question effectively considers whether or not they'll ever be Z. No federal judge is ever going to be stopped at an airport . No federal judge is ever going to have his laptop searched at the border. In fact none of the rulings federal judges make will ever apply to them personally or anyone with the power to pick up a phone and call that judge to complain that X is about to do Y to them.

Essentially the way judges hear the proposition is: "would you like us to increase security for you, sir?" They know if for some ungodly oversight they were ever actually asked to turn over their laptop to a customs agent, one phone call and it all goes away before the agent can boot their Windows 8 (this is who's buying that dog btw ) installation and that agent would soon be manning the un-airconditioned , 3x5 border booth in 105 degree heat watching over some dirt road in Tumbleweed Town, Texas.

So get real. You're asking people To Whom Nothing Adverse Is Permitted To Happen if they would like ditch the Constitution within 100 miles of any border so that he and his can feel in some nighty-night, all-tucked-in way "safer".

I am sure the nation's judicial benches are deep with such people. I am sure that people capable of considering the effects of their decisions on a nation and on its people are few and far between. Last week's judge was citing as supporting evidence the 9-11 commission report even though the 9-11 commission report said, substantively, exactly the opposite of what he claimed in his judgement it said.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131230/11062925713/judge-who-ruled-favor-nsa-relied-911-report-that-doesnt-even-mention-what-he-claims-it-does.shtml

This is what is populating our benches. How bad is it? We're about to find out. .

Hahaha. Trust me, if you think Chicago is bad you should see New York and LA.

Hollywood and New York are the original crony capitalism groups, by definition. Look at the NY judge that made up his own rules just to rule in the NSA's favor yesterday! Those rules and facts that he used don't even exist! If that's not a clear "I am sucking at the government teat" then I don't know what is.

Chicago's corruption is the police force, but not the legal system itself. New York's is 100% regulatory capture.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131230/11062925713/judge-who-ruled-favor-nsa-relied-911-report-that-doesnt-even-mention-what-he-claims-it-does.shtml

There is no misunderstanding. It is an just yet another attempt to misinform the public in hopes to gather support to continue their illegal ways. Do not forget, government sponsored propaganda is legal now and they are doing everything they can to manipulate what you see and hear.

Just another blatant lie on top of the pile.

Unfortunately, Snowden would likely be prosecuted under the ridiculously over-broad espionage act, which has no exceptions for public interest. Ref: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131223/17054725677/if-snowden-returned-to-us-trial-all-whistleblower-evidence-would-likely-be-inadmissible.shtml

It is well known that our government ("our" being American) has been running a misinformation campaign for some time; even before the NSA leaks, and even before repealing the anti-propaganda law. Some of their agents have even been exposed posting here on Slashdot.

You can call them whatever you want, but pretending they don't exist is just willful ignorance.

Yes.

Oh, and my reader's wifi, is never on.

I don't mean to sound like I have a tinfoil hat on, but all you're sure of is that you have instructed the software to turn the wifi off. That doesn't mean the software doesn't lie to you and keeps trying to connect without telling you.

Think I'm paranoid? Well, maybe I am, maybe I'm not.

Do they categorically deny taking a 10 million dollar payment from the NSA?

No. On that all they said was they "don't divulge details".

Do they categorically deny they incorporated Dual EC DRBG random number generator into its BSAFE encryption libraries?

No. They can't deny that. Because its clearly something they did in fact do.

Do they categorically deny they took 10 million dollars from the NSA to incorporate Dual EC DRBG into BSAFE?

Well... again.. no, not really. They categorically deny they ever intended to weaken products or incorporate known flaws.

Basically all they are categorically deny is that they KNEW what they were doing. Here's a decent article on it...

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131222/23532125671/rsas-denial-concerning-10-million-nsa-to-promote-broken-crypto-not-really-denial-all.shtml

Me, I havent' seen the documents alleging the connection bewtween 10M and setting Dual EC DRBG as default in BSAFE... and I would dearly like to see how much of a smoking gun it really is.

Its great thanks to Snowden and many others that the world can now see past terms like "metadata" and understand that they are under constant domestic watch.
In the past you had to join a political party, be near a protest, have your car licence plate seen near a protest, be found to be writing letters on political topics...have the wrong friends, family, reading the wrong material...
Now your entire digital life awaits US domestic storage, indexing, sorting and cross referencing. The next step will be domestic US legal use beyond the Parallel construction methods i.e. the vision of a generational (life long) US court friendly digital "lockbox".
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130618/00483923515/nsas-lockbox-has-no-lock.shtml

Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages â Secret files show scale of Silicon Valley co-operation on Prism â Outlook.com encryption unlocked even before official launch â Skype worked to enable Prism collection of video calls â Company says it is legally compelled to comply http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data

"Collection directly from the servers of these U.S. Service Providers: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple" http://gizmodo.com/google-to-government-let-us-publish-national-security-512647113

And look at the chronology of this:
23 September 2013: BBC News - RSA warns over NSA link to encryption algorithm http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24173977
21 December 2013: NSA Gave RSA $10 Million To Promote Crypto It Had Purposely Weakened https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131220/14143625655/nsa-gave-rsa-10-million-to-promote-crypto-it-had-purposely-weakened.shtml How apt: Techdirt said the story was from the "from the say-bye-bye-to-credibility,-rsa dept"

Fuck you RSA. Fuck you NSA.

Re So what would happen?

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130927/14413024680/one-telco-exec-who-resisted-nsa-has-been-released-4-years-jail.shtml

So what, are you arguing he wasn't guilty of insider trading, because I was under the impression it was pretty clear he was last time I read up on it.

You're right; my biases got the better of me. Disney was making another Oz movie, and, in a refreshing change of pace, Warner was being a jerk.

You still have to be very careful with things that are in the public domain. Reprints of images from the movie posters (now in the public domain) were found to be infringing, and Warner thinks it's entitled to a trademark on anything involving the word "Oz."

You're right; my biases got the better of me. Disney was making another Oz movie, and, in a refreshing change of pace, Warner was being a jerk.

You still have to be very careful with things that are in the public domain. Reprints of images from the movie posters (now in the public domain) were found to be infringing, and Warner thinks it's entitled to a trademark on anything involving the word "Oz."

Re So what would happen?
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130927/14413024680/one-telco-exec-who-resisted-nsa-has-been-released-4-years-jail.shtml

While that's true in theory, you're forgetting that copyright law exists only to benefit Disney. The Wizard of Oz is also in the public domain, but Oz the Great and Powerful needed Disney lawyers on set to approve what shade of green they painted the witch.

If you had the audacity to attempt filming a Snow White movie without the Mouse's explicit, written consent, their legal team would relish driving you to bankruptcy--even though you'd be perfectly within your rights.

All of that may be true, but the media companies (in the U.S. at least) lose a LOT of the high ground when they use creative accounting to be sure they make maximum profits (see http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100708/02510310122.shtml). Also, they purchase helpful copyright extensions from our politicians so that nothing can ever fall into the public domain (see http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20020305_sprigman.html).

So, yes, a studio does deserve to profit from its creative work, and the people who participate should also get paid. But the studios should beware of wallowing in hypocrisy as they shout about having things "stolen" from them.

I don't always agree with Techdirt, I think they exaggerate, omit and sometimes distort for effect. That being said, they do good stuff also. They have a pretty good take down of the whole 60 Minutes puff piece, including the interviewer (hint- when you've never seen that interviewer before, you might be interested to know more about him) and also claims about the whole BIOS attack thing.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131216/12580425582/cbs-airs-nsa-propaganda-informercial-masquerading-as-hard-hitting-60-minutes-journalism-reporter-with-massive-conflict-interest.shtml

I am sure there's more out there that's even more damning. This is the problem with the people running this organization. They've somehow enabled themselves to lie lie lie and think they're doing everyone a favor so it's OK.

That's just not how a democracy is run. If you've given up on democracy, like say Peter Thiel apparently has

http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/22/geeks-for-monarchy/

then that's cool. But you don't need to be running the organs of that democracy in that case. Have a nice retirement. It's on us.

>
> DRM only works when it's not intrusive, prohibitive, or makes you feel like a criminal.
>

Even then it still scares away customers. I'm always reluctant to buy music, movies or even apps as I'm always worried that
something will change and render all my "possessions" null. Buying from a big name that is less likely to go out of business
helps but even amazon has voided previously purchased stuff. The most ironic being the book 1984:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090717/1559425587.shtml

Why not just call this a Grinch move and be done with it?

What and risk a lawsuit from the Dr Seuss state.

If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him..

Cardinal Richelieu

But when you get right down to it, a search is required to find a particular paper letter in a mass of other paper letters while it's in the post office system.

That analogy is off on a tangent, we are not talking about intercepting a particular letter or email. The topic is recording meta data, in other words recording the addresses on the front of an envelope. My understanding is that letters already go through optical sorting, the envelope imaged and recognition is applied to the address. It would take little effort to record that address.

... If yahoo.com's hard drives were public, David Kernell would not have committed any infraction at all for reading Sarah Palin's email. ...

That is an even worse analogy, even farther off on a tangent. No one is talking about reading the contents of mail or email. That has been made clear repeatedly in this thread. All that is being discussed is the recording of the meta data, to and from addresses.

Telephone call routing information is not public. Letter routing information is not public. Packet routing information is not public. Email routing information is not public. Package routing information is not public. Metadata is not public.

"The Mail Isolation program is really just a super-beefed-up version of the USPS "mail covers" program that has been around for about a century, explains the Times. Mail covers are warrantless requests for photos of the outside of specific recipients’ mail. Basically, a law enforcement agency fills out the request, and for 30 days (extendable to 120 days), it receives scans of all mail related to the subject of the request. Only the outside of the mail is provided, as opening mail would require a warrant. Authorities maintain that no warrant is needed for information on the outside of a piece of mail, as there can be no reasonable expectation of privacy. The USPS can deny a mail covers request, but rarely does."
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130703/12551523709/old-school-metadata-still-being-harvested-usps-turned-over-to-law-enforcementsecurity-agencies-request.shtml

Going into an ISP and recording all the to/from fields or going into the phone company and recording all the phone numbers connected in a call would seem analogous.

"How can I spy without spying on a particular subset of people I'm not supposed to spy on?"

But that's the very rub... To even know, who to spy on, he has to spy on all. It used to be much harder to wage war and even to commit one-time atrocities — it used to require a state's backing. The pool of people to, possibly, have such a backing was relatively narrow.

Not any more. Conventional explosives can be made cheaply and easily — the information on making them is easily transfered electronically (the clowns searching our data at the border-crossings are just justifying their own jobs). Deadly poisons can be created at home too — easier than growing one's own marijuana or cooking meth. Compared to such dangers, an occasional shooter — even with an "assault" rifle — that the usually libertine-minded people wish to see outlawed, are merely a nuisance.

More importantly, a conspiracy requires communication, but it is only in the past two decades that strong encryption is available to the masses — before that it was possible to listen and read, what the suspects are saying and writing. Now, if properly done, it requires cooperation not just from the service-providers, but the suspects themselves. This was always anticipated by the government — they treated encryption as a weapon and not for nothing. When the genie was out of the lamp, Clinton's Administration — twenty years ago — tried to compel the use of NSA-approved, explicitly "backdoored" technology, but failed.

So, given the possibility, that

1. just about anyone may be up to no good — with means to do it;
2. thanks to encryption, it is often technically impossible to obtain actual data — the contents of a letter or a phone call — when reasonable suspicion justifies a formal warrant;

the only two choices remain: rely on the (legally-collected) meta-data — when was a message sent, from where, how long was it, what were the headers — collected about everyone, or simply accept the increased risks to life and health of all residents of the country.

The second option is up to the said residents themselves (that's you and me) — whose representatives in Congress can tell the Admiral just that, if they want to. But, as long as he has that job, he sees no other way to do it, but to collect the metadata. Do you?

None of the angry comments in this thread so far are offering a viable alternative — maybe, we really ought to stop trying to prevent a terrorist act and try to build up instead the perception, that punishment will be inevitable afterwards, for example. But NSA are currently charged with prevention...

This techdirt article from a couple of years ago suggests a precedent was set then that viewing a streaming file is considered to be making a copy of it, and therefore the viewers are also liable for copyright infringement. Stupid, but this is sometimes what happens when old laws are applied to scenarios they weren't intended for and the court doesn't have enough room to manoeuvre out of it. I don't read German well enough to look at the decision and see whether it suggests that the court tried to find a way around a badly phrased law, or if they were just being vindictive, but it seems likely enough that they tried and failed.

You can already get tacos from an octorotor, so what makes you think this model won't be scalable to delivering other goods in a decade and a half?

Sigh. You're attempting to disprove one hoax with another? Why You Can't Have A Tacocopter Drone Deliver You A Taco For Lunch Today.

http://thepiratebay.ac/torrent/8495137/Rise_of_the_New_Atheists_(_Unbelievers_Movie_2013)

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100920/03361311077/richard-dawkins-points-fan-to-the-pirate-bay-to-see-his-latest-documentary.shtml

There isn't that much demand. Assuming everybody in the US buys 20 albums a year, that's a total of 6 billion albums sold. If you need to sell 1,000,000 albums to be a star, that leaves room for about 6000 musicians. In reality, the number of albums sold will be much less than 20 per person, actual numbers I've found show that it maxed out around 5 albums per person, so there's at most room for 1500 musicians all selling 1 million albums. And in reality, you're going to get some artists selling 20 million albums, and which takes up the sales for about 20 other artists.

I make time lapse videos as a hobby, and I spend hours searching for CC licensed music. After finding such music, I go through the license type to make sure I am not using the music in a way it was not intended to.
Yet, anybody can file a claim.
Remember that fiasco about the video that had no music, just some background of birds chirping?
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120227/00152917884/

It was so ridiculous that everybody from slashdot to tech portals picked it up, and the guy won. However, what about countless others who are impacted every day.

Here see, they take down classical public domain music
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110421/10280813987/uk-music-publishers-issue-dmca-takedown-public-domain-sheet-music.shtml

Search google and stories are literally unlimited. Its a sad state of affairs, with everything heavily stacked in favour of those who can afford an expensive lawyer.

I make time lapse videos as a hobby, and I spend hours searching for CC licensed music. After finding such music, I go through the license type to make sure I am not using the music in a way it was not intended to.
Yet, anybody can file a claim.
Remember that fiasco about the video that had no music, just some background of birds chirping?
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120227/00152917884/

It was so ridiculous that everybody from slashdot to tech portals picked it up, and the guy won. However, what about countless others who are impacted every day.

Here see, they take down classical public domain music
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110421/10280813987/uk-music-publishers-issue-dmca-takedown-public-domain-sheet-music.shtml

Search google and stories are literally unlimited. Its a sad state of affairs, with everything heavily stacked in favour of those who can afford an expensive lawyer.

Remember when we questioned whether or not a monkey could own a copyright? Well, if this happens...

Memories. Still pretty cool, even if the public hasn't clamored for it. :-)

Shit has hit the fan.

"'Anti-Propaganda' Ban Repealed... Direct Broadcasting at American Citizens"

Wow, that's really interesting, how the heck did I not hear about this?? I mean seriously, a decades old ban on government propaganda is lifted, and nobody (meaning most big US media outlets) bothers to frickin' mention it??? No, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, it's not really surprising anymore when something like this gets overlooked in the media, but damn... How far we have fallen. And still no end in sight. I no longer recognize my country, truly I don't. Thank you for posting that link.

SHOW ME THE PROOF

Ok...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encryption-codes-security
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130909/11430124454/john-gilmore-how-nsa-sabotaged-key-security-standard.shtml
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us/nsa-foils-much-internet-encryption.html?hp&_r=0

I think you're just failing to understand the scope of what they've done. The NSA planted people in standards bodies to deliberately weaken those standards. Not only do we have eye whiteness's from those standards committees that have complained about this for years, but we've got leaked documents from the NSA bragging about doing it. One of their primary goals seems to have been to dissuade broadening the use of encryption in general. By making the standards complicated, hard to understand, a lot of people just gave up and didn't implement them. In other cases they tried to block standards from using encryption by default. All of this leads to a less secure network. Without a doubt those actions of made crime and identity theft much easier. Can we find some guy and say that his identity was stolen because of the NSA? No... but what we can say is that without the NSA's interference, there would be more, and better encryption... and more and better encryption would have definitely reduced the numbers of identity thefts in the world.

A limited hangout, or partial hangout, is a public relations or propaganda technique that involves the release of previously hidden information in order to prevent a greater exposure of more important details.

[sarcasm] By lucky coincidence [/sarcasm] the NSA are now allowed to go direct to the public with their message (see "'Anti-Propaganda' Ban Repealed... Direct Broadcasting at American Citizens"), not that private mass media was not on their side to begin with anyway.

When journalists get around later to releasing Snowdens whistleblower material as a "full hangout" truth, most mass media will then shout LALALA OLD NEWS nothing to see here as loud as they can to drown it out. You might even see it being marked as a dupe here on /.

A US court document that made it to the press might make interesting reading:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131019/02322924936/accidentally-revealed-document-shows-tsa-doesnt-think-terrorists-are-plotting-to-attack-airplanes.shtml
Think of an internal and external papers please checkpoint for any other "legal" issues you have with your nation.

Oh I do not know - looks like a routine baby step these days, see The US Using Prism To Engage In Commercial Espionage Against Germany And Others

Don't get nostalgic about the old manual days where an employee might have a chance to glance at your postcard. These days the post-office (and by extension every branch of government that wants to) memorizes each and every post card you receive. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130703/12551523709/old-school-metadata-still-being-harvested-usps-turned-over-to-law-enforcementsecurity-agencies-request.shtml

Copyright should end after 10yrs max. Whatever paltry profits apple may stand to gain from hording things like this to themselves pale in comparison to the lost history if such things are destroyed before they're ever released to the public.

Whether copyrights should or should not last no more than 10 years is an interesting question but chances are they will always be much longer than that especially as life spans continue to increase. Meanwhile for something more unfailing than Moore's law check out the "how old is Mickey" copyright curve.

The problem is those evil pedophiles, praying on our children, preferably online.

If the children don't know about it, they won't be violated!

I'll believe they're people when Texas executes one.

I guess Texas did

There are procedures to report those crimes. I don't know of Snowden following them.

He did. The result was partly what convinced him to go another way.

The other part that convinced him? What happened to the others that tried before him.

It's so amazing to me that geeks can act so knowledgeable about the Constitution and be so ignorant of how it actually works in the real world.

If he got stymied by the Executive he was supposed to Check and Balance said Executive by snitching to Congress. Wyden would have loved this data dump. More importantly Wyden would have been able to decide which bits of it could be released without hurting legitimate intelligence operations, whereas all Greenwald can be counted on to do is make sure he gets paid for releasing the info.

Don't need to go so far, James Clapper lied to the congress, was found out, and as "punishment" is be his own auditor.

By now if the government of US says that 2+2=4, you should bet that they are doing math in base 3.