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So most of those names were meant to be there, it is right for
them to be published, it is right to publish the names of
politicians, generals bureaucrats, etc, who are involved in this
sort of activity, it is right even to publish the names of corrupt radio
stations in Kabul that were taking SYOPS programme content. It is
also right to publish the names of those people who have been
killed and murdered and who need to be investigated and it is
right to publish the names of all incidental characters who
themselves are not at serious and probable risk of physical harm.
Those incidental characters are someone who owns a company for
example is just involved in shipping operations.... So then there is the
question were there any sort of villagers or so on who gave
information that might lead to reprisals, were there some of those?
Um there were some villagers who - who had given information,
um so that is a regrettable oversight, but it is not our, not merely
our oversight it was the oversight of the United States military
who should've never included that material and who falsely
classified it, and who then made it available to everyone and it
then got out."

Bummer for those "villagers" who opposed the Taliban. Or for anyone who operated a radio station that was pro government and anti Taliban.

So he was in favour of publishing names. And he did too, after a Twitter poll of his followers. Up to that point there was no evidence that Leigh publishing the password had caused the unredacted cables to become generally available.

http://www.theguardian.com/med...

The Guardian book revealed the diplomatic files were placed by WikiLeaks on a secure online server in July 2010, which it was agreed would only be online for a matter of hours.

This server held a heavily encrypted file containing the unredacted embassy cables database. Assange had given Leigh the password to unlock this file once he had obtained it, and this password was included in the book - seven months after the temporary file was taken offline. No trace could be found through web links or Google's archives of this file ever being visible through this secure server.

However, at a later stage the same encrypted file and at least one other encrypted with the same password was posted on the peer-to-peer file-sharing network BitTorrent. One of these files was first published on 7 December 2010, just hours before Assange's arrest. In the days running up to his arrest, Assange had spoken of "taking precautions" in the event of anything untoward happening to him.

This file, it was later discovered, was the same file that had been shared with the Guardian via the secure server. It shared the same file name and file size, and could be unlocked using the same password as that given to Leigh.

Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a former member of staff at WikiLeaks who is attempting to set up a rival whistleblowing website, discovered this republished file and shared information on WikiLeaks's security breach with a small group of journalists.

Avoiding the re-use of passwords and avoiding republishing temporary files are both considered basic security procedures among online security experts.

However, the file was not discovered or downloaded by the public. By 10am on Thursday it had been accessed once in the previous 31 days, despite mounting speculation about its existence.

Initial news stories did not give details of the location of files or of passwords. Later, WikiLeaks and some of its supporters published a series of hints about the passwords and files.

At about 11pm on Wednesday an anonymous Twitter user discovered the published password and opened a separate file - not the one shared with the Guardian - that had also been circulating on file-sharing networks for several m

Firstly, Cameron didn't say it was necessary. He merely used that example to illustrate what he was saying.

Cameron's first act as PM was to repeal Labour's ID Cards Act (which was compulsory fingerprinting, numbering and recording on a national database to hook up all govt databases) and destroy the hard disks Guardian-style. Maybe this is where he got the idea.

He also attended the inception meeting of NO2ID, the immensely successful campaign that Labour's Home Minister Secretary at the time, David Blunkett, acknowledged in his final speech.

The Tory Snooper's Charter was a mess. Expert after expert (including industry data-rape experts from Google et al) slagged it off in official proceedings and even an open letter. We're kinda used to Govts being clueless about IT but what was properly disturbing was how the Home Office ignored all this clear and helpful feedback. So certainly, Theresa May should be sacked.

I'm not sure Cameron ever stepped in until now. Under pressure from his party, Clegg eventually said he wasn't going to support any such Bill and so that killed it for this Parliament.

We badly need an Act clawing back some of the surveillance powers of the state. They can do already do any surveillance at the ISP level they want as well as lock up people for not disclosing their public keys. There are no checks on that power whatsover in this country bar possibly The Guardian.

So that's a summary of where we are. The debate I wanted to highlight is how do we assess Cameron's views on this:

Few people know this but Cameron used to write a column for the left-wing Guardian. And he was far more liberal a couple of years before he got into power.

Has he gone from liberal to totalitarian in 3-6 years? If so, why? Is it merely scary-sounding intelligence reports or is it possible that our secret services are blackmailing him?

Or is he merely trying to shift the cost burden of surveillance from the state to the ISP/customer? And if so, why is he talking about a dead Bill which he has almost no chance of reintroducing (since he'll almost certainly be kicked out in 2015)?

One of the -false- accusations against wikileaks was their undiscriminate leaking of classified documents.

False?

http://download.cabledrum.net/...

Interviewer: "So come on, redactions are going on at the same time, now there is
or isn't a row going on about redaction, I haven't the faintest clue
whether there is or isn't...?

Mr Assange: No, there's no row going on about redactions at all....There was a
group of reports where although they were not really intelligence
informants there were sort of hotline tips...something called threat
reports comprised one in five of the Afghan War Logs and so we held
them back for a line by line redaction...But what we didn't do was
redact one in five lines, putting black marker through it, we just
removed them, and so it looked like we hadn't redacted everything but
in fact we had redacted a fifth of all material, and this permitted an
attack, a political attack, to come from The Times of London.... So The
Times did a proxy war on The Guardian through us by attacking us....
So most of those names were meant to be there, it is right for
them to be published, it is right to publish the names of
politicians, generals bureaucrats, etc, who are involved in this
sort of activity, it is right even to publish the names of corrupt radio
stations in Kabul that were taking SYOPS programme content. It is
also right to publish the names of those people who have been
killed and murdered and who need to be investigated and it is
right to publish the names of all incidental characters who
themselves are not at serious and probable risk of physical harm.
Those incidental characters are someone who owns a company for
example is just involved in shipping operations.... So then there is the
question were there any sort of villagers or so on who gave
information that might lead to reprisals, were there some of those?
Um there were some villagers who - who had given information,
um so that is a regrettable oversight, but it is not our, not merely
our oversight it was the oversight of the United States military
who should've never included that material and who falsely
classified it, and who then made it available to everyone and it
then got out."

Assange never wanted to redact but was forced his media partners. Then he published the full unredacted cables on wikileaks' website. Which they denounced

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worl...

In a joint statement, the Guardian, El Pais, New York Times and Der Spiegel said they "deplore the decision of WikiLeaks to publish the unredacted state department cables, which may put sources at risk".

And before you mention the password that appeared in David Leigh's book that was supposed to be for a temporary copy of the archive

http://www.theguardian.com/med...

WikiLeaks claimed its disclosure was prompted after conflicts between Assange and former WikiLeaks associates led to one highlighting an error made months before. When passing the documents to the Guardian, Assange created a temporary web server and placed an encrypted file containing the documents on it. The Guardian was led to believe this was a temporary file and the server would be taken offline after a period of hours.

However, former WikiLeaks staff member Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who parted acrimoniously with WikiLeaks, said instead of following standard security precautions and creating a temporary folder, Assange instead re-used WikiLeaks's "master password". This password was then unwittingly placed in the Guardian's book on the embassy cables, which was pu

Data destruction industry has finally "jumped the shark" with the posting of the Guardian Newspaper's hard drive destruction just a few hours ago. This sales pitch shows the billion dollar industry behind selling insurance to people afraid of digital losses via old hardware. http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

Identity theft and trade secret losses are real, very real risks. But physically destroying hardware is to data protections as toilet paper on the loo lid is to AIDS prevention. The real threats are phishing (getting employees to log in credentials on fake websites), and loss of active PCs (theft of laptops from the back of cars), and the new credit-card swiping devices used at Target stores are the actual risks.

I have heard the argument that physically destroying the disks eliminates the potential for bad apple employees to skirt the wiping of disks, and that with physical destruction you really control human error. I say bullhockey. When I have a staffer wiping disks, I can inventory the disks and randomly sample them to see if the data has been erased, and replace the staffer if necessary. If the drives are thrown in a mechanical shredder, how do I know a PARTICULAR drive was thrown in the shredder? How will I ever catch the bad apple? Try sifting through the scrap fluff for serial numbers to make sure the right one went through the machine.

The big opportunity is "digital haystacks", putting randomized and false data out, especially metadata. If enough bad data written on to drives, it has the added benefit of wasting the time of Russian hackers who have too much of it on their hands.

> That's ~50 attacks short of the total, not counting ones they can't disclose due to classification rules.

Not according to NSA deputy director John C Inglis:

"The NSA has previously claimed that 54 terrorist plots had been disrupted "over the lifetime" of the bulk phone records collection and the separate program collecting the internet habits and communications of people believed to be non-Americans. On Wednesday, Inglis said that at most one plot might have been disrupted by the bulk phone records collection alone. "There is an example that comes close to a 'but for' example," Inglis said."

http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

And, there are no secret undisclosed successes - they never disclosed the details of the "54" attacks either, just the totals, keeping the details classified.

This is what "national security" means: Maintaining the political and economic status quo, even against the will of the people.

Since they dropped law enforcement from their mission statement and donned "national security" the FBI won't have to worry about their actions exposed as they directly support de-facto communist corporate interests, not the people or the capitalism we're told is at play.

Think about it: How capitalistic is it to confiscate a bunch of goods to prevent competition? The sportswear price is inflated because the state ensures a monopoly for the normalization the product. Hello, that's communism. In a free market capitalism the cheaper "counterfeits" would compete with the "official" sports gear on price, and quality, allowing the public access to a cheaper product for less money.

The FBI prioritizes copyright issues over missing persons. You live in a corpro-communist dictatorship where your votes don't count.

It appears that The Telegraph is just making this stuff up. They often do this to increase the anti-EU crowd in the UK.

The biggest fact that this story is false is the fact there are no secret EU bodies at work here.

http://europa.eu/about-eu/inst...

Journalist are also known to make up stories.

http://www.theguardian.com/med...
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/US...
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com...

Here are some EU myths busted.

http://youtu.be/oqVJEZnYiZo

"Developing countries have reacted angrily to revelations that the United States spied on other governments at the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009."

"Documents leaked by Edward Snowden show how the US National Security Agency (NSA) monitored communication between key countries before and during the conference to give their negotiators advance information about other positions at the high-profile meeting where world leaders including Barack Obama, Gordon Brown and Angela Merkel failed to agree to a strong deal on climate change." link

North Korea is technically at war with the US, South Korea, and the UN armed forces. It is involved with counterfeiting on a global scale, illegal arms trade, drug trade, and supports terrorism. That is on top of diverting food aid sent to help its starving peasants to the North Korean military. Three generations of a dissenter's family get sent to prison camps where they are likely to die. They are used in experiments.

If you can't figure out the difference between North Korea and the US then your meter is broken.

U.S. Aircraft Carrier Leaving Disaster Zone After Tsunami

"Honey Encryption" to Bamboozle Attackers with Fake Secrets

Tom Simonite writes at MIT Technology Review that security researcher Ari Juels says that trickery is the missing component from the cryptography protecting sensitive data and proposes a new encryption system with a devious streak. It gives encrypted data an additional layer of protection by serving up fake data in response to every incorrect guess of the password or encryption key. If the attacker does eventually guess correctly, the real data should be lost amongst the crowd of spoof data. The new approach could be valuable given how frequently large encrypted stashes of sensitive data fall into the hands of criminals. Some 150 million usernames and passwords were taken from Adobe servers in October 2013, for example. If an attacker uses software to make 10,000 attempts to decrypt a credit card number, for example, they would get back 10,000 different fake credit card numbers. "Each decryption is going to look plausible," says Juels. "The attacker has no way to distinguish a priori which is correct." Juels previously worked with Ron Rivest, the "R" in RSA, to develop a system called Honey Words to protect password databases by also stuffing them with false passwords. Juels says that by now enough password dumps have leaked online to make it possible to create fakes that accurately mimic collections of real passwords and is currently working on creating the fake password vault generator needed for Honey Encryption to be used to protect password managers. This generator will draw on data from a small collection of leaked password manager vaults, several large collections of leaked passwords, and a model of real-world password use built into a powerful password cracker. "Honeywords and honey-encryption represent some of the first steps toward the principled use of decoys, a time-honored and increasingly important defense in a world of frequent, sophisticated, and damaging security breaches."

No, I actually don't. I think exposing an all-seeing police state has great implications for the rights of that state's citizens, but has very little bearing on life vs. death. Snowden's revelations haven't actually saved anyone's lives, or stopped a war, or otherwise prevented violence. I think there are better candidates.

In that case I think you're being short sighted and parochial. A great deal of Snowden's revelations concern the interception of world-wide communications data in order for the Western powers (chiefly the US and the UK) to prosecute illegal wars and carry out extra-judicial killings (murder, in every day terms) across the world. These actions will certainly provoke the next generation of terrorist outrages, and are probably intended to provoke the next generation of terrorist outrages - because unless there are enough terrorist outrages the security state will get its budget slashed.

The security state and the terrorists are symbiotic: they feed off each other. It's no accident that Osama bin Laden received his initial training and support from mujahideen who were financed by the CIA.

I guess he is primarily talking about the pollution from burning coal. ( For example: http://www.theguardian.com/env... , articles from across the pond also exist about this.). Not sure where the solar cost is coming from.

Apparently, The Guardian uses Flurry as well.

http://www.theguardian.com/hel...

"Please visit audiencescience.com/privacy.asp, quantcast.com/privacy and flurry.com/privacy-policy.html for the privacy policy of our online behavioural targeting technology providers."(again, my emphasis)

A quick look at the Propublica privacy policy shows that they use Google, for what that's worth.

This is not a flaw in Android, it is an intentional design decision made by Google in order to accomplish THEIR goals, you are not the customer, you are the product.

Let's clear that up a bit more. Cyanogenmod; a very slight modification of Android based entirely on free software Google could easily copy, have a feature which completely protects you from this. It provides a privacy mode in which applications can't see your private data even if they ask for those permissions. The interesting thing is that this privacy mode has a deliberately introduced security flaw which lets application writers avoid the effect if they really want to. The thing is, that this security flaw was not in the original patch which inspired the privacy mode. Cyanogenmod added the flaw since they were afraid Google might ban them from getting normal access to Android's play market place. Google stock Android really really needs to allow users to turn off privilages from applications selectively and without the application being able to tell that is in privacy mode.

The only company clearly and visibly having a worse influence on privacy here is Microsoft which has been very agressive in cooperation with the NSA and which is currently running adverts about email privacy whilst it was the first company to hand over all their email. At least Google and even Facebook are pretty up front about using your data for advertising.

This is not a flaw in Android, it is an intentional design decision made by Google in order to accomplish THEIR goals, you are not the customer, you are the product.

Let's clear that up a bit more. Cyanogenmod; a very slight modification of Android based entirely on free software Google could easily copy, have a feature which completely protects you from this. It provides a privacy mode in which applications can't see your private data even if they ask for those permissions. The interesting thing is that this privacy mode has a deliberately introduced security flaw which lets application writers avoid the effect if they really want to. The thing is, that this security flaw was not in the original patch which inspired the privacy mode. Cyanogenmod added the flaw since they were afraid Google might ban them from getting normal access to Android's play market place. Google stock Android really really needs to allow users to turn off privilages from applications selectively and without the application being able to tell that is in privacy mode.

The only company clearly and visibly having a worse influence on privacy here is Microsoft which has been very agressive in cooperation with the NSA and which is currently running adverts about email privacy whilst it was the first company to hand over all their email. At least Google and even Facebook are pretty up front about using your data for advertising.

The original story is ambiguous, but the linked articles appear to state that it was the operator of Freedom Hosting, not TorMail, who was charged with enabling CP. If the feds can run a Tor client to see what a site on the dark web is offering, it is a reasonable assumption that the hosting provider can do the same, and should do some basic diligence to ensure that the sites he is hosting comply with the law.

It is interesting of course that GMail, EC2, AT&T etc escape responsibility for what their customers do.

Bruce Schneier said "What I took away from reading the Snowden documents was that if the NSA wants in to your computer, it's in. Period."

This applies even if you are using TOR. TOR conceals your IP address, but it cannot remove the vulnerability of the end points - the client and server of the web/mail/whatever service. The Silk Road server was running PHP, and was probably compromised within hours of coming to the attention of the authorities. For the next two years the FBI was most likely building a case by parallel construction.

It is not a smart idea to use TOR or other services to break the law.

The NSA has all the actual slides from the internal presentation:
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

From what I gather, TRACKER SMURF module of the WARRIOR PRIDE rootkit for both IOS and Android sort of grabs pin positions of places you search for in Google Maps as well as where you actually ARE. What's interesting is the seeming fascination with sexual orientation and clubs. I guess if there is dirt to be had on an operative or a politician, it might be if they are secretly a wild and crazy guy, or perhaps visiting a mistress in South America instead of being lost on the Appalachian trail.

I know it's fashionable to be angry and all that, but the more of these slides they release, the more you understand how good these guys are at spycraft. It's a solid rootkit base with modules for various device driver interaction, it's pulling back info to be sorted in databases specifically at dossier building on targets, etc etc. It's a well organized program of information gathering, actually.

I was mistaken, it was the Argentine oil company , not BP.

t does not grow stronger or more nimble no matter how much you study or learn

Ahem. Repeat after me:

not the language per say.(sic)

...not the language per se.

From Latin per se (“by itself”), from per (“by, through”) and se (“itself, himself, , herself, themselves")

Saying the word house in English, Spanish, or French does not provide additional worldviews.

Far too simplistic an example to make your case. Language can indeed cue culture. Spend a little time here to get a taste of some surface examples.

I'd argue that it isn't a failure of our distribution system so much as it is a failure of unchecked capitalism. For example, US consumers' demand for quinoa has pushed the price up so far that the people who used to survive on it (Peruvians, Bolivians) can no longer afford to eat it. http://www.theguardian.com/com...

The rich will always exploit the poor to whatever extent they can get away with. In this case, it means that a small group profits from foreign demand while the laborers suffer. It's the same as "blood diamonds" - perfectly normal "free market" foreign demand may send capital to the region, but increases human suffering.

With the billions poured into "security"...

Security is for the little people. Corporations, small, medium, and large? Not so much.

Your comment makes no sense.

Oh, AC... you poor thing. I understand your confusion: Words don't make sense without context.

If you are a "little person" then you might think all this talk about "national security" is about protecting you and your interests, ensuring your safety. That's wrong. Only you are responsible for protecting yourself. Congress has ruled the police have no obligation to protect you, they are enforcers of the law against those who break it (if they're "little people").

If you are a corporation then "security" means ensuring existence of your socio-economic status, and influence over politics, despite the will of the people. That's what "national security" is, except under that label they don't have to worry about pesky FOIA requests exposing such actions.

You don't have "national safety" you have "Security theater". It's not just harmless bureaucratic waste, it's actually preparation to keep you from organizing any activism enough to change anything. Just like the stuff they did under COINTELPRO; Thus, their ability to maintain the status quo is "secure". Any real threat to life is pretty much ignored unless it's not really a big deal and can be heavily monetized by the state -- See: War on Drugs. The important thing to note is that the electronic spying apparatus has been in operation for decades. PRISM's spying was in place pre-9/11 and yet failed to protect us; There's no evidence it's ever protected us, since that's not what it was meant to do. The powers that be have no real interest in your safety, just that you are "secured". They're actually hoping for another disaster. Four hundred times more folks die every year from heart disease and accidents than a 9/11 scale attack, yet we still drive the kids to get a happy meal -- Compared to nearly any other risk, even falling down in the bath or lightning, the terrorist threat is pathetically small. The scaremongering threat narrative is only needed to push through more draconian legislation, like the PATRIOT Act, by manufacturing your consent.

Now, once you've educated yourself, you too can lament the state of things. Welcome to the discussion.

The Jew Timothy has received his orders from Feinstein, and they aren't pretty: Projecting on social media that China is bad, so let's plant the seed that Americans are killing their sons and daughters for us but it's actually about China, Snowden is a traitor, and conincidentally we prevented an attack on on your Israeli embassy while disregarding bombings on your own soil.

America's best ally, indeed.

-- Ethanol-fueleed

You might have missed these:
Former U.S. Officials Give NSA Whistleblower Snowden Award in Russia

Maybe YOU missed the "in Russia" part. Pretty such any medal pales in comparison to the punishment of having to spend the rest of his life in exile from the country he grew up in and tried to help.

It seems like Mr. Snowden may disagree with you.

Snowden Says He Has No Regrets
Fugitive former intelligence operative Edward Snowden told supporters at a secret dinner this week that he doesn't regret leaking details of classified U.S. surveillance programs, despite having to live his life on the run because he is satisfied his actions have had an impact, a person present at the dinner said.

Mr. Snowden told four former U.S. government agents-turned-whistleblowers, who traveled to Moscow to give him an...
[complete article behind login]

Edward Snowden Statement: 'It was the right thing to do and I have no regrets'

Friday July 12, 15:00 UTC

Hello. My name is Ed Snowden. A little over one month ago, I had family, a home in paradise, and I lived in great comfort. I also had the capability without any warrant to search for, seize, and read your communications. Anyone's communications at any time. That is the power to change people's fates.

It is also a serious violation of the law. The 4th and 5th Amendments to the Constitution of my country, Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and numerous statutes and treaties forbid such systems of massive, pervasive surveillance. While the US Constitution marks these programs as illegal, my government argues that secret court rulings, which the world is not permitted to see, somehow legitimize an illegal affair. These rulings simply corrupt the most basic notion of justice – that it must be seen to be done. The immoral cannot be made moral through the use of secret law.

I believe in the principle declared at Nuremberg in 1945: "Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring."

Accordingly, I did what I believed right and began a campaign to correct this wrongdoing. I did not seek to enrich myself. I did not seek to sell US secrets. I did not partner with any foreign government to guarantee my safety. Instead, I took what I knew to the public, so what affects all of us can be discussed by all of us in the light of day, and I asked the world for justice.

That moral decision to tell the public about spying that affects all of us has been costly, but it was the right thing to do and I have no regrets.

Since that time, the government and intelligence services of the United States of America have attempted to make an example of me, a warning to all others who might speak out as I have. I have been made stateless and hounded for my act of political expression. The United States Government has placed me on no-fly lists. It demanded Hong Kong return me outside of the framework of its laws, in direct violation of the principle of non-refoulement – the Law of Nations. It has threatened with sanctions countries who would stand up for my human rights and the UN asylum system. It has even taken the unprecedented step of ordering military allies to ground a Latin American president's plane in search for a political refugee. These dangerous escalations represent a threat not just to the dignity of Latin America, but to the basic rights shared by every person, every nation, to live free from persecution, and to seek and enjoy asylum.

Yet even in the face of this historically disproportionate aggression, countries around the world have offered support and asylum.

This fanatical "activism" needs to be stopped.

Well, to do that, you're going to need to draft up a Constitutional Amendment that voids the First Amendment, then get 2/3 of state legislatures to ratify it.

Good luck with that, chief.

Perhaps you failed to realize that is exactly what the FBI and NSA are for, doofus.

Even if your cultural narrative came from Fox News you should have found the FBI's Occupy Wall-street involvement odd. I mean, here you are spouting off about activism and you don't know the first thing about your government policy about it. What the actual fuck? Have you had your head up your ass concerning the past 100 years of your country's history such that you missed that whole 'secret' police state doing heinous illegal shit and especially their anti-activism policy AKA "national security"? For fuck's sake, you morons would make me sick if your politics hadn't heaved me dry.

i know a country in south america that disagrees
http://www.theguardian.com/env...

It's all the gays' fault. A fine, right-thinking, upstanding, god-fearing, hard-working Englishman said so!

The senate intelligence committee behaves as if we've already lost our national identity to the "war on terror."

Well, we have, unfortunately.

The other interesting tidbit here involves Mike Rogers, the guy who's still reiterating the debunked talking point about Snowden not having the "capability" to do what he did, and accusing him of having Russian help without citing any evidence.

Surely Feinstein understands that "privacy people" aren't going to be placated by such a statement and that their continuing discontent will only serve to perpetuate the perception of our formerly great nation as "the Great Satan." It's a vicious circle, and the only way out is to enact policies that live up to the two key tenets outlined in the last line of our national anthem.

This. During the cold war, there was a saying "Better dead than Red." Better to let the Russians nuke us than to abandon our way of life for theris.

The Russians had the capability to annihilate us; it turned out they didn't have the desire. The terrists have the desire to annihilate us; even with a couple of nukes, they won't have the capability to do any more damage to our nation than Hurricane Katrina did.

Ms. Feinstein, Mr. Rogers, the only people in this story who are acting under Soviet influence - the only two people actively trying to turn America into a KGB-like dystopian nightmare - are you.

And if refusing your protection means I'm somewhat more likely to get blown to smithereens by a terrorist? So be it. I don't want your protection, DiFi. I don't want to live in your neighborhood, Mr. Rogers. I know enough of what was like behind the Iron Curtain that I want no part of it.

I think you need some citations. And if you're going to declare a post "total BS", perhaps your rebuttals should be on point? Kinda like this:

1) China "will be"? UN says 28.6%, not quite "over 1/3" as you originally said.
2) China is indeed focusing on reducing pollution, but they're also cutting coal consumption, not just consuming it differently. They're using GreatPoint's catalytic hydromethanation process of coal gasification, and the CO2 produced is captured, not released.
3) Primarily stopping desertification as I said, but 500,000,000 hectares of fast-growing trees are a not-insignificant CO2 absorber, as the Chinese are quick to point out.
4) China's top climate negotiator said that China has pledged to cut its carbon intensity by 40-45% by 2020 from 2005 levels. Coal plants are no longer being approved in polluted provinces like Beijing, and their nuclear power program is one of the most ambitious programs in the world.
5) Huh?

China's emissions growth is slowing, as it has implemented its own carbon trading scheme and started cleaning up the worst-polluting of its power plants.

Additionally, China has planted over 500,000 square km of trees in the north, as a desertification barrier and carbon sink. This is the largest artificial forest in the world (twice the size of Britain), and they plan to continue increasing this through to 2050.

Little known fact: It is a legal requirement for all Chinese over the age of eleven to plant at least three trees a year.

What good is a lexical translator if the output doesn't compile? We've been incrementally compiling the language of ++BS (doubleplus bullshit) for quite a while, so let's just run what we've got now and see if there are any obvious errors.

The FBI and NSA have now both been tasked with maintaining "national security": This means maintaining the political, and socio-economic status quo despite the will of the people. It's a fact they have a long history of acting to silence civil rights activism, anti-war activism, and other activist groups. They claimed to stop the practice, but the NSA has now admitted it still entertains the idea of discrediting "radicals", via exposing porn habits, etc. Under the state secret label of "national security" they FBI and NSA won't have to worry about pesky FOIA requests revealing their programs like they did in the past, and can delegate enforcement to the state police agency: DHS. It doesn't matter where the data is stored online, or how encrypted it is, the NSA can and will get at it via exploits., so Obama is free to promise the moon and stars. Not like oversight ever stopped them from blatant constitutional violations before.

Here is a documentary / book presenting facts which can be easily verified in an attempt explain the practice of Disaster Capitalism. The gist is that through application of social, political and economic shock therapy you can bend the will of the people to your design and siphon a lot of wealth up into the upper echelon of private business. It's also a great way to force the privatization of public resources for corporate benefit. Anyone who objects or holds counter economic views is labelled a "radical extremist" of a "dangerous ideology" and rounded up in prison camps as examples of what happens if you disagree. The bogeyman of Communism or Marxism or Terrorism, etc. is thereby leveraged.

Warning: Cognitive Dissonance Detected.
    Assumption of inherent benign governance illogical: More evidence for Null Hypothesis against this stance exists.

This article examines the Pentagon's preparation to implement the round-up of those having "radical ideologies" in the wake of a Disaster Capitalism event, (essentially following the predicitons and warnings of the prior linked documentary) and explains how the PRISM system is apparently connected to it.

Error: Expected Event "Future" not found.
    Democratic Republic execution model is not consistent with economic ruin and despotism.

So, there we have it. It would be crazy to think anyone could benefit through economic ruin, so everything's probably OK. It seems our government is just run at the behest of rich corporations, and is wearing tinfoil hats in preparation of ensuring our continued acquiescence just in case they're ever able to strip more power from the people than is bearable. However, it's probably nothing to worry about unless they plan to let some "unforseen disaster" happen, like a Stock Market Crash, Pearl Harbour, 9/11, Energy Crisis, etc. or our ability to influence the government via the democratic vote has been hacked.

TL;DR: Obama's Promises are merely legitimization and fulfilment of The Nightmare Eisenhower Tried to Warn Us About.

Oil companies paying researchers?

Openly so. Available to any scientist OR economist. Example:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2007/feb/02/frontpagenews.climatechange

Of course there is far more money available from the oil companies than is actually taken, because few scientists got in to science to take money to falsify articles.

How many billions have institutions been given in grants by politicians, desiring as they were justification for their energy security policies?

It may have escaped your attention, but most governments around the world have actively avoided implementing the requirements from the Kyoto protocol. Most politicians, especially conservative ones, would much prefer that AGW was not true.

I'm afraid you have decided against AGW based on your politics, and everything else you believe is just confirmation bias. You're deluding yourself.

The organ theft urban legend has been around for a long time, but organ transplant isn't just something any unethical surgeon can do in the back of a fan.

Unethical surgeons aided by criminal enterprises (which is sometimes the state) seem to be available.

Kidney Thefts Shock India

GURGAON, India — As the anesthetic wore off, Naseem Mohammed said, he felt an acute pain in the lower left side of his abdomen. Fighting drowsiness, he fumbled beneath the unfamiliar folds of a green medical gown and traced his fingers over a bandage attached with surgical tape. An armed guard by the door told him that his kidney had been removed.

Mr. Mohammed was the last of about 500 Indians whose kidneys were removed by a team of doctors running an illegal transplant operation, supplying kidneys to rich Indians and foreigners, police officials said. A few hours after his operation last Thursday, the police raided the clinic and moved him to a government hospital.

Many of the donors were day laborers, like Mr. Mohammed, picked up from the streets with the offer of work, driven to a well-equipped private clinic, and duped or forced at gunpoint to undergo operations.

Illegal kidney trade booms as new organ is 'sold every hour'
China Admits Selling Prisoners’ Organs

Stolen baby is found alive - Woman arrested in grisly case

The baby who had been ripped from her slain mother’s womb was found alive and well in New Hampshire last night, and a woman was arrested in the grisly killing and kidnapping

Social workers 'seize unborn baby from the WOMB' after mother has panic attack

When you google "peer review problems" the first hits are:
http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2013/10/04/open-access-is-not-the-problem/
and this
http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2013/oct/04/science-hoax-peer-review-open-access
and this
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21588069-scientific-research-has-changed-world-now-it-needs-change-itself-how-science-goes-wrong
and
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1420798/

So, should all the journals discussed there be closed down? Peer reviewing ending up favoring somebodies paper whom the anonymous reviewers happen to know or like, or whose conclusions they agree with is a well known problem. As is peer reviewers delaying papers that disagree with their own research, despite impeccable research.

The problem is not that the peer review process used here was acceptable and should in fact have continued. The problem is double standards.

Since I think we know that few scientists are billionaires, and yet scientific fraud is documented to exist, you just might be distorting the picture. (I like the bit about, "might as well add creationism while we are into denialism." It really added to your argument. You should have suggested a more sophisticated cocktail for sipping on a "billion dollar yacht" though.) Thank goodness that everyone associated with climate science is clean, eh?

False positives: fraud and misconduct are threatening scientific research

The psychologist, who admitted "massaging" the data in some of his papers, resigned from his position in June after being investigated by his university, which had been tipped off by Uri Simonsohn from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Simonsohn carried out an independent analysis of the data and was suspicious of how perfect many of Smeesters' results seemed when, statistically speaking, there should have been more variation in his measurements.

The case, which led to two scientific papers being retracted, came on the heels of an even bigger fraud, uncovered last year, perpetrated by the Dutch psychologist Diederik Stapel. He was found to have fabricated data for years and published it in at least 30 peer-reviewed papers, including a report in the journal Science about how untidy environments may encourage discrimination.

The cases have sent shockwaves through a discipline that was already facing serious questions about plagiarism.

Spring (and Scientific Fraud) Is Busting Out All Over

Verbeke and Tijdink cast a wide net, with support they received from the Pascal Decroos Fund for Investigative Journalism. They contacted researchers from the medical science faculties of every university in Flanders, sending out more than 2,500 questionnaires and receiving 315 fully completed anonymous responses in return.

The answers startled. Four of the researchers who responded, or 1.3 percent, acknowledged that they had fabricated data at least once during the past three years, misdeeds that may still be unpunished. What’s more, 23, or 7.3 percent, of those who sent back questionnaires had engaged in the quaint term “massaging”—in which data or results were removed to make their work true up with original hypotheses. The roughly 8 percent of fraudulent practices found at the universities in Flanders compared with an average of 2 percent of smelly stuff going on that turned up in a 2009 meta-analysis in PLoS ONE of studies from around the world. .....

Respondents said the publish or die imperative was one of the main reasons for the infractions. The survey found that two thirds of the professors polled ran into excessive pressure to get their work into journals and nearly 70 percent of all of those surveyed had added the name of one author who had not participated in a study.

Study: Scientific research fraud on the rise

The primary reason for the death penalty is still the factor of revenge.

The other is incapacitation, but that can be achieved almost as effectively through lifetime imprisonment.

The remaining purposes of justice are rehabilitation (which is impossible with the death penalty and irrelevant with lifetime imprisonment), reparation (which is impossible for crimes that would earn the death penalty), deterrence (the effectiveness of which is still under debate), and denunciation (which doesn't seem to justify an eye for an eye).

A society that kills people because of revenge, has still a lot of learning to do. Revenge seldom leads to something good for anybody involved...

I agree. Does revenge really need to be a purpose of justice? I think we could achieve the other purposes more easily without it. If we gave prisons a portion of the money our society saves for each prisoner released who doesn't re-offend, it would make rehabilitation the primary purpose of imprisonment. Would it really be so bad if murderers walked free after being fully rehabilitated to a very high degree of certainty? Or if a serial burglar were kept away from society indefinitely if he can't be rehabilitated?

Any idea what the names of those are? Maybe you have a better source, but I don't see any listed here:
http://www.shanghairanking.com/SubjectCS2013.html
or here:
http://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2013/computer-science-and-information-systems
or here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/09/best-university-computer-science_n_2439697.html
or here:
http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2011/sep/05/top-100-universities-world-computer-science-and-information-systems-2011

My assumption was that gmuslera was connecting Snowden with a whistleblower.

I believe he gave the info to journalists who are choosing what to reveal about these transgressions.

No, he's fucking bartering foreign intel to foreign countries. So he indiscriminately took massive troves of docents and dumped them all on reporters, and now you absolve Snowden for anything they may or may not release? That's right, keep moving the moral goalposts, my friend. "He is courageous! Let's give him a medal". Oops, can't, he ran away to China and dumped his info on them. Certainly, then, China must be some sort of ally with an impeccable record for the sanctity of civil rights. Oh shit, he's not in China anymore. He must have gone to another country well known for not spying on its own people; a veritable beacon of liberty! Whatever, he is a hero for revealing what our government is doing to us! Now, I suppose, he must want to be a hero to the whole world for letting the world know what the US intelligence is up to.

You want heros? Learn yourself about Mark Felt or Daniel Ellsberg. Guys who actually had real guts and conscience and were patriots who never considered selling out their country to get a narcissist rush like your "hero".

Such as? Go ahead, please list the ways he's damaging this country.

The revelation of all the implants in foreign computers, the data centers set up in China, and that's just news from the last fucking day. I guess he is whistleblowing for the Chinese now. Or are you one of those "nobody should be spying on anyone" people? You seriously think revealing methods and intel on how we spy on other countries doesn't do us any harm? Really?

whatever keeps up the spin of the fox-news induced dreamstate you have about Snowden's motivations

Ah, yes, since I disagree with you then obviously I live in a fox-news dream state. I don't need to question his motives; you just need to look at his actions. Believe it or not, but the outrage you seem to feel (and the rabidness of many around here) about him releasing information on stuff that has been in the news for years, there are others of us who are outraged that he's fucking us over regarding our foreign intel operations. Some of us can actually draw a distinction between domestic overreach and selling out your secrets. Maybe it is too nuanced a topic for you, it certainly is for most of the outraged people posting here, but many people here seem to live in a very black-and-white world where their side is obviously correct and the other side lives in fox-news dream states.

Let me guess, you're still wondering how a "mere contractor" could have had access to all this data?

I have absolutely no idea what you're getting at here. Are you implying that Snowden didn't take any data? I really don't care how he got the data; he had a security clearance and knew the info to be classified. I'm not sure what you are getting at.

I hope you get a chance to read this before it disappears off the site. One is not allowed to even dare question the moral certitude around here on these topics. It is exactly like arguing with abortion protestors; one is not allowed to question their belief, or bring in facts or observations, you are only allowed to be given the honor of being shit on for not occupying their obvious moral high ground. I'm sure we'll see some bombings of NSA sites just like we had to go through with the abortion clinic bombing in the 90's.

At least there is his supposed "dead man's switch" where if he disappears, then all sorts of stuff will automatically be released. He really fucked himself over saying that. Instead of supposedly protecting himself from the boogeyman US, it is now in the interest of most of the foreign intelligence services to kill him to ensure th

Well, he already has the crown.

That don't seem coherent with the fact that the NSA sharing raw intelligence information with Israel, you know, before analizing it and determining if they can or not conduct some activities on them. Then the allies don't have that limitation, of course. But, you know, if they can lie even to the congress without consequences, why they would tell you the truth?

NSA shares raw intelligence including Americans' data with Israel

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/11/nsa-americans-personal-data-israel-documents

America is a vassal state of Israel. Israel gets to decide when and where America goes to war in the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2013.

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/s1881/text

It looks like when it comes to TERRORISM, the authorities are taking a hard line on where discussion becomes planning.

'The men, from Luton, admitted one count of engaging in conduct in preparation for acts of terrorism between 1 January 2011 and 25 April 2012 at a hearing on 1 March.'

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/apr/18/luton-terror-plot-four-jailed

If a fight broke out in a british cinema, there'd be a punch-up, the police would be called and someone would be spending the night in the cells.

[..]And that's how it tends to work: there are people carrying all around, I guess, but you'd never know it 99.9% of the time (if you're a layperson who wasn't trained to recognize someone carrying), since those people understand what's at stake, take their responsibility seriously, and know that there are laws barring them from even hinting to someone else that they are carrying.

In America you get shot.

This whole story is just weird[...]. But your sort of generalization isn't helpful either, since it overexaggerates an outlier, rather than recognizing that America's gun violence problem has seen a massive decline over the past two decades, one which, ironically, has largely gone unnoticed

Well the decline seems to be less spectacular lately (link) and is also a global trend aparently. Still compared to the UK (to which the GP was refering) it is still more than 10 times higher!
(link)
Maybe not such a strange remark, since both countries are at the oposite side of curve.

> Users of Truecrypt should be extra careful of physical security of their systems to prevent investigators from gaining access to the contents of physical memory."

By investigators, do you mean government workers conducting industrial espionage?

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/10/nsa-busted-conducting-industrial-espionage-in-france-mexico-brazil-and-other-countries.html
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-12-04/asio-arrests-key-witness-in-east-timor-spying-scandal/5132954
http://www.globalresearch.ca/canada-spied-on-brazils-government-as-part-of-global-commercial-espionage-campaign/5353642
http://www.smh.com.au/national/australian-spy-agency-helped-bhp-negotiate-trade-deals-20131106-2x1sw.html
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131111/11532125198/australia-spied-japan-to-help-companies-negotiate-trade-deals.shtml
http://www.crikey.com.au/2013/12/02/revealed-the-government-agency-stealing-ideas-from-businesses/
http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0000940560
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jun/16/gchq-intercepted-communications-g20-summits

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/10/nsa-mass-surveillance-powers-john-inglis-npr
http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/19/21975158-nsa-program-stopped-no-terror-attacks-says-white-house-panel-member?lite
"“...there has been no instance in which NSA could say with confidence that the outcome [of a terror investigation] would have been any different” without the program."
Welcome to a world where a vast domestic surveillance system is rubber stamped and oversight is tame.

The device as a layer of physical hardware in a USB device has been posted as a pic as part of the COTTONMOUTH I and II effort.
http://www.dailytech.com/Tax+and+Spy+How+the+NSA+Can+Hack+Any+American+Stores+Data+15+Years/article34010.htm (scroll down for the slide)
What it sends out to?
The usual new spy "rocks" or some other "network"
http://rt.com/usa/spy-rocks-lockheed-usa-771/
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jan/19/fake-rock-plot-spy-russians

What are you talking about? Didn't you see the 60 Minutes/NSA love fest?

What if "national security" meant socio-political control of the populace to maintain the status quo and thus securing the interests of corporate America. Could that be why civil-rights, privacy-rights, anti-war activism, etc. are heavily monitored? Perhaps that's why they would add to the 'enemies of the state' list clean-energy and ecology activists.

Noam Chomsky proved decades ago journalistic integrity is dead.

This is the Age of Information. World War III was fought long ago, and the world's citizens lost.

See references:
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/jun/07/cinema-filmgoer-thrown-out-texting-alamo/
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/risky-business/movie-theater-kicks-customer-texting-195400/

In this age of decreasing levels of common decency, and manners in public places, (theaters being nearly the antithesis of private) people still feel they have a false sense of entitlement to do rude things without consequences.

Not play down that someone DIED here, but that level of offense is going to get more common as the texters drain what enjoyment might be left in going for a Big Screen Experience.

I still remember when they first banned cigarettes in theaters, and how terribly offended people were on both sides of the ban.

Maybe, I'm just getting Old and Cranky... Good thing I'm Canadian, and guns are nowhere near as available to us up here.

Bike lanes? The idiots who wasted public money painting those on the roads should be put in stocks. Cycle correctly - not where some idiot who knows nothing about cycling says you should.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pillory-stocks.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door_zone

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2012/jul/24/cyclists-threat-parked-cars

Climate scientists do NOT make those claims and have been explicitly stating that no single weather event can conclusively be linked to AGW.

Also, the "G" in AGW stands for GLOBAL, which seems to be a difficult concept for some North Americans to grasp.

While the polar vortex was wreaking havoc in America, much of Scandinavia was having an unusually warm winter, with flowering plants & bears coming out of hibernation.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jan/10/polar-vortex-us-mild-weather-scandinavia

So whose narrative does that jibe with?

Global means everywhere. Warm winter in Scandinavia is local; polar vortex in North America is local. GLOBAL warming is a myth. The evidence supports global climate CHANGE; this change is warming in some places and cooling in others.

The one nasty anti-vax angle with polio is, I'm ashamed to say, pretty much our fault: The CIA came up with a clever ruse to do some DNA gathering under the guise of a vaccination program (one for hepatitis B), and the subsequent revelation of this fact has not done much to quell the 'zOMG vaccines are a western and/or zionist conspiracy against muslims!!!' rumor mongering present in certain areas.

This is unreasonable. They could simply say "no bloody westerners after this cheating, - we want proper muslim doctors only." They'd incur all sorts of delays this way - but they could certainly have a vaccination programme as well as "no western spies" if they wanted to. But they didn't want to - they went the idiot route instead.