Slashdot Mirror
FBI Widens Use of National Security Letters
An anonymous reader writes "The Washington Post reports that the FBI has drastically increased its use of National Security Letters (NSL), which permit it to collect information without judicial oversight. According to the article, the use of NSLs is up by a factor of 100, and the records are kept forever (in the past they were thrown away if the subject was cleared). Deep in the article, the author reports that NSLs were used to collect records '[...] of every hotel guest, everyone who rented a car or truck, every lease on a storage space, and every airplane passenger who landed in [Las Vegas]' for a two week period, in response to a terrorism threat in 2003. Those records, apparently, will be kept forever by the federal government. There's an ombudsman, and a procedure to resolve complaints, but the mere existence of an NSL is secret, so it's not clear how anyone can complain!
Man, I want THAT job.
Person: Are you the ombudsman for National Security Letters?
Me: Yes.
Person: I'd like to complain about the FBI's issuance of one against me. I was cleared and they're now storing all my personal information forever.
Me: Sir, you're not supposed to know about that.
Person: But I...
Me: I'm afraid you're now a threat to National Security.
Person: Wait, what the... No, I'm an innocent man! I'M INNOCENT DAMN-*gunshots* *silence*
Me: I love my job.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Just track everyone: Piggy back RFID/GPS chips on every sperm that swims
Another reason not to visit America.
When I was a kid I wanted nothing more than to emigrate to the US of A. At the moment, I don't even want to visit it as a tourist.
How things can change in less than a decade...
One the one hand it's useful, but on the other it contradicts our constitutuion. Man I love polidicks[sic].
public class null extends java applet { System.out.print ("Tabula Rasa"); }
Did you guys really vote for all this, um, stuff? Take your country back.
Everybody's a libertarian 'till their neighbour's becomes a crack house.
Well, I would imagine that just by posting to Slashdot you are registered 'for all eternity' in some federal register. So, what's your point?
When we have sensible Supreme Court justices installed, who understand we're at war with an ideology that will never die, national security rules by the president will never be subverted by the meddlesome Congress. Or the people, who don't know enough about security intelligence to keep ourselves safe by electing Congressmembers. We need more justices like Roberts who insist on the privilege of the president to keep us safe, and out of the danger of risky "due process". Too bad we can't get Miers back, who saw the towering intelligence of our current defender. But Alito's committment to the security power of the supreme executive should keep us perfectly safe.
--
make install -not war
In unrelated news, the price of Aluminum today is up by a factor of 100.
.. can't even trust them to correct^h^h^h^h^h^h^hchange the spelling of Anonymous cowards even
Damn those slashdot editors
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Welcome to Amerika, please surrender your rights here!
Karma: a simple way of silencing those with unpopular views regardless how correct or just that view might be.
My credit card company!
Which I used to rent the car, purchase the plane tickets and secure my rental garages.
They also know where I live, my phone # and my mother's maiden name!
Only criminals will go to the trouble to avoid being caught in such a web of information collection, leaving innocent private citizens as the only victims in this process.
Like is said for gun control laws, if you outlaw it, only the criminals will have it. This sort of crap will ensure that only criminals are outside of the jurisdiction of legal daily surveilance, thus achieving nothing but ill will and a semi-police state.
If you think this is a troll, try again... When the government invents a reason to spy on you without your permission or that of the courts, they have found a way to be the big brother that we all despise and fear. Never mind tin-foil hats, when they know what you had for breakfast without having to lift a finger, the tin-foil hat does no good.
How long will it be before it is made illegal to thwart such efforts by use of misleading electronic activities, and botnets that spoil the information gathered with false information and misleading information. How long before identity theft is not the real problem, but being accused of anti-american activities is the problem because of clever botnets that have seeded the government databases with information about you and your activities?
Where is the oversight to stop the government from doing that, then arresting you on trumped up charges based on bad information... damn, the US started an entire war on bad information...
FSCK, this is bad!
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
There's an easy solution.
Everyone should complain.
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
I recall posts from about 7 years ago where our American brethren would profusely claim such laws would (could) never exist in the U.S., and it was kind of comforting to know such a human-rights haven existed (contrast: we don't have a bill of rights in Australia).
But it's frightening how Uncle Sam has managed to sidestep such safeguards in the name of "national security".
I shake my head in disgust when I think of the governments trouncing basic rights to protect us against a threat that claims as many people per decade as cancer does in one day !!
Hey, where's the poster complaining that this FBI privacy invasion story isn't "News for Nerds"? Are nerds finally starting to find a consensus that they're just like everyone else, and "News for Police State Residents" is also news for them, too? Maybe those nerds who have always realized that security/privacy is nerdy will finally get recognition, if only from other nerds... nah, nerds are no good at that kind of social awareness.
--
make install -not war
I'm not sure how reassuring this is, but keep in mind that most reports indicate that the FBI is fabulously inept at analyzing the information that they have already, and this is merely going to further overwhelm them. To be sure, there are genuine civil liberties issues here, but I'd be far more concerned if they were investing the same resources doing things the old-fashioned way (infiltrating groups, hanging out taking notes, reading mail, tapping phones, etc)
"All successful systems accumulate parasites" -- Hal Hixon
Well, in today's present society the first step would be to automate voting, and get rid of the electorate delegates - that would ensure the majority actually does rule (assuming the techonology is implemented correctly).
Second step would be (this I'm sort of deriving from an article I read) - to send the senators and representatives home, and allow them to use video conferencing instead. I think this would allow more "real" people to eventually get elected - and be *willing* to get elected, since they wouldn't have to move out of their home towns - leaving friends, family, and a sense of what's going on locally in their state behind them.
On certain issues you could also institute country wide referendums. More technical issues would have to be decided by the senate/house - which is why electing competent people would still be important.
Last but not least, it might be a good idea to make being a senator/representative a part time job, and let them keep their day jobs. That would keep them in touch with daily life, and also effectively curb the amount of useless legislation that's passed each year. (Along with mitigating the effects of lobbyists - since they wouldn't fear losing their jobs, they would merely be doing a service for their country.)
Oh, and term limits might also fit into that plan quite well to enforce the idea that "this is not your permanent job".
Not that the scenario will ever happen in my lifetime without a nation-wide catastrophy or revolt, but it doesn't hurt to throw the ideas out there.
I think the submitter missed an important part of the article, which is this quote[ ...In late 2003, the Bush administration reversed a long-standing policy requiring agents to destroy their files on innocent American citizens, companies and residents when investigations closed. Late last month, President Bush signed Executive Order 13388, expanding access to those files for "state, local and tribal" governments and for "appropriate private sector entities," which are not defined. ...]
This lack of respect to privacy is troubling....
And I thought the FBI was wasting time on porn cases and such, but the waste of time and effort that must of gone into that vegas data mining with such a wide net was epic. What could they hope to have found, considering the FBI hasn't managed to handle their other low level basic database problems so well. And considering all these false alarms they get as they roust people all over the world. Our street-level intelligence is truly clueless and out of touch and adding the epic waste of mass data mining is surely going to have the FBI chasing ghosts as our freedoms erode.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi
Vegas is probably the most surveilled city in the U.S. Keeping rental car records and hotel receipts pales in comparison to the information stored by the casinos. What's frightening is that the government collecting such information about ordinary Americans doesn't amount to much on its own in terms of fighting terrorism, but it would offer unscrupulous feds a convenient database of information for blackmail purposes (as well as for a variety of investigations, both legal and illegal). A call by the feds to your hotel/casino could probably garner fairly detailed information about your activities in the city, including video of most of your public activities on the strip and in many cases even your activities in your room. Again, if the suspect isn't holding a terrorist or mafia meeting in Vegas, such information is probably not worth much for investigative purposes, but imagine its utility for blackmail purposes.
- that would ensure the majority actually does rule (assuming the techonology is implemented correctly)
I'm not sure we want the majority to rule. The purpose of a democratic republic is to seat a group of informed representaives.
make being a senator/representative a part time job, and let them keep their day jobs.
Nah. People pay attention to where their bowl of rice is coming from. We don't want them paying less attention to their senator/representative job than they already do. This would make them (if possible) even more susceptible to bribes and lobbying.
term limits might also fit into that plan quite well
I object to term limits because imagine you have really good representation, a really good, effective member. Couple years, bang! He's fired. Someone new comes in, probably not as good as what you had. I know it's hard to imagine now, but let's don't force good people out of office.
I think a better start would be to revoke the corporation's right to free speech, and forbid them from contributing to campaigns. Period. Corporations are not people and do not act like people, so we should not let them drive our elections. They are far too able to throw large volumes of cash at election campaigns. They have too much say over how we are governed.
I also think we should try really hard to break up the power structures in the two big parties. There is such a huge interlocking collection of debts and favors controlling who gets to be a nominee that it is (usually) impossible for anyone fresh and different to get on the ticket. Does anyone really believe that there is nobody in the Republican Party better qualified to lead the US than George W.? Neither party puts forward their best candidate anymore. They put forward the one who best manipulates the existing power structure.
No one who dies of cancer does so in a fiery ball that destroys a Billion dollars worth of infrastructure.
No, but when you add up the $100,000+ treatment costs of the millions of uninsured Americans who do get cancer that the government pays... well, guess what? Billions of dollars.
To quote one 'Madpride' from another board:
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel
The FBI came calling in Windsor, Conn., this summer with a document marked for delivery by hand. On Matianuk Avenue, across from the tennis courts, two special agents found their man. They gave George Christian the letter, which warned him to tell no one, ever, what it said.
Under the shield and stars of the FBI crest, the letter directed Christian to surrender "all subscriber information, billing information and access logs of any person" who used a specific computer at a library branch some distance away. Christian, who manages digital records for three dozen Connecticut libraries, said in an affidavit that he configures his system for privacy. But the vendors of the software he operates said their databases can reveal the Web sites that visitors browse, the e-mail accounts they open and the books they borrow.
Christian refused to hand over those records, and his employer, Library Connection Inc., filed suit for the right to protest the FBI demand in public. The Washington Post established their identities -- still under seal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit -- by comparing unsealed portions of the file with public records and information gleaned from people who had no knowledge of the FBI demand.
The Connecticut case affords a rare glimpse of an exponentially growing practice of domestic surveillance under the USA Patriot Act, which marked its fourth anniversary on Oct. 26. "National security letters," created in the 1970s for espionage and terrorism investigations, originated as narrow exceptions in consumer privacy law, enabling the FBI to review in secret the customer records of suspected foreign agents. The Patriot Act, and Bush administration guidelines for its use, transformed those letters by permitting clandestine scrutiny of U.S. residents and visitors who are not alleged to be terrorists or spies.
The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year, according to government sources, a hundredfold increase over historic norms. The letters -- one of which can be used to sweep up the records of many people -- are extending the bureau's reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans.
Issued by FBI field supervisors, national security letters do not need the imprimatur of a prosecutor, grand jury or judge. They receive no review after the fact by the Justice Department or Congress. The executive branch maintains only statistics, which are incomplete and confined to classified reports. The Bush administration defeated legislation and a lawsuit to require a public accounting, and has offered no example in which the use of a national security letter helped disrupt a terrorist plot.
The burgeoning use of national security letters coincides with an unannounced decision to deposit all the information they yield into government data banks -- and to share those private records widely, in the federal government and beyond. In late 2003, the Bush administration reversed a long-standing policy requiring agents to destroy their files on innocent American citizens, companies and residents when investigations closed. Late last month, President Bush signed Executive Order 13388, expanding access to those files for "state, local and tribal" governments and for "appropriate private sector entities," which are not defined.
National security letters offer a case study of the impact of the Patriot Act outside the spotlight of political debate. Drafted in haste after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the law's 132 pages wrought scores of changes in the landscape of intelligence and law enforcement. Many received far more attention than the amendments to a seemingly pedestrian power to review "transactional records." But few if any other provisions touch as many ordinary Americans without their knowledge.
Senior FBI officials acknowledged in interviews that the proliferation of national security letters results primarily from the bureau's new authority to collect intimate facts about people who a
I eventually had to go down to the cellar. With a torch. The notice was on display at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "beware of the leopard".
Rubies and Pearls are not what you think.
In the last ten years, traffic has killed about 400.000 Americans. Terrorism has killed less than 4.000. I'm still amazed how the American public is prepared the give up all kinds of civil liberties just to fight the risk that is 100 times smaller, not to mention that the success chances are doubtful. Accepting a small - tiny! - terrorism threat is a small price to pay for a free society.
If you receive one, you need to get legal advice before complying.
The proposed legislation to criminalize NSL noncompliance, S.1680, has no cosponsors and isn't going anywhere.
The FBI can still go before a judge and get a subpoena, but that requires judicial authorization, and you can fight a subpoena in court if it's overreaching.
This kind of thing is very clearly illegal under the fourth and fifth amendments. The lesson here, is that the constitution is no guarantee of our liberty. Freedon ultimately depends on the will of people to demand and enforce limits on government's continuous attempts to expand its power.
This will go on until someone who is presented with a "national security letter" says, "Fuck you, get a warrant", and is preparted to fight the case all the way to the supreme court.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Have you seen any terrorism here in the states since 9/11?
Yes.
Antrax (we still don't know what happened with that, right? Yeah, we're sure doing a bang-up job fighting terrorism), DC shooter, happy-face mailbox bomber (that was post-9/11, right? or was it right before? If it was the latter, then disregard it, obviously)
We had a major attack in '93, and another in '95 (IIRC), so that was a 2-year gap followed by a 6-year gap ('95-'01), and the second one was domestic terrorism, so it was 8 years between "Al Qaeda" attacks. Yes, there were the embassy bombings, but putting aside that whole "embassies are technically US territory" thing, those were in other countries, and we've certainly lost a lot of people in foreign countries to similar attacks since 9/11, in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
It's only been 4 years since 9/11. If we go another 4 or 5 without a foreign-origininating attack, we'll be doing OK I suppose, though with only 2 prior major foreign attacks to work with, it's not like we've got enough data points to say much about this anyway, so arguments either way using this information are rather pointless. It could be that the 8-year span was an unusually short one anyway, or maybe unusually long. There's no way to tell.
or that all-time favorite,
When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called Rel
- Yellow road signs - Marriage fidelity - Nutrition information on the label - The 10 Commandments - Speed limits ...merely "suggestions"
>Did you guys really vote for all this, um, stuff? Take your country back.
Do you really think the average voter has any idea what a national security letter might be and if they did the proper checks and balances such a thing would need. Or if they are even aware of the big privacy debate going on? They don't. During the last election, from what I was told first hand, people voted on:
1. Terrorism: Usually "Bush will teach them 'Rabs" kind of attitude.
2. Gay marriage: This was surprisingly everywhere before the election and no where now. Funny how that works.
3. Abortion: The usual crap here.
4. Vietnam: Kerry's status as a vet opened up the old vietnam wounds.
Only political junkies cared about privacy, civil rights, economic stability, social security, judge appointments, etc.
I don't think most countries are too different, the LCD tend to vote on hot button issues and the educated and elitist classes take on everything else. Asking "Did you people really vote for this stuff" is kinda non-starter. People don't even vote on this stuff, they vote for what they know.
Essentially this is your classic "raise the discourse" argument, but one of the nice things of being at the top of the world as a superpower in about a dozen different ways is that there's little incentive to learn about foreign policy, civil issues, other countries, other systems, etc. As long as there is wealth and safety one can remain fairly ignorant of a lot of things. This eventually does bite one in the ass and will probably coincide with the loss of a superpower status as Europe and Asia keep rising.
The traffic accidents of which you speak did not:
1) Cause billions of dollars of damage in less than an hour's time and shut down an entire industry for days.
2) Generally result from malicious intent from people who have declared they will not be happy until millions of Americans are dead
3) Paralyze an entire nation's ability to move people and goods
4) Happen as the result of an accident
Also, please provide a source for your 400,000 dead in past four years statistic. Statistics I've found from 1998 say around 49,000 died in North America from car accidents that year. Sounds like you're pulling your numbers out of thin air.
No, but when you add up the $100,000+ treatment costs of the millions of uninsured Americans who do get cancer that the government pays... well, guess what? Billions of dollars.
I am a full time student and uninsured. I pay my taxes, in full, on time, every year. I am an American Citizen and have been for all of my 25 years on this earth. I have no criminal record of any kind.
My foot is currently broken, and I believe I have established that I am both 'uninsured' and an 'American' (one in good standing, too). I do not have the resources to pay for X-Rays, Doctors, a Cast, or possible therapy. How can I get the government to pay for my treatment?
Oh yea, I can't, because we're the only country in the world where our government sponsored healthcare only helps non-Americans, such as illegal immigrants and Iraqis. I've tried, I can't get shit for myself. I would be more than happy for you to prove me wrong, because a cast really would be nice.
~Rebecca
Er, did you read my post? The anthrax thing was AFTER 9/11. So were the DC shootings. Let me bold that for you: THEY WERE TERRORIST ATTACKS THAT HAPPENED AFTER 9/11.
And I just looked it up: the "smiley face bomber" was also after 9/11. 2002, in fact.
So there HAVE been terrorist attacks within the US borders since 9/11. Several, in fact.
Now, there HAVE NOT been any foreign-created attacks (well, the Anthrax may have been, who the hell knows, since the government seems to have stopped caring about that) since 9/11, but the gap between the last two attacks by Al Qaeda was 8 years. It has only been 4 years since the second one, so if they have the same gap this time, it won't be 'till after the next presidential election that we get hit again. So, without changing anything or taking any special action after 9/11, the president should have been able to get 8 years without attacks anyway.
AND AGAIN, this is all using the previous Al Qaeda attacks in the US as a model for predicting future ones, and since there have only been 2, it's hard to say anything based on that.
In other words, saying "the president's doing such a good job because there havn't been any attacks since 9/11!" is dumb by any standard, even based on the little bit of data that we do have; conversely, EVEN IF we had an attack tomorrow, it'd be only slightly less silly to say that that was evidence of him doing a bad job. It's a poor metric by which to measure performance, without other data sets to support it.
The "fighting them over there instead of over here" thing is one of the dumbest mantras to come out of the right in the past few years, and that's saying a lot. Odds are, we wouldn't be fighting them over here anyway, at least not any more so than we had been before 9/11. Putting the money from Iraq into investigations and law enforement would have taken a bigger bite out of real terrorist threats than the war has, by an order of magnitude, and probably resulted in a net gain in the "loss of US life" category, given how many US citizens (not just soldiers) have died in Iraq. Putting that money into research for treatments and cures for cancer and heart disease would likely have saved more lives than either of the other options.
Before folks get all riled up just remember, there is a limit here. Heck, F.B.I uses three letters and NSL uses another three leaving a total of 20. At the rate they're going, they'll be out of letters in no time at all.
"American soil is safer than ever. And whenever a terrorist travels to Iraq and gets swiss cheesed by one of our boys, it is even safer."
Too much Fox News for your 2 neurons, eh...
Let's try this in simpler terms. Our invasion and continued occupation of Iraq is making us MORE at risk of attack not less.
Here is your assignment:
Assume another country, say China since they would have the resources, decided to invade the US on the grounds that we have WMD. Further say that they, not us, will be the ones to "rebuild" after the invasion sending our economy into the toilet (as if it wasn't already there). Would you fight with any means at your disposal including terrorist acts? Would you continue fighting even after they "won" the war?
That is exactly what is going on. The longer we stay there the more likely we are to have another 9/11. And while we are on the subject, why was it only AFTER 9/11 that the US decided to take terrorism seriously? You mean to tell me the other pre-9/11 attacks were unworthy of changing how we dealt with terrorism?
B.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
You can love your country and hate the current administration. There is no conflict between those positions.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Because then we expected death to come in the form of bombs on ICBMs, or perhaps as armies marching across Europe. Nobody figured that an individual would do much damage.
Not that an individual couldn't do some damage, but it wouldn't particularly advance the USSR's goals to kill a few people at a time (or even a few thousand). And if they did piss us off by, say, flying planes into a few buildings, we knew right where the USSR was and could drop a few bombs of our own on it.
The war we're engaged in now is one of individuals doing a little bit of damage at a time. It can't bring down the US the way a full-on war with the Soviets could, but it is very demoralizing to be subject to terror attacks and it does lousy things to the economy. And when it happens, there's no place to bomb in retaliation (at least not without filling the media with pictures of civilians killed in the process.)
The old enemy wore uniforms, so you can't even tell which of those dead civilians really were planning to kill you.
So they check the individuals a lot more closely, both on entry and in the country. Illegally closely, perhaps, but that's not my point. You can, perhaps, feel safer knowing that the odds of you being wiped out along with the entire rest of the country in a nuclear holocaust are far, far lower than they were two decades ago. But it'll still kinda piss you off if you happen to be in the vicinity of a dirty bomb, suicide bomber, or whatever nasty trick they come up with next.
Note that the purpose of the law allowing NSLs was to foil terroristic activities, not to deter crime per se. Use of NSLs for criminal prosecution is IMO illegal as the law is defined. That is the reason why the above numbers on criminal indictments versus foils should be collected - to determine if the law is being abused to make criminal prosecution easier rather than to pursue terroristic threats.
The above statistics could help in analysis of the effectiveness of NSLs vis-a-vis subpoenas, search warrants, and other legal instruments. Such statistics may indicate that a given legal instrument is ineffective and therefore, although it appears useful, is truly not so.
IOW I would like to see statistical proof that NSLs are a useful legal instrument for fighting terrorism and not merely legal instruments that will be abused by some later administration with consequent loss of our civil rights.
My personal belief is that NSLs are ineffectual and serve primarily as a distraction (and a huge waste of effort) from the FBI's proper role in law enforcement. Certainly there is an argument to be made for the use of legal instruments such as NSLs in a domestic counter-terrorism organization (such as MI-5 of England) but, since the USA has no such organizations (the FBI being relegated by law to pursuit of only criminal indictments, the CIA to purely foreign operations, and NSA et al restricted from domestic operations) I do not see a proper place for NSLs in the current legal structure. Consequently NSLs will eventually be defined as illegal by the courts. Unfortunately this is a very slow process.
-xeo_at_thermopylae
He wants his agenda back.
In late 2003, the Bush administration reversed a long-standing policy requiring agents to destroy their files on innocent American citizens, companies and residents when investigations closed. Late last month, President Bush signed Executive Order 13388, expanding access to those files for "state, local and tribal" governments and for "appropriate private sector entities," which are not defined.
Is it just me, or does this demonstrate nothing but the most vile contempt for the citizens of the U.S.?
You are "spot on-target"!
The regime currently in power is using the "war on terrorism" to strip Americans of their rights, especially that of privacy. They justify their unconstitutional methods with the claim that "no further acts of terrorism have been committed on US soil", while totally side-stepping the reality that Al-Queda seems to spend a lot of time (between terrorist attacks) to plan their next offensive.
The Dubya regime has been just as ineffective in their optional war in Iraq as in securing the USA's borders and seaports. The President, Vice President, Attorney General, Director of the CIA, Director of the FBI, and Director of Homeland Security have all come out at various times to state that "it is not a matter of if, but of when then next terrorist attack will come". By "predicting" such an event, they presume to "cover their collective backsides" when it comes to accepting responsibility/blame for their ineffectiveness.
I fear that when AL-Queda does eventually attack the USA again, it will be far more spectacular than 9/11/2001, just as that terrorist attack far exceeded the results of the first World Trade Center bombing. Considering the state of the world today, I have concluded that they will use WMDs that they either can steal or purchase on the black market.
I love what gets deemed as insightful here. This'll be a good one for the meta mods.
:) :) I would not presume to revoke your geek-card over the esthetic appreciation of some humorous item.
Slashdot is primarily populated with geeks/hackers. That geek population will mod geekish things geekily. Most meta-mods will be geeks and I doubt they will have a serious objection to the insightful mod.
One of the pecularities of geekish humor is the earnest application of intelligence to an absurdity. It tends to be both funny and insightful. The fact that intelligence was humorously applied to an absurdity does not (in the geek mindset) diminish the inherent value of the creative intellectual contribution. His post was indeed insightful, he provided at least a one billion fold increase in efficency to the suggested system.
Maybe you're a bit too normal to get the peculiarly geekish appreciation in that
And if you do consider yourself a geek, well no offence intended by that last comment
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.