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Total Information Awareness still Running
gordm writes "National Journal reports that, instead of being shut down 2 years ago, the Total Information Awareness program is still datamining away. Must be effective. What else could explain Morrissey's latest adventure?" Just posting this story probably puts me on their radar.
Inch by inch, we're getting closer to living in a massive panopticon.
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
"They were trying to determine if I was a threat to the government, and similarly in England. But it didn't take them very long to realise that I'm not."
Bogus. They can determine that from a distance. They just made him an example of what happens when you call fraud a fraud; when you say the king has no clothes.
If black projects cant get funding in public view, they work behind the scenes and find money elsewhere.
If they ask you anything, that answers the whole question...
the tinfoil hat was a GOOD idea!!!!
I leave you with the wisdom of Mr. Eisenhower from 1961.
I wouldnt be suprised if at some point the government will start selling off 'de-classifed' data to the highest bidder. Such as what kind of socks you buy.. or your food habits..
the rest of the data ( like your friends, or what street corner you stopped too long at last saturday at 12am ) wont be sold off. Instead it will be used against you when your turn to be directly invesigated comes. Remember, we are all criminals to 'the system'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
come on now... something this "good" was never gonna die
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I have wrote on subject of the Surveillance Society many times - including here on Slashdot.
d =8554109
e.g. this is snippet from one post:
Quote from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency: "The goal of the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program is to revolutionize the ability of the United States to detect, classify and identify foreign terrorists -- and decipher their plans -- and thereby enable the U.S. to take timely action to successfully preempt and defeat terrorist acts."
The declared GOAL is to, quote: "identify foreign terrorists" - what rubbish. They know you are American citizen, not even a suspect foreigner - yet want to know what you buy, where you travel - everything. They want to profile you, like a criminal. I find it hard to believe that U.S. politicians are that dumb to go along with this violation of the American Peoples Rights. Looks like TIA initials stand for Totally Ignorant Acceptance (for their propaganda).
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=100317&ci
Morrissey is involved with this, too?? How does he find time between cutting albums?
GITI - Global Infotek - is the company still in control of a lot of this tech.
http://www.globalinfotek.com/
when I was working there a few years ago they had a half dozen projects that they specifically told me were the next iteration of TIA, and that TIA had not been shut down, but simply renamed and split up.
I didn't have a security clearance, and nothing they said was confidential, but they threatened my job if I told anyone about it while I was there. Needless to say, I left fairly quickly.
Over a period of decades, the U.S. government paid to kill Arabs and interfere with their politics. The U.S. government also paid to train Arabs in terrorism to fight in Afghanistan.
Is it surprising that a small percentage of Arabs eventually decided to react to violence with more violence? Is it surprising that Arabs don't like being killed?
Now, those who wanted violence have what they want. They can claim that there is a threat, and can make billions in largely hidden contracts for weapons and contracts for war.
The U.S. government is more corrupt now than ever before. Here are some short reviews of books about the corruption. The article is old and needs revision and additions, but gives a small view of a very extensive subject: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government.
Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in World War Two and former U.S. President General Dwight D. Eisenhower said in a famous speech that we should beware of the "military-industrial complex". Here's a quote:
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
"We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes."
Another quote:
"The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present - and is gravely to be regarded."
--
Before, Saddam got Iraq oil profits & paid part to kill Iraqis. Now a few Americans share Iraq oil profits, & U.S. citizens pay to kill Iraqis. Improvement?
I wonder if Alberto Gonzales had a hand in naming Total Information Awareness. In the small town where I grew up, Tias knew everything going on, the comings and goings, motivations, credit balances and who was seeing who.
The danger with TIA, as with any collection of information with or without the consent of the subjects of the information, is that the power will eventually fall into the hands of someone who will abuse it. Not "might", not "will unless we're careful" -- WILL, as inevitably and certainly as death. The failure to understand this certainty is what enables this kind of creeping infringement of power. Every generation thinks that it has the savvy and the tools to prevent the abuses -- when in reality prevention of abuse is impossible.
/.'ers -- The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist -- apply to more than just the "military-industrial complex". Any power will be "misplaced" as soon as just one unethical person gets his hands on it.
Eisenhower's words, quoted by several other
The only way to limit (not prevent) abuses is to severely curtail the amount of power out there to be abused.
How can a post be modded "overrated" or "underrated" when it hasn't been rated yet?
The best explanation is that he needed some press, and figured that "I'm being hassled by The Man" was a good tack for his audience.
Will be the last of the famous international detainees?
bomb bomb allah president kill bush cheney islam iraq bomb nuke nuclear batmobile taliban saddam osama afghanistan nuke china nuke bomb allah terrorist wtc
When I hear stories about stuff like TIA and Echelon, I start to worry that the gubment is going to be all-seeing and all-knowing. Then, I hear a news story about how our leaders didn't even know a Arab country had bought an entire US port, then I relax a little bit. Incompetence trumps diabolical planning every time.
If you are at all interested in this topic, and have the time, I strongly urge you to read Thomas Powers' article "The Biggest Secret" http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18730 in the New York Review of Books.
OoO
Please do not publish outside of
Looking into the US from a long way off, articles like this consistently give the impression that the US is out of control; at least out of the control or ordinary hard working citizens. What has happened to accountability? How does the average citizen take a stand and agitate for real change if it takes umpteen million dollars or ownership of a great chunk of popular media to get elected to office?
How far from the ideal can you go and still call it a democracy? Maybe you still get to vote (If you are willing to stand in line for hours on end on polling day, and you haven't been taken off the electoral roll by your political opponents for some unknown reason) but if the political establishment has pre-filtered or sanitised or heavily biased (with little regard for impartial analysis of the facts) all the information available to help you make your choice can you still claim to be making an informed choice?
If the practical realities of electioneering mean you only get to choose from those with very large bank balances, can you really claim ultimate political authority still comes from the people? If only the very rich can stand for office with any expectation of being elected, don't they have considerably more political authority than the average citizen?
While the US does still sometimes present a shining beacon for the world, it increasingly looks dimmer and less frequent. The darker episodes also seem to be more frequent. With luck, this will come to be seen as an aberration, but from where I stand I don't like the downward direction the US looks to be heading in.
What makes this scary is
Yes, of course it contains information about incidents and people in the United States, including U.S. Citizens.
Granted, it's been twenty years, but this guy did release an album (with the Smiths) titled "The Queen is Dead". Contained a number of amusing lyrics such as "Her very lowness with her head in a sling.." and so on. Good record, btw.
Then of course, he's not only a homosexual but a vegetarian as well - strikes two and three, as it were.
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
With all the other stories that've been breaking in the past few months of the NSA wholesale spying on American civilians, the real news here isn't just that the TIA is around. It's that the Senate ordered it shut down, and it wasn't.
Lets look at the past couple of years. The Executive branch has claimed the powers to: declare people including American citizens "enemy combatants" and hold them incommunicado overseas for however long they wish with no access to the US court system, wiretap American citizens within the United States without a court order or indeed any judicial review. Recently the Vice President has also claimed to power to unilaterally declassify anything that he wants.
The CIA has been caught running torture flights through allied countries without their apparent knowledge, running secret prisons in EU member states without EU knowledge, and to top it off, they were caught kidnapping people on the streets of Milan without the knowledge of the Italian government.
The Pentagon, the FBI and the California National Guard have all been caught spying on peaceful protesters on American soil, in spite of a law that specifically forbids this.
A few months ago... Congress passed a law banning torture. The President grudgingly signed this into law, but reiterated his belief that he wasn't personally bound by the ban.
Now we find out that while the Senate ordered a domestic surveillance operation shut down years ago because it was a threat to the privacy of the average American... the Executive branch has decided to keep it going anyhow, without anyone's knowledge.
What's the point of even having a Legislative or Judicial branch anymore? They have no real powers at this point.
The Executive branch can just arbitrarily declare people outside the judicial branch's jurisdiction to keep them out of the courts, and the whole notion of getting a court order for federal law enforcement action is now considered "obsolete".
The Legislature still theoretically gets to pass laws, but the executive branch can basically break them at will... and since the power of enforcing those laws falls within the executive branch's domain, is it any wonder that all these overt violations of the laws of Congress never amount to any meaningful charges?
In fact, we don't even know how far the executive branch's power goes at this point... nobody new the President had the power to wiretap without warrants. The Constitution never mentions it... in fact, federal law specifically prohibits it. Indeed, when the press first found out about this power, they were pressured to keep it a secret (which they did for over a year), and when the existance of this power was revealed to thew general public, members of the executive branch denounced the revelation of the power itself as unlawful.
did someone say skynet?
Let them keep hitting us and hitting us and smile back and let them hit us again.
Are you volunteering to be the next person hit?
How can a post be modded "overrated" or "underrated" when it hasn't been rated yet?
My view is that neither England or America are democratic societies. You can't really speak your mind and if you do you're investigated.
The Brit is a famous critic of the US-led war in Iraq and has dubbed President GEORGE W BUSH a "terrorist" - but he was baffled to be hauled in by authorities.
Heh. Am I the only one who thinks this guy is an idiot?
It seems it's getting more and more popular to criticize the US and accuse them of being a totalitarian faschist state, yet any time they do anything even remotely in line with those accusations the critics act shocked and distraught. Here's a tip: pick your viewpoint and stick with it. As any Chinses citizen will tell you, if you live under a totalitarian state it's usualy not a good idea to publicaly criticize them. They have a nasty way of making you dissapear. So if you truly beleive that the US has become one, it might behoove you to either STFU, or move away and criticize them from a distance.
On the other hand, if the US is still a free and open democratic society, you sure would be an asshole if you went around making accusations that even you don't really beleive in.
What the heck. Ridicule or not, I'll take /. as the forum to say that I'm an outspoken person against the current government on blogs and reveal that I have had the "Philip K. Dick experience".
/.ers probably know, PKD wasn't in a good state when he died. He said that his house was ransacked and, although he said he didn't know who did it, he suspected the FBI or local sheriff. Some people think he might have done it himself at that point in his life.
As a large percentage of
You have to visualize my apartment storage. Since I hoard books and some amateur radio equipment, it is much like a solid 8x8x6 cube of heavy boxes. One night I got broken into and _every_ box inspected. Other building occupants were coming down over the HOURS I was repacking and marveling how my stuff had exploded into the aisles of the space.
Yet, here's the thing. As far as I can tell, NOTHING and I emphasize NOTHING was taken. Screw the amateur radio equipment -- where are you going to hock an old HF transceiver quietly? But it seems to me if I were some young punk(s) who went to that much trouble I would have either taken something like the window air conditioner, the few 1950s comic books, or the like for slight compensation of the night or maybe just destroyed some stuff out of anger and frustration.
The local police station told me, "Nothing stolen or destroyed, no crime." So who has that discipline? Maybe info thieves looking for cancelled checks and credit cards (_old_ ones in my storage space?) or someone else who wanted to know who I was and what I was holding. You give me your guess who you think that would be.
If nothing else, when a government demonstrates that it thinks it can make and break the law and work in the dark, paranoia is going to rise. That's not necessarily a bad attitude for a citizen either but, then, when is enough enough? The first casualty of a lawless government is peace of mind.
How depressing a song Morrissey will write about the experience.
I'm soaking my cutting blades in alcohol right now...
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
The article, a troll, was posted to Slashdot, as others are to other forums, to elicit responses that can be added to the secret data bases and correlated with the user's email, other postings, cell phone calls, etc. with the idea of fingering anyone who is disloyal (to the present regime at least). If it's determined that the person is not a security threat he or she can be picked up for questioning (intimidation) or other intimidating actions taken. Or if there might, possibly, be a threat sterner methods may be in store.
Ah, this couldn't be true, I need my morning coffee. Wait who's at the door at this hour?
Nate
Nate
Unaware of the 4th Amendment
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
To draw a crude analogy we did not "beat" communism by invading korea or vietnam we "beat" them because our way of life was accepted and won the war of ideas.
Touchy-feely ideas don't win wars. In point of fact, for winning wars a totalitarian system is more efficient than a democratic system simply because there is no room for dissention. For achieving short-term wins, you can't beat a dictatorship. We won in the long term because their economy collapsed. Their economy collapsed because our economy was more diverse and fluid, and we forced them to shovel massive ammounts of resources into their military complex. We did that by expanding our own military capabilities, and constantly engaging them on foreign soil. Make no mistake about it, if the US had not made itself a threat to the USSR, Communism would have lasted a heck of a lot longer than it had. As long as such a system can keep expanding, and as long as it has no real external competition, there's nothing to bring it down.
If you ask me (I'll agree that no-one is) we need to pull the Mohamed Ali ropa-dope on our enemies. Let them keep hitting us and hitting us and smile back and let them hit us again. When they realize our resolve of ideas remains, that is when we would have won and not before.
May Mohamed Ali beat your ass for misusing his name in such a horrible fashion. Any boxer and any fighter will tell you that fighting a purely defensive battle is the same as losing the battle.
Bear with me for a moment
TIA - Spanish for Aunt & Tias knew everything going on
Now... where's the closest large scale repository of Tias?
If you said Mexico, you'd be right!
Guess who Bush wants to allow easy access to in the U.S. of A.?
If you said Mexicans, you'd be right!
His immigration and naturalization drive for illegal Mexicans is merely a secret attempt to bring in more Tias, so that he can increase the U.S.'s human intelligence gathering powers.
Importing Mexican Aunts to spy on American citizens... not even your tinfoil hat will save you now.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
When Total Information Awareness was first let out of the skunkworks, it had a logo: An Illuminati pyramid bathing the earth with a glowing searchlight:
2 0awareness
http://www.cafepress.com/buy/total%20information%
(I have absolutely no association with the Cafepress "store" linked to above. Just pointing it out because I had the link and knew there was a picture of the old logo there.)
I miss that logo. It really laid things on the table. The fact that they not only chose that design, but put it on their web page suggested an arrogance so deep it wrapped around into cluelessness. When they pulled the plug, you almost had to feel sorry for the creepy ivory-dungeon darkside academic creeps involved.
Well, we still have TIA, but no cool logo. I guess they learned their lesson.
Hey! Maybe we'll get a chance to see the new, secret logo when they drag us into the local Halliburton-run Reeducation Center after the post-2006 election coup^H^H^H^H Patriotic Values Revolution.
Stefan
As someone who lives in far-away, safe and quiet Sweden it also makes me wonder what these people are at. Are they diligently uncovering evidence for some sort of super-Watergate or are they the usual fringe mob of conspiracy theorists? Any Yanks out there who care to comment on this? I know for one that if these accusations were levelled at the Swedish or Dutch government they would be either dispelled with fact or pursued in court and parliament.
--frank[at]unternet.org
Yes, it's still running. /. Opinion.
There is a federal program, budget dollars authorized against the project, and it would be a black eye for all of the contracting and management people, not to mention a severe hardship on the actual project staff, if they didn't strive to meet 100% of the goals of the project.
Whether or not this is a variation of the Nuremberg defense is left up to the Court of
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Effective at what? Poindexter's 1980s project, Iran/Contra, wasn't effective at deposing the Communist Nicaraguan government - that happened years after Iran/Contra folded, a result of other covert ops run by different spooks. It was effective in arming Iran, robbing Savings and Loans, arming cocaine gangs, funding arms dealers, pumping cocaine into America, killing thousands of people, and violating all kinds of laws. And putting traitor^WOliver North on TV.
I expect Poindexter's TIA is effective in finding blackmail content to protect Poindexter. But the Congressional act that killed TIA also outlawed its successors, which this current program clearly is. Poindexter and his minions should get the book thrown at them. And Poindexter should hang for sedition, a repeat traitor with obviously no chance of rehabilitation. Stop him before he spies again.
--
make install -not war
There are plenty of ways to explain Morrisey's experience. First, he's a goddamn loudmouth attention whore.
While I do not agree with you totally I must say that Morrisey is a total bore. I can't believe that people are still listening to his endless moanings about how bad he feels about either being male or being gay... Pretty much every Smiths song is about how much he wants to die because of his not so secret shame...
Why would people listen to such crap? Either they're just as depressed as Morrisey is or they feel that suffering is a means of communication. Either way it's simply pathetic. Infact it's plainly neurotic.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Morrissey got the title of his last album wrong. It should have been 'I Am The Quarry'.
You must think in Russian.
Did you really believe that they would ever voluntarily slow the march toward a complete surveillance society where everything that you buy, everywhere you go and even every conversation that you have is ruthlessly cataloged by the state. This is why they are pushing the RFID chips in products, the RFID chips in people, the cashless society, the national ID card (see HR418, the "Real ID" act http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:H.R.418 : ), the NSA domestic spying, and the patriot act.
Did you know that under the PATRIOT act (HR3162 http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d107:h.r.0 3162: ) all of your property can be seized and the burden will be on you to prove that you are not a terrorist so that you can get your property back. What is the definition of a terrorist? Under section 802 of the PATRIOT act, a terrorist is anyone who is involved in "dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State" is a terrorist. So literally if you jay-walk you are a terrorist. Any one of us is in danger of being declared a terrorist at any time. When the government considers its entire population to be the enemy there is a term for that -- a police state.
None of this stuff is a coincidence. Start getting informed about this stuff so that you know how to protect yourself.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
While on one level, I see the validity of your post, on another, I know there is another alternative. What we need to do is recognize how they have achieved this. They have divided us along as many lines as they can. Athiests hate believers, believers hate athiests and you get large segments on each side of that coin thinking the other is the big threat. Then you move to abortion, which is an even more powerful split. The pro-choice and pro-life camps hate each other, and large segments on each side have construed the other to be the big threat. Then there is the gun debate, two sides hating each other seeing the other as the big threat. Then there is the classic left right BS, where both sides think they are supporting real change, etc... both sides hating each other as "the big threat".
The list goes on and on and on. How hard is it to let go of such surface shallowness to work together for the common goal of reclamation of our government? All these issues are all secondary to what is going on now. These politicians have exploited these issues and encouraged the divisions for a very very specific reason. It takes peoples eyes off of what they are working towards. I've said this so many times around the net and I'll say it again, read the Pentagon Papers. It tells the story of two political parties working towards the same goal, while using these other shallow "issues" to keep peoples eyes off of what was really going on.
And by the time a democrat or republican is done reading something like I just typed, instead of actually doing some info into the Pentagon Papers, they are going with their programming, and thinking about justifications for how their party is somehow better. And that's bullshit. That's how we got here. That's how we're in this mess.
Abortion is a non-issue. Gun ownership is a non-issue. Everything other than government corruption and politician ownership by special interest is a non-issue, until these other things are addressed. Who the fuck cares if abortion is legal or not, if your every move is monitored? Who the fuck cares if you can own a gun or not, if the government begins questioning you every time you crticize it? At that point, which is where we are heading, these other things will be like complaining about a fly in the soup when the base of the soup is urine!
People have to be shown clearly, that it isn't one or the other party, that both parties need to removed from office, and that we need to put people in office who don't owe their political careers to political head giving. It really is not that hard. It's a lot easier than a violent revolution.
maybe more people need to start using emacs for email and ending everything with esc x spook
even the magic 8 ball has an opinion on email clients: Outlook not so good.
I don't care if the Fed is running a project to profile terrorists based off financial transactions, purchases, telecommunications, all that jazz. Many private industries like choicepoint already gathered information close to that previously, not to mention the phone records etc.
What is scary though, is that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Danger identified members of the 9-11 terrorist group prior to their attack, yet the wall of seperation between the military and law enforcement created by Jamie Gorelick was sufficient to deter that information sharing to the FBI (Able Danger was a SOCOM project).
We in the US already know we don't have half the consumer protections our european cousins have. That is why companies share our information all the time, for cash. While it isn't something I like, it isn't something I can stop either. If those companies are exploiting my personal info for cash, why can't the US govt use that same kind of info to protect us?
All the slashdot conspiracy theorists need to wake up and smell the coffee. This is not 1960. The US now has very real enemies seeking to get here and slaughter innocents. Get off your stupid America hating, "we caused this" retarded platform too.
I'm all for TIA, and I'd love to see a biometric national ID card next.
FTA:
We will be describing this new effort as "Basketball"
Basketball??? Does this remind anyone else of Rumsfeld's assertion that we should no longer refer to the insurgents as "insurgents?" And the subsequent joke that W. would rename the deficit "cake." Because, really, who doesn't like cake?
It's as though Orwell suddenly took an absurd turn... next, we'll see the Department of Tennis, the Department of Impressionist Paintings, &c. &c.; the former will run Guantanamo Bay, the latter, Abu Ghraib.
This article may shed a little more light on the subject. I suspect it has more to do with TIA's monitoring of commerce.
Thank you! You just described the reason I love The Smiths.
Infact it's plainly neurotic.
Do healthy, happy, successful people enjoy music at all? If so, should I blame them for the new Toto record?
If anyone cares to remember, Morrissey is that whiney lead singer of the Smiths. Eventually, I think he found out what Zoloft was and started to make a few good songs. (The Cure > The Smiths)
Reguardless, TIA is clueless. Apparently, the establishment seems to be more interested in interrigating some guy in some gothic punk rock band than actually going after...oh...let me think...OSAMA BIN LADEN!
Keep in mind that ever since 1999, post-Columbine to be exact, the government has been spying on just about every 13 year old whose ever walked into a Hot Topic or been to a Marylin Manson concert. They just might "shoot up the school" or "explode a bomb during a high school assembly". To which, TIA has just about every LiveJournal and MySpace account monitored.
What the government does not see is that it is not the spooky kids with their esoteric lifestyle or the geeky kids with their knowledge of computer networks who are a threat to national security, It's those perky, happy mainstream kids who are the threat! especially the ones who are part of some high school religious organization.
At this point, the FBI is wasting there time with Morrissey. And those British Intellegence agents, shouldn't they be finding the chavs that executed Britans largest bank heist a few days ago rather than questioning this guy. Who are they going to interview next? Nick Cave? Siouxsie Sioux? Adam Ant?
Total Information Awareness is an experiment that is DOOMED TO FAIL!
BTW, Hi, TIA! You guys suck!
/Plays David Bowie f/ Trent Reznor - I'm Afraid of Americans
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
"Just posting this story probably puts me on their radar."
You're missing the point - with TIA, everyone is always on the radar.
In the 90's he was accused of racism and showing at least tacit support for far right politcal groups.
Personally I think the allegations were very overblown, but but some of his lyrics, interviews and the imagery that he has used seems to flirt with racism and nationalism. Songs like 'National Front Disco' (the NF being a british far right group) and 'Bengali in Platforms' can be interpreted as racist even if that wasn't their original intent, as can many of the mans public comments e.g.
"Reggae is vile."
"Obviously to get on Top Of The Pops these days one had to be, by law, black. I think something political has happened and there has been a hefty pushing of all these black artists and all this discofied nonsense into the Top 40... In essence, this music doesn't say anything whatsoever "
Saying stuff like this whilst wandering round draped in a Union Jack along with his apparent fascination with skinheads, is bound to raise a few eybrows.
Perhpas Morrissey's history has to do with his recent 'interview', that coupled with his recent comments may have been enough to cause a blip on government radars. As I say, I don't think the man really is a facist as some would have it (actually Im a big fan, seen him live many times) but there may be more to this than just his anti bush comments. Everyone here has assumed that it's some sort of liberal, left wing viewpoint that has landed him in trouble, just because he's anti bush doesn't mean that he's also a liberal. They may have thought he was involved with the far right.
"I don't want to be European. I want England to remain an island. I think part of the greatness of the past has been the fact that England has been an island." (Morrissey, August 1992)
sounds similar to the BNPs view. There's a good page about his nineties nationalist controversy here
I do belive that the current regime here in the UK and in the USA has gone way top far in eroding our liberties, and that pulling Moz in was unjustified, but at the same time groups and their supporters that seek to damage society and disrupt the democratic process do need watching. I'd hate to think that no one was paying attention.
"Backing one group against another is only a problem when you back the losing side. When the US backed one group of Europeans against another group of Europeans in WW2, it turned out fine because they backed the winning side."
Another way of looking at that is when you decide to "back" individual people instead of principles of government, you inevitably end up backing people that do things against your own principles sooner or later, then what do you do?
It happens in all spheres I suppose, should you be loyal to the president the man or to the country? To your boss or to your company? To your family or your community? Being loyal to just principles means you will sometimes have to drop support of individuals that you previously supported, but it always comes as a consequence of their actions that violate those principles.
Sure there are reasons to form mutual aid compacts such that you allow them to do what they want and they allow you to do what you want. To support eachother as individuals without regard to conduct. Thieves, murderers, and other miscreants do it all the time and benefit enormously. But the just must resist the temptation, and hold themselves to the same rule of law they hold others to.
Is he 'out'?
I had thought that, like Cliff Richard, he is homosexual only inasmuch as he is sexually attracted only to himself (a person of the same sex), and noone else.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
That the US government could possibly be the perpetrators of public lies and secret spying?
a genoa jib is a headail that extends beyond the mast, (the rigid structure that holds the sails up) and and now it's topsail? a sail that is above the mast.
am I reaching too far to see the mast as a metaphor for law?
-- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
Just posting this story probably puts me on their radar.
with out a doubt. All it really takes is to visit the Huffington Post 3 days in a row.
I just looked through all the comments rated 4 and above...
/. is so automatic as to make it painful.
Every single one of them contained what has become the Slashdot canonical response to any action the government takes on the war on terror... the paranoid cry...
'they're spying on me'
'they're evil'
'they are sending evil rays to control my thoughts'
(alright - I made up the last one)
While there may be something to criticise in this program (part of which was able to spot the 9-11 terrorists before the act, but was prohibited from using the information), the response on
Does anyone out there ever consider that there might be people in government that might actually be trying to protect us? Does anyone consider that some programs are not as bad as described in the main stream press (i.e. spying on international phone calls to terrorist suspects has been morphed into "wholesale domestic wiretaps")?
Has anyone considered that liberty can never be absolute in a world of real human beings, and that the issue is not *whether* you give up some privacy, but *when* giving it up is appropriate and when it is not?
I'd just like to see a slight bit of balance here. The monotone is becoming boring.
Oh, and to hopefully forestall some canonical responses....
Ben Franklin's quote about protection and liberty is absolutist, and he himself, by being involved in a government which provided protection at the cost of liberty proved that, so please don't raise that old quote as a response.
Yes, the measures might be abused. The same logic applies to all government powers - so the simple assertion that they may be abused and therefore are wrong is without value. It applies just as well to prosecutors, police departments and DOD. An argument based on this assertion has to be a lot more specific - it needs to show the cost of the abuses vs the cost of not implementing the program, or make an alternative recommendation.
If it were not for some perhaps over-zealous protections enacted by civil libertarian fundamentalists, the World Trade Center towers might still be standing. Of course, if it were not for perhaps over-zealous protections enacted by civil libertarian fundamentalists, we might all now be wearing GPS ankle bracelets. Go figure.
This program may be evil. Or it may have good and bad components. Or it may be very good. Remember, the evil department of defense, during the time of the Vietnam War, created the internet. Bad... oh how bad.... look how it could be abused... how it could help the government keep track of people! Obviously, people should have been alert at the time and prevented its creation.
Finally, I love the word canonical.
The only good weather is bad weather.
Who hit who first?
Our forefathers beliefs have been thrown out the window, then tramppled on by politics. We have freedom of religion, as long as you are christian. Ironicly, most of our forefathers were not christian, but diest.
"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security"- Benjamin Franklin
-William
God is everything science has yet to explain.
This ain't the 1700's. Back then, the average firepower of an armed civilian was only slightly less than the average firepower of a soldier.
Today, the average firepower of a soldier is, after you factor in all the supporting firepower he has at his disposal (tanks, mortars, bombs, aircraft, etc.) is thousands of times that of the average civilian. And if we include weapons of mass destruction, that ratio rises to millions.
If the King of England had been able to drop a nuke onto the U.S. revolutionaries, the revolution would have been stopped dead in its tracks. What makes you think that a government whose existence is threatened by its own population won't be willing to do the same (and that's only if the thousands-to-one firepower advantage they already have proves to not be enough)?
So don't go busting out the U.S. revolution as a shining example of what can be accomplished today, because it doesn't even come close to applying to the modern world.
No, not impossible, I'll grant you that.
But even if you shake people's faith in the media, the media in question has to be replaced with something that is as easily accessible. Not only must it be as easily accessible, it must also not be centrally controlled (for if it's centrally controlled then those who currently control the media can gain control over it, and we're back to where we started).
There is nothing that meets those requirements. Not even the internet. Every other method of information distribution requires a lot more work on the part of the recipient. If you try to ignore the inherent laziness of humans, then your attempt at replacing the mass media will have failed before it begins.
What's in my head is the result of observing the real world. I'm a realist. What "control" the PTBs have over me is at the point of a gun. I don't listen to the mass media. If I did, I wouldn't recognize the problem. I do recognize the problem. I also recognize, because I'm a realist, that it's effectively impossible to fix it now. We're way past the point of no return. Ignore that at your own peril, for the real world doesn't give a crap what you believe.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
Even if TIA were so well-tuned that it could screen out 99% of the population as being not potential terrorists, that leaves 2.9 million people to investigate. That's a huge pool. Many false positives will come of it, and meanwhile actual terrorists will be missed, with great resources spent chasing false leads.
There is no substitute for on-the-ground investigation and detective work. If you look to pre-911 investigations of the 19 hijackers, they were well-known to our investigators. Very well known.
Undocumented immigrant-terrorists will be the most diffcult to locate - under the ICE radar and not using electronic money, I imagine. In the end, foreign policy trumps large-scale security efforts, which ultimately fail due to the net not being fine enough.
O lord, bless this thy holy hand grenade, that with it thou mayest blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy mercy.
They've all been toned down or discontinued in the last decade, but other companies also had the pyramid/eyeball logo: AOL, Logitech, and Fidelity.
And of course the all-seeing eye pyramid is being taken off of US currency.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
that coupled with his recent comments may have been enough to cause a blip on government radars. As I say, I don't think the man really is a facist as some would have it
You're under some sort of impression that this individual citizen, exercising his right to freedom of speech and opinion, and being investigated (secretly or openly) by his government for that, is the fascist?
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Lucifer is mentioned one time in the bible, in Isaiah 14:12. It was not in reference to Satan, but to Tiglath-pileser III, King of Babylon.
Lucifer is the term the early Romans used for the planet Venus. It came into the bible through a translation error. The original Hebrew term "HeYLeL BeN-ShaCHaR" that ment bright son of the morning/dawn was translated as Phosphorus,The then current Greek Term for Venus, and then into Lucifer, the term used by the Romans for Venus. Now we are stuck with it, and many christians belive it refers to an archangel that fell from hevean. If you dont belive me, break out your good book, and start reading from Isaiah 14:1.
The NIV has done away with the word, and changed it to morning star, some christians protest this, because they still think its a referance to Satan, and Jesus is also refered to as the Morning star.
-William
God is everything science has yet to explain.
I guess we just have to assume that everything we transmit electronically on any channel is being recorded and analyzed. The natural instinct if you don't want to be spied on is "use encryption," but I just have to take it on faith that key-based encryption hasn't been secretly broken by someone wicked smart at the NSA since I don't remotely have the math.
Is it known for a fact that PGP doesn't have backdoors for the FBI, or that nobody's got a quantum computer in some underground lab calmly ripping though 2048-bit keys? Who do we believe? And should we also assume that using encryption at all raise your "snoopability score" with the gov't spooks and subject you to more intensive surveillance?
-- http://frobnosticate.com
(1) They haven't ticketed me. (2) Everyone in America knows that the custom is for cops to allow a measure of grace of 5 (in some places 10) mph above the "speed limit" before writing tickets. (3) That's certainly the custom throughout Vermont and New Hampshire -- in practice cops stop nobody not going at least 5 over, and we've all driven through speed traps enough to know that that's the social contract about speed limits. Signs mean nothing outside of context; and in context these signs mean "not more than 5 mph over." It would be nice to impose literalism and raise all speed limits 5 mph while actually enforcing that -- but too many people wouldn't get the word and would drive too fast during the transition period. It's sort of like metric conversion: makes sense; won't happen.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
I happened to be sitting next to Vernor Vinge at a convention a few years back, listening to a presentation on trends in monitoring technology. We passed a few notes back and forth, but the one that really stuck in my mind was this one (paraphrased, 'cause I don't have the paper handy): --MarkusQ
Yeah, I voted for GWB because he said some of the right things. He said it was wrong that the Federal Government, in a time of peace, was taking in as much of the GDP as it did in WWII. He also thought the Federal Government was too invasive and should be scaled back. How clever of him to have justified it all with endless warfare in a few short years.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I'll volunteer to be hit next, or anyone I know or care about in even the slightest fashion. True security will never be achieved. Given the likelihood that I or anyone else I am even remotely associated with will be a little more than overwhelmingly likely to suffer from much more mundane ends, I don't worry about it. Car accident? Possibly. Slip in the shower? Maybe. Terrorist victim? Might as well buy some lottery tickets.
I'll add a corollary to the oft quoted Ben Franklin saying, though I'm not sure who wrote it. "A ship in a harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are for." Give up your rights, build your own prison and do the safe thing by moving under a proverbial microscope. Please do not overreact when I don't jump to do the same thing or resist you wanting me to do so.
pant
Do healthy, happy, successful people enjoy music at all?
Certainly. And certainly these people aren't happy all the time but it's nothing like the endless moanings of Morrisey. There's nothing wrong with having a good time every now and then and there's nothing wrong about listening to music that isn't endless depressive noise.
If so, should I blame them for the new Toto record?
Never even knew there was a new Toto album. There are 6 billion people who roam the face of this planet and my guess is that about half of them buy music on a regular basis at some point in their lives. That leaves a lot of room for various artists to get ahead.
And it's not that I mind the occasional Smiths song but Morrisey is still a bore.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
We simply can not pay for domain experts to be teaching our kids, even if the cost wouldn't skyrocket as demand went up. Swiping such experts from industry would cause serious problems for industry, so there goes the economy. Besides, most of these people don't have the patience and clarity required to teach well.
We have 2 serious obstacles:
1. The teacher's union blocks reform. It would be great if we could reward teachers who make students learn. Instead, we reward teachers for years of experience.
2. Normal and dim-witted people don't like seeing most of the money go to where it will do the most good. Bright kids are bored out of their mind while the teacher struggles to control the idiots. We can't give special treatment to the bright kids, kick out the dumb kids, or effectively punish the troublemakers.
As you say later, in addition to the above:
4 6.php and http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=cache:www.iwm. at/publ-jvc/jc-11-04.pdf+author:%22Bailey%22
> They're setting up considerable precedent in the future that the President doesn't have to abide by Congressional edicts, high court rulings, or indeed, international human rights treaties.
This is not surprising though, since ratified treaties carry the same/similar weight as the words of the Constitution itself (provided no part of the treaty is contrary to our Federal laws or Constitution (Article 6 and 1836's New Orleans v. U.S.? I'm sure someone will correct me)). If Bush can't be bothered to abide the Constitution he surely isn't going to be hung up over treaty obligations.
However, the President is not above the law. Ever. As Jefferson argued[1], if a President feels obliged (morally) to break the law in order to uphold his oath of office he must submit to the penalty of law (it is noble to fall on one's own sword in defense of the republic). If Bush has to (apparently) violate FISA and Amendment 4 to save the republic (from the terrorists!) then he must be willing to submit to us, under our laws. I might even go as far as claiming that if George Bush is not impeached, he must be arrested and tried in January of 2009. Don't worry though, innocent men are arrested all the time, even jailed pending trial (arguably in every case as they have not yet been proven guilty).
[1]http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/0030
I wonder when CATO will run one of these on Bush.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
When did this become the Daily Kos?
"kick out the dumb kids"
Ummm, the idea of universal eductaion is that it is, well, universal. (ie: everyone gets a BASIC education.) What you do with those basics during adulthood is entirely up to you.
"Normal and dim-witted people don't like seeing most of the money go to where it will do the most good."
Thankfully that translates into: the majority of people dissagree with you.
You can add me to that majority for the following reason: If you are "smart" you have a greater ability to educate yourself. Therefore, I would rather a few "smart" people feel ripped-off by the education system than rip-off the majority by focusing on prima-dona's. Not to mention the fact that the prima-dona's would be left facing a larger, more ignorant and more dominant mob mentality as adults.
BTW: I am not from the US but paying teachers for experince would seem to be designed to lower the turnover of teachers, thus providing some consitency and expertise. Wether you like it or not, childeren will emotionally bind to thier teachers.
I myself have 26yrs of experience raising my own kids, I find that an underlying consistency of environment for a child greatly enhances the chances of creating a well balanced adult. Me thinks you simply don't like the word "Union", paying a premium for experienced teachers is a perfectly "sane" thing to do with the taxpayers money.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
"While there may be something to criticise in this program (part of which was able to spot the 9-11 terrorists before the act, but was prohibited from using the information), the response on /. is so automatic as to make it painful."
... everything he eats, etc. Having good intentions doesn't always translate to sound actions to that end.
... we have carefully considered it ... thus the posts. The fact that there is a general concensus should clue you in to the fact that many people, much more informed, educated, and smarter than you, understand the issue and universally agree that this is a BadThing(tm.)
... I see where you are going with this. It's like the Copernicus slant on reality. Everyone agrees that the Earth is round and revolves around the sun. This indicates that people have not thought about it very well, and it would be much better if half the population of Slashdot would contend that it is Flat and stationary ;-)
... how will we solve this problem? OH! I have an idea! Maybe we can invent some sort of system of checks and balances! Nah ... forget it. That will never work, and besides that is exactly what terrorists are trying to get to happen. They would not be happy if they knew we had systems in place to check abuse of
There was already a report in the White House containing all necessary information. It was ignored because there was already too much information through which to sift. Slashdot is frequented by a lot of well educated people who understand technology. They are aware of how it can be beneficial, and how it can be abused. They also understand goverment enough to know what about the system of checks and balances, what principles were conveyed by the founding fathers when they penned the US constitution, and how far off track today's government is from what those in power claim it is.
"Does anyone out there ever consider that there might be people in government that might actually be trying to protect us? Does anyone consider that some programs are not as bad as described in the main stream press (i.e. spying on international phone calls to terrorist suspects has been morphed into "wholesale domestic wiretaps")?"
We have little doubt that many are trying to protect us. One way to protect a child is to lock him in a cellar and control his every move
"Has anyone considered that liberty can never be absolute in a world of real human beings, and that the issue is not *whether* you give up some privacy, but *when* giving it up is appropriate and when it is not?
Yes
"I'd just like to see a slight bit of balance here. The monotone is becoming boring."
Oh
"Ben Franklin's quote about protection and liberty is absolutist, and he himself, by being involved in a government which provided protection at the cost of liberty proved that, so please don't raise that old quote as a response."
If you knew what the definition of proof was, you probably wouldn't have an issue with the quote, and I am certain you would understand the problem. A pedophile may claim that the Earth is spherical. The fact that he is a pedophile does not prove that the earth is flat. Your logic fails you.
"Yes, the measures might be abused. The same logic applies to all government powers - so the simple assertion that they may be abused and therefore are wrong is without value. It applies just as well to prosecutors, police departments and DOD. An argument based on this assertion has to be a lot more specific - it needs to show the cost of the abuses vs the cost of not implementing the program, or make an alternative recommendation."
So in other words, it applies to members of the executive branch, members of the executive branch, and memebers of the executive branch. Hmmm
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Ooh, that's going in the quotefile. Thanks!
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Google 'attrs'
In WW2 and the Korean War it was defending largely democratic countries against vicious dictatorships. In the Middle East it's been backing one tyrant against another or propping up the very badly managed and intransigent Israeli governments.
You might be surprised at the effectiveness of a peashooter against a grenade in close quarters. The day the government actually uses nuclear weapons, on US soil, against US citizens is the day that half of all of this country's troops pull of their insignia and pick up their guns. Considering the number of governments that have fallen to uprisings in human history, it's foolish to say the least to believe that any governments currently in existence won't (unless it's first conquered from without). On another note, look at the difficulty that the Soviet Union had in Afghanistan. They had tanks, planes, artillery, etc. and for the most part the Afghanis had outdated muskets. Of course, they were also supplied with modern weapons by the US gov't, but then American citizens could just as easily be supplied by other governments in such a case. Note that I'm not advocating the overthrow of the government, just saying that given this country's history I think it likely that that's how it will end, be it 50 or 500 years from now. Then a new government will be installed. Rinse, lather, repeat.
You probably have simulated middle click on press of both mouse buttons -- Try it in a text editor and see if it pastes.
Pasting a url into firefox will load it, and I guess / parsed into the url for it.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
Comparing denying someone naptime to keeping somebody up for days to weeks (past the point of sleep deprivation induced hallucinations and on toward major organ failure) is a little sleazy. You can really fuck people up with some of this psychological torture. And keep in mind that this isn't "punishment" for people convicted of crimes. In many cases the treatment is intended to provide the means to convict the person. I bet it's pretty easy for you to dismiss this as not that bad, when you haven't ever been exposed to anything like it.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
What facts am I missing? I, too, have functioned for long periods with extremely little sleep. It is my experience that led me to rebuke you for comparing extended sleep deprivation to missing nap-time. I see that you were trying to say that the bill would not allow someone to be deprived of nap-time, but that is simply not true. While it is somewhat vague in its wording at times, it is certainly not that vague.
Bear in mind, of course, that what is happening right now between us is what is known as a "discussion". It is in no way a personal attack on you or your ideals or whatever. It seems unnecessary to have to spell it out so plainly, but perhaps I'm just seeing this from a simpleton's point of view.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.