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More Details Emerge On Domestic Spying Programs
The feed brings us this NYTimes story giving new details on the telecom carriers' cooperation with secret NSA (and other) domestic spying programs. One revelation is that the Drug Enforcement Agency has been running a program since the 1990s to collect the phone records of calls from US citizens to Latin America in order to catch narcotics traffickers. Another revelation is what exactly the NSA asked for in 2001 that Qwest balked at supplying. According to the article, it was access to the company's most localized communications switches, which primarily carry domestic calls.
There, I saved some apologist troll from the trouble of posting a disingenuous, dismissive post treating more damning evidence of this administration's march toward a police state.
One revelation is that the Drug Enforcement Agency has been running a program since the 1990s to collect the phone records of calls from US citizens to Latin America in order to catch narcotics traffickers.
...thereby winning the war on drugs once and for all. ONCE AND FOR ALL!
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Of course they balked at being asked for access to the home records,
Criminal gangs, cartels and organisations are not individual customers and must have a business account with the phone company.
liqbase
Of course if this were a story about Government abuse of civil liberties in China, as applied to privacy, people would be decrying it as immaculate example of that failed, corruptible political system we call Communism. In America it just defers to "Well what have you got to hide, bad guy?"
Describing America in the context of Democracy becomes increasingly difficult.
So, my point: before posting a rant about the fascist big brother state that rules from beyond the centre of the Ultraworld, for heaven's sake take some actions to register your protest, and to work against it. This is the real freedom for which more abstract things like the right to not have your comms intercepted by the government. No-one's going to kick your door in at 5am and drag you off to Cuba for it, not yet anyway -(sadly I have to now include the disclaimer "unless you're very unlucky" :( ) There are 300,000-something EFF members and many more supporters, and we haven't ALL been arrested, not yet anyway ;)
Please, stick your hand in your pocket and send 'em $30 or whatever you can. Join, if you can afford it.
We now return you to the Soviet Russia jokes, tinfoil hat conspiracy theories and hair-splitting arguing the toss about the precise spec of the optical splitters being used in San Francisco.
The Govt has ALWAYS maintained the ability to do this for international calls. Old FDR did it, probably every administration since the beginning of telecommunications has done this.
Dicks? Yes.
Surprising/News? No.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
And he's not just wanted by any government. He's wanted by the so called "most powerful country on earth."
Come on, now. The seriously bad dudes out there running major operations aren't (usually) dumb enough to pick up the phone and chat away about their to-do lists. I'd think the use of commodity encryption software and computers has probably replaced a lot of insecure communications channels for these people, leaving the feds to pick up the low-hanging fruit. Sure, you might nab man number 137 on the totem pole o' dealers through a wiretap, but you're not going to be troubling the guy at the top of the food chain.
I'd imagine this applies to all sorts of bad guys, whether they're slinging coke by the truckload or plotting terrorist acts. That begs the question: what's the real value of these surveillance programs?
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
What? I thought this was all Bush and his neocon evil-doers! Sorry, had to get that out of the way. Now let's drop he partisanship and all work together to get back our liberties.
The cynic in me wonders why this story was published at 9pm EST on a Saturday night. Not just any Saturday night, the weekend before Christmas where most people have office Christmas parties or are otherwise occupied.
Nah, must be a coincidence.
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I was about to post this as is, but the CAPTCHA for posting as Anonymous Coward is "congress"
Yes, I remember the Clipper Chip. Essentially, a government-supplied encryption scheme with a backdoor that a law enforcement agency could get a court order to take advantage of.
I find it difficult to compare that egregious bit of stupidity -- which was proposed and thoroughly shot to pieces in full public view -- with this secretive, shadowy, unaccountable program.
These spying operations are both unconstitutional, and a complete waste of taxpayer time and money.
Black marketters (i.e., criminals) have wisened up to the fact that the telephone, and the Internet, is not a safe way to communicate. Many of them are even weary of the keyboard, since tapping into a keyboard with a stroke logger has been used to put some people away.
The drug war amazes me. Powerful interests involved in the profiteering over private medicinal use co-opt the security organizations to battle their competition. And yet few people call for the end to the drug war. The masterminds have long walked away from using technology that is easily spied on. The software, and hardware, that the masterminds use is far and away more powerful than most of the pro-privacy stuff I use. While I'm sure that the security organizations are continuously working to hack into the newer systems, they'll constantly lose ground to that battle.
Even the lesser members of the underground are moving away from open communications. Technology isn't cheap, but it's cheaper than jail. It's a wonder that people have faith in our security forces, who will always be one-step behind. As far as I'm aware, many of the ex-government security technologists are likely working for the other side (it's much more profitable). If I was truly profit-motivated, I'd likely do it myself, considering the amount of money that is available for someone tech savvy who is willing to provide the latest and greatest hardware and software to stay ahead of the security forces. Of course, morally I'm opposed to such work, but not because it is illegal. It just doesn't interest me to be part of the organizations of that sort. I'd rather do things morally, the law be damned.
So what is the end purpose of all this technology? It isn't safety for the citizens. I can only think of one reason, mostly conspiratorial, for the money and time spent: the learn how to use it for the powers that control the security forces. They all have their fingers in the pie, and by using taxpayer money for their research, they get the best of both worlds. Yes, it sounds like NWO-Alex-Jones mumbo-jumbo, but it's the only answer I can think of as to why we continue on with these programs.
FTFA:
Not without a wiretap warrent, I hope. It's amazing what kind of cooperation a warrent will still get. So, this is a nice excuse if you don't think about it very long.
Secure communications are not just a Constitutionally protected right, they are a prerequisite for business.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
You're saying this "could very well have benefitted you"?!? Specify exactly how, please.
AFAICT, the only thing the war on drugs successfully accomplished in MY life was to increase the cost of drugs so much that the only way a lower-class American could pay for them was to commit property crimes. Thus I can personally thank the war on drugs for my car and mail getting stolen, and having to change my bank account. Hooray!
Without the war on drugs, someone in my neighborhood would have been using drugs while holding down a low-wage job. I'm certainly glad that nightmare scenario was avoided!
I joined the EFF as soon as memberships were offered. (One of the key events that spurred the founding of the organization was the Secret Service raid on my publisher, Steve Jackson Games.) My original membership card is #127.
Through the years I've let the membership lapse now and then. For a while, the EFF's fights included marginal things like pushing ISDN connections. Hard to get excited about.
But now . . . they have a real fight. I just rejoined at the $100.00 level.
How many Bothan spies had to die to get us this information? God knows that the Democratically controlled Congress didn't do shit to get this information.
Okay, so Google is the all-seeing eye, grabbing up bits and pieces of data from the people who use it - yes, I know. That said, they did sponsor one talk that I found very interesting, and now seems like an appropriate time to share it. Policy@Google - Digital Search & Seizure
How much is it going to take for people to stand up against this? Lots of people may be upset and complaining about it, but as Thoreau said: "The are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."
"Early" 2001, February 2001, like before the Clintons had left the grounds, as Nacchio has said all along- PRIOR to 9/11! If you read the text of the latest FISA bill that includes retroactive immunity, it says they would drop civil suits only for spying AFTER 9/11. Plus, the amendment says it would have to be shown they didn't think it was illegal because the Bush administration said it wasn't, and last time I checked, the executive branch doesn't make the law...unless you count signing statements.
Actually "neo" does not mean that. Neo means new or modern ie "neoconservative" means new conservative. Neo is good for neologisms or new words.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Why does this post assume that domestic spying happens? Does domestic spying assume spying on US persons (including US citizens, green card holders, etc)? The government isn't allowed to spy on US persons in the US or abroad - see 4th amendment or EO 12333. Even if a US citizen lives in Iraq, NSA cannot monitor their calls. Conspiracy theorists point out that spying centers are in the US, but that doesn't mean they spy on US citizens, and especially not "surveillance" (as the article claims), which is a systematic monitoring. The NY Times article is written with a lot of assumptions and the article also notes that the details are not really known about any of the cases. What does this mean? It means, that the article is based largely on speculation.
As far as the war on drugs comment goes, it may not have affected you in a negative way, but I doubt it benefited you either (or anybody). Something like $500 billion spent and has there been any serious improvement?
Personally, I think more of them should just be "cons", as in convicts. Probably, when Bush is out of office and all the dust settles, a few of them will be. A few, just enough to make us think that some kind of justice was done. Still, I don't know how many life sentences one should receive for throwing away some thousands of lives, some few civil liberties, and a few trillion dollars of public funds, but whatever.
It's not just "cons", conservatives, who costs many lives and civil liberties. Bush's direct predecessor, Clinton, bombed Serbia back to the middle ages based on false and fack intel. Some mass graves had been shown to be staged for the west. Meanwhile the KLA, Kosovo Liberation Army was raising funds by dealing with opium, much like the Taliban is today.
The fact is is the US had supported coups against democratically elected governments and supported dictators throughout the 1900s.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Gee, where's your faux outrage now?
There's plenty of outrage to go around. Don't break this into red vs. blue BS. What part of "2001" don't you understand?
Support the constitution and the 4th Amendment no matter what year it is, and no matter what party is currently in "control".
This isn't to mention Bush's greatest threat to the constitution. The Bush administration has been using Satellites (in Space) to spy on other countries -- even our enemies -- without first getting warrants. And I won't even get into the rampant (warrantless) newspaper reading that goes on in the CIA and NSA and up the ladder straight to the white house.
It's impeachment time. The sheeple of the US need to stand up and do what's right.
Well, there needs to be a little red verses blue. When news of this first happened Bush claimed there was nothing wrong with it and that the previous administration had done the same. Of course that was adamantly denied while at the same time that same administration or elements of the former Clinton administration fueled the outrage over the programs.
A good majority of why America is pissed about this is because the people who denied doing it. It is only fair that the american public knows that portions of their outrage was a direct manipulation by people just as guilty if not more so. There actually is something to be said about a something that has been done before and not declared illegal. It directly gives other people who know about it the impression that it is legal. But that isn't the point.
The point is that a good majority of people were nothing but tools for certain people to gain some political advantage. Not only were they manipulative, but they lied in th process of doing the same. How can you trust the rest of the stuff they are claiming you should be outraged over? And I think the biggest shame of it all is the fact that people aren't legitimately outraged by these things on their own without lies and manipulations from one side attempting to gain a political advantage. Who in the two party system is actually the lessor of two evils?
That's NOT domestic, unless I missed the news about annexing all of Latin America.
Yes, I see what you say! When I replace the 's' with a dollar sign on all these company names, boundless hilarity ensues!!! HAHAHAHA!
Wal-Mart $tore$
General Motor$
ConocoPhillip$
J.P. Morgan Cha$e & Co.
Berk$hire Hathaway
Verizon Communication$
Intl. Bu$ine$$ Machine$
McKe$$on
Morgan $tanley
Goldman $ach$ Group
Ameri$ourceBergen
$tate Farm In$urance Co$
Co$tco Whole$ale
John$on & John$on
$ear$ Holding$
Well$ Fargo
United Technologie$
United Parcel $ervice
Lowe'$
Lehman Brother$ Holding$
CV$/Caremark
$print Nextel
Medco Health $olution$
$afeway
Archer Daniel$ Midland
$unoco
All$tate
Pep$iCo
Walt Di$ney
$y$co
John$on Control$
Be$t Buy
He$$
Federated Dept. $tore$
Ci$co $y$tem$
New York Life In$urance
American Expre$$
Wa$hington Mutual
Hartford Financial $ervice$
Comca$t
Ty$on Food$
New$ Corp.
Traveler$ Co$.
Ma$$achu$ett$ Mutual Life In$urance
General Dynamic$
Liberty Mutual In$. Group
As far as the war on drugs comment goes, it may not have affected you in a negative way, but I doubt it benefited you either (or anybody). Something like $500 billion spent and has there been any serious improvement?
{sigh} the government's answer to that question is always the same: "Yes, it was hideously expensive, but if we hadn't spent that half trillion, we're absolutely sure that everything would have turned out much worse, so you're damned lucky we're on the job! And by the way, we'll need a bigger budget next year" which puts attempted oversight at the same level of wanting to know if there's a God.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
The drug war amazes me. Powerful interests involved in the profiteering over private medicinal use co-opt the security organizations to battle their competition.
The so called drug war was started purely by business interests. The war started in the 1930s with businesses pushing to make hemp illegal, which the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 did. Prior to it's passage hemp was found to be one of if the most industrial useful plants there is. MIT published a study showing an acre of hemp could make more paper than an acre of forest, this threatened newpaperman William Randolph Hearst who owned thousands of miles of land in California. Hemp was a good source for making plastics as well, however DuPont had received a patent on using petroleum to make plastic, specifically nylon. The oil from hemp seeds was useful for making diesel fuel, Rudolph Diesel designed his engine to run on most any vegetable oil. And Henry Ford designed and built a vehicle on his Iron Mountain Estate that not only used hemp in it's construction but was power by fuel made from hemp he grew on the estate. This threatened Rockefeller's Standard Oil and Rothschild's Royal Dutch Shell. Eventually Andrew Mellon, who's Mellon Bank was a major financier of DuPont, as the USA's Secretary of Treasury appointed his future nephew-in-law Harry J Anslinger as the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, the reformed Federal Bureau of Narcotics where he started the war.
Quite simply legal hemp threatened some wealthy and powerful industrialists, so they pushed to have it made illegal.
FalconShould there be a Law?
You know what I LOVE about this?
When "those evil communists" (and they WERE evil, no doubts about it) did the same damn thing in other countries, America's people wondered HOW IN BLAZES the Russians and the other Eastern Block people didn't revolt.
I mean, their rulers were reading their mail. Kidnapping those who spoke out against abuses, and torturing them... ahem *enhanced interrogating them*... Free speech zones were established, and those who dared speak elsewhere were arrested and sent to Gulags. People who failed to show up for vote or voted for the "upstart" candidate were harassed, and sometimes not heard from again if they dared speak out. Experiments were often run on citizens, and often on the military, without any information or informed consent given. Evidence was often planted of "seditious behavior" or "conspiracy to overthrow the People's Government", usually with some rusty gun being found in someone's haystack as "evidence". One of my uncles ran a small investigation unit when he was younger, and remarked to me as I was growing up, that it was amazing to him that the same gun was found in a dozen different individuals' homes. Those individuals, of course, were quickly apprehended for "intended terroristic activities" and were slam dunked in a typical "kangaroo court" (the name used was "special tribunals"). Nobody mentioned the serial number on the gun... those individuals were eventually executed.
How is it that those poor bastards living under communism didn't notice all this and put an end to it?! Well let me ask you this... how is it that the poor bastards living in the West don't also notice all this and raise hell? The pattern is the same, even the TERMS in use are the same. Strange that those digging in the future will ask the same questions of this civilization.
"How come they didn't see it or put an end to it? Were they really that stupid, gullible or blind? Did any of them at all actually walk away? Did any make it out?"
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m39190&hd=&size=1&l=e
wake up, 'merkins.
If it weren't for the rocks in its bed, the stream would have no songs.
This is different. The DEA was tracking the phone numbers of international calls, not the conversations of local, domestic calls, and local, domestic internet traffic. This is *different*. Please don't mistake the current situation for the status que.
Eh, now I know we kind of claim to run EVERYTHING, and of course the Mexicans are taking over the USA right this very minute, but I don't believe there has really been a merger yet. Latin America was "international" last I checked.
How is it that those poor bastards living under communism didn't notice all this and put an end to it?! Well let me ask you this... how is it that the poor bastards living in the West don't also notice all this and raise hell? The pattern is the same, even the TERMS in use are the same. Strange that those digging in the future will ask the same questions of this civilization.
Well, I think there's a huge difference in degree. First off, in the soviet era, you couldn't own private property, couldn't travel (remember the Berlin wall?), couldn't form your own company, couldn't invest. Comparing Guantonimo to the Gulag system is a downright lie. Gitmo is a place where a relatively small number of muslims captured in other countries are sent. The Gulag, on the other had, was to used to kill an estimated up to 20-30 million people that represented the entire educated class of Russian society. Acamedicians, the russian army officer corp, the middle class, the kulaks, all just were all killed. I mean, you can sit here fat and happy and write about the USA and Bush and everything else. If you tried that crap in Soviet Russia, you would be shot, and most likely, your entirely family would be crushed down in some way.
This is my sig.
Why bother tapping Americans' phones to search for narcotraffickers when they could just bust the CIA, which alternates torture flights with cocaine flights? Iran/Contra forever!
Or maybe they need to tap phonecalls from Cheney to his Saud buddies. Iran/Contra forever!
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make install -not war
Who in the two party system is actually the lessor of two evils?
I, for one, will assume that is a rhetorical question. And I will turn it around to ask, is there such a thing as a "lessor" evil? I think not.
What?
...after the senate votes and possibly grants them retroactive immunity. Might be a good idea to contact your representatives and remind them that it's not in the best interests of remaining a functional country to encourage people or corporations to break the law. :)
The EFF has this nifty form to submit e-mails to your senators, but I think phoning or faxing might be more effective at the last minute.
It just common sense that if you need immunity its because you have done something wrong and dont want to deal with the concequences. And why is it that the system of checks and balances only allow the telcom companies to be punished for wrongdoing. The NSA cant be forced to make reparations.
Its funny how THIS:
NSA guy: Well we realize its against the law and all but we would like you to do it anyways.
Telephone company CEO: I am pretty sure that what you want me to do is illegal.
NSA guy: Im with the government. I wouldnt ask you to do it if it were illegal.
Sounds alot like THIS:
Child molester: Listen kid I know your parents told you not to let people touch you there but I think you should let me do it anyways.
Small inocent child: I am pretty sure that you shouldnt do that.
Child molester: Listen kid I am an adult. I wouldnt ask you to do something if it were wrong.
I agree that the telcom companies need feel some heat for allowing the NSA to violate peoples rights but its a bit like punishing the child instead of the child molester.
AFAICT, the only thing the war on drugs successfully accomplished in MY life was to increase the cost of drugs
I don't know squat on the subject, but someone else just posted this graph. (I believe the graph is a combination of a raw $$$ price drop combined with an inflation adjusted price drop). Apparently 20 years of the War On Drugs has achieved an 85% price slash on drugs (or on cocaine anyway).
I think we need a War On Gasoline. At an 85% price drop we'd have 43 cent gallons.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
may not have affected you in a negative way
Something like $500 billion spent
For the average household, that works out to:
About $4300 tax-spend for the War On Drugs.
While we're at it:
About $4100 tax-spend for Iraq through 2007.
About $1400 tax-spend for Iraq proposed 2008,
plus god-knows how much for years and possibly decades thereafter.
I dunno about you, but I'd rather have TEN GRAND, CASH in my pocket and in the pocket of every household in the country.
Half a trillion dollars here, half a trillion dollars there, pretty soon it starts adding up to real money.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Plenty of evil lessors working this neighborhood.
Unfortunately, there is a lessor evil. The concept revolves around being willing to accept some behavior because to alternative is worse or being able to distinguish between motivations for an act. A simple example might be something like being "More late" or the difference between killing someone to protect your's or another's life and killing someone because it gets your kicks on or "he looked at me hard". And trust me, being 10 minutes late is an entirely different concept then being 10 hours late.
The problem is that not one candidate is going to be appealing to every person. It is just human nature and varying degrees of inteligence combined with personal experience and probably many other unique characteristics of the individual that effectively allow that person to say, I don't like this from them but I don't like that from those people even more. In the above, killing another human is evil yet one instance is acceptable and can be somewhat honorable.
In the context of my post, the question was more or less rhetorical but I wanted to leave room for an actual reply if someone wished. The problem as I see it, comes to more then one instance of lieing, manipulating and/or hiding the truth to manipulate the thoughts and outrage the people should have for political advantage. This "started in the 90's" bit is just the latest exposed example of this. Another example might be the Mark Foley page scandal where believe it or not, democrats sat on information that congressional pages might be exposed to a predator in order to time the release of information as close to an election as possible in order to benefit from the fall out in the polls. There are more examples but that is a popular one attributed to part of the democrats success in 2006.
Sure Foley is scum and people should be outraged at what he did. But what should have they thought about the withholding of complaints from the then leadership and exposing the kids to people like this only to release it when it was most politically advantageous. They then walked around and claimed that the republicans were attempting to cover it up when they said they thought the problem had been taken care of earlier only to find that information concerning the severity of the problem had been withheld specifically so it didn't seem as bad as it was and to allow it to be exploited later. Now you have a situation where they outright claimed that something never happened when Bush said other presidents did it and he took the cue from them. It is coming to light that not only did it happen, but it was covered up specifically in order for the democrats to create outrage and develop a political advantage over the current administration.
None of this excuse what was, has or is going on. But the question remains, which is worse? The "act" or the covering the act up in order to manipulate the fallout for your advantage. Does creating and exciting the problem while hiding information that could have shed the entire thing in a different light make one party of the action more evil then another? Even if their only part is the manipulation of information concerning the actions so they can gain politically? If you ask me, one is worse then the other, it is all evil but what evils are worse? The con or the conman? and when will people wake up and realize that both parties are willing participants, it just seems that one motivation is the protection of the citizens even if it gets them reelected while the other's motivation is getting elected even if it mean protecting the people. I'll leave who is doing which to the reader to decide.
Yes there are differences. But the similarities are more significant.
In our digital PBX and VoIP world, the reason the telco is able to provide wiretaps is because the telecoms manaufacturers (e.g., AT&T, Cisco, Nortel, Siemens, etc.) have configured their equipment to allow these wire taps to be put in place.
This is especially frustrating in a VoIP universe because the implementation of these features degrades the function of the service: a VoIP call should talk to a central "switch" program to make a connection (since it's the easiest way to circumvent firewalls) and thereafter all traffic between the VoIP clients should be point to point; however, commercial VoIP implementations offered by the telecoms manufacturers route all packets through a central "switch".
The press, in castigating the telcom operators have neglected to highlight the fact that the manufacturers are already in bed with the government; which is what enables the carriers to cooperate.
Since the telecom manufacturers have implemented the feature set(s) necessary to enable wiretapping---even in VoIP switched environments---secure communications are neither possible nor are they anyone's right.
Of course "evil" is an opinion; a value judgment, so one could decide to classify all "evil" acts as equivalent, despite any quantitative differences (people could give all murderers the same legal punishment despite quantity). And one could delve into intentions and motivations.
For me getting a light tan is less evil than getting a third degree sunburn, or putting one sugar in a coffee is less evil than putting in three (though my taste buds may disagree). It really depends on how a person decides to classify and ascribe qualities to the concept of "evil".
http://libertyforlife.com/jail-police/us_concentration_camps.htm
Yes there are differences. But the similarities are more significant
I read your link. At first, I thought it was so much more crackpot stuff, but now, I don't know. It's creepy enough to make one think. Every time I want to say, "it couldn't happen here", I remember that a lot of what helped the Holocaust along was that, people just didn't believe someone would do something like that.
And now I have to wonder, is there an element that wants to ethnically cleanse the entire USA for only white people? If its an "immigration emergency" might be a euphemism for killing all hispanic people?
This is my sig.
As a citizen of the USA, I expect AND DEMAND privacy of my telecommunications. It is the law with an exception when a court order is signed by a judge with jurisdiction. PERIOD. There's no other option.
Sadly, the current world circumstances has caused leaders in all branches of the US Government to forget those laws. They keep looking for "loop holes" that don't apply to all conversations. Starting first with international calls. People have a common belief that criminals don't talk over unencrypted channels. That really isn't true. They talk, but over someone else's phone or using throw away cell phones. They don't call from their own office or home or cell phone and discuss illegal activities. That's why the old wiretap on 1 line doesn't work anymore. That's why they want to tap **ALL** lines now.
Don't forget internet traffic. There is no law that says internet traffic has the same level of protection.
In fact, the European Union has a law that went into effect, October I think, that requires email headers to be available to any law enforcement organization in the EU. I looked for a reference, but couldn't find it. I **know** AT&T implemented this from a data center in the middle of the USA. Yes, some email from Europe goes thru systems inside the USA. Since it was easier to send all headers than try to filter them, they send them all, including email **not** going to addresses in Europe. That includes your email, my email, and a larger percentage of other email since AT&T is a Tier 1 internet provider - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network#List_of_Tier_1_IPv4_ISPs
Just because you and I have nothing to hide, doesn't mean that any government should be provided with the data without cause AND without a judge being convinced there is enough cause to support both internet AND voice tapping.
You and your article seem to be completely wrong.
The so called concentration camps are POW camps and have been under way since the 90's after the first gulf war. I do like the way they attempt to premise your article with Rumsfield speeches taken out of context though. Rumsfield never said anything close to rounding up people and placing them into concentration camps.
But it gets better, it goes on to mention that George Bush himself orchestrated 9/11. What an utter crop of shit. Your type spent too much time declaring him a moron to somehow now think he is responsible for 9/11.
Here is some facts, enemy combatants are POWs, they need to be housed. Even citizens who are working for the enemy need to be housed when they are caught. Here is another fact, pay close attention to this one because it is probably the most important one that discredits everything your site and probably you want to claim, No one, I repeat _No_Person_ has been declared an enemy combatant and carted off to one of these prisons for reasons of political or racial nature. No group has mentioned systemic round ups of people based on their opposition of the government or race and there is quite a bit of proof all around you that people are freely speaking their minds without fear or retaliation remotely resembling and abuse of power by the government or being declared an enemy combatant.
You are a tool being used by people higher up in the conspiracy chain. There are elements of the truth in every conspiracy, but the majority is always taken out of context, imposed with improper associations and mixed with just enough untrue statements that it seems believable. I don't know if your a willing participant or if you are just another dumb person who has been sucked in so I'm not going to comment on that. But I will comment on how your being used and your stupidity is being exploited.
Let me preface this with I don't walk lockstep with the government and I don't always agree with what they do. I'm not even in agreement with their current actions. But I'm not naive enough to take this disagreement and allow it to accept blatantly false accusations. I look around and posit actual questions that typically disprove the whackjob conspiracies people like you get sucked into. There are quite a few of them that are true but they don't have anything to do with the government wanting to find your aunt Betty's cookie recipe, nothing suggesting that anyone wants to round anyone legally in the US up that is following the laws. There is nothing remotely close to the Government being involved in 9/11 or the OK city bombing and the real criminals in the justice department who shoot infants through porch doors and gas women and children that are doing nothing illegal are gone.
...wah wah wah. Clinton and the Republican Congress had their spy attempts shot down (Clipper Chip?!) in plain view. The shit that's going on, especially Bush's decision to skip getting court orders for the spying...cannot be compared to Clinton's asshole moves. They're not even in the same sport.
Blar.
Actually my uncles who also fled from there used to tell me, "nah, the Americans do it too, all countries do it, Stalin just ran out of space."
I thought it was a lie, and then I came to America and noticed that they throw you in prison for just about any old petty thing, including self harm or no harm... they don't care, they make more laws each day, declare more innocents as criminals, and haven't run out of room. Stalin did. These people have turned the prisoners into a manufacturing base. Your intelligent jobs go to India, your menial jobs go to inmates.
Nothing changes. Different tyrants are in charge, but the patterns and results are always similar... if not downright the same.
Sure, we'll be "fat and happy" for awhile (as the poster below said) but if we don't stop this mess while some of us are capable of being fat and happy, we'll all be skinny and starving, except those who engineer these things. Not that I expect anyone to stand up and stop it. Kind of reminds me of that final scene in I am Legend (Will Smith movie, not the original book) with the zombie smashing into the glass trying to kill him, while Will's saying "let me save you, I can help you, let me heal you" and the zombie just keeps mindlessly attacking. This is the apologist mindset. Which is fine, they get to be the ones to ask themselves "What have I done?" after its all gone down the drain.
As for property rights? IN AMERICA?? You're licensed to dig a well in your own yard, you're licensed to run any trade, you're forced to buy a license to defend yourself, and by all means and purposes your property is confiscated if you don't pay tribut
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
The local switches primarily carry domestic calls. They also carry the international calls which were monitored.
You can be sure the asshole(s) [the hardcopy I read was by two] who wrote the story knew the difference and included the irrelevancy about "primarily carry[ing] domestic calls" to rake the muck.
Which is what this whole issue is about. The government monitors international calls, and every story is written as if the government was monitoring domestic calls.
It is damned unfortunate that anybody would fall for such yellow journalism.
Imagine if every story about Sen. Barack Hussein Obama included irrelevencies as,
"Senator Barack Hussein Obama, who shares a name with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein...."
"Senator Barack Hussein Obama, whose minister is a racist whackjob...."
"Senator Barack Hussein Obama, who represents the corrupt districts of the Daley dynasty...."
"Senator Barack Hussein Obama, whose last name is almost identical to 'Osama,'...."
So no shit, local switches carry local traffic. They also carry the local legs of international traffic.
BTW, I do know the telephone systems, "inside and out."
a) The US government does have the most amount of people in jail. A simple Google search can point out dozens of Web sites corroborating this
b) I do not have a Web site or an article on a Web site. This Web site is the first one that came up so I listed it. If you don't like it then fine. I do know one thing, and that is the quote I have put up is correct.
Taken from a different Web site: The number of prisoners held in 211 countries is reported. Over 9 million people are incarcerated, with almost 50% held in the U.S., Russia, and China. The U.S. has the highest prison population rate of 714 per 100,000 of its national population, well above Russia with a rate of 532 per 100,000. Rates of 150 per 100,000 or below are experienced by 58% of the countries reviewed. Accession Number: 020631 http://www.nicic.org/Library/020631
Also, if you wish to dispute what the article says at least you could have provided some evidence. Granted your whole rant is off topic in the first place.
As for me being "stupid", that may very well be true, but it is rude to advertise this fact to the world. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words just hurt my feelings
According to the Hemp Timeline Mellon was Anslinger's wife's uncle. Wiki cites William Randolph Hearst as a creator of the "highly sensational anti-marijuana campaign". What I find incongruence is that in the February, 1938 issue of "Popular Mechanics" the magazine called hemp the "New Billion-Dollar Crop" and PM was owned and published by Hearst.
FalconShould there be a Law?
In the context of my post, the question was more or less rhetorical but I wanted to leave room for an actual reply if someone wished.
:-)
In that context, asked, and answered. But to repeat, between those "two", clearly the answer is no. What you have there is tag team wrestling, with the party in one corner and us in the other. And while you* have been fished in by all these distractions, one of their goons just swiped your wallet off the table and spiked your drink. I've seen it plenty of times where someone will start a "fight" in a bar and while everybody is watching, the team goes to work. Many of the patrons go home without their money, credit cards, keys, and ID. Make no mistake these people will and have committed murder to keep their power. Republican and democrat alike. And they are alike. They work as one. They are one. There can only be one. And since the party is basically a tool of power, not the user, I tend to ignore it altogether. I believe we are the users, all trying to manipulate it to our own personal advantage, but our methods have made it simple for someone to come in and use it for their own personal power. All the world's a stage...
Do like the man says. It will help clear up the fog a little. These distractions are the potholes we need to avoid in order to have a safe journey. And for goodness sake, don't tailgate
*editorial, of course
What?
democracy is incompatible with capitalism, because under capitalism wealth = power and is available at any time, unlike the democratic vote
the ONLY way a capitalist society can ever become democratic is for one's vote to be inversely equal to their wealth - in other words, the richer you are, the less your vote should be worth
As to point 2, while technically true, you don't have the website and you don't have an article on that website, you did present that article here for consideration. You were in fact attempting to convey something about the article and you are responsible for it's linking. It's your article as far as we are concerned because your presenting it. You have ownership of the message it lends to your argument. Dude, If I truly hurt your feelings, I apologize. I don't take back anything I said because I believe it to be true. I just really sick of articles like that. They attempt to pass of opinion as fact and have an awful lot of people believing them. Perhaps you should have picked a better article to link to. Maybe one with out incorect tone, misleading assumptions and flat out lies.
Oh, and BTW, your second link won't come up for me.
I'm going to agree with your entire premise. The problem is that we aren't presented with the right choices to make it stop. I don't think it is some conspiracy to hold down opposing power either.
The problem as I see it is that no third party wants to put in the time and effort to become a real candidate for change. They only want to run for president and ignore that fact that the president is useless without people backing him. It is the parties that really give him the power. It congress decided to ignore his legislation requests, he couldn't get anything done. If congress was against him, they could pass any bill he vetoes into law.
So what needs to happen is the third parties who think they are serious, they need to organize a ground up campaign and stick with it until they are as common place as republicans or democrats. Skip this always going for the gold crap because the best they could hope for is to bring some issues to the table and pray that someone takes a position close to theirs. If they started at the root levels, ran for city counsel, mayor, state legislatures and governor, then there would be the support to give congress and a president what is necessary to make a difference. As of now, voting a third party mean the guy the least like him has one less vote against him to overcome. We have seen that happen in the last 4 presidential elections. Clinton won by a large margin but he didn't even get half of the vote.
So I don't see it changing for a while. I see the only real choices as picking the least evil of the bunch. And yes, spot on about checking the back page. Too many times has this been found to be true.
The problem is that we aren't presented with the right choices to make it stop. emph. mine
Now see? This is precisely the problem I'm talking about. We only accept what's being presented. This is where we go wrong. Don't wait for the presentation. We have a fairly robust system of worldwide communication now. Let's use it. Seek them out! The party has no obligation to present anything. It will only present what's in its best interests, certainly not yours. Draft people who want to be lawyers, for instance, into office. I'm all for political conscription. The whole thing lies squarely on our shoulders, nobody else's. We have to make it work. Don't depend on the authoritarians to do it for you. They're only looking for slaves to clean their toilets and wipe their butts. Don't look to a "third party". If we need political parties, we should create a second one first. We need to be the party, not be ruled by one. In America WE are supposed to be the rulers. We have completely abdicated our authority...to a bunch of lying carpetbaggers no less. And all this is due to personal desire (of the flesh). Dive deeper...beyond Clinton-Bush-republican-democrat-congress-procedure-bla bla bla. They are not worth a moment's thought, other than getting them out of the way. It's up to us to make them and their ilk totally irrelevant. We need to control our own lives while at the same time insure that all human interaction is cooperative and consensual, not coercive and demanding. Only we can do anything to make it happen. And we need you, and you, and you...all of you....please. It is a major undertaking, but one that can be accomplished instantaneously, with every individual making the switch. There is no Superman, I'm sorry to say.
What?
People seem to think that, in the communist regimes every guy, that speaks up is shot in the public square.
I am from Romania, and some people say that we were the ones doing the disinformation campaign for the Eastern Block. I was pretty little when it all ended, but thinking about it everybody was pretty much frighting themselves. There where no people with guns at the corner of the street.
The army was formed pretty much of conscripts, you know, young people that didn't necessarily love Communism, that could get hold of a gun. Even when the "Revolution" started there wasn't any turmoil or repressive actions in my town. Just people frightened as hell, looking for terrorists although it was the first time they've heard the term. As I remember the army focused on defending the national points of interest, meaning the local refinery, against the perceived threat.
The communist didn't start with bloodshed and famine, it only ended that way. It's your job to make sure your capitalism doesn't end in the same way.
Buy 100 shares of two of the major defense contractors to get your taxes back, 100 shares of any two gold miners to exploit the resulting devaluation of the currency, 100 shares of any two major agricultural producers to exploit the driving up of soft commodities as corn production is diverted to the ethanol boondoggole, and 100 shares of any two integrated oil producers just because everyone else is doing it, and throw darts at the WSJ's stock quotes page until you hit two names you recognize.
> Half a trillion dollars here, half a trillion dollars there, pretty soon it starts adding up to real money.
It sure does.
This is the most fucking profitable war the USSA has ever lost. More than makes up for the taxes, even after Hilary! gets in in 2009 and raises taxes on dividends/capital gains and imposes an exit tax on people emigrating the USSA. Doesn't make up for the fact that we've added a second "S" to our name, but it buys me enough $6/bottle beer, $40/bottle wine, and $80/bottle whisky that I can overlook it.
My carrier is Sprint. Does anyone here know if Sprint was in contact or cooperation with the government? I keep seeing AT&T and Verizon being mentioned.
No doubt the NSA is quite pleased to see people yammering on about encryption as if that mattered. On a practical level, the most important data stream is traffic analysis: who is talking to whom. Traffic analysis forms a graph. What's a graph worth? Tough question. Perhaps ask Google.
... traffic analysis ... unless the node is almost completely private. A private steganographic Tor node is your best cover, but it will severely compromise your bandwidth and latency. We've all got one of those in our back pockets. Neither would I wish to be apprehended in possession of that particular coke spoon: it has Gitmo express written all over it.
On this graph, what does the NSA know about the various nodes and links? They know who uses crypto, and when. They know who you talk to and in what order, the duration, and the interval between communications. They also know if you are talking to a Tor node, or any other node suspected of laundering one or more end-points.
Think you have a secret Tor node. Well, these nodes are fairly easy to detect by
For any node or link where the probers that be have the slightest suspicion, they can also determine in the majority of all cases what protocols you are running. Even if you tunnel your anonymity through SSL, packet timing profiles is likely to leak significant information about the protocols employed. Even if you leak no timing information, you distinguish your SSL segment from every other protocol which does.
With commercial software, it is almost impossible to know if the NSA hasn't found some clever way to leak key bits through the "random" number generator. What to do? Obtain hard core anon steg crypto from an open source project? Don't be seen doing it. That will flag your packets upward for years to come. Maybe through your functioning personal anon steg Tor server? That poses two problems: first of all, you don't have one yet. And second, even if your recently purchased four-digit Slashdot ID from the Dread Pirate Roberts included a secret anon steg Tor treasure map, your anon steg Tor server is severely bandwidth constrained (supposing you wish to continue flying under the radar much longer).
Even supposing, how well do you actually choose your password? It's a virtual certainty the NSA maintains a list of the billion most popular passwords in every language of the world, plus the one million most popular mnemonic devices (including all forms of keyboard mambo), and all the most popular transformations of the former against the later. Think your mnemonic device is unique? Guess again. Not unless it is almost as hard to remember as the password it replaces. Have you ever used any portion of that password in a context less strongly encrypted (such as any Microsoft or Apple program ever written?) The elephant never forgets. Remembering is cheap, cracking costs money.
Should you actually prevail and manage to conduct your electronic communications immune to any form of analysis yet mentioned, congratulations, you have now achieved exclusive membership among the hardened targets of the world, where brute force and white vans finally make good economic sense.
Those little chocolate mints that showed up on your pillowcase the other day are the sign of a job well done.
Prisoners of War? Which war is that, exactly? Is this the "war on drugs"(TM) or the "war on terror"(TM) (two equally abstract 'fronts')
It's very easy to claim falacies with such certainty when you don't leave your lounge room huh? To be fair, you are actually closer to the truth than you may think as plenty of people get carted off for months (or years) in prisons without even being declared a combatant.
I'll save you the trouble of formulating and posting a reply. you are just another dumb person
Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but high school pretty well influenced me that my opinions were in the minority, and the majority prefer to have someone else think for them. The decade or so since has done nothing to diminish this opinion, thus leaving me searching for somewhere else to call home (at least until they make some excuse to invade it, or barring that, economically influence it to become as fascist as we're on the road to.)
>That's not a democracy you're describing.. it's a constitutional republic.
I think you meant to say "conditional republic".
As in: "It's a republic unless the king says it isn't", or
"It's only a republic if the people will fight to keep it"
CALEA (1994) - mandated access to the telco switches (even local ones)
http://www.ala.org/ala/washoff/woissues/techinttele/calea/calea.cfm
Patriot Act (2001) - removed barriers between domestic law enforcement and "national security"
So, what did you expect?
Nah, they aren't shot in the public square, that was a soviet thing... chinese too. The further west people went, the nicer communism was. Eastern bloc communism was nowhere nearly as horrible as it was in the USSR and further East (Vietnam, China, North Korea, etc.)
That being said, all redistributive governments have to "redistribute" someone's wealth or goods. Problem is, government produces NONE of it, so in order to "redistribute" and to pay those who redistribute, it must fleece/confiscate from someone else. With force of arms, of course. If you or I do it, its "robbery" and we get punished... if the government does it, its called "taxation" and its "for the good of the people". Problem is, when those who HAD things to be taxed and confiscated are gone, the only ones left to fleece and tax are the poor. And since the communist/socialist governments did a good job of it, almost everyone ended up poor AND taxed. Those who fled, with their wealth, only had to wait until the logical fall of communism, after the coffers and treasuries ran empty, and then, move back in after the "revolutions" and buy all the infrastructure at pennies on the dollar. This is classic history, and has happened countless times, but the only ones who bother to study and apply this history are the rich. As a result, they get vilified for having "dared" to take advantage of the fact that nobody else bothered to read up on patterns of the past.
Nothing will change in America either. The peasants may revolt some day and put an end to the tyrannies here in America, but I have no doubt, that if they do, they also will, once again, go to their homes before following through and setting things right, so in the end, all they will have accomplished was a little "feel good" revolt, and still lost the greater war. And follow through is key in everything, from sports, to shooting targets, to having sex or smoking cigars to having revolutions. If you don't follow through, someone else does. And in history, someone "else" always has, because "the people" (aka "the revolutionaries" were too "tired" to follow through.)
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
No, not really. Serbia was actually conducting an ethnic cleansing program.
So were Croats and Albanians. That doesn't mean all of those mass graves were real. All sides in the former Yugoslavia participated in ethnic cleansing, Albanian and Bosnian Muslims, Croatian Catholics, and Serbian Orthodox Christians. That doesn't mean Serbia was guilt of all that was bad, no matter what you or anyone else thinks. The only tyme people of all 3 faiths got along was under Josip Broz Tito's rule, though those who supported the NAZIs did face prosecution. He worked at uniting all of the people otherwise.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Your observation is underappreciated in too many circles. Though the EC also recognizes the need and called upon member states to get their act together, very little has actually happened on either side of the pond despite widely available, easy to use encryption technologies.
(Links and bold are added for emphasis)
Further, what's kind of funny is that though businesses make all kinds of noise and bluster about security, many go ahead and put business plans and meeting minutes on servers which (not counting holes and back doors) explicitly sign over access to their competitor(s). However, see if M$ makes it easy for businesses to see what their so-called tech support is agreeing to.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.