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Whistleblower Claims NSA Spied On Everyone, Targeted Media
JCWDenton writes "Former National Security Agency analyst Russell Tice, who helped expose the NSA's warrantless wiretapping in December 2005, has now come forward with even more startling allegations. Tice told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Wednesday that the programs that spied on Americans were not only much broader than previously acknowledged but specifically targeted journalists."
Either I am first or the NSA is really on top of things.
Why Keith Olbermann? Why not a less biased journalist? Any journalist at the Washington Post, Washington Times, etc would have been happy to get this information and run with it. Keith Olbermann's name brings with it a certain amount of partisan baggage.
Not news.
I mean, really, who didn't think the liberal media would be singled out? You kids were born too late to remember McCarthy, and Hoover's FBI, apparently.
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
Gasp! They spied on everyone! No! My secrets!!!
So... they didn't really spy on everyone in the sense that they listened to my conversations so much as they COULD have.
Scary stuff, but the /. headline is horribly misleading.
Nice, first post! Ask the NSA, they can verify it...
Is anyone shocked by this revelation? I'd be more surprised if investigations and prosecutions actually occur. Somehow, I have a feeling the Obama administration will want to try to move past Bush's abuses of power as soon as possible in the name of "change," rather than focus on all the bullshit that went on during the past eight years.
Well, with a big enough claim, questions start getting asked. Big questions.
Is it true? Prove it!
Is it false? Prove it!
Either way learning happens, and that's a good thing right?
crazy dynamite monkey
The taps that were set up for the NSA were at the backbones, where they had access to all communications, incoming and outgoing. Since it is impossible, even for the NSA, to know with 100% certainty who was at the end of each communication, they would have had to collect everything, as well as store everything. At that point, it is irrelevant what they said they did with the mountains of data they collected.
Finally, it is also impossible to create a classification system that just happens to ignore american citizens during its training/creation phase. Again, it means that it is guaranteed that the NSA would be able to classify the groups involved in the communication. And again, it is irrelevant that the NSA said "Trust us, we're ignoring all of that."
The only real news is that the NSA didn't even internally pretend that they were only interested in communications with or between foreign agents. Everything else has been predicted the instant it became apparent that wiretaps were being done without oversight.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Over the next several months, however, Tice was frustrated in his attempts to testify before Congress, had his credibility attacked by Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, and was subpoenaed by a federal grand jury in an apparent attempt at intimidation.
That says it all. If Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly can't believe him, then who else in their right mind would.
"Either way learning happens, and that's a good thing right?"
Learning doesn't happen because it's all classified for one. Additionally, learning doesn't happen because it's mostly subjective to begin with, but add to that the obvious biases (Olberman is biased as it is but then take into account this whistleblower was FIRED and is obviously disgruntled about it) and you have nothing but a cesspool of name calling, propaganda and political positioning.
There is nothing to be learned here, just people to blame.
If papers start reporting on our efforts to do surveillance of al Qaeda agents in this country communicating outside and their flow of money, I would start tapping all of the calls going in and out of the NY Times.
FDR, Lincoln, and any serious President would do the same thing.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
The person bush & co appointed to department of justice screened fifty applicants and more for their political views. people who told even positive stuff towards gay rights, abortion, any liberal issues even on the internet were screened with the help of a 'special software'.
dont believe me ? well, the woman confessed to all this and more in front of senate committee investigating the issue. 'i have made a mistake' she said. mistake, fifty times.
it would be utterly stupid for any person with a brain cell to believe that an administration which is capable of doing that would not exploit wiretapping for their own political purposes.
Read radical news here
True, but in Sun Tzu's The Art of War(as well as operation Ivy Bells), large-scale things often depend on the use of many small guys to unwittingly do the dirty work. Our intelligence services have to justify their elephantine budgets somehow, but I wouldn't mind seeing them follow suit and announce 10% layoffs ;)
Why would it be a good idea to go to a partisan journalist? If you're going to blow the whistle on something and you want to be taken seriously, then doesn't it make sense to take it to a journalist who is generally respected regardless of one's political leanings?
"Some people just want to believe this stuff so much they'll grasp at any old straw that agrees with their narrow view of the government."
That might apply to you as well. You don't think its possible that the government might spy on journalists? It's been proven to have happened with at least one administration (Nixon) in my lifetime.
There's an email from a old friend I accidentally deleted. Maybe I could get a copy from the NSA?
It is a sad state of affairs but if you adopts the view that everything you say and do may be monitored by the government without redress then your view is probably not far from what is happening.
The problem with this monitoring is that it's almost impossible to stop or control because by it's very nature it's kept very secret.
I imagine in the future we will end up with a revolution and lots of people will die, that's typically what happens when the ruler is doing something the majority of the populace doesn't agree with. Before you shout that the majority of the population are sheeple and just "think of the children / terrorists" I think the real problem is that they aren't well informed and very time poor and if they knew what was going on and they would disagree strongly.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Seems like a pretty good way to test the new openness mandate recently enacted by Obama. Submit a FOIA request to the NSA for any records, information, recordings, etc made of you and see if they reject it. This would be especially interesting if a journalist for a major network (Olbermann himself perhaps?) were to submit the request for his own information, since they supposedly targeted journalists.
Of course, since the NSA tends to exist on the fringes of legality anyway, they'll probably just claim there's nothing there even if there is, but it could be an interesting exercise.
It means they couldn't have listed or collected all communications because that wasn't technically possible. That doesn't mean they didn't listen to yours.
since before it existed
What?
Well, with a big enough claim, questions start getting asked. Big questions.
Is it true? Prove it!
Is it false? Prove it!
It might be possible to prove these allegations are true. How would you go about proving they are false?
-- Support a free market in the field of government
I understood what it meant, my point was that it was different from what the headline said (or at least implied.)
To make a pointless car metaphor, it's like if you're trying to sell a junked car, and you put in the ad "will run like new!" when it doesn't have an engine, your rationale being it will run like new once you put a new engine in it.
This is not the NSA spying on everyone, this is the NSA being ABLE to spy on everyone. They could have spied on me, yes, but as he pointed out in the article, they didn't spy on EVERYONE.
The conventional wisdom here is flat-out wrong. At least read a different view, folks!
Political cartoonist Tom Tomorrow reminds us about
I'd forgotten about that incident.
The Bush administration has its own list of scandals, of course. But just as significant a scandal may be the way that our so-called media hid from its audience the true scope of government wrongdoing. Recall that the New York Times sat on the NSA wiretapping scandal for a year before it thought it was time to let us citizens know. If it turns out that the industry that was supposed to be keeping the public informed about things like violations of the Constitution by top elected officials was deliberately concealing that information, it may be time to reconsider whether we have a press in America that's worthy of the name, and what we can do about it.
Anyway, Tom Tomorrow asks what other revelations about the Bush administration are likely to follow. Anyone have any ideas?
This is just pathetic.
Of all the biases exhibited here at Slashdot---and there are many!---the bias favoring low-id users is probably the most idiotic.
"Tice told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Wednesday that the programs that spied on Americans were not only much broader than previously acknowledged but specifically targeted journalists."
The Pecking order for paradise at the bottom of the ocean-
1) Lawyers
2) Journalists
3) Terrorists
We have too many of all of the above and culling the herd is way overdue!
From the FA, his job was to 'weed out' people. So he went to the folks gathering the intel and said "Ok, I'll need the stuff on persons X, Y, and Z next week. I just want to make sure you guys will cover that.". Response: "Oh sure. We're gathering everything on everyone".
(Obviously paraphrased for brevity)
So, despite being a "low-level" analyst, his story is at least plausible.
And, under the current law and the August 2008 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review ruling, it is explicitly legal.
The FISA Amendments Act of 2008, passed by a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress, allows for foreign intelligence collection on non-US Persons without a warrant, no matter where the collection occurs. The longstanding Smith v. Maryland, 442 US 735 (1979), allows for the collection of communications metadata, i.e., "to" and "from" information, without a warrant. The FISC ruling explicitly finds legal such collection under the now-sunset Protect America Act and, thus, the current FISA Amendments Act of 2008.
In order to determine which traffic content may be collected for foreign intelligence purposes, the traffic metadata must be examined. Even when a target in question is a specific non-US Person of foreign intelligence interest, traffic metadata must first be examined in order to target that person! Because examining traffic metadata was found explicitly legal and Constitutional three decades ago by the United States Supreme Court, doing so in order to target legitimate foreign intelligence collection is allowable under the law.
The major issues for foreign SIGINT were twofold:
- A lot of traffic is now digital versus analog, and cannot be targeted by aiming a directional antenna at a particular geographic locale. It is now traveling largely via things like fiber optic cables, intermixed with all manner of other communications. In order to target the collection, it is no longer a case of sitting on a Navy vessel offshore from some area of interest between individuals talking on two-way radios; it's finding that traffic in a sea of global digital communications.
- Foreign communications of non-US Persons physically outside of the US was increasingly traveling through the US. Previously fair game for foreign intelligence collection throughout the history of such collection in the United States, it suddenly became off-limits without a warrant because it was incidentally routed through locations in the United States. Foreign intelligence collection on non-US Persons outside of the US does not require a warrant, and fundamentally still shouldn't simply because their traffic happens to enter the US.
This was a case of changing technology necessitating an update to a law. A supermajority of both houses of Congress agreed.
Unfortunately, this discussion is so mired in politics, personal grinding of axes, confusion about early NSA programs (like the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program, or TSP, which was not renewed after January 2007), and isolated examples of legitimate abuse or misconduct, that not many seem interested in having any real discussion about how foreign intelligence can be reasonably conducted in the digital age. Instead it is a sea of frantic arm-waving and breathless blogging about how the Constitution is being shredded, when the mechanisms of law and judicial oversight have explicitly established the activities as legal.
Ironically, Tice's interview is spot-on. He says, "What was done was sort of an ability to look at the metadata ... and ferret that information to determine what communications would ultimately be collected," and adds, "we looked at organizations, just supposedly so that we would not target them."
"Supposedly?"
That's the whole point. So here's an example of someone explaining more or less what is happening, namely, that traffic metadata is examined to determine whether or not it constitutes a foreign intelligence target, and that measures were undertaken to not intercept the content of communications of entities which are not legitima
You can't really fault them for wanting to keep on eye on people like Geraldo Rivera, can you?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
ohh gr8 ... was looking for my lost bookmarks and passwds for last few months ...
can someone from NSA team check their logs and pass it to me pls ?
Considering the fact it can be illegal to carry a lobster smaller than a certain size is illegal. Anything is considered illegal. So why did you post this as anonymous coward? What are YOU afraid of?
Disclaimer: I am not god.
We may not be created equal
But we can be treated equal.
And that logic sets us up for big brother. Someone else said "Knowledge is power" - that power can be used against you by the corrupt and immoral.
Then Katie Couric would be in Gitmo as a result of this program.
Get FISA Right is collecting messages on FISA to give to President Obama. Our "asks" were just presented to Macon Phillips at a National Press Club event, and we're running a new video ad "Congratulations, President Obama, please get FISA right". If you'd like to add your opinion (or see the video), please check out Get FISA Right launches new pro-Constitution video on MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, and Comedy Channel on our blog.
He's a little more hands on than that. He was more than likely directly over the guys gathering the intel (usually their title is translator) where he would sit with a team of 8 I believe and the translators would listen where he instructed them to and write down everything said. He would then write up a report based on what they had translated and written down. Anonymous for obvious reasons.
Didn't Naomi Wolf, author of The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot say that she had significant evidence that she was being bugged and her mail being intercepted? I distinctly recall hearing her say this at the Revolution March in DC on July 12, 2008.
I think I got it on video--I'll have to find the video tonight and put it on YouTube.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
lolberman.
No, they didn't actually read every e-mail. They didn't even read a significant fraction of them. But, they did categorize every one by who sent them and who received them and then archived them for future use. That's the part that should scare everyone. Even if you happen to like/trust the current administration (or happened to like/trust the previous one), you and your descendents are going to live through many more presidencies. The legal red-tape that people like Bush & Cheney worked to eliminate wasn't, necessarily, meant to stop them it was meant to stop the true monster that will, inevitably, get into office someday. It's almost a guarantee that, some day, someone on the order of Hitler will sneak his/her way into office (Note: This isn't a Godwin as I'm not trying to suggest that Bush & Co. are like Hitler themselves.). When that happens, those limitations on government power are the only thing that has a chance of stopping them. The more we water them down, the more we guarantee his/her future success at destroying this country.
Even in the short term, this kind of illegal invasion of privacy can, easily, lead to lots of people being hurt. Just look at the improper/illegal attorney firing in the Department of Justice under the Bush administration. They went through and fired anyone they thought had connections with political/social views they didn't like. People lost their source of income and the government became much more politically polarized. The kind of info archived by a program like what this guy is suggesting could be used to make similar, illegal/improper, witch-hunt much more "efficient".
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
Why do you feel that way? The nerds that have stuck around tend to have very valid opinions, even if I don't always agree with them. We have been on the net longer than most, and have a better perspective on this issues that keep popping up. Granted, some of the arguments get really circular, but there is wisdom in the old-timers.
I'm Peggy.
After everything else we've seen out of Bush's administration, you think the most parsimonious explanation for this story is that this guy's going public with a made-up story in order to get some sort of revenge, and no wrongdoing ever took place? Applying Ockham's Razor doesn't mean forgetting everything you know about the context and just picking a convenient story.
I would expect the NSA to spy on everybody.
I would just expect anything they find to never in anyway be admissible in court.
They are an intelligence agency, little or nothing they do should involve law enforcement or the courts.
You mad
Monitoring journalists is actually a smart move, for an organization that wishes to gather intelligence.
Journalists write about the news. They're sent out on great breaking stories, as well as little crappy ones. They may have one piece of a much bigger story, and never know about it.
Think about this. A guy steals a car in New York. Not big news, right? But someone is bound to cover it. The police only have so much manpower to investigate things. Now, an investigative reporter finds that it's a little old lady, and wants to make it news. It's a fluff story, but maybe someone will have some sympathy for her.
The reporter goes to some neighboring houses. They ask "did you see anything." "What can you tell me about the little old lady." Oh, she's nice, tends to her flowers every day, and has 14 cats. Big deal. That is, until you find that one of the neighbors was actually a person of interest.
The neighbor of interest normally lives in California, but is now in New York. Another person of the same organization had flown into New York (found through the airline reservation systems). Another was stopped crossing the Canadian border because he had a forged passport. Documents in his bag indicate he was going to ... you got it, New York.
I won't agree that it's nice that they record all my calls, emails, and movements. Their job isn't to be nice. Theirs, for the most part, is to gather intelligence. By monitoring journalists, that would put an extra 50,000 eyes and ears out there (according to ASNE) every day. Add that to the more traditional resources, like other law enforcement agencies and their own agents, and now you get a much clearer picture.
They can't depend on the news that does make it. Plenty of stories are written and rejected. The journalist trying to make the story about our little old lady, her 14 cats, and stolen car, will probably never see the light of day. It'll be superseded by any more interesting story.
Do I know that any of this happens? No. But, it would make a lot of sense. I know my own news site is read on a regular basis by just about every intelligence agency there is. I know when I write a story about being flagged as a security risk at the airport, I'm not flagged again. Really, if they monitor everything I do, they're bored out of their minds, but they do know, I'm not a risk. I know if I look through my logs, I get a good glimpse of what they're willing to let me see (the occasional IP from their agency). I know that's not the whole story either. I just think of it as their way of saying "hi".
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Wow, in addition to being an atheist Muslim Canadian Joseph McCarthy loving stock analyst who uses SPICE in his circuit design work you're also a mid-to-high ranking spook at the NSA? And yet you still find time to post about it all on /.?
Amazing. Simply amazing. If true.
--MarkusQ
Yeah, that's a wise assessment if you trust your government completely, which you shouldn't. If you're a journalist trying to break a big story about government corruption, this allows the bad guys in our government to spy on you. Grass roots activist trying fight some corporation? They chat with some congressman they own and your phone is tapped. Rival political party? Tap their HQ.
There's so many ways this can be abused, and if you think that will never happen you're incredibly naive. Domestic spying without oversight is an invitation to totalitarianism.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
This is not the NSA spying on everyone, this is the NSA being ABLE to spy on everyone. They could have spied on me, yes, but as he pointed out in the article, they didn't spy on EVERYONE.
I don't know about that. I've always suspected that New Hampshire is simply a front for the NSA's spying operations on the rest of the US.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Just wait till it comes out that they spied on Senators from the opposition party.
I always wondered about how when Gonzales, Bush, Hayden, Cheney were defending warrantless wiretaps on americans by saying "this program only eavesdrops on americans domestically if they are one end of a conversation with someone outside the U.S linked to Al Qaeda/terror" whether the "this program" implied that there were other programs that did not have that restriction.
NONE of your GODDAMNED BUSINESS!!!! er, I mean, nothing.
The innocence defense fails the moment that administrative or judicial bias, corruption, or ineptitude exists. Since no human is perfect, at least one of those three disqualifiers actually exists.
Innocent people are convicted of crimes from time to time. Sometimes they are even proven innocent so far after the fact that they're already dead. This is with the full recourse available to people in court proceedings. Some or all of those rights and reliefs do not apply to actions taken by federal agencies, especially anything associated with DHS.
The average person cannot afford a satisfactory legal defense against the federal government or it's agencies. The average person has little or no understanding of their rights and responsibilities with regard to an administrative action, lawsuit, or criminal suit. Further, the average person has the same impaired understanding of any relief available and in some cases such relief is so well-hidden that not even your average lawyer knows they exist.
Administrative actions are not subject to judicial review in most cases, unless the victim brings suit (which they probably don't know how or even that they can, let alone be able to pay for it). The rules of the court do not apply. You are guilty until proven innocent. The burden of proof is on you. Decisions made are not subject to appeal or review. Agency directors are appointed, not elected; you cannot vote them out. Federal judges are appointed, not elected; you cannot vote them out.
Just going through an investigation associated with an administrative action can be so costly and damaging that you are effectively punished before your guilt or innocence is proven. Even if time is the only measure, you will spend a huge amount of it even to attempt to defend yourself.
To translate this to filesharing terms:
The RIAA claims you distributed a song in violation of copyright. The court orders you to pay full statutory damages until you are proven innocent (if you ever are). You are charged for MediaSentry's investigative costs. You are prevented from working until the investigation is resolved. You are labeled a criminal in public before any truth or fact is even looked at.
Car analogy:
You buy a car at a car lot. The DOT charges you $50,000 for property damage and $200,000 for medical damages because you might have had an accident. You can get the money back only if you can prove you were never in an accident, and after following Byzantine internal processes for requesting a review and paying for the agency's investigative work, for which you will not be reimbursed.
Never claim that the innocent has nothing to fear until you have been the innocent accused.
Analogies may or may not be comprehensive, appropriate, etc. IANAL, other disclaimers apply.
-1 raving lunatic; +6 subGenius... Things even out...
Screw this "Now who's really surprised?" guff.
Screw the apologias for law-breaking, secrecy, and contempt for law.
Contact your REPRESENTATIVE and SENATORS:
http://www.conservativeusa.org/mega-cong.htm
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/
Contact the WHITE HOUSE:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
Demand an investigation. Drag the people responsible for this into the light. Publish the mail and meeting minutes. Make the records public.
Hold the bastards accountable.
'Age' does not guarantee wisdom, would be my only complaint.
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
Of all the biases exhibited here at Slashdot---and there are many!---the bias favoring low-id users is probably the most idiotic.
Sorry, but we only consider critiques from users numbered below 636672.
One aspect of this that many seem to forget is the potential for stock-market fraud that these illegal surveillance techniques could easily present. You joke like these things don't affect you, and maybe you have good reasons to think that. Maybe you don't buy into the psychology of a chilling effect of government surveillance. Maybe you're an upright citizen with nothing to hide and no enemies. Maybe you don't have any "secrets." But if you have any investments or savings at all, you should be concerned.
Imagine the kind of profit one could have made by short-selling on financial stocks in the past 12 months. One or two illegally tapped phonecalls is all it likely would have taken to make billions while average investors lost their shirts. Do you really trust those in-charge (or even low-level personnel) to resist that kind of financial temptation?
If the public doesn't aggressively push their representatives to investigate these very serious allegations then they deserve everything they get. Don't shake your fists at the heavens when your 401(k) or IRA is wiped out years from now (maybe already?) from such fraud as if it were some kind of act of God or natural disaster.
-Grym
well, he was right about the NSA wiretapping scandal wasn't he? actually, he wasnt just right, he helped break the damn story. another thing is, if you get a really bright analyst in a situation where things arent adding up, subterfuge if you will, it shouldnt be a surprise when they figure out whats really going on, or at least the jist of it.
on the other hand, he worked for the nsa, so hes probably a liar. btw, i am a low-level analyst also, and management underestimates me all time. they usually find out soon or later.
If you think that posting anonymously is going to hide you from the NSA, well, nevermind, we'll discuss this over coffee while I question you about your knowledge.
Illegal search and seizure != Tiny Lobster transportation.
Whether or not there is some sort of god, I'm not supposed to say/god is a word and the argument ends there-Smog
And how does it make you feel when these intelligence agencies say "hi" to you like this? Do you post about it so they know that you got their message? Or do you just go buy another copy of "Catcher In The Rye"?
And finally, do you find your news site as satisfying to run as a mimeographed newsletter would be?
--MarkusQ
Gasp! They spied on everyone! No! My secrets!!!
So... they didn't really spy on everyone in the sense that they listened to my conversations so much as they COULD have.
Doesn't your quote imply that they did listen exactly as much as they COULD have? IE, to the best of their ability?
Why do you feel that way? The nerds that have stuck around tend to have very valid opinions,
Evidence for that claim?
even if I don't always agree with them. We have been on the net longer than most,
You registered on a specific website earlier than some. What does being on the net even matter when discussing such issues? It is also no indication of anything other than the first time you registered with Slashdot.
and have a better perspective on this issues that keep popping up.
Again, it identifies nothing but the order in which you registered on Slashdot. It conveys no special insight.
Granted, some of the arguments get really circular, but there is wisdom in the old-timers
There is also Alzheimers in old-timers, which might actually help explain the circular arguments ;)
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Would the parent have been modded troll if he made the same observation about going on Bill O'Reilly? To a lot of us, Olbermann is in the same league as him (he just chooses different topics to manufacture outrage over) and it's pretty hard to take him seriously.
And regardless of what you think of him do try and remember this: Olbermann is not a reporter. He's a commentator. It seems to me like a lot of people have forgotten the difference between the two.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I don't think such a journalist exists. Certainly not on any of the big news networks.
Maybe not
Why would it be a good idea to go to a partisan journalist? If you're going to blow the whistle on something and you want to be taken seriously, then doesn't it make sense to take it to a journalist who is generally respected regardless of one's political leanings?
No, it doesn't make sense.
Think about it. Given the nature of these crimes, which most sane people were already pretty certain were going on, if one's political leanings are in support of the Bush administration, then they're either a fool, or a traitor. So a journalist that they would respect is clearly an extreme partisan hack. As more and more facts like this have continued to come out, it just demonstrates that Olberman and the like aren't actually partisan, they are both correct and relatively neutral.
Wanting Bush and his administration hung for treason is a completely neutral and unbiased position. Trying to play assinine games with "balance' and pretending that supporting criminal treason and standing against it are just opposite sides of neutrality is utter insanity.
That is the clear problem with your position. You don't even seem to understand what bias, partisanship, or neutrality even are.
After all the bennies the outgoing failministration gave FoxNews
Your concern smells trollish.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
(emphasis obviously mine)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
We have been on /. longer than most
Fixed that for you. I've been on the net since 1991 (using USENET and IRC on a text terminal at Duke) and I have a six digit /. UID.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
You worked with Tice closely enough to know his security clearances, therefore, you implicate yourself in his accusations.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
This would be especially interesting if a journalist for a major network (Olbermann himself perhaps?)
Olbermann isn't a journalist. He's a commentator. Let's try and remember the difference between the two.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
But, they did categorize every one by who sent them and who received them and then archived them for future use.
So, if they'd done it to monitor spam nets.....?
Olbermann isn't a journalist. He's a commentator. Let's try and remember the difference between the two.
Since there are no real journalists anymore, I figured the terms were interchangeable.
Gasp! They spied on everyone! No! My secrets!!! ... So... they didn't really spy on everyone in the sense that they listened to my conversations so much as they COULD have.
Well they probably know what's in your pr0n collection. Nothing else seemed worth while ;)
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
That has got to be the most stupid thing I've ever heard.
Do you hear me?
Damn it, why don't you answer?!?!?
To-may-to, to-mah-to. It doesn't matter if it's to Olbermann or O'Reilly. They're BOTH useless. They're BOTH mindlessly partisan. And they BOTH should be marginalized.
We need less O'Reilly and Hannity, but we also need less Olbermann, because Keith is nothing but a blue O'Reilly to begin with.
Let's stop dilly-dallying and just change "-1: Overrated" to "-1: Disagree" or "-1: Doesn't Subscribe to Groupthink".
You appear to be conflating conservative with Republican, but the two are not interchangeable, particularly with respect to the administration that just left office. There are plenty of conservatives that took issue with the warrantless wiretapping because it represented exactly the sort of governmental encroachment into private life that their ideology opposes.
Actually, it does imply that. A) You say he's a former colleague. B) You claim to have knowledge regarding the level of access he had at the NSA.
"Bread and Circuses is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure." --Robert Heinlien
If they were "spying" on the "journalists", dont you think they would have used the stuff they dug up to discredit them?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
It's possible that he tried to give his story to the major networks, but they wouldn't run it. (I have no idea if this is true, but I'm just throwing out the possibility.)
My Mod points count as much as the user who has shorter id numbers.
It really is stupid. Although interesting.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Wanting Bush and his administration hung for treason is a completely neutral and unbiased position.
Um, no, it's not (and I say it as somebody who would have no problem whatsoever with it).
Recognize your biases, sir.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Even if they were TRYING to respect the 4th amendment and the traditional NSA distinction between foreign and domestic spying, it wouldn't matter with this type of collection. Such a large fishnet would inevitably yield *way* more "false positives" than actual criminal calls. I would not be surprised if this program didn't even catch a single true terrorist of foreign threat.
This leads to the inevitable question of whether sussing out foreign threats was even the program's *intention* (rather than just its justification). If the guy in this article is telling the truth, it would seem that it was never about foreign threats to the U.S. at all, but rather about spying on domestic threats to the Bush Administration and plugging leaks (a la Richard Nixon's plumbers).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
You are an idiot!
-- waiting for someone lower ID to say the same to me
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Many posts on this thread are interesting. The journalist is attacked. The analyst is attacked. The story is attacked.
But the bottom line is: Nobody really knows anything. And that lack of knowledge is unacceptable. Congress is responsible for this. Congressional oversight of our spy agencies is their damn duty. And CONGRESS has let us down.
If this analyst's statements are false, we should be hearing assurances of that fact by our representatives and senators. The silence of the congressmen is deafening. They are betraying our trust in them.
That is all what you need to know about the imbecile.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Same here. Six digit UID (although I had an ID in the mid 200,000's at one point), but I've been on the net since 1993.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
I'm sorry, but this guy just reaks of paranoia, I'm not saying he's necissarily wrong or that it shouldn't be investigated but something about this just doesn't seem right.
[I sent a ] handwritten letter [to the white house], because I knew all my communications were tapped, my phones, my computer, and I've had the FBI on me like flies on you-know-what
He's convinced that the FBI is watching him like a hawk, but that they can't intercept a paper letter sent directly to the whitehouse?
Will shock everyone more than who they monitored.
I'll bet they didn't record business conversations...
Even though those/that businesses had BSL-3 and BSL-4 labs and/or made guns, bombs, nuclear materials, chemicals and moved money for a living.
10/1 Haliburton wasn't monitored for even a minute.
Thanks to eating disorders most chicks are reasonably good looking these days.
My post didn't express any bias other than to ask for evidence. I'm not going to take a random low-level analyst who was fired and went to Olberman of all people at his word.
I'm well aware it's plausible, what I am not aware of is when we started screaming the government was guilty until proven innocent. That type of nonsense I expect from high school kids too lazy to actually discuss or investigate, resulting in finger pointing and name calling.
I was favored? Looks like I got 0 flamebait thanks to childish people such as yourself who look at a UID instead of content. Keep patting yourself on the back though, do it long enough and you may start to really believe you're popular on the internet and people like you.
Since your comment is even more vaporous that TFA, perhaps you might enlighten us with what cause he has, perceived or real, to hang on to a grudge. The firing itself?
The funny part about the part you find funny is the article "implied"(stated) his access was limited and therefore was only able to piece together the extent of the program over time and some other undisclosed means. A little far fetched?...maybe but certainly no more than your own. If you have real information you can share then do so, otherwise do us a favor and keep your unfounded personal attacks to yourself.
brandelf -t FreeBSD
Of all the biases exhibited here at Slashdot---and there are many!---the bias favoring low-id users is probably the most idiotic.
Interesting, but I'd accept your premise a lot more readily if you had a 5-digit id...
Isn't yours low too relatively speaking too?
(31524)
but I guess I can't. I personally think Olbermann gets it right more often than O'Reilly and Hannity (and of course Limbaugh), but I also think that's more because "reality has a well-known liberal bias" as Steven Colbert famously said than because of any responsible action on Olbermann's part. He really does seem to react by reflex, and manufacture umbrage at every opportunity.
Low ID users have been around longer, probably have more "alignment" with the community mentality, and just more experience commenting. Thus it's likely they get modded up. I doubt many people look at IDs before moderating.
And I've got a low ID, so that makes it true.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
I dunno about that I read /. for years before I got a UID just to look up cool stuff that I couldn't find elsewhere. So someone with a high number might have been around longer than you think.
If the number is less than 10,000 I even tend to pay attention to that.
Disgruntled ex-employee makes accusations with zero evidence. News at 11 I guess.
This guy was just an analyst, not some super high ranking official. The type of data he was privy too was low level and generic.
You have no clue what an analyst is, do you?
High ranking officials often make it a point to *NOT* know, or be informed of, things that may jeopardize themselves politically and legally. Analysts on the other hand, are the people who ACTUALLY DO the Top Secret work the public never hears about.... unless an analyst blows the whistle on illegal, immoral, unconstitutional acts ordered by (in this case) Bush and Cheney.
Read a book or something....sheesh.
I am open source, and Linux baby!
Really, I didn't know this. I like money. How much do you think I might get?
Nor does a low User ID => greater age.
I see the glass as full with a FoS of 2.
Yeah, good points. If your explanation of B is true then it's no surprise this guy got fired. I'd fire his ass too. Hell, just watching this unfold, if I were the guy who fired him I'd be patting myself on the back.
"Bread and Circuses is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure." --Robert Heinlien
to get on television. He may be telling the truth but I don't think I'd ever believe him. His stories sound like delusions of grandeur to compensate for being fired. I guess that fills my arm-chair psycho-analysis quota for the day.
I think your sig warrants everything you post being moderated +1 insightful. Which really only means that someone needs to mod this post -1 Depressing As All Hell.
I don't think there's evidence, certainly. But I do think that trolls get tired of trolling eventually. People don't often get tired of voicing their actual opinions.
It has to do with inverse proportion of pudendae vs. id value. Really. BSD, indeed.
There is a lot to learn here and most importantly putting in strong safeguards to prevent the NSA from ever being used inside or outside the United States against it's own citizens ever again.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
I disagree, and I have a much lower ID, so I'm right.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I "surfed" the Hippocampus BBS in the 80's.
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
Sorry, but we only consider critiques from users numbered below 636672.
I'm a windows 95 user, so I am only able to consider critiques from users numbered below 65534.
BBH
I'm glad the net's throwing media into chaos. Let's hope something more forthright shakes out.
You're a...wait a second, what was I saying?
I agree with other posts, I didn't get a UID for a couple of years after starting to read /. so the ID means little.
This shillery is just pathetic. Don't you have any terrorists to torture? Oh yeah, new prez, must be boring since they won't let you torture anybody but slashdot readers!
Free Martian Whores!
If you are innocent, then you have nothing to worry about. That's a pretty wise assessment.
For:
Against:
tell that to fox news
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
...when the Soviets threw in the towel. Immediately, all the Congress-critters started chanting "Peace Dividend!" (Translation: "We're going to cannibalize the Defense and Intelligence budgets to fund our pork-barrel projects!"). As a result, the budgets of both Defense and Intel were trimmed, and a lot of pros were either cut or forced into early retirement.
As a result of that, by the late 90's the U.S. found itself dangerously understaffed, particularly in both the Intelligence and Counterintelligence/Security fields.
Then 9/11/2001 rolled around; a tour-de-force of failures in both Intel and Security, surprise-surprise. After that, one would have thought that even dimwits like you would have finally gotten a clue, but I guess that was just too much to hope for.
With this country, it's always one "Task Force Smith" right after another, and no-one ever learns.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Task_Force_Smith
Regards;
People will believe whatever validates the opinions they already have. In other words, if the FOIA request is accepted and nothing is turned over which implicates Bush, Cheney, DIRNSA, etc., then the same people "breaking" this story will call them all liars.
So really, what's the point?
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
Why wait over three years? Let me guess, he's writing a book.
The legal red-tape that people like Bush & Cheney worked to eliminate wasn't, necessarily, meant to stop them it was meant to stop the true monster that will, inevitably, get into office someday.
The fact that they were able to eliminate the red tape shows that we(americans) have a false sense of freedom.
My theory is the american people just seem like unintelligent pushovers. If you piss them off enough, you will get more than you bargained for by removing that red tape.
I've been on the net since 1991 (using USENET and IRC on a text terminal at Duke) and I have a six digit /. UID.
Which means you were late 'getting' Slashdot. That's an important measure.
I could have had an ID under 100, but at the time I was of the opinion that everything on the net was to be anonymous. I didn't 'get it' until nearly 5000 other people had already figured it out, and that'll show for all time.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
...is Pardon GW Bush or Tricky-Dick Cheney. Call me a dreamer, but what if Obama plans to prosecute the former administration?
Every time we turn around, we heard more revelations about lies, misdirection, misinformation and deceit from the Bush administration. How much more will we have to hear before anyone is angry enough to actually allow action to be taken? Bush makes Nixon look like an angel.
It sold for $115.
Actually he's got a point, although it's badly phrased and you made it seem worse by quoting out of context.
because they're Republicans - that would be a partisan and biased position.
because they violated the constitution, lied to the American people to start an unecessary war that would enrich their friends, and performed numerous other high crimes against the American people
There has been plenty of evidence that the latter accusations are true, even if none of it has been presented in a court of law, and to recognize that and the inevitable consequences is neutral and unbiased. What we don't know is which specific individuals in the Bush administration are responsible, although it's pretty clear that, at the very least, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Gonzales, and Bush were involved since a) they headed or influenced the departments involved (Justice and Defence) and b) provided guidance in specific meetings (at least regarding torture and wiretapping) and c) were ultimately responsible for the actions that happened as a result.
OK, hung for treason might be a little harsh for Gonzales since his actions at Justice were criminal but perhaps not treasonous, i.e. limited to conspiracy after the fact. Nevertheless, treasonous actions were committed by members of the Bush administration and to want to see justice done in those cases is not a biased position.
I'd really like to know how a Canadian would happen to have a future US spook as a colleague, and still talk with him about things like classified work areas.
I'm gonna call bullshit here.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Wanting Bush hung for treason is totally biased. Treason is explicitly defined by the Constitution which you hypocritically claim you want to hang him for violating: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.
Bush has not levied War against the United States, nor has he made common cause with our enemies. Therefore he is not guilty of treason. He is most likely guilty of a host of other crimes, and of myriad unconstitutional acts, the sum total of which clearly would have warranted impeachment (too late now) and his probable removal by the Senate (if the trial was judicial and not political, which woujld have never happened). On top of that, criminal prosecution would also be warranted.
Deploring the fact that none of this will ever happen is one thing; but Treason is the only crime expressly delineated in the Constitution, and it is that way for a very good reason: the English practice in times past of using treason as a conveniently ill-defined way to legally murder people who were too good at opposing you. Bush has done nothing to meet the definition which was specifically adopted to prevent politically sanctioned assassination -- therefore he is not (strictly speaking) a traitor.
You just illustrated a point that I think was forgotten by folks in the last presidency. There seemed to be an idea that their ideology would reign supreme for eternity, and so any skirting of the law would be a way of forwarding their agenda. Oh course they failed to remember that their constitutional erosions will stay in place long after they have gone. Suddenly the left is in control of a massive overreaching government who can spy on us at will (and take us a torture us). The only hope we have is that Obama is what he says he is and willing to roll back his own power. In the end I wish that we didn't have to trust anyone to do that, and hadn't broken it in the first place. A good president understands he and his allies will not always be in power, and acts accordingly. That is the balance that is supposed to help keep our executive branch in check.
You appear to be conflating conservative with Republican, but the two are not interchangeable, particularly with respect to the administration that just left office. There are plenty of conservatives that took issue with the warrantless wiretapping because it represented exactly the sort of governmental encroachment into private life that their ideology opposes.
That's the thing that amazes me. It's not like this is unknown territory. That sort of governmental encroachment (and its ten million justifications) has been tried, repeatedly, throughout history. The result has always been the same. It has always been an utter failure and led to some of the most egregious examples of evil in all of history. At what point can we, as one people, recognize together that this is a failed idea and that trying harder to implement it won't change that?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Ha, of course you'd say that Mr. 600K.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
You may have no idea if this is true, but apparently the NSA does.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
Hence the quotes around the word age.
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
Of all the biases exhibited here at Slashdot---and there are many!---the bias favoring low-id users is probably the most idiotic.
It's just an extension of the same cultural bias that favors age. Yes, it's idiotic, but it is at least understandable.
If only I had bothered to sign up for an account when I first started lurking, I could have had a low 5 digit UID. Oh well.
Knowledge != Intelligence
Yeah but while I know Keith is a lefty, he also seems intelligent. Wallace just a few days ago was questioning if Obama was actually president because Roberts flubbed the oath. I know that the constitution dictates the presidency shifts at noon, there is no a excuse for someone who is labeled a journalist not to. Unless of course they are choosing to hype up their audience and spread FUD.
The conservatives you mention. By your definition they haven't had anyone to vote for in the last 100 years or so.
Seriously, if you're a conservative of that stripe...who do you vote for?
And another thing. Conservatives such as the people you describe need to *SPEAK UP* and get represented. Although I usually vote Democrat, I would happily consider people of that mind set. Anything that marginalizes the neocons is good, IMHO.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Fuck off!
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
You just described me.
/. and elsewhere, that the Bush administration blatantly abused their power. I would love to have seen Bush impeached and on trial for violating his oath to uphold the Constitution. Because of the direction the Republican party took during the last eight years, I now fall more in line with the Libertarian political ideology than the Republicans'.
I am politically conservative, but have made no secret of the fact, here on
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Is it false? Prove it!
And just how do prove that it's false?
Who is John Galt?
Can you tell me again why we need covert foreign intelligence? What do you consider their greatest achievements?
They missed the Russian army marching into Afghanistan. They missed the collapse of the Soviet Union. They missed the WTC attack in 93. They missed 9/11. They missed WMD in Iraq, or helped the Administration manufacture the evidence. So wouldn't it be better to spend 100 billion a year on securing our ports and borders, rather than hiring agents who pay double agents who we hope know something about anything, or trying to datamine e-mails for terrorist activity? It's colossally stupid. Do you really think you're going to find a non-encrypted, non-coded message between two guys that says, "Hey Ahmed! Zero hour is next Tuesday at three o'clock. Would you like to grab dinner before our salvation?" If you do decode the network, it's probably too late. Hell, they don't even have ten people who read Arabic at the FBI. They have more interest in power than in counter-intelligence.
And here someone will say that we're not allowed to know what they've prevented to protect our intelligence gathering methods. Well, here's to hoping you and the emperor continue to enjoy your new clothes.
Freedom and security are mutually exclusive options. If you lose important freedoms to have a small chance at security, there's nothing left to defend.
Hell, being anti-American isn't even a crime, much less being communist, or socialist. What the hell does "anti-American" even mean, really? I hated Bush, his policies, his wars, his abuse of the constitution; does that make me anti-American? I really dislike much of our culture; does this make me anti-American? I'm a social libertarian; does that? I'm not a fan of our economic philosophies and our view that they are superior to everyone else's (or worse, that their sinonymous with democracy or freedom); am I anti-American?
As far as I'm concerned, these positions make you actively pro-American, not anti-American.
Sadly, most of America has become anti-American.
Knowledge != Intelligence
Does it really matter if people were "commies"?
Its just a political ideology, and just like the rest of them, it has good points and bad points. Discriminating, or ruining peoples lives in this case, against people because you don't personally like their opinion is wrong.
Communism, at the time, was equated with Nazism. The US government, driven by hysteria on the part of a few blowhards whose sole purpose is to win re-election by sowing fear (gee, that sounds familiar) worked to make belief in any political ideology short of "Democracy" (we have never had that on a national level in the United States) illegal. As a member of a union I was forced to join (by nature of my work) I had to, in the 1990s sign a paper indicating that I was not a member of the Communist Party or any organization allied with Communism. Everyone who joins a union today still has to sign such a statement.
Frankly, when I signed that statement, I realized it was a direct violation of my rights as a citizen to associate with whom I wish and to believe in what I prefer to believe in.
As a part of our "campaign against godless Communism," Congress even went as far as to have a new motto imprinted on all of our money: "In God We Trust" and they also changed the Pledge of Allegiance to include under God after "One nation" and before "Indivisible."
These latter measures, designed to oppose Communism, have been "reinterpreted" by part of he political spectrum as proof that the United States is a "Christian nation" which I understand means "theocracy."
But it did matter if people were "commies." They lost their jobs and were forced to find other work, usually for a lot less pay. The blacklist didn't end until the 1960s and was a list of people "convicted" mostly on hearsay evidence with no trial.
The creepy thing about Bush is that he was using the same techniques Nixon used against journalists and others perceived to be "enemies." Everyone knows today that Nixon was extremely paranoid. I don't think Bush is paranoid like Nixon, he is just mean, like his mother.
And, with the President of the United States allowed to incarcerate anyone who he declares to be an "enemy combatant," your hatred of Bush, his policies, wars and Constitutional abuse makes you not anti-American as much as an "enemy combatant."
And I use that term, based on the Bush Administration's definition of "returned to the battlefield" applied to released inmates of Gitmo: Anyone who wrote an article or whose lawyer wrote an article or spoke out to describe their captivity was considered having "returned to the battlefield." So, I am assuming you spoke out about your dislike of the past administration.
How does it feel to be an "enemy combatant?"
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
In the case of the Bush administration, that has often appeared to be true. Sensationalism is fine, but not when it rocks the boat.
I do have to call you on this one... The US attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president. Clinton fired every single one of them to insure their loyalty to his administration. Their job is to represent the administration's policies.
There was nothing improper or illegal about the firing process... However there did seem to be something amok with the interview questions during the hiring process.
you must be an idiot.
Even if *EVERYONE* in the NSA who knows about these programs voted against the people who implemented them or more specifically voted against the people who nominated the people who implemented the programs... without telling *OTHER PEOPLE* why they are voting the way they are they won't be able to effect change by voting. There aren't enough people who "know" about the classified programs to effect change without.
Besides, how can monitoring journalists communications ever protect america from anything?
And if the NSA is innocent, then they have nothing to worry about (same w/ Bush, Cheney, & co.)... So why are they trying to keep all of this a secret?
Putting the "anal" back into "analyst"...
Sometimes, I swear to god, Fox News is just going for civil war. Those people seriously need to STFU. Partisan bias, partisan criticisms, and partisan opinions are all fine and to be expected in democracy, but Fox News is purely vitriolic partisan propaganda. The video I linked to would be tasteless and offensive if provided during a comedy show, but acceptable. When masked as the news they are placing their juvenile name-calling and slander in the same class as news coverage regarding things like nuclear proliferation and war in the middle east. For all their pandering to the soldiers in Iraq, my heart goes out to all the African American soldiers we have in the field that saw this.
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
....And do what with the prisoners?
I hate to bring up one little, carefully glossed-over fact, Pollyanna, but some of Gitmo's inmates are hardcore mass-murderers.
What do you do with them? Put a bullet in the backs of their heads? Ship them home? Turn them loose?
Curious minds would like to know....
Regards;
Silence, slave!
Sometimes, I swear to god, Fox News is just going for civil war. Those people seriously need to STFU. Partisan bias, partisan criticisms, and partisan opinions are all fine and to be expected in democracy, but Fox News is purely vitriolic partisan propaganda.
The funny thing is I could do a find and replace on that part of your post from "Fox News" to "MSNBC" and the rest of it would still be true. Personally I can't take either one of them seriously. Can't take CNN seriously either but that's not because they are hyper-partisan -- it's because they managed to find the airtime to cover Britney Spears while our country is involved in two wars......
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
what I am not aware of is when we started screaming the government was guilty until proven innocent.
Goes with the territory. Those in positions of authority should have to prove their innocence. It is our obligation to revoke that authority otherwise. Nothing more need be done.
What?
It can be illegal to carry a lobster smaller than a certain size is illegal. Anything is considered illegal.
The person carrying the illegal lobster did not specifically swear, as Bush did, to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Because Bush did so swear, that places him at higher risk of prosecution for his wholesale violation of the Fourth Amendment, which reads:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
One should not confuse a regular citizen with a US government official who is carrying out specific duties and, rather than abiding by the laws of the land he is sworn to uphold, violates them and does so with legal advice prior to those violations.
If I'm pulling up a lobster pot and upon finding an undersized lobster, I choose to wait until I can show it to my daughter onshore (as one we must let go) -- which may be an illegal act -- I don't have a lawyer standing by my side, as Bush did, offering me advice at a moment's notice. Furthermore, I am not charged with prosecuting others for the crime I am committing.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
So what is the venue for proving the government guilty of something?
Oh yeah? Well I agree that being biased towards low UID numbers is incredibly stupid, and my UID is lower than yours so that means I'm... wait... Damnit.
The enemies of Democracy are
Yes, Obama here is exactly right. Obama makes an excellent point about the very important username bias issue, and I think Obama should be rewarded with many positive moderations, or possibly just start out with a +5, Insightful on each post.
Yes We Can!
Yes We Can!
Yes We Can!
While Bush might not have (directly) aided our foreign enemies, he has aided and abetted enemies of the constitution, and attempted to undermine our entire Democracy. An enemy of the constitution and Democracy itself is by definition an enemy of the United States.
This is not empty rhetoric, in fact he filled the entire government with people who "believe" in so-called unitary executive, which is very much a monarch. While you may have an argument he has not violated the letter of the law, he has indeed violated the spirit, in a treasonous manner.
I only support the death penalty in 2 cases: treason, and war crimes. I disagree with your assessment, and assert that Bush/Cheney committed both, and now that Bush is out of office, I'm a lot less afraid to say so, too.
Everyone ?
If the NSA spied on "everyone", then surely they'd have to spy on themselves also ? That's an awful lot of spys ! Do they have a rota system to ensure that no one ends up spying on themselves ? Do they need a Beowulf cluster of spys ?
That headlin is really like the casino bosses who used to proclaim "everyone's a winner". If that were true, and everyone did in fact win, they'd go out of business pretty damn quick.
Now if the article headline had been, for example, "NSA spied on eveyone who mattered", then that's something more pertinent. The existing one is just pure tabloid sensationalism.
Respect your slash elders, young man !
music lover since 1969
Your concern smells trollish.
I find your lack of faith disturbing.
Are you sure? Bush hung Saddam for his war crimes, wouldn't it be neutral to do the same? Not for spite, just because it's a good example. Dictators who order people to their death should be removed - permanently.
I'm not neutral. I'd have a party. But it doesn't seem like a Rep/Dem issue.
Clearly a lack of historic awareness combined with wishful thinking :)
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
You're genuinely paranoid.
Well, the government did do illegal wiretapping by violating FISA rules in establishing the program without valid authorization in the first place. So they've been shown to have already broken the law on this issue, and then had it retroactively changed to whitewash what was publicly known about their crime. There really was no valid reason for the government to have broken the law in the first place since FISA was already quite lax. That makes quite a bit more credible this accusation that the lawbreaking was actually more severe than what has been proved so far. In for a penny, in for a pound.
Kidnapping US and Canadian citizens and shipping them off to foreign countries for torture. Just saying, you know, that if anyone tried to ship me off to Guantanamo, or worse, I'd consider it an act of war.
If Osama did any of what Bush did we'd agree he should taste MoaB.
It has always been an utter failure ...
See, that's where you're wrong. It was a huge success in this case. They got hordes of intelligence on the domestic activities of U.S. citizens, without any need for public documentation or warrants, and nobody has gone to jail for it. In fact, the telecoms were granted blanket immunity from prosecution after the fact. Sure, they couldn't keep it up forever, but that was never the goal to begin with.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Olberman is definitely on the left, but he isn't the raving lunatic that is O'Reilly. O'Reilly's positions are the extreme of the extreme. I only hope his opinion represents a smaller number of people than his fervor indicates.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
[...] At what point can we, as one people, recognize together that this is a failed idea and that trying harder to implement it won't change that?
Somewhere around Doomsday, I'd think. Two days after Duke Nukem Forever comes out...on HURD.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
Oh, yeah, like anybody is going to follow a tinyurl link from /..
in the 1990s sign a paper indicating that I was not a member of the Communist Party or any organization allied with Communism. Everyone who joins a union today still has to sign such a statement.
Well, (unfortunately) I've been a member of a few unions and was never asked to sign a piece of paper that stated a I was or wasn't a member of any political party. They were all just interested in a cut of my paycheck.
Bush has done more for the comfort of America's enemies than anyone else in the world since his election. He recruited very effectively for terrorist groups, diminished American freedoms, espoused torture, and impoverished Americans. Treason does not have to be intentional or openly espoused.
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
Wanting Bush hung for treason is totally biased.
agreed.
Bush has not levied War against the United States, nor has he made common cause with our enemies.
are you sure about that ( Plame affair)? I mean if Bush intentionally interfered with our CIA, our diplomants, and messed with the rightful secession of power from a dully elected president ( Al gore) as he has been previously accused, then treason has indeed been alleged.
Give it a shot. Just pick up your phone and ask them when you hear the dial tone.
I Know You're Listening
Eclipse PDE and Me
It has always been an utter failure ...
See, that's where you're wrong. It was a huge success in this case. They got hordes of intelligence on the domestic activities of U.S. citizens, without any need for public documentation or warrants, and nobody has gone to jail for it. In fact, the telecoms were granted blanket immunity from prosecution after the fact. Sure, they couldn't keep it up forever, but that was never the goal to begin with.
No, I wasn't commenting on the intelligence-gathering or domestic spying itself. I was commenting on what that ultimately leads to. This kind of surveillance (only the technology with which it is done has changed) and lack of respect for the citizens has always been a core component of totalitarian dictatorships throughout history. I consider the widespread misery and suffering that all such dictatorships embody to be the "utter failure" and it's not like we don't have enough historical examples to know what the early stages look like.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
By invading Iraq, we bolstered support in the middle east (and Iraq in particular) for Al Qaida. We gave them angry young people who wanted to attack the US for ruining their lives (by killing their families) as recruits. Thus, we gave them aid.
Nonsense.
It is not mindlessly partisan to insist on the rule of law in war, and adherence to the constitution always. That is Olbermann's main gig.
Furthermore, Olbermann criticizes Democrats frequently. That also can't possibly be construed as "mindlessly partisan".
The constitution is not a baby to be divided in the middle, and "both sides" given half of it. Calling someone partisan to dismiss everything they say is a lazy, intellectual cop-out.
I could write a treatise documenting Bill O'Reilly's lies, but I would not call him a mindless partisan, either. I call him a loud mouthed bully.
Revealing secrets about our capabilities really can hurt the United States.
Not a tenth as much as allowing unconstitutional domestic surveillance to continue unchallenged.
Commies (and yes, I use that term intentionally) were just less creative about how they committed mass murder... the skipped the whole elaborate Xyklon-off-the-trains scenario, and went straight to firing squads and starvation.
You *are* aware that Communism, the political idealogy, != Stalinism/totalitarianism, right? I mean, I get that you Americans have been brainwashed over the last 50 years to believe that communism precisely equates to the Russian purges, but... have you not yet learned that that's not *actually* true?
I mean, I fully concede that Communism, as it's been implemented on a large scale in recent human history, has devolved to totalitarianism, but that doesn't mean the two are equal. Or are you telling me that your average hutterite colony is a hotbed of genocidal killings that we're just not aware of?
Says the guy w/ the 600K+ ID.. :)
I love these tangents where people start comparing their Userids..
The last one I participated in got out some really low ones.. got down to people in the low 3-digit range..
http://entertainment.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=560628&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=nested&startat=100&pid=0
Not only this, but while we were "fighting communism," we were propping up authoritarian regimes around the world - many worse than the communism we were "fighting" ...
How did the original story come out about the wiretaps? Someone (namely, this guy) leaked.
Why do people believe him rather than thinking that he's a raving lunatic? Because other people started digging, calls were made, Congress got off their ass and started looking around, and the story eventually held up.
The question is whether this story will hold up. A FOIA request is a way of asking the government for information, and in such a way that they pretty much have to respond one way or another. If they lie, then we probably won't know about it at first, but these things have a way of eventually leaking out. And a blatent lie about a FOIA is a crime that is prosecutable, in a way that wiretapping with the Administration's say-so probably isn't.
I would guess that an analyst is likely to keep their mouth shut when told to spy on Americans when when the President has told them to; that's a crime of ommission. But, with a new administration in town, the analyst is less likely to lie in response to a direct question; that's a crime of commission, and without the top cover.
I'm not putting a lot of faith in this guys accusations for three reasons: 1) coming out with it now rather than earlier and 2) releasing it to KO and 3) no backup or supporting evidence. It's when KO or other journalists really start digging, calling their contacts on the inside, and get corroboration _or_ when a FOIA or other document surfaces that the likelihood of this being correct goes way up.
The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.
Eh, but I don't claim to know anything. The Friends and Enemies thing on here is interesting, and I tend to highlight those with a libertarian bent, but at times I like to read every comment, just to get a feel for all the opinions out there. Do I think a lower ID is more important? No. I don't moderate by that. My point was that there were two older IDs engaging in actual discussion, rather than a flamewar.
I'm Peggy.
In the interest of 'National Security', the NSA can be forced to become our Internet Nanny, monitoring and admonishing our errant Internet habits, with the uncertainty of unknown consequences in undisclosed locations being a powerful deterrent.
Don't need COPA or anything like it to protect us and especially our children. NSA can be made to do it.
Her lips were softer than a duck's bill, but her quacks
You appear to be conflating conservative with Republican, but the two are not interchangeable, particularly with respect to the administration that just left office. There are plenty of conservatives that took issue with the warrantless wiretapping because it represented exactly the sort of governmental encroachment into private life that their ideology opposes.
That mainstream Republicans who support things like domestic surveillance, offensive war, and micromanagement of the economy call themselves "conservative" (why? because many of them are also prudes like what we saw in the Super Bowl "wardrobe malfunction"?) is one of the best examples of Newspeak in our times. It's destroyed the meaning that this word "conservative" once had; now it means whatever is convenient for the speaker depending on who is speaking and whom they are addressing.
I personally do not like and do not support either major party, for they are both worshippers of the status quo and their own entrenched power, but I will say that at least the Democrats are more open about their dream of an ever-expanding government. That doesn't make the Democrats any better, of course, it just means that they use a different tactic. They use the idea of a government that does many things for you that you should be doing for yourself as a seductive lure to weaken our resolve and compromise our principles. The effect is the same, however, for both parties and both tactics and it is our collective weakness, lack of resolve, and screwed-up priorities that makes this whole thing work. A healthy, joyous, complete person with a firm grasp of what is and is not important (freedom vs. security, for example) would never be tempted by the offerings of either party.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
We have a number of visitors at my local library who believe that the government or some other major group is spying on them or even harassing them. Certainly, they fall into the paranoid category. You should hear some of the claims they make!! That said, at least this guy (subject of the posted story) has (had) some access to real information and we know that the NSA, et al, and their data mining, so the story is plausible. On the other hand, the guy could be in the same boat as some of these library visitors: out of his mind with paranoia. The best paranoids base their conspiracy theories on truths and plausible concepts. Time will tell, but I imagine he's at least partially right, even if by accident.
I hope this comment is well received... I could have moderated instead!
Persecutors will be violated!
It's all relative. I'd love to have a UID under the 250k mark, whereas a teenager I know is insanely jealous that I have a UID under a million. Sad thing is I registered a /. account in 1999, but I have no damned idea what the UID, the nick, or the password is. Oh well.
[FUCK BETA]
I don't think your premise is correct. Bush and Cheney were high-level officials, yet you say they ordered all this illegal stuff. Is there a special exception to your rule?
We, the secret cabal of /. users with IDs under 100k, will take your opinion into consideration when reviewing our attitudes. Of course given your higher value ID, your opinion will be weighted accordingly :P
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Bush has not levied War against the United States, nor has he made common cause with our enemies. Therefore he is not guilty of treason.
I disagree. Firstly, there are foreign and domestic enemies of the US. Those who would undermine the constitution are the enemies of the United States. There can be no question that Bush gave aid and comfort to those enemies.
Secondly, Bin Laden made it perfectly clear that his intention in attacking the US was to provoke a military response by the US. This military response would create a backlash against the US in the muslim world. This is exactly what happened. The actions of Bush directly aided the aims of Osama Bin Laden. He could not have given Bin Laden a bigger gift if he tried.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/30/study-nbc-news-doesnt-fol_n_139162.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/vp/28286392#28699663
I can see the partisanship, I don't quite see the childish "haha your stupid!" attitude. I think if you want something that compares to Fox's level of immaturity you need to visit comedy central.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=210922&title=msnbc-replaces-fox-news
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
From what I gather, though, at least the Democrats want everyone to go to school, so they can learn to think for themselves.
"I was in love with a beautiful blonde once, dear. She drove me to drink. It's the one thing I am indebted to her for."
I hear you. But I also think that the problem with trying to work within a system to fight corruption of the system itself is largely pointless once the corruption reaches a critical mass. Eventually, you just have to say, "No" to the actors in lab coats with their authority-endowing clip boards who instruct you to increase the voltage and shock the actor strapped in the chair. Because sometimes, usually, it's not just a disturbing university social-studies experiment. The sad truth today is that official organs have become systems with the primary purpose of keeping populations enslaved, largely ignorant of the fact, and content to just go with it. --Or to be confounded when the official channels of complaint become too convoluted to be of any use, thus using up all the available energy of the complainant and leaving him or her with the feeling, "Oh well, at least I tried." The end result, as appears to be the case with you, is to simply get back to work, secure in the knowledge that you did your best. And nothing changes. A safety valve for dealing with people who have a glimmer of awareness and fight in them.
Our trust and reliance on the system to protect us, as well as our perceived duty to be loyal to that system is taught by the system itself during our youth when we are at our most trusting and our minds at their most vulnerable to manipulations from which many never recover enough to even fully recognize have even occurred. There comes a time when you have to screw up the courage and do that which is right, because secrecy is very often there primarily to protect the perps. --As is certainly the case with spying on the public.
Also, you must be cautious. When you say, "I stand by what I said," that standing is very much like the statement itself, one bound up with a notion of honor and duty to a system which hates and fears its subjects. Honor and duty are not bad things in and of themselves, but with the appropriate conditioning, they become facets of the personality which are easily redirected into empowering the corruption.
It's very easy to take offense and for the ego to scream and yell when such ideas are pointed out, but understanding our world cannot be achieved when valid notions become things to fight against for fear of 'being wrong'. This is usually what keeps people from progressing. Fear of feeling wrong. The aggression and ridicule which is so rampant on this very site is another programmed response. Geeks get it the worst, I suspect because they are generally more aware and capable of dealing with thought problems. As such, they suffer from the deepest programming, and you can see it in their reactions. I've seen spittle fly and eyes roll around like those of frightened horses when discussing benign facts and ideas. This is not rational behavior, and it comes from somewhere. All of it is yet another aspect of the control system built into use through our childhood experiences with schooling.
Objective reality is all that counts. The rest is a trap.
Cheers!
-FL
Hmm, your first link doesn't really seem relevant because I never claimed that NBC News was the problem. In fact NBC Nightly News is the only network newscast that I still bother watching. Gibson should have been put out to pasture a long time ago (his "moderation" of the debate between Hillary and Obama comes to mind -- we are involved in two wars so let's talk about flag pins!) and Couric is hard to take seriously. I mostly watch Nightly News and the Newshour.
I can see the partisanship, I don't quite see the childish "haha your stupid!" attitude
Then I don't think you've watched enough of Countdown. I don't really see the difference between the "haha your stupid!" name calling of Fox News and the self-righteous indignation of Keith "he must resign!" Olbermann.
I think if you want something that compares to Fox's level of immaturity you need to visit comedy central.
Well, if we are linking to comedy shows then I would offer this up for consideration :)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
There is no need to inject partisan politics into this issue. Each individual congressperson (democrat or republican) bears responsiblilty for the lack of oversight in this matter.
Thank-you for nipping that one in the bud so succinctly. It's far too easy to slip into old response patterns. Divide and conquer is a popular tactic because it works. It takes clarity of mind to overcome our garden variety pre-conditioning.
-FL
The biggest nixon fanboys RAN the bush whitehouse! Nixon wouldn't spy in such a primitive fashion if he had today's technology. He would do what they did in a heartbeat.
Perhaps Liberman went for bush on every important issue because they had something on him?
Perhaps the corrupt, perverted, and closet-homosexual republicans HAD to vote the way they did 90+% of the time! (that is, until it leaked out on a few of them-- no, I didn't say all republicans.) This is not unrealistic-- these are lawyers who live by quid pro quo. Spending the USA into the ground is not a very republican thing to do (except the last 8 years...)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
From what I gather, though, at least the Democrats want everyone to go to school, so they can learn to think for themselves.
If that's what you believe the public school system is for, I'd like to introduce you to a man named John Taylor Gatto. I know of two works of his which will disabuse you of this notion if you will only read them. The first is an essay called The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher and the second is a full book called The Underground History of American Education. Both are quite eye-opening. The only caution I will give is that you may feel a temptation to become angry when you read these works; that will help nothing and no one, particularly you. The better approach is to understand that "if they really understood what they were doing, they wouldn't."
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
You're also probably not 21. :P
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
I'm not putting a lot of faith in this guys accusations for three reasons: 1) coming out with it now rather than earlier and 2) releasing it to KO and 3) no backup or supporting evidence. It's when KO or other journalists really start digging, calling their contacts on the inside, and get corroboration _or_ when a FOIA or other document surfaces that the likelihood of this being correct goes way up.
In other words... [citation needed]?
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
Bush didn't hang him. He had his day in court.
And Bush was not a dictator, no matter what people want to say now. He had a willing Congress (both parties) and enough electoral support to be re-elected.
It shouldn't be a Rep/Dem issue, but apparently it is for most people. (Me, I'm a centrist.)
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
If you are innocent, then you have nothing to worry about. That's a pretty wise assessment.
And by saying that, you just lost the right to be taken seriously.
I mean, that's right up there with, "I was just following orders."
How out of touch does a person have to be to not know this stuff? Seriously. Google for it. It's not complicated. --And frankly, it ought to be covered around the same time as street crossing safety tips and telephone etiquette.
-FL
"Echelon."
This NSA business is a side show. Of COURSE we are being spied on. We've always been spied on. This is only a debate with those who have short memories or denial issues.
It's as though people live in two separate universes but only pay attention to one of them because the other one is just too upsetting. Doesn't make it go away, though.
I was talking with a friend a couple of weeks back, and she asked me a question about something, so I answered it. She looked alarmed and upset and flew into accusations and anger and stormed away. This surprised me because I didn't think what we were talking about was even terribly interesting. It was old, old news for me.
Then the other day she phoned up and apologized. Seems she checked it out on her own and grudgingly verified the answer I'd offered her. I told her it was okay, and that it was easy for me to forget that this stuff is upsetting when you first learn about it. Scary and life-altering, and a very real option is to just block it out and pretend that everything is as we are told it is. Heck, even with Echelon, I went through a state of fear when I first learned about it and who was involved and why it was happening. But that story broke years ago now, and it was old even then. It's easy to forget that people find comfort in a continuity of reality, even if it is a false one, and that this is often why they reject new ideas.
-FL
I don't see that happening anytime soon. Depression-era Germany was quite overcrowded, had no money, no land, no food and a crappy government that was still in shambles after a monarchy-created war a few decades before. The monarchy is gone now, so we don't have to worry about a WWI, and the people of this country have their needs met enough by the free market that they will not support a fascist (ie: corporatist) government. Hitler was only in power for about what, 5 years? WWII was about the German corporations more than it's figurehead leader (although yes, he was a madman). It was a pretty clean war at, the U.S. may have gotten behind Germany if it weren't for Pearl Harbor. What happened in the later years was disgusting but that was not the cause.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
MSNBC tried being the opposite of Fox, and failed. I'm talking as a somewhat liberal fellow here.
You should read Little Brother . The USA PATRIOT Act messed badly with "innocent until proven guilty." In which case, you don't have to be guilty to be treated as a criminal.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
Check out the parent of the post you're replying to. You misunderstood the lobster allusion.
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
"Granted, some of the arguments get really circular, but there is wisdom in the old-timers."
Note to self. Ask grandpa if women should stay in the kitchen?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
"People don't often get tired of voicing their actual opinions."
Haven't been modded down much, have you?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Talk about brainwashing!
The (at that time underground) communist party, with strong ties to the Soviet one, was actually one of the major players in the abolishment of a decades long dictatorship in my country, and it's not an isolated case. And no, they didn't run around executing people.
Communism is as valid a political ideology as any of the others, and it's certainly not "evil". Its implementation, on the other hand, might be. So can an implementation of conservatism, as the US has so successfully shown over the last few years.
And no, I'm far from being communist, never voted for the communist party and probably never will. I just find it sad to see someone so obviously brainwashed by false, discusting propaganda.
I agree with you, and the other people who are disagreeing with you are stretching the definition of treason in much the same way as the Megan Meier case stretches the definition of the computer abuse and fraud act.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
<xxxGirlygirlxxx> Thank you for listening to me.
<xxxGirlygirlxxx> You know your a really good listener.
<xxxGirlygirlxxx> Sweety please say something.
<Sandaedar> Ok I'm back.
Here's what I always understood.
The NSA dragnet collect information or collect any info(?) ('spy') on its own citizens for the purposes of intelligence gathering. Its against Constitutional rights. Its against the policies and objectives of the NSA (must be for FOREIGN targets only). OK.
The FBI probably can't collect information in a similar fashion (tapping all telephones, internet). It must obtain a warrant and must target a specific individual. Ok.
Canada has an intelligence agency (CSIS). As well the US is in 'good' relations with the French, British, Autralians, etc.
It seems -THE loophole- is that any other another government could collect information on every US citizen's Internet access (destined in or outside the US) and then share that information with the US - presumably the FBI or Secret Service etc since it would fall well within their jurisdiction. As long as the information isn't being collected domestically.
Occam's razor suggests that it's more plausible that a single man is attention-whoring than that his outrageous claims are true.
Yes, Occam would be appalled at the alternative: Spy agencies... spying.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
If you wanted to get the media interested in your story, what better way than to say "you were targeted!"?
You don't really believe that's a coincidence, do you?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I've yet to ever see a form of dismissal of any non-trivial issue that didn't make me feel this way. I've always felt that it was the favored tactic of small-minded individuals who feel threatened instead of delighted when they discover the limitations of their worldview.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
No, he's a dictator. I'm not aware of anyone voting to detain Maher Arar.
Bush's big game was shipping people overseas where he could pretend the rules of the USA didn't apply. There he wholeheartedly supported torture.
He's easily guilty of kidnapping, torture, and a few cases of murder. That's if you don't get into the issue of guilt over ordering an invasion on false premises, etc.
Why do you feel that way? The nerds that have stuck around tend to have very valid opinions, even if I don't always agree with them. We have been on the net longer than most, and have a better perspective on this issues that keep popping up. Granted, some of the arguments get really circular, but there is wisdom in the old-timers.
Because when the only thing you know about a poster is that they have a low Slashdot user ID, it is the fallacy of appeal to authority. The only way to know more about a poster than the number of digits in their user ID is to examine the merit of what they are actually saying, in which case the user ID number is quite irrelevant. I really do not care what someone's user ID is. It provides no exemption from the need to critically examine the facts they present or the claims they make, nor the need to apply common sense to the opinions they present.
There is simply no substitute for thinking for yourself, it makes you a better and more effective person who is not easily deceived (intentionally or otherwise). I wish we'd accept that this is a good thing instead of looking for clever and not-so-clever ways to shortcut this process.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
'Age' does not guarantee wisdom, would be my only complaint.
Indeed, and in some cases "age" also means "entrenched worldview", "resistant to change", and the type of self-limiting hubris that prevents one from entertaining alternative viewpoints.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
If you won't say it, I will. The neocons ARE Hitler reincarnate, and America IS a fascist nation.
How many innocent Arabs has american militarism killed? Errr wait, I suppose killing the Indians wasn't genocide either? Just eradicating barbarians and securing freedom, as Andrew Jackson liked to point out. God bless him. He should be on the 20 dollar bill. Oh yeah... I forgot.
Scanning data with computers in order to determine whether to have a human being look at it still qualifies as "spying".
Dictators don't give up power peacefully. I have a feeling the guy your talking to is a troll and he doesn't have enough sense to know the definitions of the words he is using. I noticed in his next response that he lists a Canadian who was incorrectly detained. He forgets to mention that his friend was detained because of information the Canadian government (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) gave the US indicating his connections to Al Qeada and links to terrorism. Even the Wikipesia article attempts to hide that by listing agency initials and links to dead sources (The INS was acting upon information supplied by the RCMP).
You walked into a loaded one here I'm afraid. Take it for what it's worth but I felt the need to attempt to inform you of what you were up against.
Wow.. that sure is a biased view.
It really comes down to whether you want temporary Kings that rule with divine right and have eternal immunity from the law afterwards or whether you want a Republic or Democracy. Ford and Nixon set a very bad precedent but it shouldn't overturn the precendents set by Washington etc, however it did. However actually calling a former President to account would start a political shitstorm that would run for years and damage all parties - calling current Presidents to account and resticting their power when they go too far is about all that can be done.
If you had stuck around long enough to have a low id you would have read plenty of evidence :P
However there would be thousands of us that could have had a low id if we really thought it would have been important even just for the bragging rights, instead of just cowering anonymously for ages. A lot of people took a look on day 1. Rob Malda had a popular Enlightenment theme site before slashdot and there were a huge number of people that must have heard about it from somewhere else.
Nasty little hobbitses!
Only if they are corrupt or incompetant arseholes, and they really are just maintaining the appearance of not knowing in order to dodge the consequences of appearing to be responsible. The important thing in that case is to be seen to be not informed so any fallout lands on a scapegoat. It really is a very bad way to run any sort of organisation. When underlings discover they are not under adult supervision a large variety of crimes occur.
Bush has not levied War against the United States, nor has he made common cause with our enemies.
Unless you believe, as I and others do, that we have enemies within as well as without, and those enemies were better served by George Bush and Dick Cheney than any other administration in history. As PNAC signatories and NeoCon ideologues, they gutted this country in the pursuit of self-enrichment cloaked in the propaganda of securing the survival of liberty in this country by securing liberty in other countries. The destruction of our Constitutional freedoms, the looting of our treasury, the wasting of our military resources on unnecessary, fraudulently sold wars was a far more effective attack on this country than running planes into high rise buildings.
According to Wikipedia:
Oran's Dictionary of the Law (1983) defines treason as: "...[a]...citizen's actions to help a foreign government overthrow, make war against, or seriously injure the [parent nation]." In many nations, it is also often considered treason to attempt or conspire to overthrow the government, even if no foreign country is aided or involved by such an endeavour.
By that definition, which expounds on the Constitutional definition and legal precedence, I charge that Bush and Cheney should be tried for treason based on the fact of their injury to the United States of America. Now you can argue my conclusion of treason, but you can't deny that they harmed our country, against all advice and evidence, to the point that the injury could be construed as intentional. And as such it shouldn't surprise anyone that people of this nation desired their impeachment, trial, conviction, and punishment for their crimes.
*** *** You're just jealous 'cause the voices talk to me... ***
You appear to be conflating conservative with Republican, but the two are not interchangeable, particularly with respect to the administration that just left office.
So who does a self-respecting conservative vote for when there's only two real parties on the ballot and the Republicans are royally screwing things up? Did you actually vote Democrat in the last election or are you both conservative and Republican?
This is one of the dumbest things I've ever seen posted here on Slashdot, and that's saying a lot. If I could mod you -1 Clueless I would. Communism was as bad as National Socialism ever was. Nazis were just more open about their plans for genocide, but when you crunch the numbers, communism accomplished a lot more in the murder category. Commies (and yes, I use that term intentionally) were just less creative about how they committed mass murder... the skipped the whole elaborate Xyklon-off-the-trains scenario, and went straight to firing squads and starvation. Your thinking is a prime example of what we used to call "The Banality of Evil"... the ideal that evil is overblown and really, isn't that big a deal. In your case, the ghosts of 60+ million people would disagree.
Congratulations, you're officially brainwashed.
Communism is an ideology, or a theory, or whatever you want to call it. I'll happily say that I consider it to be very flawed, since it makes certain assumptions about human nature pretty much anyone over the age of 5 understands are wrong.
The way some countries chose to implement communism is different. There's a difference between thought and action. If you fail to see that difference, then that explains a lot about the state the US of A is in these days.
I take it you also consider Islam to be evil?
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
It's our own fault for this to occur on various levels.
First we elected the people stomping all over our rights and worse, reelected the vast majority again.
Second there is no particular public outcry over the doings of NSA and their willing accomplices (ATT, Verizon etc.), in fact, we still keep paying the latter happily every month for 'service'.
Third...can we really complain when our communication gets monitored on a vast scale if we take no steps to protect them in the least? The issue has been known for decades, the solutions have been available for almost an equal amount of time. We just do not use them as it's apparently too inconvenient, too complicated, yadda yadda... So why can't Johnny encrypt...STILL in 2009 and what are we as techies gonna do about it?
I believe his name would be Ted Koppel. However, he is not at a major network and I can't think of any others in the networks.
Appeal to authority is only a fallacy in a world of infinite time, energy and resources to adequately examine the merit of all claims. In a world where such things are in short supply, human beings must rely on authorities.
Infact Obama is probably the most conservative democrat to ever be president, I even heard he bleeds red if cut.
I do agree with you but just playing devils advocate on a particular technicality- regarding making a common cause with your enemies, I'd argue this effectively depends on how you define enemies.
One might quite reasonably argue that Halliburton for example is an enemy of the state due to the very fact that they've been responsible for getting many American's killed on jobs that these workers were sent on for no reason other than to increase Halliburton's ability to charge- that is, take, US tax payers money. Their execs also moved or were going to move abroad, to one of the arab states (Dubai?), the reason for which many argued was to avoid US prosecution. There are other situations where Bush has arguably helped who are fairly clearly defined as the enemy although this is primarily through incompetence than malice. An example is vastly strengthening Iran and Syria by weakening Iraq.
I can see why some would certainly argue he is guilty of treason and I don't think their view is entirely without merit. I do think it's just a little too much of a stretch though realistically to be a valid path to pursue.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In that case, I'll call you on this one. Clinton fired the USAs when he assumed office, like most presidents do. Bush fired some USAs during his second term, including those he appointed, apparently (according to several whistleblowers--and look for much more of this in the months ahead) because they weren't pursuing certain cases "aggressively enough" when they had no evidence to bring those cases to court, and because they were pursuing other cases "too aggressively" when they *did* have evidence. What do you consider immoral or illegal if not obstruction of justice?
Wow.. that sure is a biased view.
thank you.
But that can cut both ways. Imagine a rep from the NSA told Olbermann in this example, "Sure, we'll release your file in its entirety, however not solely to you, but on a publicly accessible website where everyone from your ex to Fox News can access it as well. So, want the world to know about your run-ins with the law as a child? How about that stint in rehab? Your current affair with your makeup artist? Imagine the alimony she'd demand once she saw your tax records? . . ."
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Good thing those teachers taught you how to read.
YES
Jag pratar lite svenska.
I'd imagine that there are plenty of Republicans that took issue with the warrantless wiretapping as well.
Bush has not levied War against the United States, nor has he made common cause with our enemies.
I don't go as far as the 9/11 "Truth" conspiracy nuts, but I do believe it is at least plausible that Bush and Cheney had some degree of foreknowledge of the attacks. If that is false, then even still, using the attacks as leverage to invade Iraq is enough to warrant a charge or Treason, for it has created many more enemies (terrorists) than it has killed/captured/converted. Right there is your "common cause", helping the enemy with their recruitment efforts.
Meh.
I read the essay, and though I share Gatto's dislike of regimentation, it basically comes off as a rant. I'm a big believer in Montessori-type schooling, but also in the idea that most children will not bother to learn, e.g. high-school geometry without prodding from the system. I choose the geometry example because it is most people's first introduction to nontrivial logic. And I know that my classmates resisted it.
Gatto implies that every child will become an amazing intellectual butterfly, if only their education can be sufficiently free-from. Judging from the homeschooled people and kids I know, from the average curiosity and intelligence of the uneducated, and from the world's 5B population, I think he is wrong.
While the blatant bias on Fox is irritating, I just keep mind of the fact that it's the television equivalent of a three year old's screeching as he's being dragged out of the restaurant for a timeout.
Fox once had an opinion that mattered to an administration more interested in promoting divisiveness than intellectual debate. The tables have turned and they're now facing a long stretch in the political wilderness. Like the rabid three year old, they just want to make as much noise as possible on the way out.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
sorry, first link was supposed to be this one. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1101189&cid=26564983
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
I would feel the same way if I hadn't just discovered MSNBC has taken a similar position on the other side of the aisle. (if MSNBC is as juvenile as FOX, which I still kind of doubt) Anyways, as long as there are two to tango, Fox News will continue.
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
Welcome to the club. I officially switched my party affiliation to Libertarian this year. Personally I think at this point in our history as a nation the greatest threat to the average citizen is the Federal government. Republican or Democrat really doesn't matter, all either party wants to do is consolidate as much power to tax and control the populace as they possibly can.
Politicians are like diapers - they should be changed frequently and for the same reasons.
No, he's a dictator. I'm not aware of anyone voting to detain Maher Arar [wikipedia.org].
America isn't a democracy, dumbass. It's a representative republic. Bush was elected as the representative of the people.
Either you're retarded or trolling. I'll give you the benefit and the doubt and go with the former.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Christ, that wasn't flaming someone, it was putting things into perspective.
Or is hurting someone's feelings flaming now? Lol..
You're very welcome.
Ahhh yes, and now I clearly remember how we all made him above the law! Yes, you're right... it started as a mere presidential election and then we let him eat that kid's heart and say that thing about the devil, then the smoke, and the eight years of blackness! Yeah, how could I forget.
Sorry asshole. The president was (badly) elected but is still expected to follow the laws of the land. That he did not feel it necessary was proof that he was a dictator.
He also lied and got us into a useless war that has killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, thousands of Americans, and was designed JUST to get Saddam.
That whole war on false pretenses thing... Maybe you're too fucking retarded to follow along here, but that's murder. Conspiracy to commit perhaps, but still a ticket to the big house for anyone not above the law.
We must rid of presidents who see this as a kingdom.
Just as soon as Pelosi gives up her attempts to destroy the 2nd amendment.
Um, what? My parents taught me to read, at least until I was 5 or 6, at which point I would sequester myself in the library for hours on end and read myself, often picking up the meanings of words by context alone.
And therein lies YOUR problem. It's a reading comprehension issue. Where someone says "Iraq" you see the words "Al Qaeda". This connotation has been proven absurdly false for several years now.
You KNOW all of this, as I've seen it explained to you before. You have such a screaming need to be "right" even in the face of so much evidence to the contrary, you start to look like the guy who REALLY DOES believe in the actual Flying Spaghetti Monster, even after having been told of that particular deity's origins.
It's damn near farcical, and would be if it weren't so sad.
I honestly think it would be taken MORE seriously. I'm not going to go into a long rant about it, but there's a facet of U.S. sociology that really doesn't want to accept these things as true. The way John Stewart presents the news with comedy is like the sugar that helps the medicine go down. The comedy makes the information more palatable (in a passive reception sense, not a moral acceptability sense) but the information itself still gets disseminated effectively.
I put little weight in most of what I hear and read. For one, idiots like this guy are most likely looking for a little notoriety, or perhaps are so opposed to a political ideology as to damn-near commit treason and expect a book deal and doing the talk show rounds. And there are very strict rules as to how communications including US citizens are handled, yet this has very successfully been spun into "Bush wants to listen to your phone calls." That's partisan crap. Maybe if the government had implemented such a program after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing 3000 people would still be alive. No telling how many would be jumping off the WTT in the wake of current fiscal crisis though...
I take a strong position usually against "leakers" as I used to work for a certain agency which will not be named, and I took seriously the oaths I took in the process of getting cleared to do my job.
I enjoy the unpopularity of my stance that there are things the American people do not need to know in order to live happy, productive lives. And I'm not talking third-world assassinations or anything like that.
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
Sorry asshole. The president was (badly) elected but is still expected to follow the laws of the land. That he did not feel it necessary was proof that he was a dictator.
Wrong.
"a person exercising absolute power, esp. a ruler who has absolute, unrestricted control in a government without hereditary succession"
The idea that Bush had "absolute power" is preposterous and everybody knows it.
He also lied and got us into a useless war that has killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, thousands of Americans, and was designed JUST to get Saddam.
Correct--and then he was re-elected despite it. Interesting, that. Sounds like a majority of Americans (and I didn't vote for him, mind you) were OK with it. Doesn't look too dictatorial to me.
That whole war on false pretenses thing... Maybe you're too fucking retarded to follow along here, but that's murder. Conspiracy to commit perhaps, but still a ticket to the big house for anyone not above the law.
Wrong. When you understand how both American and international law work, you can try to prove this point. You don't, so stop trying.
We must rid of presidents who see this as a kingdom.
Wow, you're right twice in one post. That's shocking. But that still doesn't make him a dictator, no matter how much you'd like to redefine the term.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
And here lies your problem. It seems your reading comprehension is fucked worse then your imagination thinks mine is. You see, I didn't just see Iraq and then claim Al Qeada, the parent said "By invading Iraq, we bolstered support in the middle east (and Iraq in particular) for Al Qaida." You see, that? Right there where he said Al Qeada? Or do I need to draw you a picture? And it doesn't even matter because what I wrote in my drunken stupor wasn't pertaining directly to the content of the parent but the context and the intent of his message. It was to show that his stretches to grasp at straws that aren't there can just as easily be turned against him.
Yes, I have had idiots like you attempting to impress their viewpoints with little sucess. They always seem to end up getting smacked down then marking me as their enemy and pouting for a while. Many of them troll my posts and waste mod points marking shit down that they know is correct but doesn't agree with their world view.
Of course you think I need to be right. That is because I am right the majority of the time and won't back down to misinformation and slanted incorrect points. But hey, that isn't a faulting characteristic of me, it's a fault in you who almost implodes over the prospect of your world view being a fallacy built around a charade. You seem to see that as a threat for some reason and can't accept anything but your own views. Even when you have to ignore relevant points to do so. Here, you had nothing constructive to say, the one point you attempted to make was completely invalidated just by selecting the button that says "Parent" and going back to see what I was replying to. You then jump into character assassination attempts after blindly being wrong.
Lol.. you looking in the mirror are you? I suggest you go troll somewhere else or actually pay attention and find something worth trolling over. You failed at both here.
Yeah, grandparent seems to imply that the public school system *isn't* hopelessly behind those of its students who are well-educated. That concept is so far removed from my personal experience that I am not sure how to react.
The idea that Bush had "absolute power" is preposterous
Great. Then he'll be charged for overstepping his bounds. Right? Because there's no way he was legally entitled to allow torture, lie about Iraq evidence, etc.
But if he's not going to be charged with his crimes then what's the practical difference?
Sure, he couldn't eat a baby and get away with it, but he has gotten away with ordering illegal wiretapping, kidnapping, and more.
he was re-elected despite it.
He never admitted to lying, it became clear during his second term just how little evidence he had and the extent of the prisoner torture, the wiretapping, etc.
When you understand how both American and international law work
Oh, it's obvious how they (don't) work. The fact that Bush's crimes will never be addressed is a problem of money/power influencing the courts, not that he actually had the legal right to order the things he did. He's not entitled to single-handedly break treaties but the actions he ordered were intentional treaty violations.
He's absolved of specific murder guilt in ordering a war, but it's obvious that if he lied about the evidence to support the war that he's guilty, and that's pretty evident by now.
Even if American law absolved him, and there's no way it actually does, why shouldn't the Iraqis order his death/abduction-trial-execution, as he did for Saddam? Or the Canadians for his attack on their citizens (though woefully they'd merely imprison him if they did).
Read what you wrote above. Actually read it.
I'm not trying to be a smart ass man, but I honestly believe you may be in need of mental help. Seriously, I know you really don't like me, and I honestly don't like you either, but this isn't a sly personal attack, it's honest advice from someone who shouldn't care but does.
Just go have an evaluation done, you'll be better off for it. If you really think I'm just trolling, read your post again while pretending a stranger wrote it and see what you think of the mental state of the person writing it. Your post is rife with illogical connections, subject changing, undeserved aggression and an unfounded arrogance that you wrap yourself in as if it's both some kind of defense from facts and an excuse to say whatever you wish (no matter how baseless) while somehow retaining some imaginary high-ground.
If you're actually just a teenager venting your hormonal emotional state, it would be understandable, but you're not are you? From what I've gathered (admittedly not much to go by for this conclusion) I'd guess you're in your 30s or 40s. Again, I'll suggest that you re-read your post without the automatic assumption that you're right because you're you, as if it is written by a stranger, and take a long hard eye opening look at how you come across, and how your claim of being right most of the time would seem to an outside observer. If you somehow still view everyone else as wrong and foolish while believing you're the perfectly logical and reasonable one, seek professional help immediately before you hurt yourself or someone else.
My post, although poorly worded and misspellings all over the place, (mos likely because of the alcohol I consumed before it) says the exact same thing in principle that the parent said except it turned the principle against him. Even with the poor grammar and misseppled words that is obvious. You see, the parent was stretching everything he mentioned in order to make bush out to be evil, I showed that the very same stretches could be done to make him the exact same way.
Here, let me break it down for the challeneged, the op said when attempting to justify hanging Bush for aiding our enemies (treason),
I then added commentary about how that wasn't right starting with
I further commented with
showing how simple it is to grab things and stretch them to fit your mold. and also showed how dangerous it is if everyone did that. That is because his comments, using the same logic, could be used to make him a treasonous traitor giving aide and comfort to the enemy.
I then spell that last part out directly with
Now if you look, I told the parrent to think about what he was doing and to answer if he was willing to accept it being done to him.
So tell me, what part of that is so confusing that with all your superior intelligence, that you couldn't understand? Should I have separate a sentence somewhere? Should I have drew a picture or something? You chimed in claiming something about mistaking Iraq for Al Qeada when I obviously did nothing of the sort. You then run off about something not even related. Even in this reply, you repeat something I have most likly said to you before, The mental help is something I often refer people to when they refuse to accept facts over opinion. You claimed
So where is that? Granted, I will admit that the wording and spelling caused someone to look at it for a second or two, but I'm not sure how you can pull that out of it. Perhaps you can point directly to is.
What I think really happened was that you read too much of your own personal opinions into what I posted. I can tell that you have somewhat of a disdain for me because you went through the trouble of putting me on your Foes list for whatever reason. As of this writing and the writings in this threat before this, you have are listed as one of my freaks which only happens when you put me on your Foes list. Obvio
Sure, but obviously a few stepped in it. :)
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
You're a tool, and BTW, sorry about the lateness of my post, I spent the past several days moving.
Your attempt to switch your tone over to faux-intellectual will not be effective bait. I've seen your style, and debating with you is as effective as banging your head against a steel post, nothing will come of it as the post is incapable of changing its position.
You are so entirely predictable it's funny. Your whole personality seems to be an over-the-top parody of a rampaging wingnut. Your argument style is to declare yourself right by fiat and then to dismiss all evidence to the contrary as bias.
As to why you're on my foes list, you've been there a while, and it's not because I disagree with your opinions (there are many sane right-wingers here that I not only respect, but who actually have swayed my opinions on more than one occasion using logic and reason). I'm not the blind partisan you really really want me to be, because I'm simply better than that.
And the thing about the "ignorant liberal" is cute. Just out of curiosity, is "ignorant" just something you put before "liberal" to show us how reasoned and non-biased you are? Nevermind the fact that I'm not really a liberal, but in your defense I AM a progressive, and you can be forgiven for mistake as the two ideologies share many common points. Can you offer an example of my ignorance? I don't believe you can, as I am aware of where I am ignorant, and either ask clarifying questions when such is the case, or I keep my damn mouth shut.
I really wasn't going to give your temper tantrum this much attention, but I feel bad for you because, unlike most trolls, I think you actually believe the shit you spew.
P.S. Being drunk doesn't excuse you from being a tool, but trying to pretend it does points out what kind of shithead you really are. It's very similar to the "she shouldn't have been wearing the short skirt, it made me horny" defense, to me at least.
P.S.S. Against all better judgment I'm going to address the issue that started my involvement in this conversation ONE MORE TIME. The OP said that Iraqi deaths are increasing terrorist numbers, and you immediately went off on how killing Al Qaeda is a good thing. Iraq != Al Qaeda no matter how badly your worldview requires it to be true. I think you might just have to bite the bullet and for the first time admit that maybe you were a tiny bit wrong.
Don't worry though, you can still pretend you've delivered a "smack-down" to another "ignorant liberal" if your ego requires, I'll pretend to be humbled for you.
So are you refusing to back up your assertions or something? Are you simply trolling? I showed you beyond any misunderstanding that you could possibly get where I was coming from. You have failed to do anything but rant and insult me which I can handle but it shows the character of the person I am dealing with. I guess perhaps I could cut this short and simply say Put up or shut up. I know it must really chap your ass that I have not resorted to directly dealing with your insults but you were responding to something and have failed to make any statement of substance about it.
So yea, I will just end this with a Put up or shut up.
You didn't finish reading my post did you? I expounded on my original post, and you've (yet again) completely ignored the substance of argument, which is (for the third time now) you automatically substituted Iraq for Al Qaeda with full knowledge of the false correlation.
I read your post and you still didn't understand the plain fucking english that I have repeated to you five times already. Well, not five but it was enough that I didn't care to do it again. This is especially true after you spent the better part of your life attempting to insult me just to find that the answer to your question about ignorant is that I use it when it is fucking appropriate. Now, if you must, I will address the two sentences out of the 8 paragraphs that actually addressed it but I think I'm giving you more consideration then you deserve.
Now pull your head out of your ass and pay attention to what I'm saying instead of what you think I'm saying or what you want me to say. I said nothing about Iraq being Al Qaeda. I said nothing about killing Al Qaeda being a good thing. As I pointed out already, I said I was taking what the parrent said to the same extreme using Al Qaeda as an example instead of Iraq to make the point that his position has no meaning or merrit to it. I then took it to the extreme of showing him how his own worlds could be doing exactly what he claimed the Iraq war was doing and his recomended punishment should be applied to him. I ended with asking him if it was ok.
Now do you understand that or do I have to saying ten more times and draw a fucking picture? I can understand you getting the wrong impression from the first attempt, but damn, I have told you three other times now. What the fuck is it going to take? Furthermore, I asked you to point to where I said Iraq=Al Qaeda and you have refused to do that at least twice now and this time, your blaming me for not reading you post. Well, stick you head back up your ass and be as stupid as you want. I don't care, it only makes you look bad, not me. And that is true no matter what insults you hurl around instead of addressing the meat of the issue/argument. If you would have spent one third of the time addressing the argument as you did attempting to think not so clever insults up, you would have figured it out three posts ago and save the world the mindless dribble you have poisoned us with. I swear, everytime anyone reads your posts, their IQ drops in half for a period of time. I'm wondering how much of that damage is irreversable?
So it's still on you, Put up or shut up. I mean address something I actually said or go troll somewhere else.
I'm sorry, you're right. I suppose it comes from the hard time I have of believe that there are actual human beings out there so calloused and morally retarded that they can see no difference between murdering innocent civilians and killing armed murderers.
You've brought me to realize that moral relativism should include a section of "Special Moral Relativity" where there exists a moral frame with no morals whatsoever. Absolutely fucking zero.
If you cannot see how watching your son die when a missile hits an ELEMENTARY SCHOOL inspires more hatred, more action towards revenge than hearing that your wayward son who ran off to "fight the infidels" got killed at his war camp, then you're a fucking lunatic (an assertion I stand by).
You also automatically assume that Iraq (being declared a theater of war, for no reason) is just automatically supposed to be some place where you should expect bombs to be dropped on you. I don't understand. Maybe your (laughable) logic makes some sense if you figure Iraqis are somehow at fault for what a group of Saudis trained in Afghanistan did, but even then, holding a civilian populous hostage for the actions of a tiny TINY minority (of citizens of other nations, remember) that use armed force is unacceptable to the people being punished.
If you don't understand why those two targets are ENTIRELY different, and will have ENTIRELY different social effects on a nation, then you're as mentally retarded as you are morally retarded. Fortunately for you, you know there's a difference, and the only reason you came up with your snide little comparison in the first place is because you're really just a bloodthirsty armchair wanna-be soldier who wants to deliver some "smackdown" to someone who isn't a threat, and only by proxy. In other words, a pussy.
Oh, and just so you know, your 99 IQ doesn't actually mean that you are smarter than 99% of the populous. Stop trying to come up with cute little ways of saying that I'm stupid, we both know it's not true.
we still aren't on the same pages. I never said anything about morals or moral relativism. Although I will parrot the former Supreme Court Justice Rehnquist in saying that the biggest problem with society is that we moved from absolute morals to moral relativism. However, this is the first I have spoken of it.
First of all, I never said anything about a missile hitting a school and children dieing. I never said that it didn't inspire hatred. Second, the war on terror, when appropriately applied against Al Qaeda and the Taliban resulted in the same or similar scenarios. That is something that will happen in war and even though there is an attempt to avoid it, war by definition isn't pretty. Finally, I never said anything about that, I never said anything that could be connected to that, I said that by stretching that to mean treason and being cause to hang the president, the same could be applied to him.
Do you understand that? I mean we have only been fucking with this topic for a week now with you ignoring everything to make your anti-bush, anti-war, anti whatever statement. When at war, horrid things happen. It doesn't make it treason because it incites the enemy. If you were to stretch the definition of treason which is specifically defined in the constitution for all US legal purposes, then the same stretches can easily be applied to the parents position and possibly yours. This isn't about the horrors of war, it isn't about war or an act against another country. It's about abusing a definition of a legal term and stretching it past what any sane interpretation could make of it in order to demonize someone else. Change two concepts, from war to your comment, and it can be used in the same way against you or the OP I started of replying to.
No, I do not. And no I did not say anything about it in my posts. You are having conversations with yourself and acting as if I joined in but I didn't. What I did assume was that when someone stretches a concept in order to demonize someone, the same can be done on them.
That is why I asked you before to point to where I said things you claimed I did (but I never did.) And after I told you to put up or shut up, you go off on another rant about nothing I have said.
So has the NSA spying driven the prices of computer gear, cpus, ram, disk, tesla boards, etc... down low?
At least one benefit.
I suggest that we all collectively spy on THEM and publish all the materials! Oh, to some degree that's happening on the internet already.
Since I seem to not understand, can you explain clearly, and without paragraph after paragraph explaining how stupid I am, what you meant in the first place then? I'm honestly curious.
How in the hell can you not understand. Jesus fuck man, you need help.
Reread my previous post and look to where I was explaining that I wasn't making a statement on the hells of war, I was making a statement on stretching laws to incorporate coverage where it shouldn't otherwise be and how that is dangerous and can be applied in reverse thereby effecting you too. You and the op may very well be brain washed into believing the perils of war aid the enemy thereby creating a situation of treason by nature of getting involved into another war but that reasoning is so thin that it can be applied to your speaking out against was in the same light and make you guilty of the same.
If you still don't understand, I suggest just hanging it up on the topic. Any normal person should have got it by now. They most likely got it in the beginning.
Okay, there's the thing. What do the Iraqi people have to do with our war, and why are they in peril? By creating a war on "Terrorism", and then bombing innocent civilians and their children until the remaining populous turns to arms in order to fight back, you most certainly ARE giving aid to the enemy (it is a nebulous entity we declared war on).
I have been questioning your fiat declaration of Iraq as a "theater of war" since the beginning of this conversation, and you've not responded to it properly yet. You seem to make the assumption that since we're dropping bombs in Iraq, it's a legitimate theater of war, and that since war is Hell the consequences are both unavoidable and blameless. This is what I've been saying bullshit about the whole time. Being that Iraq had NOTHING to do with the attacks on 20010911, every single terrorist that comes or has come out of Iraq since the invasion was created without cause or provocation by Bush's policies. The very moment that one of these men joins Al Qaeda, the terrorist Bush (and friends) created wholecloth has become material support for Al Qaeda.
I get what you're saying, I am saying that since Iraq is NOT a legitimate theater of war, that the whole "war is Hell" idea doesn't apply. Creating those terrorists was a choice made by Americans, not Arabs. If we were talking about Afghanistan, we wouldn't be having this conversation, but we're not.
If a bunch of Canadians attacked China, and then China attacks my home state here in the U.S., bombing a school and killing my sons, then yes China itself (certainly not Canada) created whatever Hell I can (and would) unleash upon them, and the person who ordered the attack on my homeland would be solely responsible (aside from me myself, of course, the blame would be shared and I would be happy to revel in my part in it in such a case, but no third party could possibly be held accountable).
Now what if the Hell I attempted to unleash was with the very same group of Canadians that attacked China in the first place? Would you consider China's bombing of the U.S. in this case to be helping out the Canadian radicals? What if China started LOSING the war against radical Canadians because of wasting resources in the U.S., even going so far as to divert materials from the fight against the radical Canadians to fight in the U.S.? Is that then aiding the Canadians?
Similar analogy, but from a different perspective. What if the U.S. attacked China, and China attacked Canada because of it and then got stuck in a quagmire in Montreal, making them incapable of attacking YOU effectively? You'd be stoked, right? You'd feel like whoever in China made those decisions was helping you out, bringing you comfort.
Again, if Iraq was anything but elective to GWB, we wouldn't be having this conversation, but it was a choice to attack an innocent nation, and every consequence of that choice need to be laid at the feet of the ones who made it.
It doesn't matter, it is a war in and of itself. What you are describing is one of the hells of war. Using the same logic, we can say that anyone who supports Israel is committing treason too because Israel shells the terrorists in Lebanon and the Palestine territories. Bin laden himself claimed 9/11 was because of our support for Israel so should Bill Clinton have been hung for treason? If you answered yes, then you need to do some serious thinking about this.
That's because my point wasn't about the justification for Iraq being at war. War is a function of government and in our case defined by the constitution and as long as our government takes on that act, then any consequences because of it can't be used to apply treason against a sitting president. And it doesn't matter is Iraq took part in 9/11 or not, that has nothing to do with the situation.
But Iraq is a legitimate theater of war. Congress passed the appropriate levels of authority in order to go to war in Iraq, Bush didn't act alone or in defiance of government procedures or permission. He acted within the guidelines availible for reasons he thought just regardless of any final knowledge of their accuracy.
BTW, the treason part would have to be treason towards Americans, it doesn't matter what the Arabs think. The president of the United States as well and every citizen is not obligated to foreign powers or their ideas of treason. Treason is an act against your own country, not a foreign country. The fact that we went to war with another country and that caused support for another faction doesn't come into play. You can't be acting legally and be convicted of treason. Especially when it is a legal concept specifically defined within the constitution.
First of all, if the bunch of Canadians weren't backed by the Canadian government, then it wouldn't be war eve
Someone willing to lump people into "torture" and "no torture - yet" seems to need a taste of their own medicine. Perhaps the downfall of Guantanamo will be when people fake enough evidence on people like you to clog the system.
Sorry, but if you think abduction and torture of a SUSPECT you don't actually have hard evidence on is reasonable, you're the enemy. Watch your back.
That's because you're not very smart. The fact is yes, Bush/Cheney DID order MANY illegal acts, and nobody with half a brain questions that. However, by stating only 'super-high-ranking officials' know precisely what is going on is absolutely incorrect.
Bush/Cheney did illegally wiretap many people without any cause (not 'just cause') ANY cause. Bush/ Cheney DID tell the intel community to 'find reasons to justify invading Iraq' --- maybe you don't know this, I forgive you if you don't it's not common knowledge. However, an ANALYST is one of the most important positions in the intelligence community. For your information, intelligence goes just a bit like this:
1. gather intel
2. analyze it
3. provide the facts to people who need it
4. move along
Guess who the people do steps 2,3, and 4?
I'll give you a hint, it's not high-ranking officials. High-ranking officials are either dickheads like Bush/Cheney, or someone they have ordered to act in proxy.
I am open source, and Linux baby!