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Innocent Or Not, the NSA Is Watching You
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Wired: "Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world's communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails — parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital 'pocket litter.' It is, in some measure, the realization of the 'total information awareness' program created during the first term of the Bush administration — an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans' privacy."
It's time for the revolution. Kill the pigs in charge.
There are no innocent citizens in the modern police state.
Nobody's innocent anymore. There is too much information flowing about - we're all guilty of something. Even if you don't quite no what it is - it's not important. You're just guilty of something so it's important that somebody keep tags on you.
Just in case.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Gee, sure sounds familiar...
traitors to the American way
it turns out its not "home of the brave" after all
Privacy is evil, crypto is terrorism, stenography is child porn, and you are public enemy number 1.
Noids.
The increase of backup capacity, and computing capacity makes the dream or nightmare of searching through the internet a reality.
Anybody being connected to anybody in a rather short chain of relations it's obvious that we are all at some level "persons of interest".
If you are a "bad guy" you are obviously "fair game", if you know the bad guy, you are reasonably suspect, if you know somebody who knows the bad guy, you might be needed to understand if you are not part of the support group of the bad guy.
Two level more of indirection and the whole humanity is in the dragnet.
No unfortunately there is not one unique "bad guy", so the probability of being more than N+2..N+3 of any bad guy is really low, even if you are a retired nun. (actually, in practice not such a good example).
So anybody can with some justification be "looked at", so it seems that the only way to alleviate the issue is to over broadcast everything, and hoping that the weighting algorithm finds you booring...
Guess it's too boring for me, I'll have to fish for friends in high places, ... so it's back to the "old regime" (as in before Louis Capet got his headache cured, actually not really fair for the guy, and the change where far from smooth, ... but somehow the end of privileges seemed a good idea, and now seems an idea whose time is past ....)
Sic transit gloria mundi...
Good thing I stopped going on 4chan.
What became of it? I mean, did it have any effect? Where is it now? Did anybody lose their job over this? Any elected officials lose their seats? So far the only ones that did were voted out. Bunch of hogwash! Most of the voters want this, and more.
In Soviet Amerika the fascist is YOU!
I love that the magazine cover says "Deep in the Utah desert." It isn't. It is literally in the middle of the city growth centers. I've been watching them build this since they broke ground. It is a mere 15 minute drive from my house and I live in suburbia. The center sits less than 1 mile off I-15 between Salt Lake City and Utah County. BYU is 30 minutes away from it. There is a water park 10 minutes up the road. They aren't hiding this thing at all. It is in plain sight. It sits up on the side of the hill across the Jordan river valley. And yes, it is freaking massive.
For those interested, here is a google map of the location they are building this. http://maps.google.com/maps?q=40.430485,-111.934547&num=1&t=h&z=14
At least I don't have to back up my data anymore. Restoring it might be a problem...
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
I fell so nice and fuzzy-warm and, and, yes LOVED to be so secure from the ravages of the those others that wish to do us harm.
This was news, weeks ago.
WTG /. if it's not a slashvertisement, it's WAAAAAY old news.
-@|
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
Many of the same people who are most angered and most vocally oppose such blatant 1984 style mass surveillance are the same ones that consistently vote and rally for more and bigger government, and support the politicians who favor a bigger/more-powerful government.
Yet, they don't see a conflict. They don't seem to understand that when you make a government large and powerful enough to provide all these social programs, entitlements, and levels of regulation, this is what happens. Politicians, being the type of people that politicians typically are, will use every opportunity of increased government scope & power to increase their control over the citizens and reduce/eliminate citizen rights and protections.
You can have a government that provides a social "safety net" and major social services/entitlements, and that regulates everything down to kid's lemonade stands and have things like this domestic surveillance-data facility.
Or, you can decide to risk people having the ability to make bad choices and possibly failing and have freedom.
You cannot have both.
Choose.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
A young libertarian is brought into a command center....... As you can see, my young apprentice, your friends have failed. Now witness the listening power of this fully OPERATIONAL listening station!
I can't wait until the RIAA sue the NSA for copyright infringement.
Looks like it is time to start encrypting emails and buying everything with cash. And use TOR.
If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done?
that our elites have been moving in this direction for a while.
Printed on the toilet paper in all of the restrooms.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Whether or not you may have offended the State is not to be determined by you, but rather by someone, somewhere, whom you do not know.
In these days of austerity - who approved the budget for this and prioritised it over building something more useful like a hospital ? Or is that classified information ?
Anyway: now that they have it - I propose that we give them something to put in it, how about we start mailing each other 1MB chunks from /dev/random as attachments named things like HowToMakeABomb and pgp encrypted ?
I, for one, welcome our governmental overlords.
Imagine all the information that future historians will be able to use for research! In 500 years when someone does a biography of some artist or philosopher, instead of just having to publish rumors and inuendo that he was gay we'll be able to go back and see all the times he searched "m4m" on craigslist and then see what throw away yahoo email account he used to send cockpix to his gay hookups. I mean sure the potential for fascist regimes to use the information for a mass extermination campaign of gays or whatever is horrifying but on the other hand when the U.S. government eventually collapses all this stuff will become public like the old KGB archives did after the USSR collapse. It's gonna be a great time to be a historian if nothing else.
I've come across a frighteningly high number of individuals who have a "nothing to hide nothing to fear" mindset. They support things like the Patriot Act without even thinking about.
Very, very disturbing. I really hope they're the minority.
I bet they'll still subcontract a lot of classified search work to Google and Amazon, who have the necessary capacity AND software in place.
Perhaps opponents of this will just start to encourage encryption of all communications - even if they have "nothing to hide". As has been said many times before, it would be a bit like sealing the envelopes containing your personal and business correspondence.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
You will obey me while I lead you,
And eat the garbage that I feed you,
Until the day that we don't need you.
Don't call for help, no one will heed you.
Your mind is totally controlled,
It has been stuffed into our mold,
And you will Do As You Are Told,
Until the rights to you are sold.
- Frank Zappa
The US is building a vast system of paranoid security to protect... its vast security systems. Soon there will be nothing of much significance left but the military and its contractors. Then they might find out that they can't survive as a pure self-serving system. The shame is that they won't see until it's too late, stupid and arrogant as the military is (no matter which one), exercising their pompous and useless traditions, weaving flags and shooting in the air. Mankind should have known better since the first industrial war (WW1), but governments and systems have come and gone since then, the steel and cannon barons, however, have been staying in charge almost erverywhere...
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
Dredd is watching you
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/03/16/1550206/nsa-building-uss-biggest-spy-center -- c'mon /. editors.
Burn it down before it is too late and we loose the Internet.
It may sound extreme, but if you think about it this is the only thing standing between a new global totalitarian regime and one of our last freedoms!
Get everyone out and ...
Burn it
Burn it now
Burn it now
Burn it now
Burn it now
Burn it now
Burn it.
Get everyone out and burn it to the ground !
This is the last stage before we get a new global totalitarian NWO government.
They have used Echelon already in the past for their financial and economical and military benefit (eg Airbus vs Boeing sales) and now they want global control?
Not going to happen: burn it down before we loose one of the last freedoms that we have: the Internet !
At least with the super computers at the UofM, if the cooling system could be shut down, it would over heat in 15min. So, the question is: How is this data center cooled? The UofM uses the Mississippi river.
Tor is broken.
Everything they do not outlaw or fuss about you can be sure they already have access: Skype, BlackBerry, Tor ...
We need newer and better open source technology that much more complex and which we can keep updating in almost real time to stay ahead ...
In addition we need to increase traffic by a million fould so that they are unable to follow
There are at least two sets of people in the world;
1. The "keep your hands off" people who want minimal regulations and want to rely on their own intelligence for survival.
2. The "you didn't tell me" people who will blame government for not properly regulating industry and all owing bad thing to happen. They are the one that say things like "It didn't say I couldn't use that cancer causing agricultural product so the company is a fault and I will sue the company and the regulators".
You seem to miss the big question; why is the agricultural product illegal? I just twigged to the idea that by agricultural product you may mean marijuana; if you meant that just say it. I do not agree with it being illegal and that is slowly changing. Just because a product is agricultural does not mean it is OK. A good example of that is the many food recalls due to salmonella contamination. Even vegetables are susceptible to this. Should we have no regulation on how our food is handled?
Ethics are not the only reason for laws; safety is also a major factor.
You can not please everyone and sometimes you can not please anyone.
The NRO (National Reconnaissance Office) an agency so far in the black the government did not admit it or any of its massive budget so much as existed until 1995 or so, has a massive campus on the main drag in Chantilly, VA and right there on the main gate and over the front door are big signs that say National Reconnaissance Office). Of course the forest of dish antennas on the roof should tell you something, but the fact is that the government really doesn't have play these black box spy games anymore. Because there's little anyone or any government can do about it, whatever it is. Often things are secret because they need to be secret. But often they're secret because that's just what the government does - labels things secret.
The solution here is MORE BITS of encryption. Keeping your data private is simply a matter of making sure the strength of your encryption keeps pace with the "enemy"'s computing power (which is vast and growing, but not infinite).
"That's either incredibly asinine or the most brilliant troll I've ever read. Not sure which." -Anonymous Coward
Folks, I read this back in the middle of last month when it was published.
If this is such an evil thing (I happen to agree it is.) then why has it taken 6 weeks for some "anonymous" reader to submit the story?
I call "Slow News Easter Sunday" shenanigans!
FUCK YOU COCKSUCKERS!
and thanks for all the fish. Now drink your tea.
Those operating FUD serving China watch style websites sure seems rather disinterested in jumping on real issues with their own American government.
Guess Uncle Sam is not going to infuse under the table money to criticize itself.
who is watching me masturbate?
I am not condoning the what this project implies. Nor do I want to come across with a "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" mindset. If there was widespread action taken against the populace using data collected in a manner suggested by this facility, I have enough faith in the American people to at least take action then. Events of injustice will occur, much like the events already mentioned in previous posts. As disgusting as these are, they remain somewhat isolated events. Big business doesn't want you locked up in jail. They want you buying their products. Again, this does not make the Utah complex right by any means. Just that the doom and gloom found in reaction to articles like this is sometimes overblown.
"You are being watched. The government has a secret system: a machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I know because I built it. I designed the machine to detect acts of terror, but it sees everything. Violent crimes involving ordinary people, people like you. Crimes the government considered irrelevant. They wouldn't act, so I decided I would. But I needed a partner, someone with the skills to intervene. Hunted by the authorities, we work in secret. You'll never find us, but victim or perpetrator, if your number's up...we'll find you."
I thought it was a joke
blow that place up and you'll have our support and gratitude.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
In the United States of America, government watchdog watches you!
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
OK, NSA. Which finger am I holding up?
Have gnu, will travel.
and, boy are they gonna collect some garbage.
Still, it is guaranteed employment for the State Security squads
Surveillance of non-US Persons has never required a warrant, and never will. It has nothing to do with whether it's a group someone "hates" or "likes".
An intelligence service cannot be effective if its sources, methods, capabilities, and techniques are known to the adversary. Intelligence processes must be kept secret, even in an open society. This has been true for the history of our nation.
NSA is authorized to monitor foreign communications WITHIN THE US, and must be able to identify, discern, and target such communications within the sea of digital communications.
NSA lacks the authority to monitor American citizens without an individualized warrant. And the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 actually is more strict with respect to US Persons than previous law: a warrant is required to monitor the communications of a US Person anywhere on the globe. But what the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 also does is allow NSA to target and monitor FOREIGN communications within the US, without a warrant.
I know some people might be stunned to learn this, but the primary mission of the foreign intelligence agencies is FOREIGN intelligence. But what about "warrantless wiretapping", you ask?
In the immediate wake of 9/11, the administration claimed the the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) allowed them to target American citizens identified as having contact with the enemy and/or were active combatants. The current Attorney General also argues that the President has this intrinsic authority under Article II of the Constitution. This was the same justification used in the targeted killing of Anwar al-Awlaki.
Other examples are things like journalists embedded with military units having the communications allegedly monitored, which would happen under the guise of the Joint COMSEC Monitoring Activity. And then we have the court cases — all of which involved people or groups who were thought to be linked to terror groups, not just ordinary, everyday citizens.
Even the most egregious examples of "warrantless wiretapping" (as alleged in the leaks to the press, or documented in various court proceedings) in the wake of 9/11 targeted very specific people — and were justified by the Justice Department, secretly reported to Congress, and reauthorized every 45 days. And that program had long ended by the time the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 fixed the dismal state of foreign intelligence collection.
This excerpt (An 'Intel Gap': What We're Missing, Newsweek, Aug 6, 2007) sums up the issue:
Secret bureaucracy, it's just a lie
The devil's henchmen, in suit and tie
A sacred brotherhood; an ancient rite
Politicians and the double lives they hide
Violate your rights, no more equality
Surrender freedom, your Social Security
We, the people face unconstitutional lies
In greed we trust, in revolution we die
Our founding fathers are rolling in their graves
The land of liberty needs a regime change
Until you no longer know right from wrong
The constitution isn't worth the paper it's written on
Screams from the future, warn of calamity
The coming plagues of the new disease
The illuminati, one world currency
One world religion, one World everything
Violate your rights, no more equality
Surrender freedom, your Social Security
We, the people face unconstitutional lies
In greed we trust, in revolution we die
Judge Dredd wasn't a "how to" when it comes to law enforcement.
I'm completely happy to agree with virtually every opinion I've scanned here so far. But my question is: what are they really going to do with this information? I mean... current population estimate of the U.S. is 313.32x10^6. I don't feel that living in a completely different country on roughly the other side of the world protects me entirely. ... but what are they gonna DO? Arrest EVERYBODY in the world? Jerk off to some crazy panopticon fantasy they have? Enforce slave labour to put together armies and workforces when it's time to invade Mars? I mean, what?
And the rule is:
Never say anything that you would not be proud to have on a sign on your front lawn.
"Say" in this context includes anything written.
You could burn a diary if you wrote something in that you later came to regret.
With anything transmitted electronically, there is no going back. Once you hit the send button, it is out of your control forever.
So before you click it, be certain that you mean it.
"Voyeurism is the sexual interest in or practice of spying on people engaged in intimate behaviors, such as undressing, sexual activity, or other actions usually considered to be of a private nature.[1]
The principal characteristic of voyeurism is that the voyeur does not normally relate directly with the subject of his/her interest, who is often unaware of being observed. Voyeurism may involve the making of a secret photograph or video of the subject during an intimate activity. When the interest in a particular subject is obsessive, the behavior may be described as stalking."
Who gave North Korea a nuclear reactor? Elements of the US government - not China.
Who gave Iran a nuclear reactor? Elements of the US government - not Russia.
Who trained Osma? Elements of the US government - not libertarians.
Who propped up the USSR? Again, it turns out elements of the US government did.
Anyone interested in stopping the enemies of civilization would have to spy on our own government, not kids downloading music.
... yet we know exactly what capabilities it has, what they'll use it for, and even the layout of the buildings.
ah, but who is watching the watchers? There is no such thing as benign domestic surveillance.
Freedom requires some degree of risk. If you outsource your personal responsibility, you outsource your freedom.
If it is so secret, how come the author of the article has all this information on it?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
The "Data Halls" look like Pelican cases!
Just nickname it the beast and watch the fundies go nuts. At the very least you'll get the sun shining on the project and spread the word like wildfire.
According to the article this was authorized by the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. According to OpenCongress, Barack Obama voted AYE. Biden and Hillary voted NO. McCain did not vote.
Hope & Change, everybody!
Wow. That was my first thought too. I tell my son all the time that this is not the country I was born into. I was a child in the 1940s. We did have the most free country in the world then. Then again 100% of the problems of the United States and the world can be summed up in four words. The root cause of ALL the world's problems is... Too Damned Many People!
Since when is "public safety" the root password to the Constitution?
Why build a datacenter in a desert? (I know, pork...) the cooling bills will be much higher than if they built it in, say, Detroit, or some other northern city...
before we have to build a dark http protocol and dns with non-standard encryption methods just to watch porn securely lol. But in reality this is not so funny, I don't like the idea of the boogey man in the dark, let alone a real one. People have honest everyday secrets that need to stay that way because we're already being pressured to conform to the idea of a 'good person'. It's no one's business what decide to be into as long as it's not inflicting harm on anyone, and you should not be automatically watched just because it 'could' happen. The only thing they need this kind of thing is at school where kids regularly kill other children in large numbers. The sad truth is that *most* people aren't as good as you think they are, but they're not 'bad' either. I think using a system like this is basically giving someone you don't know the power to blackmail you as they see fit. Who is policing them? who is to say one of them is not a stalker who means to inflict harm on us, and has superb tools and methods to do so? We already see this being exploited by TSA agents, we have theives, perverts, people lying to save themselves. It's becoming really disgusting.
We know that everything is compromised by unauthorised intrusions, and finally there will be a nice convenient central backup of everything ever. Information will be free at last.
Korma: Good
If the NSA doesn't watch you, how do they know if you're innocent or guilty?
So time to put a higher metric on all your US routes and avoid the yanks big brother
"Yeah. I didn't bother posting anonymously, because I doubt it makes a difference at this point."
We don't have much time before the internet could just be used as a tool for a widespread crackdown. As Bucky Fuller said, whether it will be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race to the very end.
As I suggest here, the most viable strategy at this point is probably just communicating in the clear about making this a better world for everyone with an intent to help these various agencies eavesdropping to transcend to a new paradigm of abundance thinking: ..."
http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-dealing-with-social-hurricanes.html
"This approximately 60 page document is a ramble about ways to ensure the CIA (as well as other big organizations) remains (or becomes) accountable to human needs and the needs of healthy, prosperous, joyful, secure, educated communities. The primarily suggestion is to encourage a paradigm shift away from scarcity thinking & competition thinking towards abundance thinking & cooperation thinking within the CIA and other organizations. I suggest that shift could be encouraged in part by providing publicly accessible free "intelligence" tools and other publicly accessible free information that all people (including in the CIA and elsewhere) can, if they want, use to better connect the dots about global issues and see those issues from multiple perspectives, to provide a better context for providing broad policy advice. It links that effort to bigger efforts to transform our global society into a place that works well for (almost) everyone that millions of people are engaged in. A central Haudenosaunee story-related theme is the transformation of Tadodaho through the efforts of the Peacemaker from someone who was evil and hurtful to someone who was good and helpful.
To summarize why that is the case, consider, from this other essay I wrote: ...
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
"Likewise, even United States three-letter agencies like the NSA and the CIA, as well as their foreign counterparts, are becoming ironic institutions in many ways. Despite probably having more computing power per square foot than any other place in the world, they seem not to have thought much about the implications of all that computer power and organized information to transform the world into a place of abundance for all. Cheap computing makes possible just about cheap everything else, as does the ability to make better designs through shared computing.
There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all."
So, until the NSA transcends to this new abudance-oriented paradigm, this new Utah data center is just $2 billion dollars worth of irony.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
When I walk past a shopfront showing me exactly what I want to buy, I might just buy it. Also, I'd rather they pooled information on me instead of just making shit up - in which case they wouldn't need servers at all. It's the times we live in, that I can imagine much worse than this, and much better.
Damn that Bush and Cheney, somebody should vote them out of office so that the next president does not continue their evil ways!
Oh....WAIT......
And home of the slaves!
Arbeit Macht Frei...
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
What do I care if they watch me? I dont do anything wrong.
What is the NSA really going to care what I search for on ebay, porn clips I watch, reading news on upcoming movies, and so on. If youre not doing anything illegal you have nothing to worry about.
Mr. Madison, what you have just said, is the most insanely idiotic thing I have ever heard. At no point, in your rambling incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points and may God have mercy on your soul.
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
Somebody is selling shit to the government.
I think some burocrats believe it will work, or just simply they don't care. It' more related to corruption and steal of public money.
Monitor away, I say.
n/t
what album and track is that? I want to check it out.
According to the story, they're going to be doing all kinds of stuff that, if they were doing it, would be Top Secret.
If it's Top Secret, by definition those who know can't tell the public about what they're doing.
Therefore, the authors don't know what they're saying to be true. Most likely, it isn't true.
Will this facility operate under the same privacy laws that currently allow me to request all the information that a company has on me? I'd like to see that after a year.
Also, can I take these scans at the airport and all this digital information that's being gathered about me in a useful way for my benefit? I'd like a full medical screening with every flight...for free please. Also, please fill out all of my travel reports for my employer, do my taxes, and fill out my facebook timeline for me so I don't have to. Thaaaanks.
Bluffdale, UT (AP)
In welcome news to the nation’s cell phone users, the National Security Agency has announced that it will reduce dropped calls by up to 25%. Through the construction of NSA’s new Bluffdale, Utah data center, a common cause of dropped calls will soon be eliminated. “We are pleased to be able to improve the day to day lives of Americans,” said NSA spokesman Ken White. Cell phone users can expect to see improvements in dropped calls by mid-2013.
“As everyone knows, cell phones are not protected by privacy laws,” said White. “For the past ten years, the NSA has been monitoring most cell phone conversations to identify terrorist and other threats to national security.” NSA technicians recently discovered that their surveillance technology would sometimes drop a call as a phone travelled from one radio tower’s region to another. “Basically, driving too fast from one tower to the next confused the monitoring technology, so the call was simply dropped.”
To solve this problem, the NSA is building a new data center that has the ability to buffer, or store, huge amounts of phone and internet data for later analysis. The $2 billion building is nearly 23 acres in size and is expected to employ thousands of Utahans, known for being polyglots. Overall, the NSA’s budget, employee headcount, and most operations are classified.
Local residents are welcoming the change to their community. Rancher and long-time political activist Terry Buckholder said “when the NSA came to buy my ranch land, I was thrilled. They paid me a very attractive price.” Bluffdale mayor Derk Timothy also supports the project. “We welcome the economic growth the new NSA data center will bring our community. We fully expect the NSA to be a good neighbor and a partner in our future.”
There has been some concern from civil liberties proponents. In a recent Wired Magazine article, a former NSA official expressed his concern that the NSA’s activities are too intrusive and violate a citizen’s right to privacy. The American Civil Liberties Union also has some concerns. Spokeswoman Rita Sklar said “this technology is very powerful and could be used to spy on ordinary Americans. In the hands of a Republican administration, that would concern us greatly.”
Still, most people are excited to learn that they will suffer fewer dropped calls. Said Beth Ruby, Des Moines: “Whatever the government can do to improve my cell phone performance and reduce dropped calls, I support.” Rod Rennick of Dallas, TX had similar sentiments. “I see it like the airport TSA. Anything the government can do to improve my safety, even a little, is worth the inconvenience and intrusion to me. Also, I am really looking forward to fewer dropped calls,” said the father of two.
You're what I call a rational fool.
You take false assumptions and build from them in rational ways. If not for your false assumptions, you would be a fairly intelligent person.
False Assumption #1: People are in danger. Woooooo!
The only danger people are in is of the riot-instigating cop in a black balaclava pretending to be an activist kind of danger. Terror groups invented, funded and prodded into action specifically to give Big Brother something to point at and say, "See!! Danger!" This happens on the small interpersonal scale and the national scale.
We are being tormented by dangerous borderline personalities which are wound up and set free among us specifically to blow up, shoot, or generally 'go off' creating exactly the kind of stress environment which can be exploited by the controlling class.
False Assumption #2: We are Free! We live in a democracy!
We're not free. The pyramid scheme that is international banking is rigged in such a manner that there is more debt than there is money. This leads to insane behavior, to over-worked populations and boom & bust cycles. It's how we are controlled.
False Assumption #3: "Our leaders are normal people, just like us." They're not. They are very often borderlines and psychopaths. They are put in place to perpetuate and protect the plutocracy, and they seek to cause misery as a function of their existence. The wars and social distress they cause keeps the normal populace off balance and in a state of fear which makes us easier to control.
There are probably a variety of other false assumptions which led you to write your post, but the above three cover the main bases. I am not interested in debating these points. This isn't a jury box, and your knowledge or ignorance is of no concern to me. If you want to know how the world works, explore the above ideas.
You have been lied to. Propaganda isn't just a word in the dictionary.
I am conflicted in thought about this. My initial reaction is outrage. My second thought after reading the article is that I have done some nefarious things over the tubes. My third thought is that I dont think anybody really cares that I torrented some Justified episodes and streamed the first season of Game of Thrones. My fourth thought is that my IP is completly tied to the same IP I used in the late 90's when I discovered the nefarious side of the internet as a teenager. I sort of 'came to age' as the internet went from a mostly text environment to an environment where pictures and applications became viable. Video shortly after, and the bandwith to enable p2p on a massive scale. My fifth thought is about what is discussed in data analysis in the article. I think the NSA is reacting to the relatively recent abilities to utilize online data made mainstream by the likes of Google, then Facebook, then Twitter. The thing that scares me most is not the gov'ment keeping up to date with technology, but the lack of people fighting the use of technology by the gov'ment to exlude siezure from tech stuff. I wrote this post on a HP mini that had a failed hard drive, installed a linux distro on a 500 GB usb HD, and have been running it for about 6 Mo.s. I tried xubuntu, mint, debian, and ubuntu. Currently I'm xubuntu, and working fine. I can't take my netbook on a plane, however, because I have a external USB HD taped into the port so it won't fall out, and a HD case taped to the back of the screen so it won't fall off the case. I'm pretty sure if I tried to fly with that, it would be ID'd as something nefarious, examined, and trying to explain it to a TSA guy would get me nowhere. So I don't even try. I feel upset that I have lost so much control over my personal ability to know what I am doing. Skoal Bubbu Watson.
Koalas. They're telepathic. Plus, they control the weather. -Margaret
Well, lets fill their data center up.
If everyone uses their free allocated bandwidth to send 1000000000000 billion random bytes to the ISP, or ;yourself;, then they have to log those contents.
So...
Send 1 byte per TCP packet, 1 per 48 bytes.
Send it to .... out your adsl to the NSA gateway.
So even if your ISP sees you sent 100MEG, its 4800MEG wasted space on NSA.
And if its 100% pure random, ie /dev/random and xor it with some other random data, just mix 10 algos together.
Now X that by 100 m screen savers, and watch their datacenter go empty, or they have to filter out pure random crap.
We must look the evil monster in the eye, and say, Fuck you mother fucker, you might have the dollars and cia behind you, but we have 100x more humans that can go crazy wild on you.
There IS NO ENEMY, other than the govt itself.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I so with McCain hadn't beaten Obama in the last election. I'm sure he would have stopped a project like this!
Growing up during the later part of the Cold War, I always felt sorry for the poor benighted citizens of the oppressive regimes in the Soviet Union or East Germany, knowing that spies were everywhere, reporting all their activities to the secret police, whose hidden files bulged with information on the speech and movements of every citizen, who could be dragged off to prison on the basis of secret information that they themselves could not see or defend themselves against.
Of course, a lot of this was just hysteria, was exaggerated or misunderstood from Cold War anti-Communist propaganda of the time. But all the Americans I knew were grateful to God that they didn't live in one of those hellhole countries where you feared the government and never knew if your friends or neighbors were informers.
Now, all that was a long time ago and a lot of things have changed since then. The Berlin wall came down, the Soviet Union collapsed and so forth. I haven't had one of those horrible nightmares since childhood. But that Cold War hysteria has been on my mind again lately.
When you read that the NSA is building essentially the world's largest and most secure data warehouse for the purpose of indefinitely storing basically every communication of every ordinary American - they already collect it right off the backbone - it really, really makes you wonder where all this is headed and if those nightmares are going to come true after all.
Looks like they are already working on implementing the Aquinas Protocol.
Because now all child porn will be put out of it's misery!
Ron Paul.
And how they are going to fund this all? Obviously by selling all encompassing marketing information reports to private parties. This is the second stage in socializing Google. The third is the buying the remains of Google by some secretly financed investor arm of the NSA, after the competition has worked for the benefit of the government.
I think I need some more ointment for the rashes caused by my tin hat.
when will anonymous will start operation noise?
perfected this technique which made him one of the most powerful and despised men in the world.
When you have them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.
"Other examples are things like journalists embedded with military units having the communications allegedly monitored, which would happen under the guise of the Joint COMSEC Monitoring Activity."
First off, there is no such thing as a bottomless database, even Google has it's limits. So the first rule of anonymity is overwhelm the system with meaningless trivia.
And second, like in cryptography the goal is NOT to make it unbreakable, as all (digital) cyphers are breakable, but to make it so expensive as to be be impractical to perform on a Value-per-clock-cycle basis. Where if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, you baffle them with bullshit!
Given that is is widely reported that US prisoners make 21% of all office furniture and 36% of all domestic appliance at labour rates between $0.5 and $1.25 per hour, I'd say that big business had a vested interest in getting people locked up. I'd also say that's an "event of injustice" which is widespread against the populace, given the American propensity for jailing such a large proportion of its citizens. I see no sign of the American people taking action, except to elect the politicians who promise to deliver more of it.
So, why should this be any different?
Obama is president now. right?
I'm sure someone's watching them too. So it's all right. And they're all watching each other. Increasingly. After all ...
In time, the great 'intelligence' bureau/office/dept/backoffice/shed metastasis will be so great every corner club will have its own - with a security clearance - and they won't be able to keep up while doing their best to devour each other.
Enjoy the carnage. You helped cheer it on.
The old Warshaw pact would be so jealous of all this. The East-German Stasi would have (probably already have) killed for something like this. It's time that the USA people put a stop to mass spending of money for the benefit spying on their own innocent population. There are no (honest) jobs in it, it doesn't produce food, clothing or even transportation and their nation is turning into poverty at an alarming rate.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
U weren't downmodded & poster who points ur bs was -> http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2772023&cid=39608239
Question: How many sock puppet alternate accounts do you use on slashdot tqk?
(You know, because we certainly do: The kinds of alternaet registered user accounts used to mod yourself up with, and, to downmod others who point out your lies to hide those times they catch you do, as is shown in the link above, by your downmodding them using different registered accounts that you use to do that? It's rather obvious you do from that link above).
Every Moron who posted on here that this facility is for spying on all of us and thought crime is real. Between that and the morons who think that the goverment is so powerful that one person/satellite can sapy on each person.
99% of the people responding should take off their tinfoil hats and move out of their mothers basement and see what reality is really like. The other 1%, I hope, have a clue.
There is nothing wrong with someone/something watching over you. It's what's done with the information that is the problem. As laws were written in times when information was relatively scarce assumptions and probabilities of guilt have shaped the laws and rules on sentencing. With more accurate and detailed information available these laws are outdated (too broad) and can be used to oppress since everyone can be found guilty of something.
Canada ..
We got government , a great social net , everyone's got healthcare and yet , im still free
Wonder why it is that you say things like it dont exist when the best example is right here
in Canuckia few miles north of you .
As for their data center , it's nothing but an extension of what is since the cold war. .. this is nothing new.
Check your history books and communications history. Comms have always been under some sort
of surveillance. Started with Radio , telephone
Slashdot - yesterday's news, today!
Seriously, how long has the WIRED story on this been up?
People make the NSA the boogey man of the average US citizen thinking that they are being spied on by them. People forget one very simply point and let logic go out the window. If the US government wants to spy on a given citizen they just have the FBI or a local law enforcement agency do it. Why bother going through the NSA when you just ring your local FBI office?
The whole thing is much ado about nothing.
...but to what extent do encrypted communications via SSL/TLS hinder this new listening post? What good is recording everything you say if it's cyphertext? Or is the assumption that with this massive new datacenter and some dastardly unpublished NSA attack vectors they'll be able to brute force decrypt everything?
Seriously, what is the point of "countries" in this day and age? Is it simply to keep up the illusion that we have limited resources that must be squandered so that the top 1% can live lavishly? What is the purpose of this charade? It's 2012, and we still hold on to the idea that we are divided as humans simply because of borders that are virtual? If we didn't have countries, we could focus on truly moving forward as a race of human beings instead of having divided agendas.
While I totally agree with you that many countries, particularly several in northern Europe are "better" in many measured dimensions given many different optimality criteria than the US, I think that the problem is more general. The perceived need for governments to spy on others and their own stems from a recognition, often not all together conscious, that humans in order to survive and maintain a perceived social order have to exert some form of control over other humans. The reality is that, depending upon what aspect of the social order to the extent that one could even describe it as order, some humans can be incredibly destructive as they seek to create their own "new" order. As population pressures create ever more need for social stability to avoid the chaos caused by the unworkable situation where everyone has perfect freedom to "do their own thing", there is a relentless push to create order, some aspects more destructive to individual liberties than others. Humans can not escape this circumstance but seem condemned to ultimately destroyed by it. We simply don't know how at the level of the entire population to give away our freedoms so as to be able to assure that we can keep most of them. You can think of the NSA and other like organizations as representing the failure and inefficiency of humanity to address this weakness in human biology that will probably inevitably doom us as a species.
Probably our only hope is that ultimately all information so gathered by such organizations will become public in their entirety so that humanity can find a conscious, rational basis for actually controlling the more social and environmentally destructive forms of human behavior. Given the average intelligence of the average human and given the size, complexity, and dynamic nature of the problem and its consequences, this seems like wishful thinking. Consequently, despite very rational choice by some, human extinction doesn't appear to be anything we will be able to avoid.
"I suspect it would be a rare male who has not at least **thought** about sex with under-age girls."
That's why what our society needs in the next revolutionary version of the iPad/iPhone is a miniaturized version that can be directly implanted in the neocortex so that it can immediately zap offending neurons, which do not conform to the parameters established by the social control app, not to mention prevent its users from even thinking about buying anything not purchased directly from the Apple/Corporate Store.
I have seen the future and its all in my head.
I just watched this movie yesterday. ... Seems more realistic than ever, but I don't think the computers will takeover on their own, the NSA (or other agency) will be behind them.
Actually, if folks who are really worried about this kind of spying, then there is a very simple antidote that would bring any such system to its knees no matter how computationally efficient. Simply make more than 50% of all your electronic communications consist of 128 bit encryption of totally random words sent to totally random recipients. Given the the exponential nature of the computational time required to decode even a small fraction of the entirely random messages, the entire project could be rendered totally useless by flooding it with totally random information. Just make sure that you respond to all your totally random email from your friends by issuing a totally random response so as to mask your communications among friends.
Of course the cost of such a solution is likely to be the collapse of the internet and one heck of a bill from your internet provider, but hey, what price freedom.
The GOP recognizes this and that is why they have a plan. There plan is to make government so dysfunctional for all but the very wealthiest that suicide will seem like an attractive alternative to all but the 1%, who will then inherit the earth. They are too timid and ashamed to actually admit that this and thus as Jesus noted, meek shall inherit the earth.
You have to put this into context. This is just Orin Hatch's idea of a jobs project for Utah. Its not as if the NSA has any idea or really cares what they are going to do about knowing that your teenage daughter has just admitted that she has a crush on little Billy to her friends and a hundred zillion other pieces of useless information. Its only when they privatize the system to maximize the profits for a few "businessmen" that we really have to start worrying, since then they will impose an expensive mandated vaginal probe to take control of the situation, thereby adding shareholder value.
So what is the alternative? A privatized system will only increase the ruthless efficiency by which others can mine your life for personal gain, with no "checks and balances" at all.
Just why do you think "privatization" is always the preferred answer given by the GOP establishment. They want not only to govern you. They want to own you as well.
Just be thankful that democrats are so disorganized. In MIchigan the GOP now rules by fiat and where they have dispensed even with the charade of counting votes.
I find that there aren't too many people who share my opinions. For instance, I believe that it is better ten "guilty" people go free than to convict one "innocent" person. I also believe that our rights as U.S. citizens should be protected at all costs, and that even means we must accept the good with the bad. Sometimes protecting someone's rights may mean that a "bad" person is let go. It upsets me when that happens, but it's necessary to protect EVERYONE's rights.
I also believe we have too many government agencies with too much power, and the line needs to be drawn somewhere. There is too much paranoia in this country, and I feel it is time we begin trusting each other a little more. Let's figure out where the real threats are, not the perceived threats, but the REAL threats, and let's protect ourselves against THEM.
I believe government is necessary, however I believe the government is there to manage the infrastructure of the country, keep its citizens safe from foreign threats, protect the citizens (including children, of course) from abusive practices and behaviors, and supports the wishes of the citizens. We elect officials to act on our wishes, not tell us what our wishes must be. I don't need a government that thinks for me. I am capable of thinking for myself.
So the question is, when has the line been crossed?
This office doesn't act. It gathers information and that's it.
The point to having this information is when another office chooses to act, they have the information needed to justify their actions. What this does is enable the government to justify any action against the people.
Can we shoot you for terrorism, arrest you, force you into government work, or take your property? I'm sure we've got something here to justify it...
Modding me -1 troll doesn't make me wrong.
So much for "Hope and Change". The only change we are getting is more, much more of the same. Rather than fixing the things he promised to fix he's just adding more to them or making them more extreme. If Congress killed this thing, why are we spending billions on it?
You're not making a logical argument. There has to be some legitimate scope for law enforcement. Saying that a distinction is specious does not make it so. Laws say that criminals can be locked up. If we assume that the distinction between ordinary citizens and criminals is specious then this seems like a scary thing. But the U.S. legal system actually works very hard to make that distinction as clear as possible. Obviously there are a lot of criminals running free and many innocent people who are falsely convicted, but that does not indicate that the entire effort to enforce laws is ill-conceived. Most of us would accept that, while it's not easy to distinguish between ordinary citizens and terrorists, a non-specious distinction exists.
Yes America has enemies. Bin Laden repeatedly called for the destruction of America and instructed his associates to kill as many Americans as possible. That seems like pretty much the definition of enemy. Yes, security agencies amass secret information, but how else can efforts to stop terrorists be conducted. If one of Bin Laden's minions contacts the CIA to warn them about a terrorist attack, is it not the CIA's obligation to keep the informant's identity secret? All large organization have moles and weak points, the identity of intelligence assets and information about the nature of other collection sources are the key resource in intelligence. Information has to be cordoned off. Intelligence is all about secrets. Given the nature of the game, I think that our oversight of U.S. intelligence agencies is pretty good.
Of course there's potential for abuse. Look at N. Korea, or China, or Iran, or Russia. In those places people have no real rights or freedom. The history of the formation of U.S. intelligence agencies though is largely reactive. That is, our capabilities have primarily grown up to defend against incoming threats. We do have accountability, oversight, and, in the long run, transparency. In the countries mentioned above there is not even a pretense of such controls. One of the main reasons our intelligence agencies are so invested in information gathering is that they actually do need to justify themselves and, in cases of domestic action, obtain warrants and present evidence in court. In countries where you can pick people up and interrogate them on vague suspicions, gathering information is less of a problem.
I would say that the more people actually understand about how intelligence functions, the less fearful they are about vague conspiracies. Go read books by ex-personnel. Read about historical actions where the secret documents are now public. Read about operations that have come to light due to public inquiries. Phobias of snakes are most common among people who live in areas where there are no snakes. The more you understand something, the less likely you are to form irrational fears about it. I'm saying ground your opinions in real info instead of YouTube conspiracy videos and Hollywood thrillers (CIA+War on Drugs+FBI= ???).
We should assume that, if given the opportunity, people with power will probably abuse it. But we should use that assumption as a basis for rationally designing institutions that minimize such opportunities. The worst regimes on Earth actually emerge from conspiracism. They believe that there are dark malignant forces conspiring to destroy them and then justify doing horrible things in self defense and thus themselves become the monsters they feared. The Germans who committed the holocaust genuinely believed that there was a Jewish conspiracy that was destroying Germany. In this sense the thing to fear is fear itself.
Or maybe Too Many Damned People. It is just as likely all funded by Hollywood to mine clever, fresh dialogue for their tv shows. Hellevision indeed.
US Govt. spies on and murders it's allies ... strike back to be expected.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
No! No! No!
That is precisely the party line of the pigs that run the show. It's actually a much simpler and goofier situation. Ask yourself this: "Why does nearly every single nation in the world use precisely the same monetary system, i.e. a central bank that administers the issuance of credit-based money?"
People? People are the hope and strength of the world!
Social Credit would solve everything...
Given how badly it rhymes, I doubt it's from an album.
They and their bosses are fascist pigs, Hitler's and Stalin's illegitimate offspring. What else can one say?
Wow. That was my first thought too. I tell my son all the time that this is not the country I was born into. I was a child in the 1940s. We did have the most free country in the world then. Then again 100% of the problems of the United States and the world can be summed up in four words. The root cause of ALL the world's problems is... Too Damned Many People!
wrong the promblem is thinking like that. We have to many people living in the cities and suburbs. We need more people that can produce for themselves. people that do not need others do not need them or their global government. A country boy can survive.