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."

Comments

End the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

It's time for the revolution. Kill the pigs in charge.

Re:End the USA

[Cyberblah]

Oh, you're so getting on the NSA's list for that.

Re:End the USA

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

THOUGHTCRIME.

It's real.

Re:End the USA

[mosb1000]

I'm sure you get on their list simply by posting in a subversive thread like this.

Re:End the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Four legs good! Two Legs Better!
Four legs good! Two Legs Better!

Vigilante Justice is all well and good, but revolution is best accomplished democratically. Bullets should be reserved for supplementing a non-functional justice system.

Trouble with Vigilante Justice is that it is administered by the "simple solutions to complex problems" type of person who would become a Vigilante. That makes it's probability of improving the justice landscape vs. making it worse very unlikely.

Did Joesph Stack really take issue with the IRS in general? Or did he just manage to get sucked in to a personality conflict with some petty dictator?

Anger and revenge need to be focused to pin point resolution like a laser to inspire violent retribution. The Jews, the Pigs, the IRS, the Supreme Court, etc. These are all small ideas that the anger and frustration in life can be attributed to as a source. It would all be lollipop fields and gumdrops "IF ONLY [insert confirmation bias scapegoat] were removed from the picture!".

Given a little bit of wisdom & perspective, the hatred loses it's focus and sharp point as it dithers in to the fog of non-black and white thinking.

My belief is that the ability of a person to accomplish evil is proportional to how much power they are given to wield without oversight. When political power becomes centralized and concentrated, the amount of evil shit it takes to remove the administrator increases proportionally with the difficulty of finding a qualified candidate to replace them. It's a lack of competition for power because fewer and fewer people are available or seen as qualified to fill the big chair.

The idea of focusing hatred on executive roles seems great in concept, because based on the idea that "shit rolls downhill", everything can be blamed on failures in leadership, however at the end of the day the leaders themselves are frequently victims of the terrain of the field and have limitations to their maneuvering room which would allow them to change things for the better.

All of this culminates in a desire to curl up on an island(remote from civilization), drink a beer, and bask in a proper case of Weltschmerz & islomania.

Then again, it's also possible that I'm too quick to relieve leadership of accountability as animals helpless to their circumstances. Perhaps I'm the type of person who would have argued against assassinating Hitler as I watched fascism goose-stepping through my living room to haul away my fiance.

There is a school of ethics that would argue that all animals are entitled to change the "terrain of the field" when the existing landscape threatens their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness(or the less lofty "self preservation"). That is pandora's box and opens the door for retribution in-kind. Sometimes, the economics are stacked against the probability of peaceful resolution as wills collide on increasing frequency for too limited of resources.

So do we look to Adam Smith to expand the scope of the market, or do we turn to Mars, the god of war, to purge the field of some actors?

What people do when presented with those choices will largely be determined by circumstances and incentives I predict. I'll note that the media is owned by defense contractors, not the Sperry Gyroscope Company or sextant manufacturers.

Whatever America decides to do with their destiny, I want no part of it. I've yet to see a president or congress in my lifetime worthy of power, and I blame the voter for that. I'm just looking for an exit, I suggest anyone reading this do the same.

Re:End the USA

[hairyfeet]

Actually its been real for quite a long time, they just used the classic "use it against a bad guy and the populace won't scream..until its too late" trick and it worked quite well. There are two men currently in prison for thoughtcrime, there are probably more but there are at least two that i know of. 1 is the guy that wrote the 'pro pedo" book, this book is nothing but his thoughts on the subject, no pictures, no "hey you should go out and rape kids" incitement, just his thoughts written down, now he's in prison...thoughtcrime. The other wrote down his fantasies of having sex with 14 year old girls on the advice of his therapist who wanted him to write down his fantasies in detail so they could break them down in therapy, now he is in prison too. again no pictures, no evidence that he actually did anything other than write his thoughts down...thoughtcrime.

It never ceases to amaze me how much of the populace will let any trully horrific law through or allow virtually any crushing of our civil liberties as long as you make sure the FIRST few targets are of a group they hate, be it communists, racists, terrorists, pedos, etc. So sad that so many years after "first they came for the communists" was written so many still don't understand that this is a classic tactic, use the power against someone that nobody will defend and then by the time they use it on you its been part of the system so long nobody balks.

We have seen the enemy...and it is us. Too many simply won't stand up if the target is someone they can't stand so that all of this horrible shit can seep into the system and eventually be used against us all. Once upon a time the NSA was mainly tasked with rooting out foreign spies which at the time was a real and credible threat...now they are used against us. nobody watched them, or kept them in check, or complained when their powers grew, so here we are.

Re:End the USA

[Cyberblah]

I'm sure you get on their list simply by posting in a subversive thread like this.

Yeah. I didn't bother posting anonymously, because I doubt it makes a difference at this point.

Re:End the USA

[roman_mir]

No question about it.

Of-course this 'article' is also a piece of propaganda designed for intimidation.

In the former USSR the people just assumed that KGB had nearly infinite powers, this way people lived in fear and were easily turned into 'seksots' - secret collaborator or secret agent.

It was done consciously this way, to ensure everybody is constantly assuming that everybody else is a 'seksot' and to make sure people don't trust each other and behave according to what is expected from them. Of-course there were real atrocities committed, and that helped plenty to create the atmosphere of fear.

I don't have reasons to doubt that NSA is working on projects like this, of-course I assume that the totality of the information that is released is bullshit, but there is something there that is real. Of-course they want every word that anybody ever recorded and transmitted to anybody - this is power of-course.

The only correct solution to this is to stop government from doing this any further and to take apart what they have done already, for this everybody who is in power right now must be removed from it (including the SCOTUS, it's crap) and new people must be put there who must be forced to obey the Constitution.

You must understand that once you allow the government to go beyond any of the authorised powers (Article 1, Section 8), you will have nothing protecting you at all from crap like this, but also from much worse.

NDAA with indefinite detentions, extra-judicial killings, destruction of all rights, property rights, business rights, complete control of what you do.

Income taxes are nothing compared to all the other stuff they do, at least for income taxes they amended the Constitution.

When did they amend the Constitution to build this NSA data centre to spy on all people, completely destroying presumption of innocence, abolishing the idea of the illegality of search without warrant, murdering people based on what POTUS wants?

Is the 2nd amendment going to be the last line of defence from total tyranny? I don't know, it may be not enough.

Re:End the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. What the US government does have is lots of clever propagandists to tell you that voting will never change anything. And if a slight change happens, there'll be merry hell to play with your brain to explain to you why it must be reversed.

See minor party George Galloway's recent by-election win in England. Even though he's an angry white Scotsman who beat an Asian Muslim candidate, the press was at pains to claim that Galloway was only elected because the constituency was full of Muslims without a voice. Good start, then, but propagandists will try to turn this into some stupid race war. Trouble is, when you begin to realise that the propagandists are using you (among very many other groups) as a scapegoat - as Muslim groups with sufficient solidarity have begun to realise - then you begin to become immune to their propaganda. There was a point at which Jews stopped having an inkling of respect for the NSDAP, too.

What can be hoped is that various groups show enough solidarity to realise that the propagandists of all the major powers are working against them as well - from academics to small businessmen. Then, if everything's Cider with Rosie, they'll start to set aside their differences and realise that they all form part of one group: those who want to work a little, play a little, help each other, live free and - above all - not amass unlimited power at the expense of everyone in their way. It's not so much class war as ass war, and the asses are winning.

Re:End the USA

[whathappenedtomonday]

um, well, yeah. Then again... "intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world's communications" is ok just as long as it does not affect US citizens? That seems to be the main concern round here. Of course YOUR CIVIL LIBERTIES come first, but the fact that for YOUR GOV't (and apparently a large part of /.ers) the rest of the world is fair game does not matter much, does it? The populace might not scream, but the rest of the world already does, cause from outside the US is even more ugly that from within ... . sorry for the rant, but some of the comments here... ugh... .

Re:End the USA

[jab16399]

Is monitoring everything everyone types and receives over the internet truly akin to "Thought Crime"? Scenario 1: In the past, if one called the Student Help Line and talked about contemplating suicide, the councillor would have to report it and the person would find someone dispatched to their door without notice. Now, if someone googles suicide then the cops could be dispatched directly and arrest them as it is illegal to do this. Scenario 2: Someone realizes that this big complex is nearly done and no matter what happens with the laws, it's not going to be allowed to sit around doing nothing. So the governments will force things through. If the Canadian Government is feeling public pressure, they could just sell off their Telecom industry to the big US Telecom's and route all Canadian Internet traffic to this new wonder-facility right? Oh, I think they just did that.... OK, I give. Thought Crime's here. In this specific case, it sounds like NSA is running the show. This doesn't bother me as these folks know how to keep a secret and really don't care about minor transgressions. The problem comes when we let the rank and file local police and summer-student level administrators have access to this information (like the Canadian Bills were pushing for). There is a much bigger chance that a few bad apples will show up at this level and abuse the public trust I suspect.

Re:End the USA

[GabriellaKat]

This is my 02c, YMMV and I ignore ACs

This is what I call irony....... Think on it.

Re:End the USA

[Stormthirst]

Unfortunately they rarely do use it for such mundane things as catching murderers and child molesters. Sure - they'll catch a few to show how benign such a system is. But then they'll start using it on ordinary citizens who might for example want to make some political changes that they don't like. Or they'll sell the information to private companies who use it to gain an advantage over their competitors. The possibilities are endless.

Re:End the USA

[koan]

I call bullshit, no links or other evidence offered.

Re:End the USA

[istartedi]

Oh, you're so getting on the NSA's list for that.

We're all on the NSA's list, so what's the point? By building that giant pile of poo, they're just proving to themselves what they already believe. They already have utter contempt for everybody, and a desire to crush us all at will. We already had misanthropes. They simply dealt on their own behalf with disgregard for others. This is actually a step backwards, since the old timey misanthropes were able to state their case without hiring a construction crew or building anything. A mere scowl of contempt would be more efficient than this complex. Oh well, that's government for you. Spending billions of dollars no doubt, when simply standing in front of a mic and shouting "fuck you slaves" would have cost virtually nothing.

Re:End the USA

[SimonInOz]

I suspect it would be a rare male who has not at least **thought** about sex with under-age girls.

I seem to recall a story about an army general who was training schoolboys in gun use. He was complained to that they would be equipped to be terrorist, and he responded to the - female - complainant that she was fully equipped to be a prostitute. But was she?

I believe the interview went badly from then on.

Seriously though, who has not thought about the most horrendous deeds? Fire-bombing ones school, blowing up the Houses of Parliament, raping the odd supermodel (or teacher, perhaps?); surely all males have fantasies? Presumably females too, but I claim less direct experience.

If people go to jail for thinking about terrible things and even writing them down, where would almost all American movies come from?

Re:End the USA

[epyT-R]

european and eastern governments are no better than the US.

Re:End the USA

[craigminah]

Can't use national resources like this to monitor us citizens within the us borders. It's against the law.

Re:End the USA

[omfgnosis]

They're uh... doing it anyway. You may have seen articles about it, since you're responding to one.

Re:End the USA

[Thing 1]

We have seen the enemy...and it is us.

Truer than you think: how many of the 16% of the US population that is employed by the government actually understand what's going on? I would say, that number is greater than 0. So: there are enemies of those who are clinging to power, who are employed by them.

Re:End the USA

[Fjandr]

Yeah, an example of that is the recent (by recent, sometime in the last couple years) conviction of a defense lawyer for "structuring." http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/local&id=7056927

For anyone unfamiliar with the term, it's the depositing of money into an account in such a way as to avoid triggering mandatory transaction reporting for banks. It's intended as a tack-on charge for money laundering when another crime has been committed. In this case, the lawyer did nothing wrong other than "structure" his deposits. The money was earned legally and all taxes had been paid on it. He even got to keep the money after being convicted, because it was earned legally and taxes had been paid on it. He committed no crime, but because his deposits were designed to not trigger mandatory reporting requirements from the bank, he now has a criminal record.

Re:End the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

european and eastern governments are no better than the US.

Some European and Eastern governments are no better than the US.
Most European and some Eastern governments are better than the US, whatever measurements you use to define "better" (there exist a lot of international human-rights/life-quality/press-freedom/democracy/crime/health/IQ et c. indices and the same countries usually top most of them, US is usually placed somewhere in the middle (if it is not an index constructed with the sole purpose to show how "good" US is, it is easy to identify those, they have to change their methods of measurement every other year)). Almost all countries around the world behave better towards people living in other countries (even China (the atrocities committed in Tibet is nothing compared to what US troupes does abroad, and China only occupy one region outside China, it doesn't invade a lot of new regions every year like USA (and Tibet was not a very nice place to live for most inhabitants even before the Chinese occupation))), the exceptions being perhaps Israel and Russia.

If you look at Northern Europe (sans Great Britain, i.e. Scandinavia, Netherlands, Germany et c., even France if you fancy), all countries there are much "better" then US, both to live in and in their relations towards other countries. [Except, perhaps, if you consider owning and carrying weapons designed to kill people a basic human right. But both Sweden and Finland have more privately owned fire arms per capita then US, except they are made for hunting animals and are not very good for killing or maiming people, hunting being the most popular hobby in most regions of those countries]

The countries in Northern Europe practise the 20th century kind of democracy, and they are a lot "better" then the 18th century kind of democracies, the model of democracy practised in USA. They may be surpassed by some new 21th century democracy model (there are a lot of experiments in government models going on today in societies in South Americas, the Baltics and the Middle East, perhaps they lead to even better modes of Democracy), but for now, they are as good as it gets.

Myself, I live in Sweden, one of those countries that usually are ranked among the best in different human life quality indexes. I'm highly critical towards the Swedish government and society, and very active in actions trying to make Sweden a better place to live. If you heard or read my criticism of the Swedish society, you could get the impression that it is hell on earth. Except it is not, my criticism i aimed at making Sweden better, I'm very well aware that compared to most countries around the world (including USA) it is almost a paradise. Heck, I couldn't even do most of the things (methods of protests et c.) I have the right to do Sweden in most countries outside Northern Europe, including USA.

Re:End the USA

[Plugh]

There's no need to go this far off the deep end, just yet. Fortunately, thousands of people who are opposed to over-intrusive government are getting together and actually doing something about it ... and getting results!

Re:End the USA

[Sesostris III]

Some citations would be useful. If what you say is true then it is indeed worrying. However we need to know the full details in order to confront the issue.

Re:End the USA

[godefroi]

You say he "committed no crime", and then, in the same sentence, you say, "his deposits we designed to not trigger mandatory reporting requirements". You can't have it both ways. He committed a crime, he paid the price. He has a criminal record because he's a CRIMINAL.

Re:End the USA

[inerlogic]

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Re:End the USA

[TheRaven64]

Then again... "intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world's communications" is ok just as long as it does not affect US citizens?

The real problem with this line of reasoning (which is very common in the USA - rights are only for citizens) is that it opens you up to easy abuses. The NSA spies on British citizens, GCHQ spies on US citizens, and both can say 'we don't spy on our own people!'. Of course, they share data when something interesting crops up...

Re:End the USA

[mathmathrevolution]

Can't use national resources like this to monitor us citizens within the us borders. It's against the law.

And all governments are incapable of breaking the law.

Re:End the USA

[jahudabudy]

I think the point is that the only "crime" he committed was subverting the government's ability to monitor his perfectly legal transactions. Why is that a crime?

Re:End the USA

[turkeyfish]

By our rationale all human actions are illegal, since those who structure their actions in order to avoid doing something illegal are guilty of "structuring" and must be sent to jail.

Enjoy your incarceration you criminal.

Re:End the USA

[fustakrakich]

Why is that a crime?

Because the government says so.. DUH!

Re:End the USA

[doston]

Actually its been real for quite a long time, they just used the classic "use it against a bad guy and the populace won't scream..until its too late" trick and it worked quite well. There are two men currently in prison for thoughtcrime, there are probably more but there are at least two that i know of. 1 is the guy that wrote the 'pro pedo" book, this book is nothing but his thoughts on the subject, no pictures, no "hey you should go out and rape kids" incitement, just his thoughts written down, now he's in prison...thoughtcrime. The other wrote down his fantasies of having sex with 14 year old girls on the advice of his therapist who wanted him to write down his fantasies in detail so they could break them down in therapy, now he is in prison too. again no pictures, no evidence that he actually did anything other than write his thoughts down...thoughtcrime.

It never ceases to amaze me how much of the populace will let any trully horrific law through or allow virtually any crushing of our civil liberties as long as you make sure the FIRST few targets are of a group they hate, be it communists, racists, terrorists, pedos, etc. So sad that so many years after "first they came for the communists" was written so many still don't understand that this is a classic tactic, use the power against someone that nobody will defend and then by the time they use it on you its been part of the system so long nobody balks.

We have seen the enemy...and it is us. Too many simply won't stand up if the target is someone they can't stand so that all of this horrible shit can seep into the system and eventually be used against us all. Once upon a time the NSA was mainly tasked with rooting out foreign spies which at the time was a real and credible threat...now they are used against us. nobody watched them, or kept them in check, or complained when their powers grew, so here we are.

jingoism, racism, fear, religious fundamentalism: these are the ways of appealing to people if you’re trying to organize a mass base of support for policies that are really intended to crush them. -Noam Chomsky

Re:End the USA

[MPAndonee]

I'm sure you get on their list simply by posting in a subversive thread like this.

I have been on the NSA's list by simply stating the obvious, over, and over and OVER again. Apparently, they don't like smart-asses. Neither does Slashdot.

Re:End the USA

[doston]

Four legs good! Two Legs Better! Four legs good! Two Legs Better!

Vigilante Justice is all well and good, but revolution is best accomplished democratically. Bullets should be reserved for supplementing a non-functional justice system.

Trouble with Vigilante Justice is that it is administered by the "simple solutions to complex problems" type of person who would become a Vigilante. That makes it's probability of improving the justice landscape vs. making it worse very unlikely.

Did Joesph Stack really take issue with the IRS in general? Or did he just manage to get sucked in to a personality conflict with some petty dictator?

Anger and revenge need to be focused to pin point resolution like a laser to inspire violent retribution. The Jews, the Pigs, the IRS, the Supreme Court, etc. These are all small ideas that the anger and frustration in life can be attributed to as a source. It would all be lollipop fields and gumdrops "IF ONLY [insert confirmation bias scapegoat] were removed from the picture!".

Given a little bit of wisdom & perspective, the hatred loses it's focus and sharp point as it dithers in to the fog of non-black and white thinking.

My belief is that the ability of a person to accomplish evil is proportional to how much power they are given to wield without oversight. When political power becomes centralized and concentrated, the amount of evil shit it takes to remove the administrator increases proportionally with the difficulty of finding a qualified candidate to replace them. It's a lack of competition for power because fewer and fewer people are available or seen as qualified to fill the big chair.

The idea of focusing hatred on executive roles seems great in concept, because based on the idea that "shit rolls downhill", everything can be blamed on failures in leadership, however at the end of the day the leaders themselves are frequently victims of the terrain of the field and have limitations to their maneuvering room which would allow them to change things for the better.

All of this culminates in a desire to curl up on an island(remote from civilization), drink a beer, and bask in a proper case of Weltschmerz & islomania.

Then again, it's also possible that I'm too quick to relieve leadership of accountability as animals helpless to their circumstances. Perhaps I'm the type of person who would have argued against assassinating Hitler as I watched fascism goose-stepping through my living room to haul away my fiance.

There is a school of ethics that would argue that all animals are entitled to change the "terrain of the field" when the existing landscape threatens their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness(or the less lofty "self preservation"). That is pandora's box and opens the door for retribution in-kind. Sometimes, the economics are stacked against the probability of peaceful resolution as wills collide on increasing frequency for too limited of resources.

So do we look to Adam Smith to expand the scope of the market, or do we turn to Mars, the god of war, to purge the field of some actors?

What people do when presented with those choices will largely be determined by circumstances and incentives I predict. I'll note that the media is owned by defense contractors, not the Sperry Gyroscope Company or sextant manufacturers.

Whatever America decides to do with their destiny, I want no part of it. I've yet to see a president or congress in my lifetime worthy of power, and I blame the voter for that. I'm just looking for an exit, I suggest anyone reading this do the same.

Where would you go? Canada? We're building a highway through it and it's referred to as the 51st state for a reason. Mexico? The same, besides the fact that the US took control via the 'drug war' long ago. Europe? They're so much farther along with surveillance that the US government pales. China? Worse and you'd stick out like a sore thumb. Australia? Worse. Latin America? That place

Re:End the USA

[shutdown -p now]

That's exactly how Echelon works in a nutshell.

Re:End the USA

[shutdown -p now]

Not too many results, by the signs of it. You know how I'll know that you've guys have actually been getting at least half of what you want? It's when the Feds will come down on you like a ton of bricks.

Remember that, ever since the Civil War, the only sovereignty states have over their affairs is what the Federal government lets them get away with.

Re:End the USA

[shutdown -p now]

Do you still pay the Federal income tax, and welfare taxes?

Assuming that you pass medical marijuana law, will it prevent the Feds from busting doors on people if they want to?

Have you done anything about TSA "mobile border checkpoints" on your soil?

Re:End the USA

[godefroi]

Hey, I'm not commenting on whether it SHOULD be a crime, I'm just saying that you can't both commit a crime and not be a criminal.

Re:End the USA

[Fjandr]

The point being that "structuring" was, up to that point, an add-on offense. It was explicitly passed to be added as a charge only when another crime had been committed. Even then, it's only provable circumstantially, which is why it was an add-on. Unless someone confesses to deliberately structuring their deposits to avoid mandatory reporting, it can only be circumstantial. Absent provable criminal intent (via the commission of another crime contemporaneously), it cannot be a crime, since it can't be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

Re:End the USA

[shutdown -p now]

Cool. We'll know the degree of your real independence once those bills becomes laws, and you try to enforce them.

Re:End the USA

[metrix007]

Do you have any kind of evidence for people being in prison for their thoughts? I'd be interested. Thanks.

Re:End the USA

[Stormthirst]

You're new here aren't you

You are not innocent

[Anonymous Coward]

There are no innocent citizens in the modern police state.

Re:You are not innocent

[Anonymous Coward]

So, not only are we not innocent, we also get to pay – through taxes – for the machinery that will be used to prove our guilt.

Why is it that we aren't voting the bastards out?

And bottomless storage? Maybe. Maybe I'll set up a cron job to automatically email myself a different uuencoded DVD movie every day. I guess that'll work until they make doing that a felony.

Re:You are not innocent

[SuricouRaven]

Because if we vote the bastards out, the other bastard wins.

Re:You are not innocent

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

I try to tell people that the primary election is the only election that really matters, and no one seems to care.

Re:You are not innocent

[gmuslera]

Is worse than that, works for the ones that aren't citizens too, on any country, because your poilice state.

Re:You are not innocent

[malilo]

It's what the anarchists used to say: "If elections could change your life, they would be illegal."

Re:You are not innocent

[The Second Horseman]

Does anyone think any candidate unacceptable to the intelligence/national security apparatus in this country would even get past the primary, if even the smallest bit of dirt could be found on them and passed to the media? Because I sure have my doubts.

Re:You are not innocent

[Phrogman]

Add in "Big Business" to that mix and I would agree that only the "approved" candidates will be allowed to get to the point where they can be voted into office. I don't believe in a deliberate cooperation between the various camps, just that only those candidates that pass the approval of everyone who has the power to bring them down will manage to get sufficient support. Once in office the same thing applies.
Democracy died a long time ago sadly.

Re:You are not innocent

[SuricouRaven]

Ron Paul managed to get all the way to the primaries simply because no-one thought to take him seriously enough to attack - even his supporters seemed to know he never stood a chance due to an excess of Teh Crazy.

Re:You are not innocent

[jouassou]

This makes me wonder -- when everyone is proven guilty and locked up, who will actually do something useful?

Re:You are not innocent

[muuh-gnu]

> "If elections could change your life, they would be illegal."

I believed sayings like that until the Pirate Party started winning seats in Sweden and Germany and started making _real changes_. It must have gone the same way back in the 80s when the Greens formed and started entering parliaments, they also brought real changes.

Today I think that another saying is more appropriate with respect to changes and political parties:

"If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got."

Obviously voting for one of the same few entrenched parties is not enough to introduce changes, because a few cycles, they tend to become alike.

Re:You are not innocent

[DCFusor]

Because even in the primaries, who you get to vote for is decided by unelected party bosses - you still don't have any real input.

Re:You are not innocent

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

This is completely wrong. ANYONE can run in the primaries.

Innocent?

[ColdWetDog]

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.

Re:Innocent?

[jhoegl]

I find you guilty of terrible grammar.
It is know, not "no". Send him to the gallows!

Re:Innocent?

[DataDiddler]

That's more right than you think. One author claims that the average citizen commits three felonies a day without knowing it (due to the byzantine legal code which can be interpreted any number of ways): Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent. It's an interesting read if you're into that sort of thing.

Re:Innocent?

[ColdWetDog]

It's my keyboards fault! I sear it is! My 'k' and 'w' keys ere stolen.

Re:Innocent?

[ColdWetDog]

Oops. My apostrophe doesnt seem to be orking either.

Re:Innocent?

[Coeurderoy]

At least a member of your family is probably guilty of:
- downloading something
- using prohibited agricultural products
- and if less than 21 and living in the US, using other also prohibited agricultural liquids.

  And that's just for starters...

    And the real "looser" in this equation, is that disconnect between law and ethics...
    how can a parent educate their children when many laws prohibits actions that are hard to describe as unethical, and
    many unethical actions are totally legal.

    And if you have enough power, you can make illegal actions legal in your special case...

        The right wing is pushing the morals out of the window... (and I'm not speaking of the operating system....)

Re:Innocent?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Give me six lines written by the most honest man, and I will find something there to hang him."

The idea's not new. It's just that the period of social democracy in Europe and liberal democracy in America has come to an end, and the West is creeping back to an imperialist Britain of the nineteenth century with some more equal than others under the law. Once we've crept back another 200 years, of course, the very technology we created to liberate ourselves will be used to stop us before we think of setting a foot wrong.

And we'll applaud, just as we'll always applaud our destruction. Some of us will applaud it because we have stuck a "free market" label on it and have faith that it'll all work out; others will applaud it because we have stuck a "communist" label on it and feel assured that nothing can go wrong; so it is for "Jesus", "Mohammed" and every religion in between. Just occasionally, someone will stand up and ask what effect something has on the people living right now - but those people are dismissed by rulers who no longer have to live in the real world, cheerled by those useful idiots who aspire to leave it too.

Re:Innocent?

[dmbasso]

In secular governments, where you can't use the concept of sin / haraam to control people, the only alternative is to make everyone a criminal. You may not feel guilty and afraid of the divine punishment, but you will be afraid of your child downloading an mp3 and your family being financially screwed for the rest of your life.

Re:Innocent?

[Dogtanian]

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.

That's more right than you think. One author claims that the average citizen commits three felonies a day without knowing it (due to the byzantine legal code which can be interpreted any number of ways): Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent [amazon.com]. It's an interesting read if you're into that sort of thing.

While it's probably true that the majority of such cases weren't intentional on the part of those who originally drafted the laws (maybe I'm being naive there), it's certainly true to say that as a rule it's more beneficial for those who value power *not* to have the average citizen be 100% perfect and law-abiding, as knowledge of lawbreaking gives them a legitimised form of pressure and control over them that they can exert if need be.

Clearly, they won't punish the majority of such infractions- and really don't care about them in themselves- but the potential to be able to do so is the main thing.

This alone is one (but not the only) reason that those who say that "those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear" (i.e. "law abiding citizens") as justification for government surveillance and intrusion are either exceptionally stupid or exceptionally disingenuous.

Life in any country where every transgression of the law was punished would be absolutely impossible and break down quickly. Of course, that would be assuming "good faith" use of the information that let us know this- as I said above, in practice, it would be more beneficial to those in power to simply accumulate knowledge of such offenses and use it against those it deemed most problematic.

Re:Innocent?

[Gonoff]

"Give me six lines written by the most honorable of men, and I will find an excuse in them to hang him."
Cardinal Richelieu

Re:Innocent?

[Hentes]

alt+107

Re:Innocent?

[SuricouRaven]

Ever collected rain to water your garden? That's illegal in some US states.

Re:Innocent?

[atriusofbricia]

At least a member of your family is probably guilty of:
- downloading something
- using prohibited agricultural products
- and if less than 21 and living in the US, using other also prohibited agricultural liquids.

  And that's just for starters...

    And the real "looser" in this equation, is that disconnect between law and ethics...

    how can a parent educate their children when many laws prohibits actions that are hard to describe as unethical, and

    many unethical actions are totally legal.

    And if you have enough power, you can make illegal actions legal in your special case...

        The right wing is pushing the morals out of the window... (and I'm not speaking of the operating system....)

The disconnect between laws and ethics, vice morals, is in fact a terrible thing. It leads to, among other things, a contempt for the law and a loss of faith in the system in general. So we're totally in agreement up to that point.

However, you do go off the rails when implying this is a purely right wing thing. The left is just a guilty of this as the so-called right. Yet, we all keep voting for the same bastards.

Re:Innocent?

[Aighearach]

One reviewer wrote,

"With such a provocative title, I expected a thorough list of ways that ordinary citizens can be unwittingly trapped by federal law. Maybe a handful of frightening anecdotes, maybe some telling historical analysis.

Instead, after two lengthy introductions, I find a dense chapter defending ... a Florida politician accused of corruption. And a Massachusetts governor. And a Massachusetts House speaker. When I got to the chapter defending Michael Milken I started skimming instead of reading."

Re:Innocent?

[lightknight]

Love that. "Those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear" -> well then, by all means, allow us to observe you as you observe us. Equality and all that, a foreign concept to these people.

What's even better, of course, is the implicit argument contained therein that they have a right to monitor people who do have something to hide. If the preceding sentence doesn't make sense to you, you might want to ponder it for a while.

Re:Innocent?

[Aighearach]

"Downloading something" is not a crime unless it is some depraved shit.
Alcohol is not an "agricultural" liquid. None of the constituent agricultural products are banned. Nor is it a felony. And while most young people do try alcohol before it is legal, it is rarely something kids do every day. Nor is it generally viewed as a healthy, natural thing for children to be doing. Nor do most people consider children capable of making an informed choice about it.

There is no conflict in education. Law and ethics are disconnected to the extent that they are different. Law defines the worst of the ethical breaches that are to be punished, but ethics addresses also what is right, not only what is very wrong. Ethics is not absolute, where law is unclear. Ethics are disputed, and so is law. If either claims not to be disputed, it only means you're dealing with an extremist.

Re:Innocent?

[jklovanc]

This seems like a no brainer on the surface; if water falls on you land it belongs to you. These laws were written before people used personal large scale rain collection. Take a look a little deeper and see what the laws are there to prevent. It is about water rights. In areas where water is precious, like Arizona, water is allocated to different people in different quantities. What would happen if everyone who owned land in a catch basin collected all the water that would normally flow into the local rivers? The rivers would dry up which would mean that fish, land animals, farms and people downriver would get no water. That is the main reason rainwater collection is illegal in several states. Rainwater is a resource to be shared and not hoarded. Some of these laws are being changed to allow small scale (rain barrel size) collection but it takes time to catch up.

Re:Innocent?

[Anonymous Coward]

That argument is a little like saying that if you build a dam all people downstream of the dam completely run out of water. Believe it or not, the dam fills up and water will continue down the stream in the same quantities as it did before. The dam can't hold infinite water; the water-collectors can't collect infinite water.

Re:Innocent?

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

You can take these things in different ways. I have never viewed the 'security theatre' as even being theatre because nobody is fooled by it. Some say it's to 'train the sheeple' to submit, but being a regular traveler before and after this 'theatre', I can tell you that the lemmings are already well trained. If there is some deeper purpose beyond lining the pockets of the contractors and the unions (and the hospitals?), it is to weed out the rebels, because they will be the ones 'opting out,' thus making the job of targeting them much, much easier, and this is where the byzantine set of laws comes into play to essentially negate future credibility by saying "convicted felon," "arrested for..., charges later dropped" (because the weasel hid his track so well - is how the public receives such statements).

Re:Innocent?

[Coeurderoy]

Well, if you download some creative common content, no it's not (usually) criminal,
but it is easy to be in a dangerous situation if you download copyrighted content, including content that although it is not the desire of the initial authors is not available for sale because the copyright "handler" does not care about it, and prefer pushing "new stuff".
Minor in Possession, nope it's not a felony, but it can be a misdemeanor or in washington state's case a gross misdemeanor.

And yes neither law nor ethics are "absolute", although one could argue that ethics should at least try to tend toward being absolute (or you risk becoming exceedingly "casuistic" and give a free pass of conscience just because it's convenient).
And laws should be made to make sure that people can be as free as possible as long as it does not limit the freedoms of others.
But the current issue is that many laws are created to impose "community standards" on people, because some people would be too bothered if other would have rights they disapprove of...
And many laws are too lax because, protecting citizens against some class of unethical actions would be bad for business...

Ideally doing something illegal should be obviously wrong, and doing something that obviously harm others should be illegal, and unfortunately it's not. (well obviously not in all case, killing people is still usually illegal, and wrong...)

Re:Innocent?

[SuricouRaven]

My cynical side thinks there is another factor in play: By making water rights exclusive, the state can sell them to a water company.

Re:Innocent?

[element-o.p.]

Liar!

If your "k" and "w" keys were stolen, your user name would be "ColdetDog!" To the gallows with you!

Re:Innocent?

[supercrisp]

No it won't. Some sinks in, some evaporates. And people don't generally pen up water to just let it sit there for recreational or hydro uses; they pen it up so that it can then be used on crops and such. So, no, flows would be drastically impacted. But if you don't buy the reasoning, just spend a little time Googling about water in the history, and present, of the US West.

Re:Innocent?

[IICV]

Good grief, that's not what the quote means. Richelieu had a team of expert forgers - the six lines were a handwriting sample, that would be used to produce a false confession (generally of dealings with the devil).

Re:Innocent?

[TapeCutter]

That argument is a little like saying that if you build a dam all people downstream of the dam completely run out of water.

Sure if as you assume the water supply is infinite, but in the real world it isn't and often it stops all together. Irrigation dams are the primary reason why many of the world's major rivers are sucked so dry they no longer reach the sea. People don't just leave the water in the dam and go water skiing, they use if for agriculture, etc. Having said that, I don't agree that rain tanks/barrels cause (or cure) the same problems as dams.

Re:Innocent?

[Idbar]

So, was the 'w' stolen before of after typing "flowing"?

We knew you were guilty from the beginning.

Re:Innocent?

[jklovanc]

Take a look at this. There may be a war over water rights on one of the largest rivers in the world.

Re:Innocent?

[CrimsonAvenger]

Your cynical side might make more sense if it remembered that water rights were an issue long before the existence of water companies.

Re:Innocent?

[Man Eating Duck]

Good grief, that's not what the quote means. Richelieu had a team of expert forgers - the six lines were a handwriting sample, that would be used to produce a false confession (generally of dealings with the devil).

That's interesting, I've always wondered about that quote. Do you have a reference? Google yields a lot of noise for me.

Re:Innocent?

[shutdown -p now]

It's your fault for having an illegal keyboard. To the gallows.

Re:Innocent?

[Devoidoid]

Before of after typing flowing

+1 Poetic

Re:Innocent?

[Devoidoid]

"Downloading something" is not a crime unless it is some depraved shit.

Get back to us as soon as you have a legal definition for the term "depraved shit," so we can commence arrests.

Re:Innocent?

[Aighearach]

Downloading copyrighting content is not a crime.

Often it is a tort, but it is not a crime.

Aquinas protocol

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee, sure sounds familiar...

Re:Aquinas protocol

[ericloewe]

It sounds just like a certain Ministerium für Staatssicherheit. Also known as Stasi.

Traitors

[Anonymous Coward]

traitors to the American way

it turns out its not "home of the brave" after all

Re:Traitors

[lightknight]

Home of the cowards, hiding behind their numbers and technological prowess.

That is Because

[walkerp1]

Privacy is evil, crypto is terrorism, stenography is child porn, and you are public enemy number 1.

Re:That is Because

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh oh. If stenography is child porn, what is steganography?

Re:That is Because

[hlavac]

Stenography? Poor secretaries! (You probably meant steganography :) )

Re:That is Because

[walkerp1]

Stenography? Poor secretaries! (You probably meant steganography :) )

Heh, yeah. Had my stenographer not been otherwise occupied, she might have spotted that. It's hard to do sinister with typos.

Re:That is Because

[walkerp1]

b-but stenography IS child porn!

Give over man. Once way funny. Twice because one was an AC, but three times is just harassment.

Re:That is Because

[Devoidoid]

Pictures of dinosaurs?

So the only remedy will be overload ?

[Coeurderoy]

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...

Re:So the only remedy will be overload ?

[zAPPzAPP]

I see this increase in serverspace as a challenge for spammers to up their output.
Maybe we should all help them out a bit with some random noise?

This 'outcry' you speak of...

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Not so deep in the desert

[mycroft16]

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.

Re:Not so deep in the desert

[TheGratefulNet]

you sure that's where they are keeping 'the data' ?

??

Re:Not so deep in the desert

[mycroft16]

Yup. It is located about 2 miles from the Army's main translation headquarters and it sits on Camp Williams Army base as well. Everyone here knows exactly what it is, though maybe not what is going into it exactly. No secret that it is the NSA's facility though. They had a big ground breaking for it with the Governor, Senator Hatch was there. News interviews. Yeah, that is it.

Re:Not so deep in the desert

[ColdWetDog]

Perchance is there a volcano spewing lava with a big round eye at the top anywhere in the vicinity?

Re:Not so deep in the desert

[BlindRobin]

Picky. While it is true that SLC is not technically in a desert, from the perspective of most (especially those of us from more verdant parts of the globe), the entire state of Utah is in the middle of the desert, hence so is everything in or near it.

Re:Not so deep in the desert

[zAPPzAPP]

Maybe they were using 'Utah' and 'the desert' synonymously.

Re:Not so deep in the desert

[mycroft16]

Granted, but the phrase "Deep in the Utah desert" makes it sound like they are building this miles away from anything. That would be like saying "deep in the bayou" when it's in a suburb of New Orleans. Groom Lake is deep in the desert. North Las Vegas is not. Neither is Bluffdale Utah. It's a suburb of the state capital.

Re:Not so deep in the desert

[TheGratefulNet]

you're not getting what I'm saying, are you?

there's no one here would could talk about it, with any direct knowledge AND be authorized to accurately tell what is going on and where.

what did you see? a building being made. and you jump to conclusions based on what? disinformation that comes from those that want to keep us all in the dark?

for all we know, this has been built and working and is in some other remote location and has been for 5 years now. for all we know!

why is this hard for you to understand?

you see some building built, the MEDIA report what they are told and you believe what they say? about such matters, especially?

today, I assume 100% of the info we get is 'managed'. I don't trust a thing that comes from 'established' sources. why should I?

Re:Not so deep in the desert

[mycroft16]

I'm getting a bit of a conspiracy theory vibe here. They have no reason to keep this place a secret. In fact it is in their best interests to not keep it a secret. It's why they sailed nuclear submarines out of harbors on the surface. It was important for the enemy to know that the thing set sail and then it disappeared. It's important for the existence of this facility to exist as well as its purpose. As to what it is, the power consumption is a very large indicator. Those numbers are not made up by managed media reports either. They did numerous power studies around the country before selecting a location to build. That amount of power is consistent with Data Center usage from Facebook, Google, Microsoft data centers. The facility has a dozen or so employees and that is it. This is a server farm that needs minimal maintenance. This is simply a massive server farm. Every bit of data points to that. The design of the facility, it's power requirements, the cooling facilities, staff numbers, etc. I'm sorry. Trust media or not, the numbers don't lie. And yes, it has been built and operating for years in other places. They have data facilities all over the country. There is no secret to that and never really has been. This is simply the largest single facility they have ever built. http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=13908592 http://www.ksl.com/?nid=960&sid=19615060 http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=13896111 http://businessfacilities.com/articles/industry-focus/centers-of-job-creation/

Re:Not so deep in the desert

[dwillden]

Don't be an idiot. It's not "just a building" It's a massive complex of big buildings with very thick walls. And armed 24 hour security that even harasses locals watching deer herds in the area (as they've been doing for years). There is no other construction project anywhere near this size anywhere else in the state. I too live and work close to it, and there is no doubt as to what is being built. You simply do not understand the scale of what we are talking about.

Further the Wired account includes illustrations from the Army Corps of Engineers giving the layout (some buildings identified, others not) and it matches every other source of info.

You are taking your paranoia too far. Yes this is a massive NSA Data (and who knows what else) center. It will very likely infringe upon at least a few citizens civil liberties. But there is no question that it is what it is, and that is where it is being built. Something this scale couldn't be easily hidden anyway. It's power requirements are too big to hide in the desert. They had to build a power substation off the main high tension lines just for this facility.

On another note, why did it take this long to hit /.? The article hit the web nearly a month ago, I got my physical copy of wired with the article nearly two weeks ago.

Re:Not so deep in the desert

[the eric conspiracy]

That would be a geography FAIL.

Re:Not so deep in the desert

[the eric conspiracy]

This is not the first Slashdot story about this.

Re:Not so deep in the desert

[Kjella]

you see some building built, the MEDIA report what they are told and you believe what they say? about such matters, especially? today, I assume 100% of the info we get is 'managed'. I don't trust a thing that comes from 'established' sources. why should I?

Of course you shouldn't trust everything. But it's not like YouTube - which seems to be the place to find "unestablished" sources - is nothing but good honest, unbiased reporting of facts either. What you're saying seems awfully close to saying that the less of an established, credible media institution they are, the more you trust them. Well, there are a lot of people that want to tell you the "truth" about various things and most of them are considered crackpots because they are crackpots. The Army builds tanks, the Navy builds ships, the Air Force builds planes and the NSA builds data centers. Yes, if you go looking for conspiracy theories you'll probably find one saying it's for something else but this doesn't exactly sound like the part they keep secret.

Re:Not so deep in the desert

[Jafafa Hots]

Yeah but Salt Lake City is deep in the desert. Just because people are crazy enough to build a city there doesn't mean it's not a desert.

Re:Not so deep in the desert

[Anonymous Coward]

They also throw in a reference toThe Ebil Bush Administration, even though this appears to be a project of Obama's.

Re:Not so deep in the desert

[Mister Transistor]

Ministry of Information Retrieval.

Re:Not so deep in the desert

[omfgnosis]

Probably because it's also a project of the Bush administration. Believe it or not, quite a lot of Obama's policies carry over from Bush. Can we get over the knee-jerk reaction to any mention of any particular politician in connection with any particular policy and start to get it in our heads that the policies are the problem, and (close to) none of the politicians are going to fight on our side?

Location of the Utah Data Center

[mycroft16]

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

Unlimited back ups

[mrbester]

At least I don't have to back up my data anymore. Restoring it might be a problem...

Re:Unlimited back ups

[element-o.p.]

No problem at all -- just file a FoIA request and you're golden.

Re:Unlimited back ups

[omfgnosis]

The data transfer rate (months to years) is terrible and data corruption (redacted) is a huge problem as well

Re:Unlimited back ups

[omfgnosis]

Oh not to mention the technology is prohibitively expensive any time you have to hire a lawyer.

Oh that's goooood....

[BlindRobin]

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.

Re:Oh that's goooood....

[Dunbal]

Yep, it's like their jealous of your freedom and will change your way of life if you let them, or something.

Conflicted

[BlueStrat]

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

Re:Conflicted

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, because unchecked corporate rule would never oppress the citizenry. Stop conflating social programs with police states, it just shows your political naivete.

Re:Conflicted

[TheGratefulNet]

binary-thinking, much?

you CAN have both, in the right ways and when designed not to walk all over our assumed basic human rights.

"its A or B. choose!"

idiots...

life is rarely so binary. life is FULL of grey levels.

Re:Conflicted

[mrnobo1024]

From the summary:

It is, in some measure, the realization of the 'total information awareness' program created during the first term of the Bush administration

Your "small-government" Republicans are just as much on board with this as the "big-government" Democrats.

Re:Conflicted

[mycroft16]

Indeed. All parties like big government. They differ only on which parts of government should be big.

Re:Conflicted

[sjames]

So who exactly are the small government types? We have big government with social programs and a lot of corporate welfare, or few social programs, lots of corporate welfare and no taxes for the rich. Bringing up the rear, we have the practically no government party with no social programs, free reign to the corporatations and few taxes.

There doesn't seem to be a small but existent government party.

As for potential choices, you left out the entire quadrant of the graph where we have a social safety net but no nanny.

Re:Conflicted

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm sure that having discovered the Secret Conflict at the Heart of the Liberal Agenda is fun and all; but you'll note that the expansions of fun surveillance technology, the making-legal of their use, and the creation and expansion of the entities in charge of them all occur under a "national defense" guise and in the aftermath of assorted defense-related incidents, from the Alien and Sedition acts to the present day.

You'll note that this is an NSA(formed during WWII, post Pearl Harbor) facility being built on a military base to store and sift through the product of post 9/11 surveillance powers exercised largely in concert with and with the assistance of the telcos, retroactively authorized because zOMG Terrorists!.

You'll note also that, in terms of voting patterns, 'National Defense' is broadly popular; both among pro-social-welfare-program(though it threatens the budgets of the programs they like, so support isn't total) and anti-social-welfare-program constituencies(though it threatens their tax cuts, so support isn't total). Each constituency does have a subgroup who oppose it(generally civil libertarians and peaceniks on the one hand, and classical libertarians on the other); but both are comparatively feeble voting groups, especially if something excitingly threatening is going on.

If we were talking about the(also present; but rather shabbier) Department of Education or FDA or such datacenter operations, the fact that you can't have social welfare programs without data gathering would, in fact, be salient. However, we are talking about a DoD spook shop. 'Defense' spending can be, and often is, in terms of empirical voting patterns and popular support, quite neatly decoupled from social welfare spending. It's actually reasonably common under non-communist authoritarians.

Re:Conflicted

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

If the Founding Fathers had meant to protect your email from search and seizure, they would have had Ben Franklin invent the OSI 7 layer model and SMTP and then mentioned them in the Fourth Amendment!

Re:Conflicted

[mosb1000]

Small government republicans are a myth.

Re:Conflicted

[BlueStrat]

Your "small-government" Republicans are just as much on board with this as the "big-government" Democrats.

"My" Republicans!?!?

Are you freaking kidding me!?!?

I hated Bush's and the Republican's freedom-killing actions just as much as I hate those carried out by those with a "D" after their names.

Mainstream political parties are meaningless. It's the actions taken, not the party. I think they all should all be taken out and hung from the nearest tree.

Wake up! Stop buying into their political distractions.

Strat

Re:Conflicted

[bheading]

"Freedom" is not a function of the size of the government. There is no reason why social programs and government regulation mean that the government must conduct this kind of monitoring and surveillance of its own citizens.

Re:Conflicted

[Anonymous Coward]

But the size of government allows for less accountability, which is what the government wants. The president/congress can just say "It wasn't my fault, the NSA was responsible for it," but the people don't vote on members of the NSA. Without all these ridiculous branches, people will be able to actually do something about the bullshit that their congressman is legitimately responsible for.

Re:Conflicted

[TerranFury]

A number of northern European countries -- Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland -- provide state health care and pensions, but also respect individual liberties to an extent sometimes even beyond in the United States.

Denmark is #3 in the World Audit Civil Liberties rankings.
Finland is #1
Sweden is #2
Norway is #5
The United States is #15.
See here.

These are the classic "Third Way" democracies -- and they outnumber the Stalinist states (USSR, North Korea, Cuba) that are always put up as straw men. In short: Your argument sounds compelling, but, like Aristotle's reasonable-sounding assertion that heaver objects accelerate faster in freefall, it is not supported by empiricism.

Re:Conflicted

[jobiwankanobi]

Totally disagree with this. This whole program started with 9/11 and was instituted by the people who supposedly champion smaller government, lower taxes, and no social services.

Re:Conflicted

[KlomDark]

I'd say large corporations do a lot more destruction of individual freedoms than the government does. Corporations have no checks & balances other than the mythological "invisible hand" bullshit.

Re:Conflicted

[bheading]

Piffle.

The "ridiculous branches" are all accountable to politicians, who do indeed have the power to stop this. That they choose not to do so, and that the population choose not to become agitated over it, is a matter which is nothing to do with the size of the government. The fact that the USA has reached a political equilibrium centred around two large parties who differ on principles but are substantially similar in practice and implementation is symptomatic of your real core problem here, which is a system of government that is increasingly logjammed. Americans still aren't debating, as far as I can tell, the reasons for that problem and how it may be solved.

It's worth adding that the USA has the smallest government of any Western country, in terms of the proportion of GDP which is government spending. That's even allowing for the fact that the USA's multiple interwoven layers of government (federal, state, county, city, in some cases each with their own executive, legislative and judicial branches) are substantially more burdensome in terms of overall bureaucracy than most Western countries.

Re:Conflicted

[JosephTX]

"Bigger government" is a vague term used by the same politicians who incidentally campaign on adding to the annual $700 billion military budget. "Providing health care like the rest of the developed world" != "Constructing giant Big Brother stations to monitor the populace". Likewise, "Taxing the rich and and telling Exxon they can't dump chemicals into rivers" != "Abolishing the First Amendment."

You don't have to look any further than Canada to see that a government can be "big" enough to adequately provide medicine to citizens without requiring them to bend over for rectal exams upon arrest. EU countries incidentally provide the same services without making up half the entire world's military spending. You seem to be confusing the word "freedom" with "anarchy."

Re:Conflicted

[BlueStrat]

If the Founding Fathers had meant to protect your email from search and seizure...

They did that already. It was that whole bit about;

"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."

Now, we just need to remove enough power from the government so that they will actually adhere to the restrictions they are already supposed to be limited by.

If enough people want to change what they want the government to do, there's already a way to do that: The Constitutional Amendment process. That those pushing for expanded government powers refuse to pursue the process laid out in the Constitution through the Amendment process is proof that they don't think enough people want more/expanded government powers.

If one starts down the path of ignoring/bypassing the parts of the Constitution that one doesn't like, pretty soon, the parts you DO like will be ignored/bypassed as well.

This is what's happening currently. TFS is just one of the symptoms.

Strat

Re:Conflicted

[Anonymous Coward]

Try voting earlier, like in the primaries, so that you actually have a choice you want to make. The reason we get stuck with all of these wing nuts on the left and the right is because currently only those with the strongest opinions actually go out to vote for them.

Re:Conflicted

[systemeng]

Tried to mod you funny but missed the click. oops.

Re:Conflicted

[LordLucless]

As for potential choices, you left out the entire quadrant of the graph where we have a social safety net but no nanny.

Because it doesn't exist anywhere but on a graph. As the government pays for your lifestyle, it becomes more and more controlling over what your lifestyle is. When it pays for health care, see how long it takes people to start complaining about how overweight people, smokers, or drinkers of alcohol taking "more than their share" - and how the government will reward "correct" lifestyle choices. When it pays for schooling, see how long kids at the extremes of the intelligence curve are supported due to having greater requirements than "normal" kids and the necessity for "equality".

When you ask a government to financially support your lifestyle, you give de facto control of your lifestyle over to your government,

Re:Conflicted

[sjames]

I keep hearing about all of this, but I mostly see it actually perpetrated by private insurance. The next most common place it comes up is Republicans who mostly resent the existence of any sort of social program and want to turn them punitive to whatever extent they can. Of course, they are also the party most likely to tell you what sexual orientation is permitted and when.

We have had "death panels" for years, elected by nobody and answerable only to shareholders. All the interfering in your lifestyle crap but we don't even get affordable health care in return.

The So-called left (actually, less extreme right) has been the least of our problems as far as the nanny state is concerned.

Re:Conflicted

[tirefire]

I am a small gov't Republican from Iowa (I might be registered as a Democrat if Russ Feingold were from my state... and still up for election). I voted for Ron Paul in the 2008 and 2012 primaries. Yes, most "small government Republicans" these days are complete phonies and do indeed love big government, but not this guy.

If you doubt me, then read up on his political positions sometime.

From the above link (emphasis added): The central tenet of Paul's political philosophy is that "the proper role for government in America is to provide national defense, a court system for civil disputes, a criminal justice system for acts of force and fraud, and little else."

Re:Conflicted

[The Evil Atheist]

If you doubt me, then read up on his political positions sometime. From the above link (emphasis added): The central tenet of Paul's political philosophy is that "the proper role for government in America is to provide national defense, a court system for civil disputes, a criminal justice system for acts of force and fraud, and little else."

In case you didn't notice, you just used Ron Paul to excuse the need for the increasing power of the NSA. What is the NSA except to provide national defense and a criminal justice system? Maybe you should take a look at governments around the world that are doing better than yours and realize "small government" and "big government" is almost orthogonally irrelevant to "good government".

Re:Conflicted

[tirefire]

Yes and no. The NSA's activities in foreign signals intelligence is something every modern military does, and is legal under the constitution. However, the NSA's domestic spying (weren't they caught tapping directly into internet backbones in 2007?) is a violation of the 4th amendment and is more like something secret police would do. Ron Paul is one of the few people who holds this position.

"Small government" doesn't just refer to the government's budget, number of employees, percentage of GNP, etc. It also defines a sharp limit to a government's involvement with private aspects of citizen's lives. I have read some compelling arguments for increasing or maintaining the size of gov't social programs (sometimes big gov't can be good), but I've never agreed with people who think domestic spying is good (that kind of big gov't is always bad).

Re:Conflicted

[The Evil Atheist]

Yes and no. The NSA's activities in foreign signals intelligence is something every modern military does, and is legal under the constitution. However, the NSA's domestic spying (weren't they caught tapping directly into internet backbones in 2007?) is a violation of the 4th amendment and is more like something secret police would do. Ron Paul is one of the few people who holds this position.

Except Ron Paul wants to decrease federal power in return for state power. If you think a state government would not go further than a federal government would, you are deluding yourself. It's no secret that "states rights" used to be an excuse for slavery, and later, racial segregation.

Re:Conflicted

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I was largely joking with this one; but aiming for a topic that has actually been a bit of a 4th amendment sticky wicket of late:

For technological reasons, not clearly anticipated by the constitutional framers, an increasing percentage of most people's communication and storage are, technically speaking, Google's, or AT&T's, or the like, at any given time. There has been some debate as to whether your gmail, hotmail, etc. account is actually your 'papers, and effects', and subject to 4th amendment protection, or whether they are the host's, fair game whether you like it or not so long as the host feels like complying, which they generally do, especially if offered a cost-recovery fee.

Teams 'living document' and 'intent of the law' naturally tend to assert that the 4th amendment protects anything that would qualify as 'your papers', regardless of the minor matter of the technological means by which they are produced and stored at a given time. Others are not entirely of that opinion.(And this isn't really the first time this has come up: phone tapping that didn't require going inside your house with a set of wiring tools, was, at one point, entirely warrantless, until a court eventually accepted some bootlegger's defense claim that his calls deserved 4th amendment coverage even if they could be tapped at the telco end).

Re:Conflicted

[tirefire]

If you think a state government would not go further than a federal government would, you are deluding yourself.

A state gov't has checks on its power. If you live in a state that is going from bad to worse (like, oh, I don't know, New Jersey), you can vote for a better solution without your vote being diluted by the hundreds of millions of people outside of your state. And if things become intolerable, despite your best efforts? You can leave. Contrast this with the current top-heavy American empire that imposes its laws all over the globe, creating a world where the only real escape can be found at the north/south poles and in some third-world countries.

It's no secret that "states rights" used to be an excuse for slavery, and later, racial segregation.

If you're referring to the "cause" of the American civil war, slavery was on its way out already. Wage slavery is much more profitable and is still around today. As for your point in general, even though states rights' has been used as an excuse by some bigoted people, it's not like it has no actual merits. Read basically anything Thomas Jefferson has written to see what I'm on about.

Re:Conflicted

[The Evil Atheist]

If you think a state government would not go further than a federal government would, you are deluding yourself.

A state gov't has checks on its power. If you live in a state that is going from bad to worse (like, oh, I don't know, New Jersey), you can vote for a better solution without your vote being diluted by the hundreds of millions of people outside of your state. And if things become intolerable, despite your best efforts? You can leave. Contrast this with the current top-heavy American empire that imposes its laws all over the globe, creating a world where the only real escape can be found at the north/south poles and in some third-world countries.

It's no secret that "states rights" used to be an excuse for slavery, and later, racial segregation.

If you're referring to the "cause" of the American civil war, slavery was on its way out already. Wage slavery is much more profitable and is still around today. As for your point in general, even though states rights' has been used as an excuse by some bigoted people, it's not like it has no actual merits. Read basically anything Thomas Jefferson has written to see what I'm on about.

Except state governments don't have checks on its power. States were free to continue racial segregation policies until the National Guard stepped in on Eisehower's orders. If taking the drastic step of moving to another state was really an option, why did the blacks feel they had to endanger themselves and go to a white university rather than moving north?
The impression I get from discussion of American politics is that the way things suppose to work in theory are made out as if they're fact. In theory people can move to another state. In theory there are no monopolies in the capitalist market. In theory people are free to choose their network provider. In theory, every state has unlimited space to accommodate migrations of political nature. In theory, people can just pack up and move state at any time.
You are mistaken in trying to apply free market economics to states rights. Unlike the mythical free market, people can't move around as easily as money can.

Maybe it is already finished now.......

[beltsbear]

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!

Re:Maybe it is already finished now.......

[dwillden]

Nope, well over a year to go, as anyone who drives by the site on a daily basis can tell you. Those buildings are far from complete.

Re:Maybe it is already finished now.......

[mycroft16]

Not anywhere near complete. The buildings in the complex have a long way to go and then they've gotta put all the equipment in, set it up, test, etc. It is a really huge project. Lots of trucks, equipment, several cranes.

RIAA

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait until the RIAA sue the NSA for copyright infringement.

Defence...

[QuasiRob]

Looks like it is time to start encrypting emails and buying everything with cash. And use TOR.

Re:Defence...

[Jafafa Hots]

I see it the other way. Buy everything on a card, have several email accounts and subscribe to every spammy company ever, join every social network and every website and sign up for every newsletter, post your whereabouts on foursquare and facebook places, livestream your life, put tons of photos of everything on picasa and flickr.

Yakk on your cell phone, leave your voicemails sitting for ages.

And then use cash and a pencil and paper only when you do something IMPORTANT you don't want them to know about, such as posting a message full of instructions like this.

Oh fuck.

But anyway, my point is, FLOOD THEM with useless shit. And lead your REAL life offline.

Re:Defence...

[Anonymous Coward]

In the U.S.A. the cash may bear the legend "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private" right on it. Try pointing that to a flight attendant that wants to swipe your card if you want food. It's nice to have principles but, eventually...you give in to hunger.

The Nazi's had plans to collectivize and control food distribution in the countries they conquered as a means of controlling the population. In modern times, they might have issued you a swipe-able "food rationing card" that would let them track.

Re:Defence...

[element-o.p.]

You can buy a prepaid "credit" card at grocery and department stores. AFAIK, your name doesn't have to be tied to one, and therefore you *can* purchase things without leaving (much) of a paper trail. It wouldn't be completely untraceable, but would be a far cry better than using the credit card tied to your name, SSN and bank account.

Re:Defence...

[Mister Transistor]

Yes, that's how the Nazis will control society, through the careful rationing and control of airline food.

Another nut heard from.

it appears

[Presto Vivace]

that our elites have been moving in this direction for a while.

And the fourth amendment?

[jcr]

Printed on the toilet paper in all of the restrooms.

-jcr

Re:And the fourth amendment?

[shutdown -p now]

That's bullshit.

You don't print classified & highly sensitive information like that on the toilet paper - what if someone who doesn't need to know reads it?

Your Protests of Innocence are Irrelevant:

[codermotor]

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.

Budget approval ?

[Alain Williams]

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 ?

Re:Budget approval ?

[fnj]

For questioning your masters - you are hereby sentenced to ... to ... live in this HELL your masters have made of your country.

Re:Budget approval ?

[Magada]

It sounds funny now, but it won't be funny when you find yourself in the Gulag for refusing to hand over the encryption keys.

My hands are placed over my head at all times

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, welcome our governmental overlords.

as a historian though it is kind of exciting...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:as a historian though it is kind of exciting...

[SuricouRaven]

I imagine pirates will have some role too. We're producing huge amount of media now, but it's all going onto storage of very short lifespan - once the companies that own it go out of business, a lot of obscure stuff will be lost to public record. Pirates, though, love collecting terabyte upon terabyte of useless crap - and they maintain it too.

Disturbing.

[GmExtremacy]

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 wonder

[Gonoff]

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.

To Quote Frank Zappa...

[codermotor]

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

Re:To Quote Frank Zappa...

[jobiwankanobi]

Thank you for quoting FZ. He also says something with regard to the fact that democracy is doomed to fail because the average American does not have the reasoning capability to distinguish between what is true and what is false.

Re:This WAS news...

[tqk]

This was news, weeks ago.

That's about when I heard about it too. Still:

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.

What changed?

Like the ancient Soviet Union

[Pf0tzenpfritz]

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...

This is exactly the same as...

[exentropy]

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/03/16/1550206/nsa-building-uss-biggest-spy-center -- c'mon /. editors.

Re:Channers Quietly Crapping themselves

[lightknight]

And I, while infrequent to 4chan, would not. I don't allow fear to dictate my behavior, as lesser men do.

Re:This WAS news...

[RussR42]

The outcry died down and they started it up again. If everyone gets uppity again, they'll put it on the back burner for a couple years or change the name...

Conflict

[jklovanc]

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.

Re:Conflict

[Coeurderoy]

Of course having regulation on food safety, which starts basically with fair advertisement is desirable.
And I suspect only very rare people would really want to try salmonella contaminated food.
BTW one of the issues with drug prohibition is that it also stops regulation and customer information.
A couple of month ago the main newpapers in Brazil and Bolivia where warning "customers" about how bat and dangerous bolivian coke was (not because it's coke, but because the production process and transportation mode was too filthy)..
In reality I mostly agree with you, I would even say that ethics have little to do with law, since they are largely personal.
Cheating on your partner is not illegal anymore in most cases, it doesn't make it ethical...
What bugs me is when law starts to look like incompatible or at least severely disconnected.

nb: I didn't specify pot because it is just one of several products who are in practice "tolerated" until caught.
many "performance" products are socially accepted and illegal.

Re:Conflict

[omfgnosis]

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".

There's a third type which is a combination of the first two. I expect to be free of intrusive regulation until such a point that my activities affect others, and I expect meaningful regulation of the actions of others as they affect me. It's not an either-or proposition, it's a question of how and why regulation is appropriate.

It is immoral, and should be forbidden by any good society, to harmfully mislead others. Industry has a much greater capacity—and tendency—to do this than the average person. Which reminds me, there's yet another type of person in the world: those who apparently can't conceive the difference between an organization and a person, or the difference between personal and interpersonal activities.

Re:Conflict

[jklovanc]

And many illegal "performance" products are also dangerous.

Been to Chantilly VA recently?

[gelfling]

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.

Re:Been to Chantilly VA recently?

[chill]

Heh. I commuted to work for a couple months with a guy who works in the NRO office down by the Navy Yard in DC.

What they do is well known now. They oversee and manage our spy satellite program and are part of the Dept. of Defense -- like the NSA.

Re:Been to Chantilly VA recently?

[gelfling]

Point being they have little or no need to be that secretive anymore because there's not much anyone can do about it.

Solution: More Bits

[yanom]

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).

Re:Solution: More Bits

[Anonymous Coward]

The solution here is MORE BITS of encryption

It also requires that TCP connections use encryption technology. Like email is slowly mandating encrypted connections. But most web sites (eg porn, Facebook, Slashdot) don't.

There is also the problem of encryption keys. If someone cracks the certificate authority, then he can instantly access your communications. Worse, a router/server that issues its own certificates, allows man-in-the-middle attacks by the same method.

Secure communications requires back-door-free software, and for every user to manage their own set of encryption keys, and for current protocols (TCP, UDP) to transmit a user's public key over every connection.

Re:Solution: More Bits

[EnergyScholar]

Your statement is true only if you exchange keys offline. Does anyone still do that? For key exchange we mostly use public key cryptography, which is vulnerable to several different sorts of attacks (e.g. Shor's Alg. on a QC, non-random seeding, version-specific implementation flaws). If the key exchange is insecure, it matters not how many bits are in the key. The article's discussion of cryptography was partly true and partly disinformation being fed to the reporters.

where are all the pink lefty Americans?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

How will they act on this?

[Ryan24]

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.

Re:How will they act on this?

[Anonymous Coward]

It won't be overt. You will never see it coming. You will be picked off, one by one.

Want to be free people to terrorists

[future assassin]

blow that place up and you'll have our support and gratitude.

Dumb joke

[MSTCrow5429]

In the United States of America, government watchdog watches you!

Watching me?

[PPH]

OK, NSA. Which finger am I holding up?

Has nothing to do with "hate" or "like"

[daveschroeder]

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:

The intel gap results partly from rapid changes in the technology carrying much of the world's message traffic (principally telephone calls and e-mails). The National Security Agency is falling so far behind in upgrading its infrastructure to cope with the digital age that the agency has had problems with its electricity supply, forcing some offices to temporarily shut down. The gap is also partly a result of administration fumbling over legal authorization for eavesdropping by U.S. agencies.

The post-Watergate Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) required a warrant for eavesdropping on people in the U.S. But after 9/11, the administration asserted that warrants weren't needed to surveil communications involving suspected terrorists even inside the U.S. The controversy over "warrantless wiretapping" made intel officials gun-shy about eavesdropping even on messages they would have regarded as fair game before 9/11.

According to both administration and congressional officials (anonymous when discussing such issues), the White House and intelligence czar's office are now urgently trying to negotiate a legal fix with Congress that would make it easier for NSA to eavesdrop on e-mails and phone calls where all parties are located outside the U.S., even if at some point the message signal crosses into U.S. territory.

Much of the electronic communications NSA once pored over, between two parties communicating with each other outside the U.S.

Re:Has nothing to do with "hate" or "like"

[EatAtJoes]

Wow, you've got that soothing tone down! "Nothing Is Wrong Here, Move Along." Are you a cop? Did you learn it from your chosen news outlets (Newsweek, Forbes)?

Dispassionate mention of "Targeted Killing" check.

Specious distinction between "ordinary, everyday citizens" and people "linked to terror groups" check.

The "Intel Gap" (don't forget the Mineshaft Gap!)

And lastly: "America's Enemies".

I don't know where to even begin. CIA + War on Drugs + FBI maybe??

Organizations like the NSA (because it isn't unique, after all) amass information secretly, which gives them tremendous power. Power they *will* use, not just to inform on those dusky foreigners you're so worried about, but on "ordinary, everyday citizens", members of government, anybody they feel like. This notion of an innocent, transparent government ceaselessly working to guarantee it's citizens' safety doesn't exist in this world, in the US or anywhere else.

Re:Has nothing to do with "hate" or "like"

[w0mprat]

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".

Everyone spies on each other, but not their own, but don't they all share intelligence information? No laws broken.

Re:Has nothing to do with "hate" or "like"

[daveschroeder]

Actually, the US cannot use allies' intelligence capabilities as a vehicle to sidestep its own laws and directives prohibiting surveillance of US Persons without a warrant. I know some people believe that this is what is happening, but that is neither the purpose nor intent of intelligence sharing between the US and its allies.

Re:Has nothing to do with "hate" or "like"

[daveschroeder]

Wow...thinly veiled ad hominem, attacking the messenger, fallacious descriptions — everything but addressing the actual content of my comments. Bravo!

Do you realize that foreign intelligence actually has a purpose, and that the US does have actual adversaries, not just of our own creation, and that there are governments which seek to project ideals and principles counter to ours?

Just because abuse exists — and history tells us it does — doesn't mean ALL activities are exclusively abuse. Indeed, our extremely free flow of information and lack of censorship reveals actual wrongdoing, or what people may perceive to be as "wrongdoing", far more easily than at any time in history. This creates an echo chamber where people believe things are worse than ever.

What's actually true is that we learn more, in more detail, and more quickly about the workings of our government than at any time in the history of our nation, or indeed, human history. Meanwhile, China is arresting people for "spreading rumors", locking down comments on state-controlled social media, forcing real-name registration on the internet, compelling lawyers to swear oath to the Communist Party, and similar.

Speaking of China...they're on pace to exceed US military spending in real dollars by 2025. I'm sure that is all for "peaceful regional defense".

You know, if the US didn't exist after, say, World War II, what do you think the world would look like? A happy, peaceful place? What about Western Europe? Would we even have the precious Internet that is part of the echo chamber where like-minded individuals convince themselves that the US is the source of everything wrong in the world, while in other places, people are, you know, actually oppressed?

Re:Has nothing to do with "hate" or "like"

[kkaos]

You know, I almost, almost, sympathized with the poster to whom you're responding regarding the notion that you were putting too much trust in our government...but I didn't because you're not doing that. I acknowledge that abuse in our government (and all governments in history) has existed. The other side to that is, yes, there are enough folks around keeping check (and able to keep check because of today's technology) on what our government does, and no one has been jailed for revealing that truth (as long as they were in their Rights and within the Law). For example, decrying the perceived existence of civil rights abuses by the City of Denver Police is well within one's Rights and well within the Law; however, doing this while attacking the City of Denver Police with vials of bodily fluids and while overturning buses and cars and while vandalizing public and private property is NOT within one's Rights and NOT within the Law (it's also immoral and incredibly stupid and heavily emphasizes the need for a police force to exist, if not for the protection of lawful citizens from fools, but also for the protection of those same fools from themselves).

It's sheer foolishness to decry elements from Orwellian works of FICTION, when there's no legitimate evidence that the government is "out to get us". Such paranoia should be a waste of one's TIME and LIFE. I'll admit, that every now and then, I worry that the rights of America's citizens are slowly being eroded away and that one day America could end up as a dictatorship (either from internal or external forces), but you know what, as of this moment, I have the freedom to express these thoughts because America is still a republic and a "sweet land of liberty", and again, there's enough of the rest of us to put a stop to such a dictatorship, such a complete loss of Rights, if that woeful day ever comes (and I will certainly not go down without a fight!). But now, I can go about enjoying my life during it's brief blink-of-an-eye existence in contrast to the eternity of my Lord.

Re:Has nothing to do with "hate" or "like"

[zlives]

What concerns me is the slow decline of freedoms and people's acceptance of them if they happen slow enough.

"if that woeful day ever comes (and I will certainly not go down without a fight!)"

the aftermath of such a day, no matter the outcome, would mean a different country.
I like the country we have, the freedoms we have and i loathe the fact that an act of terror has had its desired effect in changing the policies and thoughts of its people to such a degree that the thought of losing our rights... is acceptable.

Re:Has nothing to do with "hate" or "like"

[Killall -9 Bash]

What you think of as the American lifestyle is mostly a myth. American TV doesn't represent American life any more than anime represents Japanese life.

Jersey Shore is a fucking cartoon.

Re:Has nothing to do with "hate" or "like"

[hairyfeet]

The problem isn't the targeted killing IMHO the problem is they should have been tried in absentia. We have the system to try people in absentia for JUST THIS REASON so that criminals can't simply jump borders to escape their crimes. Sadly the only one I saw who pointed this out, even going so far as to repeatedly tell both the left and right "You don't go shredding the constitution just to get a bad guy, I don't care how bad he is" was Glenn Beck. This was the only time i agreed with him but on this one topic he was 100% correct.

What we have here is now two administrations that refuse to follow the rule of law and frankly should be looked upon as criminal. we have had a set of procedures for dealing with just such cases for decades now and it is nothing but arrogance to ignore the law when it would have been trivial to give those like Anwar al-Awlaki their day in court whether they were here or not.

Re:To Quote Megadeth...

[KlomDark]

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

It's not that I don't buy into the con-theories...

[troff]

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?

Obey the rule, and all will be well

[SlithyMagister]

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.

Re:Obey the rule, and all will be well

[narcberry]

Al Capone went to prison for tax evasion. You'll go to prison for something equally disconnected with your crimes, real or not.

I'm sorry, but your strategy will fail.

Built in ultimate secrecy...

[EmagGeek]

... yet we know exactly what capabilities it has, what they'll use it for, and even the layout of the buildings.

It is secret?

[DaveV1.0]

If it is so secret, how come the author of the article has all this information on it?

Obama voted for this

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:Obama voted for this

[Fujisawa Sensei]

Not voting is the same as voting AYE.

Obama was wrong, but at at least he bothered to vote.

And I'm proud to say that my congressman, one who I helped put in office, was one of the few to vote against then.

On the other hand the FISA amendments act is very vague.

Re:Obama voted for this

[Indigo]

*Shrug*. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. If Bush was still in office, he'd have voted the same way. If Clinton were re-elected, he'd do the same. This is just like the kids I went to grade school with, arguing with religious conviction whether Ford or Chevy was better. It just doesn't make any difference.

Oh, you're so getting on the NSA's lRe:End the USA

[gmanterry]

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!

Datacenter in the Desert?

[Kaenneth]

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...

Re:Datacenter in the Desert?

[kwalker]

How many military bases are there in Detroit? This one is being built on a National Guard base very near several major thru-ways for the Internet (Both Salt Lake and Provo have multiple, very wide, very fast feeds to plenty of spots all over the country). And yeah it's "desert" but it's only really hot during the height of summer. The other three seasons it's much more mild weather-wise.

Re:Datacenter in the Desert?

[kaoshin]

Evaporative cooling in a dry environment like the desert is actually a cheaper and more efficient method of cooling a data center. Outside temp doesn't matter so much.

Re:Datacenter in the Desert?

[jovius]

Maybe they tap into local groundwater streams. It's recommended that one cooks and microwaves water before use.

Re:Datacenter in the Desert?

[Jmanamj]

I believe Utah is considered high dessert, and gets quite a bit of snow and cold weather...without *feet* of snow blocking off roads and icing everything up. The location near the center of the country geographically is probably important as well.

Re:Datacenter in the Desert?

[narcberry]

Middle of the desert? Irrelevant.
Middle of ultra-conservative America? Yes. It's for protection from the pitchfork wielding masses. Utah will be the last to stand up against government tyranny.

It's only a matter of time...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Freedom of information

[biodata]

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.

Re:watchers

[biodata]

Once online its contents will be so valuable, I predict they will be sold to many corporations. For this it will need to be remotely accessible so will be routinely compromised. Soon we will all be watching!

Of course they are

[russotto]

If the NSA doesn't watch you, how do they know if you're innocent or guilty?

Helping the NSA transcend to abundance thinking

[Paul Fernhout]

"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.

Re:Helping the NSA transcend to abundance thinking

[ultranova]

What makes you think that the powers that be want there to be abundance for all? How would they lord it over people who didn't need to beg for their table scraps?

Scarcity gives power to those who control resources; it will never end as long as any human being dreams of being another's master. And besides, let's face it: if someone who wasted his youth slacking becomes just as wealthy as someone who spent every waking moment at hard work (or at least looking busy), how many here will cry foul?

A society where the goal is that no one lacks anything is also known as a welfare state, often disparagingly called "nanny state" here, because people want the "undeserving" to lack things. This world is exactly what people want it to be; the only thing that they disagree with is their own position in it. So instead of trying to change it, they try to change their position in it. Thus, the world will remain as it is.

Re:Helping the NSA transcend to abundance thinking

[Paul Fernhout]

To start with the bottom line: the very computers that make the new NSA facilities possible mean that the NSA's formal purpose is essentially soon to be at an end. Nothing you or I say here will reverse that trend. The only issue is how soon the NSA as a whole recognizes that fact, and then how people there choose to deal with that reality.

Overall, you make some great points about social dynamics and changing the system vs. changing your place in the system. That is all very insightful. It is also true that young men tend to focus more on competition (making it in the system) and older men on cooperation (making the system keep working) - and our youth-oriented US culture tends to celebrate the competition side publicly more. I'd have to agree that, in general, someone overall much above average in abilities that are currently in demand is individually usually better off investing their personal efforts in changing their place in the system in the short term (rather than trying to change the system) as far as access to resources that they can then use for personal ends (like to have a prosperous family) -- especially when they are young (part of this is also female preference and standing out). In the short term, narrow selfishness often pays off (and even sometimes in the long term, too).

That is pretty undeniable -- although there are a few caveats even then. Not all women want the same thing in a man (contrast with the Haudenosaunee culture and the women's choice of Tadodaho, like someone more compassionate and philosophical like Leon Shenandoah). There is also the issue of what values are you teaching you kids who will care for you in your old age. There is the issue of what friends you keep and how likely they may be to stab you in the back if they are also extreme social climbers. Too many "pleasure trap" rich foods (or drugs) are bad for the health. There also seems to be a law of diminishing returns to more stuff, beyond which doing good deeds and giving gifts and so on is probably going to bring you more overall happiness; see:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/09/07/1519221/Researchers-Say-Happiness-Costs-75k

Probably there is even a law of diminishing or even negative returns to more "social power", although we could debate that.

There is also a sense in which many people who engage in a certain kind of economic race are statistically being "chumps" according to this:
http://conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/47/
"And maybe - just maybe - the people who have "made it" wrote those rules to keep the wannabes chasing a dream that's a mirage."

Trying to change the system (at least as an individual) can for most people be a guarantee of heartbreak, loneliness, poverty, having few kids, and so on. Not that nature probably really cares about the suffering if one person succeeds though. A salmon may lay a thousand eggs to see just one survive to adulthood.

Ultimately, we may well see a newer type of economy simply because the old one is just looking so ugly these days and dysfunctional these days, although some say that has been true for a century:
http://www.amazon.com/Economics-Rest-Us-Debunking-Science/dp/1595581014

And in general, some people are seeing the value of increased cooperation, even in the USA:
"No contest: the case against competition"
http://www.share-international.org/archives/cooperation/co_nocontest.htm
"Alfie Kohn, author of No contest: the case against competition, disagrees completely. He argues that competition is essentially detrimental to every important aspect of human experience; our relationships, self-esteem, enjoyment of leisure, and even productivity would all be improved if we were to break out of

The Evil Bush and Cheney

[Danathar]

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......

Land of the Free?

[Paracelcus]

And home of the slaves!

Arbeit Macht Frei...

Re:Let's Get Real

[Travelsonic]

Your comment can be summarized as follows:

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.

Re:Let em watch.

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess that you wouldn't mind being made into soap, pillow fill and lampshades.

May Godwin's law perish!

Re:This WAS news...

[omfgnosis]

Evidently, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008.

I call bullshit on this story.

[__aaltlg1547]

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.

It Is Not All Bad

[bxwatso]

April 1, 2012

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.

Re:Let's Get Real

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

RE: THOUGHTCRIME, or...

[bdabautcb]

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.

scp /dev/random questions@nsa.gov.org

[cheekyboy]

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.

Re:scp /dev/random questions@nsa.gov.org

[ikeman32]

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.

If I understand the article correctly you need to be on their list in order to get your messages and stuff recorded or make contact with one of the people on said list. So if thousands if not millions of geeks get on the list and at a prearranged time they all start flooding the net in the manner you speak of, it might just work.

Re:scp /dev/random questions@nsa.gov.org

[Lucractius]

While a valid plan, it would fail to be as effective as intended and require more than a simple "cat /dev/random | " type shell script.

Firstly: The kinds of systems they use would be easily able to distinguish between 'garbage' and 'lint' by session analysis. Lint is trivial stuff created by everyday session connections with a start and an end. A constant stream of random data even if encapsulated properly into packets would be about as hard to pick out as a continuous ping. You would either need a network of agents passing encrypted data back and forth with semi-regular human-like traffic patterns, to mimic the sorts of things the system is designed to sniff, this is also a cat and mouse game like SEO & search engine tuning, black hat seo games the algorithm at the same time the search engine works to counter them. While steganographic masking of actual data in a constant max throughput stream of encrypted /dev/random would be suspicious if used among a group of people it has limitations addressed by my second point.

Secondly: Any attempts at using end user bandwidth at max throughput will fall foul of the architecture of the majority of Client Access Network (CAN) topologies. These systems, be they Coax Cable & DOC-SIS, PSTN copper & ADSL/VHDSL, Fiber to the Node/Premises, HSDPA+ via carrier wireless or others not enumerated, they all typically have a contention ratio of less than 1:1. That is, the total backhaul/infrastructure data rate capacity available for X users is not equal to or greater than the sum of their individual permitted data rates. Examples abound for each CAN scenario but it is a common aspect for many reasons ranging from technical (equipment just isn't fast enough) to physical (no room on site for device X) and economic (yes we could buy that, but it would cost way too much).

Also... tiny but relevant point three... they are hijacking the infrastructure links that ISPs use to connect to each other, they have tapped the main flow and consequently whatever equipment they have is going to be fast enough to handle the whole of the link it monitors, and therefor you would likely be unable to saturate the monitor, merely cause them to either overflow their storage or force a higher discard % in follow on analysis.

Also Now my second point does not means things like DDOS don't work (DDOS typically doesn't saturate outgoing bandwidth from end user/agent links).

I'm simply saying that the matter requires more thought than "if everyone spammed them with 24mbps then they could never handle it."

TL;DR version - Nice idea, wish it were more practical for me to stick it to them.

Dang it!

[superdave80]

I so with McCain hadn't beaten Obama in the last election. I'm sure he would have stopped a project like this!

Papers please, comrade

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Papers please, comrade

[Magada]

Of course, a lot of this was just hysteria, was exaggerated or misunderstood from Cold War anti-Communist propaganda of the time.

This is what you Western guys don't understand and it is also why you are doomed to repeat our experience.

It was all real. All of it. There was no "hysteria". The Gulag, the spying on everyone by everyone else, the hunger, the poverty, the mass fear and the mass (self)hatred, the fact that Soviets fully intended to rule the world, by hook or crook, the spies and sleeper agents and secret caches of backpack nukes on NATO states' territory, for use in the final war. All of it, and worse. There is stuff that is still classified, or just plain hidden, atrocities that no-one except the perpetrators and the few survivors know about.

We can't but be thrilling for the data center.

[francisco.colaco]

Because now all child porn will be put out of it's misery!

Two words

[pablo_max]

Ron Paul.

Already addressed in my comment

[daveschroeder]

"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."

Re: Big Business

[cardpuncher]

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?

Why blame Bussh

[AlleyTrotte]

Obama is president now. right?

Warshaw Pact

[dutchwhizzman]

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.

Counter example

[hebertrich]

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.
Check your history books and communications history. Comms have always been under some sort
of surveillance. Started with Radio , telephone .. this is nothing new.

Some timely news here -

[Darth Snowshoe]

Slashdot - yesterday's news, today!

Seriously, how long has the WIRED story on this been up?

Re:Some timely news here -

[narcberry]

This isn't about Whitney Houston. Some news matters, and will still matter tomorrow.

Wrong boogey man!

[onyxruby]

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.

Forgive my naiveté...

[sc0pie]

...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?

Re:Forgive my naiveté...

[sc0pie]

From TFA: "...the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US."

Sad to say

[turkeyfish]

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.

That's Why

[turkeyfish]

"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.

Stop Worrying the Solution is a Simple One

[turkeyfish]

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.

Re:Stop Worrying the Solution is a Simple One

[MiG82au]

Electronic communication is a tiny fraction of a typical individual's internet traffic. It would not make the slightest difference to the internet or your account. So there's no need to worry about it. Video, photos, and programs make up most of the volume.

That's why republicans have a plan!

[turkeyfish]

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.

Its really a jobs program

[turkeyfish]

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 you would rather privatize it?

[turkeyfish]

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.

Re:It's not that I don't buy into the con-theories

[narcberry]

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...

So much for Obama correcting Bush

[rhalstead]

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?

Calm Down

[Hankavelli]

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.

Heavily fortified ...

[RockDoctor]

Sounds to me like a target for a small asteroid. A few thousand megatons sounds persuasive to me.

US Govt. spies on and murders it's allies ... strike back to be expected.

Re:Oh, you're so getting on the NSA's lRe:End the

[randyleepublic]

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!

Innocent or not, NSA spying on everyone

[thesquire]

They and their bosses are fascist pigs, Hitler's and Stalin's illegitimate offspring. What else can one say?