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NCTC Gets Vast Powers To Spy On U.S. Citizens
interval1066 writes "In a breathtaking new move by (another) little-known national security agency, the personal information of all U.S. citizens will be available for casual perusal. The 'National Counterterrorism Center' (I've never heard of this org) may now 'examine the government files of U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them.' This is different from past bureaucratic practice (never mind due process) in that a government agency not in the list of agencies approved to to certain things without due process may completely bypass due process and store (for up to 5 years) these records, the organization doesn't need a warrant, or have any kind of oversight of any kind. They will be sifting through these records looking for 'counter-insurgency activity,' supposedly with an eye to prevention. If this doesn't wake you up and chill you to your very bone, not too sure there is anything that will anyway."
With enough media attention this will be shut down.
The government should need a warrant or due process to access its own records?
Of course, I did not RTFA
Anyone with a WSJ account able to post the article?
I might be if the article wasn't behind a paywall.
Remember when people were screaming that Bush was the root of all evil? How's that whole Obama thing working out for you.
Not collecting much of new data, and it's one agency allowed to centralize it instead of every little local agency keeping it forever. I'd rather have one agency with a long time limit than a hundred agencies with long time limits...just keep the others low.
Why would our government care if its citizens participate in activities intended to stop insurgencies? Could we maybe sensationalize this a bit more? I mean seriously, why did you leave even a modicum of hard-fact in this summary?
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
They're banning loud sound in commercials today. Feed the sheeple, maybe they won't notice the NCTC, then.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
from the theater, for theater.
Call me jaded, I kinda' figured that it's been being done for some time now anyway.
Germany! ... am I being ironical or not?
Finally! We don't need time travel, books or movies to experience the draconian police states envisioned in Orwell's 1984 masterpiece!
Remember when we hated these practices when it was the "Damn Commies" who were doing them? ME NEITHER!
This should be an enlightening experience for all...
For the next incarnation of the government I vote we model it after something a little less dystopian, like Star Trek.
gosh, i wonder if gov protesters will get targeted. or corporate protesters, or union members, or cult members, or ...you.
...so if Agency X is exempt of a warrant, then Agency X can get the information and then share it. Just like asking facebook not to share your data after the fact --- the moment it was copied before you requested, the copies are out and in the hands of businesses for use. We shouldn't expect any different from our government. If one agency has access, then there is a loophole such that they all can.
Here's the kicker... Obama ran in 2008 being against the patriot act, and extended it last year without question or veto. He might be your man for the job... But how is he at keeping his word on big issues like big brother and warrantless/unconstitutional acts?
You are giving yourself an excuse. Maybe that is true, but you are ignoring the many, many ways the U.S. government is VERY corrupt. The U.S. financial system steals trillions of dollars. The kill-other-people-and-destroy-property groups associated with the U.S. government have stolen trillions of dollars to kill people in lands most citizens can't find on a map, partly for profit and partly because they are mentally ill.
Citizens and taxpayers are not even allowed to know the names of all the secret groups that secretly get taxpayer money to do secret things that benefit people who taxpayers are not allowed to know.
U.S. government corruption is a problem for everyone on the planet, not just U.S. citizens.
Do the work of stopping corruption in the U.S. government.
It used to be for the "women and chilren" that obsurd things made their way through government. Now it is all in the name of "National Security". Fear is a powerful motivator and they know it. Just because they can, they will...
Germany only protects data from corporations, they've been quite open that the government can, will, and has broken into people's houses to bug their computers without what most of us would consider due process.
As I just asserted in another post here on /. today, we are and have been living in a police state for some time now. This is one of the many signs we've had in the past decade.
I guess 'the people' are just slow at recognizing the signs.
She blinded me with science, she tricked me with technology. ~ Thomas Dolby
'counter-insurgency activity' - AKA supporting the opposing political party. Or being a member of a non Jebus-Approved religion (or none at all).
Is not an org but a multi-agency center intended to make it easier for various agencies share information and bring their agency's talents to bear in the fight against terrorism.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Remember when people were screaming that Bush was the root of all evil? How's that whole Obama thing working out for you.
Back when the Bush admin was "asserting" Executive power, a few of us raised a warning. One of our points was that any powers that the Bush administration acquired would be bestowed on the next admin - regardless of who's in power next.
Now, I am NOT saying Obama is Evil or Bush was evil. What I am saying is that we should be very concerned with power creep.
Congress and the Judiciary really needs to reign in executive power. Executive power is the only branch where things focus on one person. This isn't for just our Liberty but also for our security.
One day soon, we're not going to be the big dogs in this World and when the new powers that be want to hurt the US, they'll just knock off the POTUS - along with his SS detail.
Think long term people. And watch more history shows on Greece, Rome, Persia, Turkey, Mesopotamia, .....
Clearly both you and the op are terrorists.
There's the rub, isn't it? As long as you call people terrorists, you can do anything to them.
Blow up buildings? Terrorist.
Free animals from research facilities? Terrorist.
Do a web search about bomb-making? Terrorist.
Say "terrorist" in an airport? Terrorist.
Run a red light? Terrorist.
Post a "subversive" comment on Slashdot? Terrorist.
Read this message? Terrorist!!!
With enough media attention this will be shut down.
It's one thing to worry about terrorist, but if they are talking about a witch hunt to find criminals then there is no way anyone but catholic police officers could support it.
I wonder how many actual terrorist incidents they've stopped, and if they're more effective than the magic rock on my desk.
By JULIA ANGWIN
Top U.S. intelligence officials gathered in the White House Situation Room in March to debate a controversial proposal. Counterterrorism officials wanted to create a government dragnet, sweeping up millions of records about U.S. citizens—even people suspected of no crime.
Not everyone was on board. "This is a sea change in the way that the government interacts with the general public," Mary Ellen Callahan, chief privacy officer of the Department of Homeland Security, argued in the meeting, according to people familiar with the discussions.
A week later, the attorney general signed the changes into effect.
Through Freedom of Information Act requests and interviews with officials at numerous agencies, The Wall Street Journal has reconstructed the clash over the counterterrorism program within the administration of President Barack Obama. The debate was a confrontation between some who viewed it as a matter of efficiency—how long to keep data, for instance, or where it should be stored—and others who saw it as granting authority for unprecedented government surveillance of U.S. citizens.
The rules now allow the little-known National Counterterrorism Center to examine the government files of U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them. That is a departure from past practice, which barred the agency from storing information about ordinary Americans unless a person was a terror suspect or related to an investigation.
Now, NCTC can copy entire government databases—flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and many others. The agency has new authority to keep data about innocent U.S. citizens for up to five years, and to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior. Previously, both were prohibited. Data about Americans "reasonably believed to constitute terrorism information" may be permanently retained.
The changes also allow databases of U.S. civilian information to be given to foreign governments for analysis of their own. In effect, U.S. and foreign governments would be using the information to look for clues that people might commit future crimes.
"It's breathtaking" in its scope, said a former senior administration official familiar with the White House debate.
Counterterrorism officials say they will be circumspect with the data. "The guidelines provide rigorous oversight to protect the information that we have, for authorized and narrow purposes," said Alexander Joel, Civil Liberties Protection Officer for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the parent agency for the National Counterterrorism Center.
The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution says that searches of "persons, houses, papers and effects" shouldn't be conducted without "probable cause" that a crime has been committed. But that doesn't cover records the government creates in the normal course of business with citizens.
Congress specifically sought to prevent government agents from rifling through government files indiscriminately when it passed the Federal Privacy Act in 1974. The act prohibits government agencies from sharing data with each other for purposes that aren't "compatible" with the reason the data were originally collected.
But the Federal Privacy Act allows agencies to exempt themselves from many requirements by placing notices in the Federal Register, the government's daily publication of proposed rules. In practice, these privacy-act notices are rarely contested by government watchdogs or members of the public. "All you have to do is publish a notice in the Federal Register and you can do whatever you want," says Robert Gellman, a privacy consultant who advises agencies on how to comply with the Privacy Act.
As a result, the National Counterterrorism Center program's opponents within the administration—led by Ms. Callahan of Homeland Security—couldn't argue that the program would violate the law. Inste
Here you go, should work for a week.
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424127887324478304578171623040640006-lMyQjAxMTAyMDEwMzExNDMyWj.html?mod=wsj_valettop_email
BlameBillCosby.com
Like others here I can't get the real article and as such must only comment on the summary. I to read this that an agency is being given permission to look at data that other agency's already have. And in so looking they can create a global view of the activities of those individuals and establish an action. Now, I'm not a lawyer but I assume the premise is that the information they obtained was legally done so under current law so there is nothing horrible going on. Likewise, one would assume that if such information was used and then found to not be legally obtained initially it would then be thrown out. Again from the summary I'm not seeing anything incredibly egregious here or even remotely giving me chills.
Sad part is at first read I thought nctc "NCTC (National Cable Television Cooperative)"
I'd say meet the new boss, same as the old boss, except it is the same damned boss.
So much for the Democrats protecting our civil liberties. More like Obama using the Constitution like a roll of Charmin.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
In information security compartmentalization, least privilege, need to know and other similar concepts are considered a good thing. These concepts exist to security confidentiality of information. But the NCTC has the authority to share the information with anyone according to the ACLU: "Perhaps most disturbing, once information is gathered (not necessarily connected to terrorism), in many cases it can be shared with “a federal, state, local, tribal, or foreign or international entity, or to an individual or entity not part of a government” – literally anyone. That sharing can happen in relation to national security and safety, drug investigations, if it’s evidence of a crime or to evaluate sources or contacts. This boundless sharing is broad enough to encompass disclosures to an employer or landlord about someone who NCTC may think is potentially a criminal, or at the request of local law enforcement for vetting an informant." http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security-technology-and-liberty/biggest-new-spying-program-youve-probably-never-heard
Now it's perfectly understandable that they have to vet informants and sources, investigate terrorism, and defend national security because that is the fundamental purpose of a federal government. Some of that of other stuff however is highly political and some of it gives far too much power to far too few people and is ripe for abuse. "Crime" is vague and could mean literally anything, and I'd be willing to say we are all criminals so that applies to all of us. Drug investigations are highly political because not all of us believe in the war on drugs and in fact a majority of us aren't even for these sorts of investigations in the first place so to include that is highly political and ripe for corruption. To share information with a person not part of a government or with individuals? What reason would they have to ever do that?
The problem I have with the NCTC isn't their spying capability but the fact that they bypassed the Democratic process and the will of the people, and that they aren't following any sort of information security protocol in their sharing. You can share information with people who are cleared, or who have a need to know, but the more you share the more leaks there could be, the more problems there will be. And the more broad the excuse to spy on people the more corruption and oppression there could be in the process. Let's spy on this citizen because they jay-walked or ignored a red light or have a marijuana plant in their closet. So now we got to unleash the full power of the federal government, NSA, CIA, Satellites, and all? That to me is bullcrap and highly political.
For these reasons I think media attention should be brought to this not to get rid of the spy program itself but to restrict it to a narrowly defined purpose. To simply spy on everyone just to give the government power over people and then to spread that power out to random people who aren't even necessarily American citizens is a problem and probably isn't even Constitutional.
McCarthy supports this group from beyond the grave.
Is not an org but a multi-agency center intended to make it easier for various agencies share information and bring their agency's talents to bear in the fight against terrorism.
This would be fine but why is the threat they claim to be facing outlined as being so broad so as to include "crime" in general? Anything could be a crime or made into a crime. Terrorism is highly specific and a threat to national security so there is a reason for the feds to be involved but "crime fighting" isn't the role of the feds.
"Once information is acquired, the new guidelines authorize broad new search powers. As long NCTC says its search is aimed at identifying terrorism information, it may conduct queries that involve non-terrorism data points and pattern-based searches and analysis (data mining). The breadth and wrongheadedness of these changes are particularly noteworthy. Not only do they mean that anytime you interact with any government agency you essentially enter a lineup as a potential terrorist, they also rely on a technique, datamining, " http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security-technology-and-liberty/biggest-new-spying-program-youve-probably-never-hearddited as a useful tool for identifying terrorists."
I actually disagree with this quote. I support datamining to catch terrorists. So to start off I want to say that.
"Perhaps most disturbing, once information is gathered (not necessarily connected to terrorism), in many cases it can be shared with “a federal, state, local, tribal, or foreign or international entity, or to an individual or entity not part of a government” – literally anyone. That sharing can happen in relation to national security and safety, drug investigations, if it’s evidence of a crime or to evaluate sources or contacts. This boundless sharing is broad enough to encompass disclosures to an employer or landlord about someone who NCTC may think is potentially a criminal, or at the request of local law enforcement for vetting an informant."
http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security-technology-and-liberty/biggest-new-spying-program-youve-probably-never-hearddited as a useful tool for identifying terrorists."
The problem is here. This is very radical. First they want to share it with an entity not part of the government. Why? What entity which is not part of the government should be involved in this and why? The other problem is the sharing can happen basically for ANYTHING, not just national security investigations but evidence of a crime (there are probably so many crimes that any of us could be a criminal under the local, state and federal government so that applies to anyone). There are reasons behind having this capability but they need to be very precise with information sharing and for the reasons why it's shared.
Employers should have a right to know if someone is a criminal, so should landlords, but it shouldn't be abused. How can we prevent it from being abused or used for fishing expeditions?
My bet is on your magic rock, it can at least be parted from its desk. :)
I have noticed a deafening silence from them for four years and fully expect it to continue. I want a four years and your out rule.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Why are they looking at counter-insurgent activity? Shouldn't they be looking at insurgent activity?
This is no big thing, The reason for the need to be able to look up anyone without warrants is so they can apply analytics to the data. With all the data being stored in the big new data centers, limited counter-terrorism resources can be applied in a correct fashion. With this option they can apply a sophisticated neural network or equivalent to look at all the data items and see if there is any pattern match for those who might hit a correlation for what constitutes a "terrorist" based on location, movement, associations, background, etc.
Domestic terrorism will be up one day, so by having systems in place they have a better idea of where to allocate drone surveillance resources, human intel on the ground, allocate training and information for law enforcement, etc.
For example, right now you "might" get a lot of hits in the Detroit area as they have a large arab population (assuming arabs are correlated with terrorists), whereas in the future it might be militia types who hang out at gun shows, have particular criminal backgrounds, spent time at a prison known as a breeding ground for certain terrorism related gangs, etc. Another hit might be large sales of fertilizer and diesel fuel in known extreme anti-government areas. It's much easier to know where you might need to investigate if you can apply automated analytics to volume data, rather than hoping Sherriff Boscoe calls in a question about why he finds blocks of C4 all over his county.
It's not just assuming everything happens in New York City so you put all your people there. Getting and properly analyzing this data might notice that a particular state or region might be hiding a training or bomb making facility. Being able to to a target a possible area, quietly, is a lot better than having to randomly hassle everyone. Although everyone "could" be a terrorist, the chances are that mostly people with certain habits and criteria are going to have a higher chance of being one. Doesn't make it right but "profiling" potential targets could be more useful than randomly searching my 80 year old grandma from Fargo with a rubber glove and lots of lube.
Counter-terrorism is a difficult job and has to pull in intelligence and analysis from a large number of sources, so while different agencies may have the data, they may not have all the data they need to give them ideas of where to apply themselves, so it's no surprise that they are looking for vast swaths of data to try and give indications of where to put their efforts. It's a parallel to if they needed a lot of satellite imagery from NRO, NASA, etc. to make analytical decisions. I'd prefer not having random government agents doing telemetry against my shopping, game,and internet behaviors, but at the same time, if volumetric data analysis helps assess me as not being a person of interest, and focuses that attention somewhere else more useful, I'm less worried about it.
I'm a satanic clam.
What are they going to come up with next? Go from "crime" to "thought-crime" and "pre-crime"?
Terrorism is a specific danger to national security. Everyone agrees to fight terrorism using whatever means available. We don't all agree with the war on crime or the war on drugs. Maybe catholic law enforcement officers support this but the rest of us are sinners and criminals.
Seriously. If you live in the United States, you should to be making plans to leave, and acting on them as soon as possible. A lot of people won't. Hell, I'll be honest and admit I likely won't - family, lack of a second language, a specialized skill set, and a personal aversion to travel combine to keep me in the Northwest, although I do keep an eye peeled for potential jobs in the cross-border parts of Canada. But if you can, you really should think about your exit process.
Ten years ago what was going on in the U.S. was an over-reaction. Five years ago it was joke that induced uncomfortable laughter. But somewhere since then America has crossed a line. We are building a totalitarian police state. That is not pleasant to think about, but it is what is happening and it is not going to change, no matter who you vote for or which party you support. Both economy and government have deep structural problems and a good chunk of the public actually supports the nascent security state.
If you don't want looking forward to living in a modern American version of Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, or Soviet Russia, or don't want your children living in one, then you really need to start looking at options. There aren't a lot of particularly good ones, especially if English is the only human language you're fluent in, but the Commonwealth countries look to not be going quite so insane. The U.S. isn't going to recover without some major shocks, and I don't think they're going to be pleasant.
trying to counter the founders of this country.
But sin and crime are basically the same. And just not like everyone agreed we should have a war on sin, we don't all agree with using datamining to fight crime. In fact that is a very radical position only supported by catholic law enforcement officers.
If you're not a law enforcement officer then you're a criminal. If you're not a catholic then you're probably a sinner. Morality should not be influencing these sorts of policy. Politics should also not be influencing these sorts of policy.
The war on drugs is a morality and political issue. The war on crime is entirely a morality issue. In this case the moral minority are pushing their morality on the majority using the law and then using unlimited surveillance to potentially track anyone who does not share their morality. That isn't to fight terrorism, I don't see how it protects national security, and while I do think some crimes are less political or less morally conflicting than others, I think when you just use the word "crime" in the vague sense then that could literally mean anything the law enforcement chooses.
So basically if they want to find something on you and they have 5 years worth of data to do it, there is no way any of us if they look at 5 years of our lives can say we haven't committed a crime. We might be able to say we aren't terrorists or aren't threats to national security but none of us can say we haven't broke the law in 5 years. If you smoked marijuana, or jay-walked, or did the smallest little thing, its illegal and you're a criminal. So it's basically more like the church trying to use surveillance and 5 year datamining to track sinners.
"They will be sifting through these records looking for 'counter-insurgency activity,' supposedly with an eye to prevention. "
Uh... did no one else catch this? What insurgency exists domestically that they don't want people countering?
We're so damned worried about "terrorism" that the Constitution and Bill of Rights don't matter anymore.
Meanwhile, diabetes mellitus directly kills more than 70,000 Americans a year. But propose something to reduce consumption of sugary drinks and suddenly people are screaming that tyrants can pry their Big Gulps out the the remainder of their cold dead fingers.
I am not a crackpot.
Although his methods and motives are debatable, McCarthy was right - there really were Communists infiltrating the Fed at high levels. Venona? Alger Hiss really was an agent. When Yeltsin came in power, KGB records were made accessible to journalists - and some even took the time to look them over - and revealed quite a bit of stuff.
He never speaks out against any of this stuff. What a waste of a president.
"looking for 'counter-insurgency activity'" - what insurgency?
My big concern is that in the future someone will abuse the system and use the data gathered to for their own advantage. It is a huge temptation. Think of a future president running for reelection getting the best of his opponent by using this data to his advantage. Or a federal employee using the data to get even with his or her Ex.
OK, let's presuppose the argument that this is necessary to national security is valid. Great. I stipulate that nothing discovered in such a search should be admissible for any crime that does not fall under National Security purview.
Of course, I don't find this is a valid argument, since you could then argue anything was a National Security matter. Still, I don't suppose it is realistic to expect politicians to see it that way.
What I'd really like to see are some Draconian punishments for agency personnel who abuse this access.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
They told me if I voted for Romney, we'd see an accelerated loss of civil liberties under the guise of terrorism... and they were right!
McCarthy was screwing up people's lives based on often completely specious accusations of communism, while these upstanding civil servants are screwing up people's lives based on often completely specious accusations of terrorism. Anybody who can't see the obvious differences between the two must be a terrorist.
I am officially gone from
They know that the increasing concentration of wealth into the hands of the few is politically unstable. Pretty soon, there will be wide-spread revolts. They know this. The counterterrorism center doesn't exist to deal with al Qaeda. Al Quaeda isn't a threat.
At least you can throw a rock at a terrorist.
Chasing boogeymen is generally hard
FTFY.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
... but what's on TV tonight, and can I still have my iToy?
We've become sufficiently terrorized as a nation, that instead of moving on with our lives, we've given up what supposedly we held most dear. Fuck our politicians (regardless of party), and the people who choose them for bullshit reasons.
We are Rome.
You bring the fiddle, I'll grab the matches.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
You seem to forget that this whole "freedom" thing also includes forbidding the government controlling what you eat, where you sleep, what you do for a living, and where you take a shit, even if it means giving you enough rope to hang yourself with.
>> So a new agency will have a single centralized database with details of all US citizens...
Yeah, kinda like the Social Security Administration, Department of Education, the Internal Revenue Service, Department of Labor, and all of the other agencies that have your personal information as a matter of course.
Memorable quotes for
Looker (1981)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082677/quotes
"John Reston: Television can control public opinion more effectively than armies of secret police, because television is entirely voluntary. The American government forces our children to attend school, but nobody forces them to watch T.V. Americans of all ages *submit* to television. Television is the American ideal. Persuasion without coercion. Nobody makes us watch. Who could have predicted that a *free* people would voluntarily spend one fifth of their lives sitting in front of a *box* with pictures? Fifteen years sitting in prison is punishment. But 15 years sitting in front of a television set is entertainment. And the average American now spends more than one and a half years of his life just watching television commercials. Fifty minutes, every day of his life, watching commercials. Now, that's power."
##
"The United States has it's own propaganda, but it's very effective because people don't realize that it's propaganda. And it's subtle, but it's actually a much stronger propaganda machine than the Nazis had but it's funded in a different way. With the Nazis it was funded by the government, but in the United States, it's funded by corporations and corporations they only want things to happen that will make people want to buy stuff. So whatever that is, then that is considered okay and good, but that doesn't necessarily mean it really serves people's thinking - it can stupify and make not very good things happen."
- Crispin Glover: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000417/bio
##
"It's only logical to assume that conspiracies are everywhere, because that's what people do. They conspire. If you can't get the message, get the man." - Mel Gibson (from an interview)
##
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." - William Casey, CIA Director
##
"The real reason for the official secrecy, in most instances, is not to keep the opposition (the CIA's euphemistic term for the enemy) from knowing what is going on; the enemy usually does know. The basic reason for governmental secrecy is to keep you, the American public, from knowing - for you, too, are considered the opposition, or enemy - so that you cannot interfere. When the public does not know what the government or the CIA is doing, it cannot voice its approval or disapproval of their actions. In fact, they can even lie to your about what they are doing or have done, and you will not know it. As for the second advantage, despite frequent suggestion that the CIA is a rogue elephant, the truth is that the agency functions at the direction of and in response to the office of the president. All of its major clandestine operations are carried out with the direct approval of or on direct orders from the White House. The CIA is a secret tool of the president - every president. And every president since Truman has lied to the American people in order to protect the agency. When lies have failed, it has been the duty of the CIA to take the blame for the president, thus protecting him. This is known in the business as "plausible denial." The CIA, functioning as a secret instrument of the U.S. government and the presidency, has long misused and abused history and continues to do so."
- Victor Marchetti, Propaganda and Disinformation: How the CIA Manufactures History
##
George Carlin:
"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehous
As a debt-free person about to take out a student loan for a higher degree, I'm really considering just bailing to another country and take out a loan there to live. This country is beyond fucked.
I'd say do it, but good luck finding somewhere that's not just as fucked.
No, seriously, where are you going to go that A) doesn't have basically the same authoritarian shit as the US, and B) isn't a third-world shithole?
Canada? Might as well just stay in the States.
England? Out.
Australia/New Zealand? Out.
Russia? You're kidding, right?
I've heard good and bad things about Germany, so I'd say on the fence on that one.
I understand France has pretty good healthcare, but from what I understand it's fuck-all for pretty much everything else.
Switzerland - sure, if they'll give you a visa (even then, I hear that place is expensive).
Of course, you could always try not being a huge pussy, and instead at least attempt to transform the country for the better, instead of jumping ship like a traitorous, flaming rat.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
First of all in order for data to be collected it has to recorded, don't do anything that can be recorded and attract attention, at least don't do it over the net or in paper and that agency has nothing (except their own data they generated).
"counter-insurgency activity" Really? Wouldn't you be looking for "insurgency"? I mean don't you people at the "insert gov acronym here" see the US population as a giant group of potential insurgents?
Why else would you want to get details on *us*.
The whining over privacy is annoying, none of you do anything about it except post and whine (yes the same thing I'm doing right now), so my opinion is don't leave a trail and you have nothing to worry about.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I knew this was where we were headed, and it will only get worse.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
If you take a shit in public you might become a registered sex offender.
And random searches, the TSA's various abuses, and warrantless wiretapping don't infringe any freedoms you guys care about?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
Every time I travel, I get detained for 1-4 hours when I land in the US because I have been arrested one time for suspicion of DUI. I passed the blood test, the breathalyzer, and the case was thrown out. This is cited as the reason I am detained every single time. Welcome home.
I bet there were atheists (come to think of it, may have been the same ones)...and Jews.... probably had Jews in some of those agencies too.
Clearly McCarthy didn't go far enough!
Now, which article or ammendment makes the congress the gaurdian over people's beliefs and philosophies, and personal associations? I forget, I know it has to be in there somewhere....
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Wait a minute. They are looking for "counter insurgency activity"?! I'd have thought that any citizen engaging in counter-insurgency activity is to be commended. Most of them probably work for some uniformed service anyway -- now they'd be under close scrutiny? And we need a special agency for that?! Of course English is just my second language, so what do I know.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
They're now admitting to what they've always been doing.
Um only the famous 5 realy fit that archetype not sure that any of the well known US soviet agents where well off though there was a Nazi sympathizer in the US embassy in the UK just prior to ww2 who came from a fairly good background.
:-)
Oh i don't mean Joe Kennedy
Ok anyone have that number and can you then tell me how much is my part percentage of my taxes?
Or why in the hell are my taxes being spent this way, this is not the representation required for me to be paying taxes on.
If you read history, you'll know that although McCarthy was bonkers, his commie in every cupboard wasn't exactly far from the truth. Both the US and UK had top personnel in their spy agencies that were good ol' communists. Not lefty times by nature, but rich well bred men recruited at university.
You do know that communist is a political choice, right? Being a communist doesn't make you evil, it means you have a different view on how the government should run. There is a communist party in the USA.
Calling people communists back when McCarthy was doing it was just a way to get rid of competition and people you don't like. Nothing more, nothing less. McCarthy abused his power to hassle others.
Now, instead of communist being the bad guy, it's terrorist. And it's way too soon to pull this bullshit, I would think. The 1950's wasn't that long ago.
Be seeing you...
...Is good for the gander, right?
We're on a site full of nerds and geeks, right?
Start a distributed "People's Database" built on some of the same general principles as 'Freenet and TOR meets WikiLeaks and encrypted I2P'. Locate any vulnerable storage/control (although such system weaknesses should be minimized or eliminated) in a country that ignores US chest-thumping and threats.
Collect every bit of data possible about government agencies, personnel, and activities. Use FOIA requests to get things like traffic-cam and security-cam data to aid in tracking individual movements. Build dossiers on every government employee, bureaucrat, and official, their movements/travel, any communications that can be acquired, dossiers on their families, associates/friends, financial/purchase/CC data, web histories, biometric data, anything and everything.
Let's pitch-in to help them with that whole "transparency" thing.
They seem like they could really, really use the help.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
This is not the government protecting you from "terrorists". This is the government protecting itself from YOU. From their viewpoint, we are all potential terrorists. Soon to be ex-President Assad of Syria is explicit on this topic, calling the forces attempting to kick him out "terrorists". The US government is not so explicit about it, yet. They can get a few more years in power by trying to keep all this under wraps.
You can stay right in the US. Just move to an area with a low population density, small government, and lots of hunters and farmers. Cost of living is usually low, and people tend to leave you alone, because they don't know if you might be the one with plenty of rifle experience. When I lived in an area like that, I knew the power company guy and the road maintenance guy by name, because they would stop and chat.
That's been going on for a long time...
"We need a smaller government" -> "outsourcing to private consultants" -> "more power to those private consultants so they can function as an extension of the government" -> "more capable and effective private consultants" -> "more outsourcing to private consultants" -> "smaller government"...
For some, that would be a virtuous cycle... sigh...
Come play Moral Decay!