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US Mining Data Directly From 9 Silicon Valley Companies
Rick Zeman writes "Hot on the heels of Verizon's massive data dump to NSA comes news of 'PRISM' where The National Security Agency and the FBI are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person's movements and contacts over time. This program, established in 2007, includes major companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook...and more."
If this doesn't make you angry, upset and outraged, what will? Most of you will have relatives that fought and died to fight the evil of fascism in the Second World War. What was that all about, if you are just allowing the same thing on your own doorstep by stealth? Don't tell me about Godwin's Law, that's just a way to stifle debate. Call out this fascism for what it is. This is beyond the wildest dreams of the STASI or Stalin, because they didn't have the technology. The NSA and the CIA are rogue states within the state, they are beyond control and are not acting for you, or in your best interests. This should upset you. If there are not huge, mass protests on the streets of your state capitols all over the nation in the coming weeks, you should be ashamed of yourselves. The Orwellian state is not inevitable, but it takes actual action to stop this. Cynical tut-tutting will not do. This has to be shut down now, and proper protest is what it's going to take. Over to you.
Do you believe that, for example, google search prediction-as-you-type is using a keylogger? It is keylogging, it's just that it's server-side.
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
Now reports that it's not just Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, ISPs, and credit card companies are involved as well. Harry Reid said, "Everyone should just calm down and understand this isn't anything that is brand new,'' which I'm sure makes everyone feel better.
Diane Feinstein is ok with the program because she personally gets to approve it, as part of her committee position. Remember Obama voted for this before he ever got elected president, so if any of this surprises anyone, they are naive.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I hope most US slashdotters are not too rankled by this reality because this is what they voted for. Bush and Nixon, two presidents modern leftists love to vilify, HAVE NOTHING on the monster currently in office...NOTHING.
Before you try to pin this on the left, take a look at who voted for the Patriot Act:
2001:
Senate: 98 voted for the act, a single democrat voted against
House: 357 voted for the act, 66 voted against (62 democrats, 3 republicans)
2006: Patriot act renewal
Senate: 89 voted for the act, 10 against (9 democrats, 0 republicans)
House: 280 voted for the act, 138 against (124 democrat, 13 republican)
2011: Patriot act renewal
Senate: 72 Yes, 23 against (18 democrat, 4 republican)
House: 275 Yes, 144 no (117 democrat, 27 republican)
If the leftist monster in the whitehouse is solely responsible for this, then why didn't our republican saviors in Congress do anything to stop it, not even back before Obama was even in office?
Sources:
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/patriotact20012006senatevote.shtml
http://politics.nytimes.com/congress/votes/112/senate/1/84
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2011/roll036.xml
Never heard of autocomplete?
I call BS on that. Give us some examples of dozens of laws that a normal person might break every day.
Some obvious ones are:
1. Exceeding the speed limit, even by a small amount, even only for a second
2. Turning without using signals
3. Not stopping before the limit line painted on intersections
4. Jaywalking between intersections or stepping into an intersection before the walk signal is on, or after "don't walk" has started flashing even if you know you'll clear the intersection before the don't walk signal is on
5. Connecting to an open Wifi network without permission of the owner
6. Playing music loudly enough for others to hear (that's a public performance and needs to be licensed)
7. Signing on a website with a fake identity and/or various TOS violations
8. Private gambling (office football pools, betting a friend that you can run down the block faster than him, etc)
9. Riding transit with a "wide" marker (sometimes only if you're underage)
10. Possessing "child erotica" - scantily clothed children (i.e. a Sears catalog showing children in bathing suits)
11. Letting oil from your car drip on your driveway and wash into the storm drains
12. letting trash accidentally blow from your car (or fall from your pocket), even pocket lint or an apple seed
13. Eating or drinking while driving or other distracting activity
14. Taking a pen or paperclip from the office for use at home
15. Finding a penny on the ground and keeping it instead of turning it in
16. Drinking alcohol outside of your home in some jurisdictions
17. Moving prescription medications from the prescription bottle to another bottle or container
And those are only the ones I can think of off the top of my head.
There are somewhere between 10,000 and 300,000 federal regulations that you can violate, no one can possibly know them all.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304319804576389601079728920.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
"There is no one in the United States over the age of 18 who cannot be indicted for some federal crime," said John Baker, a retired Louisiana State University law professor who has also tried counting the number of new federal crimes created in recent years. "That is not an exaggeration."
to CONVENIENTLY send and receive pgp-encrypted gmail that prevents plaintext from ever reaching Google's servers.
I thought Gmail was free because Google's robots scanned the contents of your emails to determine what advertisements to display next to your inbox. If Google can't read your email, they could only show users random advertisements, or maybe ask them to complete some questionnaire to tick off their interests.
Either way, I think Google makes less money if they can't read people's Gmail messages, so I doubt we'll see it.
Google uses opportunistic TLS encryption of SMTP.
Received: from mail-ie0-f177.google.com (mail-ie0-f177.google.com [209.85.223.177])
by mind.your.own.business (8.14.5/8.14.5) with ESMTP id XXXXXXXXX
(version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=RC4-SHA bits=128 verify=FAIL)
for ; Wed, 5 Jun 2013 17:39:11 -0700 (PDT)
You'll notice that verification failed, and that's because you don't need to purchase a TLS certificate for SMTP. Most mail exchangers, including Google's, don't require verification.
Of course, if you're using GMail then you really have no right to be outraged, _especially_ if you're a geek. Google tells you up front that they read your e-mail, so why wouldn't you expect that they also hand over stuff to NSA?
I've been running my own mail, web, and Jabber servers for over a decade. Yes, it takes time and money. But my freedom is worth the price.
Once the prices come down on those "microcloud" ARM servers, I'd like to purchase a bunch of those and lease them out on-the-cheap as a side business. And I'd point a 24/7 camera at those bad boys. That way people can lease real hardware, so that if the government wants to spy on you, they actually have to serve a warrant. If the camera ever goes out, you know something happened. Sort of like some other ISP once did by regularly posting a "no warrant" notice; if a posting was missed then you no a warrant was issued.