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Inside PRISM: Why the Government Hates Encryption
Lauren Weinstein writes "Now, what's really going on with PRISM? The government admits that the program exists, but says it is being 'mischaracterized' in significant ways (always a risk with secret projects sucking up information about your citizens' personal lives). The Internet firms named in the leaked documents are denying that they have provided 'back doors' to the government for data access. Who is telling the truth? Likely both. Based on previous information and the new leaks, we can make some pretty logical guesses about the actual shape of all this. Here's my take."
I work for the government, and we use commercial products to encrypt most everything.
Utter BS, trust no-one, including you.
The government admits that the program exists, but says it is being 'mischaracterized' in significant ways ... The Internet firms named in the leaked documents are denying that they have provided 'back doors' to the government for data access. Who is telling the truth? Likely both.
Considering that the government is not saying anything in particular, it is easy to tell the truth here. When they defend the program as a "crucial tool in war on terrorism", that's quite possibly the honest truth since neither that "war" nor "terrorism" has been defined to any degree. Thus anything could be a crucial tool.
that if our government really has all of this data then China has it too
What about the front door? Did anyone denied access to the front door? What about any door? What about the room? Did anyone, explicitly denied any kind of access?
There's always the chance that NSA has Google employees on its payroll that are tasked with secretly handing off data. They could even be there under a verbal handshake agreement with Google management, giving Google plausible deniability in case they are ever discovered: "I'm shocked, shocked to find that data gathering is going on in here!"
Then everyone is happy - the NSA gets their data, and Google can legitimately say that "they" are not handing over data to the NSA.
And since secret FISA orders can apparently compel anyone to do just about anything and keep it a secret, there's nothing illegal about it.
It's likely to be dpi - and the NSA has spent time brute forcing the ssl - or obtained it as a "business record"
zuckerburg said he doesnt give the government "direct access" to its servers, that doesnt mean that it doesnt give them access. I am sure there will be more "legal speak" in the days to come
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Unless you're one of the 1.5% of the people didn't vote for a republican/democrat, STFU! You voted for this at least six times since it was officially made legal. And no doubt you will approve again in the next election.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The article makes a big deal about ubiquitous encryption eventually weakening these types of surveillance tools, but if the government has the ability to do deep packet inspection at the ISP or backbone level couldn't they see the negotiation of encryption keys between client and server and decrypt the data?
The companies denied knowing a code name (PRISM) and using a specific method for giving data to the gov't (backdoors). They didn't deny participating in a program to give data to the government. ABC News has a good analysis of their statements:
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/nsa-prism-dissecting-technology-companies-adamant-denial-involvement/story?id=19350095
The current US government has a complete disregard for the rights of its citizenry. Name a single Bill of Rights amendment that remains in full efffect. Go on... Name just one. Secret courts? DNA collection? "Free speech zones"? Compulsory self-incrimination? State imposed limitations to the 2nd amendment (which in effect guts the 10th, commerce clause aside)?
In this case - Just straight up fuck the government. No sane reading of the rights guaranteed us by the constitution allows for such a tortured interpretation. And I don't care how you use it Barry O - I care that you collect it in the first place. The constitution doesn't say "we can stop by and take a look around your place as long as we don't press charges", it says "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". Doesn't take a legal scholar to parse that, you worthless floaters atop the DC sewers!
/ For those who would inevitably bring up the 3rd amendment - We lost that one over a century ago - Thanks, Mr. Lincoln! They just haven't had a reason to casually disregard it in the past century, but make no mistake, they would (again) in a heartbeat.
FTA:
If we continue to permit this, the ultimate fault and blame will not be with our government or our leaders, but rather with ourselves.
However, it's not a future problem anymore. We already are to blame.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
A front door is not, after all, a back door.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
So...what you're saying, is that this government is effectively an anti-US government?
I am John Hurt.
Come on, get everyone to pay their "fair share".
Trust me - that money will be used only for GOOD purposes!
Sarcasm aside, maybe mauve is named that way because with all the data they collect they can break the populace down to its constituent colors.
Silence is a state of mime.
Uv gurer AFN naq Hapyr Fnz! Tb shpx lbhefryirf!
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
I can see this easily with respect to the major vendors ESPECIALLY CISCO and MICROSOFT, building back doors into all of their products.
This in my opinion will be a huge boost for open source software and hardware where you can analyse the entire system from top to bottom and verify its security integrity.
One thing is for sure, history paints a very bleak future if this sort of thing is allowed to continue.
Forget about patent trolls and SCO and everything else that has tried to destroy the only meaningful computer science research in my opinion that has been happening in the last 15 years is all around open source, and specifically LINUX and nothing else.
What happens if they decide only closed proprietary binaries can be used for all communications and open source is illegal?
Sound far fetched?
I don't think so, if the government decides to deploy a small tactical nuke in a city, and then use that crisis to solidify its power claiming to keep you all safe, all open source research can only be done under a license from the government and anyone found with open computing systems we can't directly monitor will go to prison.
This is the norm in China right now, and they didn't even need a crisis. I would like to point out to, that CISCO is the single most culpable company in the world that has created these sorts of police state networks, and they did it for cash. On a daily basis, people are hunted down, murdered, butchered and killed all thanks to CISCO tracking systems built specifically for the Chinese government.
My friends 10 years ago said that would never happen because CISCO was "too nice" and they would never do such a thing.
Likewise, imagine a VERY plausible scenario where a nuke strike orchestrated by a few companies, or government people could do for the IP industry where ONLY CISCO products are licensed by the government and can be used to "KEEP YOU SAFE".
The amount of dollars we are talking about is gigantic and easily worth destroying one or two US cities like New York or Chicago or even both to risk the force required to take ALL of the telecommunications markets.
It only two TWO buildings to take the USA military budget into the mega multiple TRILLIONS with ENDLESS WAR now. What do you think these global elite could get with two nuked America cities?
Think about all of the lawlessness that isn't even being reported on the TV news channels like the Cartoon News Network (CNN...Fox News etc...) you come to realise just how corrupt the government is. IRS actually targeting people for their religious, political views, news reporters who don't tow the line being sent to jail.
It doesn't sound to far fetched to me.
We all know how this will end, and it will end very badly, if anyone is left after the end of this "ENDLESS WAR" the enemy is "EVERYWHERE".
Yeah, well that enemy is YOU my friend.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
That one about quartering troops?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
If they got lucky and catch me, well, they'd just pay me to consult and make them look good.
Morons.
But first, they lock you in a small room with the Tossed Salad Man, just to be sure you cooperate when they make their offer.
Unless you're one of the 1.5% of the people didn't vote for a republican/democrat, STFU! You voted for this at least six times since it was officially made legal. And no doubt you will approve again in the next election.
Guilty.
I voted for Obama in the last election and the Libertarian candidate (whatever his name was) in 2008.
I'm in Georgia - US of A.
Back in 2008, every single Black person who could vote was out to vote for Obama. And he lost Georgia in '08 and in '12. Georgia is Republican State with a Capital 'R'.
I did what _I_ could do. I did what _I_ thought was right.
I was hoping the Black dude to stick it to the Man and he turned out to be the Man.
WTF are we going to do?!
It's great and all - and I'm sure it makes YOU fell good to say shit like "Unless you're one of the 1.5% of the people didn't vote for a republican/democrat, STFU! " - but am _I_ supposed to do?
Fucking tell me! Tellme !
Armed revolt?
So, I'm going to quite my job, fight the Government and in the meantime, the bank will foreclose on my house, put my student loans into collections, freeze my bank accounts, and I'm supposed to fight?
I'm a fucking serf Dude! I DID what I was supposed to do - what corporate America - what the fucking asshole hiring managers -demand I do - I AM powerless to do anything! I have TRIED mother fucker! I AM trying when I can but the thing is, there are too many people who have bought the fucking propaganda! We see it here all the time.
There are a lot more than 1.5% of us who didn't vote for the US government, starting with almost everyone outside the US, who the US Powers That Be don't much seem to care about alienating this week even if we're all "allies". This whole mess is exposing the fundamental problems of international legal frameworks when it comes to commercial and intelligence practice.
For example, it's now going to be very awkward for US businesses that deal with lots of personal information about people from Europe -- where data protection laws are much stronger than in the US -- to explain how they are both complying with those laws and complying with the US government harvesting data. Plenty of people have noticed the paradox in the past and turned a blind eye or left it to the EU bureaucrats to figure out how to deal with it quietly, but somehow I doubt that's going to fly for much longer at this point.
Things are about to get very awkward for any EU companies that send data over to US services covered by the Safe Harbor rules as well, because if it's clear that Safe Harbor doesn't really protect data to European standards because the US government freely admits it can get to it anyway, then almost by definition it's going to become illegal to use all those US-based services from the EU. If that actually became a real thing, the economic consequences would be... unpleasant.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
As opposed to wich US government? The one that selectively denied said citizenry and all but wiped out native populations? Upheld legal slavery past just about everyone else in the western civilization? Put citizens of Japanese decent into concentration camps and consfiscated their property? I think you need a history lesson.
I've always assumed anything I've posted, including E-mail or said is public knowledge.
Way back when... The usenet group knew or took for granted that every message
went through NSA, at the time is was no big deal just be a backbone and filter for words
or phrases. The practice was referred to as the eight words, while I forget them, one or more of the
eight words were sure to get your post sidelined and read.
As for back doors these have been in place for a long time, Microsoft's Firewall will
allow trusted parties to slip right through. There was a time these were talked about
in the open.
ToS and privacy policies tell you what information is being collected and what it's used
for, Angry birds has one line that says any amount of your data will "go overseas".
The game appropriately named "Jewel link!" one of many free games put out by Ezjoy Network
has no ToS or privacy policy and requires every permission Android has. Ezjoy Network can make
a copy of your entire system if they want as they've promised nothing, which you accepted when installed.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ezjoynetwork.jewelslink&feature=search_result
paste m.ezjoygame.com into google and watch what happens. "You get a Google Instant is unavailable. Press Enter to search"
message but you can learn more here: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/186645?form=bb&hl=en
Google isn't all the Innocent, recently Google Play restricted any program that interferes with
the data capture of another program, blocking programs like Adaway, or any number of programs
that blocked sites (a HOSTS file) or change permissions.
Why so surprised?
Guess that's not the goto site anymore.
Seriously this Yankee madness really needs to stop. Guess what? No representation in our government. Again. Are we really going to be scared by more delusions and crippling incompetence? What makes me so radically different from the bureaucrat working for a big company or the US government? How did these groups earn their positions? It's just sad how disconnected and alienated everyone is from each other. The only hope we have in America is that we keep our innovation and technology more advanced than everyone else. If we don't have that, forget it. What's troubling is that instead of adapting to the implications of our new technologies, we create positions and jobs that don't actually help the economy and are entirely selfish. And not selfish in a good way, but selfish in a bad way that means rewards being created from nothing that double dip right back to the beneficiary. Only significant and clear demand of what we actually want will help. Problem is, whenever anyone suggests anything like proportional voting, direct democracy, better safety conditions, teleworking, etc these will invariably be placed in the hands of individuals who have no business or ability doing this. We can talk forever about how this comes about, but a lot of it has to do with monopolies. I'm not just talking about monopolies on a large scale, it's about monopolies on what we do everyday. Many full-time positions really don't need to be full time, but are made full-time to start the silly game. Because everyone's assumption is that x-hour workday is best for productivity! Look at the numbers! If there is anything I've learned, people will do anything in their power to fudge numbers. Eventually, if there are enough full time positions in the company, there are people who are utterly disconnected from each other in what they do. This only breeds unnecessary drama which we are indoctrinated to accept and even appreciate through TV, media, and the whole three-ring circus. This is already too long; the end message is that the jobs that we do today are partly if not completely subjective in their scope and no one is really ready to accept that reality. It's made worse when people feel like they can only "make a difference" when they have this illusory monopoly on something. In this case, Obama is indicating that he can "make a difference" because "look we can have a complete monopoly on the control of this information! Isn't that great!?" No, it's not great, it is in fact worse than what we have now. Same goes for the rest of the political landscape, just a whole hoard of people with these intentions that weaken ourselves and the people we love. If there's one thing I'd want out of the lot is that they write down their intentions and then we get to grade them on it.
Yes, but what conditions have to be true before you'd consider this country to be the "soviet socialist states of america" or whatever? Asking this question allows a sane conversation because it forces both you and the other to fill in your rhetoric with details and a logical argument...and yes, I am sure that those who disagree with him have their own rhetorical salvos.
"In other words, what we're likely talking about with PRISM isn't a "back door" for rummaging around through data in an uncontrolled manner, but rather a technical and legal protocol for the government to quickly gain access to specific data under order when the firm involved agrees that the order is valid and chooses not to challenge it."
Well, we know that at least with Verizon that court order was "give me all your data". I think Weinstein is trying too hard to sound reasonable. Just trawling all text communications would be much easier than building a sophisticated system to hand off, piece-meal, data. And it's more inline with what NSA has always done... massive trawling of data. They're not the FBI. These are the same people who built Echelon, which we _know_ is a system for massive data trawling of satellite and radio communications.
If you define the problem as capturing, byte-for-byte, all e-mail traffic, then, sure it sounds kind hard. But they don't need byte-for-byte accuracy; they don't need to capture every, single message. Again, they're not the FBI, and they're not compiling folders of evidence to deliver up to a court. Their metric of success is capturing exactly as much data as they can. That's it.
What does Weinstein think the NSA does with their data facilites? 65MW in Utah. 60MW in their new Maryland facility. Ft. Meade data center? Greenbelt HQ? Elsewhere? The scale of their operations is of the same order as Google.
"The terrorists are smart and we're dog meat"
Yet more evidence that the terrorists have won. We have here yet another citizen who believes that terrorism is a major problem. Each and every day, more Americans die in automobile accidents, than the terrorists have managed to kill since 9/11/01. Yet, "we're dog meat" because of terrorists.
Far to few Americans have any balls these days. Is it something in the diet? To many drugs? To much brain washing? What is it that causes Americans to whine like whipped dogs? "we're dog meat".
On the day of the Boston Marathon bombings, I saw a lot of people who have a bit of fortitude running TOWARD the explosions, to care for their fellow citizens. People with big brass balls, who understood that something bad had happened, and decided that they should disregard the potential for further explosions. Most of the severely injured have survived because all those people ran toward the disaster, and not away from it. The crowd at the marathon bombing made me proud.
This "we're dog meat" shit is embarrassing as all hell. I can see why he posted as AC.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
If you want to make a persuasive argument, or to seem like an honest broker of the facts, please don't insert idiotic, manipulative, pre-judging rhetoric in your writing. When three words in you have "The Soviet Surveillance States of America", your credibility takes a large hit with those who don't already agree with you (but you end up getting validated by the people who do, rewarding your behavior, and repeating it). Please re-join us in the real world, and make your points here, instead.
Sure, Mr. President. We'll do as you ask.
If this is what the government is doing to protect me, I don't want to be protected anymore. I'll take my own chances.
I would rather be dead to a terrorist bomb than live in 1984.
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
I err on the side of citizen freedom - I don't want the government listening to my phone calls. spying on my internet traffic or decrypting my PC.
However... Fellow citizens who feel this way must understand the price - You have to understand that the 'price of freedom' is that, from time to time, extremely rare events will occur where people will die. Planes and trains will be bombed. Kids will be blown up. One day a dirty or chemical bomb might go off in a big city.
You can't on the one hand say "Don't read my mail!" and then on the other hand complain if the government fails to detect a terror cell operating in Sioux City. If you want to live in a nanny-state bubble well loss of freedom is the price.
We are all political prisoners now, the rest who do not care only think that they are free. Every male should grow a full beard and appropriate head covering and every female should dress modestly. It's like WW2 Denmark stood on its head. Make everyone look like the target to confuse the invaders (our own government). If everyone is regarded a terrorist (no difference between citizen and non-citizen), perhaps everyone should rub in that perception with a pound of salt.
Sorry, I've always thought Lauren Weinstein was an idiot, and now it's been confirmed. Google doesn't have to give the NSA access, the NSA will just take it. You're a moron if you think there's anything other than the constitution stopping the feds from doing whatever the hell they want. They have more money than any other organization on earth by several orders of magnitude. If the government does not respect the constitution in one way, why would they respect it in any other? If they are already packet capturing all of our traffic, is steeling API access to Googles databases any worse? As far as technical ability goes, all they would have had to do is bribe a couple of high level, psychologically profiled DBAs with talk of patriotism or telling their wives about their boyfriends and they're in.
If the federal government thinks it can fire a hellfire missile from a drone and kill a US citizen without evidence, trial or judicial oversight, then reading our email is a joke to them. It's an easy thing to do, they think they are righteous in their attempts and they have endless resources... OF COURSE THEY'RE DOING IT. The idea that Larry Page would have any fucking clue is a joke. "yes, lets makes sure some celebrities know about our evil plan!"
The price of freedom is not that bombings and shootings will happen, that's just life. Safety can happen with freedom and a lack of safety can happen with a lack of freedom. Indeed I'd go as far as to say there's no real correlation between freedom and these happenings, after all, you look at perhaps the least-free places of all: prisons and you still see murder and rape.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The terrorists are NOT especially smart. Sometimes they get lucky. Witness these two bozos in Boston, or the underwear bomber who about set his nads on fire, or the shoe bomber who failed to execute, or the butt bomber in the middle east who (ahem) blew his own ass up. The jerks who tried to bomb a terminal in Glasgow caught themselves on fire, and one of the people who caught them in the act kicked one of them so hard he tore a tendon in his own foot. Several of the otherwise successful bombers (Spain, London) got caught because they screwed up security with cell phones in traceable ways.
I also know a few people who may or may not have at one time worked for the NSA, and they're all smart, and one of them was kinda intense. Don't assume that you're smarter than them; the risks, if you're wrong, are high.
The government probably hired out a lot of this work to contractors who were like, "Yeah, we've got direct feeds from microsoft, google, yahoo... and paypa... umm, pal...talk. That'll be $100M please."
There are 0x40000000 types of people: those who understand 32-bit IEEE 754 floating point, and those who don't.
Do you really think the constitution is limiting these people? The constitution is long gone, demolished by the supreme court and by those who swore to protect it. All the constitution is used for is to give Americans an illusion that we're free, just like the constitution of North Korea claims to give human rights to its citizens.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
"The terrorists are smart and we're dog meat"
Yet more evidence that the terrorists have won. ... This "we're dog meat" shit is embarrassing as all hell.
It helps if you put "dog meat" in its original context.
The FBI, NSA, CIA are just too stupid, moronic, retarded to actually work within the Constitution of the United States of America and therefore have to violate it in order to do - attempt - their job. If they were truly smart, they could work within the confines of the Constitution. But they can't - they are stupid. The terrorists are smart and we're dog meat because our security services are stupid. Security services have to eliminate basic freedoms to achieve their goals; which means they are morons.
In which case it pretty obvious that he's complaining about the laziness and incompetence of our "security" services, not hiding under a table from the terrorists.
I always wanted to live in a society inspired by the book 1984. And to a lesser extent, Fahrenheit 451, Das Kapital, and Animal Farm.
I look forward to knowing that my new X-Box will be spying on me 24/7, that nothing I do is secret, that anything I post on the internet can and will be used against me at any time, that the police can beat me senseless for recording (or attempting to record) them on a camera, that the US Government is insanely corrupt and isn't held accountable by anyone, any entity, or the American people. Am I wearing a tinfoil hat? Maybe...
Am I delusional?
You and the doofuses who modded you up, the AC above was clearly referring to the useless state of our intelligence. Get off your soap box, you come off as a whiney cunt who can't read- something we also have far too much of.
Yeah. Jeff Bauman, who looked at the guy who left the bomb, got his legs blown off, and remembered it all, and described him to the police after regaining consciousness. Or Carlos Arredondo, who held a big artery shut running beside him in the wheelchair (that, or a tourniquet, but it looked like an artery -- it's cropped out of most of the photos you see now). Flawless. All those legs blown off could easily have been deaths, except that people got to them in time and took care of them.
Thank you, Timothy, for bringing us the Lauren Weinstein hour, sponsored by... Lauren Weinstein.
More Americans die in a year in automobiles than killed by terrorists since the beginning of time (for most definitions of terrorist - excluding wars, even if we considered the rebels or VC "terrorists").
Learn to love Alaska
In context, or out, AC has complained about the situation surrounding terrorism, characterized our own people as incompetent, and characterized the terrorists as "smart". He has concluded that "we are dog meat".
I insist that the terrorists aren't all that smart, and that despite our incompetent leaders, we, individual Americans, can make all the difference in the world.
Further, I propose that the FBI, NSA, etc aren't trying to get around the Constitution because they are stupid. In reality, they are typical organizations, which seek to expand their authority, their budgets, their manpower and their influence. Some pretty smart people in each of these organizations spend a lot of time figuring out ways to accomplish these goals. Is it stupid to try to acquire more power? I would say, "No, it is not."
It's dishonest, it's overbearing, it's dirty - but it's not stupid.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
The terrorists are smart and we're dog meat because our security services are stupid.
Which terrorists are smart? The one who caught is underpants on fire? Or maybe the one who's car turned into essentially a smoke bomb in Times Square?
The reality is, most terrorists aren't very smart. Thankfully.
Obama's comments in a 'open debate' session today constitute Perjury.
Not stupid?
Ultimately, the backlash isn't going to be pretty. These are people sworn to uphold the US Constitution, but FISA has given them their grip, and the opaque nature of FISA courts means that they're the black hand of government.
The fear-based culture after 9/11 gave rise to lots of brutish and boorish legislation. Freedom Fries. We were fighting a small, even handful of disorganized terrorists. Now, the backlash has caused armies of dedicated fighters, not they're that smart.
So what happens? You dragnet most of the communications infrastructure of the USA, and call that a win. A win? It's enormously costly both in terms of money spent, but also the feeling that we don't trust our own government, and we've reduced the currency of fighting for ideals, rather than for oil, the crooks on K Street.
Stupid? Yes. It's debased the level of trust, and created ostensible enemies of all us, watching all of us. Where is there an ounce of warmth, trust, and liberty in sifting through 10^7 conversations, just to find a nugget or two?
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Spying on Americans
But that's not true, IF you can analyze or capture that amount of data making analysis trivial - catch everything, sift it all.
That's my take.
From the FISA warrant, we can see that ALL data on EVERYONE is funnelled into a big NSA database, using the FBI as a conduit.
Once the data is in there, there is no search warrant, anyone of them can run a query on that data, its the data seized in a crime (suspected terrorism). THERE IS NO DOOR!
Even the Prism system, its a web interface, the agent (we learned this from Petraeous incident) clicks 'Yes' to does he have a warrant and promises to only stick to the limits of the warrant. He then goes searching, in this case it went into the private emails of various Generals based on Google login data.
So the door is open, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Facebook etc. all get immunity, they don't care if what was done was legal, its COMPLETELY UNIMPORTANT, post 2007 immunity law.
But you miss the bigger picture here, FBI is the conduit, FISA never turns down requests. It grants access to PRISM, all you private emails, pictures, links, files, calenders, spreadsheets, all get funnelled down to the NSA, where they're available for warrantless search at the whim of anyone in government.
NO DOOR, NOT ONE
You are wrong. The U.S. was the terrorist in vietnam , and they killed more than a million
"In reality, they are typical organizations, which seek to expand their authority, their budgets, their manpower and their influence"
That's stupid.
"The crowd at the marathon bombing made me proud." - yeah, but the sheeple that let the gendarme kick in their doors were a disgrace! the authorities had no right to do that, and the sheeple should have ignored the orders. btw: it's "too"
Yet more evidence that the terrorists have won.
I'm tired of hearing people say, "the terrorists have won" when the government infringes on our freedom, because it's wildly inaccurate. Terrorists win when their tactics cause outcomes that meet their objectives. Terrorists literally could not care less whether Americans are oppressed by their own government. Their objectives are things like, getting the USA out of the middle east, destroying Israel, etc. What we do in our own country really isn't on their radar, except for American terrorists, who are very few and very low profile and really nobody is worried about them much.
In WWII the US quartered in the aleutian islands without permission, removing the occupants by force.
But they weren't dead Americans.
Learn to love Alaska
Stupid in so far as it is short-sighted: these people limiting people's freedom are ultimately limiting their own. They are reducing their own choices once they return to civilian life.
Though maybe by the time they retire they'll be in assisted living and won't have any real choices anyway...so maybe just selfish
This looks like as good of place as any to post this link to a really interesting post on Reddit. I normally don't link stuff, this one was kind of bone chilling and relevant.
For your reading pleasure: http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1fv4r6/i_believe_the_government_should_be_allowed_to/caeb3pl?context=3
Things that make me go "Hmmm...."
P.S. it's the highlighted post.
Take the Red Pill.
... from US government intrusive spying. Oh, the irony.
Consider this- The Great Wall of China filters out most of the debris. Most Chinese citizens use local equivalents such as Sina, Weibo, QQ etc which PRISM doesn't touch. The Chinese government has demanded (and received) and vetted source codes of software such as Microsoft's Windows which are used internally. Chinese telecoms are immune to FISA.
Then again, if you go down that route all your data belongs to China.
On a related note, this whole PRISM thingy does give a lot more credence to China's complaints about being victims of US covert intelligence.
It's difficult to compare accidental deaths to deaths with a clear and intentional human cause. The former is understandable if regrettable whereas the latter tends to arouse in people feelings of anger and a desire for revenge. So my own take on the issue is that people are willing to spend much more on vengeance and getting even than they are on preventing accidents or helping their fellow man, but that's just my opinion.
PRISM inside YOU!
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
There are numerous stories where drones have targeted people that went from the hills into a diner in a village. The diner is destroyed, and everyone else inside with all males above the age of 15 labelled "combatants" just like the sole real combatant that went inside.
By your warped sense of logic, it should be fine for the police to blow up a bank killing everyone inside because a robber was inside. Of course those people should have ran out of the building and down the block before the robber walked in the door.
You are a fucking idiot that should consider removing your fingers before posting rubbish like this in the future!
On 2008/10/31:
Speaking tonight at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri, Senator Obama said, near the beginning of his speech: "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America."
He is doing what he said he will do. Excuse me for trying to steer around Godwin here, but a certain other politician, almost a century ago, also told everyone, in writing, what he will do if he is elected - and then he did just that.
Interesting "feel good" argument, but lacking in substance. We have a Government that paid manufacturing companies money to move jobs overseas. We have a Government that created NAFTA without the concern for the very obvious problems this would cause for Americans. We have a current Government trying to expand NAFTA to numerous Pacific countries, again without care for Americans. We have a Government spending hundreds of billions of dollars that we simply do not have buying surveillance, guns, ammunition, and armored vehicles for use within the US Borders (I.E. DHS, FBI, CIA, NSA expansion, not Army/Navy/Marines/Air Force). You have a Government spending millions of dollars advertising, telling people how bad Guns are and trying with all their might to convince people that they don't need to protect themselves.
Quite frankly, if you are not scared at this point you need to wake up.
Notice I didn't even touch on things we know that some may consider "Conspiracy Theory".
The government hates encryption because it despises the idea that it isn't in control of everything. 'Tis the singular life goal of every government -> to expand and destroy all competition, act with all subterfuge until it completely controls everything within its visible domain. Duh.
It's a simple life-form, with a predetermed mindset, that follows a path laid out for it much like every one of its predecessors. It has all the complexity of an amoeba (a single-celled organism), engulfing everything in its path, and so on.
The current set of scandals? Predictable, sadly so. What this government is planning for later? Already written down in some text book somewhere. But no, we're going to continue as we always have, because hubris demands it.
Frankly I tire of this play, but it's the only thing that anyone wants to watch.
I am John Hurt.
We need to talk about solutions, not politics. I want strong encryption of all my data, in the cloud and local, by default. Come on fellow nerds, let's make this happen. Has anyone tried moving their email to an encrypted cloud storage? We need someone to step up and offer encrypted cloud based email. Google clearly has no interest in encryption, as digging through our data is their bread and butter.
This is important.
Microsoft is a huge part of this decepive siphoning of information into governent databanks.
If they work on a case by case basis, fine. But if they take the wholesale corpus of emails written by us and run it through a classifier they could label people as pro and anti government and.
They could automatically penalize the anti- fraction by some form of disenfranchisement. That would bring a climate of fear like the one that existed in East Germany.
And they got more than emails - I am sure they can identify social network accounts on many social networks and aggregate our comments. Sigh...
"The terrorists are smart and we're dog meat"
Yet more evidence that the terrorists have won. We have here yet another citizen who believes that terrorism is a major problem. Each and every day, more Americans die in automobile accidents, than the terrorists have managed to kill since 9/11/01. Yet, "we're dog meat" because of terrorists.
Far to few Americans have any balls these days. Is it something in the diet? To many drugs? To much brain washing? What is it that causes Americans to whine like whipped dogs? "we're dog meat".
On the day of the Boston Marathon bombings, I saw a lot of people who have a bit of fortitude running TOWARD the explosions, to care for their fellow citizens. People with big brass balls, who understood that something bad had happened, and decided that they should disregard the potential for further explosions. Most of the severely injured have survived because all those people ran toward the disaster, and not away from it. The crowd at the marathon bombing made me proud.
This "we're dog meat" shit is embarrassing as all hell. I can see why he posted as AC.
Brave words from someone who goes by the handle Runaway1956!
Your comment takes the point completely out of context. If you have a better chance of dieing from a bee sting than a terrorist (which is factually very accurate) do you need to live in a cell to ensure no bees come in? Do we burn people's property "just in case they have a bee"? Do we shoot missiles into other countries to eradicate their bees? and of course call their bee keepers "bees" to justify taking out a bit more than just a bee?
I doubt many people would choose living in a cell over watching out for bees, and perhaps having a bee keeper they could call if one gets in the house. Most people would want us to worry about our own bees, and stop bothering other people and their bees.
We are told we need to fear the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, and need to go overseas to kill them. I guess their Navy is so powerful they could rush to US soil and drop off a bunch of suicide bombers? We are told we need to fear Iran and Syria. Funny how they have been off-again on-again allies for like.. a long time and never once tried to invade US Soil. We were also told that we had to fear Iraq and their massive amount of no WMDs. We confirmed through falsified documents that they had some, and more falsified documents that they were trying to buy yellow cake.
Two quotes come quickly to mind reading your comments. "Those that are willing to give up privacy to ensure security deserve neither." followed by "Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it.".
Yes. A rogue state, if you will
This is important.
To 14-year-olds everywhere!
despair.com be ->-> thataway
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
You've little experience with organisations, then.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I'm tired of hearing people say, "the terrorists have won" when the government infringes on our freedom, because it's wildly inaccurate. Terrorists win when their tactics cause outcomes that meet their objectives. Terrorists literally could not care less whether Americans are oppressed by their own government.
With these terrorists that may be true, maybe. But, as an example, the RAF in Germany in the 1970s considered the increase in surveilance and oppression that resulted from their actions to be a win. As it revealed to the general public the true nature and wishes of their government (as they believed them to be).
Just as the BBC was created to be the propaganda arm of the UK security services/intelligence agencies (commonly known as MI5/MI6 today), Google is effectively the IT R+D arm of the NSA. Google doesn't 'give' the NSA access, because their is literally no distinction between the NSA and Google as an entity.
Prior to Google, the US government had massive problems with its IT projects. They just didn't work. Corruption would set in, the projects had to be spread across multiple key states, budgets and time-frames would explode, and the end result was always barely functioning junk. Sure, the US intelligence agencies built multi-billion dollar computing facilities in the 60s, 70s and 80s, but they were mostly dumping grounds for masses of hyper-expensive proprietary hardware with lousy near-useless software systems. They lacked all concepts of scalability.
The Google project turned data centre design on its head, using commodity computer components in simple sane configurations. Google designed scalable data storage facilities and mining software to exploit the data stored on all those hard-drives. What you see on the 'civilian' side with Google search and Google 'adsense' etc powers the shadow-Google installations used by security services across the Western world. Of course, the security services also have full access to the data gathered by the official, publicly visible Google as well.
The NSA reads ALL electronic data in the USA (and as much of the rest of the world as possible). The data is NOT used to search for fictional 'terrorists' like you very very dumb Yanks are told. 99.99% of so-called terrorism is actually direct covert action by governments, or the limited response to such covert activity. The NSA hardly needs to search for the very acts its own people are mostly responsible for.
No, the NSA is mostly interested in YOU, the sheeple, because it is you, the sheeple, that empower the monsters that rule over you. Powerful people fear the will of the 'mob' (masses, great unwashed, whatever) more than anything else. While sheeple are trained to think they are NOT responsible for the actions of their masters, only the passive support of the sheeple gives any set of rulers their ability to rule.
Your thoughts matter. Your opinions matter. Your desires matter. Not as individuals, of course- as individuals you are completely expendable. But as a dumb beast composed of tens of millions of minds, you must be controlled be being pre-empted.
The Internet increasing gets the control messages to the sheeple, and Google gets to monitor the effectiveness of this propaganda in real-time, so that such feedback can be used to refine the control messages issued next. This power is why your masters don't even have to attempt to offer you the illusion of choice when you vote. Republican or Democrat, you sheeple now expect to get the exact same actions and policies from your 'leaders'. It is the same in the UK where the Conservatives and Liberals are delivering Tony Blair's stated goals from when he was seen (by the sheeple) to run the nation on behalf of Labour.
In Britain, this phenomenon is actually given a name and an organisation behind it- COMMON PURPOSE. The goal of Common Purpose is to ensure ALL politicians and other leaders in the UK follow the same goals, regardless of their apparent political allegiances.
Google and the NSA also look for dangerous arising grass-roots movements, so they can be targeted and extinguished before they have a chance to grow and threaten the agenda of the elites. Fake grass roots movements are created and promoted in their stead, so the sheeple don't notice the change. TV depravities like Bill Maher- especially popular with beta sheeple- are positioned to reassure the sheeple, and cheer things like NSA spying, US terrorism in Syria, disarming American citizens, and providing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons to Israel.
Evil is a thing, just like pain and suffering are things. Mankind is either working to reduce such problems, or it
There is a sense that the "islamists" view the open, and to them, too liberal, society and economy of the US as the devil's spoor. Whether they cause it to fall apart by their own direct actions, or as the consequence of other actions, is a "win" for them, and justifies their quest for power and dominion over the rest of the world. In that sense, they're no different than the "marxists", the American revolutionaries/terrorists (who inadvertently helped start the crumbling down of the British Empire), etc. Yes, what the US does on an identifiable "micro" scale is meaningless to them.
But if the American "culture", for lack of a better word, can be made to flail itself apart, then it's all good. Better if they're throwing the sugar into the gas tank, but if other things are doing it, then so be it... But having the liberal American society eating its own tail in the name of "security", especially by its own processes, has got to provide some schadenfreude satisfaction for them as well. And that's because they're coming from some pretty oppressive societies, and "freedom" to them means they're the ones empowered to provide the oppression in their mind's eye, because it's only a slightly less evil or more "right" than the suppression they've overthrown and replaced with their own. Just a different batch of inmates wanting to run the asylum, really, driven by their own dogma.
here's my religion corollary to the XML/violence "law", and seems applicable to most if not all zealots:
"Faith (Religion) is like XML. If you're not getting the results you want, you just need to apply a little bit more..."
apply to "islamists", left-wing, right-wing, tea party, eco-terrorists, gun nuts, MADD, PETA, etc...
I am afraid that no backdoors were provided, only highly monitored front doors to the account information ;)
That's one example, and did not run through to the end. Yes, it was at least close, but after contact cut off, it could have deviated quite a distance to either side or even fallen short.
With the US forces it was the same video shown over and over and over. The one down the elevator shaft. If it had happened more than once then we would have seen a more representative sample. One lucky shot was caught on film, that's all.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Brave words from someone whose handle is about 1.5 decades behind Clever on the Hip-o-meter.
But since you've brought up the subject, my nick is a koan. When you understand it, you'll have achieved Illumination.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
This is important.
To 14-year-olds everywhere!
Very true. I think it should be important to anyone who's concerned about the future of computing and the future generally, but a 14 year old is just starting their life. They'll have a lot longer to look forward to than the old, jaded people who're running Microsoft and Prism.
If I was 14 again, I'd sure as hell be hunting around frantically looking for a way out of this cage. And I'd sure as hell not be using any Microsoft products.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
So...what you're saying, is that this government is effectively an anti-US government?
I will put it as "A regime which is anti-The Constitution of the United States"
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I'm SO FUCKING ANNOYED by clueless americans whining above this post. Do you think the world CARES about your whining?
Get a grip on reality, ffs.
there's a funny episode of doomsday preppers.
in it a guy is prepping because he fears an invasion.. invasion of "terrorists". no, really, the way he believes it might happen is that the (impliedly foreign)"terrorists" blow up major pieces of infrastructure and _take over_ administration and start taxing people and so forth - like a real invasion. and his plan included acts of terror on the "terrorist" invaders as a "resistance fighter!" (why he told this on tv if it really was his plan I have no idea, either he is very stupid or the whole program is a setup or both - It's probably both)
as if "terrorism" was some great big country with a great big army. bonkers as fuck but can you blame him if you've been in "war with terrorism" for a decade.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
So far Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, FB et al had been identified by the Prism disclosure
They are indentified because they are in the big data business
However, I'll bet that there's yet another US company which may be deeply involved - CISCO
I get this thought only on hindsight - the way the US government reacted so negatively on Huawei gears really makes me wonder if there's another hidden story somewhere
Maybe, and I stress, just _maybe_ Huawei's hardware does not come with the backdoor which NSA/FBI (or any other alphabetic agency) can tap on to spy on us, and that fact alone infuriate them so much
Or ... to put it another way ... the so-called "safe hardware", the ones made by CISCO, may come with backdoors which NSA can drive a semi through
The more I think of this scenario, the more it makes sense --- Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, FB can deny their participation on the Prism scheme because, technically, they are *NOT*
It's the CISCO gears that they use in the datacenter which accomplish the task
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
All that remains is the right to bear arms. Christ I'm glad I'm not American.
What we do in our own country really isn't on their radar
You couldn't be more wrong. The terrorists know they don't have a chance of winning militarily. The aim to make the system implode economically or otherwise. Bush sold out America's ideals pretty damned quickly. Obama isn't doing so well getting them back.
I found this quote from a Forbes article:
In 2004, Bin Laden released a tape to Al-Jazeera where the former head of Al Qaeda laid out the purpose of the 9/11 attacks, and the organization’s goals. “We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah,” Bin Laden said.
Honecker called. He wants his republic back.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
It also appears that they are willing to spend more on preventing willful deaths than on preventing accidental deaths. Which to me makes no sense, but oh well.
Each month dies more people in automobile accidents that terrorists killed after 9/11.
Maybe, and I stress, just _maybe_ Huawei's hardware does come with a backdoor which Chinese intelligence services can tap on to spy on us?
Now in my private life, a backdoor for Chinese intelligence services might bother me less than a backdoor for the NSA. Because if I happen to do something that my (German) government does not like, there is the risk that the NSA shares data with them. But I don't think that the Chinese and German government are that good buddies ;-)
For a company that has valuable corporate data, industry espionage is a risk either way, but probably worse with a Chinese backdoor.
C - the footgun of programming languages
The National Security Agency is spying on the nation? Where is Ric Romero when you need him?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
In the world of black and white, if you lose, the other side wins. And Americans have lost.
> If I was 14 again, I'd sure as hell be hunting around frantically looking for a way out of this cage. And I'd sure as hell not be using any Microsoft products.
:-S
Hear! Hear! You are absolutely right! BUT...
If you were born today there is a good chance that your lovely mom put pictures of you on FB the very moment they cut the umbilical cord. And there you go, the game is on and in the very first moment FB scores 1, you... 0
As I am writing this I realised I sound a bit like an old preacher droning on about original sin
rm -rf --no-preserve-root /
Safety is a lie but sells well to those without common sense. The power monger has but one guiding principle: Induce fear, exploit, repeat.
That was an excellent post. For anyone who can't or doesn't want to visit Reddit, I am reproducing 161719's post dated 2013-06-07 below:
I live in a country generally assumed to be a dictatorship. One of the Arab spring countries. I have lived through curfews and have seen the outcomes of the sort of surveillance now being revealed in the US. People here talking about curfews aren't realizing what that actually FEELS like. It isn't about having to go inside, and the practicality of that. It's about creating the feeling that everyone, everything is watching. A few points:
1) the purpose of this surveillance from the governments point of view is to control enemies of the state. Not terrorists. People who are coalescing around ideas that would destabilize the status quo. These could be religious ideas. These could be groups like anon who are too good with tech for the governments liking. It makes it very easy to know who these people are. It also makes it very simple to control these people.
Lets say you are a college student and you get in with some people who want to stop farming practices that hurt animals. So you make a plan and go to protest these practices. You get there, and wow, the protest is huge. You never expected this, you were just goofing off. Well now everyone who was there is suspect. Even though you technically had the right to protest, you're now considered a dangerous person.
With this tech in place, the government doesn't have to put you in jail. They can do something more sinister. They can just email you a sexy picture you took with a girlfriend. Or they can email you a note saying that they can prove your dad is cheating on his taxes. Or they can threaten to get your dad fired. All you have to do, the email says, is help them catch your friends in the group. You have to report back every week, or you dad might lose his job. So you do. You turn in your friends and even though they try to keep meetings off grid, you're reporting on them to protect your dad.
2) Let's say number one goes on. The country is a weird place now. Really weird. Pretty soon, a movement springs up like occupy, except its bigger this time. People are really serious, and they are saying they want a government without this power. I guess people are realizing that it is a serious deal. You see on the news that tear gas was fired. Your friend calls you, frantic. They're shooting people. Oh my god. you never signed up for this. You say, fuck it. My dad might lose his job but I won't be responsible for anyone dying. That's going too far. You refuse to report anymore. You just stop going to meetings. You stay at home, and try not to watch the news. Three days later, police come to your door and arrest you. They confiscate your computer and phones, and they beat you up a bit. No one can help you so they all just sit quietly. They know if they say anything they're next. This happened in the country I live in. It is not a joke.
3) Its hard to say how long you were in there. What you saw was horrible. Most of the time, you only heard screams. People begging to be killed. Noises you've never heard before. You, you were lucky. You got kicked every day when they threw your moldy food at you, but no one shocked you. No one used sexual violence on you, at least that you remember. There were some times they gave you pills, and you can't say for sure what happened then. To be honest, sometimes the pills were the best part of your day, because at least then you didn't feel anything. You have scars on you from the way you were treated. You learn in prison that torture is now common. But everyone who uploads videos or pictures of this torture is labeled a leaker. Its considered a threat to national security. Pretty soon, a cut you got on your leg is looking really bad. You think it's infected. There were no doctors in prison, and it was so overcrowded, who knows what got in the cut. You go to the doctor, but he refuses to see you. He knows if he does the government can see the record
This hysterical muppet is saying stuff like the "Soviet States of America", which does a LOT for his credibility.
I have family who lived in REAL police states, and suffered at the hands of the Soviets. Libertarian hysteria about so-called "totalitarianism" insult the memory of people who really suffered tyranny, torture and death.
If I ever meet this cunt, I'll punch him.
You live in fear. You think you need this for your survival. You build these straw men arguments, and then let them enthrall you. Maybe someone else told you these, late night in a bar some place.
They're half-truths that are used to conflate fear-based arguments. Takes courage to see past the fact that government is for sale. NAFTA is a red herring. Unions screwed themselves. Great idea, horrible execution. Costs went thru the roof, and competitiveness did not. Labor was exported for the same reason that water seeks the lowest exit.
You can live a long happy life without guns. Guns are not the problem. Pulling the trigger out of fear is the problem.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
On the day of the Boston Marathon bombings, I saw a lot of people who have a bit of fortitude running TOWARD the explosions, to care for their fellow citizens
Actually, it is very unlikely for another explosion to take place exactly at the epicenter of the first one. The first explosion is likely to set off all materials in its vicinity so it MAY BE SAFER to run towards the explosion epicenter.
Because you STUPID libertarian cunts hate Obama and the US Government so badly, you are blind to the truth that is staring you in the face.
This sensitive PRISM presentation was leaked by "Anonymous" (either Chinese intelligence, or people working inadvertantly for Chinese intelligence), to discredit Obama during the Sunnylands Conference.
Obama WAS going to raise the sensitive subject of Chinese criminal hacking of American business and theft of trade secrets and IP. The Chinese don't want to lose face.
NOW that you stupid cunts are ignorantly bleating about how evil, cruel and tyrannical the US Government is, you have COMPLETELY missed the point of what has happened here. The Chinese government (who DO murder and disappear their people and spy on them extensively) have gotten off scot free.
Give me American "tyranny" over the Chinese any day. You are all idiots.
You are all cunts, and you are ALL retards, who have so little perspective, you can't see the obvious truth staring you in the face.
As I am writing this I realised I sound a bit like an old preacher droning on about original sin :-S
Just wait till you're my age.
;-)
I'll let you into a secret: Sin wasn't very original even when I was a boy.
Spin for a chance to get a$1,000 gift card
You are wrong. The U.S. was the terrorist in vietnam , and they killed more than a million
Exactly. Something you won't usually read in American books is that the Vietnamese call that conflict the "American War'.
Brave words from someone who goes by the handle Runaway1956!
Only because "Sir Robin" was already taken...
I'm tired of hearing people say, "the terrorists have won" when the government infringes on our freedom, because it's wildly inaccurate. Terrorists win when their tactics cause outcomes that meet their objectives. Terrorists literally could not care less whether Americans are oppressed by their own government.
You are mistaken. The goal of terrorism (at least in the 20th century, as asserted in their own doctrine) is to highlight the alienation of the people from their government, by creating a situation where the government "clamps down" on civil liberties and privileges in response to the actions of the terrorists and the people respond by being less loyal to the government that is now obviously oppressing them, and thus more open to the ideas of revolutionary change.
The government of the United States was especially idiotic, doing exactly the thing the terrorists/revolutionaries claim idiotic governments will do. The correct response to the 2001 attacks should have been counter-revolutionary expansion of freedom. When that didn't happen, the terrorists really did win.
Your statement that the terrorists "literally could not care less whether Americans are oppressed by their government" is horribly wrong. That is not a side effect of terrorism; it is the actual short-term objective.
Far to few Americans have any balls these days. Is it something in the diet? To many drugs? To much brain washing? What is it that causes Americans to whine like whipped dogs?
at least you accidentally got it right once.
They don't need Prism, they have Google data mining all your emails and VoIP.
Its quite possible the terrorists objectives are to cause the govt to so oppress the people that the people revolt with the assumption that the govt would have to withdraw forces from the areas the terrorists do care about to fight its own people. Also see "Soviet Union, The". As in make an anti-terror / terror "arms race" and hope your enemy is forced to fold due to running out of chips rather than outright winning.
40 years ago, I had run away from home multiple times. I earned the name. "Runaway" is not synonymous with "coward". Don't like my nick? That's fine. Don't like my opinion? That's fine too. But, you don't have to show your ignorance to disagree with me.
I've also ridden a runaway truck down a mountainside - twice. And, maintained enough control that I'm here to post on Slashdot.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
You are correct - but few people are going to actually think of that when the shit hits the fan. Certainly not people who aren't trained to think that way. ;^)
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
the opaque nature of FISA courts means that they're the black hand of government.
The FISA court members have lifetime appointments, and cannot be touched by the executive branch, or congress. They are effectively a law unto themselves, since their dirty laundry never gets aired by the supreme court. Oh course they're going to take the conservative approach and allow wide-spread surveillance. They can't get in trouble for doing so, but if they don't, then maybe something bad really will happen.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
The U.S. was the terrorist in vietnam , and they killed more than a million
I'm not going to defend the US involvement in Vietnam; however, I do know the situation is far more complex than you suggest. I knew boat people growing up, there are a lot of them in Australia -- people who fled South Vietnam because they had a deep distaste for the North Vietnamese regime. The two "countries" were pawns in the cold war, with china and USSR on one side (before China back-stabbed both of them for nationalist reasons), and Load, Khmer, Thailand, USA, Australia, New Zealand on the other side. Back then, the Chinese/Soviets believed in a world-wide communist revolution. It was a different world. Speak to some boat people about their perception of the Vietnam war.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Are companies such as Google, AT&T, Microsoft, Facebook etc allowed to tell the public they are monitoring? Or can they be held responsible for leaking information that could 'jepordize national security'? If my memory is correct I read an article a couple of years ago which talked about this, I believe it was your patriot act that restricted what subjected organizations could tell about this.
People feel this way because of the way our brains have evolved and how that interacts with mass media. We evolved in small tribal/family groups. "News" or gossip or whatever you would call that in the stone age was something that happened to your family/tribal group and likely had significance to you right now.
Unfortunately, our brains process stories that we watch on TV the same way. We process the story that 6 people are killed in a shooting in the greater LA metro area, and process it like it happened down the street. Most humans living in LA have a hard time grasping the fact that LA metro is home to 13 million people, and we kill 6 or more people in car accidents most weekends.
Your odds of getting killed in a terrorist attack, school shooting, nuclear plant meltdown etc. are insignificant, but people just can't grasp the numbers and react irrationally.
The error is in thinking the Terrorists are the ones who bomb buildings and bridges. When people are afraid of their neighbours and their own security services, are encouraged to turn in co-workers and relatives who might act suspicious, fear the police and various forms of government retribution for any kind of dissent ... the ones who cause the terror are in the government. Specifically, the fear-mongers and those who profit from people being afraid. Yes, they're winning more every day.
He addressed that in the post:
/ For those who would inevitably bring up the 3rd amendment - We lost that one over a century ago - Thanks, Mr. Lincoln! They just haven't had a reason to casually disregard it in the past century, but make no mistake, they would (again) in a heartbeat.
Terrorists literally could not care less whether Americans are oppressed by their own government.
The terrorists' primary goal is to render the United States impotent. The terrorists' primary strategy is to destabilize the United States enough so that it is rendered impotent.
The terrorists have discovered that their acts of terrorism cause the US government to act against its citizens in a way that is strongly contrary to the fundamental principles of the country. They see how this causes political tension in the US, and they see this political tension as a useful tool for politically destabilizing the US.
This is the only feasible mechanism available to the terrorists to destabilize the US. They don't have the means to destabilize the US with armed conflict or financial pressure. But they have discovered the US's one grave weakness: its political leaders are unprincipled cowards who respond to acts of terrorism by turning against their own citizens.
The terrorist have found that they can use the US government as their puppet to help politically destabilize the US. The more the terrorist bomb, the more authoritarian and oppressive the US government becomes. This is what people mean when they say that the terrorists have "won" -- they have won puppet control of the US government in this one key aspect.
Your statement is the exact opposite of the truth. The terrorist care deeply about getting the US government to act in ways that lead toward domestic political destabilization. It's true that they haven't made much headway in destabilizing the US and rendering it impotent. But they have made tremendous progress in their strategy of fomenting US authoritarian oppression. This is their principal measurement of progress, and they relish it.
Those weren't terrorists just the FBI and CIA's patsies (the one on the plane the so called underwear bomber had no ticket, no passport, and was escorted past security by someone who filmed him the entire time). Every time one of these events happen the politicians go into over-drive with new legislation to take our rights away, and that's not by coincidence.
> Name a single Bill of Rights amendment that remains in full efffect. Go on... Name just one.
The second amendment is still not only in effect, but it is exaggerated to humongous. Children are still shooting-up schools so that is proof that the second amendment is not only in effect, but it is very effective. Of course the GOP and their kind loves to see dead kids.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/stop-spying-american-citizens-and-abolish-un-american-foreign-intelligence-surveillance-court/6XcPRSCM - At least one petition complaining about this. I havent yet found another.
Sadly for New Zealander's a local company has been supplying the NSA hardware to do the capturing for at least the last ten years. A friend who coded for www.endace.com told me ten years ago that they were supplying the US with gear to capture OC192 at full steam, from memory it was the storage sub-systems that were the issue (i.e. the fibre cards produced a 'lot' of data). The cards could be spliced into a network without modifying timestamps etc hence invisible to either end. A not well known irony of this situation for Kiwi's is that Endace products were born from Waikato University research (Waikato Uni is well known for its socialist/leftist inclinations).
I think he meant it more in the sense of The Onion's Drugs Win Drugs War.... When you go to war against something, you can lose to it even if the thing doesn't care about winning.
In this case, we went to war with "terror" and we have succeeded in terrorizing ourselves, thus it has won.
Cisco id well known for putting in nsa backdoor stuff.... ask any disco certified engineer and che Will tel you about strange things happening... li ke traffic going TO known usa gov sites...
Let's hope the next Hitler is not born in America because if he is then he is gonna have lots of data that he can go through to kill any person based on its religion, political views, race and even favorite music lol. The U.S. blames China for spying on American federal agencies and the pentagon, but the U.S. government does it to its people, its own agencies and obviously to other countries including China, Russia, etc. and won't accept it lol.
People share an MP3 file and that is to violate copyright laws, the government copy or shares your data and that IS JUST COOL AND LEGAL. Encryption is just a stupid illusion to make you feel safe, the NSA has systems that could easily crack any private key or other types of encryption such as AES. That's wjhy they have super computers and huge cluster data centers to do calculations extremely fast on data. We are stupid enough to allow the government tell us how big a SSL certificate can be on the internet, whats the maximum size of a private key can be and the like so that they can easily decrypt your data when it is needed. Encryption only protects people from others that do not have the hardware and other resources to decrypt your data, that's all. Stenography is always better than encryption because you can even make somebody believe you are hiding something, make them spend time looking for it and and the end they find you have nothing to hide :)
Locking down your borders and stopping immigration of Muslims would actually assure there is no more terror. But that would run against the Money God, who you Americans worship. The Money God say that "whoever has money, he has privilege".
You are basically 100% corrupt, your culture is corrupt and you are fucked by your Jew banksters every single day. The Jews of Hollywood will make you even "feel good" about all that. And quite soon, the majority of Americans will either be Muslims or Catholics. So you will descend into either Latin-American shitcrap authoritarianism or Muslim/Arab authoritarianism.
All the joys of movies who have convinced you nice Americans to have no kids and use drugs instead and then fuck your dog and your same-sex friends.
Their objective is to make America as authoritarian as their own culture. So YES, they have achieved some objectives.
You need to wake up from your Jewish dreams of "money can buy US citizenship" and lock down your borders for all the brownies. Have some kids instead of wasting your time with drugs and perverted sex. Lock out some cultures who are not compatible with yours: Muslim, Catholics must be top of the blacklist. And add Jews, they terror-bomb your financial system.
The entire finance world think they are smart. Then they end up in a KZ because they fucked up their own system. How smart is that ???
Further, I propose that the FBI, NSA, etc aren't trying to get around the Constitution because they are stupid. In reality, they are typical organizations, which seek to expand their authority, their budgets, their manpower and their influence. Some pretty smart people in each of these organizations spend a lot of time figuring out ways to accomplish these goals. Is it stupid to try to acquire more power? I would say, "No, it is not."
And isn't is just ironic as hell that the same people who decry evil, greedy corporations -- and declare that the GOVERNMENT is needed to stop them -- fail to realize that the GOVERNMENT is just as evil, and just as greedy?
All large organizations seek to increase in size, increase their power, and control more wealth. Thanks to the activity of a lot of idiots here in the U.S., and a phenomenal marketing campaign on the part of the politicians, we've created a monster federal organization that is now demonstrating how greedy, corrupt, and evil humans in large groups can be. We have exactly what we wished and voted for. Exactly.
Murphy was an optimist
one harmless e-mail arrived at 6:06 p.m. a bit later your e-mail of slashdot arrived with thime-stamp 6:03 - but after 6:06 ??? so checked through first by prism ?!
TFA is pure speculation of author with no facts. I think it is safe to assume that everything that you store in the cloud is shared with US government.
Because it serves to keep all the traffic cloaked from OTHER governments. That is, provided someone in each of these companies might do just one little thing: routinely hand over the private keys used for their public SSL servers for www, pop3, smtp and imap.
Do you think this little thing is so unlikely? Frankly I'm amazed. Over 400 comments on this article and only one Anonymous Coward seems to have even fronted the idea.
Plenty of chatter about brute force attacks, elaborate backdoors. Compulsory XKCD. Methinks more Slashdotters should bone up on the basics of public key SSL.
I am not quite as anonymous and my own rabbit hole on the topic leads here and here.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
"The terrorists are smart and we're dog meat"
Yet more evidence that the terrorists have won. We have here yet another citizen who believes that terrorism is a major problem. Each and every day, more Americans die in automobile accidents, than the terrorists have managed to kill since 9/11/01. Yet, "we're dog meat" because of terrorists.
Far to few Americans have any balls these days. Is it something in the diet? To many drugs? To much brain washing? What is it that causes Americans to whine like whipped dogs? "we're dog meat".
On the day of the Boston Marathon bombings, I saw a lot of people who have a bit of fortitude running TOWARD the explosions, to care for their fellow citizens. People with big brass balls, who understood that something bad had happened, and decided that they should disregard the potential for further explosions. Most of the severely injured have survived because all those people ran toward the disaster, and not away from it. The crowd at the marathon bombing made me proud.
This "we're dog meat" shit is embarrassing as all hell. I can see why he posted as AC.
Most people are selfish. They think of themselves first. And to further add to your ideas why there are no complainers, it is because the average American has become trained to be passive. Give him a Big Mac, Pizza at home, and a 50 inch TV, so he can sit and be entertained and fed, and that is the reason they don't give a care. Its "I don't want to get involved or get up from watching my TV show".
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Hm. It sounds like America is not the people, it is the government. The people are merely an inconvenience.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
I'm tired of hearing people say, "the terrorists have won" when the government infringes on our freedom, because it's wildly inaccurate. Terrorists win when their tactics cause outcomes that meet their objectives. Terrorists literally could not care less whether Americans are oppressed by their own government.
Actually, that is not true. One of Bin Laden's objectives was to turn the government against its own people to make it a "hellish place". Being under constant surveillance *is* hellish.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
I read in many comments that the everybody's thought process is the government might send an order to a company that says we need this information from you. Everybody believes the company could then seek legal council to fight an order if they think it's unjust or not in their best interest. I believe this is an incorrect assumption. I also believe they are sending along a gag order as well. The gag order is, you can not discuss the information we want and the request for information we want with any other party. This gag order language is part of section 215 the patriot act. Those served with Section 215 orders are prohibited from disclosing the fact to anyone else. This was supposedly removed in 2006 with the reauthorization of the patriot act to allow for legal counsel in certain circumstances. (But the government does not have to tell the recipient of the order, they have that right.) This means most companies would not seek out legal counsel, because they believe they would be violating a gag order. But there is another caveat. The court orders are issued by a secret court using secret evidence. Since the court is secret, if the company wants to contest, they cannot because the secrecy of the court could override the rule of law if the secret court deems it so. Nor can you contest any "secret" evidence. The order is unstoppable.