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."

Comments

Definitions.

[Mitreya]

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.

Re:Definitions.

[Jherek Carnelian]

If they are willing to do things like define all military age males as militants to avoid admitting to civilian casualties from drone attacks you know they don't have a problem redefining pretty much any word in order to avoid being held accountable to the people.

Re:Definitions.

[PopeRatzo]

If they are willing to do things like define all military age males as militants

There's a little more to it than that. It actually says they define all military age males in a strike zone as militants, which is a little bit different.

After all, the particular event that inspired this story took place on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. If you were a "military age male" on the Afghani/Pakistan border and were NOT a militant, wouldn't you get the fuck out of there?

It's not like when the US bombed Dresden, or the Germans bombed London during WWII, they went to any great pains to make sure their bombs only hit uniformed members of the military.

Yes, it's very brutal, but I still think it's too early to tell whether the drone strikes are a policy that works. If you make it so nobody wants to be anywhere near the militants unless they are fighting alongside them, then it will be very easy to tell who is a militant and who is not.

Personally, I think the whole thing is barbaric and unnecessary and we shouldn't be doing it. At all. It's immoral. But whether or not it minimizes civilian casualties compared to carpet-bombing followed by an all-out invasion still remains to be determined.

Re:Definitions.

[dgatwood]

After all, the particular event that inspired this story took place on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. If you were a "military age male" on the Afghani/Pakistan border and were NOT a militant, wouldn't you get the fuck out of there?

Let me turn that on your head. If you had been living in your family home for all your life and a bunch of hoodlums came into your neighborhood and started shooting up the place, would you A. leave, or B. stay to spite them? Many people would choose A., but many would choose B.

If you make it so nobody wants to be anywhere near the militants unless they are fighting alongside them, then it will be very easy to tell who is a militant and who is not.

Wrong. You don't make it so nobody wants to be anywhere near the militants. You teach the families of the innocent victims to hate America and Americans for assuming guilt by proximity. There's a difference. It is policies like these that fuel terrorism and anti-American sentiment around the globe.

Re:Definitions.

[girlintraining]

Yes, it's very brutal, but I still think it's too early to tell whether the drone strikes are a policy that works

When we have technology capable of putting a missile through an attic window, or down a ventilation shaft, the government does have an obligation to limit civilian casualties. This isn't like Dresden, or London during WWII, when bombs were more or less flung out the back door and they hit where they hit... sometimes miles off target. Thus the reason for carpet bombing in the first place -- there was no accuracy: It was Angry Birds with kilotons of ordinance.

But ignoring the technological side of things, thousands (yes, thousands) of years of military history has shown that the key to winning any war is not in having superior technology or weapons, but in winning the hearts and minds of the people. Sun Tzu wrote about this back when the state of the art was long spears and loud screams, and not a damn thing has changed. But you know, fuck Tzu, maybe you need something a little more modern: How about the British/American war of independence? The greatest navy on the planet, best trained military at the time, got its ass handed to it by some upstart guy named Washington whose troops crossed the Potamac river on Christmas while starving to the point they had been eating their own boots only a few days prior. How'd that happen? "SOONER", you say? Okay, the Vietnam war. Now we're the greatest military force on the planet. We get our asses handed to us by a bunch of tunnel-dwelling communists who largely rely on traps made out of sharpened bamboo and guns that are 40 years old. SOONER! Okay, the war in Iraq. Which one? All of them.

So please, don't even try taking the position that making our ambassadors to the world a predator drone is going to end anything but very, very badly for us. Sun Tzu, were he alive right now, would be posting Picard facepalm pics as a reaction to just about every strategic initiative our government has undertaken in the past twenty years. To him, we're push-overs. We are not a threat... all the nukes in the world can't change the simple fact that where we go, we're resented. And it'll be the death of us, perhaps quite literally.

The fight for democracy cannot be won by any technology we now possess. Not drones, not nukes, none of it. There is but one weapon to assure us of victory: People.

Re:Definitions.

[cold fjord]

that's quite possibly the honest truth since neither that "war" nor "terrorism" has been defined to any degree.

For it is the doom of men that they forget. -- Merlin, Excalibur

SEC. 2. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.

(a) In General.--That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

By their deeds you shall know them.

1996 Bin Laden's Fatwa - The following text is a fatwa, or declaration of war, by Osama bin Laden first published in Al Quds Al Arabi

1998 Bombing of US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya

2000 Photo: USS Cole - Video: 2000: USS Cole Attack in Yemen

2001 9-11

2002 Bali terror attack

2004 Madrid train attacks

2005 London 7/7 Terrorist Attacks

2009 Now classified as "workplace violence" - Nidal Hasan Admitted Jihadist Motive, Ft. Hood Victims’ Attorneys Say

2013 Boston Marathon Bombing

Note that this is only a snapshot of attacks, and doesn't include the many attacks that occurred in the Middle East (except the Cole). It also doesn't include the many plots disrupted by the security services, or cancelled by the terrorists planning them. It doesn't include the many arrests for terrorism related activity, but snapshot of that over a short period of time is below:

FBI’s Top Ten News Stories for the Week Ending January 27, 2012

Denver: Man Arrested for Providing Material Support to a Designated Foreign Terrorist Organization

Jamshid Muhtorov was arrested by members of the FBI’s Denver and Chicago Joint Terrorism Task Forces on a charge of providing and attempting to provide material support to the Islamic Jihad Union, a Pakistan-based designated foreign terrorist organization.

Baltimore: Man Pleads Guilty to Attempted Use of a Weapon of Mass Destruction in Plot to Attack Armed Forces Recruiting Center

U.S. citizen Antonio Martinez, aka Muhammad Hussain, pled guilty to attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction against federal property in connection with a scheme to attack an armed forces recruiting station in Catonsville, Maryland.

Washington Field: Man Pleads Guilty to Shootings at Pentagon, Other Military Buildings

Yonathan Melaku, of Alexandria, Virginia, pled guilty to damaging property and to firearms violations involving five separate shootings at military installations in northern Virginia betwe

Re:Definitions.

[hackula]

It actually says they define all military age males in a strike zone as militants, which is a little bit different.

This is effectively the same thing. Any military male becomes a military male in a strike zone upon being "struck"

Re:Definitions.

[ebno-10db]

What's your point? For how many of those things were these monitoring programs necessary? They only started in 2007. They weren't able to do this kind of work before that? I find that hard to believe. The FBI could have prevented 9/11 if only headquarters had listened to the field offices, and no widespread monitoring like this would have been necessary. Since 9/11 they're more on the ball. Good. And they were plenty on the ball through 2006, before these programs started. It's called police work, and it was done very successfully for many years without massive surveillance.

Re:Definitions.

[PopeRatzo]

If you had been living in your family home for all your life and a bunch of hoodlums came into your neighborhood and started shooting up the place, would you A. leave, or B. stay to spite them? Many people would choose A., but many would choose B.

And those that stayed to fight could be correctly described as "militants", no?

You teach the families of the innocent victims to hate America

I'm pretty sure they already hate America. Maybe for good reason, but that's a matter of perspective.

Re:Definitions.

[PopeRatzo]

When we have technology capable of putting a missile through an attic window, or down a ventilation shaft

I don't think it's quite as reliably accurate as all that.

I admit, it's sometimes hard to tell the military contractor porn from Mission: Impossible.

Re:Definitions.

[AK Marc]

When your enemy sets up a mortar on the roof of a hospital and launches attacks from there, what do you do?

Re:Definitions.

[Jherek Carnelian]

.And those that stayed to fight could be correctly described as "militants", no?

Wow. So now the people fighting against the people we are ostensibly fighting are also legitimate targets. I thought the administration's redefinition of militant was entirely bogus, but you've taken it a level I never would have even conceived of.

Re:Definitions.

[PopeRatzo]

the key to winning any war is not in having superior technology or weapons, but in winning the hearts and minds of the people.

How does Sun Tzu suggest winning the hearts and minds of people whose devout faith tells them that anyone who doesn't believe the same way should be killed?

I hope DARPA is working on an anti-religious extremism technology. And I hope it gets used domestically too.

Re:Definitions.

[gagol]

You ask yourself what the fuck you are doing in this other country...

Re:Definitions.

[Skreems]

Time and again we've seen that a combination of democracy, increased science and history education, and improved economic circumstances leads to a decrease in fundamentalism. Just saying.

Re:Definitions.

[AK Marc]

Does it matter if I'm in Texas and they are shooting from Mexico?

Re:Definitions.

[elashish14]

How does Sun Tzu suggest winning the hearts and minds of people whose devout faith tells them that anyone who doesn't believe the same way should be killed?

Well, the zealots will always be zealots. It's in the minds of the ordinary people where the wars are fought. It's because the growth of any philosophical view, religious extremism in this case, is the result a network effect. But such an effect relies on fresh nodes to ingest, otherwise it dies. You cut that off, and you win the game.

Make no mistake of course: it's definitely not easy. We have extremists on both sides in this situation, coercing people otherwise uninvolved to support their cause, and often threatening not only them, but their family members as well. And all the ordinary people want to do make their own livings - tending their farms, working their dayjobs, or doing whatever they do to make a living. They couldn't care less whether the ruling party ^Wdominion is the United States, or the Taliban, or the Federation of Ponies and Unicorns. (Of course, there is an issue of principle here - a citizen's foremost duty is to stand up against the government when they know they are doing something wrong, regardless of whether it affects them or not - but 99% of people will still not bother to react.)

But GP is dead on. The United States cannot fight forever in every country that $SUPPOSED_TERRORIST_ORGANIZATION is operating in (well technically they could, but the death toll and financial expense would be enormous, not to mention moral and ethical travesty). The best way to win these idealogical wars is to not give the terrorists ^Wregular people more reasons to hate the others; and maybe if this idea can get off the ground, the world won't need extremists on either side. But would the US (government and people) or its haters ever show a sign of humility and restraint? Of course not.

So in short, here's my thesis: extremists can only exist when there are two sides involved. Hopefully that's not too subtle....

Re:Definitions.

[jpstanle]

Well, you could manuever a sniper into a position to shoot him. Or fastrope some riflemen from a helicopter to shoot and/or beat him senseless.

The problem with solutions like that, though, is they don't do any good helping to justify why you need billion-dollar weapon systems to fight a bunch of dirt farmers with Kalashnikovs and RPGs but no planes, helicopters, armor, or anti-aircraft capability to speak of.

Re:Definitions.

[WaffleMonster]

There's a little more to it than that. It actually says they define all military age males in a strike zone as militants, which is a little bit different.

"little more" no exaggeration.

Yes, it's very brutal, but I still think it's too early to tell whether the drone strikes are a policy that works.

When you say "policy that works" would you mind enumerating what this means?

But whether or not it minimizes civilian casualties compared to carpet-bombing followed by an all-out invasion still remains to be determined

Or glass parking lots even.. Did you know that tanks have more firepower and can kill more people than squirt guns?

Re:Definitions.

[ae1294]

Wrong. You don't make it so nobody wants to be anywhere near the militants. You teach the families of the innocent victims to hate America and Americans for assuming guilt by proximity. There's a difference. It is policies like these that fuel terrorism and anti-American sentiment around the globe.

You know, I'm starting to think that that is the point... I mean it makes sense if you think about it. Those in power need people to hate and attack us endlessly if they are going to get that endless war they have always wanted.

Re:Definitions.

[girlintraining]

How does Sun Tzu suggest winning the hearts and minds of people whose devout faith tells them that anyone who doesn't believe the same way should be killed?

"There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare." -- Sun Tzu

I suppose it applies equally to religions... if you're constantly at war, you weaken yourself to the point you make yourself easy to conquer. And when I say the people, I mean the majority, not the "devout" minority calling the shots. And the majority is going to get tired of being constantly poor, hungry, and underappreciated by the "devout"... war isn't cheap. There is no religion that has lasted long where the majority of its adherents were actively waging war.

And as for DARPA working on "anti-religious extremism technology"... will it also target christian extremists? Will it be able to look past the race and national origin of those it scans? Or will it simply be another technological manifestation of our collective prejudices, which when it's done exterminating the entire human race (fun statistics fact: The number of 'extremists' remains constant no matter how many you kill!), we'll simply throw our arms in the air and say "The computer did it!"... Which is the 21st century equivalent of "It was God's will."

Re:Definitions.

[girlintraining]

I don't think it's quite as reliably accurate as all that.

2006 just called. It says it was reliably accurate then. We've been able to shoot missiles down with other missiles for quite some time now. Do you really think when we can do that at several times the speed of sound we can't reliably do it at less than it?

Re:Definitions.

[jdogalt]

And those that stayed to fight could be correctly described as "militants", no?

Only if your intent was to mislead spectators of this debate. Since clearly these "militants" would actually be fighting _against_ the subset of "militants" that the U.S. forces were fighting against.

So for the purposes of this discussion, *NO*, the people in group B would not be called "militants" because at least superficially, they are specifically the kind of resident native that our government at least claims to be interested in protecting, not executing.

Or perhaps I'm too intoxicated to be trying to parse your sentence. But the general idea is that there are some "militants" in foreign countries whose goal is to slaughter as many civilian US citizens as possible. And there are some "militants" whose goal is stay in their home and raise their families, and wish to harm no US citizen blindly (now, they may have a personal beef with somebody, but they aren't out to kill citizens due to their specific citizenship). And from where I'm standing, it seems like your comment was meant to somehow confuse the two groups. Probably your just a semantic troll. But we are talking about killing people, via remote control, who bore the unfortune of having parents who fucked in a part of the world that decades later happened to become very dangerous for people that stubbornly just want to live in the land they were born in. And the more of those we kill, and literally propogandistically write off as "militants", the more dozens of people will fantasize about suicide missions killing the appeasing populace of the country that accidentally droned their family member to bits, for being the wrong gender, and age, and skin color, in the wrong geographic region that happened to be their homeland, at the wrong time. Or so it seems to me.

Re:Definitions.

[girlintraining]

And those that stayed to fight could be correctly described as "militants", no?

The word militant has traditionally meant that the person is part of an organized resistance, not merely stuck in the combat area when the shit hit the fan. We call those people victims or refugees depending on whether they stay or leave.

I'm pretty sure they already hate America. Maybe for good reason, but that's a matter of perspective.

Most of the world hates America, and they have damn good reasons for doing so that aren't about perspective. America has given up caring about collateral damage. Our international ambassador of peace is the Predator drone. "Bringing democracy" has become synonymous with "They're sending in tanks and missiles and shit again." We've unilaterally withdrawn from several key Geneva conventions, we're engaging in mass acts of torture of areas we occupy...

I don't give a flying fuck through a rolling doughnut what religion you are... if some assholes are rolling tanks down your street, dropping bombs on your neighbors, and shooting friends and family... they are not liberating you, it's not democracy, and you got every reason and right to kick the mother fuckers right in the teeth. And I say that as an American of no particular religion. My home is my castle. The founding fathers started on about that whole business, and I think they might have been onto something there.

We're going about things all wrong. People don't just hate America, America hates itself. It's economically depressed, militarily suicidal... and frankly, if America was my aunt, I'd be asking the state to have them committed post-haste, because they're fucking up every good thing that life ever gave them while screaming "I'm sane! No really! I'm the sanest one here!"

We're going about this whole warfare thing all wrong. Congress, please stop sending us to po-dunk desert countries and pissing off the locals... it's not helping us, and it's not helping them. The only people it's helping are the defense industry, which has massive (and now unlimited!) funds going towards our elected officials, which in turn are inking orders for new tanks That the entire joint chiefs of staff said we don't need, we have no possible need for, in fact, if you give them to us we're just going to park them out in the Nevada desert with the 50,000 other tanks that are sitting out there rusting... that we also don't need, from the last time we said we don't need any more fucking tanks... I mean, guys... when your own military is saying "No thanks, we're full" and we're force feeding them more equipment...

Sit back and take the fucking hint, man. We are seriously messed in the head as a country.

Re:Definitions.

[girlintraining]

Holy wall of text, batman. I feel we should build a Plinth upon which to erect this comment, for never before, and perhaps never again, will a person as completely encompass why the acronym "tl;dr" was invented.

Let's wind back the clock a few months to the 3rd week in February. It's late at night and Jon Stewart pops in; "So 'imminent threat'... in other words, imminent... or not imminent. Broadly speaking, imminent in the geological sense. So, wait, we can kill an American who is in al Qaeda or al Qaeda-adjacent if they post an imminent danger, and by 'imminent,' we mean eventual?â Oh, but it gets better... he went on to point out how the definition of "unlawful combatant" pretty much means "whoever the fuck we say". Go watch the episode -- 3rd week, February.

No, really. Honest truth. I mean, yeah, it's coming from a comedian, but it doesn't mean he's wrong: The original poster is spot on.. by the executive branch of the US government's definition, "imminent" means "whenever", and "terrorist" means, whoever we say. Really really. Oh, and a friendly piece of advice? You need to lighten up, both in terms of your attitude and your, achem, predeliction for beating dead horses with dictionaries.

Re:Definitions.

[Jherek Carnelian]

You have a strange definition of "asses handed to us", in general.

In Vietnam they call it the "American War" and you know what? They are not particularly pissed about it.
You know why? Because they fucking won.

Re:Definitions.

[Xarvh]

None said they stayed to fight.
Maybe they just have families to take responsibilities of.
Maybe not everybody can just snap fingers and move away from their only home and the only place they have known for all their lives.

Or maybe you are just creating militants where there were none.

Re:Definitions.

[nbauman]

How does Sun Tzu suggest winning the hearts and minds of people whose devout faith tells them that anyone who doesn't believe the same way should be killed?

That sounds like the war propaganda handbook list of accusations against the enemy, No. 4. Their devout faith tells them that anyone who doesn't believe the same way should be killed. That's what the Protestants said about the Catholics, the French about the Germans, the Germans about the French, what we said about the Japanese, the Russians, and all our enemies. Now we're up to the Arabs.

And pray tell me how you know that their devout faith tells them that anyone who doesn't believe the same way should be killed? Did you hear that when you visited your local mosque? Did you read it in the Koran? Or did you get it from the propaganda tanks like MEMRI and CAMERA?

Re:Definitions.

[Xarvh]

"Devout faith" my ass. It's just politics and the propaganda you get.
Most of these fanatics drop their cherished faith at the first bribe.

Re:Definitions.

[Kingofearth]

The same way you win anyone else's hearts and minds. These are people you're talking about, not machines programmed to destroy anyone who's different. If we take the high road, and they can see that and they see the benefits of peace and tolerance from our example, a lot of them would change. Probably not all of them, but enough that we wouldn't have to fight huge wars.

Besides, most people in the middle east don't have a "devout faith [that] tells them that anyone who doesn't believe the same way should be killed." any more than Christian Americans have a devout faith that tells them that homosexuals, blasphemers, and adulterers should be killed. Sure there are a lot of islamic fanatics in the middle east, but you're buying way to much into the propaganda if you believe most people over there are like that. And as I argued above, even fanatics have have their minds changed.

When you make it into an "us vs them" fight, of course they're going to be on their own side (against us), you're forcing their hand.

Re:Definitions.

[sociocapitalist]

If you had been living in your family home for all your life and a bunch of hoodlums came into your neighborhood and started shooting up the place, would you A. leave, or B. stay to spite them? Many people would choose A., but many would choose B.

And those that stayed to fight could be correctly described as "militants", no?

Only if you change the definition of the word 'militant'. Just because someone chooses to remain in any given place does not make them militant.

militant
  (ml-tnt)
adj.
1. Fighting or warring.
2. Having a combative character; aggressive, especially in the service of a cause: a militant political activist.
n.
A fighting, warring, or aggressive person or party.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/militant

Re:Definitions.

[cold fjord]

For some people nothing says "appeal to emotion" like FBI arrest reports I guess.

Here are some great resources for anyone confused by information at "911truth.org" and would like more information.

'Debunking 9/11 Myths': Nano-thermite dust found near Ground Zero (Photos)
Debunking 9/11 Myths: conspiracy plots are sheer fantasy

NIST Releases Final WTC 7 Investigation Report
World Trade Center Disaster Study

Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts
Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report
Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report

Resources for debunking 9/11 Conspiracy Theories

Debunking 9/11 Bomb Theories

The Truthers Are Out There

9/11 Conspiracy Theories: The 9/11 Truth Movement in Perspective

Debunking Conspiracy Theories In 'Voodoo Histories'

Re:Definitions.

[sociocapitalist]

When your enemy sets up a mortar on the roof of a hospital and launches attacks from there, what do you do?

There is actually a choice.

a. take the easy way and drop a bomb on the hospital, attacking military and civilians at the same time
b. take the expensive way and use costly (in every way) ground troops or helicopters to take out the mortar team

Re:Definitions.

[Hentes]

If the local population weren't sympathetic towards them, the Al Qaeda would be out of Pakistan in a few months. You can't fight a guerilla war if the people aren't supportive of you. The militants get supplies and shelter from the "civilians", and most importantly never get reported by them.

Re:Definitions.

[cold fjord]

The post I responded to is completely wrong in any meaningful sense and yet it was highly rated when I responded to it. I often see the same thing in your posts. It isn't all that rare for you to make posts that are factually wrong, but they express a popular sentiment or have an agreeable political orientation for many on Slashdot, so you get rated to the roof. Everyone is entitled to their own preferences, but questions of fact are another thing entirely. Some facts can be unpalatable from various political perspectives. When I present those facts that in my experience are less tasty to many on Slashdot I am happy to provide documentation. That allows people to investigate and use their own judgment. I'm happy to post for the people that are interested in becoming better informed instead of "tl;dr". We all have our part to play. (If were getting to the edge of your attention span, I suggest jumping down to read the last paragraph now. Boring but useful and important facts for those that want to be better informed are ahead.)

Now lets take a quick look at a couple of things in your second paragraph. First, "unlawful combatant" actually isn't all that squishy. The context of the term is the Law of War, which is a separate body of law from civil law, criminal law, administrative law, and admiralty law. Unlawful combatants are those who wage war in a manner that violates the law of war. Al Qaida is a good example. It is typical for them to target peaceful civilians for attacks with bombs, mines, and other means. That is a violation of the law of war when done deliberately. They also typically violate numerous other provisions of the Geneva Conventions. Therefore Al Qaida are unlawful combatants. That is pretty straight forward. What many people get excited about is the consequences of being an unlawful combatant. There is also rampant confusion about the Law of War with many people wanting to push all of the legal action against Al Qaida into the realm of criminal law which isn't necessarily well suited to deal with the circumstances of the battlefield as the Law of War is.

As far as killing American citizens that are members of Al Qaida without a trial - completely legitimate. You don't really have any special rights when you are fighting with an enemy engaged in armed conflict against the United States if you are an American citizen, at least until you are captured if that is an option. American citizens fighting with the enemy can be extremely dangerous due to their cultural knowledge, knowledge of potential weakness and vulnerabilities, and experience with the security services and police. That knowledge can be used in training terrorists and in planning operations. There is no requirement for an American to personally engage in attack to be dangerous. That sort of knowledge is so useful that North Korea kidnapped a number of Japanese citizens to force them to train North Korean spies in Japanese customs so that they would be less likely to be caught. There is considerable precedent for the US federal government to lawfully kill Americans without trial. Here is a representation of Americans being shot down en mass lawfully by the US federal government without arrest, charges, trial, or conviction. American citizens allied with or fighting with Al Qaida are in the same position as the people in that representation. It is a serious thing to take up arms against your country, and the consequences may be fatal.

If you want to see a plinth erected to my "walls of text," I'm fine with that as long as the temple can include an obelisk of errors dedicated to you. ;) If you write better posts, I'll probably be writing shorter posts.

Re:Definitions.

[gl4ss]

Does it matter if I'm in Texas and they are shooting from Mexico?

ehm.. If they're doing that then go catch that coke and mj they're shooting you with!.

is this sub thread about how it's right for americans to ignore international conventions and it's okay to have gitmo and not prosecute your own people for war crimes BECAUSE OMG SOME DUDE WAS ONCE ON TOP OF A HOSPITAL SHOOTING!!! KILL ALL RED CROSS NOW!! KILL WITH FIRE!!!

Re:Definitions.

[gl4ss]

the devout faith just says what happens to be the order of the day. the religion aspect is just the color of the movement, the color could be maoist communism just as well.
Vendetta is the substance. Curbing vendetta needs winning over the hearts. You don't do that with killing doods and then asking your pow's to form human pyramids and then kidnapping random friends of theirs for indefinite time.

By applying different rules to "them", you create a barrier where "they" are presented as another tribe that has a beef with your tribe.

You should note that the evil militant extremists mostly kill rival gang members... when trying for political power locally in their region.. people who go off their rockers and do a boston are an entirely different subset and could have used any motivation.

Re:Definitions.

[beelsebob]

Not quite the same thing. No one ever tells the police where the mafia are hiding out in Italy, nor do they ever stop paying for the "services" the mafia provide. Doesn't mean they're supportive of the mafia.

Re:Definitions.

[gl4ss]

where does it define what counts as war on terror? if anything your links describe a hydra without a body to have a WAR with. just a barrel of snakes, some of which had nothing to do with USA at all. And suddenly a war on preventing certain events(bombings) turns into a war of occupation of one country and then another. it turned into a policy of preemptively ignoring every other law in order to do whatever the fuck they want, when they want, where they want.

by that Policy they could attack Iran tomorrow. They could go and take over Finland by saying that we harbor Checzhen sympathizers(we do!). It's only politics (and sanity) that keeps them from doing it, but it has given them free reign to act as The Empire in weak countries, flying drones and dropping hellfire based on secret court proceedings where the defendandt was never even approached.

Re:Definitions.

[Eivind]

Not much: All adult males in a strike-zone are militants. A strike-zone is an area where the US military is making a strike, thus all adult males hit by US strikes are by definition militants.

Drone strikes certainly work in killing people, often even bad people. The problem is that if you kill one bad person, but in the process radicalize the population where two new persons are now willing to use violence against the US, you're not really closer to your goal.

Re:Definitions.

[gl4ss]

is everyone in texas who owns a gun a militant? no.
is everyone on the USA-MEXICAN border a drug militant? fuck no.

do you really expect every male between 15 and 40 to leave afghanistan, yemen etc. where they have lived all their lives? WHERE THE FUCK WOULD THEY EVEN GO? it's not like they can just board a plane and fly to miami.

Re:Definitions.

[cold fjord]

Did you read the section with this label?

SEC. 2. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES

That pretty well spells out the war against Al Qaida and the Taliban.

AS to the rest of it ....

Imagine going to a restaurant and ordering your favorite meal that has the following courses: soup, salad, entree with side dishes, desert, cheese, wine. And don't forget some good bread, rolls, and crackers. Sitting at the table we could discuss the merits of each dish as it is served. I like this soup, the broth is just right, the vegetables are the ones I like done just so, and they always server it at the proper temperature. Continue likewise for the rest of the meal. It could be an enjoyable meal and the merits of each dish would be easy to discuss. Now, instead of serving each dish separately, image putting all of the food for your meal, after it is prepared, all together in a blender and mixing it at high speed until it all becomes a fine sludge. No meat, just sludge. No salad, just sludge. No bread, just sludge. No cheese, just sludge. No ice cream, just sludge. You would not be happy because you can no longer enjoy the meal as it was intended. All of the unique attributes, textures, temperatures and other characteristics of the dishes are destroyed. That is what you are doing with the policy questions. Although they might all involve the armed forces just as food involves a cook, they are separate questions just as meat and salad are separate. The war against Al Qaida is a separate question from the enforcement of disarmament against Iraq which is separate from the non-proliferation issue with Iran and they are all separate from surveillance policy in the United States. Maybe from where you sit you can't see that, but it is true. You've reduced it all to sludge which is hard to discuss. Keep the separate issues and it might be possible to say something about it.

Looking into the sludge there is one chunk I will address: there is very little chance that the United States will invade Finland, so rest easy.

Re:Definitions.

[DNS-and-BIND]

Withdrawn unilaterally from several of the Geneva conventions...which ones would those be? The convention of 1949 or which one? We do know, right, that the Geneva convention only applies to uniformed combatants of a national armed force, right? Right? The proper response to an uniformed militant who doesn't represent a nation - someone like a Taliban - is, under the Geneva convention, immediate battlefield execution. No really.

Re:Definitions.

[TheP4st]

Now tackle Japan.

Sure. I'll even sacrifice a heap of mod points to do so. Have you ever considered that Nagasaki and Hiroshima played a much smaller part in the Japanese surrender than what is the commonly believed truth, and that in fact it might more have to do with the Soviet declaring war on Japan on August 8 1945 than it ever did with the atomic bombs?

Your point about the Japan is worth considering. But perhaps a better context, without the shakey historical context, might look something like this: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/29/the_bomb_didnt_beat_japan_nuclear_world_war_ii

Re:Definitions.

[PopeRatzo]

The old fashioned way: by recognizing that those people are irrational fanatics, that most people aren't that way, and therefore do things to support the people who aren't that way.

All the people who aren't that way are over here studying at our universities.

The old fashioned way: by recognizing that those people are irrational fanatics, that most people aren't that way,

Prove that most people "aren't that way".

Anyway, improve the lives for the majority of people, show people that as different as they are they DO have the same basic human goals in mind, and most of those morons will go away,

That never worked in the US, why should it work over there?

Re:Definitions.

[PopeRatzo]

Wow. So now the people fighting against the people we are ostensibly fighting are also legitimate targets.

You took a big jump there, from "militants" to "legitimate targets".

I've already said, I think the whole thing is illegitimate and immoral. I'm just pointing out that it's too soon to say whether or not it's effective.

Re:Definitions.

[PopeRatzo]

The proper response to an uniformed militant who doesn't represent a nation - someone like a Taliban - is, under the Geneva convention, immediate battlefield execution. No really.

I had to go check that out for myself, but you are absolutely right.

Also saw that there are some huge logical holes in the Geneva Conventions, but that's another discussion.

Re:Definitions.

[PopeRatzo]

Maybe not everybody can just snap fingers and move away from their only home and the only place they have known for all their lives.

History has shown that when bullets start flying and bombs start dropping that virtually everyone who is not sick or lame (and many of those) can and do "move away from their only home and the only place they have known for all their lives".

The number of refugees on Earth at any given time is astounding.

Re:Definitions.

[PopeRatzo]

Only if you change the definition of the word 'militant'. Just because someone chooses to remain in any given place does not make them militant.

Friend, the modifier was not just "remain in a given place". It was, "stay and fight" which does indeed fit your dictionary definition.

We weren't talking about people who stay, but those who stay and fight.

Re:Definitions.

[cffrost]

The following is a brief media presentation created by a company called Pitch Interactive that helps to illustrate the efficacy and efficiency of the drone strike program in creating — excuse me, killing — "terrorists:"

Out of Sight, Out of Mind: A visualization of drone strikes in Pakistan since 2004

Personally, I think the whole thing is barbaric and unnecessary and we shouldn't be doing it. At all. It's immoral. But whether or not it minimizes civilian casualties compared to carpet-bombing followed by an all-out invasion still remains to be determined.

I'm glad you said that; I don't think we should be doing it at all, either — but I don't think that the program should be compared to committing wholesale extermination of a populace based on their geographic location, but rather to less-provocative solutions that are possibly humanitarian or isolationist in nature.

As for the Obama Administration's hard-on for "double-tap" drone strikes, I think everyone who authorized this practice should be brought to The Hague for prosecution; such blatant and atrocious targeting of civilian non-combatants is, in my mind, a completely inexcusable war crime.

Re:Definitions.

[PopeRatzo]

Not quite the same thing. No one ever tells the police where the mafia are hiding out in Italy, nor do they ever stop paying for the "services" the mafia provide. Doesn't mean they're supportive of the mafia.

I've lived in Sicily and places in Southern Italy where the Mafia runs society. It amazed me that although people groused about the Mafia, they hated the government more. I got the impression that humans will adapt to a grumbling acceptance of whatever system is put upon them. I learned the same thing in the former Yugoslavia, where people said they hated Milosevic, yet had a sort of pride in him. Sometimes, my wife will still say, in a resigned way, that Mladko Radic had his good points, even though by an outsider's perspective, he was a monster.

Humans are complicated critters.

Re:Definitions.

[PopeRatzo]

And as for DARPA working on "anti-religious extremism technology"... will it also target christian extremists?

I would hope so. That's why I didn't specify a religion.

Religion will always keep people poor and ignorant. If you look at the US states that have the lowest incomes, highest poverty and lowest literacy, they are, 10 for 10, the most religious.

If you look at the states that have the highest education, the lowest divorce rates and lowest poverty, they are 4 of 5 the least religious.

Re:Definitions.

[PopeRatzo]

The problem is that if you kill one bad person, but in the process radicalize the population where two new persons are now willing to use violence against the US, you're not really closer to your goal.

Do we know for sure that two people are being radicalized for each one killed? When the US bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were two Japanese radicalized for each one that was killed? I'm pretty sure some innocents were killed in those attacks. When the US firebombed Dresden, were there twice as many Germans radicalized as were killed? History would seem to say "no".

Look, I think the whole war is immoral and unnecessary. I'm just discussing the logical consistency of the drone strikes. We don't have enough data to know if they are effective. And I'm still trying to decide if they are more or less moral that conventional bombing and invasion.

Re:Definitions.

[Cwix]

I normally enjoy your posts, today you couldn't be more wrong. We send a bomb strike to kill terrorists, and kill the people that are keeping the terrorists in check? Good way to generate more terrorists I would think,

Re:Definitions.

[Lonewolf666]

That reminds me of my old landlady in my study times. She actually said Adolf Hitler had his good points.

Re:Definitions.

[PopeRatzo]

We send a bomb strike to kill terrorists, and kill the people that are keeping the terrorists in check?

I think you misunderstand my point.

Ultimately it comes down to this: What causes more casualties among innocents, conventional warfare or modern warfare/drone strikes? We have to make our decision based on that question. I don't know if you can say one method is more moral than another. What do you think?

I'm just saying we don't have enough data. And if someone does have enough data, they're not talking or are intentionally misleading us.

Re:Definitions.

[sociocapitalist]

Only if you change the definition of the word 'militant'. Just because someone chooses to remain in any given place does not make them militant.

Friend, the modifier was not just "remain in a given place". It was, "stay and fight" which does indeed fit your dictionary definition.

We weren't talk

Re:Definitions.

[dgatwood]

That might be a legitimate answer if the government placed the weapons battery there. It isn't a legitimate answer when it is some random criminal standing on the roof.

In the U.S., the police would never bomb an American hospital to kill a single criminal. Why should such actions be excused simply because they occur on foreign soil? Ostensibly, if that action is necessary to preserve the lives of American soldiers in the heat of the moment, it might be acceptable, but if there is any time at all to plan, then it really isn't any more acceptable there than here, IMO.

Re:Definitions.

[del_diablo]

You take control over the region. See if you can spare military personal to just uphold the law, see if there is anything that can be done on short term to remove supply bottlenecks for the civilians, and in long term do something that is very positive for the country you take over.
Sun Tzu would most likely already have discussed it with a general or some stationary military troops back in the day: So they took over a region, replaced a few figureheads, and got some troops stationed to be able to hold back a uprising, and the supply chain needed to get even more troops there if needed. How did they stop the locals from uprising in a long term? By removing their reason to having a uprising in the first place.

Re:Definitions.

[PopeRatzo]

So they took over a region, replaced a few figureheads, and got some troops stationed to be able to hold back a uprising

You make it sound so neat and clean. I think you may have skipped over something, though. That "took over a region" part probably came at the expense of a lot of young men's lives and probably more than a few civilians.

This notion that when you drop a bomb or drone you create more terrorists is not borne out by history. There wasn't an unending stream of Japanese terrorists after Hiroshima for example, and there were a lot of innocent non-combatants killed. Maybe even a few wedding parties got slaughtered.

Re:Definitions.

[walshy007]

Actually, the amendment protocols released in 1977 cover this case (you can't execute them according to it, they are either a prisoner of war if military or civilian if not, there is no "vague" ground, the US refuses to become a signing party to it though.

Other things in that protocol amendment include.

Article 77 forbids conscription of children under age 15 into the armed forces. It does allow, however, for persons under the age of 15 to participate voluntarily.

Articles 51 and 54 outlaw indiscriminate attacks on civilian populations, and destruction of food, water, and other materials needed for survival. Indiscriminate attacks include directly attacking civilian (non-military) targets, but also using technology such as biological weapons, nuclear weapons and land mines, whose scope of destruction cannot be limited. A total war that does not distinguish between civilian and military targets is considered a war crime.

The list of things it bans is rather sane. That the US doesn't want to sign it is a pretty bad sign.

Re:Definitions.

[Eivind]

I don't think those are remotely comparable. At those times, the US was in a full out war with the nations they bombed. Japan was not occupied by allied forces, and with some cells of opposition left, Japan, the nation, was at war with USA.

The current "war" is different. It's a war of ideas. Having the military upper hand is a given -- the sum total of military expenditures in all those countries where most drone-strikes are made, don't add up to 5% of USAs spending. The question really is not if USA is military superior to Afghanistan.

Nominally, Afghanistan is at peace. Nominally, criminals of any kind inside it's borders, is a police matter. Yes I know, that doesn't quite match the reality. Nevertheless there's a -huge- gulf between police-methodology and having flying killer-robots run by a occupying nation circling the landscape day and night, raining death on whomever is deemed a threat to USA.

It's debatable if the examples you gave where supportable too, but in any case the situation was -entirely- different.

Re:Definitions.

[PopeRatzo]

I don't think those are remotely comparable. At those times, the US was in a full out war with the nations they bombed.

It doesn't matter who we're at war with. The militant Islamists see themselves as in a "full out war" with us.

Nevertheless there's a -huge- gulf between police-methodology and having flying killer-robots run by a occupying nation circling the landscape day and night, raining death on whomever is deemed a threat to USA.

Don't forget, that before we used a drone over there, they sent "flying killer robots" in the form of 737's into our biggest city, the Pentagon and the nation's capital. Only two of them hit their target.

What's the difference if the intelligence behind the "flying killer robot" is a single-minded AI or a religious zealot with a box-cutter? We were not occupying Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia when those 19 killer robots came to the US and learned to fly planes so they could rain death on us.

We should never have invaded Afghanistan or Iraq. But there is an organized militant group who believe themselves to be at war with us and want to kill us. Since we are not in a position to roll back history to before the Ottoman Empire, what do you suggest we do? Are you sure a drone war is less humane than a conventional war and invasion? Which one causes more civilian casualties?

As I said, I think the whole thing is immoral and unnecessary. My only argument here is against the notion that every drone attack creates new terrorists. There's no data to suggest that is so. The terrorists preceded the drone attacks and if the drone attacks stopped tomorrow there would still be terrorists. Maybe more because their command structure could stabilize. As long as their is extremist religion, terrorism is inevitable.

Re:Definitions.

[rtb61]

Reality. The goal is to use random acts of extreme murder to drive people from rural areas to major regional cities where they can more readily be controlled. Only those persons approved will be allowed to return to rural areas. Basically the US government is using terrorism to control the movement of foreign populations.

The goal with prism, is for the government to be able to control the population by gaining evidence of minor criminal activity against persons of interest or family members in order to silence their anti-government activities whether those activities by environmental, peace or government over-reach protests. This is of course the main reason why the US Federal is so adamant that drugs especially marijuana remain illegal with prison sentences as punishment, so that they can use it to hold over the majority of the population.

Just as the extreme penalties for minor computer abuse acts or at least the threats of extreme penalties against computer nerds and geeks whose acts might threaten the insane US Government over-reach. Uncle Tom Obama is basically the lapdog of an out of control CIA who is looking, in reality to keep the war on terrorism profits flowing, without which the major cut backs in funding especially to private contractors is assured.

INSANITY ON PUBLIC DISPLAY

Re:Definitions.

[Eivind]

"they", as in Afghanistan or Iraq, didn't send 737s. A extremist organization did. And yes, it's a huge problem that organizations exist which are extremist enough to be in favor of violence for their political goals. (it doesn't help much that those goals are repugnant to most of us)

So the question is, what policies will help most in figthing such organizations ? It's not clear that every drone-strike creates new terrorists, but it does seem clear that continued occupation by foreign forces, spiced up with the occasional abuse from some soldier or other, creates increased resentment and probably is radicalizing. Drone-strikes are just a tiny bit of that puzzle.

Re:Definitions.

[PopeRatzo]

The goal with prism, is for the government to be able to control the population by gaining evidence of minor criminal activity against persons of interest or family members in order to silence their anti-government activities whether those activities by environmental, peace or government over-reach protests

If that were true, wouldn't it be working?

I don't believe this is about anti-government activity at all. I believe this is entirely about anti-corporate activity. If you look at the people who are actually being punished under this new regime, it's far more likely that they're anti-corporate than anti-government. You see a lot of tea party folks in jail or "silenced"?

Re:Definitions.

[strikethree]

All phones were monitored since the 70s at least. In a way, this is all nothing new except now that morons seem to have access to the data and they are making moronic decisions based on it.

Re:Definitions.

[cusco]

That's pretty much been the behind-the-scenes reasoning for an awful lot of Pentagon actions since the 1970s at least, when it was clear that the Soviet Union wasn't going to be around forever. Create terrorists, get money for anti-terrorism operations, wash, rinse, repeat ad infiitum. The Soviets were a clearly-defined target, a single focus for spending and operations. The convenient thing about "terrorism" is that it's amorphous, you can declare anyone a terrorist, the Tea Baggers, Greenpeace, the Hells Angels, random high school script kiddie, and any expansion of authority is immediately approved. Bastards in the Pentagram may be cowards, but they're not stupid.

Re:Definitions.

[rtb61]

When corporations own the government, why bother nitpicking anti-corporation or anti-government.

it just occurred to me

[ze_nexus]

that if our government really has all of this data then China has it too

Re:it just occurred to me

[PPH]

Thanks for bringing up China.

On the eve of Obama's meeting with President Jinping, any conversations about Chinese espionage is going to be quite embarrassing.

Re:it just occurred to me

[ebno-10db]

On the eve of Obama's meeting with President Jinping, any conversations about Chinese espionage is going to be quite embarrassing.

That's it! The Chinese found out about this through their hacking, and leaked it to the press to avoid complaints about their hacking. Is there anything like a Pulitzer Prize for conspiracy theories?

Re:it just occurred to me

[Enry]

Yes. The award is a statue wrapped in tin foil.

Re:it just occurred to me

[memnock]

China's hacking and the U.S. federal government's surveillance are two different things. China is foreign entity that is competing with (if not confronting) another international player.

What the feds are doing is spying on its constituents, the people it supposedly is supposed to represent and be beholden to. There SHOULD be no competing interest between a people and its government. Apparently though, our own government seems to hold us all as potential opponents.

So Obama shouldn't be worried about confronting China's electronic intrusions. It's only right to warn off a competitor (opponent) when you catch them doing something illegal and threatening. Comparing China's hacking to federal surveillance is an apples to oranges comparison.

On the other hand, Obama SHOULD be worried about facing up to the citizens about abusing government's ability to surveil its own constituents. However, who is holding his feet to the fire?

Re:it just occurred to me

[ebno-10db]

Is it a chocolate statue wrapped in pretty colored foil? I used to love getting those for Easter.

Re:it just occurred to me

[ebno-10db]

It was a joke.

Re:it just occurred to me

[crutchy]

chinese don't need to hack for information... they can merely sell off some of their $1+ trillion in US dollar reserves and buy it

Re:it just occurred to me

[identity0]

Not to mention internal human rights or freedom of speech, freedom of thought...

back door?

[stanlyb]

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?

Re:back door?

[hazem]

The statement I heard on the news was that they did not allow government have backdoor access to their servers.

But that doesn't say anything about the traffic heading to and from those servers. Think about the name "PRISM" and how it refracts a single ray of light into several. If the network traffic coming into their servers were "refracted" to multiple destinations (say, the originally intended server as well as a government collection site), then technically, the government is not using a backdoor to access the server.

Rogue employees

[hawguy]

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.

Re:Rogue employees

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Possibly but I have to think at least some of these billionaires would say hold on, and buy a half hour block of TV that evening to have a chat with America.

Re:Rogue employees

[hawguy]

Possibly but I have to think at least some of these billionaires would say hold on, and buy a half hour block of TV that evening to have a chat with America.

"Sergey and Larry, we know the Justice department has been hard on your company, and we've heard that they are going to open a lot more probes into your business practices, you'll be deposed so many times that you may as well move to Washington DC. I think we could make things better for you if you'll just agree to let us put a few of our employees in your datacenters....as a token showing of good faith, we're giving you use of NASA's runway at Moffett Field for your little 767 jet"

Re:Rogue employees

[stanIyb]

What are you even referring to?

Re:Rogue employees

[ebno-10db]

I have to think at least some of these billionaires would say hold on, and buy a half hour block of TV that evening to have a chat with America.

And put themselves out of business? Not likely.

Re:Rogue employees

[PPH]

I think this goes beyond a few employees walking out with the occasional thumb drive. If they have a link inside Google* it means a sh*tload of additional traffic to their backbone provider. Or a dedicated fiber link. Someone would notice.

*Its more likely this is being monitored in real time at the backbone providers. The same people that were given unconditional amnesty for handing customer data out. Cue the movie scene where the crooked cop has all the local hoods on a short leash when he needs some dirty work done.

Re:Rogue employees

[hawguy]

Do you really think that nobody would notice this stream of ridiculously sensitive data flowing out of the systems? Especially after the paranoia inspired by the Aurora attacks from the Chinese? I guarantee you this stuff would be found out near immediately. Also keep in mind that the people who work at these companies are geeky engineer types, which means they very likely feel just as strongly about all this as anyone.

What would you say when your boss tells you "Hey, Bill and Jeff are working on an analytics project that will give us a huge edge in the market. They're keeping their equipment in those two racks in the datacenter marked "Secret analytics product - keep out". They'll be hitting your API's to pull out some search data from our front-ends for deeper analysis of customer search patterns, and will be reporting directly to me.

Especially if there are 5 or 6 "secret" projects going on at the same time to test out new technology.

Re:Rogue employees

[Lloyd_Bryant]

Possibly but I have to think at least some of these billionaires would say hold on, and buy a half hour block of TV that evening to have a chat with America.

Why? Given the cost of 30 minutes of prime time, it'd probably be cheaper to just buy a few senators, and then have them tell the spooks to back off...

Re:Rogue employees

[hawguy]

I think this goes beyond a few employees walking out with the occasional thumb drive. If they have a link inside Google* it means a sh*tload of additional traffic to their backbone provider. Or a dedicated fiber link. Someone would notice.

Depends what data they are monitoring, if they are just capturing search queries and IP addresses, it's not that much data. Google gets around 4B queries/day. If each query log entry consumes 256 bytes (should be less with compression?) that's 1TB of data per day, which *would* fit on a thumb drive. Or consume around 100mbit/second of bandwidth, which would be lost in the noise of Google's outbound bandwidth (or served by a single AT&T fiber drop that terminates at the NSA)

*Its more likely this is being monitored in real time at the backbone providers. The same people that were given unconditional amnesty for handing customer data out. Cue the movie scene where the crooked cop has all the local hoods on a short leash when he needs some dirty work done.

Depends on whether or not they want to see SSL encrypted data too. Few believe that the NSA has the compute power to decrypt billions of SSL transactions a day.

Re:Rogue employees

[ebno-10db]

keep in mind that the people who work at these companies are geeky engineer types, which means they very likely feel just as strongly about all this as anyone

What type do you think work at the NSA? The few NSA vets I've known fit the geeky engineer mold pretty well.

don't you think that everyone's on the lookout for any symptoms of monitoring?

They may be well aware that monitoring capabilities exist, in fact that's not even surprising. Phone companies have had monitoring/bugging capabilities for years. It's perfectly legitimate if it's only used pursuant to a proper warrant. But knowing that these capabilities exist, and knowing exactly how they're being used are two different things. Do the few techies that handle it even see the warrants, or are they just told "this is legit - do it". Or maybe the government has some remotely controlled ability to monitor without bothering company personnel. That's a perfect "hear no evil, see no evil" approach. "Gosh, the government told us it would only be used for legitimate lawful purposes, who wouldn't trust the government?"

The idea of a giant dragnet that monitors everybody may be nonsense, but it doesn't mean the government can't monitor anybody it chooses.

Re:Rogue employees

[ebno-10db]

Have you never considered that Google itself may be a department of the NSA?

Or maybe the NSA is a Google department.

Re:Rogue employees

[hawguy]

Not the OP, but you have no idea what it's like to work at [insert Silicon valley company here]. Personally identifiable information (including IP addresses and emails) have ridiculous protections in place. There would be multiple layers of people demanding to scrutinize the code before it could ever even hope to touch anything useful.

"Did you not understand when I said the team is reporting directly to *me* and they require your full cooperation? This is an extremely important project, has been fully vetted by Legal, and the team is comprised of handpicked senior engineers (who have suddenly started being dropped off at the office by black SUV's). Or would you rather bring up your concerns with HR at your exit interview?"

Re:Rogue employees

[ebno-10db]

being dropped off at the office by black SUV's

Limo service for your commute? Cool perk.

Re:Rogue employees

[Enry]

You want tin foil? How's this:

Go read James Bamford's "Body of Secrets". Near the end, he mentions the things that the NSA needs to get right in order to stay ahead in the intelligence business:

Distributed data so that the loss of one data center doesn't impact data
Ability to import and index a massive amount of information continuously (while keeping it available)
Accurate speech to text
Accurate language translation
Ability to search massive amounts of data very quickly, ranking results
Search through different media formats (video, audio, text, etc.)

Now go look at what Google is good at and known for.

Re:Rogue employees

[ebno-10db]

FB a division of the Illuminati? No way would they be associated with a cut-rate scam like FB. Google sure, but not FB.

Re:Rogue employees

[lister king of smeg]

with this size of this dragnet the spooks undoubtedly have lots of dirt on every senetor and congrassmen and would be more then willing to use it to cover their ass(ets)

Re:Rogue employees

[lister king of smeg]

wasn't ssl broken a while back with a ps3 cluster

  http://hackaday.com/2008/12/30/25c3-hackers-completely-break-ssl-using-200-ps3s/

I would not be supprised if they had a hack to get through it

Re:Rogue employees

[ebno-10db]

It worked for J. Edgar.

Re:Rogue employees

[kesuki]

just guessing but google search tools send the data in the clear unless you manually type the 'https' for it. oops lotta data being shipped there and as you type one character at a time to any search engine it is going in the clear, and google tries to anticipate your search.

Re:Rogue employees

[the eric conspiracy]

Why do you think so much funding for open source NoSQL comes from three letter agencies?

http://www.dataversity.net/10gen-closes-funding-round-with-us-intelligence-investors/

Re:Rogue employees

[the eric conspiracy]

No, SSL wasn't broken. This was an attack on MD5, which isn't used any more.

Re:Rogue employees

[Skreems]

Personally identifiable information (including IP addresses and emails) have ridiculous protections in place. There would be multiple layers of people demanding to scrutinize the code before it could ever even hope to touch anything useful.

You have been grossly misinformed.

Re:Rogue employees

[Skreems]

No. Just no. SAYING that data protection trumps all concerns is common. So is wanting to hit your yearly goals by shipping your project, and agreeing with the objectives your VP sets. Sure, some people really want to do the right thing, and sometimes they even have enough time to figure out what that is, and enough backbone to stand up for it. But that combination exists in way less of middle management than you seem to think it does.

Re:Rogue employees

[elashish14]

There's always the chance that NSA has Google employees on its payroll that are tasked with secretly handing off data.

Let me guess.. they're probably the employees that get dropped off from the big black SUVs....

Re:Rogue employees

[RussR42]

I've heard of this before... It was Focus!
Isn't that what certain countries use for their internet filters now?

Re:Rogue employees

[drinkypoo]

Qwest was the only long distance provider which actually complained to The People when ordered to insert a comprehensive tap. The others faithfully kept the orders secret.

I'm not going to track down a citation, because I remember being there. You can do that.

Re:Rogue employees

[Qzukk]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qwest#Refusal_for_NSA_spying

It's he-said-she-said, but pretty much the events in order are:

1) guy tells stock holders he landed awesome government contract and states contract as income up front.
2) guy tells government not to listen to everyone's phone calls.
3) government cancels awesome contract, Qwest suddenly "loses" all that money they "had" in step 1.
4) government arrests guy for lying to stockholders in step 1.

The government's not entirely at fault here, if he hadn't stated the future contract as present income in step 1, the government would have had a much shorter lever on moving him, but that's how it is.

Re:Rogue employees

[FatLittleMonkey]

Further to Qzukk:

The guy, Joseph Nacchio, was convicted of insider trading. (He sold his own shares before telling shareholders the bad news.) He appealed, the conviction was overturned. The government appealed, and the overturn was overturned. He appealed to the Supreme Court, who refused to hear his case. He then sued his lawyers. He got five years plus and is now out on some kind of community release thing.

The Judge who quashed the conviction was not a Bush appointee. The Judge who upheld the conviction was a recent Bush appointee. The Supreme Court was, of course, controlled of Bush supporting conservatives.

From there it's into conspiracy sites and tin foil prisms I mean hats.

Re:Rogue employees

[cffrost]

[J]ust guessing but google search tools send the data in the clear unless you manually type the 'https' for it. oops lotta data being shipped there and as you type one character at a time to any search engine it is going in the clear, and google tries to anticipate your search.

https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere

https://code.google.com/p/https-finder/

Anyone who doesn't want to run search engines' key-loggers (aka auto-complete) can disable them, often at the expense of saving a cookie. Both Ixquick and DuckDuckGo offer url-based preference-saving — no cookie(s) needed.

Re:Rogue employees

[iOdin]

Here we go again, sensationalist conspiracy theories. I worked at Google. Believe me, there is no way for "Google employees to secretly hand off data". It just does not work like that. Every *single* data request is logged, reviewed, and approved or denied. And mind you, this is for SCRUBBED data that is of little use for anything other than core business analysis such as ads placement. More often than not, few employees actually get to handle such data to start with. One of the first things Google instills upon you when you join is that user trust is everything. Despite what you may believe, they take user trust and privacy very seriously. After all, it's a free product and people can easily change search engines on a whim. Hell, typing Google.com takes more effort than typing Bing.com...

Re:Rogue employees

[crtreece]

You might also want to look into the venture capital arm of the CIA, In-Q-Tel, an early funder of google.

Wikipedia has an interesting list of the electronics, software, biotech, video processing, telemetry systems, and data center tech companies they have funded.

More likely

[Anonymous Coward]

It's likely to be dpi - and the NSA has spent time brute forcing the ssl - or obtained it as a "business record"

Re:More likely

[Anonymous Coward]

Narus STA 6600 deep packet inspection gear

It's called PRISM because that's what you use to split optical fibres.

Passive man-in-the-middle attacks. Doesn't matter if they can't get access to contents due to encryption if they're analysing traffic patterns with ThinThread - which is exactly what they're doing.

There are also specific trojans that have been deployed inside major companies without their knowledge (well, without their knowledge until now).

Re:More likely

[crutchy]

on the other hand, dpi could mean something totally different here... there are so many pixels on screens nowadays (think apple's retina) that perhaps every second pixel is actually a ccd component that together forms a big camera on your screen

probably not, but i wouldn't put it past companies down the track

Re:More likely

[russotto]

It's called PRISM because that's what you use to split optical fibres.

No, you don't. It's probably called PRISM because of that image, but you actually tap optical fibers by bending them until a little light leaks out. Unless you're the NSA, in which case the backbone providers happily install splitters (also not prisms) for you.

Prisms separate light by frequency, which isn't what you're trying to do. Although the code name could refer to separating the information from the data stream (breaking the while light into colors) rather than being a reference to the collection method.

Re:More likely

[petsounds]

I never have mod points when I truly want them.

Re:More likely

[sociocapitalist]

Narus STA 6600 deep packet inspection gear

It's called PRISM because that's what you use to split optical fibres.

Passive man-in-the-middle attacks. Doesn't matter if they can't get access to contents due to encryption if they're analysing traffic patterns with ThinThread - which is exactly what they're doing.

There are also specific trojans that have been deployed inside major companies without their knowledge (well, without their knowledge until now).

ThinThread ==> Trailblazer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trailblazer_Project

Re:More likely

[symbolset]

It's called "port mirroring" and it's a standard feature on all mid-to-high range network gear.

look at the wording carefully

[ganjadude]

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

Re:look at the wording carefully

[Anonymous Coward]

Both Google and Facebook acknowledge that if they get a court order for some specific records, like some relevant to a criminal case, then they do comply and hand it over to the government. But they have been very clear they don't give out access without court orders.

Re:look at the wording carefully

[ebno-10db]

they have been very clear they don't give out access without court orders

So? Orders can come from the FISA court. Who knows how broad they are? Who is going to complain about them since they're secret?

In all fairness I don't blame FB, the big G, etc. They don't have much choice in following court orders. The problem lies with the government.

Re:look at the wording carefully

[AHuxley]

You could request a total copy of the picture data for a training exercise to help fine tune next gen facial recognition.
Inject some training pages into a huge data set and see how fast and well universities, departments and contractors do with real world "anonymised" data.
People on court orders who should have no interaction with web 2.0.
People with skills and cash for quality identity document forgery - with or without some plastic surgery.
That one image with a wanted face caught at an event, party.
Once the data is 'given' every department and contractor interested in say anti war protesters can run another "training exercise" with images from outside a base or city march.
Add in names from the 1960'70'80's90's00 with new current state and federal ID images -U.S. passport and driver license data.
Who are they friends with or again that one face in an unexpected group image, perhaps outside the USA?.
Offer the data sets to Canada, UK, Australia... just for a joint training exercise...
Their citizens might waive many rights when on any form of government assistance over a lifetime.
Would data have to be "anonymised" for Canada, UK, Australia...
If a US citizen is found via cooperation with Canada, UK, Australia...the USA just put a name or face of interest out to trusted friends.
Its not "direct access" when a national security letter covers the request for help with a "training exercise".

Re:look at the wording carefully

[Anonymous Coward]

A spinal tap on the internet backbone in the right strategic places will give then everything they want. There will be rooms in exchanges.

Secondly, they are bugging Judges and Congressmen, that information will swept up for analysis. Whether they get up to Hoover/Bush Senior like tactics, select targeting to apply the blowtorch on cantankerous objectors - who knows.

The most dangerous terrorist attacks (if any) will come from domestic citizens. They are not going to let on if their only breakthrough came from a domestic contact. Justice would be equally criminal for letting a US citizen do something bad if they knew about it.
There is reason to believe domestic drug dealers have suffered as a result.

They won't come out and say "Yes, we have been breaking the law all along, but we feel good about it" . AG's are not very smart - who cares if they do an 'East Germany' on everyone.

So everyone, stop donating money to political parties. Stop using phone and computer to broadcast your life, and go out to the park to discuss business

Re:look at the wording carefully

[femtobyte]

That's the "-1, NSA employees read Slashdot too" mod.

Re:look at the wording carefully

[sociocapitalist]

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

Indeed, he probably just gives them direct access to the network instead.

Re:Strange

[x_t0ken_407]

s/Hates/Hates\ When\ Citizens\ Use

Re:Utter BS, trust no-one, including you.

[tqk]

Utter BS, trust no-one, including you.

You don't trust Lauren Weinstein?

To anyone complaining about this

[fustakrakich]

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.

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[fustakrakich]

Oh wait, I apologize for being so harsh. What I meant to say was, you have the right to remain silent. Please make the most of it. Thank you very much

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[stanIyb]

Unless you're one of the 1.5% of the people didn't vote for a republican/democrat, STFU!

But what if they have a change of heart?

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[ebno-10db]

you have the right to remain silent

Not anymore.

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[Anonymous Coward]

You have it backwards, your 1.5% have no representatives to even complain to. Your silent protest hasn't done shit, you have no more (or less) right to complain, you have no right to complain about others participating in a system that you find distasteful in a productive manner complaining.

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[ebno-10db]

You have it backwards, your 1.5% have no representatives to even complain to

So? Let's say you voted for Obama (I did in 2008). What are you going to do, threaten to vote Republican if he doesn't stop wiping his ass with the Constitution? Barack to George: pass the toilet paper.

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[stanIyb]

You have it backwards, your 1.5% have no representatives to even complain to.

By voting for other parties, you're letting the main parties know that maybe the third parties are onto something (if a sufficient number of people do so, and it starts with the individual). And even if it were futile, it would still be hell of a lot better than directly voting for evil like so many people do.

Sure, they have a right to complain, but it would be much better if they actually did something and stopped voting for evil.

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[squiggleslash]

Oh rubbish. You forget that in 2008 there really was a choice. One of the guys, a senator from Illinois, promised to end things like warrantless wiretapping, torture, wars on whistleblowers, etc, if he was elected.

Alas the other guy won. I think. He did, right?

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[ebno-10db]

Alas the other guy won. I think. He did, right?

There were two candidates?

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[fustakrakich]

One of the guys, a senator from Illinois, promised to end things like warrantless wiretapping, torture, wars on whistleblowers, etc, if he was elected.

And you believed him? Did you ever look a little deeper than what he broadcast on the TV? Did you check his voting record in the senate? Doesn't sound like it. Did you ever suspect anything fishy about his alliance with Lieberman? If not, that's too bad. You might have seen a little more clearly through the facade. Personally I would hope that all of you would understand you don't get close to power without being a corrupt bastard. Regardless of any of these peoples' promises, you should always check to see what they do, not what they say. I was dead set against him in '08, and so far all my suspicions have been confirmed. To vote democrat/republican is absurdly wishful thinking that anything will change, and it has been that way since at least the 1870s.

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[I'm New Around Here]

It depended on how you looked at Janus, I think. But Janus certainly got elected.

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[the eric conspiracy]

The Patriot Act would not have been renewed if the House had a Democratic majority in 2006.

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[fustakrakich]

How do you know?

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[AK Marc]

If a murderer feels remorse, do you set him free because he changed his mind? Or do you force the consequences on him, regardless of any change of heart?

And I haven't voted for a Republicrat. Ever. Except in primaries, where most of the real decisions take place.

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[the eric conspiracy]

Because the Democrats voted 3:1 against it.

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[AK Marc]

If all the losers picking the evil they are most comfortable with just voted for a non-party, then the 2-party system would be dead. Instead, we have greens voting democrat, and libertarians voting republican because if everyone voted their conscience, every vote would count, but there's a fear that someone, somewhere, will vote party as a "not the other team" vote, so they cowardly cave in and vote negatively, giving us the worst possible choices. If you aren't part of the 1.5%, you are part of the problem, unless you actually agree with 90% of what "your" party does, in which case, I recommend suicide.

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[fustakrakich]

Easy to do when you know it will pass anyway. This way you can look like a hero without rocking the boat. It's bullshit, and both republicans and democrats are equally full of it. Again the 'rotating villain' applies here. That's how the game is played. The democrats certainly have no moral high ground here. They were solidly in charge of congress in '08 and all the old policies remained solidly intact. And what do the idiot voters do in response? Vote republican again! It's a regular seesaw. It's tag team wrestling. Back and forth it goes.

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[stanIyb]

If a murderer feels remorse, do you set him free because he changed his mind?

What does that have to do with someone changing their mind about a political matter?

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[stanIyb]

There is no "direct" voting for anything

Most interesting, but that's not what I was referring to.

If you know the numbers aren't there you are just being a smug idiot on a high moral horse bragging about hitting windmills.

Ah, so we should all just give up! The people who want to make change? Give up. At the start of every movement, you probably won't have very many people on your side, but as time goes by, and with enough effort, you might be able to muster up an army. It's by no means certain, but it's a hell of a lot better than voting for evil.

It might take time for things to change, but your attitude is absolutely poisonous.

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[sociocapitalist]

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.

And who would you have voted for that wouldn't have approved similar legislation?

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[gl4ss]

Because the Democrats voted 3:1 against it.

what makes you think they would have voted so if they were in power? it standard practice for opposition to be voting against everything.

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[skegg]

100% agree. And it's quite possible that these minor parties can grow over time.
There are plenty of countries that have 95% of the vote split fairly evenly across 3 or even 4 parties.

What's sad is disenfranchised voters who have given-up, thus perpetuating the status quo.

Nevertheless I'm forever doing my bit at home / work / play, encouraging people to vote differently.

Re: To anyone complaining about this

[stanIyb]

Nonsense. I've not given up, and that's the entire point.

Yes, focusing on something that has a nonzero chance of doing anything is giving up

It's not, and that's why you have to continue pushing for change using a variety of methods. Voting for third parties instead of voting for evil is but one method.

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[AK Marc]

So you must be a Republican. Everyone else should take responsibility for their actions. But you don't need to. You insinuated that changing your mind (about a political matter) absolved you of all responsibility for that choice. How neo-con of you.

Re: To anyone complaining about this

[AK Marc]

What have you done, and what would you expect someone else to do? I did get politically active, enough to know that, unless I'm a sociopath bent on world domination, or a corrupt pig, there was nothing in politics to fight for.

My attitude may not be what you'd like, but if everyone like me followed my actions, then the problem would be fixed. Again, what have you done?

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[stanIyb]

So you must be a Republican.

Since that's false, you must have used an interesting line of logic to reach that conclusion.

You insinuated that changing your mind (about a political matter) absolved you of all responsibility for that choice.

No, I didn't. Just that upon seeing this wreck, some of them might change their minds, and that there is no need for them to quietly observe the situation when they could be making themselves useful.

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[KGIII]

I haven't voted for a member of either of the two major parties for president in 30+ years. I have never voted for a winning president. I have voted for a congress critter or two because the race was tight enough that I simply couldn't throw my vote away and felt obligated to ensure their victory if I could. It hasn't helped. I can say that I've tried and I sleep better because of it. But, no, it hasn't helped. I actually even go so far as to avoid the two major parties in smaller elections to the point where I'll abstain if neither meets my needs and there is no third party option.

I think the problem is that the voting public isn't very educated. They aren't very principled either. Well, I could go on but no, just no.

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[Velex]

Don't blame me. I voted for Bob Barr in 2008 and Gary Johnson in 2012. So yes, the other guy did win. Excuse me for not allowing mainstream media (especially Fox News) define my reality. However, the depressing thing is I live in a country where everyone else lets big media define their reality. See, I live in this wonderful place where all sorts of folks run for president and lots of other offices, too. I guess in this crazy world I live in, Noam Chomsky can endorse Jill Stein's presidential run. Did anybody even know she existed in 2012 besides me?

But no. Everybody's masturbating over Sarah Palin because zomg she would be the frist woman ever close to the presidency. Watch as we masturbate over Clinton when she runs in 2016 just like we were masturbating over her bid in 2008.

Folks need to wake up. Anyone who is voting either D or R, especially in local elections, is part of the problem.

The problem is so big, in fact, that I've been finding myself wondering whether, depending on how much of a homophobic, reactionary, police state-endorsing jerk gets the Republican nomination in 2016 and whether or not the Libertarian's 2016 candidate has even a shadow of a chance of getting 5% of the popular vote, whether I might actually end up turning into part of the problem myself by voting for Clinton.

What's to be done? You've got candidates running left and right that might actually do things like reducing the size of government, ending the wars on drugs and terror, and trying to undo the damage that's been done since we all lost our shit after 9/11. Yet everybody turns on Faux News, PMSNBC, and CNN and gets ready to root for either an R or D and blame all our problems on the other letter like this is some kind of meaningless sport.

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[AK Marc]

I have never voted for a winning president.

My first presidential vote was 1992. I also have never voted for a winning president, but voted in all elections I was eligible to vote in.

It hasn't helped.

It's a tragedy of the commons issue. If there are 100 or 1000 people doing it, it'll never work. If 10,000,000 people do it, it will completely change politics overnight. The problem is that there are not enough willing people in the electorate to make a difference. So many would rather tune in to hate radio and discuss why their "enemy" is so bad, and vote the other way. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Except in US politics, the enemy of my enemy is my enemy's friend, and neither are my friend.

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[AK Marc]

No, I didn't. Just that upon seeing this wreck, some of them might change their minds,

Changing your mind doesn't absolve you of responsibility for causing it. Why do you not stand up and say "I helped elect Obama/Bush, and I'm sorry." Instead, it's always "he's better than the other choice" when they are the same, for most definitions of "same".

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[cffrost]

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.

And who would you have voted for that wouldn't have approved similar legislation?

Stewart Alexander (Socialist), Rocky Anderson (Justice), Gary Johnson (Libertarian), and Jill Stein (Green) all ran on civil libertarian platforms during the 2012 election; (for example, all four sought the repeal of the PATRIOT Act).

Among third-party candidates, Virgil Goode (Constitution) was an odd-ball, his authoritarianism exceeding that of GWB, BHO, and Romney. Although Goode expressed regret for voting for the PATRIOT Act, was a "money-out-of-politics" guy (accepting donations no greater than $200), his campaign positions and HR voting record showed little regard for civil liberties.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_third_party_and_independent_presidential_candidates,_2012

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2012#Results [Compact table w/ links for leading 3rd-party candidates/parties]

http://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2012 [Graph depicting 2012 candidates' political positions]

http://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2008 [Graph for 2008 — note Obama's rightward/authoritarian shift between '08-'12]

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[stanIyb]

Changing your mind doesn't absolve you of responsibility for causing it.

No, it doesn't. Now WTF are you talking about? I didn't say anything about absolving responsibility, or even imply it...

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[fustakrakich]

We masturbate over Sarah Palin because she's a MILF. It never went beyond that.

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[the eric conspiracy]

Pro Tip: Factual evidence outweighs speculation in an argument.

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[KGIII]

I've been told that I'm throwing my vote away by voting for a third party and I can see the reasoning behind that sentiment. However, it's the statement that matters to me and my own ethics demand that I vote for the person who is most closely aligned to my own personal beliefs. Very seldom do I find myself in a position where I'm truly voting FOR a person, I'm normally voting AGAINST a person (or persons). I find it disheartening but I've been at this for years and years and I don't see me changing my voting habits any time soon.

What this country needs is more than two parties. We could do (and would do well, I think) with a dozen or so parties. Unfortunately it requires that people be educated and willing to stand for their principles. There is, frankly, too much money in our elections. It's sad, really...

What we have is two parties that are just full of hate. You see it every time there's a mass shooting (for one easy example) when the first words are, "It was surely some gun-loving Tea Party, mouth breathing, simpleton." I actually see the left as the instigating, rhetoric filled, hate spewing, authoritarians more than I see the right. It's sad because, frankly, I'm fairly left leaning (which means that I'm drastically left leaning when compared with the average American).

There can be no debate. There can be no constructive bi-partisanship because it is a team sport. The only time I see bi-partisan legislation is when it's authoritarian in nature and reduces the rights of the citizens. The real reason we have the second amendment is because a government that is scared of the populace is a good government. They should be afraid of us, we shouldn't be afraid of them. (Don't take that to mean that I'm advocating overthrowing or revolution.)

I find it disturbing how many times people, on either side, "know" how the other side thinks. They don't, they won't even make the effort to understand. The reality is that they're just listening to their preferred media and feeding off their echo chamber. I don't have a quick and easy solution for this (and the many problems that come with it). It isn't simple enough to fit on a bumper sticker so it won't catch on anyhow. I believe, though, the solution is found somewhere in education. It is unrealistic to expect an uneducated populace to vote for an effective government.

An interesting aside is the people who insist that the person who mentions a problem also offer a solution. That makes little sense to me. The validity of the problem isn't predicated on one's ability to also dictate a solution. There was a lot of that during the OWS movement. "All we have is people pointing out problems with out giving us a solution." Umm... Yeah? So come up with a solution on your own. Not spoon feeding you solutions doesn't mean the problems don't exist. (Note that I have no affiliation with, love for, or even more than a vague agreement with the OWS folks. I'm simply using them as an example.)

So, alas, I don't have a solution other than to educate the populace. It would be interesting to see people get better and more accurate representation. I think an increase in the number of political parties may help. I think that the media is partially to blame for the state of affairs. I think that the two major parties need to be stripped of power as they've long since ceased to represent those who elected them and I say that as a whole, not just the individuals but the entirety of them. I'm not a fan of increasing or creating legislation as all laws are, by their nature, a reduction in rights to someone but I think carefully crafted legislation to reform the election process and adjust the powers afforded the elected persons is something that can be examined.

In short, I don't really know and I'm grateful to be in a position where I am able to cope pretty much regardless. I am not in my position because of hard work, ethics, or dedication. I certainly worked hard, maintained very high ethical standards, and remained dedicated to completing the various ta

Re:To anyone complaining about this

[sociocapitalist]

Okay - thanks for the info -

Re:Man in the middle

[ebno-10db]

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?

Doesn't work w/ public key encryption.

Re:Utter BS, trust no-one, including you.

[ebno-10db]

You don't trust Lauren Weinstein?

An obvious plant.

Companies did not deny giving data to gov't

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Companies did not deny giving data to gov't

[ebno-10db]

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

Also all the companies say they only do it in accordance with the law. That may well be true, but so what? That doesn't mean the law isn't corrupt, or that they didn't get an overly broad FISA court order that comes with a gag. I really can't blame these companies as they have little choice. The problem is with the government.

Really going on? Let me spell it out for you...

[pla]

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.

Well golly gee! I'm not so far off base

[fustakrakich]

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.

Most obvious:

[fyngyrz]

A front door is not, after all, a back door.

Re:Most obvious:

[Seumas]

That's what sh... fuck it.

Re:Most obvious:

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what sh... fuck it.

*thats* what she said.

Re:Most obvious:

[fyngyrz]

And then she said "Oh... OH!... So that's why people do this!

Re:Most obvious:

[DeathToThePatriarchy]

And then she said "Oh... OH!... So that's why people do this!

Really? You had to go *here*? And, yeah, it's "that's" -- at least in English.

Re:Man in the middle

[Prune]

Most PKI is based on certificate authorities which are likely to easily submit to government pressure. Secure key exchange with a private key system remains necessary for anything really sensitive. Right now that might mean exchanging keys in a way immune from MITM attacks by physically carrying over a storage medium containing the keys to the other party; in the meantime, quantum key distribution is making strides and eventually will be practical enough for more widespread use.

Re:Really going on? Let me spell it out for you...

[lightknight]

So...what you're saying, is that this government is effectively an anti-US government?

Re:Utter BS, trust no-one, including you.

[willie3204]

Reddit is in another castle...

At least...

[wbr1]

...with a name like PRISM, it is friendly to all sexual orientations.

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.

Re:Utter BS, trust no-one, including you.

[Seumas]

Bu- bu- but Obama said that they're not listening into our phone calls and not to worry and everyone else says if I'm not doing anything wrong then I don't have anything to hide and should just shut the fuck up because I'm being paranoid...!

A Message for the NSA

[cosm]

Uv gurer AFN naq Hapyr Fnz! Tb shpx lbhefryirf!

PRISM and Backdoors

[hackus]

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

Re:PRISM and Backdoors

[Darkness404]

It goes beyond hardware and software though. Even if everything that you have is secure and without backdoors it still has to go on the infrastructure that the state can hijack. Sure, at this time I think its safe to say that if you encrypt your traffic you can be fairly certain that the state cannot read your messages, but, eventually weaknesses may be found or quantum computing may allow for the breaking of current "strong" encryption.

For privacy to be sustainable, we need an open infrastructure with open hardware, open software and open firmware.

Re:Utter BS, trust no-one, including you.

[Seumas]

I'll trust a dude with a beard on a bike with leather long before I'll trust a pig in a car with a donut or any other civil servant. Granted, that is not saying a lot.

Re:Really going on? Let me spell it out for you...

[larry bagina]

That one about quartering troops?

Re:Morons

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Guility motherfucker!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Guility motherfucker!

[ganjadude]

after 4 years of obama... why would anyone be a first time obama voter in 12? not attacking seriously curious.

Re:Guility motherfucker!

[Anonymous Coward]

To keep the wrong, abortion limiting, homosexual right denying, health care privatizing, global warming denying, Social Security gutting lizard out.

Re:Guility motherfucker!

[elashish14]

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?

All that I can suggest is to leave the country. Living in the United States and paying US taxes means you continue to fund the economy which in turn funds its evil. If enough worthy people do this, then there will be nothing left.

Re:Guility motherfucker!

[RussR42]

I believe I'll vote for a third party candidate!
Go ahead, throw your vote away! Hahahaha!

Re:Guility motherfucker!

[sociocapitalist]

after 4 years of obama... why would anyone be a first time obama voter in 12? not attacking seriously curious.

Lack of a better option?

Re:Guility motherfucker!

[anagama]

Throwing your vote away is failing to register your displeasure by voting as a sheep.

It is NOT a wasted vote to refuse to vote for a fuckhead but it is obviously a waste to cast a vote for a fuckhead. Winning isn't everything -- if nobody protests then the fuckhead thinks he's got a mandate. And if the fuckhead should lose to the other fuckhead not because that one got so many votes, but because the a lot of people voted for their cat (as I did for any seat in which there was no third party, and I mean any third party), that might make all the fuckheads think about actually appealing to voters again -- all us cat voters might then seem like a group they want to woo. But if you just give them your vote, they WILL ignore you. To win later, you have to be willing to make the fuckheads lose now.

Re:Guility motherfucker!

[fustakrakich]

That's a bullshit answer. There's always a better option, but you have to go out and find it, not wait for it to just show up on your TV screen. This blame game all of you are playing is precisely why we are in this mess. We are the ones that reward all the corruption. To brutalize Homer: The cause of, and solution to all our problems is in the mirror.

Re:Guility motherfucker!

[ganjadude]

I see you got the talking points off....

1.5%?! What about everyone outside the US?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

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.

Why so surprised?

[Trax3001BBS]

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?

Re:Why so surprised?

[ebno-10db]

Those get ignored. Things like "OWS" or "Fourth Amendment" get flagged.

Re:Man in the middle

[AHuxley]

If part of the free service is targeted ads to users based on the "content" of their emails - deep packet inspection at the ISP or backbone level is really just for port, ip and TOR tracking fun ;)
You can encrypt all you want up to the trusted server and back out again. Its going back to machine readable content at some point for the ads in the USA :)

Re:Stop with the rhetoric.

[epyT-R]

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.

Re:Morons

[Runaway1956]

"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.

If this is what the government is doing...

[mrxak]

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.

Re:If this is what the government is doing...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have news for you, you don't live in 1984. A childish, hyperbolic attitude will only ensure that the "level-headed" politicians in Washington will prevail. They'll shoot down your hyperbole, and then convince everybody else there's nothing to worry about.

Do you use GMail, Hotmail, or Yahoo Mail? They tell you upfront that they read all your damn e-mail? But now it's 1984 just because the NSA can do it?

That no excuse for what the government is doing, but let's be realistic about what's happening. And then work to change it.

Re:If this is what the government is doing...

[stanIyb]

There's a huge difference between corporations and government.

If corporations get your information, both they and the government will have it. Don't forget that many corporations bow down to the government when if it's to protect the children or to stop the terrorists.

Re:If this is what the government is doing...

[Anonymous Coward]

One of them fucks you over for the money, the other fucks you over for power. Then one uses money to get power, and the other uses power to get money. The differences are startling!

Price of Freedom...

[CohibaVancouver]

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.

Horseshit

[Charliemopps]

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!"

Re:Horseshit

[DavidStarr]

I won't say somebody is an idiot, but I agree that the government can get any information it wants now without any checks and balances, thanks to the Patriot Act. http://www.bordc.org/resources/businessbook.pdf This particular PDF talks about the cost of doing business with the Patriot Act. If somethink like the Carrier IQ program that tracks everything you do with your phone can be inbedded into phones operating system, what is to stop something like that from being inbedded into all major operating systems of all devices and being accessed by the government. Answer. Nothing.

Freedom is Free

[Darkness404]

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.

Re:Morons

[dr2chase]

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.

Contractors

[mypalmike]

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."

Constitution?

[Darkness404]

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.

Re:Morons

[ebno-10db]

"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.

Re:Morons

[dr2chase]

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.

Re:I think this is great

[stanIyb]

Am I wearing a tinfoil hat?

Does the TSA blatantly and publicly violate the constitution by molesting anyone who wants to get on a plane? Yes. Are you wearing a tinfoil hat? No, not at all; our government is insane, and pretty much always has been. They can't be trusted to not misuse their new toys.

Re:Morons

[AK Marc]

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").

Re:Morons

[Runaway1956]

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.

Re:Morons

[chrismcb]

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.

Re:Morons

[postbigbang]

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?

Re:Morons

[Pitt64]

You are wrong. The U.S. was the terrorist in vietnam , and they killed more than a million

Re:Morons

[Anonymous Coward]

"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"

Re:Morons

[__aaltlg1547]

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.

Re:Man in the middle

[AK Marc]

Good thing I only give out my private key.

Re:Morons

[AK Marc]

But they weren't dead Americans.

I disagree

[xdor]

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

Re:I disagree

[Zontar The Mindless]

Once they return to their positions of wealth and privilege in civilian life, and their hand-picked successors assume their places in the halls of power, you mean?

Oh, yeah, I'm sure that they're *very* worried about what happens then.

Re:I disagree

[cffrost]

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.

That's a good point, and it reminds me of a related thought I've occasionally had in regards to the "think of the children" justification* for curtailing civil liberties. What about the civil liberties of these children, particularly once they turn 18 or 21 and could have used them* to full effect?

Why don't they "think of the childrens'" civil liberties, for a change? A tattered, loop-holed, ineffectual, ignored (and even untaught) Bill of Rights seem like a really shitty gift to leave to future generations.

* For the sake of argument, I'm taking the motives and words of those that employ "think of the children" at face value.

** Examples of utilization being to full effect for adults: Second Amendment-related statutes limiting it in part to adults, increased need for legal protections for suspects who may waive their right to have an attorney present during police interrogation (children must have an attorney/"advocate" present, as far as I'm aware), and defendants who are not eligible for the reduced legal penalties afforded to some minors.

Re:Morons

[lexsird]

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.

China might be the safest place right now...

[Camael]

... 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.

Re:China might be the safest place right now...

[Camael]

What the US is pissed about is corporate espionage. It's an honor thing. The US expects China to try to break into military systems. What the US doesn't like is China breaking into Google or Wal-Mart, or bugging the phones of visiting CEOs from car manufacturers, and stealing corporate secrets to help them out-compete in the global market. To the US, corporate spying feels like cheating--there's something repugnant about mixing military with civilian affairs this way. No official from the US military would ever hand intelligence to a lumber company to help them with a contract. In China this is routine.

Given the fact that the US government has pretty much admitted getting data from most of the major technological companies in the US (see Obama's and the executive branch's defence of PRISM et. al. ) I don't think your comment about the US government's repugnance about mixing military with civilian affairs holds water any longer, and I have doubts whether this was ever true at all. A case could also be made that by soliciting the aid of these companies, the US has made them legitimate "military" targets.

I agree that as far as we know, China seems more willing to supply their own companies with the fruits of their spying, but ultimately the difference between covert electronic espionage conducted by US and by China is only a matter of degree.

Re:Morons

[CodeBuster]

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.

In Soviet Russia

[Roachie]

PRISM inside YOU!

Re:Really going on? Let me spell it out for you...

[tftp]

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.

Re:Utter BS, trust no-one, including you.

[Z00L00K]

I don't even trust myself.

And you will always have people that flies under the radar that can create trouble. The Una Bomber is a good example of a person that really wasn't leaving much trace for the investigators to follow. You can't get everyone, the actions taken with passport controls etc. is annoying for the public and won't really achieve anything.

Even more "fun" is that the name is the key they are looking for, not the individual - so if someone changes name on their passport they may pass through unchecked while if someone has an identical name but isn't the same person they may be scrutinized five times to Friday for no result.

Re:Morons

[Anonymous Coward]

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".

Bleh

[lightknight]

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.

Encryption NOW

[Nocturrne]

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.

Re:Morons

[cyn1c77]

"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!

Re:Morons

[Anonymous Coward]

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.".

Re:Morons

[Zontar The Mindless]

despair.com be ->-> thataway

Re:Morons

[Zontar The Mindless]

You've little experience with organisations, then.

Re:Morons

[bosah]

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).

One example

[SgtChaireBourne]

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.

Re:Morons

[Zontar The Mindless]

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.

Re:Microsoft Hired People To Make Positive Comment

[ozmanjusri]

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.

Re:Really going on? Let me spell it out for you...

[Taco Cowboy]

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"

Re:Morons

[gl4ss]

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.

The front door

[Taco Cowboy]

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

Re:The front door

[Somebody Is Using My]

Huawei routers don't /need/ backdoor access.

The short of it: at least for some of their commercial offerings, the software in their routers are old and filled with vulnerabilities long-patched out of the offerings from other companies. They are easy to exploit because the tools have been available for years.

If the NSA's concern is that Cisco routers have a backdoor built-in, then any lack of such in Huawei routers should barely be a stumbling block to them.

No, I believe the NSA's (and the government's concern in general) is exactly as stated: they don't want to use Huawei routers because /anybody/ can access them.

Re:The front door

[huckamania]

You don't need Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, FB if you have the Verizon Backbone that is carrying most of their traffic. It might not even be Verizon, but you get my point.

How do we get around this issue? There is a huge MitM operating here and that is scary.

Re:The front door

[bakuun]

> How do we get around this issue? There is a huge MitM operating here and that is scary. How do we get around a man in the middle? SSL. Most of these companies do use proper encryption for their network traffic. That is why NSA needs connections on the inside.

Re:The front door

[bakuun]

> 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 No. We could identify them because they were mentioned in the powerpoint slides... It doesn't get any more obvious than that.

Re:The front door

[romons]

I know that cisco has facilities for wiretapping built into their routers; I used to work at cisco, on IOS. There were bits of the code that were there to allow law enforcement to control and wiretap flows without the knowledge of root level users (ie, sysadmins). It is documented in the cisco user manuals as 'lawful intercept'. Feel free to look at the user docs.

Unfortunately, knowing how to get the flows doesn't help when the ends are encrypted, unless you have access to the one time pads, or the bad guys are silly enough to depend on NP hard encryption.

Re:The front door

[WillAffleckUW]

Have to agree with you there.

But you assume there's only one set of doors.

Re:Morons

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

DDR

[flyingfsck]

Honecker called. He wants his republic back.

Other people's back door maybe?

[Lonewolf666]

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.

Re:Other people's back door maybe?

[BrokenHalo]

Now in my private life, a backdoor for Chinese intelligence services might bother me less than a backdoor for the NSA.

Why?

Let's turn that around. Assume, for the moment that (like myself) you are not a US citizen. Now you are told that this surveillance is only carried out on non-US nationals, as if that is somehow OK and the action of a good neighbour.

How would that make you feel?

Re:Other people's back door maybe?

[Lonewolf666]

What the government tells me about the targets of their surveillance does not matter. They are lying anyway (see also http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/nsa-phone-records-verizon-court-order).

What matters is that they can get at my data easily enough for routine surveillance even when I'm not in their jurisdiction, and that such data might be used against me. Considering that, I'm actually less worried about spying by a government that is not allied with my own. Because the non-allies are unlikely to share the data with my government.

Re:Other people's back door maybe?

[B'Trey]

Let's turn that around. Assume, for the moment that (like myself) you are not a US citizen. Now you are told that this surveillance is only carried out on non-US nationals, as if that is somehow OK and the action of a good neighbour.
How would that make you feel?

What happened to "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."? (Emphasis mine.) Granted that the Declaration of Independence isn't legally binding in the way that the Constitution is, there's still no way that you can square the "Constitutional guarantees only apply to citizens" doctrine with the fundamental principle of human rights.

Quelle surprise

[symbolset]

The National Security Agency is spying on the nation? Where is Ric Romero when you need him?

Re:Microsoft Hired People To Make Positive Comment

[Razgorov Prikazka]

> 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.

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 :-S

Re: Morons

[pha3drs]

Safety is a lie but sells well to those without common sense. The power monger has but one guiding principle: Induce fear, exploit, repeat.

Re:Morons

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Hysterical, irresponsible garbage

[benjfowler]

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.

Re:Morons

[postbigbang]

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.

Re:Morons

[BlackHornet]

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.

Re:Microsoft Hired People To Make Positive Comment

[BrokenHalo]

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. ;-)

Re:Morons

[BrokenHalo]

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'.

Re:Morons

[BrokenHalo]

Brave words from someone who goes by the handle Runaway1956!

Only because "Sir Robin" was already taken...

Re:Morons

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:I think this is great

[towermac]

"Am I wearing a tinfoil hat?"

Unlikely, unless you saved a roll from 40 years ago...

You might be wearing an aluminum foil hat. Which is totally ineffective for your intended use of it.

Why do you thing the government made them stop making tin foil?

Re:Morons

[Runaway1956]

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.

Re:Morons

[Runaway1956]

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. ;^)

FISA == law unto themselves

[microbox]

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.

Re:FISA == law unto themselves

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh course they're going to take the conservative approach and allow wide-spread surveillance.

You mean 'the liberal approach'.

Or maybe it would be better to call it 'the totalitarian approach', which applies quite equally to both ends of the political spectrum.

Speak to some boat people about their perception.

[microbox]

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.

Re:Utter BS, trust no-one, including you.

[dcollins117]

And you will always have people that flies under the radar that can create trouble.

If you're intent on doing evil, it's much easier to "fly under the radar" in a crowd than in a sparse population. The government's program of amassing as much data as they possibly can on American citizens actually makes it easier to hide ones nefarious activities because it only creates a vanishishly small signal compared to the tremendous amount of noise.

According to the recent Nova program on the Boston Marathon Bomber manhunt, the two perpetrators were on a terrorist watch list, albeit along with over 800,000 other people. Furthermore, one of their names was entered incorrectly in the FBI database, a simple typo, so it didn't raise any red flags when he travelled to Chechnya for bomb-making lessons.

Amassing tons of data on your citizens is easy, knowing how to use that data effectively is orders of magnitude more difficult.

Re:Chinese propaganda coup of the century

[KZigurs]

You know, if only there was a way for the government to clear this all up in a quick and efficient manner where public would trust their answers, none of this would have happened. Might be the chinese, might be not. The root of the problem is that you will be hard pressed to find a person that will trust anything that comes out of a mouth of government official (bush, obama, clinton, whatever).

Kiwi hardware

[Nocode5000]

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).

Re:Morons

[identity0]

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.

Re:Morons

[MooseMiester]

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.

Re:Most obvious: why mail has delay ?

[dschinn1001]

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 ?!

Why our government LOVES SSL encryption

[TheRealHocusLocus]

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.

Re:Morons

[lsatenstein]

"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".

Re:Morons

[strikethree]

Hm. It sounds like America is not the people, it is the government. The people are merely an inconvenience.

Re:Morons

[strikethree]

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.

Illegal to get Legal counsel against Govt. orders?

[DavidStarr]

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.