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NSA Surveillance May Have Dealt Major Blow To Global Internet Freedom Efforts
An anonymous reader writes "Simply put, the US government has failed in its role as the 'caretaker' of the internet. Although this was never an official designation, America controls much of the infrastructure, and many of the most popular services online are provided by a handful of American companies. The world is starting to sober up to the fact that much of what they've done online in the last decade is now cataloged in a top-secret facility somewhere in the United States. The goal has been to promote internet freedom around the world, but we may have also potentially created a blueprint for how authoritarian governments can store, track, and mine their citizens' digital lives."
All politicians lie.
No exceptions.
If they weren't willing to lie, they'd never get elected.
Is it too late for the NSA to spin this as just a huge misunderstanding?
Actually taking this into consideration, no, it's not too late.
Too many Americans are too fucking stupid to give enough of a shit for these revelations to cause real change.
Sustained change will largely depend on how the rest of the world reacts, and that's not looking promising either.
What if the Internet is just unworkable?
What if big government is just unworkable?
Agreed, and all politicians are not to be trusted, which is why freedom of press and transparency of government are of the utmost importance in any democratic republic.
You can erode freedoms gradually or even outright remove them overnight in the name of 'fighting terrorism'. People are driven paranoid by the media and the government. Terrorism, school shootings, global warming, the boogeyman, something is around the corner waiting to kill you and your children. Want to be safe from that? Then get ready to lose a lot of your rights and get ready to pay a lot more in taxes as well to finance the loss of your rights.
We all know that airport security and border security failed before 9/11. Letting multiple armed men most of whom had passport and visa violations into airplanes was a colossal intelligence failure. After the attacks security at our airports was supposedly beefed up and billions of dollars were invested in physical security. Did that prevent the shoe bomber or underwear bomber from getting bombs onto their airplanes? No. But it gave everyone the illusion of security and the government made a killing from forcing taxpayers to pay for all sorts of wasteful security theater.
The NSA is the cyber equivalent of the TSA. Instead of groping everyone and inspecting your person they inspect your internet usage and your phone records. They go after everything you do in your personal life that they can get a hold of and use. And did that prevent the Times Square bomber? Or the Ft. Hood shooter? Or the Boston Marathon bombers? No. But everyone felt secure on the days that there wasn't terrorism. And the government made a killing. And the government got to use the NSA (and IRS, FBI, etc.) to go after political enemies as well.
You question any of this? And you're siding with the terrorists. You blow the whistle on any of this? It's treason. Get ready to flee to a foreign country or risk being murdered, jailed, rendered, or worse.
We spy on our own people indiscriminately. Ruin the rights of the people with the destruction of privacy. Intercept and record and document everything. Yet the Boston Marathon bombers were looking at radical Islam videos for months. The older brother had been thrown out of a mosque for preaching violent Jihad. The brothers names had been tipped off at the CIA by both the Russian and Saudi governments that they were linked to Al Qaeda. The Ft. Hood shooter was viewing radical Islam videos online and even told his supervisors about his Jihadist sympathy. But the government somehow in their total surveillance missed all of those things.
The fact is that most people don't care or understand. George Carlin said "think of how dumb the average American is...and realize that half of the people are even dumber". The average American doesn't care about rights or privacy. They won't defend the Constitution or Bill of Rights. The American empire is crumbling from within. Demographics rapidly changing, politicians and leaders being openly hostile to the Bill of Rights, rapidly escalating bipartisanship in politics and society, increasing loss of rights resulting from alarmist paranoia.
At this point all we can do is try to stop the bleeding. But eventually the freedoms of America. Its lifeblood. Will be gone.
The US government IS an authoritarian government. Period.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
All politicians lie.
No exceptions.
If they weren't willing to lie, they'd never get elected.
Sure but then why didn't the US citizens throw out Obama after the 1st presidential term ? He didn't go to the White House for the second time of his own free will. Lazy, morally corrupt, couch potatoes american citizens voted this lier for a second term. So who the fuck is to blame eh ?
A 2 party system is no better than a 1 party system especially when the 2 sides agree on almost everything that has to do with fucking the american citizen.
The NSA is a pack of dimwitted fuckers for pulling this, because the blow back when this was discovered (not if) would clearly far exceed any benefit they could possibly gain. Now, I think this might not be an entirely bad thing that they pulled this shit.
I suspect that as a result, the rest of the world is going to be deeply suspicious of the US in the future, and it is going to be much more difficult to maintain control of the Internet's key systems and keep them inside US borders as much as is possible. I also think this might kick off a new round of encryption and paranoia, which really is a good thing for consumers of tech resources in the long run. Bad for the spy types, because RSA1024 on everything will really put a damper on their ELINT gathering capabilities. They might have to go out and do some honest on the ground trade craft for a change.
Who ever is running the NSA should be sacked on the spot. Not for engaging in massive illegal wire tapping, but for being such a shallow idiot and not considering the fall out of being caught. You have to suppose that there are analysts writing papers about what will likely happen when they get caught, so the Director isn't paying attention to their own intel papers and projections. Fire him for being a fucking inept moron.
The rest of the world is barely surprised, and everyday Americans aren't educated enough to be outraged.
The recent Pew poll indicating a majority of Americans are okay with warrantless data aggregation is merely a sign of the times to come.
The supposed blowback from this revelation is barely a collective sigh, and front-page news-coverage already moved on to supposed chemical weapons in Syria and Iran's presidential election.
In other words, we're pretty much fucked.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
If you haven't connected the dots yet, it's simple.
They hoover down all the internet data, most of which crosses US Fibre and can be freely read. That's email, texts, VOIP, GPS, Maps, your photos, your videos. As US companies switched to https, that wasn't so useful. So they started an agenda of 'going dark', demanding CALEA II/UK 'Snoopers Charter' laws and using the secret courts to grant them direct access to Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple servers, 3 months at a time, using a power granted to the FBI, but used by the FBI on behalf of the NSA.
Sweden's FRA spying law, nobody could quite figure out why Sweden did that in 2008, but now we know the NSA started its program in 2007, a year before, its now clear:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRA_law
All that data together with all government data on you, goes into a central database, where it can be data mined and searched at whim of the US military, without a warrant. There are no limits and no checks on the access to that database. Reporters, politicians, competing generals, all had leaks on them recently. In Europe politicians seem to face leaks regularly.
The excuse given is terrorism, and the military man testifies how he won't sacrifice "one American life". As if someone put him in charge and he can decide to throw away the constitutional balance and replace it with this "one American life" test. Obama has so far killed 4 Americans in drone strikes, 3 Americans were killed at Boston. 3 is less than 4, so much for terrorism as the excuse.
Lots of new databases are springing up and NSA is working hard with leaks and lobbying to get hold of them. e.g. Europe is to switch to its own banking system next year, SEPA, watch the PR and smear battle unfold, which will ultimately lead to the EU signing over our SEPA bank data to the NSA, 'for our safety'.
And the Canadian military leader has confirmed a Canadian surveillance program, nobodies quite sure whether their spying agency is loyal to their own country, or to the USA military.
There's dark days ahead.
Is it too late for the NSA to spin this as just a huge misunderstanding?
I mean PRISM was obviously intended to be a redundant backup of the entire Internet.
It is obvious, but it's also something most of us suspected they were doing all along. The real question is why didn't they just admit to it from the start? Why keep it a secret from us if it's to protect us?
If you work for a corporation and its telling you they never back anything up and anything you delete is deleted forever and then you find out that they lied and everything any employee every did was secretly backed up for all eternity, this would change how you view that corporation. This would also change how the customers view that corporation which lies to it's own employees about it's practices.
This is similar to what the NSA has done. It has got caught lying to the American people. It tells the American people it exits to spy on foreigners, but applie deception tactics to the American people as if the American people themselves are the foreigners.
It's catch 22. They could have a valid reason to have kept this stuff secret but it's up to the NSA to explain their reasoning. The NSA also has to find a way to communicate better with the American people in such a way that the American people cannot disclose those secrets to the enemy. This might mean greater portions of the American people should be given enough of a clearance to know why the NSA does what it does and to make informed decisions in the voting booth.
How can the NSA expect the uninformed voter to make an informed decision if it keeps the voter in the dark? How can the congress make informed decisions if they are kept in the dark as well? The NSA needs to shed light on this. While I don't necessarily think leaking is the best way to shed light and promote discussion, if the NSA wasn't willing to have this discussion without it having to be leaked to the whole world then that is a problem with the NSA because this is a discussion we need to have.
Because the alternative didn't look all that different and so people went with the known evil.
There was a great diversity of primary candidates, but people ended up playing it safe. And our parties are pretty weak compared to parliamentary systems; just look at the wide range of votes on many issues.
Sure but then why didn't the US citizens throw out Obama after the 1st presidential term ? He didn't go to the White House for the second time of his own free will. Lazy, morally corrupt, couch potatoes american citizens voted this lier for a second term. So who the fuck is to blame eh ?
A 2 party system is no better than a 1 party system especially when the 2 sides agree on almost everything that has to do with fucking the american citizen.
You answered your own question... The only viable alternative was just as bad.
Although technically the people could vote for a third party, you could never get enough people sufficiently motivated or even aware of the third party without significant money and control over the mass media. Since the current system benefits those who have large amounts of money and/or own large media outlets that will never happen.
And a 2 party system is in many ways worse than a 1 party system. It gives the people a false sense that they have a choice which combined with control of the mass media is sufficient to keep a large majority of the population in the dark.
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Just because YOUR government is corrupt doesn't mean that all governments MUST be corrupt.
Well, unless you think your government is composed entirely of perfect beings (and what constitutes as "perfect" I don't know), there's a very high probability that it is corrupt at some level.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
The majority of Americans would be okay with forced re-education camps provided they were told they'd never be put into them.
I am John Hurt.
2nd amendment - sacred
4th amendment - meh...
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
you could never get enough people sufficiently motivated or even aware of the third party without significant money and control over the mass media.
If you continue not voting for third parties because of this, then you're the problem. Voting for 'evil' is not the solution to our problems. I'd feel like an absolute imbecile if I voting for either of the two main parties, so I'm not sure how other people can even stand themselves.
Third parties need not win in order to bring about some amount of change, either. If the two main parties see that many people are voting for third parties, they might decide to adopt some of the policies of the third parties in an effort to claim back some votes.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Trying to 'fix' the situation is unlikely to work.
A better strategy is accepting there will be failure, and building systems to cope.
A great example of this, quite fittingly, is the internet itself.
Accept that governments will work most of the time, understand they will fail some of the time. Keep your eyes open. Try and be cool. We are all in it together, despite the example set by some.
Invaders must die
If you actually thought that no one was looking into what you did then you deserved it. I've said it a hundred times and I'll say it again, privacy is dead! If you want privacy then give up the internet, give you your cell phone, give up you credit cards and basically fall off the grid. The NSA didn't deal the blow, the blow was dealt long before the big whistle was blown, it was every person who thought they have privacy on the internet. So how about now people listen and believe me when I say, YOU DON'T HAVE PRIVACY ON THE INTERNET!!! SO deal with it.
Too many Americans are too fucking stupid to give enough of a shit for these revelations to cause real change.
You have to remember, half the population have two digit IQs. And I haven't spoken to a single person IRL who isn't disgusted by what the NSA is doing. The only apologists I've seen are politicians, a few columnists, and anonymous people on the internet.
That said, there isn't a whole hell of a lot we can do but speak out loudly, especially to our elected "representatives".
Free Martian Whores!
Professors too have the right to be scaremongered into an unrealistic fear of terrorism.
Occam says they're better at math than that. However, they can be bought or threatened easily enough.
Free Martian Whores!
The UK is one of the countries involved in Echelon. The BBC is a government channel. They supposedly are independent but I doubt they forget who their paymaster is.
I'm hoping this is an issue everyone can finally agree on, but you're probably right. Besides, Fox News is only making an issue of this to bash Obama a bit. As soon as it looks like public support starts swinging towards actually ending this invasion of privacy, they'll go on the warpath to defend America against terrorists, and all my conservative friends will forget why they were upset about the program. They'll also deny Google, Microsoft, and friends the right to tell us what unspeakable acts the government forces them to do, and after a while, average Joe will even forget that there is massive government spying on Americans. It is the nature of most of us to want to believe in a higher authority without question, whether God or Country.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell