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Technology, Not Law, Limits Mass Surveillance

holy_calamity writes "U.S. citizens have historically been protected from government surveillance by technical limits, not legal ones, writes independent security researcher Ashkan Soltani at MIT Tech Review. He claims that recent leaks show that technical limits are loosening, fast, with data storage and analysis cheap and large Internet services taking care of data collection for free. 'Spying no longer requires following people or planting bugs, but rather filling out forms to demand access to an existing trove of information,' writes Soltani."

191 comments

  1. I don't know... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The fourth amendment seems pretty clear to me.

    1. Re:I don't know... by ArcadeMan · · Score: 2

      The 2nd amendment also seemed clear at the time

    2. Re:I don't know... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You may find, however, that the only thing ultimately protecting that fourth amendment are the technical impracticalities that would come with violating it more than the idea that the notion ought to be upheld.

    3. Re:I don't know... by ebno-10db · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The fourth amendment seems pretty clear to me.

      Unfortunately it's not when it comes to electronic communications.

      The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and 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.

      A phone call isn't clearly covered, and SCOTUS explicitly decided it wasn't in 1928, then reversed itself in 1967. That's also when they came up with the "reasonable expectation of privacy" test, which I always thought was reasonable. Of course 1967 was an era when the court thought its job was to defend the Bill of Rights, rather than play nitpicking legal games to create as many loopholes as possible.

      Don't bother trying to convince me that email, etc, should be covered by the 4th, as you'll be preaching to the choir. I don't give a damn what kind of legal games they play about you not owning the servers or storage medium. That's like saying that the 4th doesn't apply if you rent rather than own your home. My only point was that SCOTUS is free to play lots of games. My favorite is their recent Catch-22 nonsense, that you can't sue the government for a secret program violating your rights because you can't be sure they've been violated (of course not, it's a secret!). Maybe Snowden will release info on who has unlawfully been a surveillance target so they can sue.

    4. Re:I don't know... by shentino · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I wonder if you could sue the feds for spying on you, and use the lawsuit to get a subpoena against the federal agency in question. When the subpoena is inevitably challenged on grounds of national security, rebut that with the fact that your constitutional rights are provided by the constitution which supercedes any laws that make the information secret in the first place (supremacy clause).

      Of course, this is doomed to failure since the feds have shown they'll do whatever the hell they want to anyway.

    5. Re:I don't know... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or just hack into government computers and publish the hell out of everything you find.

    6. Re: I don't know... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It doesn't really matter if you own the servers or not. At this point they just cry wolf er terrorist and take anything they want... up to and including your life.

    7. Re: I don't know... by fazey · · Score: 1

      They have a little blackbox on every major DC's routers anyway. So its not like they cant setup an "intercept". For your data.

    8. Re:I don't know... by lightknight · · Score: 1

      Or not. To be honest, the strategies to remove a problematic government are numerous...in much the same way as the strategies to remove a human are numerous.

      There's the 'nice' approach, which is petitioning...and may or may not work. Then there's the 'you done fucked up' approach, which involves going in and manually removing the problem. Ultimately, the US government will decide whether or not we've crossed the line into the second approach...after all, everyone is watching to see what they do now that this NSA stuff (as well as others) is out in broad daylight. If it has gone overboard, at the moment it thinks it has won...well, that's usually when everything becomes unwoven.

      --
      I am John Hurt.
    9. Re:I don't know... by __aaltlg1547 · · Score: 1

      IANAL but your legal rationale seems sound. But good luck getting a court to agree that you have standing to sue since SCOTUS won't listen to reason. The only cure is replace Congress and have them impeach the current SCOTUS and replace them with people who take the 4th Amendment to mean what it says.

    10. Re:I don't know... by b4dc0d3r · · Score: 1

      No.

      This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.

      There is a tie among the Constitution, the Laws (aka Congress) and treaties (aka Congress). Break a federal law, and your argument goes out the window, since the supreme laws of the land include the one you broke. Of course, if you have Congress on your side, you have the advantage.

      You don't, and it's very unlikely that you will.

      Executive orders and such don't matter, or if they do it's because Congress made executive orders effectively have the force of law, and the Constitution is clear that executive power exists, but isn't really clear on what it is. In this case your Supreme Court may decide - but this is an unlikely scenario.

      Finally, unless you have some reasonable suspicion that spying has taken place - and not that you stand a good chance of being caught in the NSA dragnet at some point, statistically speaking - you aren't even going to get to the point of a subpoena challenge.

      Extremely unlikely, though not completely impossible.

    11. Re:I don't know... by shentino · · Score: 1

      Any federal law that contradicts the constitution is still unconstitutional, even without the supremacy clause (which you are correct that I miscited)

      This principle was established in Marbury v. Madison.

    12. Re:I don't know... by cundare · · Score: 1

      Well, the issue with pen registers was that a caller has no expectation of privacy regarding the duration, length, identification of the other party, etc., because the caller has already surrendered that information, both to the called party and to the phone company. This was consistent with a lot of law that existed when the SUpreme Court heard the case in the 1980s and here in NYS, for example, a person is in fact legally able to record any conversation of which that person is a part. In reality, people of course have expectatoins of privacy in electronic communications, but the question is whether such an expectation is "reasonable" simply because it's rooted in ignorance. I'd thing that, in a post-Snowden world, it will be tougher than ever to argue that we have reasonable expectations of privacy in any kind of computer-related transaction. That's the world we're inheriting and, to be honest, despite the tendency to whine like b's about it now, we're all at fault. This didn't happen overnight and if it's reached the point where it's too late to do anything about it -- which probably happened 35 years ago -- it's in part because too many of us have been too absorbed in non-issues like whether Apple is as evil as Microsoft, while the really important stuff just slipped on by...

    13. Re:I don't know... by anyGould · · Score: 1

      That's like saying that the 4th doesn't apply if you rent rather than own your home.

      Sadly, the courts are kinda leaning that way. There's also been a few cases where cops will patrol the hallways of your apartment building and then use whatever "evidence" they find in the "public space" and then bust down your door.

    14. Re:I don't know... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's like saying that the 4th doesn't apply if you rent rather than own your home.

      This is used as an incentive for home ownership. More wage slaves for the interest-paying treadmill.

      --
      Another fine opinion from The Fucking Psychopath®. You know, the one who dared to invoke the transcendent (i.e. Calvinism, Augustinianism, personal depravity, etc.) when explaining human behavior.

  2. Reality is stranger than humour by ArcadeMan · · Score: 5, Funny
    1. Re:Reality is stranger than humour by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The Onion has a disturbing way of doing this.

      It seems that advanced enough cynicism is indistinguishable from clairvoyance.

    2. Re:Reality is stranger than humour by ebno-10db · · Score: 1

      That's absurd - the NSA came up with Facebook.

    3. Re:Reality is stranger than humour by electrofelix · · Score: 1

      That video is hilarious, right up to the point where you realise there's a kind of creepy truth to the benefit social networking sites provide to the likes of the NSA.

  3. Yo Dawg I heard you like data by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So I built a giant communication network to track your giant communication network. Now you can archive your communications about archived communications.

    1. Re:Yo Dawg I heard you like data by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Haha! Metadata.

  4. U.S. Citizens have historically... by michael_rendier · · Score: 3, Insightful

    We've been told that we've been protected from such things, a la the constitution...yet if you go back into history, it's never really been seen by the gov't as a 'limit' to their power...they just make up a 'reason' why they needed to do it. Reasons why it's legal to do so. We have not been historically protected...we've been historically monitored, invaded and exploited for one reason or another in the name of national security and 'fighting enemies'...oh, and marketing. Just because there's not a dictator behind the Securitate, doesn't mean it's not being done behind the scenes.

    --
    There are three kinds of people in the world. Those that can count, and those that can't.
    1. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by meta-monkey · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You're correct, but it's gotten way, way worse in the past decade.

      The truly Orwellian thing about this nightmare isn't even so much the surveillance, but the wholesale redefinition of language. Plain English no longer means what plain English means, and we have traded rule of law for rule of lawyer.

      It's not torture, it's "extraordinary rendition for enhanced interrogation techniques."
      And of course you still have due process, it's "a process that is due, but not necessarily judicial."
      And you're not being jailed without trial. You're being "indefinitely detained."

      I would say we need a Constitutional Amendment that Congress shall make no law infringing upon your right to privacy, but without another amendment that says "no really, plain English means plain English" it wouldn't matter much. And they'd just twist that to mean "plain English in the context of this amendment means English which, plainly, means what we want it to mean."

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
    2. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by future+assassin · · Score: 2

      Just because there's not a dictator behind the Securitate, doesn't mean it's not being done behind the scenes.

      But there are dictators already, they are the corporations who are rewriting US laws and circumventing the constitution in their favour. American is now under corporate law just loose enough to make the peaons think they're still free.

      --
      by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
    3. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      More like we have historically assumed that "freedom" was defined by our own sensibilities which, naturally, are "common".

      In fact, our founding documents are full of mushy sentiments, onto which any reader can project his or her own convictions about what is right and necessary. This is as true for the average citizen as it is for politician or a spy. It is by design,.

    4. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by meta-monkey · · Score: 2

      Agreed. We should rewrite the Constitution in Navajo.

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
    5. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by Rockoon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But there are dictators already, they are the corporations who are rewriting US laws and circumventing the constitution in their favour.

      Stop apologizing for the politicians.

      Corporations do not write or rewrite law, politicians do. Politicians sell the service of lawmaking to corporations.

      Clearly you dont care.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
    6. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by Culture20 · · Score: 1

      The truly Orwellian thing about this nightmare isn't even so much the surveillance, but the wholesale redefinition of language. Plain English no longer means what plain English means

      That's Patriot talk, consumer. Prepare for extreme reeducation after reclassification as an imminent threat.

    7. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by steelfood · · Score: 2

      It's Newspeak, the latest and most popular trend in American English.

      --
      "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
    8. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by ebno-10db · · Score: 4, Informative

      The truly Orwellian thing about this nightmare isn't even so much the surveillance, but the wholesale redefinition of language.

      Orwell's classic essay on the subject, Politics and the English Language.

    9. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      We've been told that we've been protected from such things, a la the constitution..

      There's the error, right there. We can't be protected; protection isn't something that is done to the citizenry. We protect. Or we don't.

      The constitution is a document, a way of informing newbies of our intent so they can better predict how we will react if they try to pass certain types of law.

      Unfortunately, we haven't kept the documentation up-to-date. Most of us want there to be limitations on what people are allowed to say without punishment, most of us want to limit citizens bearing arms, most of us think government should have broad powers whenever investigating crimes (or possible crimes) of sufficient severity, most of us think the government should punish certain suspected crimes without bothering with unnecessary "formality" trials, most of us see silence as an admission of guilt, and most of us can't even imagine how the 10th amendment expresses an idea that makes logical sense (what powers could ever be neither prohibited nor delegated?).

      We all know this stuff, but we haven't written it down, or "ratified" it as the old 1789 egghead pedants called it. So we have an undocumented constitution.

      You can make excellent arguments for why Our opinion on these matters is short-sighted and foolish, but most of us aren't listening to your arguments nor are we hearing them elsewhere, so We remain unpersuaded. The constitution itself is a sort of an attempt to establish a religion, and is a statement of dogma. It just happens to be one that We don't believe or practice. We prove this ever other year, in our voting booths.

    10. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by king+neckbeard · · Score: 1
      Since Orwell has already ben brought up, I might as well throw this in:

      The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

      --
      This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
    11. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We prove this ever other year, in our voting booths.

      Well, I certainly don't. Go live in North Korea and see the result of your thinking.

    12. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by Joiseybill · · Score: 5, Informative
      Agreed (+1 parent) .. and also agree with later post about semantics/ navajo translation.

      We BELIEVED there was privacy, because the Government told us about the protection, and the media supported them. The olde-tyme radio cops got away with what society thought was fair.. today, Law and Order:(n) or CSI:(m) would at least make a 'big deal' about a sketchy search without PC, or when handling a suspect who hasn't been properly Mirandized.
      Until relatively recent credit card legislation, citizens had no expectation of privacy against data collection ( selective surveillance) by non-government agencies. This surveillance has been happening since before most of us were even born. It is not new.. but the media has ignited the flames of FUD, and the methods for collecting, analyzing , and distributing information have grown exponentially as a result of computers and the changes they bring to society.

      In 1897 or so, S&H Green stamps started a " marketing loyalty program". Your grocer ( gas station, Sears & Roebuck) could influence your purchases by adjusting the 'bonus levels' of green stamps you received in return for a purchase. When they chose to, they could also watch meta-trends, or even specific consumer behavior changes, because all the stamps were serial-numbered. S&H, when they received the redeemed booklets, could measure the effectiveness.. which retailers were distributing more, which customers were collecting & returning more, how many just got lost or never filled a book? The company changed over time.. and never really returned to the giant stature they had after the 1970's inflation/stagflation.. but they still exist, and offer web-based purchase premiums.

      Around 1920, Al Neilsen got tired with his day job, and decided to create A.C. Neilsen ; to rate how well radio advertisers were doing. The company is still around today, trying to measure DVR and Netflix data, too. This was probably one of the original "crowdsourced" industries.. I mean, if you get "selected" today, they only pay you a dollar a week - if your data is on-time.

      Criminal records, property records, articles of incorporation, lawsuits.. all were considered public record at one level or another. I was taught how to search all that paper at my local County Courthouse back in the mid- 1980s. At the time, only criminal records actually required that you produce ID and a legitimate reason to ask.
      My sister was in an auto accident last summer. Before the local police were ready with a report " ...10 business days, lady..."; she received a letter from an attorney - with a copy of the accident report, asking if she needed any legal advice or representation. Also, NJ State law about "Red Light Cameras" requires that the footage recorded is destroyed within 60 days - if nothing is illegal, or no charges filed; and within 90 days after the matter is settled ( if you are charged, and just pay the ticket) . Another case of nobody watching.. search YouTube and find at least 5, probably a dozen NJ Red Light Cam videos.. posted as marketing from the camera company! Big brother ( d/b/a private contractor) is watching, recording, and had their fingers crossed when they promised to destroy the footage.

      It was around 1902-1904 that the Northeast's major Life & Medical insurers got together and built what we now call the MIB ( Medical Information Bureau). Any insurer.. and lots of other "qualified participants" ( =$ ?) can add, edit, or search these records about every one of us. Every time an insurance company paid a claim (or messed up a claim) medically, that info was added to the collection. Today, we just call this a database.
      Again.. no protection here. Last time I checked, the MIB was voluntarily adopting a model similar to credit reporting agencies.. they would provide an individual with a personal report ( minus trade-secrets and scoring), and give the individual some righ

    13. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's a good essay, but the horrible OCR job is such a shame. It's disgusting that they couldn't go through the immense trouble of reading and editing such a short essay before posting it.

    14. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by meta-monkey · · Score: 1

      Thank you for that. I had never read it, and just did so. Orwell was prescient.

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
    15. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by meta-monkey · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They'd never call it "Patriot talk." Remember, "Patriots" are the brave men and women who spy on everything you do to keep this great nation and its people safe.

      Other awful problem of the state of the language: we've pre-Godwined ourselves. We're so ingrained with the idea that comparing something to nazi germany means that you have lost perspective and your argument has devolved into flinging hyperbolic insults, and you have therefore lost. People do not understand the literal definition of Fascism anymore, and as Orwell said in Politics and the English Language (relinked from a response to my original post by a fine poster), "The word fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies 'something not desirable.'"

      In fact, "Italian Fascism promotes a corporatist economic system whereby employer and employee syndicates are linked together in corporative associations to collectively represent the nation's economic producers and work alongside the state to set national economic policy."

      Doesn't that sound like someplace we know? Where through "regulatory capture" (a fancy way of saying "industry writes government regulation to their benefit"), and "campaign contributions" (i.e., "bribes") the government and industry are basically one in the same?

      Yes, that's America. But you can't say it! Because if you do, you lose. "Well that's ridiculous! I don't see any dictator marching Jews into ovens!"

      You can't even criticize the system of our government, because the word that properly describes our system of government is no longer allowed in public debate. Orwell would be...not proud...sadly resigned?

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
    16. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's now interpreted in Jiddish. You just need to convert and you will understand. Third door is for circumcision.

    17. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "They'd never call it "Patriot talk." Remember, "Patriots" are the brave men and women who spy on everything you do to keep this great nation and its people safe."

      A friend recently linked me to an article about this very thing. For a change this is not Godwin's Law; this is actually relevant.

      The reason it was possible for Hitler and the Nazis to rise to power, was because the populace mistakenly believed "patriotism" was not loyalty to The People or their country, but to their government. Big Mistake.

      Patriotism is loyalty to your family and your neighbors, not to Barack Obama.

    18. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by Darinbob · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The constitution is vague. We should rewrite it in Lojban to avoid all arguments about the meaning. Lojban as the advantage of having no native speakers and thus does not promote any one ethnic group.

    19. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      go back to your fuckin hugbox you fuckin aspie!!

    20. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by Culture20 · · Score: 1

      Remember, "Patriots" are the brave men and women who spy...

      Unh uh. "Patriots" are the teabagger scum who need to list the political leanings of their extended family members and friends for the IRS so that the rest of us can be safe.

    21. Re: U.S. Citizens have historically... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No... our county clerk charges by the day, week, month, or by the page, depending on how much you want to fork over up front. Access to "public" records is one of the county's more lucrative money makers. Almost as good as mental "health" related services.

    22. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by mooingyak · · Score: 2

      A friend recently linked me to an article about this very thing. For a change this is not Godwin's Law; this is actually relevant.

      Godwin's law does not preclude relevancy.

      --
      William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
    23. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Did you know that the Spanish Inquisition (you didn't expect them, nobody does) had Rules about torture? They did. About when it was appropriate to use and when it was to stop. Of course, it got stretched over time, as it always does. In fact, the US definition of torture (or whatever they call it this week) starts where the Inquisition's Rules said it was to stop. Try that one on for size, eh.

      Then there's the whole "you're not human, so no human rights for you!" shtick. No, I don't care that some of those guys went terrorist after release, as some American Thinkers have ex post facto argued as sufficient justification--they may very well have radicalised in the umpteen years they were stuck there. Can't blame someone for becoming what you made them become. The USA made the first move in rounding up lots of people, some of them now proven innocent, then simply depriving them of even the most basic rights, and keeping them in limbo for well over a decade. That ment the USA irretrievably lost the moral high ground as well as the argument, right there and then.

      And we haven't even started about the rest of the secret prisons. And the sneaking around the laws they hadn't outright flouted yet by use of private companies like blackwater (then xe services, now "academi"). And, and, and.

      Another interesting parallel is the torture and "vanishing" of lots of Latin American citizens, usually by USA-backed totalitarian regimes forcibly replacing the democratically chosen governments that had the audacity to care for their people. For socialism equals communism. It's come home to roost. Fuck Yeah.

    24. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by lightknight · · Score: 1

      Nonsense. Let's write it in all known languages, and make all interpretations authoritative.

      --
      I am John Hurt.
    25. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by hedwards · · Score: 1

      Politicians don't write the laws, they take the laws that the lobbyists give them and then merge them with what the other lobbyists give them and then amend them with amendments that by and large were created by lobbyists and vote on that mess.

      You don't seriously think that these hundred page monstrosities are the result of politicians' staffs writing them, do you?

    26. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by stenvar · · Score: 1

      No, but politicians approve those laws. And they approve those laws because voters reelect them even though they do. In different words, if you reelect Obama, don't complain that he goes a-hunting after Snowden, starts wars, causes racial divisiveness, or gives billions to his rich buddies and donors because that's the kind of politician he showed himself to be during the first term.

    27. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by bfandreas · · Score: 1

      Well, take for instance the massive GCHQ snooping effort. What they did was perfectly legal based on laws from the mid 90ies. Now 20 years on those laws prove not to be sufficient because technical limitations that had held the storage of data gained by massive trawling in check are simply gone. The only effect the recent revelations had in the UK is that Theresa May may give up on her Snooper's Charter for the time being. Apart from The Guardian everybody else seems to be hunky-dory.

      Meanwhile in the US the biggest discussion seems to be the size of Snowden's girlfriends tits and why he did betray his country. And who had lied to the Congress. I see very few headlines regarding the NSA using GCHQ data to circumvent the "not spy on our own people without cause" thing. It's all focussed on the messenger. Not on the message.


      Meanwhile in Germany...
      People took to the street a couple of years ago when some politico tried to push telco meta-data storage through legislation. Not by the dozens, by the thousands. Not for just a weekend, but for months. As a result there is very strong anti-snooping legislation in Germany and the minister of justice is one of the strongest pro-privacy advocates in the country.

      tl;dr:
      You reap what you sow.


      As a little brouhahaha on top of the brouhaha German federal prosecutors(as they are required to do) are currently trying to figure out who to drag into court over this whole thing. Not based on privacy laws but over cold war anti spying legislation which was intentionally vague as to make it easy to lock up them damn red spies. Those laws are cold war carbon copies of US laws. As in aiding and abetting foreign powers to the detriment of the state.

      --
      20 minutes into the future
    28. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 0

      "Godwin's law does not preclude relevancy."

      Yes it does. Otherwise it would be a tautology.

    29. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by serviscope_minor · · Score: 2

      No it doesn't.

      Goodwin's law merely states that as the length of the thread increases the probability of comparison of a poster to the Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    30. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by Rockoon · · Score: 1

      Politicians don't write the laws, they take the laws that the lobbyists give them and then merge them with what the other lobbyists give them and then amend them with amendments that by and large were created by lobbyists and vote on that mess.

      Another apologist, I see.

      Clearly you will never hold a politician accountable. You hate corporations that much, eh? Fuck the fact that the politician enables it, benefits from it, and encourages it... no sir, its those evil corporations and their evil lobby groups that the politician gladly sells his services to.. its their fault that someone is selling a service to them, right?

      Wake the fuck up.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
    31. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by pantaril · · Score: 1

      Corporations do not write or rewrite law, politicians do. Politicians sell the service of lawmaking to corporations.

      Clearly you dont care.

      It seems to me like majority of US voters who continue to vote for republicans or democrats don't care.

      Too bad that majority of people base their voting decision on election campaign paid by the corporations and lobbyists. In this sense, GP is right.

    32. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      wait 'till 2020, then Project Gutenberg is allowed to do a proper job (70 years post mortem auctoris unless Mickey comes of age again)

    33. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by geminidomino · · Score: 2
    34. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Go fuck yourself.

      Precisely where did I let them off the hook for passing bad bills into law?

    35. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by hedwards · · Score: 1

      Causes racial divisiveness? The President didn't cause racial divisiveness, that was folks like you. He's black, and racism existed well before his parents were born.

    36. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by Rockoon · · Score: 1

      The moment you tried to blame anyone but the politicians.

      The blame lies 100% with the politicians. Nobody else is to blame. No corporations are to blame. No lobby groups are to blame. Only the politicians are selling laws.

      Wake the fuck up.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
    37. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Amazingly, something like racism can have multiple causes. Obama was elected to reduce it, yet he has inflamed and contributed to it.

      As for your accusation of racism against me without knowing anything about me, it just shows what a bigoted person you are yourself.

    38. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 0

      I know what it says. Sorry you didn't follow the logic.

    39. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 0

      I should amend my previous reply.

      No, it doesn't preclude relevance, but it very strongly implies irrelevance. After all, if it is relevant to the discussion, then Godwin's law approaches being a tautology; there is no point to it anymore.

    40. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 0

      Looks like I've been hit by "vindictive mystery modder" again.

    41. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by anyGould · · Score: 2

      No, but politicians approve those laws. And they approve those laws because voters reelect them even though they do.

      It's cute that you think that politicians worry about voters more than six months before re-election. It doesn't take a lot of economics to see where a politician's loyalties must, by definition, lie.

      I live in a medium-sized city in Canada. About a million people, nothing big. To make a run for city council here costs $50-60 thousand dollars. (More if you want to be mayor). That's roughly a year's salary at a pretty good job. Since most people can't afford to spend a year's salary at the shot of winning an election, you get people to donate to you. And the rich people who can afford to throw thousands of dollars at you... expect you to do certain things.

      Scale up to provincial/state or federal elections, and everything becomes more expensive. (Mother Jones says it can cost half a million dollars for your first Senate race). Do you know anyone who can put a dent in half a million dollars who *doesn't* want some quo to go with the quid pro?

      Politicians can be as popular as they want to be - without the money they won't win. Which means that the people who supply the money are far more influential than the voters.

    42. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by stenvar · · Score: 1

      I live in a medium-sized city in Canada. About a million people, nothing big. To make a run for city council here costs $50-60 thousand dollars. (More if you want to be mayor). That's roughly a year's salary at a pretty good job. Since most people can't afford to spend a year's salary at the shot of winning an election, you get people to donate to you. And the rich people who can afford to throw thousands of dollars at you... expect you to do certain things.

      It's cute that you think politics and campaign donations work that way, but they really don't. For one thing, most donations don't come from "rich people" or even "corporations", they come from non-profits, unions, and other non-corporate lobbies.

      Politicians can be as popular as they want to be - without the money they won't win. Which means that the people who supply the money are far more influential than the voters.

      It's no great mystery how this works. The first priority of a politician is to make their voters happy, the second priority to make their donors happy, and doing the right thing has the lowest priority. Since most voters actually don't care about most decisions either way, usually the donors come off best in the end.

    43. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by hedwards · · Score: 1

      Oh please, the President hasn't caused any racism. He did give a focus to the pre-existing racism, but he did not cause it. The fact that you're accusing him of that strongly implies that you are in fact racist.

      As for me, I'm not a bigot, I'm just not interested in playing along as you try and pretend you're not one.

    44. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by anyGould · · Score: 1

      It's cute that you think politics and campaign donations work that way, but they really don't. For one thing, most donations don't come from "rich people" or even "corporations", they come from non-profits, unions, and other non-corporate lobbies.

      My local billionaire would disagree with you - he (I'm sorry, him and 16 of his friends and family) contributed several hundred thousand dollars (or, $30,000 *each*) in the last election.

      It's no great mystery how this works. The first priority of a politician is to make their voters happy, the second priority to make their donors happy, and doing the right thing has the lowest priority. Since most voters actually don't care about most decisions either way, usually the donors come off best in the end.

      I'll agree on the low priority right thing, but it's rare to see a politician who will side with a voter over a donor IMO.

    45. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by stenvar · · Score: 1

      You're just reiterating common beliefs and anecdotes. Go look at some data.

    46. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by anyGould · · Score: 1

      Sure thing - here's the 2012 US election data.

      Even Obama, the "grassroots" candidate, got about 70% of his money from "large individual contributions". (And before the haters start a-hatin', Romney clocked 80% of his cash from big sugar daddies, so he got nothing to talk about.)

      Are you really, with a straight face, tell me that if Microsoft or Google (Obama donors #2 and 3 respectively) call up for a meeting, Obama's not going to take their call? (And anyone want to guess why all those bankers backed Romney?)

    47. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by stenvar · · Score: 1

      Are you really, with a straight face, tell me that if Microsoft or Google (Obama donors #2 and 3 respectively) call up for a meeting, Obama's not going to take their call?

      Do you even bother to read what you cite? That table does not list any donations from Microsoft or Google as companies, it lists individual donations from people and their families who happen to be working at those companies, plus a small number of PACs affiliated with those companies. The maximum donation for any individual or PAC is $2500 (large donation) or $200 (small donation).

      Yeah, Microsoft obviously represents thousands of politically active Democrats, so I would hope that Obama listens what they have to say (which may or may not coincide with what their management or their stockholders want); that's what democratically elected representatives are supposed to do: listen to their supporters and voters. Where do you see the problem?

    48. Re:U.S. Citizens have historically... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      .we've been historically monitored, invaded and exploited for one reason or another in the name of national security and 'fighting enemies'

      Honestly, most people did not mind that. The problem came in with the FBI gaining access to this information and using it for normal law enforcement purposes. I offered my life to keep this country free. I am willing to offer my privacy towards that as well even if it is creepy as hell.

      I am NOT willing to offer up my privacy in the name of law and order though. Fuck. That. Shit.

  5. Why does this need someone from MIT to point out? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It was obvious to me for a while already. And it's not just surveillance either: Most of the protection from government in general always was due to it being slow and ponderous. Both because the founding fathers liked it that way, but also because this was pretty much a given due to the properties of large organisations, poor communication, and the slowness of paperwork. No longer.

    The obvious consequences really ought to be obvious to everyone. Why do we need academics to point it out to us? Can't we do anything ourselves any longer?

  6. Going off the grid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So if I wanted to disappear I should hire someone to maintain my digital presence whilst I slip away to avoid raising suspicion? I wonder how many currently monitored intelligence targets are actually drones tweeting, texting and LOLing on forums? What if this post was authored by a captcha-cracking script?

    1. Re: Going off the grid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Slashdot mobile doesn't have captchas. Tell your bot script to send android in the browser identification string.

  7. Re:Why does this need someone from MIT to point ou by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nope, and that's the way corporations like it!

  8. If they're monitoring our every move... by Nutria · · Score: 4, Interesting

    why didn't they notice that the Boston Bombers were planning on setting off bombs in public?

    Either:
    (a) they're not a Panopticon, or
    (b) they're massively incompetent, or
    (c) they don't care what happens to the Plebs.

    In any of the cases, we don't actually have anything to worry about.

    --
    "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    1. Re:If they're monitoring our every move... by Rockoon · · Score: 4, Interesting

      (d) allowing stuff like the Boston bombings to happen gives them an excuse to tight their grip

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
    2. Re:If they're monitoring our every move... by vux984 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In any of the cases, we don't actually have anything to worry about.

      Quite the opposite really; it means the ONLY thing this apparatus is effective at is selectively abusing people.

      In other words it won't stop any crimes, but will be used to perpetrate them.

    3. Re:If they're monitoring our every move... by Culture20 · · Score: 1

      (d) it's not about tracking terrorists or criminals, but instead tracking political trends/opponents or getting a list for gas chambers. Yeah, I Godwined. Big whoop, wanna fight about it?

    4. Re:If they're monitoring our every move... by Nutria · · Score: 1

      gives them an excuse to tight their grip

      "They" the NSA, or "They" the politicians?

      --
      "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    5. Re:If they're monitoring our every move... by Nutria · · Score: 1

      but will be used to perpetrate them.

      When? The murky always-future?

      --
      "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    6. Re:If they're monitoring our every move... by Rockoon · · Score: 1

      Yes.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
    7. Re:If they're monitoring our every move... by SJHiIlman · · Score: 1

      Any time there exists individuals in the government who aren't perfect beings; in other words: always.

    8. Re:If they're monitoring our every move... by Nutria · · Score: 2

      Non-NSA methods of Panoptical (Facebook, for example, and toll road "tags", credit cards, cell phone companies, Google, etc, etc) social control are doing a darned fine job, than you very much, of tightening the politicians' grip on the country.

      So, give me another reason for worrying about the NSA.

      --
      "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    9. Re:If they're monitoring our every move... by Nutria · · Score: 1

      That's a murky non-answer.

      --
      "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    10. Re:If they're monitoring our every move... by vux984 · · Score: 1

      When? The murky always-future?

      Anytime someone is improperly on a terrorist watch list, or no-fly list, or was denied a passport, or denied security clearance, or denied entry into the country as a result of this apparatus.

      Definitely it happens in the murky future. Its probably already happened several times over the last several years.

      For example, we don't know how those no-fly lists get made up, or how people get on them. I can't prove this apparatus is responsible, but you can't prove it isn't.

      The people in a position to prove it one way or the other are still trying to come to terms with the fact that we even now know the apparatus exists.

      We're miles away from them coming clean on what they've actually done with it so far. I doubt we'll ever know.

    11. Re:If they're monitoring our every move... by SJHiIlman · · Score: 1

      Do you really need a specific answer of when abuses might happen? Because you shouldn't, and no one can give you such a thing. But if you know even a bit about history, you'll know that it's probably not a good idea to give a human access to such a ridiculous amount of information; such a power will be abused.

      I suppose that's another "murky non-answer," but only a ridiculously naive person would conclude that abuses won't happen.

    12. Re:If they're monitoring our every move... by Nutria · · Score: 1

      Anytime someone is improperly on a terrorist watch list, or no-fly list, or was denied a passport, or denied security clearance, or denied entry into the country as a result of this apparatus.

      Finally, a viable answer.

      Now: do the Snowden releases mention whether the NSA Panopticon is used to populate those lists?

      --
      "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    13. Re:If they're monitoring our every move... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because you shouldn't, and no one can give you such a thing.

      At least for future abuses.

    14. Re:If they're monitoring our every move... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      (d) The DoJ is protecting muslims from being investigated. In the case of the boston bomber, the police were blocked by the DoJ from investigating beforehand, and had to wait several days to even get a pass through from them to investigate the mosque they went to.

      It's a classic case of 1984. Some are more equal than others.

    15. Re:If they're monitoring our every move... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      (f) they were preoccupied watching their real target. The people.

    16. Re:If they're monitoring our every move... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Didn't they already use this on Gen. Patreaus?

      My guess for when is about 6 months ago, at least. Every time someone starts giving "the party" problems its time to dig into his email and phone calls, leak a little info to the press and just like that they are discredited and provide cover for whatever other scandal is bothering "the party" at the time.

    17. Re:If they're monitoring our every move... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      (d) The DoJ is protecting muslims from being investigated. In the case of the boston bomber, the police were blocked by the DoJ from investigating beforehand, and had to wait several days to even get a pass through from them to investigate the mosque they went to.

      It's a classic case of 1984. Some are more equal than others.

      It is to prevent another petroleum embargo. This is the current income source for the elites starting in 2003.

      --
      Another fine opinion from The Fucking Psychopath®.

    18. Re:If they're monitoring our every move... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://www.mediafreedominternational.org/2011/02/09/no-justice-for-victims-raped-in-custody/

    19. Re:If they're monitoring our every move... by SJHiIlman · · Score: 1

      I thought we were talking about future abuses... As for past abuses of power that happened in the past, I already mentioned that there were many.

      Really, though, he should be able to think of a few on his own.

    20. Re:If they're monitoring our every move... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In any of the cases, we don't actually have anything to worry about.

      What kind of logic is this? The fact that the surveillance doesn't give is perfect safety isn't evidence that the information it yields isn't at least somewhat effective or can't be abused. That point right there pretty much debunks your entire post, since your argument hinges on all-or-nothing logic.

    21. Re:If they're monitoring our every move... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      (c) they don't care what happens to the Plebs.

      In any of the cases, we don't actually have anything to worry about.

      Do you not think that (c) is something to worry about? The people in charge don't care what happens to the plebs, and they will happily cause millions of plebs to die horribly if it is profitable.

    22. Re:If they're monitoring our every move... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When? The murky always-future?

      In the past, present and future, you ignoramus.

      Edward Snowden did not need to travel into the future to find the government perpetrating these crimes.

    23. Re:If they're monitoring our every move... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      (d) The DoJ is protecting muslims from being investigated. In the case of the boston bomber, the police were blocked by the DoJ from investigating beforehand, and had to wait several days to even get a pass through from them to investigate the mosque they went to.

      It's a classic case of 1984. Some are more equal than others.

      It is to prevent another petroleum embargo. This is the current income source for the elites starting in 2003

      BINGO !!

      But you got the year wrong, though --- the whole thing started way before Desert Shield / Desert Storm
       
      To those of us who have purposely extracted ourselves from our own beloved country, the United States of America, in order to monitor what has been transpired, Desert Storm was nothing less than a mercenary war, - with our American troops dying for their paymasters from Riyadh

    24. Re:If they're monitoring our every move... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes. I find this most likely, since... well.. just around the dates of the boston bombs, there was a vote in congress regarding your CISPA bill. So it could be to withdraw attention from the vote or even to try and motivate the bill.

  9. I'd like to see technology work for the people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Just as lack of technology can prevent mass surveillance, use of technology can as well. As always, there are good and bad uses. Just as our government keeps secrets from us, we can keep secrets from them through proper use of encryption and not implicitly trusting service providers (like Google, Microsoft etc) with all our data.

    There is no reason, aside from legacy compatibility (which can and have been solved!) for your email to not be end to end encrypted. There is no need for social networks. There are other technologies that can meet those needs in a distributed and secure manner (sure, you lose ad targeting info to pay for hosting, but I don't care). Web browsing should be end to end encrypted. If you need anonymity, you can use Tor (for hosting / and or client side). Chat programs are easy to secure.

    Cell phone meta-data is a harder target. If you force some separation between the parties who provide connections to the network (towers/cells) from those which identify customers, and those that manage the routing and ISP services for the cells/towers, protection could be at least drastically improved. At the very least, when latency is not critical, you can still hide what you are accessing through Tor, and you can always hide the content with encryption.

    Also, we can attack the problem from the legislative and regulatory side as well. Impose massive fines (and maybe some jail time) for any companies (or individuals) logging and/or distributing such information. Yes: make collection, even if kept locally, illegal in many cases. Theres no reason for my ISP to collect traffic analysis details, so ban logging all but a specific white list of things they really need (not want). Same for cell providers etc. Then compensate individuals who report violations with a portion of the fine.

    I'd love to see a ban on ISPs from being in other businesses to remove the biases and make regulating them easier.

    We can improve this situation. Its not going to be easy, but we can make progress, both technically and legislatively.

    1. Re:I'd like to see technology work for the people by Culture20 · · Score: 1

      There is no reason, aside from legacy compatibility (which can and have been solved!) for your email to not be end to end encrypted.

      There's a very good reason for that. I work with above-average IQ people, but they can't be bothered to spend the time to figure out how gpg/pgp works. And people of average and below 100 IQ can't be expected to understand it.

    2. Re:I'd like to see technology work for the people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't know the details of HTTPS, TLS, SSL or even IMAP orPOP. I can use them just fine though. We need to get support for decently secure systems (including email) to be more user friendly. That does not mean they have to understand how it works. Secure by default even for the ignorant is what we should aim for. I know plenty of people with no clue how DNS, IP, TCP or HTTP work than can browse the web and even do online banking over HTTPS just fine.

    3. Re:I'd like to see technology work for the people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Impending leak: NSA has a cryptanalysis device capable of cracking public key cryptography.

    4. Re: I'd like to see technology work for the people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The same ones that fall for spoofed banking sites? Phishing scams? Cold calls from Microsoft regarding the malware infection seen coming from the home PC?

    5. Re: I'd like to see technology work for the people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The same ones that fall for spoofed banking sites? Phishing scams? Cold calls from Microsoft regarding the malware infection seen coming from the home PC?

      No actually. I know people who have a trivial understanding of computers, but know not to fall for such scams (at least most of them, so far). And really, knowing the details of HTTPS isn't how you protect people from Phishing scams. Just like knowing the details of pgp isn't how you protect someone from having Google leak their email to the NSA. Using sane software thats properly setup (by default) and minimal training is sufficient. Sure its not perfect, but it helps a huge amount!

      The educated will need to provide said software, and will need to convince people to use it (or at least not use the deeply insecure alternatives nearly everyone uses now). Its an ongoing process. HTTPS is doing well, DNSSEC is on the way, Tor has made great progress as far as being user friendly (No there yet for many uses, but getting closer). We need to continue the push for secure services and get people to favor them over insecure ones, both among the advanced users, as well as the naive ones.

    6. Re:I'd like to see technology work for the people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Impending leak: NSA has a cryptanalysis device capable of cracking public key cryptography.

      That would be bad, but if Perfect Forward Secrecy is properly employed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_forward_secrecy ) it would not compromise most messages unless they are MITM attacking everything live which is unlikely (and noticeable). Attacks on signatures would be a major issue though, but large scale use of such tactics would be really obvious.

    7. Re:I'd like to see technology work for the people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... Web browsing should be end to end encrypted ...

      Yes. But how do you tell a web server your public encryption key? What brand of encryption hardware do you use?

    8. Re:I'd like to see technology work for the people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There is no reason, aside from legacy compatibility (which can and have been solved!) for your email to not be end to end encrypted.

      Pointless when the next Windows/OS X/iOS/Android/Ubuntu security update will include code to upload all your and your recipients' encryption keys. For your own safety of course.

      You can't compete with an amoral government, particularly one that has "national security letter" access to your OS vendor.

  10. Enough by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Will you morons stop using the title as the beginning of your comment?

    1. Re:Enough by Deadstick · · Score: 1

      Is that your takeaway from this issue?

  11. Part of a social phase change by Paul+Fernhout · · Score: 4, Interesting

    http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
    "Likewise, even United States three-letter agencies like the NSA and the CIA, as well as their foreign counterparts, are becoming ironic institutions in many ways. Despite probably having more computing power per square foot than any other place in the world, they seem not to have thought much about the implications of all that computer power and organized information to transform the world into a place of abundance for all. Cheap computing makes possible just about cheap everything else, as does the ability to make better designs through shared computing. ...
    There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all."

    Going forward, there are many other implications of trends from "better, faster, cheaper". We should think about the positive trends and try to help amplify them. Related suggestions by me in areas of collective intelligence for mutual intrinsic security, space settlement, and health sensemaking:
    http://www.phibetaiota.net/2011/09/paul-fernhout-open-letter-to-the-intelligence-advanced-programs-research-agency-iarpa/
    http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/SSI_Fernhout2001_web.html
    https://www.changemakers.com/morehealth/entries/health-sensemaking

    Or, read "The Skills of Xanadu" for ideas from the 1950s by Theodore Sturgeon which helped inspire Ted Nelson and hypertext and so the world wide web:
    http://books.google.com/books?id=wpuJQrxHZXAC&pg=PA51&lpg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false

    Or look to groups like the Maker community or sustainable technology community inventing new ways of local subsistence.

    Something I wrote thirteen years ago to Doug Engelbart's Unrev-II mailing list, and we are still more-or-less following predicted exponential trends:
    "[unrev-II] Singularity in twenty to forty years?"
    http://www.dougengelbart.org/colloquium/forum/discussion/0126.html
    "Below are six "explosive" technology trends that all appear to culminate in around twenty years. Even if some of them don't pan out, the others will revolutionize our world (for good or bad). ...
    You may argue the dates -- ten years for some, forty for others. You may point out Y2K didn't melt things down, that AI researchers predicted AIs by now, that fusion power was supposed to be here by now, etc. And you would be right to be skeptical. My point is that these are trends in many different areas -- any one of which would make this world radically different. Together, they spell awesome change -- in economics, politics, lifestyle, relationships, and values.
    It is quite likely we are heading for a singularity in

    --
    A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
    1. Re:Part of a social phase change by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh it's not paradigm shift anymore? It's "phase change"? jesus tittyfucking buzzword christ........

    2. Re: Part of a social phase change by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Holy shit, dude, it's a
      comment, not a book.

    3. Re:Part of a social phase change by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fuck you. Obama knows what he's doing? Where's your degree? Where's your being voted as president? All you white fucks have attacked every move he's made since the beginning. You're all scared little cunts. Go have Paula Deen serve you up another pork sandwich you fuckers.

    4. Re:Part of a social phase change by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All you white fucks have attacked every move he's made since the beginning.

      This country is full of racists but I'm pretty sure every president has people picking apart every tiny detail of their behavior.

    5. Re:Part of a social phase change by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Lordie, can I get a room in your ivory tower? It must be awfully nice there without having to worry about enough food, drinkable water, breathable air, or energy for personal and family needs. None of those are "free", nor will they be.

      David Brin wrote science fiction: Even he acknowledged basic limitations of living habitats, energy, and food for his cultures.

    6. Re:Part of a social phase change by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fuck you. Obama knows what he's doing? Where's your degree? Where's your being voted as president? All you white fucks have attacked every move he's made since the beginning. You're all scared little cunts. Go have Paula Deen serve you up another pork sandwich you fuckers.

      Americans....... you're so focused on peoples skin colour. Get a life losers, your country sucks and so does your leader.

    7. Re:Part of a social phase change by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      James P. Hogan cites Velikovsky on Ancient Astronauts and W. Dembski on "Intelligent Design". I'd say he has about as much scientific credibity as a Scientologist.

      AC

    8. Re:Part of a social phase change by stenvar · · Score: 1

      Despite probably having more computing power per square foot than any other place in the world, they [the three letter agencies] seem not to have thought much about the implications of all that computer power and organized information to transform the world into a place of abundance for all.

      "They" don't get paid for thinking about that. They do what a bunch of old politicians with a mindset steeped in hula-hoops and cold war espionage want them to do.. And those old politicians get reelected because, despite their ignorance of much of the modern world, they are perceived as preferable to the alternatives by the voters. And even that may not be irrational: an older politician, ignorant of technology, may still be better than some young hothead.

      You can't change the world into a post-scarcity world until you actually understand why it is working the way it is today.

    9. Re:Part of a social phase change by Paul+Fernhout · · Score: 1

      See Marshall Brain's Manna for an example about "free":
      http://marshallbrain.com/manna5.htm
      ----
      "It works like this. Let's say that you own a large piece of land. Say something the size of your state of California. This land contains natural resources. There is the sand on the beaches, from which you can make glass and silicon chips. There are iron, gold and aluminum ores in the soil, which you can mine, refine and form into any shape. There are oil and coal deposits under the ground. There is carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen in the air and in the water. If you were to own California, all of these resources are 'free.' That is, since you own them, you don't have to pay anyone for them and they are there for the taking."
          "If you have a source of energy and if you also own smart robots, the robots can turn these resources into anything you want for free. Robots can grow free food for you in the soil. Robots can manufacture things like steel, glass, fiberglass insulation and so on to create free buildings. Robots can weave fabric from cotton or synthetics and make free clothing. In the case of this catalog you are holding, nanoscale robots chain together glucose molecules to form laminar carbohydrates. As long as you have smart robots, along with energy and free resources, everything is free."
          Linda chimed in, "This was Eric's core idea -- everything can be free in a robotic world. Then he took it one step further. He said that everything should be free. Furthermore, he believed that every human being should get an equal share of all of these free products that the robots are producing. He took the American phrase 'all men are created equal' quite literally."
      -----

      Attempts I've made (not very successfully) to help bring something like that about include:
      http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/

      A "basic income" (social security for all from birth) would be a way to do something in the "Manna" direction right away in the USA, where say, half the GDP would be distributed evenly among residents and half would be earned by those who chose to work.

      --
      A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
    10. Re:Part of a social phase change by Paul+Fernhout · · Score: 1

      So what? It's true JP Hogan pushed he envelope on some things, but that does not make his other observations incorrect. Go look at some of the stuff someone like Isaac Newton wrote, where we just remember and honor what he was right about.

      JP Hogan liked to support the underdog against the establishment, to ask for a fari hearing for ideas that he felt were unfairly dismissed as heretical. Sometimes the heretic ends up being right, sometimes they are indeed wrong. His concern was more about critical thinking and working from the evidence, as he makes clear in various novels, including his first.

      Besides, if the universe is a computer simulation, it may well have been designed, and may well have been started recently (including from a backup) -- and I say that as someone who was in a PhD program in Ecology and Evolution.
      http://www.simulation-argument.com/

      --
      A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
    11. Re:Part of a social phase change by Paul+Fernhout · · Score: 1

      I can't disagree with your insightful point. However, so what? A lot of these trends are just happening via current social dynamics, so they are not directly something one person does. As I wrote here:
      http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2773253&cid=39629001
      "To start with the bottom line: the very computers that make the new NSA facilities possible mean that the NSA's formal purpose is essentially soon to be at an end. Nothing you or I say here will reverse that trend. The only issue is how soon the NSA as a whole recognizes that fact, and then how people there choose to deal with that reality."

      My comments in a way are just hopefully to ease the transition and prevent some needless suffering. And people or cultures can and do change for a variety of reasons. More by me on that theme:
      http://www.pdfernhout.net/on-dealing-with-social-hurricanes.html
      "This approximately 60 page document is a ramble about ways to ensure the CIA (as well as other big organizations) remains (or becomes) accountable to human needs and the needs of healthy, prosperous, joyful, secure, educated communities. The primarily suggestion is to encourage a paradigm shift away from scarcity thinking & competition thinking towards abundance thinking & cooperation thinking within the CIA and other organizations. I suggest that shift could be encouraged in part by providing publicly accessible free "intelligence" tools and other publicly accessible free information that all people (including in the CIA and elsewhere) can, if they want, use to better connect the dots about global issues and see those issues from multiple perspectives, to provide a better context for providing broad policy advice. It links that effort to bigger efforts to transform our global society into a place that works well for (almost) everyone that millions of people are engaged in. A central Haudenosaunee story-related theme is the transformation of Tadodaho through the efforts of the Peacemaker from someone who was evil and hurtful to someone who was good and helpful. "

      Lets say the NSA and CIA do not make this leap, and neither does the USA. Then the USA will likely eventually become a backwater compared to those countries or groups who do. Granted, it will be a backwater still armed with nuclear, bio, chemical, neuro, and other WMDs that can threaten a tantrum of global destruction if it does not get its way...

      --
      A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
    12. Re:Part of a social phase change by stenvar · · Score: 1

      I find odd how so many people seem to be able to conceive of progress as something that can only be achieved by big public spending. In reality, the CIA and NSA are mainly just a drain on the budget, and innovation needs to come from the private sector and universities.

  12. Keeping records is an "attractive nuisance" by davecb · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Just like a swimming pool, keeping records that someone else might want is an attractive nuisance: people you don't want will go snooping around in them. And just like a swimming pool, it you that's liable when someone uses them without your permission.

    At the moment, it's ISPs that find themselves having to cough up DHCP records to courts: give the criminals a week or two and they'll be writing exploits to get at Facebook, Google+ and your local video store, just like they've been doing for people who have lists of credit-card numbers.

    --dave

    --
    davecb@spamcop.net
    1. Re:Keeping records is an "attractive nuisance" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You hit the nail on the head... great analogy!

      I'd like to add that access to that pool of information not only attracts criminals.. it creates them.

  13. "Right To Serve" might help by jdogalt · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've used the fact that GoogleFiber was my first ISP choice involving IPv6 to press a new novel interpretation of NetworkNeutrality. It seems to be going somewhere. ComIntercept(FCC->Google):

    "The enclosed informal complaint, dated September 1, 2012, has been filed with the Commission by Douglas McClendon against Google pursuant to section 1.41 of Comissions's Rules, 47 C.F.R. // 1.41. Also attached is Mr. McClendon's October 24, 2012 complaint forwarded to the FCC by the Kansas Office of the Attorney General. Mr. McClendon asserts that Google's policy prohibiting use of its fixed broadband internet service (Google Fiber connection) to host any type of server violates the Open Internet Order, FCC 10-201, and the Commission's rules at 47 C.F.R. // 8.1-11.

    We are forwarding a copy of the informal complaint so that you may satisfy or answer the informal complaint based on a thorough review of all relevant records and other information. You should respond in writing specifically and comprehensively to all material allegations raised in the informal complaint, being sure not to include the specifics of any confidential settlement discussions. ...

    Your written response to the informal complaint must be filed with the Commission contact listed below by U.S. mail and e-mail by July 29, 2013. On that same day, you must mail and e-mail your response to Douglas McClendon.

    The parties shall retain all records that may be relevant to the informal complaint until final Commission disposition of the informal complaint or of any formal complaint that may arise from this matter. See 47 C.F.R. //1.812-17. (seriously, can't I and Google just depend on the NSA's backups of our records? :)

    Failure of any person to answer any lawful Commission inquiry is considered a misdemeanor punishable by a fine... ... ...

    http://cloudsession.com/dawg/downloads/misc/mcclendon_notice_of_informal_complaint.pdf
    http://cloudsession.com/dawg/downloads/misc/mcclendon_oct24_2012_complaint.pdf

    This represents Google getting 'served' this week, my form 2000F 'informal' 53 page complaint that suggests that NetNeutrality provides protections against ISP blocking to my home servers as well as to Skype's. Google has been compelled by the government to respond to me on July 29th. GoogleFiber's 'evil' terms of service prohibit hosting any kind of server without prior written permission against your residential connection. And zero transparency for any alternate server-allowed plan rates, or what kinds of reasons they might use to disallow a requested written permission (which is laughable as the FCC 10-201 NetNeutrality document goes out of it's way to laud Tim Berner Lee's invention of the web atop tcp/ip, specifically, without having to have gotten any permission from any government or network provider)

    I forwarded the documents to schneier@schneier.com and requested any insight he might have into the matter. I got an email response (theoretically perhaps spoofed) that read "Thanks.\n\nGood Luck."

  14. Budget, Not Law, Limits Mass Surveillance by zlives · · Score: 1

    Now that's something we might be able to talk about

    1. Re:Budget, Not Law, Limits Mass Surveillance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are you a racist? Because everyone I know who suggested cutting the budget in the last 5 years has been called a moronic racist teabagger.

  15. Transcend instead of fight back by Paul+Fernhout · · Score: 2

    One other meme on this: http://pcast.ideascale.com/a/dtd/The-need-for-FOSS-intelligence-tools-for-sensemaking-etc./76207-8319
    "As with that notion of "mutual security", the US intelligence community needs to look beyond seeing an intelligence tool as just something proprietary that gives a "friendly" analyst some advantage over an "unfriendly" analyst. Instead, the intelligence community could begin to see the potential for a free and open source intelligence tool as a way to promote "friendship" across the planet by dispelling some of the gloom of "want and ignorance" (see the scene in "A Christmas Carol" with Scrooge and a Christmas Spirit) that we still have all too much of around the planet. So, beyond supporting legitimate US intelligence needs (useful with their own closed sources of data), supporting a free and open source intelligence tool (and related open datasets) could become a strategic part of US (or other nation's) "diplomacy" and constructive outreach.
        Now, there are many people out there (including computer scientists) who may raise legitimate concerns about privacy or other important issues in regards to any system that can support the intelligence community (as well as civilian needs). As I see it, there is a race going on. The race is between two trends. On the one hand, the internet can be used to profile and round up dissenters to the scarcity-based economic status quo (thus legitimate worries about privacy and something like TIA). On the other hand, the internet can be used to change the status quo in various ways (better designs, better science, stronger social networks advocating for some healthy mix of a basic income, a gift economy, democratic resource-based planning, improved local subsistence, etc., all supported by better structured arguments like with the Genoa II approach) to the point where there is abundance for all and rounding up dissenters to mainstream economics is a non-issue because material abundance is everywhere. So, as Bucky Fuller said, whether is will be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race to the very end. While I can't guarantee success at the second option of using the internet for abundance for all, I can guarantee that if we do nothing, the first option of using the internet to round up dissenters (or really, anybody who is different, like was done using IBM computers in WWII Germany) will probably prevail. So, I feel the global public really needs access to these sorts of sensemaking tools in an open source way, and the way to use them is not so much to "fight back" as to "transform and/or transcend the system". As Bucky Fuller said, you never change thing by fighting the old paradigm directly; you change things by inventing a new way that makes the old paradigm obsolete."

    Some attempts by us at such FOSS tools:
    http://www.rakontu.org/
    https://code.google.com/p/rakontu/
    https://github.com/pdfernhout/Pointrel20130202
    https://github.com/pdfernhout/Pointrel20120623

    We've built other stuff in the past, but sadly it is proprietary. Hopefully people can go beyond all this in their own ways.

    A billion dollars could see a good start on this project. :-) Or a "basic income" for all, to give coders who want to do this the time to do it.

    --
    A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
    1. Re:Transcend instead of fight back by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So you are advocating a project that needs "Google App Engine" ?

      Cynthia, why don't you suggest we deposit all our books with the police ? Surely the police would make an excellent bookstore and surely they would censor those books only in accordance with the constitution and 18723 executive orders by the droner-in-chief.

      Read up what Mr Schmidt is up to. Realize you need to "show passport" (cell phone number) even for a puny gmail account. Google has ambitions to be part and parcel of the security apparatus. "do now evil"... or we lock you up !

    2. Re:Transcend instead of fight back by Paul+Fernhout · · Score: 1

      You make interesting points, AC. The reason my wife originally chose Google App engine originally (chosen in 2008, when Google has a better reputation) was to make something any community could use for free, and because my wife was comfortable with Python. It is open source, and the code coudl be ported, or the ideas reimplemented. See:
      http://www.storycoloredglasses.com/2010/08/steal-these-ideas.html
      "In my lessons-learned document I said that I'm more interested in the ideas from Rakontu moving on than the actual software surviving as is. Since then a few people have asked me to elaborate on that statement. So I've reviewed and thought, and I've come up with a list of six pieces of advice for anyone who would like to incorporate ideas from Rakontu into their own effort to support online story sharing."

      I had suggested using the Pointrel system I was working on, but Google was the bright big-name shiny thing, and I could not guarantee my experimental stuff was production ready. Neither could Google though for App Engine, apparently, at least back then.

      She now thinks that App Engine approach was a mistake for several reasons, including that, say, a Drupal add-on would have been a better approach (as much as PHP is a crummy language).

      Later work by me toward Rakontu 2.0 has been in other directions, including code you can run locally or on some server of your choice (like with the GitHub stuff). But we ran out of money funding it ourselves, so now I do unrelated stuff, but at least Cynthia still works towards finishing her free book on how communities can collect and organize their own stories in a variety of ways, available as a work-in-progress here
      http://www.workingwithstories.org/

      Still, if you want to be concerned about privacy, and you assume the NSA monitors all internet traffic, then it really does not matter who hosts your content if you access it through the internet.

      The distributed approach I was working towards included the option to exchange info via direct exchange like on flash drives (like is happening now in Cuba).
      http://politics.slashdot.org/story/13/03/19/2351234/cubans-evade-censorship-by-exchanging-flash-drives

      But even that is not really secure, since any collection of information can be compromised by an informant. So, ultimately, finding an innovative way to work within the system is still probably a safer bet.

      This social transition may well all be over in twenty years with the pace of technological and social advancement -- in the sense of our employment-based economy imploding from advanced automation like AI-powered robotics, various group spreading Vinge-like (Deepness in the Sky) networked "smart dust" around the world (probably developed ironically by the NSA or CIA) some of which probably makes it into the NSA and CIA headquarters and all government offices by random chance (making Wikileaks and Snowden revelations seem tame by comparison), and tons of other trends.

      Who knows for sure how it will all end? We can just do our best from a hopefully moral-enough strategic foundation and keep updating our tactics as we get new information or the world changes around us as it constantly does. But what that moral foundation should be for the 21st century might make for a good exploratory Slashdot discussion (my sig being a nod in that direction).

      By the way, something I wrote about Schmidt and Knol:
      http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2011-February/000401.html
      """
      Gold Leader: Pardon me for asking, sir, but what good are semantic wikis and desktops going to be against [that]?
      General Dodonna: Well, the Empire doesn't consider a small cgi script on a

      --
      A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
    3. Re:Transcend instead of fight back by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

      Cynthia, why don't you suggest we deposit all our books with the police?

      In many countries, you already have the obligation of depositing any printed book into a designated national library.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
  16. Criminals by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Barack Obomba seems intent on threatening other governments who may consider
    helping Snowden. Here are some other criminals he missed.

    Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela - Convicted of sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the government
    in 1962 and sentenced to life imprisonment.
    Considered to be a communist and terrorist

    Rosa Louise McCauley Parks - Committed a crime on December 1, 1955
    A Montgomery, Alabama, ordinance compelled black residents to take seats
    apart from whites on municipal buses.

    Martin Luther King, Jr.
    The target of an intensive campaign by the FBI to neutralize him as an
    effective civil rights leader.

    I wonder if he would have supported prosecution of these traitors and/or criminals.

    1. Re:Criminals by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Obama is a devious liar; in the pocket of the 1%. Sorry for you if you have fallen for his Messiah P.R. work.

      I honestly believe GWB was less of a threat, because he was simply dumber.

    2. Re:Criminals by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I honestly believe GWB was less of a threat, because he was simply dumber

      Those of us who opted to stay outside of the United States of America have come to a similar understanding as yours
       
      When Obama was first elected there was the conspiracy that Obama being a product of the CIA, with the deep involvement of his grandparents/mother with the intelligence community, and so on ...
       
      On the hind sight, that conspiracy does ring more and more true

  17. Prism dudes by Mister+Liberty · · Score: 1

    are pathetic wankers.

  18. Technology Solution by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Think of people disabling the GSM/UMTS/LTE modem and connecting to other people's WLAN. Think of a system how sharing would not be abused (e.g. by limiting tx/rx rate). Think of offering only a TOR SOCKS proxy over your WLAN, so that you can't be held liable. Think of an external Cantenna attached to your tablet, which will easily allow you to connect over 1000 meters to the next free, anon WLAN/TOR access point. Of course, all spyware ripped out of the phone. Of course, using your personal RPI server for all your "social" and "sharing" stuff. Think of Voice Messages over TOR (it's already fast enough for that !).

    We can easily erect a Very Big Middle Finger to the ruling elite and their control freakery. And no, they didn't prevent 9/11 with comint and this is not at all the objective. The objective is control of average joe and his anger towards the 1% criminals who can't be caught. Because they have all the politicos in their pockets.

  19. New constitutional amendment. by EmperorOfCanada · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A New constitutional amendment is needed in nearly every western country. It needs to strictly limit the information that a government can conceal from the public and limit what corporations and governments may collect.

    Right now people blah blah about big data but the reality is that most data collected is not well analyzed and is poorly collected. A simple example is that I was doing some billing system work for a telephone company and based on the records they kept many phone calls never started, and many phone calls never ended. Just glitches in the recorded data. This is just one problem among many in really analyzing data. But people are only going to get better at this and with image recognition I can see both the police and retailers going mad once they can get it working. Through the pile of cameras you should be able to make a fairly good map of where everyone is all the time. Retailers on the otherhand would love to know your tastes and spending habits. That way they can pounce on their likely customers and say, "These green pants will go well with your new red sweater that you bought across town a week ago."

    If corporations can start combining their data they can quickly build an incredible profile of every person. Get records from your power company about power usage, scan what car you are driving, what you are wearing, who you are with. I can see them identifying that you might have a new girlfriend and try to guilt you into buying her something "Special". This might all sound like innocent marketing but it becomes nastier when your employer can now buy a retail record that you met with some union organizers. (Which I did yesterday even though I run my own company because they happen to be friends).

    Once the information that is gathered has some real value you will see companies energetically collecting it (paying everyone with a security camera to feed their machine) and then finding the gaps and putting up bill boards that watch cars go by and check their occupants.

    But the elephant in the room is that governments really really should not know that much about people. If a government (democratically elected included) can watch its opponents then it will. Many people elected to government get very righteous about their mission and think that their opposition (taking cheap shots) only exists to steal their jobs and stop them from doing the right thing. So using government gathered data to stop them is actually the righteous thing to do. Or they are just dirtbags who don't want to let go.

    Another one was a telephone tech division that used company's call records to see if they were talking to the competition. They also had the sales division's phones set up for two neat tricks. One was that if a phone call was forwarded they would see what number the call had been forwarded to. And they would see private numbers. These guys saw nothing wrong with this.

    In my neck of the woods a government lost an election and one of the nails in their coffin was when it was revealed that they were using private tax records to target their fundraising.

    So as this big data becomes easier and easier I can see where anyone with access to this data will misuse it. Not everyone just that there are some people who will abuse any data they can get.

    So quite simply there need to be constitutional amendments (that lobbyists can't keep working against) that limit what data anyone can store and what data can be hidden. A simple example of this is that I don't want my power records accessible to anyone without a warrant. I want the mall security video to only be used in relation to a crime not sold to a marketing a company.

    1. Re:New constitutional amendment. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Very soon, we will use Burqas in the western world, too. Because Mr Rainhouse, a former NSA employee, revealed that NSA have hacked 99% of all global cameras and injected facial recognition software. The IDs are forwarded to a 10000 acre data center in Dumbdale, Wisconsin for real-time analysis. They are especially proud they can ID you from your eyeballs only.

      So we now don't only use TOR, we now also wear Burqas. See, BinLaden (or whoever really was behind all the stupid shittery) has won conclusively. Not only do women veil themselves in America, me do that, too ! Islam now rules the entire world ! (At least in garment),

    2. Re:New constitutional amendment. by ebno-10db · · Score: 2

      So we now don't only use TOR, we now also wear Burqas.

      I'd prefer a Guy Fawkes mask.

    3. Re: New constitutional amendment. by FuzzNugget · · Score: 1

      The government and their corporate cronies clearly don't give a shit about the existing amendments. What good is a new one gonna do?

    4. Re:New constitutional amendment. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So we now don't only use TOR, we now also wear Burqas.

      I'd prefer a Guy Fawkes mask.

      Nah. Go for Darth Vader. They'll ignore you, thinking that you're just another NSA employee.

  20. Horse shit! by s.petry · · Score: 1

    If it was not the law protecting people, then why have they tried so hard to hide it? Why are they attacking a person that released information on a perfectly legal activity, with perfectly legal data?

    Some people simply disgust me, and no I'm not going to get her point when the title of the essay intends to diminish the fact that the Government broke it's own laws. Whether or not there were meritorious points in the article the INTENT is wrong!

    I find it really really interesting that while all of this starts to hit the press, all that CNN, ABC, NBC and Fox can talk about for a week is a bullshit trial in Florida where the same media has created a circus of ethnic hatred. It's now using the bait it put sugar on 2 years ago so that everyone tries to look at something other than the Government Agencies and their heads that broke the law and should be in jail.

    Shame on you if you continue to fall for this open propaganda and brainwashing.

    --

    -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

    1. Re:Horse shit! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      " CNN, ABC, NBC and Fox"

      Do you still use that NY-finance-controlled crap ?

  21. With all due respect ... by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...the researcher, Ashkan Soltani, may not have enough understanding of the United States of America to come into a more holistic conclusion that it was the technology that puts the limit on the Big Brother

    There was a limit, - and I use the past tense, "was", - and that limit, was morality

    You just gotta be an American to understand what makes an American, an American

    It's not a "snide remark" or a "fool's pride", but to be a true American, one has to have that sense of responsibility, that morality that pushes one to respect other people's rights, that forces one to limit oneself in order to not infringing onto other people's "space"

    It was a social construct - that, in order for others to respect your right, you gotta respect others first

    Unfortunately, all that had gone out of the door, when the congress critters in Washington D.C., stop thinking of themselves being Americans, but rather, a part of the global ruling elites governing the entire world

    The erosion of morality on Congress Hill did not start with Obama, it started way back during Clinton's administration

    While some may want to push the envelope to Tricky Dick's time (after all, he was the president who was pushed out of his presidency), but during Tricky Dick's era, the sense of morality was _still_ intact, or Richard Nixon wouldn't have to move out of the White House

    Compare to Richard Nixon, how many of you think that Obama feels ashamed of what he has done ?

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
    1. Re:With all due respect ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      You were making a good point until you claimed congress's erosion of morality only started during the Clinton administration.

    2. Re:With all due respect ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You just gotta be an American to understand what makes an American, an American

      Usually this involves the possession of certain immutable traits such as blond hair, blue eyes and skin that burns within fifteen minutes and the inability to receive instant citizenship elsewhere in the world based on ancestry. Anything swarthier than that introduces the dreaded HYPHEN-NATION. Naturalization is supposed to be a process where change occurs inside the skull. The problem with that is since the Snivel Rights Era, the First Amendment has been invoked to prevent said process from occurring under the rubric of "free exercise of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of association, etc.". Now we have naturalized individuals whose bodies are in the voting booth, yet their minds are operating outside "the jurisdiction thereof". Seems like the bigots were right all along.

      Unfortunately, all that had gone out of the door, when the congress critters in Washington D.C., stop thinking of themselves being Americans, but rather, a part of the global ruling elites governing the entire world.

      Up to the turn of the twentieth century, world travel did not require passports. Perhaps that sort of thing will return for the elites and the masses will be stuck with the need for travel documents. A passport becomes an internal passport in a one-world situation. There is a certain threshold of individual wealth that when transgressed, the individual ceases to be a member of a nation-state as the common person understands. The individual's wealth BECOMES their nationality.

      --
      Another fine opinion from The Fucking Psychopath®. You know, the one who dared to invoke the transcendent (i.e. Calvinism, Augustinianism, personal depravity, etc.) when explaining human behavior.

    3. Re:With all due respect ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I used to believe that the erosion of American values is recent too, but I don't think there's really any evidence for that. Consider ITT's involvement in the Pinochet coup, or the United Fruit Company's involvement in Guatemala. The history of the US government violating human rights to protect the profits of its businesses goes back a long time. If you want to talk about spying, consider J Edgar Hoover's spying on "subversives". Or the CIA's drugging and torturing unwilling participants in the 50s and 60s in order to learn effective methods of extracting information.

      Hell, the country was founded by individuals who believed you supported the kidnapping and selling of other humans because it was profitable. Read the Constitution not as a moral document, but as a legal document that limits the extent to which the government can interfere in the lives of business owners.

    4. Re:With all due respect ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The erosion of morality on Congress Hill did not start with Obama, it started way back during Jefferson's administration

      Fixed that for you.

    5. Re:With all due respect ... by nbauman · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You need to learn more history.

      Look up J. Edgar Hoover.

      Look up the Anarchist Exclusion Act.

      Look up the Alien and Sedition Act.

    6. Re:With all due respect ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That you even mention Nixon, to me, states that it started way before Clinton. If anything, it has been steadily escalting since the Hoover era, with the introduction of technology, propping it up along the way to continue.

      Technology 'may' have been a limiter at one time, but not anymore. As you point out, morality was the stopgap, that has now all but vanished.

      Not that it really matters, (I really am that cynical), but I have to wonder just how surreal the Presidential Race in 2016 is going to be.

    7. Re:With all due respect ... by stenvar · · Score: 2

      There was a limit, - and I use the past tense, "was", - and that limit, was morality

      I can't tell whether you're trolling, joking, or are just plain stupid. US politicians, like politicians everywhere, run the gamut from saints to psychopaths and they always have. In any government, you find plenty of people who abuse their position to enrich themselves and hurt other people. US history is full of examples, as is the history of all other nations. If anything, things may have gotten a little better over time.

      Pretending that you can fix government dysfunction by just restoring morality and electing better politicians is about the worst mistake you can make. Rotten as it is, we probably have a (relatively speaking) better and more honest government than ever before, in part because leaks and scrutiny are getting ever easier and politicians can get away with less and less. Obama isn't unusually dishonest for a president, he is just unusually incompetent.

      The best way to reduce governmental abuses is to reduce the size and power of government. Of course, there's a limit to how far you can go, because eventually essential functions are going to be affected and other abuses are going to become your primary problem. But our current federal government could easily be cut down to half of what it is with little ill effect, because that's what it used to be like not too long ago. If, on the other hand, you want to use the federal government to realize progressive notions of equality and justice, you have to live with the fact that there is a lot of corruption and abuse of power that inevitably go along with that.

    8. Re:With all due respect ... by davester666 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Um, you are sadly mistaken. If you show any signs of 'morality', you don't go anywhere in the NSA or CIA.

      For example, back in 1945, the NSA started project Shamrock http://www.dailydot.com/politics/nsa-prism-shamrock-history-spying-telegraphs/ where they asked the major telegram companies to give them all telegrams sent or received oversea's, every day. No warrant, just a 'give this to us'.

      Totally illegal, but not public knowledge at the time and the governments response was basically "hehe, oops, of course we never looked at telegrams sent between Americans".

      Or Echolon. Google it.

      The problems every security service seems to have are:

      1) they have nobody to say "this is as far as you can go within the law" that isn't hand-picked to have an extremely minimalist attitude towards what should not be permitted
      2) nobody goes to jail or is even criminally investigated when these programs become public knowledge. There may be a investigation by Congress or the Senate, maybe somebody retires or they don't get promoted anymore, with a report that says "We stopped doing these outrageous things long ago, weeks before it became public knowledge", but nobody ever goes to jail. Actually, no, the people that go to jail are the ones that report the wrongdoing, to make others not report other wrongdoing [which is the exact opposite of what your 'moral American' would want].

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    9. Re:With all due respect ... by sirlark · · Score: 2

      Americans do not have to sole claim to ideals like partiotism, morality, freedom, and civil liberties. You don't have to be American to understand a desire for privacy, a live and let live attitude. When you refer to 'Americans' you are actually referring to a subset of people with a word view similar to yours (presumably) to you like to identify with on the basis of a geographical area. I'm guessing that those who don't share your world view would be deemed 'unAmerican'.

      That said, I happen to agree with the idea of civil liberties, due process, mutual respect of rights, and in general a live-and-let-live attitude towards life. But I call myself a liberal (in the broad political sense; I'm South African), not an American. Also from the outside, it's becoming increasingly 'unAmerican' to support your world view. Going by the apparent majority, to be 'American' these days seems to be the exact opposite; trample on other people's and nation's rights, screw mutual respect, support the erosion of civil liberties in favour of maintaining an obnoxiously opulent life style etc. I know this isn't true of all Americans, but you (as a nation) lost the right to associate 'the American way' with your ideals of civil liberties and personal freedoms somewhere in the 60's when as a nation you started screwing around in South America and the middle East.

      And Richard Nixon wasn't ashamed of what he'd done, he ashamed he got caught!

    10. Re:With all due respect ... by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 1

      And Richard Nixon wasn't ashamed of what he'd done, he ashamed he got caught!

      You are right in saying that Tricky Dick was ashamed because he got caught

      Obama got caught with his hands in the cookie jar too

      Now, the question ...
       
      Has Obama shown any sign of shame, yet ?

      --
      Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
    11. Re:With all due respect ... by aaaaaaargh! · · Score: 2

      What you say sounds quite nice and appealing to many of your fellow compatriots, but is really based on a lack of historical knowledge. Not only is it hard to detect any decline of morality in the US - in fact, the opposite is true if you look at civil rights of e.g. ethnic minorities or women -, the sometimes extreme immorality of intelligence agencies and other federal institutions during Cold War is well-documented by now. These were crazy times, some high-ranking officials really thought communists put something in the tap water to make Americans gay and sick. They weren't joking about it, they really thought so. And the CIA contemplated how they could kill Castro with a poisoned cigar. Poisoning political enemies is considered immoral throughout history. Or, to give another example, the CIA experimented with drugs, sexual abuse and psychological torture on (often unsuspecting) US citizens. Want more? How about intentionally not treating the syphilis of hundreds of black patients for 'scientific reasons' (1932-1972)?

      I'm not saying that the US is inherently more immoral than other countries, atrocities can be found everywhere. However, it is ludicrous to claim that moral standards were higher in the US intelligence and military community formerly than now. If at all, the opposite is true, thanks to the fact that the Cold War is over.

    12. Re:With all due respect ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ideals like partiotism

      How is patriotism an ideal?

    13. Re:With all due respect ... by oreaq · · Score: 1

      , but during Tricky Dick's era, the sense of morality was _still_ intact, or Richard Nixon wouldn't have to move out of the White House

      Burning millions of Vietnamese people with napalm and poisoning them with agent orange was morally OK?

    14. Re:With all due respect ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not a "snide remark" or a "fool's pride", but to be a true American, one has to have that sense of responsibility, that morality that pushes one to respect other people's rights, that forces one to limit oneself in order to not infringing onto other people's "space"

      I see. So slave owners (and the society that enabled them) weren't "true Americans". Neither where the settlers who stole the Native Americans' lands. I'm sure we could find lots more recent examples. Seems to me that a "true American" is about as rare as a "true Scotsman".

    15. Re:With all due respect ... by MozeeToby · · Score: 1

      That's a cute view of history there. Naive, but cute. During WWII we rounded up all the Japanese citizens and put them in camps. During the Civil War we suspended Habeas Corpus. We've read citizen's mail en masse the old fashioned way. These are not new abuses, what's new is the ability to do it always and to everyone in a cost effective manner.

    16. Re:With all due respect ... by JeanCroix · · Score: 1

      He was just continuing the policies which his predecessors had initiated. Sound familiar?

    17. Re:With all due respect ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "It's not a "snide remark" or a "fool's pride", but to be a true American, one has to have that sense of responsibility, that morality that pushes one to respect other people's rights, that forces one to limit oneself in order to not infringing onto other people's "space"

      It was a social construct - that, in order for others to respect your right, you gotta respect others first"

      So I guess the americans are gone for a while now... since 1950's...
      Korea, Vietnam, Iraq...

    18. Re:With all due respect ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The erosion of morality on Congress Hill did not start with Obama, it started way back during Clinton's administration

      Sorry, young man, but you've not lived through much history, nor read much of it. Google McCarthy, Chicago Seven, J. Edgar Hoover, Watergate. This shit has been going on forever.

    19. Re:With all due respect ... by rockout · · Score: 1

      Has Bush II? Has Clinton? Has Bush I? etc.....

      Nixon wasn't ashamed after he got caught either. He simply faced the reality that it would be slightly less shameful to resign than to be forced out, which was inevitable. If his impeachment and conviction hadn't been a foregone conclusion, he would've served out his term with the same arrogance as every president since and most presidents before.

      Your anti-Obama-wired brain has clouded your vision, and your understanding of politics and politicians seems to come from the superficial level that most of us get these days from info-tainment programs.

      --
      I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
    20. Re:With all due respect ... by RabidReindeer · · Score: 1

      The erosion of morality on Congress Hill did not start with Obama, it started way back during Jefferson's administration

      Fixed that for you.

      As with so many other things, it's all due to increasing leverage. Four conscienceless jerks with box-cutters could kill more people than a small army would have been able to back 200 years earlier. Four conscienceless jerks with metadata and a supercomputer could ruin more lives than a small army of misinformed spies 200 years ago.

    21. Re:With all due respect ... by anyGould · · Score: 1

      The erosion of morality on Congress Hill did not start with Obama, it started way back during Clinton's administration

      Sorry, young man, but you've not lived through much history, nor read much of it. Google McCarthy, Chicago Seven, J. Edgar Hoover, Watergate. This shit has been going on forever.

      And the point of the article is that technology makes it cheaper and more efficient to do the shit, which makes it more and more tempting.

      Scroll up a bit and look at Shamrock again, and think about what would be involved there - even if they had the manpower to read every telegram that came in, it's hit-and-miss as to whether the right connection gets made at the time. And it's a safe bet that they weren't storing all those telegrams afterwards (just imagine the storage costs!). Fast forward to today: you can get the computer to do your first-pass reads of email (the modern telegram), and storage is cheap enough that you can store everything (whether you think it's important or not), because once you have a lead or suspicion you can search the entire back-history to see what you might have missed.

    22. Re:With all due respect ... by In+hydraulis · · Score: 1

      No, his credibility disappeared the moment he introduced the notion of a hypothetical true Scotsman^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H American.

      Strike-out tags unavailable. Thanks Slashdot.

  22. There are higher level laws by gmuslera · · Score: 2

    Like moral or human rights. Anyway, take everyone as an enemy and everyone will be.

  23. But I do by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

    Email is considered your personal effect, therefore is covered, and not only covered by the 4th, but copyright as well. They are not allowed to copy it without your explicit consent. I'm sure we could get "creative" and cover the rest. Government keeping tabs on who you associate with - 1st amendment - right to assembly. That should cover about 90% of what they're tracking today.

    --
    The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    1. Re:But I do by Gription · · Score: 2

      bzzzzztthankyouforplaying...
      Current legal precedent says that if an email message has been on the server for over 6 months they can consider it abandoned property and therefor has no privacy protection. This does not mean that you haven't accessed your account for 6 months. It means only that you left the email in question on the server. Back in POP3 days there might have been an argument for "It's abandoned" but in this day of IMAP and hosted Exchange it is pretty stupid.
      This points out the stupidity of many of our laws in this day of rapid technological change.

    2. Re:But I do by ebno-10db · · Score: 1

      Current legal precedent says that if an email message has been on the server for over 6 months they can consider it abandoned property and therefor has no privacy protection. ... This points out the stupidity of many of our laws in this day of rapid technological change.

      I dunno, they seem willing to change the law to accommodate new technology. With every other thing I've ever heard of, it takes 7 years for something to be considered abandoned property. They've moved it up to 6 months.

    3. Re:But I do by WGFCrafty · · Score: 1

      bzzzzztthankyouforplaying...

      Current legal precedent says that if an email message has been on the server for over 6 months they can consider it abandoned property and therefor has no privacy protection. This does not mean that you haven't accessed your account for 6 months. It means only that you left the email in question on the server. Back in POP3 days there might have been an argument for "It's abandoned" but in this day of IMAP and hosted Exchange it is pretty stupid.

      This points out the stupidity of many of our laws in this day of rapid technological change.

      It isn't stupid, it's by design. You think anyone is going to want to limit the trove of data which protects us from the ter`ists.

    4. Re:But I do by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      I'm aware that there is "legal precedent" but that "precedent" can also be in violation of our Constitution. IMNSHO, it is. But even with the property precedent, that does not remove your copyright privileges, which last like 90 years after your grandkids die. And given the MPAA/RIAA precedents, apparently their downloading or accessing of your email should result in fines of 20K-150K per instance. (Hey, what's good for the goose....)

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
  24. Re:Why does this need someone from MIT to point ou by mooingyak · · Score: 1

    Agreed. First thought on reading the headline was "Figured that out on your own, did you?"

    But from reading the comments here, it's apparently not as obvious as I had believed.

    --
    William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
  25. 1 billion cellphone call recordings by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "A phone call isn't clearly covered, and SCOTUS explicitly decided it wasn't in 1928, then reversed itself in 1967"
    It clearly is. Even the metadata is an incredible amount of private information, let alone the latest revelation, that NSA records 1 billion voice calls from cell phones per day. The *content* not just the metadata.

    If it wasn't covered, they wouldn't need to do it in secret and scream ''terrorist" at anyone who points out how illegal their system is. It really amounts to a coup with the military running the show against the democracy, because nobody wants to vote General Alexander in charge of the country.
    It's why Clapper is apologising to Dianne Feinstein for lying. She was in on the lie, but now we're in ass covering mode. A court necessarily can't be making a true decision if its based on lies or lies by omission (secrecy). Ergo any decision made that way is by definition not the law.

    "My only point was that SCOTUS is free to play lots of games. "
    They do that because the military man tells them he's targeting terrorists, and by keeping individual judges in individual pockets, he's able to avoid letting them see the big picture. I bet the FISA judge is in one pocket, thinks they don't store that data for a long time, or datamine it, or keep it after its been identified as America. Or he's been told they have all sorts of legal protections on its access. All things which are completely untrue, yet each FISA judge is making rulings in secret in their individual pockets, without the full knowledge or without any counter information.

    It seems the President didn't know they had a database of cellphone numbers & IMEAs to identity/names etc. when he said the database is only anonymous metadata not names. He also seems to have been kept in a pocket. Congress was basically lied to, with the bulk of them kept in the dark, not even in a pocket, simply kept out.

    It isn't SCOTUS playing games, they're as much the *played* and the executive branch/legislative. The ones playing games are a faction of the military led by General Alexander. And it is just a faction, you can see this by the leaks/smears of other Generals that he's thinning the nest of opponents.

    1. Re:1 billion cellphone call recordings by oreaq · · Score: 1

      It seems the President didn't know they had a database of cellphone numbers & IMEAs to identity/names etc. when he said the database is only anonymous metadata not names

      The metadata contains telephone numbers. Even Obama can't faithfully claim to be stupid enough to not understand what a telephone number is.

  26. Everyone is being watched because... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... under the rubric of "free exercise of religion" all are free to convert to Islam. If all are free to convert to a religion associated with attacks against the United States, her allies and interests, that alone justifies mass surveillance. All those whose education, wealth and/or pedigree allow them to live elsewhere are free to leave. However, they will all still be watched. The rest of us who cannot depart will have to deal with it.

    --
    Another fine opinion from The Fucking Psychopath®.

  27. Actually sloth protects us too by shadowofwind · · Score: 1

    In my experience, remarkably little real work gets done by federal employees, because they can keep their jobs without meeting an objective bottom line. Private contractors work harder, as they compete for the money the federal workers are showering with, but there is a lot of waste in the way their work is assigned and coordinated. The system can still hurt us a lot potentially, but its not half as bad as it would be if it was more efficient.

    1. Re:Actually sloth protects us too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Depends on what level employee you mean. GS-5, GS-9, in that ballpark I'd say you're pretty well right. Once you start getting to GS-12 and up you're more likely to find the ones who actually have some interest and even passion for their field. It probably depends a bit on which branch and subdivision you look at too, though.

      Your absolutism for contractors is equally short-sighted. For instance, there are only so many Lockheeds and Boeings to compete with each other; one loses a contract this round but wins the next, and each goes through cycles of layoffs and rehires to compensate. This lets them be as lazy as they like. You're only right, once again, in the penny-ante cross section.

  28. Quantico Circuit, anyone? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Has Babak Pasdar been disappeared yet?

  29. they are in control of everything;.. by strstr · · Score: 2

    you might recall NSA Whistleblower Russell Tice's Revelations from 2006. He was probably the biggest leaker of information about the NSAs warrantless wire tapping and spying programs to date. He also specialized in technological systems used for spying, especially space and air space ones, for remote monitoring.

    I believe that the NSAs limit to spying right now is limited only to what they can imagine and get access to. Technology allows them to monitor everything that is processed normally by systems which handles or regulates any communication or data. This is the limiting factor for spying via electronic communications systems; anything that can be processed or is stored by ISPs, can be monitored. and it apparently all is.

    but there is another side to the NSA spying going on, and that is that they literally think they have to monitor everything they can. a lot of it is done warrantlessly and without court oversight; and companies don't go out of their way to disclose what is going on. one type of spying that the NSA does that is heavily underreported, and it goes back to Russell Tice and his space systems expertise: they would be monitoring all radio and air space signals, including those that are emanated from the human brain and body, and those from other resources like electronic devices and house wiring. anything that uses electrons produces an electromagnetic field which can be read remotely. NSA Russell Tice was barred by NSA NDA from directly talking about the NSAs Remote Neural Monitoring capability, but he did drop many hints to how it worked. Basically, publically, he could disclose that he knew the NSA was monitoring him and everyone else everywhere, didn't matter where he was. they had access to phone and Internet data, but also, spy and ground satellite data which allowed Electronic Brain Link and Remote Neural Monitoring to occur. He knew the NSA was monitoring everyone's brain waves remotely, and by doing so, they were able to tap the mind; a so called mind tap. They can decode and piece together every neuronal signal in the brain and body; every neuron separately. and using a very advanced computer system, combine all this information back into one; to allow them to remotely see what you see, hear, think, feel, monitor mood, dreams, cognition, memory, sensations, and more all remotely. The government can extract any information they want from your brain, and they are monitoring every square inch of earths surface, at least in the US like this. police, FBI, NSA, CIA, DoD, and state/federal government are all tied into this system. it might also gather information from and monitor other systems for information, like the Internet, phone, banking, and any other system which generates and stores data electronically. this goes back to the DoD's LifeLog program - and it's all real. they literally are keeping a database of information about every individual that they can, and the system is very complex and advanced in the way many tasks and monitoring is done automatically. sound and video and brain waves, memory, emotion, it's all mapped, stored and read automatically. they can get a lot of information from listening to any sound recording of you automatically, like lie detection software, except it monitors the intent and emotions of your voice; the pressure, the little hints that tell them what you were trying to communication, and why. which lets them basically read your mind state just by listening to you. this is completely separate from the RMN system and focuses just on what they can figure out by recording sound or listening to phone conversations. these systems are real and tell them everything they want to know, and more.

    if you want some more information on the Electronic Brain Link stuff, it also is used for covert communication amongst officers. it's a type of synthetic telepathy, a brain computer interface which both reads and manipulates brain, nerve, particle, atoms, and tissue remotely. cops everywhere are literally able to see and hear through walls with it, and they can

  30. Care to elaborate ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... at the moment it thinks it has won...well, that's usually when everything becomes unwoven

    I have read the above quote couple of times and yet, perhaps because I'm dense, I just couldn't grasp how you arrived to that conclusion

    Specifically, how can the establishment "becomes unwoven" when it thinks it has won ?

    Thank you !

  31. A simple correction is in order ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Some people simply disgust me, and no I'm not going to get her point when the title of the essay intends to diminish the fact that the Government broke it's own laws

    A correction is in order ...

    It is The Constitution of the United States of America that the government of the United States of America has broken

    The Constitution does NOT belong to the government

    Rather, it ***IS*** the government which has to abide to The Constitution of the United States of America

    Just need to clear things up

  32. Great work! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    it's a fact know to many, but finally someone puts it down on paper.

  33. Sanity Check : Not all things written down by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Many people don't have facebooks. Many people may e-mail email banal crap. Many people don't use the phone knowing it could be tapped, and don't carry a phone so it can be geo-tracked. This is called capture ratio - you may buffer all electronic comms, but the human stuff - well requires people / Agents and those collect paychecks.

    Many people talk at the mosque, in a park, at a beach or in a pub - and are aware of plants. Not even on the radar. But any bad people are dumb, so its just a matter of time before someones loose lips sink ships. Not all rats eat the bait. Corporate bankers certainly 'go dark' after Clinton- gate broadcast to all - don't write it down, ever.

    Some can see the lying, weaselly ways has merit, but now this has been exposed, there is going to be payback at the ballot box. If politicians wanted to get their standing above that of a used car salesman, they have failed.

  34. Tecnology and computer by AditiKumer · · Score: 0

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  35. Tecnology and computer by AditiKumer · · Score: 0

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  36. Re: Technology, Not Law, Limits Mass Surveillance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I take it that the Fourth Amendment has been suspended. You know, the one against unjustified searches.-Ignacio Agulló