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NSA Recruitment Drive Goes Horribly Wrong
An anonymous reader writes "The Guardian is running a story about a recent recruitment session held by the NSA and attended by students from the University of Wisconsin which had an unexpected outcome for the recruiters. 'Attending the session was Madiha R Tahir, a journalist studying a language course at the university. She asked the squirming recruiters a few uncomfortable questions about the activities of NSA: which countries the agency considers to be 'adversaries', and if being a good liar is a qualification for getting a job at the NSA.' Following her, others students started to put NSA employees under fire too. A recording of the session is available on Tahir's blog."
Then the answer to question #2 is no. Also, the answer to question #1 is all of the above.
Have you actually listened to it? No one attacked them. They asked them some very pointed questions, but even the pointed questions were generally in reference to what they said (while referencing what is now known because of the leaks). When they ask about which countries were "adversaries" it was because they said they analyzed the communications of "adversaries". So she asked what they considered adversaries, since we know they analyze the communications of our allies. A lot of hard questions were asked, but no one attacked them just because they worked at the NSA.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
A recording of the session is available on Tahir's blog.
It would probably make more sense to link to the blog post instead of the main blog page so people can actually find the recording in the future after new blog posts are added.
The NSA is wiping their ass with the U.S. Constitution again.
A recent article in CNN outlines why there is little in the US Media regarding Eric Snowden and the NSA Prism program--the NSA is literally threatening journalists with prosecution for espionage for doing their jobs.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/03/opinion/snepp-journalists-espionage/index.html?hpt=us_mid
We are sliding down that slippery slope fast, folks. I honestly feel the next few months will determine whether or not our Constitution remains viable as a means to protect basic human rights. Help the press help us--tell as many people as you can about this article and the serious repercussions the article outlines. These are not potential repercussions--this is happening folks. A near-complete lack of articles in main-stream media about the Prism program and Snowden is all the evidence I need to come to that conclusion.
I must be missing something here. How does being a college/university student equate with being rich and/or spoiled? Everyone goes to college. Not all of us are rich.
The law is public.
No... It is not!
Stop trolling :-)
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The amount of stupidity in your post is too high. Why the hell are you not allowed to know how the law works? The law is public. You're just too lazy to study it.
To actually study and know all the laws that apply to you living in the US of today would require more than just not being lazy, it would require a full-time staff, at least. Even the so-called "representatives" voting on the laws don't have the time to study and understand them. And even if you could get to that point of knowing all the "public" laws (not to mention the ones you have to pay a license fee to even read, or the ones that are kept secret for "national security"), the amount of machinations you would have to go through to not break any of them would be outside the realm of feasibility. At times you will find yourself in a catch-22 where one law says you must do A, and another says you are not allowed to do A. Did you know if you toss out a piece of junk mail addressed to someone else you could be charged with a felony that carries 5 years in jail time? That law exists in spite of the fact that the post office cannot forward that mail anyway.
Harvey Silverglate estimates that the typical American unwittingly commits three felonies a day, and he backs it up very well. This is the infrastructure that police states are built upon. You don't need to look for crimes, you just pick someone and find some laws to charge them with violating.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
The problem with your bad attempt at an analogy is that none of those crimes really represent anything personal. The kinds of people that commit those crimes don't care who their victim are. Even a rapist doesn't have any strong preference. It's not personal.
Uh no, not always. About 30% of the time they're targeted attacks for car jacking. Armed robbery is almost always a targeted attack, with the person checking out several locations and picking one. Rape about 70% in all cases the person knows who attacked them. And in all cases it *is* personal, that's the thing with rape and a graduated crime. It's the same with psychopathic killers. It is personal, and they've graduated from a lower series of criminal acts to the point at which they're at.
Terrorism on the other hand can be both personal and impersonal. Sometimes terrorists are out to kill *insert religious branch here* or *kill people of x society.* In other cases they meticulously target and select exactly who they're going after and where.
Om, nomnomnom...
relates to your point; from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_enforcement
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Selective enforcement is the ability that executors of the law (such as police officers or administrative agencies, in some cases) have to arbitrarily select choice individuals as being outside of the law. The use of enforcement discretion in an arbitrary way is referred to as selective enforcement or selective prosecution.
Historically, selective enforcement is recognized as a sign of tyranny, and an abuse of power, because it violates rule of law, allowing men to apply justice only when they choose.[citation needed] Aside from this being inherently unjust, it almost inevitably must lead to favoritism and extortion, with those empowered to choose being able to help their friends, take bribes, and threaten those from whom they desire favors.
However, the converse can also be true. Police officer discretion is sometimes warranted for minor offenses,[citation needed] for instance where a warning to a teenager could be quite effective without putting the teen through a legal process and also reduces costs of governmental legal resources. Another example is patrol officers parked on the side of a highway for speed enforcement. It may be impractical and cost prohibitive to ticket everyone who is going any amount over the speed limit, so the officer should watch for the more egregious cases and those drivers who are showing signs of driving recklessly.
Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (1886),[1] was the first case where the United States Supreme Court ruled that a law that is race-neutral on its face, but is administered in a prejudicial manner, is an infringement of the Equal Protection Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.