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Microsoft's Cooperation With NSA Either Voluntary, Or Reveals New Legal Tactic
holy_calamity writes "When Microsoft re-engineered its online services to assist NSA surveillance programs, the company was either acting voluntarily, or under a new kind of court order, reports MIT Technology Review. Existing laws were believed to shelter companies from being forced to modify their systems to aid surveillance, but experts say the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court may now have a new interpretation. Microsoft's statement about its cooperation with NSA surveillance doesn't make it clear whether it acted under legal duress, or simply decided that to helping out voluntarily was in its best interest."
Don't use US services.
Businesses dont go out of their way to increase their costs with no tangible benefit. There is either a tangible benefit (Quid pro quo) or it was the best of a group of bad options (not doing it will cost us more.)
I don't see what the NSA/FISA has to offer in return, so its probably being done due to a threat, and at that point you have to wonder what other companies are also doing for the same reason.
"His name was James Damore."
Does someone really need to connect the dots?
It could be 'voluntary' complience, with the quotemarks. The classic offer-you-can't-refuse approach. Perhaps a government representative just explained that one way or another the NSA was going to get total access, but if MS (or any other company) complied now they could at least deign the taps in a way suited to their infrastructure, whereas resisting the request would result - after a couple of sessions of congress - in a new law mandating an NSA-designed system be installed and probably break half their well-designed systems by forcing centralisation.
In the UK we used the same approach to compel ISPs to install anti-child-porn filters: The government never actually passed a law mandating ISPs install filtering, they just made it quite clear that they would pass a law if the industry didn't collectively do so 'voluntarily.' This suits the govermnent very well, because it means the filtering list can be maintained by the IWF, an ultra-secretive unaccoutable non-governmental organisation with all the procedural transparency of a lead brick. If they screw up and block wikipedia, no government department gets the blame and no embarassing enquery is launched.
I'm expecting exactly the same tactic will be used within a few years to pressure ISPs into blocking regular adult pornography too - there's already a major tabloid and a couple of MPs campaigning for it. To protect the children, of course.
Although apples taste nice, the fact of the matter is that microsoft is only one (albeit a big fish) of a number of companies who have bent-over-backwards for the NSA/CIA/MOSSAD.
Google`s Brin is ex-israeli army, Facebook`s Zuckerburger has undisclosed interests in israel (a foreign entity), and Akamai was founded by an israeli-commando?
Hold up, lemme get this write....... The "mines" of the vast majority of private personal data are afilliated with israel? Can this be true? If so, what sort of proportions are we looking at?
"I understand the telephone-metadata of 80% of american cellphones is generated by a company called "AMDOCS", an israeli company. This, in combination with the proportionate/disproportionate illicit access of personal data via israeli-afilliated companies, certainly beggars proverbial belief."
- clicked, not signed, Kaiser So-Say
Xbox One
"All this and now they want to put an always (or nearly) on mic and camera in my home?"
* http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3964083&cid=44254927
Remember "national security letters" that were created as part of the "USA Patriot Act"? These were the special kind of fake warrants that were never approved by any judge, but any person or organization who got one wasn't allowed to tell anyone about, including a court of law (preventing anyone from saying "Hey, Fourth Amendment anyone?"). That would explain everything: why FISA didn't stop it, why the companies are cooperating with the NSA, and why they aren't including references to such things in their privacy policies.
Bless you, former senator Russ Feingold, for having the guts to stand up for the Constitution when the entire rest of the Senate ignored it.
I am officially gone from
What do you expect Microsoft to do if the NSA come knocking with a request for information? Say no? You either provide it to them or your company will get severely fined with possible additional legal action taken against it.
Doesn't make it right. Doesn't make it "land of the free". But fuck if Google wouldn't have to deal with the same shit if the NSA came to them (and no doubt they already have). It's just because Microsoft didn't want to make a big fuss for no reason that people are jumping over them.
Having said that, that "Scroogled" campaign of Microsoft is basically in tatters now, and rightly so. Fucking hypocrites.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data
"Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow usersâ(TM) communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the companyâ(TM)s own encryption, according to top-secret documents obtained by the Guardian.
The files provided by Edward Snowden illustrate the scale of co-operation between Silicon Valley and the intelligence agencies over the last three years. They also shed new light on the workings of the top-secret Prism program, which was disclosed by the Guardian and the Washington Post last month.
The documents show that:
* Microsoft helped the NSA to circumvent its encryption to address concerns that the agency would be unable to intercept web chats on the new Outlook.com portal;
* The agency already had pre-encryption stage access to email on Outlook.com, including Hotmail;
* The company worked with the FBI this year to allow the NSA easier access via Prism to its cloud storage service SkyDrive, which now has more than 250 million users worldwide;
* Microsoft also worked with the FBIâ(TM)s Data Intercept Unit to âoeunderstandâ potential issues with a feature in Outlook.com that allows users to create email aliases;
* In July last year, nine months after Microsoft bought Skype, the NSA boasted that a new capability had tripled the amount of Skype video calls being collected through Prism;
* Material collected through Prism is routinely shared with the FBI and CIA, with one NSA document describing the program as a âoeteam sportâ."
And you STILL want to do business with them? You STILL want to trust their OS with your personal files and/or communications?
What more do you need?
Wasn't the frequency hopping rate in cell phone standards lowered to make surveillance more easy? AFAIK this happened far more than a decade ago.
Kinda puts the whole uproar over Huwaei equipment into perspective doesn't it? Fucking hypocrites
As an American, as an American who loves my country, I need to have the courage to face the reality --- that my country has ceased to be the land of the free, the home of the braves, but has turned into an empire which is moving towards oblivion
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Who are you kidding?
The NSA probably comes across a lot of information that would be useful for US companies.
Where "new kind" includes it being secret.
It used to be that we *had to* know the law, now we're not allowed to know the law.
Not to worry, it's all over our heads anyway, our masters know what's good for us.
Nowadays anything and everything that are related to NSA has been condemned to death by a million cuts.
But we do need to tally up what has actually transpired to the American society BEFORE Mr. Edward Snowden decided to break his silence of the terrible truth ...
The American society before the Snowden era was already a very damaged and trouble society.
The United States of America, as a nation, has already become very heavily debt-ridden, and that the rights of the average Americans has already been greatly reduced by patent-trolls and the copyright-MAFIAA-trolls.
Taken as a whole, NSA is but one of the many players with the nefarous intentions to decimate the Rights of the average Americans as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States of America.
I am not defending NSA, but I have to be fair.
It ***IS*** the system itself, which the government of the United States of America is but a part of it, that is behind the destruction of the Spirit of Americana.
They allowed, hmm... no, they ENCOURAGED the HUMONGOUS CORPORATIONS to encroach into our rights (via patents and copyrights), and they actively fanned phobia against "gun violence" / "terrorism" in order to expediting the destruction of the Bill of Rights.
But the most important aspect of all is this --- that the American people have failed to rise up against the system.
We have become a people who no longer care about our own Constitutions.
Instead of being proud Americans who will fight for liberty and justice for all, we have become the timid Americans who will sacrifice anyting in order to secure a place inside the "safety cocoon" prepared for us, by our Great Leader.
The true "1984" had arrived, and it had arrived 29 years later than as was promised.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I know we're bashing Microsoft, but this kind of reminds me when Apple was caught sending huge files home with an OS upgrade on their portable devices. They released a patch that "fixed" it (ie encrypted it). I wonder if that data was also being forwarded to the NSA. That would just leave linux. I hope.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The purchase of popular Skype and modification of supernode to ease snooping now makes perfect sense. MS is just a front for NSA spying!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218817/
Basically the Microsoft company (obviously pretending it's MS) in the movie is spying on open source coders and stealing their work. Once they figure it out people start getting murdered and end up in danger.
Essentially the same plot, except in this case the movie's MS didn't have full government CIA/NSA backing.... Now that movie *is* scary.
Remember Microsoft already own a back door into every windows box - they call it "software update" - com patch Tuesday maybe you get something different from everyone else should the NSA want a peek - that's the problem with closed source code - who do you trust?
Chinese backdoors. US backdoors. Aussie backdoors. Not just government, you can't even trust the companies you pay to look after you. Can anyone be trusted? Everyone will now encrypt the shit out of everything making it easier for the next bin Laden and perverts to hide their crimes.
Secret laws, secret courts, secret trials - it's secrets all the way down
They would all release the letters to the public all at once. What's the gov gonna do jail all of them?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Haven't you people been paying attention?
Microsoft vs. DOJ was settled almost immediately after 9/11, from wikipedia "On November 2, 2001, the DOJ reached an agreement with Microsoft to settle the case". That's just enough time for the dust to settle, and for MS and the DOJ to wrangle a deal over permitting the government "backdoor access" to everything on your computer.
Why do you think the US government permitted a convicted monopolist to continue without any punishment?
The US DOJ had won the case, and like Aaron Schwartz, they were attempting to squeeze everything that's important to them from the convicted parth.
Sure, they were ordered to go along with the consent decree, but that's not a real punishment, like the rest of us were expecting.
Remember those NSA keys that were found in the release of Windows that included debugging symbols?...
They were there in MS Windows even BEFORE 9/11....Look it up here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY
Don't you people pay attention?
Sorry for all you conspiracy theorists, but:
Correlation does not imply causation.
The only true way of preventing that the government does not do this kind of thing is ensuring that the government does not have the money and power to do it, for that you would have to accept of course the reduction of your government to a bare shell and have the rest provided by community/private driven efforts.
I'm sorry, but I'm not buying the primary argument here — that this level of surveillance is necessary in order to catch terrorists. (Never mind that it took this scandal leaking for Obama to actually say "terrorists".)
Are terrorists actually stupid enough to communicate using public services like this? You'd think that, at the very least, they'd be using Tor, or their own private equivalents. More likely than not, they're not even communicating electronically; Bin Laden communicated with the outside world through a very non-electronic trusted courier.
It seems to me that their argument is a red herring — that their real purpose is surveilling us, for partisan/corrupt purposes. Witness the harassment of Tea Party groups by the IRS, journalists by the Attorney General, and the NYPD's abuse of that data.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
I agree that one should question RedHat and a few other GNU/Linux distributions. Luckily we do not have to use RedHat if we choose to use GNU/Linux, there are many other variants. NSA may have a harder time getting their backdoors into Debian / Ubuntu than they have with RH, but there are questions there too. Anyone remember that "mistake" in Debians OpenSSL code which made it generate useless certificates for years without anyone noticing? As for the kernel itself.. I don't see it as likely that anyone would manage to put a backdoor in there. But it's open source, so you can I can and should take a look. Overall, I'd say you are much better off using Linux than Windows.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
Yes http://cryptome.org/jya/echelon-dk.htm .com refusing to cooperate save your network/OS? :)
"....today they monitor everything and everyone. Politicians, organizations, companies, private individuals, even friends in allied countries. In 1985, their long-term goal was "total hearability", i.e. the capability to listen in on all communication around the world.""
Fun reading back in http://it.slashdot.org/story/00/09/26/1836244/ex-nsa-analyst-warns-of-nsa-security-backdoors
Now we have the Snowden news to reflect:
Did the risk of a stock crash and very bad press save your network/OS?
Chain of command and accountability save your network/OS?
Did some committee in Congress save your network/OS?
Complexity save your network/OS?
Did a
They cannot use the data in court...
We would see the data moving
Someone would talk real 'soon'
They only care about "military" stuff..
Only outside of the US
Australia is safe
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
It's only because I believe it will be among the only more peaceful ways we can get things to straighten out.
For hundreds or even thousands of years, business has sought to enjoy favor and support of government. With the help of government, they can more easily monopolize and therefore make more profit. Today is no different... well... maybe a little different.
The thing is, we rely much more heavily on information than ever before. Sure, buying food and other tangibles haven't exactly gone out of style, but informaiton and communications have become commodities in and of themselves. So it's kind of bigger than ever before. So when the stuff we use and buy compromise us so dramatically, we have a situation which is essentially without precedent. Our technology is being used against us in a very big way.
The large vendors of tech and communications and informaiton have all been touched [tainted] by governments all over. Our lives have been compromised, limited and subverted. If you are STILL using these technologies, there is either no option to do otherwise or you're a giant fool right now. In the case of "The Internet" there aren't other options -- the internet works best when there's only one that everyone uses -- same for the phone network. But devices? Well, we have open source OSes which are quite viable. We have open source applications which are setting standards for commercial applications. And even the suspect "Android" devices have the source code available and is actively being used to create custom installations. (READ: reviewed and stripped of code which may be unwanted.)
So if you're running a stock Android device put out by Google or other vendors, you're just as foolish as a Microsoft Windows user in many respects. (Slightly less foolish if you're sacrificing your security and privacy because you can't "play games" as well under F/OSS operating systems. Seriously. Games are not quite as important as your basic human rights. Please try argue otherwise.)
What we're looking at is something very interesting and as I ponder what it could mean and what it could lead to, one thing occurs to me, as it has occurred to others here, is that as these commercial products and services are recognized as compromised or even dangerous, people WILL begin to seek alternatives and it WILL result in cutting off the money supply to those who have been working with government. To survive, eventually the "we don't work with government" statement will represent a statement of trust not just for individuals and business, but of other governments as well. Let's face it -- it's almost ALL about US goods and services.
Snowden and those like him are "harming" the US and may result in a much more extremely depressed US economy. I'm a US Citizen and I don't look forward to anything like that happen as it affects my life quite directly. However, I also see something else -- something I find comforting in some ways. That if things begin to unravel as I hope they might, we may be able to restore government to a form and purpose which it was intended and not as a means for a few to rape and reap the resources of the planet which includes all of us.
"Conspiracy theorist" is no longer a negative. Turns out a lot of conspiracy theory has been right all along. And even if not all of it is right, it has been demonstrated that the public trust has been completely compromised and so EVERYTHING the government does requires suspicion and scrutiny. It's much more convenient to try to think about other things or to just turn on the TV to see what else is on, but if you think that way -- if you're intentionally "protecting your sanity" by avoiding knowing the truth or debunking lies, then you are, by all classic definitions, sheeple. "Don't want to think about it. Don't want to worry about it. Just want to live your day to day life." That's sheeple talking.
You're being dismissive without considering the whole of reality. "This doesn't necessarily prove that." Great. But why stop there and smugly turn away as if you've demonstrated some kind of superior wisdom?
Also, don't attribute to malice to what can be explained by idiocy. But we are talking about Microsoft here, probably was their idea to plant backdoors to settle with the DOJ.
"conspiracy theorist" is a term with two words, conspire and theory. If two people rob a bank and the bank manager calls the police then the police does not respond by saying "that's a stupid conspiracy theory", they actually look at the evidence. "conspiracy theorist" today means "person who thinks for himself" and it is used exclusively by people who don't.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
The Nazi party had support from about of the population 10%. Kind of like the Tea Party in the U.S.
Move too far right and you end up with Facism. Most Republicans are not concerned about being unseated by Democrats. They are concerned about not being perceived as conservative enough.
Move too far left and you end up with Communism.
Both are types of oligarchys. Both ends can be reached through democracy. The problem is that we have forgotten that the United States is a Republic.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhNobpG_4fQ
Perhaps we should watch the Star Wars movies again.
Here is a concise summary of the new FISC interpretation.
"Lubricant optional."
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Conspiracy theorist was originally a short way of saying Conspiracy theorist of History. These were people who posited that all of history we've been controlled by a small cabal of people whose secret organization has continued throughout history. Such theories were always logically absurd, that's were the connotation of conspiracy theorist as inherently absurd came from, but then it got morphed by imbeciles who were unaware of the original meaning, ie most of humanity.
Another example is revisionist, which originally was a shortening of revisionist historian, which inherently there is nothing wrong with, but since neo-nazi historians were labeled as such, the word got a bad meaning from imbeciles, and now you can call someone a revisionist in a negative light, even if they are not positing history.
Unregulated free tarde with repressive low wage regimes meant the American blue color workers never stand a chance.
Now the surveillance system will kill off the American software industry.
Heck of a job, Congress.
...from the US today, or actually WORSE in the US today: You can democratically elect one of two parties that both continue on the same path.
I know that's a cheap comment to make (and I too am from Germany lived and worked in the US for many years - and loved it), but wouldn't you say there's more than just a grain of truth? How I too celebrated when Obama was elected! How very stupid of me.
The American legal system allows for no company to be forced to engage in 'pre-emptive' or 'pre-crime' behaviour. What does exist is for certain forms of co-operation to be available 'on demand' from certain industries.
Bill Gates is a dangerous psychopath, with a complete (and publicly stated) belief in the form of eugenics that America created in the 19th century, and gifted to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in the 20th. Gates believes that Microsoft is an essential pillar of 21st century police-state surveillance, and actually lobbies politicians in the USA and other nations of the West to make maximum use of computerised spying on the ENTIRE population.
Gates argues that his 'class' of Human are the 'elite', whose job it is to 'farm' the 'cattle' (the rest of us) for maximum efficiency. He even calls for the equivalent of slaughter houses to reduce the planet's population to a level Gates and his cronies state are needed to serve the elites, without using up more of 'their' resources.
Slashdot's owners encourage the filthy shills to imply Microsoft's spying is imposed on them, but nothing could be further from the truth. Bill Gates, in co-operation with Rupert Murdoch, and eugenic foundations that have existed in the USA since the early 20th century, have designed a universal child database system that is designed to capture every possible piece of information about every child from birth to adulthood. This system is currently being rolled out in the most backwoods and corrupt states in America, including of course, New York. Teachers are paid extra to 'spy' on children and their families, and enter 'data' obtained this way on Gates' database.
Meanwhile, Gates has worked with the NSA to create the Xbox One, a product designed to plug the last hole in the NDA surveillance grid- YOUR HOME. Bill Gates has ensured the console does its best to constantly monitor a living room (or child's bedroom) 24 hours a day, with state-of-the-art NSA spying sensors. 99.9%+ of all consoles will be connected to the internet at all time. These consoles report to NSA servers, and can be instructed to transmit a high-quality video feed within 10 milliseconds. Every Xbox One console, by default, tracks every person that enters and leaves the room (including facial photos) and uploads this data to NSA servers at least once per day.
Bill "Jimmy Savile" Gates has spent his whole life carrying out depraved acts while constantly present in the public eye. The psychology of this tactic is crude and clear. Sheeple are supposed to 'think' "if something was truly wrong with this guy, surely he'd be exposed by now". The reverse is true. Like Jimmy Savile, Gates is about power and influence, giving a cheery face to the very dumb sheeple, while working the most sickening evil behind the scenes.
Bill Gates' Child database is the single greatest crime against children in the History of our planet. Sadly, too many of you are far to thick to understand the implications of Gates' actions. The most dangerous, murderous monsters operate at the 'meta' level, creating systems designed to unleash evil into the lives of millions of Humans. Organised child rape gangs will use the information provided by Gates' database to carry out levels of child abuse greater than at any time previously, but this is only the smallest part of the harm intended by Gates' actions.
The lives of ordinary people are to be both trashed and controlled. Sheeple are to live their lives in constant fear and worry- psychological conditions that make them far more compliant. Big Brother is NOT about finding wrong-doers. It is about turning the vast majority of Humanity into literal cattle, for the benefit of a tiny ruling class.
The colossal fuckup started with two guys in the Pentagon drawing a line on the map in an effort to stop the Russians advancing all the way across Korea before the Japanese surrender. The competent Korean leaders that had been fighting alongside the Russians and Chinese rushed south to Seoul thinking that they could be part of setting up a single Korea, while batshit insane Kim the nobody stayed in the north. The US President finally worked out that Stalin was a much of a monster as his military advisors and Churchill had been warning him about and US troops moved in to enforce the border, trapping the north with the idiot Kim. Then the vast number of veteran Korean troops that had been fighting the Japanese for years some distance away in China eventually came home and the war was on about six months later.
It can be argued (and is frequently) that the arbitrary line on the map drawn in the Pentagon was the major cause, but either way it was the only reason for US involvement. So there's the "random expansionist" bit, more random than expansionist and really more about making sure that Russia didn't get much of Japan than anything about Korea.
I suspect the border on the north of North Korea is also a bit arbitrary since there is a Chinese province there that was almost exclusively populated with ethnic Koreans until around the 1960s.
Looking at the evidence means examining the facts to determine if a direct causal chain exists. Police are looking for evidence such as photographs taken at the time of the robbery showing pictures of an individual holding a gun or stuffing a pillowcase with money.
The police are NOT looking at coincidences like Joe was not at work at the same time the bank robbery occurred.
There is a BIG difference between correlation and causation. You can use correlation to rule out a hypothesis. However you cannot use it to prove a hypothesis. This is why an alibi is exculpatory but lack of one means little.
This distinction unfortunately escapes many conspiracy theorists.
I don't think George sees such a thing as a crime, so I think the backdoors and dropping the penalties are probably not connected. See also the tobacco company cases and other Clinton leftovers where the penalties were made irrelevant.
No, the most convenient is to see conspiracies in everything because there are, unsurprisingly, the occasional true conspiracies. What's much least convenient is to try to evaluate incoming knowledge and sift truth from falsehood. Believing every possible conspiracy is even lazier than believing everything you're told.
A connection to 9/11 is a huge leap of faith that doesn't make a lot of sense and isn't really necessary or sufficient to explain anything else. It's random and says nothing, and believing it shows a form of exceptional gullibility. There are some things that happened around the turn of the millennium that would have happened even without 9/11.
Ironically, a person who believes anything other than the official story is probably the easiest person for an official to dupe. They can stand up and declare "THERE ARE NO ALIENS AT AREA 51" and then everybody looks at area 51 and not at anything real. Of *course* there are some things "they" don't want you to know for just about any definition of "they". You're not getting it by wild guessing for no reason.
Today, I've uninstalled Skype. And every single one of my colleagues. If trust is all you have as a company, and something like this happens, then you can go bankrupt for all I care.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
I beg to differ. In a police investigation coincidences or correlations are used to dress a profile of the criminal long before hard facts are found.
Sometimes only a bundle of correlations are used by the judge to condemn somebody.
Antigua named an entire MOUNTAIN after him, and you should've seen all the 'Obama' branded foodstuffs there.
They went completely apeshit over him and that was still going on in 2010!
What a joke that gang of brown nosing syncophants is. But thats not even the real problem, since another group of equally obsequious assholes would undoubtedly take their place,
People who GET that high up in the power hierarchy by definition through attrition of anyone else at the hands of various gatekeepers are excellent at figuring out what are the unspoken requirements being put upon them by forces bigger than they are. Then they comply and between the figuring out and the complying not even a shard of consciousness seeps in. It's just the way Orwell described it., They're so thoroughly intimidated by power they never even experience dissent as a possibility.. it all seems very reasonable to them. They LOVE big brother.
So what's the solution? I am going to wash my mouth out after I say this, but : Congress. Obviously the national security apparatus has found a clear path to usurping the Constitution via the FISA courts and it playing that hand for everything it's worth.
Maybe we do have to modify the Fourth Amendment in some ways . I deal with reality and I can entertain that notion as a hypothesis. Let's hear the counter arguments. Let's let the experts bring forward their best arguments and evidence. Then we'll decide.
But this shit of underhandedly subverting the Constitution on the part of people sworn to uphold it is very very bad. It's bad because it implies the terrorists have won. It's bad because it codifies the subversion of the Constitution by the nation's institutions. It's not paranoid to ask "what's next then?".
It's immaterial if they are doing this for a good or even necessary purpose since "good" is a matter of how you weigh priorities and "necessary" presumes you actually know the future and what's more, everyone implicitly shares your view.
I love it when Diane Feinstein - my representative - let's go with "it's called keeping the country safe" shit. WHAT is it that is thus called? We are not permitted to know , despite the fact that whatever it is it clearly includes removing my Fourth Amendment protections. We are supposed to, like little children, just take her word for it that removing the Fourth Amendment is necessary.
Sorry, but that's a joke right out of the gate. This is not how we deal with threats of WMD or anything else. One miniscule fraction of society decides everything for everyone else and lies about it. If we were being invaded by Martians, maybe we would need some kind of Constitutional suspension ala Lincoln and the Civil War. But get real. IF the future is terrorists with WMD, and I personally think it is, then we need to have a big national discussion about how to re-constitute ourselves to deal with that changing reality.
The CBC did a good documentary describing how Hitler got into power how he manipulated the German population into supporting him. The series is called "Love, Hate and Propaganda":
http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/lovehatepropaganda/episode-guide.html
It is available on DVD and as to alternative online sources, I haven't looked.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I don't think it's 'conspiracy' what the government's doing, they're behaving like every person and corp. Simply using legal and financial tools to get what they want.
1) Telecoms granted immunity.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/10/supreme-court-telecoms-win-immunity
2) Quest CEO claims retaliation by NSA for refusal (old)
http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/13/jailed-qwest-ceo-claimed-that-nsa-retaliated-because-he-wouldnt-participate-in-spy-program/
Here's my point in relation to Microsoft: That having won the case against MS, the DOJ had them 100% 'bent over the barrel' as it were. And in exchange for their continued assistance to the NSA, they were granted the 'consent decree' as a sort of 'released on probation', rather than breaking up the company at that time (or imposing other really draconian measures). As with all of the other secret FISC/DOJ agreements, just enter one for MS in relation to this case. MS would certainly have agreed to go along. Besides, monopoly is good for state control and Linux as an alternative would have looked bad to the NSA too. Method, motive, and opportunity.
Look what the facts of the case with the Quest CEO. The loss of the NSA contract (and the related mis-measure of income/profit as a result) directly created the situation he was charged with. I suspect that the government came to him looking for him to go along with the plan too. He didn't want to play ball, and when he tried to cash out and run away...they got him for insider trading. What's conspiracy about that? Method, motive, and opportunity.
Look at the ongoing investigation of Google now too. Not claiming that they're innocent, but DOJ gaining leverage with an 'ongoing investigation' of something or other is just their style. US Government wants into everyone's pants, any time they want too.
People did used to say I'm wearing a 'tin-foil' hat, but it's looking like the 'high fashion statement for 2013' these days.
What partisanship? The left-leaning half of the Ruling Party is no more, or less, virtuous than the right-leaning half of the Ruling Party.
The ruling elite that normally dominates the citizenry is operating here as it operates everywhere else in the world, except that here, instead of being right in our faces, it has disguised itself by giving us a false choice. The only real difference between them is how they want to kill us; the left wants to smother us in a nanny state, the right wants to leave us to fend for ourselves. Either way, we die.
You're correct when you say that both parties have pulled this kind of crap, but incorrect when you assume that there is any difference between the two parties.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
With what we know now about Microsoft's cooperation with the NSA, exactly how unprecedented was the number of 0-day vulnerabilities and certificates used to subvert the OS?
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
No one is believing "every" conspiracy. Even "conspiracy nuts" stick to a generally consistent line of belief.
But you know, if you ask the average person if they believed that the government injected unaware people with radioactive material as an experiment, they wouldn't believe it in a million years and yet it happened. And we know there are a lot more crazy things which are actually true as well.
We have an educational problem in that we don't teach people to think -- it's either an accidental development or a natural one for those people who do. It's ridiculously rare for people to take the information they have been given and then APPLY it. For example, people actually think eating "fatty foods" make people fat. Ridiculous. Anyway... rambling detected.
The connection to 9/11 is a huge leap, but then again, 9/11 was an inside job and loads of evidence and the laws of physics support that notion. It's not the "terrorist" attack itself -- that's just an excuse to make the DHS happen. It's a much greater push to create new programs and to justify existing ones the public didn't already know about. You may recall that the original FISA scandal revealed by another whistleblower long ago? It had been going on prior to 9/11.
We already know as a matter of documented fact that the US government created Al Qaeda and is STILL involved with supporting Al Qaeda in Syria. Why people aren't outraged at this given that they completely bought into the 9/11 narrative that Al Qaeda is the enemy, the public isn't screaming about the current support of Al Qaeda now. It's absolutely amazing. This is not "theory." There is documentation supporting all this.
Reveled documents state that NSA (likely through Department of Treasury) payed for access to communications-streams, routers, servers, programs and protocols at Microsoft and all other e-commerce companies.
Microsoft's SEC fillings like all other e-commerce companies indicate no transactions with the Department of Treasure or NSA.
So, where did the cash go ?
How much cash did Balmer get ?
How much cash did Cook get ?
How much cash did Bozos get ?
Was the 'cash' in US dollars, gold, or prostitutes ?
Does Balmer prefer Male as opposed to Female prostitutes ?
Does Cook prefer 2-year old Male prostitutes or 1-year old Male prostitutes ?
Does Bozos want a Carte of 1- 2- and 3-year Males prostitutes ?
The assertions of Generals Alexander and Clapper regarding the prevention of acts of terror have no evidence, not even justifiable evidence and therefore fail.
Thus, the blanket servileness programs of the U.S.A. and other countries like France and Germany are to maintain Narcotics an Human Slavery trade networks and nothing else.
I would rather take the chance and try fend for myself rather than being smothered by a Leftist nanny state.
You missed the point. It's a false choice. There are more possibilities than these two degrading deaths.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
Microsoft vs. DOJ was settled almost immediately after 9/11, from wikipedia "On November 2, 2001, the DOJ reached an agreement with Microsoft to settle the case". That's just enough time for the dust to settle, and for MS and the DOJ to wrangle a deal over permitting the government "backdoor access" to everything on your computer.
Now we see the real reason the government didn't use eminent domain to make Windows public property, as it would have done with any other piece of property that most of society depended upon.
Windows SHOULD have been made open source, but that wouldn't fit in with government surveillance needs.
And I say this because Google, apple, and Blackberry do the same thing. Just because the writer has his crotch on fire for Microsoft he points it out with them. This becoming law, if Microsoft didn't do it they could go under fire by the government. Its not like they can say no and the government is going to say "ok that's fine, carry on". This isn't Microsoft's fault. Actually Microsoft will probably do it in the best way and only give what they're asked to unlike apple which would probably give everything . Remember Microsoft was the ones who turned on "Do Not Track" in IE while other browsers you have to turn it on. Go bother a company that deserves to be hassled and that is apple.