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Google Engineer Wins NSA Award, Then Says NSA Should Be Abolished
First time accepted submitter MetalliQaZ writes "Last week, Dr. Joseph Bonneau learned that he had won the NSA's first annual "Science of Security (SoS) Competition." The competition, which aims to honor the best 'scientific papers about national security' as a way to strengthen NSA collaboration with researchers in academia, honored Bonneau for his paper on the nature of passwords. And how did Bonneau respond to being honored by the NSA? By expressing, in an honest and bittersweet blog post, his revulsion at what the NSA has become: 'Simply put, I don't think a free society is compatible with an organisation like the NSA in its current form.'"
On slashdot Google engineers are evil, thus NSA must be good.
So he wants Google to be abolished.
"[...] America’s core problems are in Washington and not in Fort Meade [...]" a part of the (sort) blog post that i would prefered in the summary instead of the choosen, or at least also present...
He did seem kind of down lately...
Google is a huge part of the surveillance machine. If you oppose surveillance, aren't you morally bound to stop enriching a big part of the problem? Is this what you signed up for? To help them build the apparatus of tyranny?
Maybe a mass wave of resignations among the 9 would effect positive change? Maybe we are all responsible to do our part to stop this monstrosity?
I am afraid to post this comment. I am sure that I will get categorized as a dissident for it. I would say a lot more, but my freedom of speech is chilled.
From the Winner of the prize:
"And like many American citizens I’m ashamed we’ve let our politicians sneak the country down this path."
From some of the politicians:
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) : "It’s called protecting America," Feinstein said at a Capitol Hill news conference.
"Protecting America!" - that's right up there with "Think of the Children!"
"Right now I think everyone should just calm down and understand this isn't anything that's brand new," Reid said.
Al Gore
In digital era, privacy must be a priority. Is it just me, or is secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous?
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) said in a statement:
"This type of secret bulk data collection is an outrageous breach of Americans’ privacy."
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said he was "glad" the NSA was collecting phone records.
"I don’t mind Verizon turning over records to the government if the government is going to make sure that they try to match up a known terrorist phone with somebody in the United States," Graham said in an interview on "Fox and Friends."
The "Catbert" quote....
Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) also claimed that reports of the NSA collecting phone records was "nothing particularly new."
"Every member of the United States Senate has been advised of this," Chambliss said. "And to my knowledge we have not had any citizen who has registered a complaint relative to the gathering of this information."
Bold mine. I think Saxby doesn't understand "secret surveillance" means.
Senator Ted Cruz
Disturbing pattern emerging. Govt wants your DNA, prayer content & now...phone records?
And lastly, Mike Lee:
Mike Lee
#NSA surveillance of #Verizon cell phone records illustrates why I voted against Patriot Act
I think everyone who said he was "UnAmerican" or UnPatriotic" should apologize.
A techie who never had any responsibility for whatever part of national security (and never will have) feels 'Simply put, I don't think a free society is compatible with an organisation like the NSA in its current form.'
A very "American" sentiment, approximately equivalent to the "thinking" that led to the US marked inferiority in decryption and signals intelligence in the 1930's which in turn allowed Pear Harbour to happen.
Yes, there are good reasons to reign in the NSA when it comes to reading every email sent within, to, from, or through the US. Even though all electronic communications must be "tappable" unless you want to provide absolutely everyone with a safe channel for communication about their criminal, terrorist, or otherwise hostile business.
But those reasons don't abolish the need to have a functional NSA (and not some crippled shadow of it).
There is a difficulty of course: cripple the NSA, and you give free and secure communication to all sorts of undesirables. Allow the NSA unchecked, and make people transparent to the Government, (and worse expose them to typically stupid Government dragnet trawling). I'm not sure myself which way we ought to go, but I'm pretty sure that abolishing the NSA isn't one of the sane ones.
The paper in question is available here in case anybody is interested why the NSA granted him the award.
That post struck me as pretty abjectly apologetic for the NSA. Sure "I don’t think a free society is compatible with an organisation like the NSA in its current form."; but then, same paragraph no less, a bunch of fuzz about how visiting the NSA was pretty neat, and the engineers there seemed like a smart, likeable bunch, who asked good questions, and the problem is clearly with Politicians, not with the NSA (lets just not talk about the...somewhat creative...approach to informing anyone outside the NSA what the NSA does, right?)
What was he expecting? The NSA to actually be running (probably) the world's most sophisticated electronic surveillance program with a skeleton crew of idiots and sadists? Were they supposed to sneer and wear evil henchman uniforms? Perhaps more importantly, why would the niceness-or-not of the NSA minions me met be relevant to much of anything? It's sort of a commonplace at this point that you can set an organization composed almost entirely of just decent regular folks on an arbitrarily unpleasant path, and that even the most beneficent of institutions can't avoid hiring a total asshole from time to time.
Interestingly, out of the first 13 posts on this topic, only 2 have been by named individuals, the rest by anonymous cowards.
Is everyone so scared of getting on the NSA's "of interest" list, no one want's to be identified? Maybe our new tyrannical overlords have won already.
N.B. this user is far too lazy to write a witty and intelligent sig.
So fucking what if we give criminals and "terrorists" a "safe channel for communication?"
Communication alone is not a danger. Boo hoo - the law enforcers have to do some good old hard work.
... when somebody working for the evil mass-spying corporation Google complains about an evil government mass-spying corporation.
If the NSA cannot even accurately profile somebody they are about to give an award to and predict his response, what good are they? It seems all this massive surveillance is not only hugely immoral and dangerous, it also seems to be completely broken with regard to its stated mission. WTF are they collecting this data for?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I was wondering about the relationship between NSA and academia, only the other way around. It's probable that they've got their eye on relevant courses (math, cs) and must by now employ a significant number of top-shelf scientists -- whose insights are not likely shared academically, certainly not in a timely fashion.
This seems to me quite detrimental to scientific progress in these areas.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
As per the congressional investigations into what we knew before Pearl Harbor -- and as per records in any public library before the 2001 reclassification act, AND testified to by the fact that some of the volumes and some of the pages are new, AND also to be confirmed by librarians that the substitutions did occur, followed by a failed lawsuit...
the US government, including the president, KNEW when, what, and where on Pearl Harbor ahead of time, but the president of the United States wanted to pressure Americans into accepting the war.
I call BS on your post, and further I call NSA slashtroturfing.
As of this point, NSA reclassification is being used against US citizens, for the benefit of the NSA.
"Absolute Power Corrupting Absolutely" in the long-haul. There is a reason that old adage exists you know... it usually comes true, and history's FULL of examples of it & if you keep reading? You'll see WHERE I got that idea, and from whom (an expert in the field, without a doubt).
I.E.-> You put that much power in anyone's hands, sooner or later, it goes to their heads, & they abuse it (not sure I'd be "above it" either myself - 1 'bad day' & poof - you've got Caligula!).
I figure it this way: When the ONLY guy foreign dignitaries often will talk to since he has honor and is trustworthy says this http://now.msn.com/jimmy-carter-says-the-nsa-has-eliminated-a-functioning-democracy it's spot-on.
Lastly - this fellow? I'd put his intelligence FAR above politicians, and I will go with the insights of intelligent folks every time vs. the less intelligent. How about you?
No - I suspect that YOU are 1 of those getting "fat & happy" off of this somehow, hence your statement. Defunding the NSA would "upset your applecart" - the powers that be WANT to keep the status quo.
Why?
Heck - transparently simple: They're ALL wealthy men (including our politicians the puppets of the REAL controllers) getting wealthier is why & at OUR expense as taxpayers. Are they doing a good job? Please, lol... HELL NO! Look @ the economy, the US credit rating, etc./et al!
I can think of MANY WAYS to spend that money more wisely, to greater efficacy/ROI & for the greater good & I am no "genius" or economist either (then neither is our "rule of law" (secret law/secret courts, wtf - they're civil servants NOT masters, nothing more)!
It doesn't take one to fix our main problem: The economy. Instead of building war machines, build jobs. Be "good government" for real, & do "laissez faire" but, as good government say "Ok, fine - but we're going to tax your profit gains on offshoring, hit you with a fine too - you'll stop: It will defeat your 'raison d'etre' as business: Profit". Do right by the MAJORITY of your constituents instead of only yourselves & those that TRULY control "the best politicians money can REALLY buy", for real.
Plus - Who the hell made us the "policeman (gestapo) of the planet anyhow? Why are we sticking our noses into others' lives overseas when we have issues @ home to fix?? Oh, we KNOW who (the real puppeteers/war profiteers is who that REALLY run things - the infamous 1% is who!).
APK
P.S.=> Nobody in their RIGHT MIND likes this stuff going on, period. Nobody That is, unless they too are part of the "good ole' boy" network getting fat, rich & happy from it on NO BID CONTRACTS (halliburton) - they won't bitch @ all, while the rest of us get unions busted, jobs offshored, and seeing these "brainiacs" (not) fuck the economy up spending on bullshit like this used against us, and spent on NO WMDs FOUND WARS (false pretense to go after someone who had something you want, or crossed the "powers that be").
---
1.) Clapper & Alexander outright LIED to congress (twisting words using DIRECTLY! Well, might as well be, using directed multigraph discrete math work & NARUS devices set @ the "choke point" nexus of communique.
2.) Just like how they CLAIM there is no easy CENTRAL way to query their own mail but they do it to everyone else - I found that hilarious & disgusting, since mail is really DBMail and to select/insert/update/delete into those, you NEED to have abilities for that... What they told us, unless someone can show me otherwise, is total bullshit. Hypocritical bullshit). I.E.-> We can do it to you, but nobody can to us @ the NSA... that's bullshit.
3.) Screwing with protesters was from the FEEBS http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy
This times eleventy billion. If congress, etc., didn't want the NSA they could change it. Besides, the ability to view private communication has been a core capability and even the purpose of national spy organizations forever.
The larger question is what government is allowed to do with it. Honestly it would be disappointing, even outrageous if the NSA didn't have the technical ability to collect this kind of data. Being on the cutting edges of information gathering and technology were crucial in the allies winning WW2, for instance. Certainly russia and china are champing at the bit to do it. This is the major reason why they keep pushing to "decentralize the internet" and wrest control from the US for their own purposes.
The hijacking of government for political purposes (e.g., the IRS scandal) is far more worrying simply because it's a clear indicator that those in power have no qualms about abusing it. Hence ultimately you could blame not congress but rather the electorate.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
You would be right to point that out once Google can imprison you indefinitely and torture you in Gitmo.
Or do hundreds of other life ruining things.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
The ability to capture it is not the issue, it is who they are capturing it from that is the issue.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
like it leave it.
Even if doing so is in violation of your oath to defend the constitution? Isnt this how the corrupt cops think?
When you cant win, ad hominem.
because the USA has unsustainable government debt and trade deficits. People, products and services need to flow without interruption that would be expected of nations that have government and trade surpluses. By reason of the necessary flow, all that moves must be regarded as a potential enemy because everyone is free to convert to a religion that has demonstrated its potential for harm.
IRS scandal? Did you even read how that ended up?
http://www.wnd.com/2013/07/there-was-never-any-irs-scandal-after-all/
Google has the "best record for privacy?!?!?"
WTF? Their whole platform is a rape of privacy. They supported CISPA so they could share the fruits of their privacy rape legally with other corps and govs. And now we know that they willingly spread our cheeks for the NSA/FBI.
FUCK YOU SHILL.
Its priorities. The US has reached such an ethical crossroads: either strong state security or extensive individual liberty. Can't have both.
Do we need to list all the ways that Google has eroded privacy and personal liberty in the US and the rest of the world?
This headline is not at all what he said. The title, much like the cake, is a lie.
The NSA is just like a too big to fail bank. They believe they no longer need to hide their evil nature and criminal activity. They are, regrettably, correct in their belief.
The Wall Street banks, private sector entities with (in theory) strict oversight, gambled away other people's money, and then the victims were forced to hand over taxes to replace the money the banks lost. Expect the "punishment" that the NSA receives now that their bubble (secrecy) has collapsed to be equally punitive.
Honestly it would be disappointing, even outrageous if the NSA didn't have the technical ability to collect this kind of data.
It really wouldn't; from my perspective, they're just a waste of tax dollars.
Hence ultimately you could blame not congress but rather the electorate.
Blame both.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
It's okay as long as we catch the bogeymen.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Safe communication means safe means for propaganda, avenues for radicalisation and recruitment, and for coordination and planning. And that's plenty harmful.
Unsafe communication means no safe means for recruitment, coordination and planning. And that means that people take their business elsewhere than the U.S.A.
If you really want to know how important secure communication is considered, ask the military, the diplomatic service, and most companies.
Not to mention the U.S. constitution.
I'm all for good old detective work, given a suspect. But the trick is to get a suspect in the first place. Monitoring communication helps enormously in becoming aware of suspects.
In particular since every citizen is suspect. Some need less, some need more coaxing in order to stop behaving like prospective terrorists and to start loving the government. If the government is supposed to micromanage its citizens' loyalty, it needs proper access to their communication.
Why won't I work for the NSA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrOZllbNarw but it's transparently obvious that you and your fellow on the payroll crony you replied to, do. Sure, makes sense - you're getting ahead on the backs of people who actually are intelligent, and using their tax money to do it. Clever, in a scumbag reprehensible way, but terribly obvious.
Linus speaks the way he does because he is a bully and thinks his shit doesn't stink. This guy is miles above Linus.
Both're proven better than what's goes on here http://money.msn.com/now/post--heres-the-most-dishonest-place-in-the-us
* I have NO problem with guys that speak truth & operate as honestly as they can. I don't see that in the link above (the character of the place) OR their results (especially economically, which SHOULD be their #1 job for their constituency, NOT JUST THEMSELVES!)
I objectively sat back + watched all of this, taking in what sources I read said, but more importantly? THE REACTIONS OF THOSE WHO *MAY* GET THEIR "APPLECART UPSET" noted point by point, in the link below.
(I don't argue with facts. Facts I keep repeatedly being reinforced from valid & reputable enough sources).
This says it better than I EVER COULD:
"Why shouldn't I work for the NSA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrOZllbNarw
Especially regarding this article, since that video shows that the less intelligent scammers use the more intelligent folks that CAN actually get things done. Is that bad? Yes, when they "do as I say & not as I do" & feed us bullshit worst of all using OUR TAX MONEY TO DO IT, making war machines only the 1% profits by with their sycophants/cronies/yes men, and sending our jobs offshore profiting moreso even.
Why do you *think* Greenspan quit? He knew it's fucked up, and run fucked up. Doesn't take an economist to fix this mess... read below.
APK
P.S.=> You *MAY* want to take another read, & consider its points (they were written for YOU, myself, & those you care for) -> http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4023649&cid=44405751
... apk
And they have decided to discard the 'free' society for the 'security' of the NSA. This will not effect next year's election, or those in 2016. A republican or a democrat will occupy the white house and the vast majority of seats in congress... and life will muddle on.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
With 'friends' like Obama and the NSA who needs to worry about 'terrorists' anymore. Now we can all sing Kum-buy-ah with the tyrants in our own backyards, homes, cell phones, emails,...
Got to hand it to the NSA, creating this competition was a PR windfall. Err, no wait, I think I need to go check on the definition of windfall.
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
As i said, glasshole.
It is certainly true that monitoring everyone 24/7 as in 1984 increases security. It is also true that it leads to a lot of very unhappy people who are forced to live in an Orwellian dystopia. Human beings simply are not meant to live like that. So your cure is far, far worse than the actual diseasae.
If the price for freedom from being watched all the time by hostile government agents on fishing expeditions to find illegal or suspicious (to them) behavior is losing 3000 lives every 10-20 years then it's a price that I and probably most freedom loving people are willing to pay.
Nuking every country other than the US would also make us very safe. A bit lonely but a lot safer from the occassional terrorist. The fewer people on the planet the fewer terrorists. Unfortunately for you safe at any price people there are ethical considerations.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
If the voters didn't want congress they could change it.
Seriously.
Yes, I feel SO much better knowing that the IRS was holding up all kinds of requests for political reasons, routing them to Washington, DC, then making completely illegal requests for information such as the content of prayers (!), and delaying approval for years. Just because more than one ox was gored does not mean the problem is gone. The IRS has leaders who used the agency for political ends, that is an abomination.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
It is certainly true that monitoring everyone 24/7 as in 1984 increases security.
You are not secure against torture. You are not secure against wide-reaching accusations based on an accumulation of trivialities/or and suspicious observations. You are not secure against getting terminated without due process. You are not secure against indefinite detainment. You are not secure against government-fabricated "evidence".
You don't get any of the securities that are understood to be the consequence of living in a civilized country because the government and its institutions have detached themselved from democratic control and decide what is best for them and for its citizens, in this order.
No, that's not security.
Auuuuugaaaaaa!
Funny post. \m/
What is there to be scared of? What if I'm put on their "interest list"? So fucking what?
(posting anonymous because I would never sign up for an account for such a shitty site as slashdot - yes that's why many of us post anonymous dumbass)
Oh come on, it's a phoney scandal. Yahoo News and Politico said so. They must be right. How the Inspector General possibly know things that Yahoo doesn't?
Safe communication means safe means for propaganda, avenues for radicalisation and recruitment, and for coordination and planning. And that's plenty harmful.
If you really want to know how important secure communication is considered, ask the military, the diplomatic service, and most companies.
I'm all for good old detective work, given a suspect. But the trick is to get a suspect in the first place. Monitoring communication helps enormously in becoming aware of suspects.
"Safe communication means safe means for unsuppressed countering of government propaganda, avenues for free expression of disagreement with government actions, avenues for planning concerted action against a corrupt and sold-out government, and for effective planning and recruitment."
Fixed it for you. Or do you trust this government? The government that writes paid-for legislation for Disney and Time-Warner? The government that allows pharmaceutical companies to write legislation that gets rubber-stamped 100 times out of a 100? The government that promises 'transparency' and then absolutely CRUSHES anyone who exposes unconstitutional practices or blows the whistle on corruption? The government that promises enlightened reform of drug laws and then (literally) laughs at the prospect of maybe NOT ruining people's lives for minor offenses. The government that pads the coffers of ADM and Simplot with farm subsidy giveaways, and when trotting out Ma and Pa Kettle isn't adequate to quell the outrage at the corruption, ties the gifts to food stamps...for the poor, for the single mother, for the CHIIIILDREN....*sniff*
This is the government of, by and for, DEA scum, corporate thieves and the purchasers (not creators) of intellectual property.
Okay, it's YOUR government, I get that, but as a citizen of the US, I feel it SHOULD also be mine, and increasingly, that it isn't. Maybe a government that feels it needs to keep every citizen under surveillance recognizes that it really is NOT serving "all of the people", and is concerned that more and more of us are figuring this out.
"To be fair, I was left completely unsupervised." ~Anon
So you need to set up Total Surveillance to spy on about three million relevant people in Russia and China ? Of course you need to totally anal-analyse every American because you need to spy on Chinese, Russians and Arabs ??? Your argument is 100% bullshit.
The NSA, GCHQ and, probably, many others are not monitoring their user IDs. They don't need to!
They're monitoring all the traffic. Or that's how it seems.
Statistically, in their giant super-computers, they can associate places (real, virtual), people, "identities" (for example, a deliberate attempt at confusion or fakery by creating an identity who has the ability to "move around" the real world by creating a paper trail in the virtual world), time. Position is, mostly, a dead give away at protocol layer for lots of reasons. Hell, it's basically what Google do to provide us a service... weird.
Anyway - just saying... It's not like that can't figure out who you are. Even the way you form sentences and paragraphs will give you away... statistically! Quantum machines should be of massive interest to these guys.
I'm posting the anonymously because I've lost my password!
Can any of you spooks help me out? Google is fuck all use.
This is the major reason why they keep pushing to "decentralize the internet" and wrest control from the US for their own purposes.
I don't think you quite understand how the internet works... if the US disappeared tomorrow, the internet everywhere else (shock horror) would still work. When I use a website or connect to someone this side of the pond, funnily enough the US doesn't come into the equation at all. There isn't a central server everyone routes through...
No, it's not. Not ever. Caught, or not caught, they still win if they've managed to cow us so much that we give up precious rights.
...or did you just forget that sarcasm tag?
Yeah, but every one of those people you mention is unanimous in thinking using HOSTS files as a security tool is a shite idea.
A Google engineer criticizing the NSA on data collection – the irony is unbelievable. The pot calling the kettle black.
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
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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.
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http://www.pdfernhout.net/a-rant-on-financial-obesity-and-Project-Virgle.html :-). And that jest came almost half a *century* after the "Triple Revolution" letter of 1964 about the growing disconnect between effort and productivity (or work and financial fitness): :-) As with my mother, no doubt Googlers have lived through periods of scarcity of money relative to their needs to survive or be independent scholars or effective agents of change. Is it any wonder they probably think being financially obese is a *good* thing, not an indication of either personal or societal pathology? :-( ... :-(
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Look at Project Virgle and "An Open Source Planet":
http://www.google.com/virgle/opensource.html
Even just in jest some of the most financially obese people on the planet (who have built their company with thousands of servers all running GNU/Linux free software) apparently could not see any other possibility but seriously becoming even more financially obese off the free work of others on another planet (as well as saddling others with financial obesity too
http://www.educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm
Even not having completed their PhDs, the top Google-ites may well take many more *decades* to shake off that ideological discipline. I know it took me decades (and I am still only part way there.
So what is Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California but a little temporary space habitat bubble of happiness for regular employees, but floating on a sea of relative misery for everyone else planetwide who supports it? Can't we as a society or Google/Virgle as an aspiration do better that that? And even within that bubble are emerging issues. How long can a company expect to run on twenty-somethings without kids?
Google-ites and other financially obese people IMHO need to take a good look at the junk food capitalist propaganda they are eating and serving up to others, as in saying (even in jest):
http://www.google.com/virgle/opensource.html
"we should profit from others' use of our innovations, and we should buy or lease others' intellectual property whenever it advances our own goals" -- even while running one of the biggest post-scarcity enterprises on Earth based on free-as-in-freedom software.
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See also, for the future both of them together may create, the upcoming movie "Elysium":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium_(film)
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In the year 2154, the very wealthy live on Elysium, a Stanford torus[8][9] high-tech space station governed by President Patel (Faran Tahir), in a utopian setting which includes access to private medical machines that offer instant cures, while everyone else lives below on the overpopulated, ruined, "Third World slum"[7] Ear
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
from somebody trying to learn about this. Does browsing with Tor deal with the issues you raise?
To what extent, I wonder, is this massive surveillance effective in _preventing_ terrorism or crime more generally. Can the NSA really process, in real time and in a meaningful way, the vast amounts of data they collect? It seems to me that having this enormous data set would actually be effective only in tracing those responsible AFTER a crime has been committed, not before. The ability to catch criminals quickly after a crime was committed would provide some deterrents to regular folk, but terrorists? They don't really seem to care too much about that. Catching those responsible for a crime quickly would, I suppose, also make some folk feel more secure, and the government more likely to be re-elected, if I'm to be very cynical about it, but that's about it.
With so much data you're adding so much noise to your signal that you need a lot more resources to follow up on potential leads, and I mean human resources not computer algorithms. I may be naive, but I can think of a number of ways of communicating with people without direct contact or link. It seems sufficient to post something on a very public forum such as slashdot according to a pre-established code (e.g. the first letter of every fifth word refers to a word or phrase on the wikipedia article on dolphins), and having access to my gmail account data, my encryption codes, a backdoor to my OS, etc, would do nothing to prevent or even detect such communication. Sure, the parties would have to agree on a code ahead of time, but it seems silly to expect such agreement would be reached over e-mail or other electronic means. So how, with these vasts amount of data, do you detect when a code (and what code!) is transmitted between two random folks who meet occasionally at a gym? In fact, I would think that it can be very easy to "poison" the data collected by the government, so that it becomes more difficult, not easier, to figure out who a person of interest is meaningfully communicating with.
In short, I don't buy the argument that this massive surveillance program helps prevent attacks of one sort or another. Terrorists are outliers in the data (though if they are smart they will behave, most of the time, as if they are totally average), so it's kind of difficult to predict their trends. I do think, however, that this massive surveillance program is very useful for manipulating social trends, either by predicting and guiding future average wants, needs, etc, or keeping tabs on what average joe does and using that information against him should he ever step out of line.
The US owns the root nameservers but have not misbehaved with them yet (probably never will), but resisted efforts for the UN to take over that role. Using those root nameservers they could potentially redirect just about any internet traffic on the planet to wherever it would be convenient to listen to it but it would probably be noticed fairly quickly. :)
So there you go - it was bound to happen when you accuse someone of not understanding how the internet works
Now that you understand what the above poster was getting at you can go clean the egg off your face.
It's easy to believe 24/7 surveillance and monitoring increases security, but how well reasoned is it really?
Security for whom? What is secured?
Another way to put it, spending BILLIONS to collect information on ALL citizens on earth, including US citizens, and then letting the mob, rich people, politicians, foreign countries like Russia, China and Iran get their copies (information wants to be free => information tends to become free), makes those people and leaders RESPONSIBLE for, in their own words, "aiding the enemy".
Once you gather that data in one place, you are also responsible for what other people do with it! That should be a terrifying prospect to anyone who understands how ineffective trade secrets, copyrights, DRM and most "security" measures (security theatres) really are.
To even speak of "security", without defining it, simply speaks volumes to me that people more wish to believe something, than actualize it in reality.
Belief is weak, because it is dependent on unmeasurable dependencies.
Faith is a source of strength, but should not be constrained into one specific belief system.
Nuking every country other than the US would also make us very safe. A bit lonely but a lot safer from the occassional terrorist. The fewer people on the planet the fewer terrorists. Unfortunately for you safe at any price people there are ethical considerations.
You really think killing everyone outside US makes you safer? Really? Maybe in another century killing the whole competing tribes would have worked, but now? People have relatives and loved ones in these countries, nuking them will create bitter and angry people on your own soil, so now you have new terrorists living among you. How is that safer? Killing people randomly only creates fear and hatred, and revenge, i mean, terrorists.
Nah - we've bred our own terrorists. McVeigh, abortion bombers and murderers, etc. A few more years of high unemployment for the under-25 set, and we'll see a spike likely.
And I want to know everthing that you plan on doing with me. No exceptions!
He is crazy if you think about it; I am not.
your a fucking piece of shit
Bogeymen are not real, and therefore cannot be caught. Not everything needs a sarcasm tag; sometimes reading comprehension is sufficient.
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1j6qo4/i_am_joseph_bonneau_2013_nsa_award_winner_for/