Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Overridden by the NSA being the bad guys on Stargate.
The engineers are mere henchmen for the Brin. All hail the Brin and his manly spy glasses!
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.
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.
Without their consent? That's new.
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
1.Google first is not spying on you. Partly because you actually know what they are doing, and spying requires secrecy, and google will tell you what they are doing.
2. Google cannot ruin your life like the NSA can.
3. You have no idea who collects more data.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
He wrote the paper for IEEE.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
You can opt out of Google, but you can't opt out of NSA
You can opt out of Google, but you can't opt out of NSA
Fallacy. Just because you feel the NSA is overboard, and not conducive to a free society, does not mean you dont work on crytography and the such. The problem US citizens have with the NSA is not that they have the capability to capture data, but who they are capturing it on violates their oath.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
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.
No. Google is CIA, not NSA.
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
you dont know Google is collecting data on you, or are you just incapable of operating a computer without the help of Google?
When you cant win, ad hominem.
"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.
The NSA and CIA are not allowed, by law, to spy on American citizens. I don't see why this is so difficult for people to get through their fucking heads.
Google sucking up as much customer information as they can may be sleezy (maybe) and can be questionable, depending on how they are using, selling, whatever that data . . . but it is a far fucking cry from the nature of the NSA/CIA doing it to our own citizens (except when Google and other companies then hand it over to the NSA/CIA, in which case it is just as fucking vile again).
Because there is no reason to.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
You are a fucking idiot.
Don't want Google collecting your data? Don't use their services.
Don't want the NSA collecting your data? Too bad.
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.
On the contrary. We all have responsibility for national security. And what is being done today by our government in the name of national security threatens national security.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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/
The NSA and CIA are not allowed, by law, to spy on American citizens. I don't see why this is so difficult for people to get through their fucking heads.
Hear, hear. The whole debate would be so much more rational if the NSA and CIA would get it "through their fucking heads" that they are not allowed, by law, to spy on American citizens.
I did not state google will tell you every time they do something, but that they will tell you what they are doing. Nice strawman.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
You still have a choice. You can either make your own version of those sites, or dont use those specific services. With the NSA your only choice is to be a hermit to use them.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Again you still have a choice to use that service or not. It is trivial to find out if a site you are using is using google services. If you chose not to figure it on it is your fault not google's.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
It's not difficult; The concern is that these government organizations are blantantly, deliberately, and willing violating said law(s), and going ahead with mass spying on the public.
At least Google tell you up front that they're going to collect data on you in some form or another.. At no point do they ever state otherwise.
With the CIA and NSA, all we have is some dodged questions and weak promises that they're actually holding up to the letter of the law. We have no way to properly audit them to ensure that they're actually in compliance, and their congressional admissions are rather concerning that they in all likelihood aren't.
There are no LEGAL reasons to surveil the people of the United States en mass. It doesnt matter how safe you want to feel, what you ask for is illegal and has been for a very long time. The word Papers in the 4th covers not just paper, but all communications from now until the heat death of the universe. Time or technology does not change these ideals
Good-bye
Its priorities. The US has reached such an ethical crossroads: either strong state security or extensive individual liberty. Can't have both.
Neither. There should be no warrentless spying of American citizens. Putting forth the forth the question who should do it tries to put me into a choice between people who can do it at varying levels of efficiency.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
When you cant win, ad hominem. Right?
When you cant win, ad hominem.
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!
Because it is not enshrined in our laws that we dont spy on you, but it is enshrined in our laws and society that we dont spy on ourselves.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
It's okay as long as we catch the bogeymen.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
And so did MS, Yahoo, and virtually every other internet group out there who collects data. Personally I would suspect an AC of being a shill before a person who is not an AC.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
I see plenty of reasons. Whatever information corporations collect is typically given to the government without much of a fight.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Google, has fought several times however.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
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.
The world, regardless of your hippy views, is still divided up into nation-states. The duty of the US government is to protect and serve US Citizens, not the entire world. That mission includes spying on the citizens of other nation states from time to time, as do the governments of other nation-states spy on the US. If you're trying to claim that the US is the only nation that spies on its allies and others you're going to get laughed out of the courtroom, so your implied objection is DENIED.
Spying on EVERYONE, including US Citizens, is typical of a Government that is ill and out of control, and THAT is something that US citizens need to correct.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
It's not trivial to do so until after you've already been there. And Google Ads are freaking everywhere.
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
And herein lies the problem: who gets to define who the "undesirables" are? How do we know they're undesirable? There's a large segment of the American population who think gays are undesirable. There's an even larger segment who think Muslims are undesirable. There are an amazing number of people on /. who object to pinko, gun-stealing liberals.
In my opinion, NSA apologists are undesirable, and should be the people we tap 24/7; it's usually ultra right-wing types who perform modern domestic-bred terrorism.
j/k. Even conservatives deserve privacy.
--- SER
You're both wrong. Google is spying on you, and then handing that data to the NSA.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And, once again, we have yet another example of why the warrantless surveillance is a bad idea. There was an agent (DuÅan Popov) working for the British MI6 who was trying to tell the US military about Pearl Harbor for months before the attack, but the US military didn't want to listen. In other words, Pearl Harbor happened, not because of a lack of intelligence (in the information sense), but instead a lack of intelligence (in the IQ sense) amongst US military personnel.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
no that was the nid a fictional department made for civilian over site of military secrets
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
I don't know about that but if you go into your account settings and edit the information they have on you and you can request a report on your google usage be delivered via Email to you.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
I say that Bayer should select their advertising agencies and brokers little more carefully.
It is not illegal to spy on other countries, just in other countries. I expect China to spy on us, I dont expect my own government to do it.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Just because it is not apparent who you are shilling for does not mean you are not shilling.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
No it's not. Any time you see a page with a Facebook or Google logo on it ANYWHERE, that page is a part of the respective corporation's data collection machine.
Virtually all websites on the internet today have some form of "social" badge on them to make them easy for users to share, be it facebook, google, pinterest, or reddit. Every one of those badges is pulled directly from those corporate servers and effectively pings the servers with your IP address, browser agent, operating system, and a few other metrics that are about as personally identifiable as your thumb print.
Simply put, facebook doesn't need you to sign up with them for them to know everything about you. At this point creating a login and password is an unnecessary pretense. Facebook knows who you are even if you've never been to facebook.com. The issue at play here is that your browser is the tool they use to spy on you directly. Both Facebook and Google know every single page you've ever been to, and not just you're PC, but you personally.
I sincerely doubt you gave consent to that.
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
If you make your own version of a web site the NSA is monitoring is only a matter of time before they show up with a NSL and force you to spy for them as well.
This is assuming they can't just get what they want by tapping your upstream provider of course.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
1. Google IS spying on you. Anytime you see a "share on G+" logo, an embedded youtube video, or that google analytics is being used in a page's HTML, you are being spied on by google, a fact that is not understood by most people and is difficult for even experienced users to grasp the full ramifications of.
2. Google hands it's collected data over to the NSA. This is no secret and is widely documented fact. By doing this google is directly causal to any actions the NSA take against you.
3. It's irrelevant who collects MORE data, what is relevant however is that all of these giants, facebook, google, microsoft, yahoo, reddit, etc... are required by US law to comply with court orders to hand over information to the NSA.
The NSA does not collect much data at all personally; you won't see "NSA+", "Share on NSA", or "Login with NSA Connect" on any webpages ever. What the NSA does is go to those private industries that are tracking virtually every single page you view including most porn, news, shoping, and entertainment sites and they show them fancy court orders for them to hand over data on you and anyone else involved in the investigation. The NSA admitted to using "3 hops" of separation in their data collection demands so to day they could demand the entire contents of Google's data collection on every man woman and child is not a stretch. They'd only need a few dozen "suspects" to do so.
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!”
4. Google doesn't spend your tax dollars tracking you.
5. You can tell Google to buzz off if you want.
> All hail the Brin and his manly spy glasses!
Ah, but they are countered by the (other) Brin and his kiln-baked doppelgangers!
...which in turn allowed Pear Harbour to happen.
Utter bullshit. It's well understood in the intelligence community and among historians that elements in DC (including Roosevelt) knew all about the impending attack and allowed it to occur for political reasons.
You really ought to refrain from commenting on subjects you clearly know nothing about.
MOST people would understand the phrase "in it's current form" to mean he understands the need for some sort of sigint.
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
I'm not happy about Google either but Google has neither the power nor the inclination to throw me in prison because I wrote that I'd like to kill person X in an email that was never intended for any eyes but the recipient. Or put me on a no fly list when I criticise the TSA and say I want to go on a killing rampage and take out a bunch of them.
We are used to having genuine 100% freedom of speech with no exceptions when communicating privately with a friend. Due to PRISM and probably other NSA programs this is no longer the case. You have to assume that everything you write could be read by an NSA agent.
Privacy from a repressive government is completely different from privacy from a private company that merely wants to make as much money as possible. On the one hand you get targeted ads. On the other you might spend years in prison getting raped by your cellmate and then dying from HIV. That's why we should be more concerned about the NSA than Google. Google doesn't even have a reason to personally read our emails. The NSA does.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
How does facebook know who I am? From my IP address? Only my ISP can connect my name to an IP address. Are you suggesting that Google routinely contacts someone like Comcast or Verizon and just asks to connect the two because, you know, they are curious?
If the FBI wants to connect my identity to an IP address they can call my ISP, but I haven't seen any evidence that ISPs are routinely giving out that information to people without law enforcement credentials.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Does google analytics need javascript to work? I never whitelist it in noscript.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
There is no need to spy on close allies. That is a sign that the whole system is out of control and exists only for its own sake. Also, ultimately laws are supposed to derive from ethics. If it is wrong to spy on your own citizens it is also wrong to spy on anyone else who is not currently or very soon to be an enemy.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
One word, Shadow Profiles http://m.digitaltrends.com/social-media/what-exactly-is-a-facebook-shadow-profile/
The US is one of unfortunately all too many nations that spy to support their own corporations getting business secrets. There's a big difference between checking up on what ballistic missile submarine a government is deploying where, and what new flavor some consumer product will be released in six months from now. The US government pays, with your tax dollars and mine, to give "American" companies (which are often international), data on what their competitiors are doing , supposedly because that keeps jobs in the US (which are being outsourced overseas anyway).
A lot of the motivation for the NSA spying domestically is that the average citizen is being viewed only as a consumer: only useful to the government, and its true 'masters', if the citizen doesn't get out of line and start occupying something. That's a very pro-corporatist viewpoint, and goes hand in hand with international corporate directed espionage. being able to get the taxpayers to both subsidise one and focus the agencies on it, helps enable the other.
Who is John Cabal?
So to you being served target ads which you won't even see if you use noscript and an ad blocker is just as bad as being thrown in jail and/or put on a terrorist watch list for something you wrote to a friend in an email or instant message or text message?
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
"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"
Historically incorrect. Signals intelligence was actually very good, FDR was reading every cable sent to and from the Embassy, as well as lots of military chatter. Intercepted cables identified the time of the attack and enough information was available to anticipate the target as well. This information was not passed on to Pearl, but that's a different problem entirely.
In the absence of a credible replacement for the Soviet Union the NSA along with lot of other cold war institutions (and industry) just don't need to be funded at anything like their former levels for national security reasons (though I agree they shouldnt be abolished entirely.) Just as the we could not get rid of prohibition era departments and wound up repurposing them for 'the war on drugs' (invented for the purpose of preserving their budgets) the same thing has happened after the cold war, with each big budget casting about for a way to make sure that it continues to grow, rather than getting cut back.
On the micro level it's all so understandable but on the macro level it's destroying the USA.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Just because it is not apparent who you are shilling for does not mean you are not shilling.
The only group involved in this controversy that has the resources to employ a small army of shills is the government. And I don't think they would hesitate to put their damage control team to work. Especially after the recent close vote in congress. A lot is at stake. They are probably right now in the process of hiring thousands more shills to join their cyber-army.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Noscript. I would suggest you Google it but you might prefer to avoid them entirely. You could try bing, but that's likely a frying pan-fire situation.
if you're willing to trust Google to some degree, then DO Google it. They offer a few solutions themselves.
Now, try asking the NSA how to opt out of their tracking and see how far you get.
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.
How do you tell google analytics to buzz off if it's embedded into practically every website?
With Ghostery
There is a difficulty of course: cripple the NSA, and you give free and secure communication to all sorts of undesirables.
"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" - Blackstone's formulation.
Individual freedom & privacy from government snooping is more important by orders of magnitude than the threat of criminals or terrorism. Damaged infrastructure can be repaired and dead politicians can be replaced, but freedom, once lost, will never return within the current generation's lifetime, or likely that of their children. *IF* & when it does return, the cost in lives and suffering will be enormous.
How would citizens ever throw off an abusive, evil government when elections are rigged, etc, if there is no ability for the citizens to communicate secretly? That ability is, IMHO, equal in importance to maintaining a free and open society as the right of the people to keep & bear arms.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
He does say it. Have you actually read his statement?
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Okay. I'll bite. Why is there no reason to avoid using gmail or other google products now that it has been revealed that they are intimately partnered with the NSA?
It seems to me that switching to hushmail or some other encrypted email provider based outside of the US would be prudent if you value your privacy. I don't write anything in Gmail that I am not comfortable with the NSA reading.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
5. You can tell Google to buzz off if you want.
Actually, you can tell the NSA that too. Case in point: NSA, BUZZ OFF!!
I can't promise you they'll buzz off. I can only assure you they heard.
Very interesting. I've always believed Facebook was evil and I've never had an account with them. I also don't have any friends who actively use the site. From the article it seems that the way they get information on people without Facebook accounts is by using information their friends post about them. So it does seem avoidable. So if you value your privacy:
1) Don't use Facebook.
2) Tell your friends that you would prefer if they didn't write about you on Facebook. If someone does then stop being friends with them.
That article didn't seem to mention how Facebook can connect an IP address to a real name without contacting your ISP with a warrant or at least being a law enforcement agency.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Because if you've logged in to facebook, they've got a cookie identifying you, which will be sent to them when you load resources (like a "like" button) from a page.
They are, however, almost certainly handing it out routinely to the NSA under the same sort of order we saw for phone metadata from Verizon Business.
How do you tell google analytics to buzz off if it's embedded into practically every website?
https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
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
Complete BS. The attack on Pearl Harbour was known, designed by Roosevelt and a naval captain who had grown up a missionary's son in Japan, knew the Japanese mind. There are new books on the topic with every new release of archival info.
We need our enemies, create them with every move in our foreign policy game, a game that is obviously far too complex for human minds to play, and every CS major should be able to show that by a simple analysis of the number of players, numbers of moves, and the fact that they all make their moves without turns. When is the last 'win' we can point to?
Read Taleb's "Antifragile". It is a world of thick-tailed risk distributions, meaning you are consumed dealing with the consequences of very unlikely events. That is an excellent discruption of the failure mode we are experencing.
They have actually been very ufront with what they are doing. They spy on anyone, as long as there's a 51 probablity that he/she is not an american. (source)
This is what the relevant part of the PRISM code actually looks like:
boolean OK_to_spy(individual *TARGET) {
if( US_POPULATION < 0.51 * DATABASE_SIZE)
return TRUE;
else
error("Database is too small.");
}
On slashdot Google engineers are evil, thus NSA must be good.
In the end I think we will find that they are all cylons...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
DHS has installed cameras in all caves across the country, to prevent Al-Qaeda from using bears to attack American interests. Being a hermit won't save you.
That's a false dilemma. We have many more options than an unchecked NSA or a "crippled" NSA (though, note that taking away their ability to spy on US Citizens is only "crippling" in the sense that it would require them to return to their chartered mission as a foreign intelligence service...).
For example, most people aren't arguing that the NSA shouldn't be allowed to collect any of the sort of data they've been caught collecting. Just that it should have limited scope, and that they should have real accountability if they abuse their power. That neither cripples them (despite their claims) nor allows them unchecked, and that's just a simple example.
It's not quite that simple, even if it seems so on its face. When you make all communication tappable, you don't just allow the government access to communications of suspected bad actors. You also create something that can be abused by people in power (remember that the government is made up of people, and people do stupid things on a regular bases) -- from little things like a government worker using the capability to spy on a spouse to big things like government cracking down on dissent. And you create a system that can be attacked; if the US government can read your email, so can an attacker or a foreign government.
Keep in mind that the government is who defines what "criminal" is. If they have unlimited surveillance power -- even if it's only limited to "criminals" -- then it's a simple matter to change what "criminal" means until they can effectively listen in to any conversation they want. And quash dissent. Remember that almost every important campaign for rights involved "criminal" things -- from the fight for Women's Suffrage to the protests and campaigns for civil rights in the 1960's. These movements did "criminal" things in part to point out that they shouldn't be criminal things. To give the government absolute ability to stop criminal activity would be a very bad thing.
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
Well, no. That's not quite what happened. That's not even close to what happened. He was asked (by his German to gather information on Pearl's harbor defenses - something military intelligence already knew that enemy agents were doing. (He was also gathering all manner of other intelligence information.) There's absolutely no evidence, except for his claim decades later, that he had any indication of or any information about an impending attack. Furthermore, he never contacted any US military personnel with his claims - he contacted the FBI.
The only lack of intelligence here is between your keyboard and chair - because you're either stupid enough to post crap like that without fact checking, or because you're aware of the facts but choose to ignore and twist them.
And, once again, we have yet another example of why the warrantless surveillance is a bad idea. There was an agent (DuÅan Popov) working for the British MI6 who was trying to tell the US military about Pearl Harbor for months before the attack, but the US military didn't want to listen. In other words, Pearl Harbor happened, not because of a lack of intelligence (in the information sense), but instead a lack of intelligence (in the IQ sense) amongst US military personnel.
Pearl Harbor was known about in advance. Pearl Harbor was the scapegoat to get rest of America behind the war effort. In other words, the Military let Pearl Harbor get bombed so they good get into the war.
Nothing like some destruction on Americans to get the people behind you. And if that sounds like something that happened in 2001 also, where do you think they got the idea?
Be seeing you...
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
no that was the nid a fictional department made for civilian over site of military secrets
Fictional. Right.
You do realise Stargate chronicled the real life actions of the US Air Force, they leaked enough of the program to create the film, then tv show, to act as plausable deniability.
They then leaked the fact they leaked it and they came up with Wormhole Extreme.
This is amazingly shortsighted IMO. There's nothing enshrined in your laws that prevents the US government buying or trading that information from someone else. Foreign governments habitually spy on American citizens, then give the information to the US government. The spying may be illegal in the US, but that doesn't matter because it was those dang foreigners.
The trouble with this argument is that the US government spies on foreign citizens, and foreign governments spy on US citizens. Then the governments get together, and swap information. This is practically no different from the US spying on its own citizens.
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...
Unless you've taken some odd measures, you're very server-side trackable. Go here and see how unique you are even with no cookies of any kind on your client. As a general rule, any step you take to block cookies or client-side tracking makes you more unique to server-side tracking. IP address isn't the point at all here! I'm unique mostly because I have an unusual monitor resolution due to running in a VM, and ad blocking on IE.
Unless you're so privacy-obsessed that you actually turn javascript off everywhere (plus a bunch of other tuning), you have a personal signature available to every web page you visit, and most pages these days phone home to the Google and Facebook motherships.
Today, there's no connection between that tracking and law enforcement. That we know about. Yet. So nothing to worry about, right?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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?
If someone does then stop being friends with them.
How would you know if you are not on Facebook?
Disclosure: i do not use Facebook - so i can be your friend :)
No it's not. Any time you see a page with a Facebook or Google logo on it ANYWHERE, that page is a part of the respective corporation's data collection machine.
Virtually all websites on the internet today have some form of "social" badge on them to make them easy for users to share, be it facebook, google, pinterest, or reddit. Every one of those badges is pulled directly from those corporate servers and effectively pings the servers with your IP address, browser agent, operating system, and a few other metrics that are about as personally identifiable as your thumb print.
Simply put, facebook doesn't need you to sign up with them for them to know everything about you. At this point creating a login and password is an unnecessary pretense. Facebook knows who you are even if you've never been to facebook.com. The issue at play here is that your browser is the tool they use to spy on you directly. Both Facebook and Google know every single page you've ever been to, and not just you're PC, but you personally.
I sincerely doubt you gave consent to that.
NoScript is your friend.
If it actually mattered to Americans, you could fix the NSA thing just like the East Germans did: They walked up to their buildings in masses and demanded to look at the records. Then they destroyed lots of them. NSA is only potent as long as they can play divide et impera.
I agree.
We Americans need to organize a few million people to march on Washington D.C., the NSA/DHS/CIA/FBI HQs, and the WH, and demand the domestic spying capabilities and systems be destroyed/dismantled.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
And not only that, Google's Webmaster tools provide Google with a lot of info from participating websites. Safebrowsing also tells them about each address people are using, think about it? Why not provide a downloadable list of hashes you can check locally? They say because you truly need the latest info but that is some major bs so you phone home no matter if you are using Firefox or Chrome.
I have actively disabled all Google access that I know of to my personal stuff and believe me when I say it is mighty hard and you will break a lot of websites from functioning properly.
It is illegal since when you are doing the spying you are breaking the other countries' laws. Not to mention international law forbids it. Spying in this sense would be classified as extraterritorial investigations without the consent of the territorial state, meaning you are violating the sovereignty of the other country which is something everybody agreed not to do at the UN.
Countries might tolerate it because there is not much you can do about it other than complain loudly, but spying is an act of war and aggression. Keep doing it to a powerful country and expect nasty things to happen to you. On the other hand if you are the powerful country yourself expect to be treated like an asshole.
In order to protect and serve your citizens you don't have to spy the entire world. Hell, maybe only your actual enemies, but in any case, get it in your head that spying is actually illegal by international law. Don't you find it odd that every time they catch a foreign spy they say they weren't doing anything, or the other country says those people were acting on their own? So get informed before writing stuff like that.
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.
----
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? :-( ... :-(
----
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.
---
See also, for the future both of them together may create, the upcoming movie "Elysium":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium_(film)
----
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.
Something tells me nobody actually *got* your code. Otherwise, you'd have either been modded into oblivion by NSA spooks, or modded +5 Interesting/Insightful by paranoid cynics.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
There is no need to spy on close allies.
I disagree, and so would Israel. If you know anything about the cold war you'd know that both sides spied on their own allies all the time, and often for pretty legitmate reasons.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Shadow Profiles is two words.
Ghostery is yo' fren'.
The weasel way around it is to collect great big blocks of data that include some traffic that goes to people that are not American citizens, or say they are just investigating a citizen because they are a link to a non-citizen.
Hey but at least you are safe! America, land of the not so free.
There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
Not just spying but going as far as letting off bombs with fatal consequences in allied countries. Chilean spies carried out an assassination by car bomb in Washington D.C., French ones sank a ship in New Zealand and a person that was most likely still a US agent at the time carried out a bombing in Italy.
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.
Also Hubert Wilkins, who had worked earlier for the US navy, was in Japan at the time sending similar reports. He couldn't get anyone to take him seriously.
The most glaring example of US intelligence failure in WWII was played out at Yalta where the US President just did not have the faintest clue who he was dealing with in Stalin. That showed that somewhere a gulf existed between intelligence gathering and decision making.
There's also this: https://www.google.com/settings/dashboard
And why would it be OK for your crappy gov agency to spy on me, and not on you, just because there is a sea in between us?
I'm really getting fed up with Americans going crazy over the fact that their government is spying on american citizens... They shouldn't spy on anybody without a very good reason to do so....
But if you want (and dont morraly oppose) your tax dollars to be spent on watching every piece of meat with 2 eyes and an evolved vocal capability as long as it isn't part of this piece of stone and water you call "the land of the free", you've got bigger problems imho
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.
Dear Anonymous Coward.
Please take a piece of paper, divide it into four coloums and put on top of each coloumn the questions respectively
From your already performed actions you can in the third coloumn fill in "call someone on slashdot a brainwashed, ignorant luser" and in the fourth coloumn put your real name. But I am really curious what you would put into the two first coloums! My suspicion is that the problem might be something along "you (e.g. Anonymous Coward) feels offended/hurt and respond with childish/immature name calling". Since I do not know you I am blank on what the cause might be. These are just my speculations though and I might be wrong, so if you could provide your answers that would be great.
When you are sure of something, you probably are wrong (search for "Unskilled and Unaware of It").
Tor helps because you have a server-side profile that is somewhat common among Tor users. You can hit panopticlick through Tor and see what they see. There's still stuff like fonts installed and monitor size that's possibly distinct. It's been quite some time since I played with Tor, and the project keeps improving, so I don't know for sure.
Of course, the default Tor profile has JavaScript enabled and some sort of cookies (not sure when they're erased these days, again best to check through a de-anonymizing site), so limited client-side tracking is still there. At one point they warned you about that in their docs - if you log into gmail then go other places, you're not anonymous - but again all my info is old.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It's impossible to watch porn with TOR!!! To slow!
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[l] Harbour to happen.
Pearl Harbour happened because the Japanese were underestimated. By the standards of the day, US signals intelligence was probably as good as one could reasonably expect. Peacetime military organizations have their limits.
Everybody important in naval circles would certainly have been aware of the highly successful British air raid on the Italian fleet in the port of Taranto on the night of 11 November 1940, over a year before the Pearl Harbour raid.
The US Navy's air-dropped torpedoes couldn't work reliably in shallow water such as that found in Pearl Harbour. It was reasonably believed that the fleet in port would not be vulnerable to torpedoes, which -- in general -- are a far greater threat to warships than bombs (aside from the occasional critical hit).
The Japanese managed to engineer air-dropped torpedoes that would work in the shallow water of the harbour.
Racism may have played a role as well. The USA of that age was a more more racist society than today, and the views many Americans had of the Japanese (which don't bear repeating here) were stupid and short-sighted. It is not clear to what extent this affected thinking at command levels, but there is no doubt that in at least some respects the US military was a racist organization (consider the segregation of African-Americans).
Incidentally, had the fleet been at sea when it engaged the Japanese carrier force, or their main surface fleet, the same underestimation could easily have led to a far worse disaster. It was easier for sailors to escape from sinking ships in harbour than it would have been in the open sea. Also, most of the ships at Pearl were able to be raised from the shallow water, and returned to fight later in the war.
For comparison, look at the Battle of Savo Island. This was a complete disaster for the US Navy, again largely caused because the Japanese were massively under-estimated, and it didn't occur in peacetime!
In short, it is easy to over-estimate the importance of signals intelligence.
4. Google doesn't spend your tax dollars tracking you.
5. You can tell Google to buzz off if you want.
I see what you did there with the "buzz off" bit. Very clever. :D
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 number of people killed by their own abusive governments in the last 100 years is at least an order of magnitude more than the number of people killed by terrorists in the entirety of recorded human history.
I'll take my chances with the terrorists, thank you very much.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
According to wikipedia:
Espionage or spying involves a government or individual obtaining information... Espionage is inherently clandestine
Yes, Google hands over data to the NSA. Would you rather that they didn't, got sued, and then were forced to fork over even MORE data, possibly along with money? At least this way, as long as Google has some oversight, we can be sure that the NSA doesn't have complete and total access to EVERYTHING. Every single claim is still reviewed by lawyers before anyone gets any information on anybody/thing.
Moreover, Google collects a lot of data, yes, but ANONYMIZED data. Heck, you can always see what they have collected on you, if I remember correctly, if you have a Google account. Anything actually tied to you, furthermore, gets deleted after a set amount of time; I forget exactly what that time is. I think it's searches are kept with IP/account identification for six months, then anonymized at the end of the 6 months, and I don't know how many years it is before it's fully wiped. But this data does not stick around until the heat death of the universe with all personal details attached, despite what many believe. And sure, you can claim that that's what they SAY and that they might keep it longer, but by the same argument they don't do any of this and store no information at all. Either trust the information you're given or say nothing at all. We have no reason yet to believe they've been lying, so there's no reason to do so.
As for the NSA... there's not much we can do right now. The average citizen can do exactly nothing about that right now because the average politician isn't WILLING to do anything. No matter who we elect, nothing is going to change. Sure we can recall a few people, make some noise, but we saw how long that lasted with SOPA - that is, not at all. We need support of major companies and access to lobbyists to actually change anything going on here. Until then everything is just wishful thinking. Though if anyone has any feasible solutions, I'm completely open to hearing them. And I'm pretty sure the NSA collects a LOT of data. That or Google is bugging your telephones too, and the NSA is just requisitioning those bugs. Whichever you think is more likely.
http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1j6qo4/i_am_joseph_bonneau_2013_nsa_award_winner_for/
The US has used a false flag operation to get into every major war we have been in. Pear Harbor was nothing new.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
Bad code is hard to grok
This is a UDP joke, I don't care if you get it or not...
There are an amazing number of people on /. who object to pinko, gun-stealing liberals.
I'm a California dictionary-type liberal (in favor of regulation of business but not morality) with strong communist leanings and I too object to gun-stealing so-called liberals. Why is that amazing to you? To my mind, the reservation of armed force for a segregated portion of society subject to a separate body of law and believing itself to be superior to general society is not really compatible with liberal values.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"