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NSA Chief Keith Alexander Takes His PRISM Pitch To YouTube
Daniel_Stuckey writes "There's definitely something strange about the video's attempt at looking/sounding like a NOVA episode. Alexander, who defended the agency at Black Hat this summer and recently announced his retirement next year, takes care to emphasize the agency's privacy compliance precautions and oversight. 'We have not had any willful or knowing violations in those programs,' he says referring to sections 215 and 702 of the Patriot Act, which relate to the telephone metadata and PRISM programs respectively. 'There have been [violations] in other programs, but not in those two.'"
All the lies and deceit that has come along from them so far means that WE. DO. NOT. TRUST. WHAT. YOU. SAY.
Your words are pointless, because you are almost certainly lying. "How do you know when an NSA spokesman is lying?" "His lips are moving"
when accused thieves an murderers are in the dock, they always assure us they are innocent too. "I may have done some minor thing, but not what I am accused of. Definitely not." And they generally believe it. Mental gymnastics should be an olympic sport.
Like you'd do anything but lie to us anyway.
So, just involuntary and ignorant violations, then.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
Later on he could claim the opposite of what you think he meant.
The NSA thinks you are a child that needs their protection, and you don't know what is best for you. That's how they think of the people who vote.
Have gnu, will travel.
It's nice that you say so. The problem is: I don't believe you. I cannot. There is no oversight whatsoever concerning your actions. You say that no transgressions happen, that's nice. But let's say I assert that I'm no terrorist, does that mean you stop spying on me? No. Why? Because you cannot verify that I'm not.
So why the hell should I believe you without any kind of evidence or any kind of ability to verify your claims?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Because that's far from the interests of anyone who could shift the focus on things that matter. Why the hell should the powers that are keep us from bickering over whether or not someone's imaginary friend's opinion should matter on whether or not someone may fuck someone else? As long as this keeps people sufficiently distracted they won't bother looking at any problems that might actually matter.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A pathological liar telling lies. You should be scared shitless that slime like this have so much power.
Doesn't this amount to the Department of the Defense propagandizing directly to the U.S. public? What is acceptable and what is not?
I can see press conferences, announcements, and factual information, but when does it become an attempt to persuade the public?
So FUCK YOU and all the people who say it's the NSA's job to spy on me because being a foreigner makes me a terrorist risk.
Secret program approved by secret courts run by a guy who has no qualms about lying under oath. Sorry but your credibility will only return once you get rid of FISA courts and replace yourself with someone who doesn't consider people who disagree with mass surveillance as being filthy, disobedient children. Massive ass that you are. And yes, he did make that comparison.
Of course he thinks its okay.
He's not going to sit there and say to himself - I'm building a police state and imposing it on hundreds of millions of people.
We have not had any willful or knowing violations in those programs,' he says referring to sections 215 and 702 of the Patriot Act
That's good news. It's just the NSA spying on me. I was getting worried for a moment.
How about that for starters? It's about time to end martial law after 9/11!
The patriot act is about as patriotic as the Federal reserve is federal...
"We have not had any willful or knowing violations in those programs"
Just violations caused by incompetence.
On a more serious note; doesn't the leaking of the very existence of the programs count as a willful and knowing violation of the program?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Outlived his usefulness, and being allowed to hang himself in the court of public opinion.
Check the like vs dislike counts on youtube (157 vs 9,993 at the time of writing).
All your ghosts are just false positives.
yeah, sure, that's what they all say!
When Comrade Alexander posts the full log of his phone calls and visited websites for the past year he might earn credibility amongst the proletariat. No harm done, because it's only metadata, right?
People are wringing their hands over an automated system that might see your super secret facebook Like of the latest Lil Bub video
Yeah! Who cares if they spy on everyone and blatantly violate the constitution? No big deal. No government has ever abused their powers or used information to their advantage. Also, laws are unchanging and always just, so what could possibly go wrong?
Ignorance is a choice
They are just trying to win your hearts and minds :P~
How does the CIA tolerate these incompetent troglodytes? Why do we fund this department of the government? It's completely useless.
Why is this not an option?
It's very nice of you to take the time and sit down and try to explain your actions. It's clear that you believe that the NSA has a set of duties and those duties require or even demand the sort of wide-spread surveillance that has, willfully or not, broached a very core aspect of your own self-worth. In trying to defend your actions, you make it patently clear that you know you've done something wrong. Unfortunately, the position you are in does not inherently give you the perspective on why so many people are upset with your actions. So, let me try to walk you through exactly why people take issue with the NSA and other members of the US Federal Government in their course of action against the people of the world.
To put in bluntly, the people of the world have various rights. One of those very core rights is the right to privacy. That is, a large part of the dignity, self-respect, and general humanity of a person comes from their ability to be alone and unique in their thoughts and beliefs and often even actions. Yet the very notion of the NSA and other such government bodies is to do away with privacy in the name of some higher purpose. The argument invariably degenerates into a black and white question of which right must be given up: a right to life or a right to privacy. The very fact that such a position is taken is the very problem.
You see, the world is not black and white. The world isn't even greyscale. It's a lush and beautiful world that expands well outside the visible spectrum. Yet as much as humans are blind to the ultraviolet and the infrared, you have set yourself up to believe in the most perverse of visions that leaves you nearly blind. You denigrate the people you are entrusted to protect and in doing so demonstrate that you are actually worse, in many ways, to the actual enemies of those people. For the enemies of the people actually see them as people. Your actions treat them as little more than sheep or fodder. The former may slaughter hundreds of people, but your actions pave the way in justifying the slaughter of millions.
Now, I say all the above with the hope that you don't take it the wrong way. I do think you started out with noble intentions. But the road to hell is paved with noble/good intentions. What you need to measure your actions by are what you actually are doing. You cannot turn to the ends to justify the means. You cannot argue that the violations that do occur are infrequent so are acceptable. In the end, as cliche as it may seem, you need to look at these words and really think behind the meaning behind them. And maybe, if you can muster a little privacy of your own, while you try to deny it to us, you can look upon your own life when you retire and how your actions will affect you once you are no longer the one in command of these forces that you have taken part in unleashing upon the world.
In the end, as much as I wish you well as a person, the question you should be asking in presenting such a statement to the public isn't "How can I live with myself?" but "How can the people of the world live with what I've done to them?". I don't really know the answer to that question. I do know that of all the people who do exist, you are the best position to be the forefront of actually fulfulling your actual duty and not merely the letters of the memos or reports presented to you that have been used to justify your actions. Instead of changing the American people, your time would be better spent in changing the Agency you're entrusted to be in charge of and are actually able to change.
PS - The sad fact is, thanks to the likes of Edward Snowden, I have a good deal of confidence that you, the NSA, will receive this comment even though it was never sent to you because you will not be certain with 51% accuracy that I'm American. That is, put simply, beyond distasteful and horribly disrespectful of the 95%+ of humanity that is not American that you treat with contempt in your actions.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
As I was glancing over the headline I read it as 'PRISM Power' and was wondering why Slashdot had an article about Sailor Moon.
Didn't you notice that he'd retired? So he's not (officially) a government spokesman.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Somebody seems to be lying here. Maybe the guy that thinks his agency is perfect, despite massive evidence to the contrary?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I did not notice this, for the simple reason that it hasn't happened. He has announced his intention to retire next year.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
anti-science, you say?
The government probably hope that some of his bullshit will stick... and it probably will with some people.
At 16:17 in the video notice that Alexander says, "no content in the metadata program." He could have said, "no content" to the question of collecting phone content. Instead he had to add, "in the metadata program." This begs the question: Is there some other program under which the NSA is collecting the content of our phone calls?
Doesn't this amount to the Department of the Defense propagandizing directly to the U.S. public? What is acceptable and what is not?
I can see press conferences, announcements, and factual information, but when does it become an attempt to persuade the public?
Oh, you didn't hear? They repealed the law that forbade the US government from using it's (formerly) foreign propaganda tools and assets domestically against US citizens.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130715/11210223804/anti-propaganda-ban-repealed-freeing-state-dept-to-direct-its-broadcasting-arm-american-citizens.shtml
http://reason.com/24-7/2013/07/15/with-ban-repealed-us-aims-propaganda-mac
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/17/1224321/-U-S-Government-Repeals-Ban-Opens-Floodgate-to-Mass-Agitprop-Meant-for-Domestic-Consumption
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3043041/posts
What I find interesting is that we see publications as politically/ideologically diverse as Daily KOS and Free Republic both highly critical of this travesty.
If only people would stop looking at only what they differ on and unite on what they agree on. That's how the government and their lackeys plays people. They stir up wedge-issue shit, create a carefully-crafted narrative, and push it through the various communications medias to enrage and divide people and suck all of the oxygen out of the air for public discussion about actual meaningful oversight, reform, and accountability of government and the political class.
I guarantee that even as a white male in his mid-50s, I and a 16-YO black or Latino gang-banger in the 'hood STILL have far, far more in common and agree with each other's views far more across the board then either of us would with the average Washington D.C. politician or apparatchik, regardless of political party.
Instead of, for instance, arguing over "racism" over the Trayvon/Zimmerman incident, how about holding those responsible for the 35% black unemployment rate and the generally crap economy that had Trayvon and has many more like him out on the streets instead of working a job and raising a family, responsible for their actions or lack of, and craft some practical solutions instead of trying to start a race war.
Same thing with Chicago/Detroit gun violence...treat the cause not the symptoms. Hold the politicians responsible for the high poverty & unemployment in those cities and others around nation responsible for the crime, violence, and hopelessness it breeds instead of attempting to shift the blame to 2A rights and individual gun ownership.
Always watch the other hand. Do you really think any of those politicians and political apparatchiks give a single damn about gun deaths or racism? All any of them (outside of a couple of pariahs of the mainstream party-establishments) actually care about is securing and increasing their wealth & power by increasing and broadening every aspect of their control over YOU.
Welcome to "Serfdom, 21st-Century Style!".
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Umm... That is sort of the American left's mantra. The Constitution is a living document which meaning changes as society changes and holding it to strict interpretation is obsolete. Why would you think they would be concerned with protecting it or it's enforcement or the ramifications of it?
That is something the American right and/or people who actually give a fuck about this country simply do not understand. Hell, even many on the left who do care don't understand it but follow that ideology to some degree because it is convenient to their other goals. There are entities who care fuck all about the constitution, what limits it places on the government's abilities (unless they conveniently need them at the moment), as long as their version of whatever makes it through. Expecting them to care is simply foolish.
Seriously, we just had a law passed (PPACA) that couldn't survive on it's own merits constitutionally and the Supreme Court had to rewrite a penalty provision to become a tax penalty that completely bypasses the 5th amendment's due process of law clause in order to force it into compliance with the Constitution and the American Left are championing it as a great victory over the mean terrorist republicans. Despite 16 million people with insurance loosing that coverage due to the strict grandfather clause in the law, Despite massive increases in premiums for those who get to keep their insurance, despite companies dropping employee hours to avoid full time employees, despite companies dumping retirement coverage onto medicare and the exchanges, despite companies dumping spousal coverage if they work because they can get insurance elsewhere now, we have an administration that rewards it's political allies by giving unions and large companies waivers and delays but will not delay the mandate for the common man even though the exchanges are completely messed up right now. And you expect them to understand or care about anything other then their agenda.
Now stop bothering me, I gotta find out what Brittany is doing next.
He has retired next year.
In case that doesn't sound right, it is because he hasn't retired yet, he will be retiring in the future. So officially, he is still a government spokesman until he actually does retire. And that is only a given if he doesn't make some deal to continue as one after retirement.
Nice cherry picked articles
Because Slashdot is not just the US market. Europeans
Why does this matter? The grandparent post is about American politics...
All the lies and deceit that has come along from them so far means that WE. DO. NOT. TRUST. WHAT. YOU. SAY.
Don't you get it yet ?
They are using Youtube, a place where the sheeples congregate
They are NOT talking to the people like you and me --- they are talking AT the sheeples
As long as the sheeples in America ( and the world ) believe their lies, and the sheeples do believe them, NSA will get to continue their deceits without any hindrance
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
General Alexander gives a wonderful expose' of the 'Mind Think' within NSA today.
NSA Today, operates on a presumption that World War II (WWII) has no end! and has not ended!
For NSA the terrors of WWII are alive and killing well today on American streets, in American Schools, and American Offices.
To KILL the THREAT, General Alexander says to KILL the Source, i.e. American Citizens. American Citizens constitute in
General Alexander's Mind Think IS the greatest threat to the Presidency Of The United States Of America IS the American Peoples,
and they MUST be killed and slaughtered at ALL COSTS. This will be the Crowning Operation of World War II by the hands of General
Alexander.
GOD BLESS General Alexander.
It's ok, I don't expect much from you. You are not supposed to understand anything I wrote in order to understand the law. Everything I wrote about the law was either because of the law or something that happened to the law and not the law in and of itself. What you are supposed to understand is the fucked mindset that sites behind the entire enterprise resulting from the law's passage, it's manipulations in order to be claimed constitutional, and it's impact on society due to it's implementation.
If you don't understand that, I can do nothing for you. Perhaps you could ask your mom to help you or something.
and be done with it. Its all lies anyway.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
What makes you so sure?
That they are STILL trying to hide something BIG? Years in the telecom and ISP business, NSA-watching since the Internet went global and way before. I am one of those people who might have become a spook, though I am glad I did not. From its all-to-brief brief mention in David Kahn's The Codebreakers [1967] which I carried around as a kid like some overstuffed bible, my interest was piqued by James Bamford's Puzzle Palace [1982] which introduced the world to the topic of the 'piggyback slurp' and laid out directly NSA's intentions to tap the world. The whole world -- Charter be damned -- from the start.
A few anecdotes from good friends in the telecommunications trade who alluded to special cordoned-off spaces within AT&T's Magens Point cable terminus in St. Thomas US Virgin Islands, drunken conversation in bars with reminders not to speak of such things... a rather suspicious 'underwater landslide' fiber outage between St. Thomas and Puerto Rico c.1995, which I suspected at the time might involve a submarine because a telco friend noticed that after all his voice circuits were back there was an eyebrow-raising 'unusually long period' before the data circuits came up, even though they were physically interspersed and not supposed to be broken out at the carrier level... circumstantial stuff, sure. Pure speculation is as fascinating as the real thing.
Since then, revelations about Room 614A and Hepting vs. AT&T, the little mouse who could have roared all the way to the Supreme Court, had they not declined to hear the case.
I'm not talking about individual stakeouts or FISA warrants or occasional 'oopsies' of a few domestic intercepts. I'm discussing large scale Tier 1 total interception of data with selective routing and forwarding of target traffic onto side channels via 'dark' or leased fiber on a scale that is approaching 'total'. This includes voice too: terrestrially trunked cell calls and landline (there is practically no difference these days, it's all turkeyfart compressed).
Which is why I posted here back in June my theory that PRISM slides were made as part of a limited hang-out. I came to this conclusion because I found the allegation that Internet service providers named grant direct back-doors to NSA to be preposterous (and still do, too much risk of exposure by now). The purpose of the hang-out was for Google and company to discredit the allegations honesty to relegate it to 'hoax' status... and provide a topic that diverts attention away from the total-tap-slurp operation.
Steve Gibson of Gibson Research has come up with another theory that I find interesting, it may fit Occam's Razor better than my own. He presented it recently in Security Now #408: The State of Surveillance, audio and full transcript available. GOOD STUFF. His angle is that "direct access to their servers" means all unencrypted SMTP-mail and HTTP from tap points directly upstream. It is all about fiber and taps. Taps are about splitting light... and that is what prisms do.
If you have a good traffic tap and encrypted intercepts, add a bit of coercion for the providers to divulge their private SSL keys and they can replay the past SSL sessions they have gathered.
It is time for everyone to learn about and implement Perfect Forward Secrecy.
Thar be dragins in our midst. Slay them.
NSA and the Desolation of Smaug
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
He has announced his future retirement, he is not presently retired.
I get propaganda from both sides in my mailbox on a daily basis. The left's arguments appeal to one's intelligence, the right appeals to emotion. However, when you think about it, both sides want the same thing: Working government, a safety net should shit happen, protection against crime, raising their kids in a better place than they were raised in, and so on.
However, the education system in the US is pitiful and corrupt. Doing like France and going to a voucher system is one idea, but what it would result is a "Schools Corporations of America" company splitting off and ending up being the only game in town, so one trades failed public schools run by the government for failed schools run by a private company that is not accountable to anyone.
Because of this, it is easy to divide the US into the two regions. Because if you live in the country, you are defending your livestock against coyotes and bobcats [1], you have to have a firearm with you. The fear of being defenseless against wild predators [1] causes them to flock to the NRA. On the other hand, you have people who live in the city who might see a feral cat once in a while, and have no clue about rural life, nor care. Their concern is gun violence, so to them, getting firearms off the streets is their main thing. Politicians know that gun control is a black/white polarization issue, so they can hot-button that, while the people ignore the fact that their working conditions get worse, there are trade agreements which favor foreign companies that have no pollution controls, that the police are taken off the streets so a new stadium can be bought.
So, while both sides piss on each other about abortion and gun control, the pie shrinks for everyone involved. Banks move their money overseas and refuse to lend in the US (same banks who happily accepted US tax dollars for a bailout), taxes become more and more regressive, and cities become more and more hostile to people working.
The sad thing, is this has worked for centuries in the US South, and it probably will continue working for the long term future.
[1]: Good luck convincing a pack of mixed coyote/feral dogs which have -zero- fear of humans to leave your chicken coop alone without a couple blasts from a shotgun. Try to go at them with a knife, and they will bring you down in a heartbeat.
Many thanks for your most wonderfully informative article !!
If this world has more sharp minds like you them Smaug wouldn't be able to continue their deceit, like they are doing now
Of course he denies any law or constitution violation : he will be accountable for them.
Just typical TeaScum ranting. Ignore it
Wow - it's clear that YOU aren't partisan! Thank all that is holy for that!
And, with that my sarcasm detector is bitching about the OUTGOING sarcasm!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Thankfully there was a group of people that saw this coming. They created a document with the rights of the people. These people have there rights, gaurentted to them by birth. This document is the Law of the Land. It supercedes all other laws, stated in itself.
1776 the revolution that gave us these rights. 1861-1865 our civil war. The war that almost started the next revolution(Vietnam 1954-1959). I see a 100 year pattern.
Article [IV]
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
From the makers of "I can't believe it's not Satan!" and "Satan clause."
"Try having a conversation with a liberal progressive about GMOs—genetically modified organisms—in which the words “Monsanto” and “profit” are not dropped like syllogistic bombs"
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Just a reminder: Heart Disease and Accidents cause more deaths every single year than over four hundred 9/11's. It's been over a decade now... That's more than 4000 September 11th sized attacks. Are you scared to eat and/or drive now? That's how fucking pathetic the fear narrative is.
This is America. We drive fast cars to fast food restaurants without a second thought. You want me to continue to ALLOW an expensive totalitarian spying apparatus to protect us from 0.00025 the danger we face from cars and cheeseburgers? What the fuck can the ineffectual terrorists do? If the NSA wanted to protect us they'd be making tastier health food and building self driving cars or the Hyper-Loop.
Fucking "intelligence" bullshit; Protip: All government labels mean the opposite. "PATRIOT Act", yeaaah. "Intelligence?" hahah... oh man. No wonder the basement dwelling NSA stinks so bad. If they're afraid of terrorists, just imagine how they feel about the many times greater threat of falling down in the bathtub!
I get propaganda from both sides in my mailbox on a daily basis. The left's arguments appeal to one's intelligence, the right appeals to emotion.
Hmm, well, I find exactly the opposite. There was a study done by a prestigious university (Yale, IIRC) here recently that I'm too lazy to Google that shocked the Yale professor conducting the study, that revealed that TEA Party members score higher on science knowledge than the average, and above those who self-identify as Left/Democrat.
In any case, the politicians in both parties want the same things, just not the things you mentioned so much. They want to protect their incumbent position. They want to increase their own power and personal wealth by continuing to grow the power and scope of government along with the amount of wealth, capital, and resources in the economy it/they control.
They want to buy votes with entitlements and social programs, engage in gerrymandering, all along with also selling influence to insure re-election. It's not unexpected given the amount of power & wealth the government controls. Governments always tend to expand and eventually become authoritarian if unchecked.
The Left has always used appeals to emotion and hot emotional issues to advance their agendas. This is simply fact, not a judgment. Much of the differences in worldview have to do with real-world knowledge gained through experience and growing emotional maturity as people get older.
"Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains." - Winston Churchill
When I was much, much, younger and in my last years of school and the first few years after I graduated, my views were much more Left than they are now. I learned as I gained age, experience, and emotional maturity, personally observed decades of history happening, and cumulatively read and listened to more and more sources, opinions, arguments, debates, etc etc.
I've ended up as a sort of "pragmatic libertarian" out of the body of my half-century's-worth of practical real-world knowledge and experience, combined with intellectual honesty rather than emotions and good intentions.
Every dictatorship is based on altruism at it's core. It says at first that "you should sacrifice for others", but that always becomes "not only must you sacrifice for others, you must actually put others ahead of you and your family's own well-being".
Big altruistic social plans from government sound good to the un/under-educated, heavily-propagandized, economically-manipulated and intentionally impoverished masses, and that's why dictatorships and other types of tyrannies will always spring up when the population becomes uninformed/educated and apathetic enough, and the government grows large enough.
The arguments over capitalism/communism/socialism/fascism/left/right are actually irrelevant. Those are only the structures. What matters is the scale between:
Absolute Tyranny =====Total Anarchy
It's where on that scale the government is at that matters to regular people and is the right discussion to have.
It's ultimately a struggle of Authoritarians vs Libertarians (the concepts, not any party).
Those who believe that people are unable to govern themselves by mutual consent, that government should have control of everything and everyone, that everyone should be made "equal" by taking the fruits of the labors of producers by force and redistributing it to those who do not produce anything, versus those that believe that the individual should be as free as possible to succeed or fail on their own, with most government being local, and with as little central government size, scope, cost, and control as possible while still maintaining a stable society and nation.
Like distributed computer networks require much more effort to take over each individual computer node than it does to take over a network consisting of a central server and dumb terminals, where comp
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Holy shit. You guys have the stadium building scam too?
I thought this was New Zealand and Australia brand corruption. You guys really do have everything over there.
More specifically, the Constitution was meant as a framework, and as that it is relatively loose in its terminology and definitions, and doesn't really establish much law. The Bill of Rights (first 10 amendments that came about 15 years later) added most of that.
But we're talking NSA here, and their charter SPECIFICALLY forbids them from spying on Americans (with FISA/Patriot Act exception if they are talking with foreigners) intentionally or not, and they have been proven to be doing that. This is a felony in the US, and they should be held accountable.
I have serious problems with the illegal, warrantless spying as well as FISA being a secret supreme court that can, in fact, overrule the public supreme court. This is unacceptable. If it keeps going on, I feel I will have to rescind my citizenship and move elsewhere, because the US is moving toward being a police state. Having ancestors that were forcibly evicted (religious persecution) gives me options for a new homeland.
When speaking of anything government or law-enforcement related, NEVER attribute to incompetence what can attributed to malice.
I like his quote, "When people die, those that leaked information should be held accountable... I think there’s irreversible and significant damage to this nation. " But what is more important than people? When does the military send people in to harm's way and maybe even to their death's? They do it to protect the Nation and The Constitution. When The President is sworn in he takes an oath to " preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" Not individuals. So I think that an excellent case could be made that when the NSA kills The Constitution, those that ran the program should be held responsible. I think the NSA has caused significant damage to this country because what makes this country special is the constitutional limits on the engorgement,
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
And how does he define "violations"? Places where they were caught and couldn't lie their way out of it?
"I am not willfully a crook."
"I did not have willful sexual relations with that woman."
"This heathcare bill will not willfully raise your rates, and will not willfully prevent you from keeping your current plan if you like what you have."
Let's see how many administration quotes we can bastardize from over the years.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Keith Alexander, director of the NSA and commander of US Cyber Command, comes off as a weird dude and, you know, a literal tool.
Am I the only one that find the description of Keith Alexander in the article uncannily applicable to cold fjord?
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
I thought it was Alan Turing and those at Bletchley Park that broke the enigma codes.
He SAID that. Hmm. i guess that makes it all better then.
Fuck. That. Guy.
What hit me like a mac truck carrying 39.5 tons of bricks all those peoples at Defcon applauding Alexander's various statements. They get paid by industry and governments to play cat and mouse games they are essentially on the same side.
It just isn't TLA overreach that is my enemy it's significant entrenched interests profiting off the sorry state of heavily used technologies while throwing wrenches or at least making no effort of any sort to correct underlying issues.
As for PRISM pitch there is nothing to discuss. NSA openly admits to collecting 100% of CDRs of all calls made within US.
When the same questions were asked in hearings where it was noted "collection" activity itself regardless of use violates statute the answer was classified ... do yourself a favor and don't even bother opening your mouth to defend the indefensible. It just makes you look like more of an asshole than you already are.
Sorry, I misread. You are right.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Doesn't this amount to the Department of the Defense propagandizing directly to the U.S. public?
Haven't you heard? The 2013 NDAA overturned a longstanding ban on domestic propaganda. It specifically permits material produced by the DOD.
Given the mountains of evidence already against him, he only buries himself that much deeper with each unauthorized disclosure. At the very least, he's aided and abetted foreign governments - including ones that are hostile to the US (such as Russia and China) - through his "human rights" contacts. At the most, he has committed acts worthy of treason multiple times over. A court of law in the US would have more problems protecting him from the public than they would have convicting him.
Grab anyone who involves themselves with him, then repeat until Snowden has nobody who will take the information. When Snowden is finally brought to justice, go to town on him (much like one would with a terrorist) to help tie up loose ends.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
This a thousand times.
This a thousand times.
Thanks. I was wondering if anyone read all that and grasped the concepts I was trying to communicate.
I got on a roll getting these concepts all typed out, and was actually surprised my post ended up being so long. Ah, well. It's extremely difficult to put such large & far-reaching concepts into few words and still communicate those concepts accurately and effectively.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Odd how the US and Russia traded their places in the good vs bad game, eh?
Given the level of corruption that exists in Russia, the US has a long way to go before they "trade sides". As for what was alleged in Germany, that's what the NSA's supposed to do as a line of their work.
But frankly, going back to the US would be about the dumbest thing he could possibly do. What for? To stand in a kangaroo court? C'mon. So he can say why he did it? He can do that already. He really has nothing to gain from turning himself in.
That is the only way that the truth can really be uncovered. Just because the evidence would all but guarantee a conviction != kangaroo court.
In addition, he's more likely to live if he turns himself in versus being pursued by those working for the US. Same would go for those that received the information or talked to him.
Espionage is not supposed to be something that is pleasant or glamorous - but it is necessary to preserve the way of life that only can be had in the US.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
That's what the NSA is supposed to do from the US point of view. But then again, all the accusations are from an US point of view too, while the rest of the world won't give a rat's ass about them. For all I care, Snowden didn't do anything wrong. Sure, he wronged the US, but why the heck should that bother me?
And, bluntly, I don't think the US justice is the place where the truth matters in this particular case. The US justice has been about making examples lately a bit too much to put any kind of faith in the system behind them. The closest this could come to an impartial and fair trial would be an international court. Let's be honest here, a US tribunal would not be far from a witch trial in its most literal sense, since in the trials held by the RCC on witchcraft matters accuser and judge were rolled into the same person. It would be very much the same for this trial where the US accuse and in turn the US is also the party that will cast the verdict. If you consider that a "fair trial", your and my definition of fair differ quite a bit.
And yes, that's a pretty fine definition of a kangaroo court. It's like having a judge preside over the trial of a guy who raped the judge's wife.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.