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NSA Can Retrieve, Replay All Phone Calls From a Country From the Past 30 Days
An anonymous reader sends this news from the Washington Post:
"The National Security Agency has built a surveillance system capable of recording '100 percent' of a foreign country's telephone calls, enabling the agency to rewind and review conversations as long as a month after they take place, according to people with direct knowledge of the effort and documents supplied by former contractor Edward Snowden. ... The voice interception program, called MYSTIC, began in 2009. Its RETRO tool, short for “retrospective retrieval,” and related projects reached full capacity against the first target nation in 2011. Planning documents two years later anticipated similar operations elsewhere."
So do they have the cooperation of the target country? Or have the infiltrated the entire communications infrastructure of the world? This is really creepy.
Think again.
Well this is a truly shocking revelation noone saw coming.
NSA will probably claim they only use their power to create rainbows and heal sick puppies.
Might answer some outstanding questions...
That coupled with the claims made on CNN by an ex FBI counterterrorism agent during the Boston Marathon Bombing investigation
http://www.theguardian.com/com...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Really makes you wonder how far this really goes...
And all it took was five guys and a pickup truck to accomplish it.
At the request of U.S. officials, The Washington Post is withholding details that could be used to identify the country where the system is being employed or other countries where its use was envisioned.
Protip: It's the US.
The system of raping our rights that they created is amazing. Also amazing is how effective they are at forcing Obama to continue it. Imagine how much worse things would be if Palin was elected President. She was the one that created the plan, along with Tom Clancy, for Russia to use with their invasion of Ukraine. This is her fault.
Either the NSA is grossly incompetent (surprisingly likely) or this is deliberate counter-intelligence.
If you really think this is confined to just one or two countries... how naive is that.
Seriously - why WOULDN't they already be capturing everything that is said, heard, posted or read or clicked on anything electronic.
- cause they "cannot" from a technical standpoint ? (c'mon... seriously ?)
- cause they wouldn't "want" to ? (again - that's a bad joke)
- cause they just wouldn't feel right about it from a constitutional standpoint ? (the saddest laugh of all)
And if you you don't realize that every major dot-com is complicit in all this big brother stuff just think about how increasingly tough it is to post comments "anonymously". I feel embarrassed for mocking the foil hat guys all these years.
Put your android or apple phone in front of you. Say a word that you normally wouldn't say. Repeat it 3 times. Start typing it in google search. Google pulls it up pretty quickly but it is normally #3 in the list the word that you said. Is it perfect...no. Google search app mind you. And yes I tested this on an IPhone 4, not 4s+ (no siri). What I'm upset about is... how much of my reported bandwidth that Cox is forcing down my throat this "feature". Am I currently paying for google to throw advertising (or selling my info)? Trolls... yes you have to have internet.
It would be cooler if we didn't have traitors revealing our spying capabilities.
I understand the anger about the gov spying inappropriately in the US, but spying on other countries is actually the NSA's job.
The unstated assumption is that only the things you find after you get the search warrant are admissible. The assumption was unstated because time machines didn't exist.
If you bury the body and bleach the walls, the prosecution finds no blood. (The cops can find a dozen empty containers of bleach, and ask you why all your wallpaper is sparkling white, and that's still a pretty good foundation on which to build a case. Reasonable people don't bleach their ceilings with a mop.) You can wiretap the guy, but if he's already made the incriminating phone call to his very good friend with the pig farm, it's not going to help the prosecution very much unless the suspect is dumb enough to do it again. Hey, guess what? Law enforcement isn't supposed to be easy.
We now have the ability to quite literally go back in time and look at everything someone ever said, preceding the time at which the warrant was issued.
Legally, there's no time machine, you're just looking at the (nonpublic) permanent record of everything everybody ever said to anybody ever. But qualitatively, being able to go into the past and drag things up, even from private communications where both speakers had a reasonable expectation of privacy, appears to fundamentally change the definition of a warrant, of discovery, and so on.
The whole concept of investigation has changed, and it makes the question "Are you now, or have you ever been, a [politically-undesirable / criminal]?" just got a whole lot murkier. I think that's the issue upon which the Supremes may ultimately have to rule.
It's one thing to say "John Spartan, you have been fined one credit for violating the verbal morality statute." It's quite another to say "...for something you uttered on January 23, 1996."
The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act was passed in 1994. Just how much equipment with mandated-by-US-law security holes WAS sold to foreign countries.
USA. For these sleazeballs, own country has become "foreign" long time ago.
You've got to hand it to them. If any team/person/mutant managed to create such a program then IT MUST BE USED.
This is nothing but speculative garbage.
If they are willing to spend the resources to store thirty days of phone calls, they probably are storing a lot more than thirty days of textual data - text takes up very little space. I imagine every SMS message, email and IM communication they can obtain is kept for a few years.
This is a good chance to plug Retroshare. Go get it. Tell your friends to get it. Annoy the NSA with an IM program even they can't monitor on a large scale.
What is obvious is that the collection of the calls is done not in one particular country, but in multiple countries. Heck, remember UK's Tempora? UK kept and spied their own phone calls for a month back in 2008. Germany had much more robust infrastructure back then. Now, you think Iraq does not have this program? US taxpayers spent tons of money to build there, so you can be sure we put some telecommunication servers too. This Washington Post revelation is misleading as it makes you believe that there is one country, the victim, while in reality most of the contents worldwide is sitting in the buffer.
I've wanted backups of my stuff for a long time. Hopefully the NSA can commercialize this and allow us to retrieve our conversations whenever we want. This is way better than the never forgetting GoogleMind or FaceBook! Imagine the possibilities.. when you promised your kid ice-cream for good grades last month, they can look it up and call you out for cheating them!
Ah, so it's not just metadata
...all domestic telephone calls will be routed through Great Britain from now on.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
my first reaction was "wow" but I was amazed that *the scope* not the technical ability
from a network engineering perspective, those calls have to go through certain nodes and pathways...
all are potential points of intercept...one concept you missed is **multiple collection methods**...they could do both of what you suggested combined with any of the following other possibilities:
1. Submarines...every "phone call" (this excludes things like google talk to skype) has to go specific routing points on the coast...subs can but a signal analyzer on the seafloor cables
2. Aircraft...esp blimps/drones...and satellites
3. passive collectors...at major routing nodes...again these are on the coastline...you could put a passive, satellite-operated device that sends the data being recorded up to space in real time
Thank you Dave Raggett
Wasn't that Obama's slogan?
His government is no better than Bush Jr.'s
Typical Dubya era program. Good think Obama stepped in in 2009 and put an end to it before it actually began. Right?
Warrants mean nothing for tapping foreign, non-US people outside of the US. They have never been required for such an operation. The ??? agencies have always claimed they could tap any international calls and were legally allowed to do so so long as one of the parties wasn't a US citizen. That has been public for years before any leaks started.
It frankly wouldn't surprise me if it turned out that they actually have full records of every single phone call placed anywhere in the world since the birth of the telephone, or at least since the 1930s or so. I would definitely be very surprised to hear they can't play back any call made in the USA since the 1970s or so.
+1 Actually Using Time Travel Relevantly In A Serious Discussion
Cue discussion about Minority Report and Pre-Crime. Hey, both are (supposed to be) deterministic...
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
I hear you...you're don't sound like a nutcase **to me**...you go a bit off on a few of your list there but that's not why i'm writing.
It's wrong to say "the US government"
Our government is the best system yet implemented.
The problem is criminality. Even if it goes up to the President (and it surely has...many times...recently) that does not mean that **our system of governmance** is faulty.
Our economic system (hardcore captialism) may surely encourage bribery...but in totalitarian communist countries you find examples of **more** bribery comparitively...or at least equal ammounts
YES...the CIA "dealt crack" in the 80s, research brainwashing, etc etc...and maybe that whole organization has been rotten from the start but it doesn't define **what the good people are trying to do**
According to its stated documents, the US of A could be the *best country in the world*....we have a *long way to go* but our problems arent because of our system...its b/c our **system is infected**
Yes, the "infected system" line could be used for any country's problems...but precisely because the US has so many channels in place for **the people** to do the right thing...because we have the *power to change* means we are held to a higher standard than say, North Korea or Ukraine
We can clean house...we can get rid of the criminals in our governemnt...the sun will still rise, and we will have ****NEW PROBLEMS****....that's progress!
Thank you Dave Raggett
We're so sorry, Uncle Albert,
We're so sorry if we caused you any pain.
We're so sorry Uncle Albert,
But there's no one left at home
And I believe I'm gonna rain.
We're so sorry but we haven't heard a thing all day.
We're so sorry, Uncle Albert.
But if anything should happen well be sure to give a ring.
We're so sorry, Uncle Albert,
But we haven't done a bloody thing all day.
We're so sorry, Uncle Albert,
But the kettles on the boil and we're so easily called away.
Table-ized A.I.
Is really the key idea. From the old cold war NATO access in countries, shared facilities and generations of helpful local staff. Add in the new NATO countries, Asia, South America, Africa - somewhere cheap new communications loops will have a US or US friendly site to tap. :
Nations get cheap deals to replace ageing telco tech thats US price peering friendly and very NSA friendly.
Cooperation of the target country can be one site with the skilled locals thinking its their own govs efforts.
Cooperation of the target a few surrounding nations can be sites with the skilled locals thinking its their own govs efforts.
As long as the NSA can have a site thats physically near some trunk line and political cover from the host nations gov.
http://cryptome.org/2014/03/ns... has the hint
Few staff know, long term, local and other nations get US export grade mil tech as a swap.
Its ECHELON for web 2.0 and the ability to fake a host, break junk standard web encryption and a few other methods.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The need or want the cooperation makes fixing local splitting sites at national exchanges easy.
Cleared US staff can move in and out guided in by chosen locals to ensure any upgrades or changes do not halt US data collection.
Infiltrate the communications infrastructure of the world gets tricky due to upgrades, skilled local staff who are not aware of their countries tap points finding sites, rooms and then asking questions.
Much better for the NSA to work with top locals, have them tell all staff that a site is for their own national security, law enfacement and read in a few top staff about all data flowing to the USA.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
With the data-monitoring capacity that has been revealed, we would expect law enforcement and anti-terrorisim efforts to be much more successful than they have been.
In fact, evidence indicates that the NSA has mostly just been sitting on all this and not using any of it to fight crime.
My hypothesis is that most of this monitoring is used to ensure that well-established businesses (and governing agencies) remain well-established and empowered to further their wealth.
Those who have power *always* abuse it.
Honestly anyone with half a clue has known the NSA has been doing this FOR YEARS.
In fact I saw a great documentary on the subject in 1998
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
( I am actually serious... who in the western world did not already know the NSA had these capabilities? The surprising thing to me would have been if it came out that they DID NOT have them - at which point I would wonder what they were doing with their billions of dollars ).
It's not realistic for a country that does have more than one central telecom company.
In most western country you have hundreds of providers, some big, others small, regional and voip-providers. Nobody routes calls between two customers through external peerings because you'd have to pay for that.
That means "all calls" means "a majority of calls" or the NSA hacked _every_ carrier, big and small, in the country.
You are fully protected in the USA. :)
No color of law, amended law, paragraph, subsection, clause, letter, finding, order, secret order, contract, legal sock puppet, amendment or press talking points can legally get around the Fourth Amendment.
Good US legal teams have been working hard on this in open court
http://www.freedomwatchusa.org...
The real fun starts with the next gen technical and legal vision of: 30 days becomes 30 months then 30 years then a lifetime of digital recall before sealed US courts.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Let's give the Chinese a go. They are probably spying too, but at least they're cheap.
The US did not want to see expensive US equipment mandated-by-US laws been frozen out of international markets with new US only costs. :)
With some effort the US ensured other telcos would upgrade to equipment of a US interception standard as part of the law enforcement laws/letter/understanding/trade deals.
No US telco exporter left behind.
Junk encryption for many telcos, their govs, the US gov, fun for ex staff, other nations spies, criminals with cash from the mid 1990's on
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Ex post facto. As far as new laws; unless they ignore the constitution, they can't apply new laws to anything you did before that law as passed. Just hope they have valid timestamps.
Somehow at some point we decided our constitutional limitations only apply to citizens (laying aside present violations) and ignore the "unalienable rights" and how it prohibits government rather than assigns human rights.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Next time the local gasoline prices jump for no logical reason, they can just rewind the last few weeks of phone calls between the petroleum producers and catch them fixing them in the act.
Some good could come of this after all.
Why would they want 30 days of this?
Have gnu, will travel.
One part is that they can go back and look for anything that may sound incriminating and use it. Like the quote: "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
The other, is, how easy is to "plant" evidence that only they have access to?
Doesn't this verge into that, 'panopticon' realm I've heard here before? (I don't recall if it was from a book.. Gibson have something to do with it? Or was it Huxley?)
Either way, with regard to the rest of fast moving technology, the law will continue to be VERY far behind in all this. Even if the Legislative could get something through wrangling even part of this surveillance state in, I'm highly doubtful the Executive would sign off. I emphasis parts of the US Government here, because D and R next to these peoples names really have no meaning when we're speaking on this topic. As far as I can tell, short of drastic and sweeping initiatives, most of this information gathering will continue for at least 2 more Executive Administrations. I say that, because SCOTUS might have new members by then. This of course implies there's hope that they'd even consider to rule an opinion on the matter...
It's a blackhole for continuing that argument, but my point is, wasn't this sort of realistic surveillance singularity seen quite a while back? Does that mean it was inevitable, or that apathy within Democracy was too great to stop it?
We should all file FOIA requests for our last month's conversations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON
We've had our allies spying on our citizens (and us spying on their citizens) since the 60s. Why is everyone acting surprised about this same capability now?
Did you miss the foreign country part?
...which makes it not so scary anymore.
I've bleached ceilings with a mop. I may not be a reasonable person, though, merely one that used to live in a damp, moldy house.
Pretend that something especially witty is here. Thanks.
No. If it was illegal when you did it, it doesn't become any less illegal just because nobody found the evidence that caught you until X hours/months/years later. The statute of limitations - if applicable - doesn't make what you did legal, it makes prosecuting you for it illegal. Profound difference.
The actual problem is that all of this surveillance is one-way. The watchers refuse to be watched in turn, and when we take matters into our own hands and catch them elbow-deep in the cookie jar, we are the ones persecuted. That is not acceptable.
So why don't they start tracking the phone calls that were made from flight MH370?
I see complaints that could be leveled against any of the world's largest countries. Not that I agree with the concept of "for profit prison.." at all...
Nope.
I want a counter example. If my comment was so aggregiously dumb then you should easily be able to give me a counter example that proves me wrong
Thank you Dave Raggett
trust me, Republicans are working on this as hard as they can, but only at the margins (voter ID laws)...and YES we did see Bush II get in via court decision...that is true....
but you're wrong...all your points are wrong, but #4 is the only one that is worth refuting...for posterity
for you to be correct, the US has to have widespread fruadulent elections
it's not true at all
if we vote for people & they win, then they make policies and vote on laws
Thank you Dave Raggett
counter-example? if you don't have one then you don't have a point & should just admit you're wrong
one that doesn't have the flaws you mention...
Thank you Dave Raggett
all decisions can be reduced to "DO or Don't"..."yes or no"...."yeah or nay"...that's why **in every country** there is a majority and minority party
first, the US is not by law or statute a "two party system"....any parties that meet the qualifications can get their candidates on the ballot
2nd, since all decisions can be reduced to a Binary then by logic at the decision point all parties must pick a "yes or no" on a law or policy
3rd, political parties are in other countries that have more than one strong party always ***reduce the policy question*** down to a majority & opposition
your "two party system" rhetoric is about 20 years old...no one currently in politics is pushing the "3rd party will solve our problems" horsepucky anymore
Republicans are **way worse** than Democrats in the USA right now in 2014...they vote in ****total antipathy to each other**** on all kinds of policies...from Abortion to Net Neutrality
I'm sorry this is as much of debate as you're going to get from me...I have seen the "3rd party solves everything" fail over and over & no one really takes it seriously
If you make good points I'll comment, but if you think carefully you'll see you're wrong.
Multiple party systems are in use all over right now & they prove the "binary by necessity" point.
Thank you Dave Raggett
I hate Republicans & their policies!
i was being sarcastic!
Thank you Dave Raggett
is this still a thing? really??
As an American Taxpayer, all this is well and good (well as long as it's not MY country that's being hacked) but...
With all this data/phone calls being intercepted, why hasn't more governments that the U.S. doesn't like been overthrown?
IF they have so totally compromised the infrastructure of foreign nations as to be able to hack even the heads of states e-mail (Sorry Chancellor Merkel!) and intercept and record ALL of a nations telephone conversations they must have dirt on SO MANY PEOPLE.
How many mistresses and Dachas does Putin have? How many billions (and where are they kept) are stashed away by the rulers of China? How does Syria's Assad (and his cronies) coordinate their attacks? How many people are the Egyptian military torturing? Is Thaksin really directing his sister in Thailand? Why is Maduro such an idiot? It would seem to be a simple thing to just publish the information and bring to bear (what's left) of public opinion against these rulers. Sure people would claim that they were faked but there would be enough of a ring of truth (because they're true!) that these accusations would stand. Also remember that even if the U.S. didn't have the dirt on the top dogs, they've probably got enough on close associates (allies, friends, lovers, family) to make things very uncomfortable.
Maybe the NSA/CIA/POTUS hasn't done this because this was meant to be a very last resort weapon since once the cover was blown nobody would trust their electronic devices again (then again it would be very hard to live without telephones!). Well SINCE THE COVER IS NOW BLOWN, I SAY USE IT! (Or at least threaten to use it). Make it known to these rulers that if they don't do X, all their assets/girlfriends/drug habits are going to be exposed to the world. Maybe in a few years they'll have replaced their infrastructure with something they think they can trust (ha ha) but until then let's make the world a better place!
Or maybe the NSA is just drowning in data. (Have you tried listening to an entire countries worth of phone calls?) Carl, I thought you solved this by now!
Wow! That is some potent MetaData.
The other issue with ubiquitous surveillance is that it doesn't even need to be used in court. You discover somebody is a drug dealer or whatever. You arrange to have a cop happen to walk past the house where a deal is going down and hear something suspicious. Busted!
Basically you have to find a chain of evidence that is legal/plausible, but that is certainly possible. The US did that sort of thing in WWII all the time. Find out that a supply ship is at point XYZ from Enigma intercepts, arrange for a recon plane to overfly it, and then the next day blow it up. Generate noise that suggests you have the worlds largest recon fleet, while in reality not needing more than a handful of planes.
What's better than to get a first post? It gives you huge rush of endorphins and a feeling of having accomplished something important in life. Almost as satisfying as racing on office chairs while drunk.
The problem with all of this is that warrants used to mean that if you had reasonable suspicion, you could ask nicely, and if you found something that gave you probable cause, you could get a search warrant.
The unstated assumption is that only the things you find after you get the search warrant are admissible. The assumption was unstated because time machines didn't exist.
...
We now have the ability to quite literally go back in time and look at everything someone ever said, preceding the time at which the warrant was issued.
So law enforcement personnel aren't allowed to use security tapes from surveillance cameras, or ISP server logs, or any sort of record keeping? Sorry. We have always had the ability to "go back in time" to retrieve evidence.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Look at the Snowden leaks. One thing is Australia's Telstra giving full access to a north Pacific cable that carries traffic from the US to a lot of Asia in addition to Australia. Add in a few more Telcos and that's 100% of all traffic from a few countries.
A lot of places that deliberately copied and expanded on the US system or even the US several years ago before portions of the system were gamed or removed. Being able to game things by fillibuster (a bullshit tactic direct from Imperial Austria, as written about by Mark Twain when he was reporting from there), refusing to put items to a vote, no consequences for lying to Congress and similar shit kicked in the face of democracy are wrinkles in the system that can be dealt with.
Other things like the really stupid electoral system can be reformed by examples devised in the US and applied when US based staff have run elections in other countries. Why should people have to line up around the block all day on a Tuesday to use machine that the staff only had minutes to learn how to operate before polling started? How can you see idiocy like that and still pretend there is no room for improvement? It doesn't matter if things are better or worse anywhere else - some things are clearly not good enough and can be fixed.
> A good system of governance should transparently expose, prevent, stop, and/or negate criminality.
We're talking about it. It's exposed. We have no fear of talking about. The politicians in Washington are worried that we're talking about it.
Is there any other system that exposes problems to the extent that the US system does? It's damn sure not perfect, obviously. This crap does get exposed and published on the front page, though.
Another important consideration after exposure is ACCEPTANCE (or lack thereof). In many countries, rampant bribery is exposed. Everyone knows about it, and everyone participates. It's accepted as normal. The US wasn't that way. When our leaders were busted, their career was over. Then there was Marion Berry, Ray Nagen, etc. They got caught and then re-elected. That, I think, is a big problem. Exposing this stuff is half of it. The other half is for the electorate to not put up with it.
The other day Obama said he would veto a bill declaring that the president must _obey_the_law. Putting aside minor arguments, his official position is more or less that he doesn't have to follow the law, that he's above the law. Is this nation to be ruled by properly passed laws, or ruled by a personality? Are we going to put up with this?
So says the 9/11 crash into the pentagon was faked guy?
Cities and states screw things up too, of course.
If your city, day Chicago, gets completely infested with dirty politicians for years and they royally score things up, or start tapping your phone, you can get the hell out of Chicago.
You can also directly affect local politics in a way you can't affect Washington so easily. It's much easier to keep on eye on the guy down the street than some guy thousands of miles away in Washington. I even considered running for an office in my county, and I probably would have won. There's no way I'll ever win the presidency. I can damn sure win a seat on the school board, though. Since I can be on the school board, but I can't run the department of education, local control is inherently more democratic.
That's the old "free will" thing that has been a matter of discussion for at least a couple of thousand years.
See also "no complex plan survives contact with the enemy".
Canada's telecoms are spliced in the same way that US ones are, by the same agencies. I started to write out links to articles, but you should look them up for yourselves. Pay attention to the *acknowledged* taps on international fibre out of BC and NS. Connections to the south are through US telcos, and contain explicitly the kind of traffic (international) which US laws have been modified to permit the recording of. Satcom is presumably recorded and Canadian telcos are so deep in the pocket of the US power elite that it's probable that US agencies have decryption keys, or would be granted after the fact without any court knowing of it.
So, one such country is Canada.
Given the poor security, at all levels and types, in developing and even some developed countries, I expect there are others, but in all cases eg. with the possible propaganda about US TLAs in South America, the situation is "quite likely, but not certain."
Unlike Canada, where it's acknowledged fact and policy.
And a datapoint you can't trust: I worked for a telco supply company, and it was occasionally acknowledged but absolutely taboo to talk about. A few drinks into a business lunch though and people admit things.
Posted AC for obvious reasons.
I'm thinking of that quote with the fuss generated over the "sinister" signoff of "good night" on the missing airliner.
In some climates you've got to use something to clean off the mould and bleach works, so thanks for the reminder that it's time to do it again :).
I get your point about unusual actions though.
There is an already existing tool that could handle this: statute of limitations
We don't believe in radical loony monotheistic religions from the middle east -- we're Christians.
Gee, the NSA can do all that - but they can't seems to find a missing 777 out of Malaysia??
So it's OK to have a police camera in your home, or a little drone that flits about in your house, taking pictures of everything that's there, every day, forever, just in case your house might be the house in which a crime is committed? (A warrant would be required to "grep all archived video feeds for bloodspatters", but somehow I still don't want to live in that world.)
Ex post facto only applies to laws that violate the criminal code - the courts have ruled time and again that other types of laws can be retroactive if they are not "intended" to be punative (even if they are later determined to be punitive in their implementation).
A great example of this is the national sex offender registry; sex offenders have to register periodically (usually quarterly or annually), file travel notifications 21 days in advance in order to travel outside the country, have restrictions on where they can live and visit, can be jailed for failing to reveal email addresses and/or other online "soft" identities, and have to pay annual fines of $50 (for the rest of their lives). All of these things are in addition to the stigma of having their name, photo, license plate, car description, home address, and place of employment listed on the internet for all to see. While most people would think that these things are punative - setting aside the separate argument as to whether or not further punishment is deserverd or not - the courts have ruled otherwise and forced these conditions on people that were convicted years before such laws were passed. My own conviction was 13 years before the SORNA laws - I completed 12 years in prison and discharged - and I still have to pay $50 per year for life to be on the registry.
Ex post facto is meaningless if the state can claim that the new laws are, "a valid regulatory measure aimed at public safety." -- c.f. Smith v. Doe, 538 US 84 (2003).
You missed my point?
I am all for decentralised democracy such as the examples used in South America and Europe. I would even settle for people being highly informed and engaged in the political process. This is irrespective of the economic/political ideology - this is not a left/right thing.
I would even go as far to argue that anything other than this is NOT democracy but a farcical approximation of it. Just because a vote is involved every few years does not make it democratic!
Sadly the opposite is true in the US and in my own country of NZ. (although not as bad here since we are smaller and have the MMP system for elections thus smaller parties are viable options)
You can encrypt phone calls. Just make sure that you destroy the keys immediately after the call and exchange the keys using PFS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_forward_secrecy). Then even the planned new Australian law that requires you to hand out all the keys can help to decrypt the call. The app is here:
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/easy-encrypted-smartphone-communication
WTF? Of course not. Both are illegal and wrong, but still, just how did you manage to conflate the issue of warrantless surveillance with the issue of laws applied ex post facto or the issue of tainted evidence?
The GP made the mistake of arguing against illegal surveillance because it could catch illegal activity. I pointed out that was a bad argument, and that the argument should be against illegal surveillance because it is _illegal_.
That would mean that the NSA could at any time simply pull a switch and get everything routed. And the local folk would not even detect that doubling of traffic.
hahahahaha
Because of course they *delete* them all after a month.
hahahahaha
a country, or any country? That's important here. If they can do it to one country that only means that have one target thoroughly infiltrated. But if they can do it to any country of their choosing, then I'm seriously frightened.
Here's why: Telecommunication is considered vital infrastructure in every country I know. I used to work in the industry. We had some of our phone switches in frigging nuclear-blast-proof bunkers. They and our primary storage system occupied the highest security data center available to us. There's nothing civilian above that.
As a security guy, I can of course imagine a few ways to breach security or hack the switch, i.e. both electronically and physically. But it would require a considerably amount of resources. So if they have done that for everything everywhere, then... wow.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Isn't anyone going to ask about the new NSA data center in Utah? It is claimed to have enough storage to save all the world's conversations for 100 years. What could NSA possibly have in mind for that?
Were those surveillance cameras, ISP server logs, or any other sort of record keeping done in blatant violation of the 4th Amendment? Sorry. Relevance fail.
I love how my posts get modded down when I put the trolls in a box
Sorry Republicans, "libertarians" and general haters...you're dead in the water
Thank you Dave Raggett
The system includes the first amendment and the diligent journalists it encourages. If the NSA chief had his way, we'd know nothing. A system includes all of the interacting parts.
If the voters interact with the policy making, they are by definition part of the system. If we abdicate our responsibility and don't take any action, we are definitionally not part of the system anymore.
> people being highly informed and engaged in the political process. This is irrespective of the economic/political ideology - this is not a left/right thing.
That brings up another interesting topic. I'm reminded of Ross Perot taking out 30 minute television spots in which he displayed various graphs trying to educate voters about economics. Contrast that with the left in America "All these people don't have health insurance. We should pass this 1,000 page bill without even reading it because ... Hope and change!"
In the US, it seems to me that in the US, the fight is often between the left saying "wouldn't it be great to give everyone free _____. Let's do it!", followed by the right interjecting "well you see, nothing is really free. To pay for that would cost $XX billion, and the budget forecast ...". From where I sit, it appears that the left does a great job politically selling the headline, the five second pitch for something that sounds great. The conservatives have done a relatively poor job explaining the implications of the proposals, informing voters why "fuck those rich people" isn't actually a solution to anything. Therefore, the evidence suggests that informed voters are precisely what the left doesn't want. Many on the right have tried to educate voters, but the voters are more interested in watching American Idol.
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.
Is automatically recording the data traversing a third party network a violation the 4th, so long as the warrant for searching that data is not based on that data?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
and I imagine that country with the 30 days of playback is US.
..the founding father's lifetime.
Who was the first commander in chief to lead the US military to quell it's own people, for taxation purposes no less?
George Frickin' Washington.
I'm pretty sure any claims about our current political and legal structure not living up to the ideals laid down in our founding documents was already set in policy by the actions of the founding fathers themselves.
Lead by example, die by legislature.
It's obviously Britain, and it's equally obvious that Britain performs the same service for the USA. That's the revelation I'm waiting to hear confirmed...
The things you point out are *human behavior* problems, not inherent to any system.
You're conflating fraud, abuse, and manipulation of the system as inherent flaws, from a cybernetic perspective.
To undrestand the difference, for a specific issue, ask yourself, "Is this caused by part of the structure of the system or could any system have a human who could make this choice?"
The thing that makes a system "better" in this context is its ability to **be corrected**
Like a submarine will sink without effort, so will Democracy. What makes the system better is the ability for people to overcome fraud, abuse, manipulation, etc.
I'm comparing **systems** not **behavior in the system**
So start over...tell me a better **system** and point out specific parts of the system and why they are better than the US system of checks and balances.
Thank you Dave Raggett
That's certainly true. Alot of the old school republican seats did get taken over by the tea party candidates. They also lost the white house after Bush, so there were SOME consequences for the party.
Will the democrats have consequences for putting up Obama and Pelosi? We shall see. They do have the advantage that Bush's last year or two were bad, so Obama's suckage doesn't contrast as much. Had Obama followed Reagan, the sudden drop in effectiveness would have been far more visible.
You took the type to type a response, but couldn't actually provide a specific, testable example...just more rhetoric
If what you say is true if I ***just*** have to ***look*** then YOU should be able to at least give an example, specifically, of your claim.
If it's so blatantly obvious why can't you manage to type it in a post???
counter-example, with specifics & explanation, or STFU...I'm still waiting
Thank you Dave Raggett
So where's the counter-example?
You take the time to type that out but you still can't manage to participate in **constructive discussion**
I made a claim, that the US system had the most 'feedback' mechanisms + therefore was theoretically the "best", and you & others said:
"no you're wrong"
but didn't actually counter my point
You didn't address the notion of "feedback mechanisms" in evaluating gov't systems or my other points
anything you type that is **not** a direct clash with my claim is trolling
that includes a meta-comment on my comment asking for a counter-example
you can't present an example b/c you're just trolling
Thank you Dave Raggett
So your response, which by your own statements should be **blatantly obvious** is this:
> Canada is a better system b/c their local, state, & federal elections are on **different days**
- Too many candidates on one day??? Canadians are idiots if a list of candidates confuses them so that they can't do it all on one day. This is irrelevant and in no way measures up to the evidence you claimed to have. Also, Canada's voter turnout in state/local elections are significantly lower...b/c they're on different days
> "any country with X"
- that's not a specific example...that's half of a specific example...and your "X" criteria are baffling...if the US's 'bill of rights' doesn't pass your test, you **must** identify which one would & what the differences are
Thank you Dave Raggett
No. I'm asking for you to *make a direct clash* so I can continue the discussion.
You're dodging, tolling, and avoiding. I want that to stop.
if there are "a bunch" then why couldn't you link to one???
you read them at least once, why didn't you just copy/paste the most relevant parts?
b/c you can't
b/c you're wrong, and you know it
Thank you Dave Raggett
So your example is "Australia has paper/pencil voting"
that's not a counter to my point about "self correcting systems" at all
it's a random factoid that is irrelevant to the discussion (voter fraud is virtually non-existent in the US as well)
Thank you Dave Raggett
um...HELL YES...WTF have I been saying this whole time???
I judge the US system the best ***precisely because*** from a systemic perspective it has the most feedback channels.
You litterally spat my own argument back at me.
As for Australia's preferential voting system, it's a distinction without a difference in practice at the Federal level. Preferential voting is an *option* I'll allow, but it in no way is the **blatantly obvious** thing that is so clearly better than the US system like you made it out to be.
Fact is, you can't actually provide a counter-example. You can make a few case studies of options but that's not the evidence you claimed you had.
But that said, I *****definitely***** agree that the US has alot of improvement to be done!
Thank you Dave Raggett
haha. God you are funny.
You are not going to bully me into it with school yard tactics dude.
I am not engaging in pointless debate with someone such as you as I have already said. Once that decision is made I don't care what you think.
This discussion is over for me now. Have a nice life.
Asking for you to directly engage the topic under discussion is something everyone in the "school yard" would understand, even the Kindergardeners.
You couldn't back up your claims, so you level a few random Ad Homonym attacks & call it done....if that's somehow me "bullying" you then guilty as charged.
Also, I'm done w/ this so I won't be responding to any further posts from you on this topic.
Thank you Dave Raggett