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Snowden: NSA Spied On Human Rights Workers
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: "The Guardian reports that according to Edward Snowden, the NSA has spied on the staff of prominent human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. 'The NSA has specifically targeted either leaders or staff members in a number of civil and non-governmental organizations including domestically within the borders of the United States.' Snowden, addressing the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, said he did not believe the NSA was engaged in 'nightmare scenarios,' such as the active compilation of a list of homosexuals 'to round them up and send them into camps.' But he did say that the infrastructure allowing this to happen had been built.
Snowden made clear that he believed in legitimate intelligence operations but said the NSA should abandon its electronic surveillance of entire civilian populations. Instead, Snowden said, it should go back to the traditional model of eavesdropping against specific targets, such as 'North Korea, terrorists, cyber-actors, or anyone else.' Snowden also urged members of the Council of Europe to encrypt their personal communications and said that encryption, used properly, could still withstand 'brute force attacks' from powerful spy agencies and others. 'Properly implemented algorithms backed up by truly random keys of significant length all require more energy to decrypt than exists in the universe.'"
Snowden made clear that he believed in legitimate intelligence operations but said the NSA should abandon its electronic surveillance of entire civilian populations. Instead, Snowden said, it should go back to the traditional model of eavesdropping against specific targets, such as 'North Korea, terrorists, cyber-actors, or anyone else.' Snowden also urged members of the Council of Europe to encrypt their personal communications and said that encryption, used properly, could still withstand 'brute force attacks' from powerful spy agencies and others. 'Properly implemented algorithms backed up by truly random keys of significant length all require more energy to decrypt than exists in the universe.'"
Do you think that the reason barricades have not been stormed and every congressperson is not running scared from all responsibility, knowledge etc is because it's another thing with a computer in it so the brain has dropped out of the ear? Same thing as public service spending billions on a solution that boils down to a 286 with a whole lot of workarounds. People stop thinking as soon as "with a computer" is in the sentence? I don't know, I can't fathom it I'm wildly advancing theories to explain how the USA achieved the USSR's wet dream of surveillance and it has less impact on policy than if a pop star got naked on prime time television.
Snowden, addressing the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, said he did not believe the NSA was engaged in 'nightmare scenarios,' such as the active compilation of a list of homosexuals 'to round them up and send them into camps.
They're not camps, they're called festivals.
But he did say that the infrastructure allowing this to happen had been built
By IBM! /insert ww2 corporate references
Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
Does that dickhead talk as if he is forgiven for being a spy himself and the worst kind of spy at that? The kind that turns in his comrades and runs like hell to America's enemies for asylum..
You mean the "enemies" that are our greatest allies in space? Look, the Nations are not the People anymore, haven't been for a long time. All that USA vs Russia shit is just rhetoric for manufacturing consent to wind up the very expensive military industrial complexes yet again. Those things don't help anyone. Talk to people from all around the world and you'll figure out that no one really wants to kill each other, we all just want to be safe and live our lives. The corporations that own the countries that use the laws of governments and religions against us are not the people of the world. All the nations are against the everyman. Snowden is an ally to the people of the world. Save all that statist "traitor" talk for the gulag.
Future generations will scarcely believe that we were here now, watching the footing for their prison be poured, and we did nothing.
And French intelligence bombed the Rainbow Warrior. Precisely what is so surprising about the NSA spying on political radicals? It's not like every nation state with even a half-baked intelligence apparatus hasn't been doing that for at least 60 years now. God help Snowden if this is the best dirt he has left on the NSA because it's only a matter of time before US intelligence loses all fear of killing him or the Russians grow bored with him and classify him as a loose end.
Snowden didn't run to the People with his juicy intelligence; he took it to Putin.
He didn't take it there.
Our Glorious Government and Dear Leaders trapped him there.
Okay, Slashdot. Pop quiz time. Today's topic is... security! Three questions; no time limit.
First question: If you are a party interested in having operatives harm another nation, what is the best way to travel between your countries? Your choices are a local grocer, a privately-owned yacht, or an airline flight that someone else has paid for?
Second question: Once your operative arrives in your target country, how will you maintain control over them and support their mission? Will you have them set up a clandestine infrastructure, or use a pre-existing organization?
Third question: What kind of association would arouse the least suspicion when traveling to and from your home country? A large corporation, a religious faction, or an international charity?
And a bonus round, for extra credit: Of the associations in the third question, which would spur the most outrage if your target country's government were to investigate your activities?
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
First, future generations may find of historical interest all those NSA records. Just think of all the data historians in 100 years (if humanity still exists) will be able to use for PhDs! And I'm only half joking about that.
The deeper issue relating to "prison" is more, is what we are doing effective? With a huge relative-to-population real prison and parole population in the USA, with vast numbers of people living in relative poverty, with thousands of nukes ready to destroy the world as we know it in a few minutes and related anxiety, with schools increasingly like prisons, and so on, one might argue the USA has already become its own anxiety-provoking prison for all too much of its population. Perhaps that's one reason for the US drug war -- while the Soviet Union had to guard its borders from escapees, the USA has to guard its medicine cabinets from escapees? (See also Wikpedia on "Rat Park".) There used to be a time when people in the USA aspired to more than that, and in that sense the USA is rapidly heading into a "Dark Age". From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
"Dark Age Ahead is a 2004 book by Jane Jacobs describing what she sees as the decay of five key "pillars" in North America: community and family, higher education, science and technology, taxes and government responsive to citizen's needs, and self-policing by the learned professions. She argues that this decay threatens to create a dark age unless the trends are reversed. Jacobs characterizes a dark age as a "mass amnesia" where even the memory of what was lost is lost."
I agree that pervasive one-way surveillance in a society shifts the balance of power, which is the reasons for US constitutional protections relating to search and seizure of documents. One can contrast that with David Brin's two-way "Transparent Society" idea, or Marshall Brain's similar suggestions in "Manna". Historically humans living in tight-knit tribal villages may have not had much privacy from each other in many ways, so our very conception of privacy via anonymity and hidden transactions or hidden records may be a new thing. In any case, these are somewhat different times from 100,000 BC or 1776 AD given cheap storage, cheap sensing, and cheap search. There also the unreliability of cryptographic systems in practice (OpenSSL bugs, spear phishing, MITM, key loggers, evil upgrades, provider compromise, and so on), so depending on encryption seems problematical, assuming hiding information really had social value in general in social movements. I'm not saying privacy is evil; I'm just suggesting that depending on privacy in a social movement is probably foolish at the very least for practical reasons. Beyond practicalities, I feel the way forward has more to do with popularizing good ideas (like about the potential for abundance for all such as by a "basic income") rather than trying to hide plans of whatever sorts from prying eyes. In the USA and many other countries we have hard-won democratic freedoms like freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. I feel it is best to use those freedoms to build something better, even knowing such efforts for change will be under constant public scrutiny. The problem is of course that building something better is hard work filled with a lot of uncertainty, including from resistance put up by those with a powerful position in the status quo or those who aspire to such a position. See also, on "Security: Crypto Imagination vs. Reality":
http://xkcd.com/538/
There is a scene near the end of James P. Hogan's "Voyage From Yesteryear" where a soldier makes a silent plea for sanity with another soldier at a command post by how the soldier moves and carries his equipment, and that is something to think about. What signals do we send others when we focus on encryption as a way to security rather than focusing on broad social and material uplift? I'm not saying there is not conflict there, just that we can look to a parallel ar
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/si...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
And we now have a pretty good idea of who it believes its enemy to be.
The chair for this guy when he's caught.
We'd have to elect him to the Senate, and get him on the Intelligence Committee, afte which he'd need a few years of seniority before he could get the chair.
But yeah, I agree with you: he'd make an excellent Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
It's an intelligence agency, it spies on people. The only thing to discuss is whether it is allowed to spy on American citizens. Everyone else is fair game AFAIC
did you forget to take your meds?
and we, us who vote, can change it
we can vote for politicians who favor accountability and if none are running we can organize and lobby to make it an issue
you use the same faulty logic as the "privacy is dead" people use and it kills our industry.
you're abdicating your power, agency, and responsibilty then claiming that **your** choices represent "how things are"
i'm not a serf...and neither is anyone reading this...at least we can **choose** to work to change
Thank you Dave Raggett
It's effect, and please stop shooting the messengers.
NSA does not even have to tap on those "human rights" activists, they are more than often willingly contributing to NSA's arsenal of knowledge ...
In fact, it was the "Human Right Watch" which published Mr. Snowden's secret email address, leading into the shut down of the operator which offered the totally encrypted email service.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !