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NSA Spying Wins Another Rubber Stamp
schwit1 sends this report from the National Journal:
A federal court has again renewed an order allowing the National Security Agency to continue its bulk collection of Americans' phone records, a decision that comes more than a year after President Obama pledged to end the controversial program. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved this week a government request to keep the NSA's mass surveillance of U.S. phone metadata operating until June 1, coinciding with when the legal authority for the program is set to expire in Congress. The extension is the fifth of its kind since Obama said he would effectively end the Snowden-exposed program as it currently exists during a major policy speech in January 2014. Obama and senior administration officials have repeatedly insisted that they will not act alone to end the program without Congress.
- to block oil pipeline construction
- to import millions of new immigrants to compete with you for jobs
- to have the IRS harass his political opponents
- to spy on the press
- to send troops to Iraq
- to postpone nearly every legal deadline in Obamacare
- to approve the Comcast -Time Warner merger
- to impose new taxes on your internet service in the name of net neutrality
But when he's using the NSA to spy on you, he blames Congress.
It's worth remember at this stage, that PRISM, NSA's bulk mass collection program is a list of company NAMES, not software products or databases:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%29#mediaviewer/File:Prism_slide_5.jpg
So it is not a hack of Microsoft or Google, and it is not that 'MSN Messager' was decrypted, it lists COMPANIES, it is Microsoft not a product within Microsoft.
So you need to realize that these companies provide data feeds to the NSA for their customers, not limited to terrorists or suspicion, bulk data feeds to fill up Utah and the other 5 mega data centers they're building.
And it only covers the data feeds up to 2012 when Apple was added. After that there's been a massive increase in the surveillance, courtesy of Android.
All those permissions you have those messaging apps, your financial stuff, your taxi/ride-sharing app that tracks your every move, all that crapware installed on Android that gets all the rights it can and takes all the data it can.
It's far beyond the meta data on the telephone calls. That wouldn't even fill the tiniest corner of one of those data centers.
and the various governments (this is not about the US, its about the new trend, or rather the new-found ability in mankind to truly neutralize all privacy and secret communications) are all addicted to this drug.
they can't give it up. they have a monkey on their back.
the stingrays are the gateway drug; and it soon is not enough and you want more. you want ALL the wireless and wired datacomms traffic.
we should shift our war-on-drugs effort to the real drug that is invading everyone's lives, though due to no fault of their own.
and again, this is not about the US or its agencies. do you really believe your own government is not wanting or having the ability to do this, as well?
this is about mankind and one of his worst weaknesses.
we should make a 'teaching moment' from this and disallow ourselves this ability. just like we really can't handle the responsibility of nukes, as a people, we can't handle THIS much power, either.
no one should have it. and yes, I truly mean NO ONE. you give it to one, and the rest want it (both good guys and bad guys).
will we use this as a teaching moment and make some change for the better?
well, I'm over 50 and have no hope left for us, as a species. we have proven we can't handle this level of responsibility. I don't expect change, but I do expect people to at least SEE what's going on and to try to work around it without giving up, entirely.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Not in JAN 2014 it wasn't. Or did you think he was elected President late last year?
Senator and Candidate Obama railed against "warrantless wiretapping" and pledged he'd end such activities were he elected.
Seven and eight years ago.
He's had six fucking years as President to do what he as a Senator and candidate said he'd do.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Obama seems to have fooled YOU for seven years running.
Is there are reason that we haven't heard about the Clinton's FBI's Carnivore (or descendants of carnivore) lately?
Don't get me wrong. I'm glad we're hearing about Obama's continuation of Bush's domestic spying. But just wondering why we aren't hearing about Obama continuing Clinton's domestic spying.
... it's that there are not a WHOLE lot more Mannings and Snowdens.
Leak that shit both from the US and UK.
Secrets are a bitch when 1.) you get caught with one and 2.) it's no longer a secret.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Well what do you expect when it doesn't even arouse the feeblest of resistance? In fact it is rewarded. The lone simple fact is that people are okay with it.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Senator and Candidate Obama railed against "warrantless wiretapping" and pledged he'd end such activities were he elected.
"Wiretapping" - Definition: Listening to the actual conversation being made, not looking up who called who and when, which has always been subject to judicial subpoenas without the need for a warrant. Hell, in that old 1995 movie "Clueless", Alicia Silverstone's character is shown helping her lawyer dad go through call sheets of who called who in a civil lawsuit. This sort of stuff always has been so common that it was put in a rom-com.
Here's the thing. Law is very much like coding. The specifics matter.
Don't be a retard. The name means nothing, at least to liberals like me. His actions however make him somewhat to the right of Richard Nixon. For Obama to be worse is somewhat of an anti-achievement, but face it, he has engaged in more war and more surveillance than Nixon could even have imagined, and he got Nixon's health care plan passed.
So, while you are there making fun of republicans, what you fail to recognize is that the Democrats ARE the fucking new Republicans.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good