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NSA-Reform Bill Fails In US Senate
New submitter Steven King writes with a link to The Daily Dot's report that the U.S. Senate has rejected the controversial USA Freedom Act, thus "all but guaranteeing that key provisions of the USA Patriot Act will expire"; had it passed, the bill would have allowed continued use of some mass data-collection practices, but with the addition of stronger oversight. From the article:
The Senate failed to reach agreement on passage of the USA Freedom Act, a bill to reauthorize and reform Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, which the government has used to conduct bulk surveillance of Americans' phone records. The House of Representatives passed the bill last week by an overwhelming bipartisan majority, but Senate Democrats, who unified behind the bill, did not get enough Republican votes to assure passage. The linked piece also mentions that the EFF shifted its position on this bill, after a panel of Federal judges ruled that the Feds at the NSA had overstepped their bounds in collecting a seemingly unlimited trove of metadata relating to American citizen's phone calls.
An 'emergency order' will extend the rule until Congress comes back from a very well deserved vacation from their hard work :-/
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Which generation likes being spied on?
The Facebook generation.
Now the NSA will feel compelled to stage a domestic terrorist act in cooperation with the FBI in order to make their point, needlessly endangering the life of Americans. Do you really want another 9/11?
Which older generation? The one that sent men to the moon and that designed and flew the SR-71? That one?
It's hard to predict what the end result of this will be.
On the one hand, I can imagine that letting the mass spying provisions expire, and forcing the bulk data collection to stop, could actually be a win for privacy in the long run. After all, inertia is powerful, especially in politics. It is much easier and less controversial to say, "let's continue with our existing domestic spying program" than it is to say, "now that we stopped spying on everyone for a while, let's start spying on everyone again."
On the other hand, letting everything expire could create an environment where it becomes easy for fear to rule the day (or, easier than usual). We'll no doubt have politicians eager to scare us with stories of how letting bulk domestic surveillance expire makes us unsafe and vulnerable to terrorists, and so "we need to do something now before we die!" Then, new spying legislation could be hastily pushed through that is no better (or worse, depending on your perspective) than what we have now.
As I said, I think it is hard to predict the ultimate outcome, but if the recent past is any indicator, I sadly suspect that fear will win.
We know how this works: Issue an emergency order until a bare-bones bill allowing basic programs can be passed by US congress. Then secretly append the nasty schedules of the failed bill into necessary bills such as bills of supply. The military-industrial complex will get the laws they want sooner rather than later.
"USA Freedom Act" - what evil manipulative piece of shit gave that name to a bill on communication monitoring?
And yet they can't seem to comprehend the internets and need their 5yr old grandchild to show them how to use an ipad.
Not sure why I didn't see it in the summary.
Looks like the NSA hasn't gathered enough blackmail material while they were spying on our politicians to get that extension. Better luck next time.
Just kidding -- expect to see an extension without any reform.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
there's no way they're building the data centers they are just to record metadata. It would be absurd to believe they're not recording the calls or having a third party do it. Or... does "metadata" include, for example, a series of hashes of the call content that lets you reproduce them with 98% accuracy, for example? :) It's just data about the call, after all...
Both oppressive regimes treat their people like shit.
They rejected Freedom.
A minority rejected Freedom on behalf of an entire countries population...
Yep.
Right, and all 12 year olds are uber-hackers supreme.
You can pretty much bet that the cool new cutting edge tech your young technophile or fresh college graduate is playing with was invented and designed by somebody you call an "older generation".
The EFF still has some pull. That's my take on this. Enough people listened that their support, or lack thereof, made a substantial difference to political support behind the bill. And that's damn good news.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
There will be enough customers for the data even if the U.S. government as a tier one customer is not interested. I am pretty sure that the NSA already has contingency plans in case the U.S. government is no longer interested in financing the collapse of privacy.
It's a lawyer thing. Most people in congress simply had no education that enables them to do an honest job.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Hmm, that tablet of Lady Liberty in the NY harbour, is actually a large iPad, on which she writes down the metadata of everything you do...
Yep. Generally the older you get the less in touch with society and technology you become. Look back at the news articles about cars when they first came out, telephones, radio, music and so on. It's an age problem for many with any new tech. Think about it, imagine in 10 years you could get wetware and plug yourself into technology. Now propose that to someone who's in their 60's or 70's. Now think about computers, encryption, and so on and remember that many of the folks in politics are between 40 and 75.
Om, nomnomnom...
Yes, the generation that sponsored the SR-71 to keep a close watch on godless communists and who commissioned astonishingly accurate satellite surveillance to keep the bad guys from taking over the world like a series of dominoes are also responsible for approving a system to keep close watch on the scary Muslims. The scary Muslims are even more dangerous than the godless Communists, because they don't concentrate inside any particular national boundaries. Therefore, it's necessary but unfortunate that every person on the planet be monitored in order to determine whether they are one of "Us" or one of "Them." The Cold War generation understands the "Us" and "Them" dichotomy, and invasive surveillance helps to distinguish.
They don't have to know how the technology works, and it may even help to be ignorant of the uselessness of so much data on so many innocent people. The people who designed the SR-71 are at the top end of their generation's technological bell curve. The people who sponsored it are at the bottom end.
Don't confuse the few geniuses with the total amount of brainless zombies that populate this planet
That, and in my experience the very young these days are very good at knowing what technology DOES, but pitifully few of them know anything about how it works.
Proportionally it's probably not all that different. In the 80s and 90s you had to know something about how this worked in order to do anything serious with it. Everyone else had their VCRs flashing 12:00 all the time.
Tech was less harmful then. If you used it you knew abit it
The poster thinks that being knowledgeable about tech is knowing your memes and posting selfies of yourself regularly. I could ask my 20 year old millenial daughters how they think their phones/laptops work if you want an example of "clueless". Being a crack addict does not confer knowledge of plant alkaloids or even botany.
On the other hand people who aren't clueless about tech (and the disturbing direction it's headed in) will voluntarily use as little tech as possible...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
It pisses me off to no end that they can just violate our rights all they want, do it for years on end, then....no harm no foul in the end.
There is no scenario to my mind where every person involved should be walking free in the sunlight. Every single analyst, every politician, every single person who knew the facts and didn't turn them in.
All broke the law, all are guilty and deserve to be made individual example of for they are each individually 100% guilty of what they did.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Reminds me of George Carlin: "Reflect for a moment how stupid the average (median) person is. Now realize that half of them are even dumber than that.".
If it acquires resources on instantiation like a duck, then its a shared_ptr<Duck>
Please actually look at the older generation, and revisit your own. Many younger people have _no idea_ how the technology works, much like their older peers. They have considerable hands-on familiarity with newer tools and no older habits to unlearn, but wait that same 10 years and they will be in a similar situation. I'm old enough to remember when 'C' and 'BASIC' were new and exciting. And it's a delight with my older colleagues and peers to learn new tools, and a personal delight to walk the young programmers through the same problems we had decades ago, problems they didn't realize the new tools would also have or which they ignored in testing.
While this is true of many there are those that do excel with tech. I also know that there are many of the younger generation who think that because they know how to use twitter they are special somehow but when their laptop wont boot they bring it to this old man to fix.
Such an intelligent response.
The people who designed the SR-71 are at the top end of their generation's technological bell curve. The people who sponsored it are at the bottom end.
So what you're saying is that those who designed the SR-71 were mediocre and those who sponsored it were a mix of geniuses, idiots and anything in-between?
If you're on the top end of a bell curve, your possible deviation is as low as it can be. You are mediocre, belonging to the largest segment of the population.
If you're at the bottom end of a bell curve, your possible deviation is as high as it can be. There's no telling. You may be a genius or you might be an idiot.
Anyhow, what's pretty clear is that most of those who designed and sponsored the SR-71 are dead.
Such an intelligent response.
At least he spelled it out fully and didn't reply with "u md bo?r".
Now that it is proved wrong in principle to collect all of the telephone and email data etc in the US, let the British Government take note. What you are doing in the same collection of data is an outrage, an offence and a violence to the people of Britain and more specifically, to me.
1. Stop collecting that data, and my data immediately.
2. Give me compensation for the harm and damage that you have done specifically to me and to milions of other subjects (note not citizens! in the UK).
3. Make a full unreserved public apology.
4. Punish all those people and employees that were involved in this reprehensible action.
5. Publish a law to prevent this from ever happening again.
And yet they can't seem to comprehend the internets and need their 5yr old grandchild to show them how to use an ipad.
And yet, millenials seem to think that the internetzs and ipads are "High Tech".
Once you strip away the veneer of Facebook, Twitter, and knowing the mechanics of hooking up a wireless router, it turns out most of the "technologically savvy" millennials don't know much more than the Grandma of the endless memes.
I had this problem at work with them - The toughest part of dealing with the millennials was getting them to accept that I knew much more than they did, and they didn't know as much as they thought they did in the first place
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
That matches what I've seen too. Younger folks excel at "tech" in the sense that they are all over Twitter and Facebook and zipping around screens on their smartphones.
But as for how any of it works? They are clueless. They've never even seen assembly language. They've never read any of the RFCs and have no idea how networking works. When something stops working, they need help to fix it. Increasingly, they lack even basic literacy like copying this file to that directory, because tablets and smartphones hide that level of use from the user.
I'm not saying that's universal: obviously there are younger folks who do make the effort to look behind the curtain. But 99% of the time when I encounter someone under 30, they seem to reside in the "tech is magic, but I know all about how to push the buttons" crowd.
Such an intelligent response.
What do you expect from the tech savvy younger crowd. At least he got it spelled correctly, so he must be smarter than average. Just be careful - they get a little testy when they figure out all that self esteem inculcation wasn't actually real.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Ah, so your laptop is still broken and you have no clue what to do. Just admit your ignorance and let someone better than you fix the problem. If you ask nicely, you might be allowed to learn something.
Otherwise, you could just fuck off.
The Freedom (to spy on citizens) Act.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Whoever wrote the article didn't watch CSPAN all the way to the end. Mitch McConnell moved to reconsider Sunday the 31st. They're going to put it to a vote the following Sunday, because the bill expires at midnight on that day. Meaning this could still pass. I'm betting they're going to twist some arms to make that happen. What was really disturbing about watching that whole ordeal last night was that McConnel was able to put it to a re-vote multiple times in hopes of getting the answer he was looking for. The public needs to write their senators ASAP this coming week to demand they vote it down or it's probably going to go through.
Now propose that to someone who's in their 60's or 70's. Now think about computers, encryption, and so on and remember that many of the folks in politics are between 40 and 75.
Wow. Just wow. Any of your brilliant insights we can get about dark skinned people or women or Hispanics or hey maybe even the Irish or polish people?
Your statements about computers and encryption - used as some sort of proof against us olde fartes and our inabilities - is simply ridiculous.
That you would include it, merely seems to illustrate the limits of your abilities.
Hell, I'm one of those olde fartes you denigrate - hey - I've been doing computers since the 70's, we're talking ancient IBM mainframes and punch card programming, hows that for old? but since retirement I've taken up learning some different programming languages, emergency communications software development, Surface Mount technology electronics design and building, and moving into software defined radio development, both hardware and software.
But thanks for the LuLz. This 60 year old troglodyte would laugh - but maybe me false teef would fall out, or I'd pee myself. Depends are expensive you know.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Obviously there are younger folks who do make the effort to look behind the curtain.
With companies, like Apple, who have a software development philosophy of "make the curtain impenetrable / obfuscate anything that might confuse people", this problem will only get worse.
If anyone in power actually cared about doing something regarding "scary muslims", then they'd:
1) Stop fucking around in their countries and just leave them alone instead of constantly antagonizing them.
2) Prevent them from immigrating here.
But they don't do either of those, because in the end, they only care about money. Money for the perpetual war machine fueled by keeping the public scared about a bogeyman their government created, and money from cheap labor.
Never heard of him before I read this article.
If you had any shred of respect for obama still left, this article will destroy it
http://www.newyorker.com/magaz...
He is the only one fighting for the rights of americans to not be spied upon. Its a shame that 2 years after this article was written, people are caring less and less about these issues. For a while there in 2013, it looked like people really did care.
-
That's great, but you're missing something aren't you? You're 'specialized' in an area of technology, they're specialized in an area of technology. These people aren't. See that point where you missed what happens when you're dealing with people who aren't adept, familiar, or even have the basic concept of something? You're welcome.
Om, nomnomnom...
The way it works according to Snowden is that they grabs all the data, metadata + content, and stores it in their data center. They don't look at the content, they only search the metadata. If the metadata implies that the person may be contacting a foreigner in any way, for example doing business for your company overseas or having a girlfriend in Canada, then they can pull up the content and look at it. The content can include voice calls where you talked about what you wanted to do to your girlfriend's butthole, images of your dick, recorded webcam feeds of you fingering your own butt at your girlfriend's request, text messages where you admit you enjoyed playing with your butthole, etc. Also, it is confirmed agents sit around laughing at people having phone sex by a previous official whistleblower before even Snowden came out with his revelations. In addition, they use the material to blackmail, which was revealed in July 2014 by another whistleblower.
as it omits (this from the NYT)
Funny that you trotted out race, can you explain where that applies? Right. It doesn't, but I'm sure you can pat yourself on the back for thinking you're witty.
So much like the other person who replied to me, you also missed the point. Tell me something, how much understanding do you think a politician is going to have about technology that you're specialized in, but they're not. Or are you going to say that they're as adept as you because of their age. Now you're suddenly realized where your reply is wrong, why my original point is right in the context of the original reply in question don't you.
Sorry if this guy in his mid-30's can figure this stuff out but you can't. My grandfather would have said it's "getting old, and forgetting that when you specialize, everyone else doesn't run along beside you."
Om, nomnomnom...
And, I forgot to mention. They get it coming and going. Any data they can't get U.S. citizens who aren't contacting foreigners, other countries in the world supply to our government in exchange for data on their own citizens as well. This way they can say, well we didn't collect the data, that other government did and gave it to us.
Yep. Generally the older you get the less in touch with society and technology you become. Look back at the news articles about cars when they first came out, telephones, radio, music and so on. It's an age problem for many with any new tech. Think about it, imagine in 10 years you could get wetware and plug yourself into technology. Now propose that to someone who's in their 60's or 70's. Now think about computers, encryption, and so on and remember that many of the folks in politics are between 40 and 75.
Only if you define "in touch ... with technology" as being able to use your thumb to send 15 text message a minute.
Or, twenty years ago, being able to program a VCR.
Rotate the graph in your mind 90-degrees counter-clockwise.
I'm pretty sure you understood what was said, and are choosing to act otherwise.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
posting selfies of yourself regularly.
How does one take a selfie of someone else? A self portrait is, by definition, a portrait you take of yourself.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Funny that you trotted out race, can you explain where that applies?
Because you trotted out a nasty stereotype. Old people are technically stupid - politions are technically stupid. It's prejudice alongside Black people are (fill in the racist stereotype) and on and on. Seriously are you trying to tell me that you did not understand the comment? Wow.
So much like the other person who replied to me, you also missed the point. Tell me something, how much understanding do you think a politician is going to have about technology that you're specialized in, but they're not.
Again with the stereotypes. You're going to have to provide the cites that prove all politicians are technical maladroit, before I try to andswer that question, because I would have to believe your prejudice.
Or are you going to say that they're as adept as you because of their age.
NO, I'm trying to say that you come into this with some soert of pre-judgement of people Politicians are stupid, old people are stupid - They ain't stupid as a group, Skippy! If you have to go all Archie Bunker on us, you're simply proving my point. There are stupid politicians, but overall, they probably represent society as a whole on intelligence and competency, and technical literacy. Just like us olde fartes.
Now you're suddenly realized where your reply is wrong, why my original point is right in the context of the original reply in question don't you.
Only thing I've realized is I'm dealing with an internet Kook.
Sorry if this guy in his mid-30's can figure this stuff out but you can't. My grandfather would have said it's "getting old, and forgetting that when you specialize, everyone else doesn't run along beside you."
Only I don't have incorrect deep seated prejudices, and troubles with logic. Your mid thirties age merely shows that anyone of any age can be pretty stupid.
Congratulations, you made it.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Which older generation? The one that sent men to the moon and that designed and flew the SR-71? That one?
And they did it with slide rules not zillions of supercomputer hours of CFD simulations.
Come get me, bitches
I think Louis C.K. appropriately called these people "noncontributing product sponge cunts".
Because using an iPad makes you "tech savvy?" Does driving a car make you a mechanic? Does simply being a driver give you the knowledge to set the ongoing policies on car technology? It's typical of the youngest generations to believe they are somehow higher minded. It's happened forever and it will always happen.
Oooh, fantastic counter. Way to win the argument.
But the flip side is that the Cold War generation also understands the difference between an existential threat (the USSR was an aggressively expansionist power, and its words were backed with nuclear weapons and the capability to deliver them anywhere on the planet) and a bunch of incompetent barbarians (the terrorists are aggressively expansionist but they have no ability to project power outside of their own fiefdoms) who, even on their best month, managed to do kill fewer people than traffic accidents did.
Furthermore, the Cold War generation understands what happens when you have a society based on mass surveillance, and that it's generally a Bad Thing(tm) if you're trying to have the economic growth generally associated with freer forms of social management. "Papers please" and "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" were lines in Cold War movies that were uttered by the bad guys - whether they wore shiny black uniforms with spiffy red armbands, or dull olive grey uniforms with spiffy red-and-yellow logos on their shoulder patches.
The real problem is that Cold War politicians have decided you can have a surveillance state without sacrificing economic growth (to be fair to them, WW2 Germany doing it with brute force and East Germany doing it with an army of bureaucrats merely proved that it didn't scale, but the Chinese post-Tienanmen beta test of economic reforms while maintaining totalitarian control worked pretty well), and are manipulating Cold War techno-ignoramuses into thinking that the terrorists are an existential threat on a par with the former USSR.
It's more subtle than that. Lawyers have an almost naive faith in the courts; it's almost like how a developer can rarely debug his or her own code. If you knew there were bugs in your code, you'd never check it in, right? So you debug, you commit, you ship, and then three weeks down the road, someone sees something you didn't (because it was obvious that you didn't mean for the computer to treat those in the string buffer as code instead of data) and exploits it.
Same deal with legislators. We want something to deal with terrists. This is something. We know we meant it to apply only to terrists. So you debate, you vote, and you sign it into law, and then three weeks down the road, some lawyer at some three-letter-agency notices that "relevant to an investigation" could apply to any investigation, not just to terrists, and exploits that loophole heavily.
The difference between programmers and legislators (and code/law) is that coding is new enough that we're used to seeing it break all the time, and we're very aware that we're fallible. Legislators know that there are other lawyers who are paid to find ways to break the spirit of the law -- the real problem with legislators is that, unlike programmers, they think they're infallible.
Hey guys, I know you're busy with that "big shutdown" (wink wink) but before you "go dark", can we get a copy of Hillary's inbox? She seems to have misplaced it.
Hey there, good buddy, I'm with you; passed double nickels a long time ago, and still got it on cruise.
What's your handle? Oops, that's old tech.
Last ten years: Python, LaTeX, xslt (ok, xslt has got to be my un-favorite programming language, maybe it's mastered me instead of the other way around), sfst.
Oh, wow, gotta get me one o' them!
You mean the generation that actually invented computer? That generation? Or the following one, the one that invented the internet? The only clueless generation is the current one: stupid kids who do not create anything and will never, ever, amount to anything.
Just be careful - they get a little testy when they figure out all that self esteem inculcation wasn't actually real.
Is that why they click on penis enlargement spam, to compensate for "a little testy"? :-p
Honestly, I don't see a lot of age difference in politician's understanding of tech. Young or old, f they're in politics, they typically don't understand it at all.
Being a crack addict does not confer knowledge of plant alkaloids or even botany.
Nicely said. I hope you don't mind if I hold on to that one for future use.
You can only TAKE a selfie of yourself, but you can easily POST someone else's selfie if you understand the technology.
"It would be absurd to believe they're not recording the calls": Is your tin hat crooked today?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Which is more likely : (1) the best-funded signals intelligence apparatus in the world is lying by choosing their words carefully and, while they likely have *some* limits on how they are allowed to search US-based data, they still keep it or arrange for someone else to in case they have to search it later, or (2) this top secret program is being transparent and 100% non-deceptive?
Remember, they have a history of lying to Congress and the public, of conducting massive surveillance that is warrantless and/or authorized by a minimal number of broad-scope warrants. And they have incentives to do so. And they operate almost entirely without real oversight--their public oversight consists of elected representatives with generally *zero* technical ability.
I believe there are a lot of great guys there, but it doesn't take many bad apples for flagrantly illegal programs to keep going, with all the weight of institutional momentum behind them. Institutional momentum is hard enough to change in *transparent* institutions.
Hey, I hope I'm wrong, and most of the people I've met who've worked for intelligence have been really great people. But then you get people who are just real assholes, or who should never be trusted with important decisions. I remember one guy saying the American people weren't *ready* for the war on terror to be over, so we should keep having it--his whole view of the thing was as an exercise in propaganda that justified all of the government overreach we've seen, and that was okay with him. He was a junior guy, and I've met much better guys who work in the community, so I'm not willing to say he's representative--but it's concerning. It's an entirely understandable perspective intellectually, just morally bankrupt and contrary to values of freedom from a policy standpoint. Get the wrong guys like that at the top, and you're fucked, and there's no outlet for good transparency.
I don't think what Snowden did was okay. But I do think he should have been able to complain at the very least to the Intelligence Committee without fear of reprisal, because otherwise the wrong guys in charge inside the intelligence community and Democracy is fucked.
As a kid I had to learn memory management and basic assembly to make games run properly and do some modding. These days people from both older and younger generations ask me to fix their crap even though it is trivial in comparison. What really concerns me is that some of the kids that I know with pretty high academic standing are not even close to handling what I could at their age despite having borderline failing grades (until late high school). If it ain't broke don't fix it? We need a new school called "digital archeology" or whatnot so that when crap starts breaking down in 50 years at least people will know where to look to figure out why.
There is a comic about this.
The NSA spying programs on the citizens of the USA represent the LAST means for democracy in the USA.
The 'treasure trove' of telecommunications meta-data and voice communications of members of the USA Federal Government and State Governments coupled to FOIA represents the only way ordinary citizens of the USA can blackmail and extort the President and WhiteHouse Staff, the Federal Departments and Staffs, the Congress and congressional staffs and the Supreme Court and Staffs going down to the district court level.
Blackmail and Extortion are the only means left to USA citizens to control the Lawless USA and State governments.
Example. Who are Obama Presidential Prostitutes ? From what country do Obama's Presidential Prostitutes come from ? It is rumored that Obama likes especially, prostitutes 4 to 6 years old.
Example. It is rumored that General John Brennen prefers prostitutes ages 1 to 3 years old and male gender.
The NSA 'treasure trove' is the way to control the lawlessness of the Federal and State and Local Governments.
IT MUST BE CONTINUED.
I hear ya.. I'm not a "digital native".
However, I designed CPUs, I/O boards, power supplies, and RF circuits.
I am "obsolete" because I don't like Facebook or Twitter (and refuse to get involved with them).
Texas republican senator Ted Cruz is leading the fight to do the right thing, to protect our Constitutional rights. Our other senator, John Cornyn, wants to renew the Patriot Act in full. Here is my letter to Cornyn.
As a career security professional, I implore you to reconsider your position regarding the Patriot Act, the USA Freedom Act, and the Fourth Amendment.
For twenty years I have worked to keep protect American citizens, interests, and our way of life. Currently, I am employed at TEEX, where I work with our National Emergency Response And Rescue Training Center, assist in homeland security training, and support our role as a founding member of the National Cybersecurity Preparedness Consortium. I do this work in order to protect the American way of life, that we might be the beacon of freedom that founders envisioned. The antithesis of this would be that the United States would be taken over by those who would subjugate the citizens. Our role, sir, is to, protect Americans from not one specific foreign threat, but from any and all who would threaten our Constitutional liberties. Your current position, senator, places you on the wrong side of this fight. Please reconsider whether you wish to be the force fighting against the Constitution, against the fourth amendment, and against the American way of life. We work today, and will work at election time, to realize the vision of American as the brightest beacon of freedom and liberty in the world.
The abilities of the NSA far exceeded the expectations of the G.W. Bush WhiteHouse and Federal Government of the day.
The collections abilities were originally aimed at non-governmental citizens, the 'gray area', of USA security.
The NSA however collected all meta-data and voice-records of all Federal and State Government Officials, and are held in servers at Fort Meade Maryland and in a facility in Utah.
Holding all of the meta-data and voice records of all Federal Employees and all State Government Employees and Local Government Employees puts them in 'harms way' for blackmail and extortion by a third party using the FOIA.
It is for this reason that the Patriot Act will die.
The Perversions of the President, WhiteHouse, Congress, Supreme Court, District Courts and Federal and State employes must never be made known.
By including both yourself and someone else in a single portrait.
bunch of cocksuckers around here
The members of the older generation who made it, knows very well how it works.
The problem is they aren't the ones making these decisions, it is the ones who didn't know shit about how it worked then and know even less about how it works now who are making the decisions.
So we really do have those who are truly clueless about tech making these decisions, either that or they know about it and are truly corrupt instead.
Which older generation? The one that sent men to the moon and that designed and flew the SR-71? That one?
And they did it with slide rules not zillions of supercomputer hours of CFD simulations.
I'm pretty sure if you're talking today's younger generation, you typo'd that and really meant "zillions of hours of CofD simulations".
cry moar, faggot
Way to radiate your virginity, loser.
luis ck is a faggot
The younger generation is even more clueless about tech. At least the older generation understand how technology works at some base level. The younger generation just think about computers as sealed magic boxes with a "go" and "stop" button.
Don't confuse WWII with scary Muslims...I agree with the Bogeyman scenario. Why do we keep bombing them into "submission?" Because our need to sell yet ANOTHER war wins out ANY thing else. Just watch the propaganda on the morning shows etc. Anyone with an open mind can see shit being shoveled at them. Think and VOTE for yourself and be unafraid.
From the department of redundancy department, located right next to the atm machine. OK I could have written it better, but also I can hide behind what someone else said - technically you can post a selfie of someone else... but yeah, fair point and well caught.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
There is no mention in the article of Sen Rand's filibuster opposing the bill.
I presume that when the article says that they could not get enough Republican votes they mean they did not get enough to override the filibuster?
(I'm Canadian and so not as knowledgeable about american political procedures as I could be.)
No... because less than 1 percent of 1 percent of that generation actually knows enough to even begin to cop to that claim.
So if you're argument is that 1 percent of 1 percent of that generation knows lots. I agree.
However, that is a politically insignificant portion of the population and so can be ignored if we are talking about POLITICS.
And we are... so I can. And I just did.
What is beyond obvious to even the most limited of semi humans is that the current generation is more fluent with new technology than the previous generation.
And you can see that in many different ways. But on topic, you can see that in political statistics that show young people as being more in favor of less NSA bullshit and the older generation being actively supportive of it.
Now, if you actually explain to the older generation what is happening, they tend to change their views.
I was talking to a 75 year old man the other day and he was for the whole NSA thing. He thought Snowden was a traitor... etc. I explained what actually happened... and because this fellow trusted me, he took my word for it on several things that he would have required proof for if we didn't have that bond of trust.
The reality of the matter is that on many of these issues, the older generations simply don't know what the fuck is going on. They are echo chambered into establishment media sources that are misleading them. And because they generally don't feel comfortable stepping outside of that box, they're are more easily manipulated by certain types of media manipulation.
The younger generations are likewise open to manipulation but of a different kind and generally with less uniform success because the media landscape at that level is more fragmented.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
First, the older generation does not have that facility. Are you implying that the older generation could fix their own personal blender or something of nature? Because they didn't. They took it to a repairman or bought another one.
Second, the older generation absolutely thinks the computers are sealed magic boxes. Ever showed a 75 year old how to use a computer? Give me a break.
Third, yes there are a lot halfwits in the new generation but all things are relative. The fact is that they're more fluent in this tech than the previous generation. And if you think the kids are bad you have NO IDEA how bad their parents are with this stuff much less their grand parents.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.