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Obama Administration Set To Expand Sharing of Data That NSA Intercepts (nytimes.com)
schwit1 writes: The Obama administration is on the verge of permitting the National Security Agency to share more of the private communications it intercepts with other American intelligence agencies without first applying any privacy protections to them, according to officials familiar with the deliberations.
The idea is to let more experts across American intelligence gain direct access to unprocessed information, increasing the chances that they will recognize any possible nuggets of value. That also means more officials will be looking at private messages - not only foreigners' phone calls and emails that have not yet had irrelevant personal information screened out, but also communications to, from, or about Americans that the NSA's foreign intelligence programs swept in incidentally.
Civil liberties advocates criticized the change, arguing that it will weaken privacy protections. They said the government should disclose how much American content the NSA collects incidentally - which agency officials have said is hard to measure - and let the public debate what the rules should be for handling that information.
The idea is to let more experts across American intelligence gain direct access to unprocessed information, increasing the chances that they will recognize any possible nuggets of value. That also means more officials will be looking at private messages - not only foreigners' phone calls and emails that have not yet had irrelevant personal information screened out, but also communications to, from, or about Americans that the NSA's foreign intelligence programs swept in incidentally.
Civil liberties advocates criticized the change, arguing that it will weaken privacy protections. They said the government should disclose how much American content the NSA collects incidentally - which agency officials have said is hard to measure - and let the public debate what the rules should be for handling that information.
I can not even begin to imagine the implications this will have. Let the fishing begin!
From Wiki
1984 is a dystopian novel by English author George Orwell published in 1949. The novel is set in Airstrip One (formerly known as Great Britain), a province of the superstate Oceania in a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance and public manipulation, dictated by a political system euphemistically named English Socialism (or Ingsoc in the government's invented language, Newspeak) under the control of a privileged elite of the Inner Party, that persecutes individualism and independent thinking as "thoughtcrime."
The tyranny is epitomised by Big Brother, the Party leader who enjoys an intense cult of personality but who may not even exist. The Party "seeks power entirely for its own sake. It is not interested in the good of others; it is interested solely in power." The protagonist of the novel, Winston Smith, is a member of the Outer Party, who works for the Ministry of Truth (or Minitrue in Newspeak), which is responsible for propaganda and historical revisionism. His job is to rewrite past newspaper articles, so that the historical record always supports the party line. The instructions that the workers receive specify the corrections as fixing misquotations and never as what they really are: forgeries and falsifications. A large part of the ministry also actively destroys all documents that have been edited and do not contain the revisions; in this way, no proof exists that the government is lying. Smith is a diligent and skillful worker but secretly hates the Party and dreams of rebellion against Big Brother.
As literary political fiction and dystopian science-fiction, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic novel in content, plot and style. Many of its terms and concepts, such as Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak, Room 101, telescreen, 2 + 2 = 5, and memory hole, have entered into common use since its publication in 1949. Nineteen Eighty-Four popularised the adjective Orwellian, which describes official deception, secret surveillance and manipulation of recorded history by a totalitarian or authoritarian state.
The elites in this country are quick to frame everything in terms of "left" and "right", "Liberal" versus "Conservative", and so on.
I've come to the realization that this is a false distinction, made to distract people from the issues and give the illusion of choice.
The real choice is populist (in the interests of the people) and non-populist (to the interests of anyone else).
Both Liberals and Conservatives in this country are on the non-populist end of that spectrum. All bad government actions have bipartisan support, whether it's H1B visa programs taking away our jobs, Patriot act(s) taking away our rights, our 3rd world health care, draconian IP laws passed by secret treaty, killing citizens without trial, secret laws, secret lists... it goes on and on.
What good does it do to argue that D's are better than R's when neither side will present a unified front on our behalf?
Take up the cause and tell us how such-and-so was Bush's fault. Someone will point out that the Democrats controlled congress during that time. Someone else will point out that the bill's opposition was mostly Democratic.
Therefore we should vote for the D's - they're always on the correct side of a losing battle.
One way out is to always vote against the incumbent. If enough people do this and the pols realize that a non-populist term will be their only term, we'll eventually see change.
This election presents a rare choice of two populist candidates: Bernie and Donald. It's apparent that neither is traditionally "left" or "right", so if one of them wins we might get some actual change.
Pay no attention to the name callers you see in the media, or even on Slashdot - that's just the elites trying to sway your vote by emotional means.
Look at their policies, and ask the question: if this policy were implemented, would the *people* benefit?
If the answer is "yes", then that's the candidate we need.