It'd be helpful if you could tell us the difference.
There isn't one; the definition of forecasting is "to predict or estimate (a future event or trend)." I think he views prediction as more "crystal ball" and forecasting more "computer screen"... but he tripped over his lack of finesse with the language and took a snarky to the knee.
Because it's easier to see a +2 comment go to +5 due to people seeing the comment than a 0 comment from an anonymous coward get any altitude at all.
That's only part of the equation. If you want to karma whore, you do three things; First, post early. Second, attach comments to highly rated ones (or ones you think will be). Third, don't be like me; Always go with the party line. Especially once your karma is 'excellent' because no matter how many upmods you get, it only takes one or two angry moderators to click your page, go into your history, and blow all their points on you to burn your karma out... and several people have multiple accounts here. I've run across them and had my karma croppy-flop from excellent to neutral in just a few minutes because I told an Apple fanboy their god was dead.
Nobody will give this post a +1, and therefore it won't be at +5 in two hours.
Hangon, let me give you a hand... I disagree with this man! There, you'll hit at least +4 now -- and disprove the theory. If there's one thing I've learned on slashdot, it's that everyone I disagree with gets atleast a +1 bump based simply on unmitigated fanboy hatred of my wonton slaughter of their sacred cows. It's sortof like reverse psychology as applied to nerds.
It is programmed by a set of open standards which gives any person or organization the tools to build support for the content which is relevant to society.
I think you need to lay off the koolaid man.
JPEG and GIF both have licensing issues; They are not free. The intended replacement for these, PNG, hasn't seen widespread adoption, can't do animations, but has no licensing issues. In fact, if you take a walk down a list of all the multimedia technologies commonly used on the web, MP3, MPEG4, h.264, AAC, surround sound... you will find yourself in a veritable desert when it comes to truly free standards. The standards may be 'open', that is, published... but a loose coalition of companies control all the key pieces.
In fact, the W3C, responsible for HTML, XML, CSS, etc., standards only two days ago decided to make documents about those standards available under an 'open source' license... optionally. Oh, but it gets worse. They're planning on introducing DRM and proprietary tech directly into the HTML5 standard; While you could conceivably use free technology, only the proprietary codec that will eventually be chosen for audio and video is guaranteed to be available on any HTML5-compliant browser.
A video game, designed in web standards, could be preserved for centuries by whoever deems it culturally relevant.
Copyright though means that they won't be able to even consider preservation for centuries, however. Many software licenses don't allow for backup copies... and it is highly doubtful you'll be able to keep that DVD you purchased it on alive for the next "150 years plus the life of the author", along with the equipment to read it, and some kind of adapter technology so that when the copyright finally expires, it might actually have a shot at being preserved.
If the W3C, or an industry body like them, creates an equivalent pseudo-native app platform... then great. For now, the web is the best we have.
What we have is a dystopian nightmare world of competing proprietary technologies, very little free/open alternatives, and billions being poured into the working groups responsible for setting these standards to ensure that every company involved gets a slice of the pie... meaning by the time they've gotten fat off their fill, you, the artist, will be starving. Again. Because before you can create art, you better pay a licensing fee, publishing fee, content storage fee, protection fee (for the drm to protect your art, of course), and ongoing monthly fees to your ISP.
No. Sorry, "the best we have" is not the web... it's stone tablets. Because those are about the only things someone doesn't have a patent on.
Developers would then be able to choose their algorithms for best suits their project, even native to web browsers with the upcoming WebCL."
If web browsers were people, that statement would have caused a mass suicide of them. Guys, stop trying to turn the browser into a platform. It introduces so many layers of complexity and security issues that it's a miracle anyone has any trust or faith in the internet at all. It's getting to the point where the only way to safely browse the net is to shove the entire browser into a virtual machine... and even that only manages to protect your own computer, say nothing of your online activities, credentials, life, etc.
We need to be making browsers simpler, not more complex. Feature bloat is making these things a leper's colony inside your computer... a cesspool of malware and vulnerability. Don't add to it by coming up with some new way for developers to directly access the hardware of your computer because you're too fucking lazy to write an app to do whatever it is, and want to cram it into the browser instead. You're just encouraging them.
Seriously, we need a 12 step program for these "web 2.0" people.
Just remember whoever fills in the vacuum left by this raging idiot (and I am being kind in calling him a raging idiot) is just as likely to be FBI, Interpol or another like kind government agency. You see the problem with having black markets is they don't attract the most ethical of people, you know the ones that practice their due diligence?
Actually, this isn't without precidence. We've been replacing arms dealers and drug cartel leaders with plants for years. Replacing a website would be far less risky, for similar gain.
You see the problem with having black markets is they don't attract the most ethical of people, you know the ones that practice their due diligence?
Those are separate issues. That said, you'd be surprised what a gun to your head can do for both your ethics and your desire to practice due diligence. Black markets have the same competitive pressures as regular ones -- in that the stupid, incompetent, and untalented, tend to be eaten up by people who lack those faults. But quantity has a quality all its own, as Stalin once said... and it's true in economics too. A large organization can tolerate a lot more fail than a small one, and drug cartels and mafias are no exception. I rather imagine managers in crime syndicates throw people under the bus to cover their own ass too... just they do it literally, not figuratively.:3
What's your appetite for risk? Do you want the well built site that's professionally run and might be a front for the FBI or the half ass site that is probably run by a raging idiot or the mafia? Pick your poison.
Truthfully... the ideal solution would be distributed. Nobody runs it; it's just a distribution platform. Decentralization has been a powerful antidote to law enforcement and governments alike for centuries. You make it all about one man, and you make it as easy as pulling a trigger to make it go away. Make it about a million men, and now you've got a problem.
Wrong on both counts there. For one, that's not an argument trotted out by anyone. It's a blatant strawman. I know of the argument you're referring to, and it's more complicated than that.
Yeah, for starters, this really has nothing to do with the NSA. It's about the "Land of the Free" denying people entry into the country because they're critical of a government agency here. I guess it's okay to bomb other countries to bring democracy to them, but if someone tries to bring it here it's all "Access denied."
But you know, that's not really the hypocritical part, it's just a dick move. The hypocritical part is how we threaten to bomb and invade other countries when they arrest US citizens who criticize the governments they visit, and we cry fowl when our own diplomats, journalists, and citizens are denied access to other countries because they've been critical of the government whose country they want to visit.
This isn't about the NSA... this is in fact comparatively worse than what the NSA is doing; The NSA just wants to watch "all teh thingz!" but this is an active and overt attempt to suppress free speech, not an (arguably) accidental byproduct of mass surveillance. It is not something an allegedly "free" government should be doing... no matter how much you dislike what someone has to say, if your country is as good as you claim it is, then you shouldn't be afraid of letting them in to see it. Maybe you turn a detractor into a supporter... wouldn't be the first time you know. Used to happen a lot around here about a hundred years ago.
This is a culture war. We have to win it by winning the hearts and minds of people all over the world... and a solid first step, is letting them visit our "free" country. Unless, of course, it isn't actually free, in which case... yeah. Keep them out. They may convince people here that things are better outside the Fox/CNN/MSNBC e-berlin wall that keeps us cut off from the actual democratic countries of the world. Open borders are for when you have something to offer... closed borders are when you have something to hide. Historically, this is how it's worked.
Do you have any evidence that this happened, or are you confusing Silk Road with Freedom Hosting?
You mean besides the criminal complaint posted in the article you were supposed to read before shoving your foot in your mouth?
Page 6: "as well as forensic analysis of computer servers used to operate the Silk Road website that have been located and imaged during the investigation"
Page 11: "... instructs vendors to 'vacuum seal' packages containing narcotics, in order to avoid detection..." "use a different address from the user's own address to receive shipment... friend's house or P.O. box"
"Since November of 2011, law enforcement agents participating in this investigation have made over 100 individual undercover purchases..."
Thanks to the Silk Road taking a percentage of all proceeds, they've been able to locate the ledger for the entire website; Every transaction made, as well as the so-called "tumbler" used to anonymize bitcoins used to make purchases on the website... as the transaction logs for "tumbled" bitcoins was also amongst the items recovered.
When you dig into the complaint it becomes painfully clear how sloppy this guy was: He had a Google+ page, a LinkedIn profile, youtube, etc., -- there is considerable captured traffic between the Silk Road webserver sent outside the Tor network, including e-mails and other accounts authorities are now using to collect the realworld identities of many of the administrators and regular contributors to the site. He didn't encrypt anything on the servers -- they didn't even need a fucking password to get this information.
Backup servers which had SSH keys to login to were also recovered, so what little was encrypted... well, let's just say the root password of the Silk Road might as well have been "1234".
Every PO box, every ship-to address... he kept it all. There was no data retention policy this guy used... he was a data hoarder, and the only reason it took the government this long wasn't because of how hard it was to track him down in real life, but because of the sheer crapflood of forensic data bogged down their entire cybercrime division. And get this... they bought the malware later used to infect Freedom Hosting off Silk Road!.
Someone should built a monument to this guy's stupidity... Tor might anonymize your IP address, but this guy fucked over the privacy of everyone that visited with gross incompetence and greed all on his own. The government didn't need to go the extra mile... all that stuff with Freedom Hosting getting infected (Hey, check out that malware sometime; It records which Tor sites you visit and when. Can't think of how Silk Road might have been affected there!) was just testing out their toys. It wasn't necessary, but you know... if you're gonna do it, might as well overdo it.
And yet, all we to show that mass surveillance of phones helps is your a hypothetical example that reads more like a CSI plot than anything that could actually work.
A CSI episode would have more catchy one-liners, and computers beeping while images flashed by in rapid succession instead of "LOADING... PLEASE WAIT". There would also be a snappy soundtrack and people yelling "Enhance!" at grainy surveillance footage, turning pixelated blob-people into pictures so sharp you can count the nose hairs on them.
What it wouldn't feature is weeks of intensive detective work stretching across a half-dozen law enforcement agencies and thousands of man-hours spent sifting through potentially relevant surveillance footage to drum up a few promising leads while the tip line rings off the hook with people calling in to report their neighbors who they know have nothing to do with the current crisis, but are really hoping the police come out and fuck with them because, you know, his dog shit on my lawn one too many times and now it's go time, bitches.
But it isn't an absurd statement that they could be so sheltered that their morals, while internally consistent, is far removed from what the rest of us would consider good.
This just in: People in radically different situations from each other may think different from each other. For example, the rich and wealthy people of Congress may not see much of a problem with shutting down food assistance programs that serve infants and single mothers, since it doesn't affect them or anyone they know.
That doesn't mean that they're going to suddenly turn into sociopaths. See, this is where people like you get it so very, very wrong: You see something that doesn't make sense in your worldview and assume this means they're mentally ill, immoral, or otherwise anti-social. People's morality largely derives from their circumstances -- but they still remain social. They make decisions based on what would help them (and by extension, those like them); This does not make them evil or immoral. You can argue it does make them self-centered egoists with some success, but you can't just call someone stupid, immoral, etc., simply because their lives aren't being lived in the same context as yours.
Will the government try to redeem these bitcoins? Wouldn't that be like saying that they accept that bitcoin is valid?
Your username here suggests you may not be up to speed on how the government operates. Allow me to explain;
Bitcoins are the main financial instrument used by terrorists on the black market to purchase guns, WMDs, drugs, and even children. So we seized them and will charge those found with them with terrorism, money laundering, etc., at the maximum dollar amount that these coins were ever traded at, come trial.
During the trial, the defendant may claim that we seized his/her property illegally. However, as bitcoins are not currency, they do not ever have to be returned. Further, being in possession of so many is bona fide proof of intent to distribute by itself, and thus falls under existing seizure laws that do not require a search warrant, or return of property, whether charged or not.
Silk Road practiced the use of Tor as well as anyone could have.
No, they didn't. They pretty much put a flare up saying where the servers were, ran unpatched servers that got infected with malware and compromised its users, and... ready for the big surprise?... The government then used the locally-installed malware to communicate outside Tor, after which it was pretty trivial to match realworld identities to bitcoin wallets and to forum posts and purchases through Silk Road.
Tor wasn't compromised; The systems running on top of it were. You can't blame the protocol for the stupid decisions of the people using it... this is like saying SSL was compromised when someone gets arrested for posting child porn on Facebook. "But... it was secured!" Yeah... and there's your picture, name, and address.
Tor anonymizes your IP address. It doesn't keep you from leaking information out via other means... like I don't know, say, making drug purchases online? They had to be shipped somewhere and you can't Tor your mailing address.
Justice delayed is justice denied. There's no reason why this can't be addressed at the moment either.
True, but people seem to think we need to grind everything to a halt until we can placate everyone's pet interests. Well, that's not gonna happen. So how about we start on Plan B instead: Figuring out how to fix something that is running poorly. The NSA and other law enforcement agencies around the world are using these technologies to good effect. We shouldn't throw that away because the early incarnations of the administration and use of these technologies is flawed.
you're just another one of those who believes that privacy is unimportant.
Straw man.
If you did think it was important, you wouldn't be...
Bandwagon.
(Failing that, then it's as I stated earlier: You argue just to argue.)
You seem to have missed the point. Your rebuttal seems to have demonstrated how surveillance technologies, mostly in the hands of private entities have aided after the event. The GGP implied that government surveillance did not stop events like these. In particular, the NSA surveillance.
If that was the point, it's a stupid point. Why do we have a justice system at all then, if there's no relationship between punitive responses to crime and a decrease in the severity and/or frequency of crime? There is, in fact, a relationship: It's basic psychology that if you see someone being punished for a behavior, you're less likely to engage in that behavior yourself.
Here you've cited a lack of surveillance. When the NSA surveillance fails to foil the most poorly planned mass shooting
This is a classic example of a cognitive error. You are taking the minority of examples where [government agency] wasn't able to prevent [crime] and concluding that [government agency] is therefore incompetent, without including in your analysis all the times where [government agency] was able to prevent [crime].
There's no point in surveilling everyone, you get so much useless information about who had what for lunch that useful clues are overlooked and lost.
Sure there is. You misunderstand the relationship between signals intelligence and its relationship to the overall intelligence cycle. The value of intelligence assets is based on three factors: Accuracy, timeliness, and access. The NSA approach gets high marks in all three. However this is only one small part of the overall intelligence cycle. Nobody looks at that data without a reason; it's just data stored somewhere until someone, or something, analyzes it or related data.
Let me give you an example; Let's say that tomorrow someone blows up a restaurant that is heavily frequented by the Jewish community to make an anti-israel statement. Cell phones and driver's licenses are recovered at the scene, as well as trace files off the cell phone towers in the area. The NSA processes this information searching for phones that may be registered anonymously or have made/received phone calls from people known to have ties with anti-semetic groups. They find one call that lasted only 5 seconds was placed at the same time as the blast, and it made several phone calls to someone flagged on a watchlist. Pulling previously-gathered logs from internet routers, it is revealed that the unknown cell phone was used at an internet cafe two weeks prior to the incident at the same time that internet cafe's internet traffic shows numerous google queries for to various local electronic parts supply stores. Following up on this lead, they go out to the local parts stores and grab a grainy surveillance camera footage of someone buying components that the FBI forensic lab reports was included in the wreckage and was probably used in construction of the IED; While they paid in cash, an ANPR system a block away installed at an intersection captured a license plate that also registered a hit on the watchlist. Now they have a potential realworld identity to followup on; A matching DMV record. They then pull phone and internet records previously stored for this individual and discover that two days before the blast, they were wired several thousand dollars in various wire transfers to several newly-setup accounts overseas. After monitoring those accounts for activity, 36 hours later, someone starts making the rounds in a city 100 miles away, withdrawing $300 at a time from ATMs from those accounts. By acting quickly with local law enforcement, they are able to anticipate which ATMs that person is likely to visit next while emptying those accounts, and one of the 13 locations yields a withdrawl at the same time an officer is present. They move in, and make the arrest. Terrorist captured.
Reread that last sentence, it's the biggest reason the NSA can and has done good. That doesn't excuse b
. The truth is that if by some miracle they did do an in-depth audit that recommend drastic measures that radically acknowledged the inherent unconstitutionality of the acts and called for trials, jail time, etc, it'd all well be ignored.
It wouldn't take just a miracle.. it'd take a note from God and an act of Congress too. And frankly, I'd believe news reports that Jesus had blasted his way back to Earth on a unicorn with rainbows crapping out all over the place and orchestras of angels blasting on trumpets over news that Congress decided Congress was in the wrong and decided to throw itself in jail.
President Barack Obama called for an independent group to review the vast surveillance programs that allow the collections of phone and email records. The members of the review group are:
... Doesn't matter. You're asking the foxes to guard the hen house. If you work for the government, you can't really be expected to provide an impartial audit of government activities. The end. The only time Congress appoints actual outsiders is when the majority party is able to excert enough power to get them appointed. Of course, this is heavily politicalized as well -- they don't appoint people without knowing what their answer will be.
Yes, because we all know how successful government spying on every citizen had managed to keep Muslim militants in line and cartels and gangsters from existing.
Yes... let's have a closer look, shall we?
Boston Marathon bombing Caught with the assistance of a multitude of surveillance cameras in the area. The internet pundits identitifed the wrong people, repeatedly. This shows that not only is surveillance important, but that processing surveillance data is not something that an untrained, or even talented, individual can do.
Sarin Gas attack by Syria Thanks to real-time satellite intelligence over the middle east, we were able to not only spot the attack, but able to warn local health care of the impending crisis. The casualty count was very low considering thousands were exposed; This was not accidental. As well, those same satellites allowed near real-time communication between activists and the global community, assisting in bringing prompt political pressure to the government to cease use of chemical weapons. As a direct result of that, a few weeks later, the government agreed to surrender its entire stockpile.
School shooting rampages Cameras in schools have allowed us to quickly identify attackers and separate facts from fiction. One of the earliest examples is the Columbine massacre, where review of surveillance footage was able to provide immediate identification of the attackers, as well as their moment by moment movements within the school. Eyewitness accounts were highly divergent and many myths, including that they were purposefully targeting christians, came out of that. The camera, however, had no such agenda, and recordings set the record straight.
9/11 An unprecidented terrorist attack caught on film by dozens of eyewitnesses is a strong barrier against accusations that the government planned it, that the airplanes were loaded with explosives, and a great many other conspiracy theories. Videographic evidence has been able eliminate all of these. As well, a global network of satellites was able to gather valuable scientific data on contrails during the time where there were no flights over the United States; Being able to have high resolution copies of all clouds over the entire continent generated valuable data for weather forcasting and the impact on contrails in the natural environment.
1000 killed by car bombs in Iraq in September alone Iraq lacks much in the way of surveillance. Many of those planting car bombs are never caught because there are no pictures until after the bomb explodes.
One Drug Killing every half hour in Mexico Mexico contains very little in the way of surveillance gear, except that used by the drug cartels to track the movements of both rival gangs and local law enforcement. They have even built their own cellular communications network; The labor was provided by kidnapped telecoms employees. Needless to say, without access to surveillance equipment, Mexican authorities have no way to get a handle on the problem, and it is running rampant.
With protection like that, who needs them!
Your own examples provide an ample rebuttal to your snarky reparte here; In fact, surveillance has provided a great deal of protection in every case mentioned... and where it was lacking, unattributed violence and mass acts of terrorism is present.
I think this provides clear and unambiguous evidence that surveillance does help keep crime down; Not just those "muslim militants" and "cartels and gangers", but police officers as well. Dash cameras have led to more than a few corrupt officers being dismissed, and our courts are less clogged with traffic court cases than ever before -- thanks in part to impartial video footage that shows every detail. Conviction rates have improved as well, as anyone who watches the TV series Cops can attest to -- there's many things an officer misses during a pursuit that the camera records. Like how 7 minutes into the chase, they threw their drugs out the window, or a gun, etc. These are things officers can then go back and recover, before children come across them and injure or kill themselves.
They may well be a turning point in how Internet surveillance is conducted and more important, thought about.
The internet pundits still haven't realized that the main source of privacy-invasion isn't the government but their manager. And they're a lot less professional about it... and have fewer rules.
We're not much focused on the big picture down here.
Yes, I've noticed. But I still maintain that the ability to see the forest from the trees is a valuable skill; If only because it's so rare these days...
My well-reasoned replies to my emotional detractors notwithstanding, it may just be possible that I simply view other things as more important than what the NSA is doing right now. The NSA's surveillance is an abstract problem for libertarians and internet pundits. People starving, going without healthcare, not being able to get married -- all of which have been news in just the last few months... those things affect tens to hundreds of millions in a very direct and personal way, every day, right now. People like you blather on the internet spitting at anyone who says it's not a big deal...but in truth, it isn't.
It's a problem, but I have bigger priorities (as do most others) than "Is the guv'ment spying on me while I masturbate?" Priorities like watching people I know and love wither and die because of a lack of access to medical facilities. How is that even right in a country that has the largest economy on Earth? Take a walk through some of the inner city schools -- there's black kids there that look like holocaust victims from hunger and malnutrition. Detroit is a crime-ridden wasteland that is more dangerous to drive through than a village in Iraq filled with Taliban. We've had entire cities in the past few years literally washed into the ocean, and you can still see the devastation from space. Very little help has come to those people from our government.
So don't try and tell me I'm not paying attention because I find your little pet peeve about some government g-men keeping you under surveillance! In truth, you aren't that damned important. They don't care about you. I would fucking love it if the NSA setup a black van outside my house and monitored me. It might make the fact that I'm stuck in my mom's basement, unemployed, feel not as bad -- because I've had to pass up one job after another because I can't get decent healthcare with part time jobs or pretty much anything that brings in less than $23 an hour. And those jobs... they're as rare as unicorns right now. And before you go blithering on like some moron trying to change topics -- this isn't about me. I'm just one example amongst an entire generation of examples. There are over fifty million people right now just like me, and not all of them are as fortunate as I am to even have a roof over my head or the internet to make this post.
Get your head screwed on straight: Personal privacy is an issue, but it's not a priority and it doesn't trump more basic needs like food, shelter, and clothing -- and we need those right now. A lot of people need them. We are now coming up on year SEVEN and economists estimate that unemployment levels won't return to pre-recession levels for ANOTHER seven years. Don't tell me Snowden matters. Don't tell me the NSA is important. We have hungry people out there. Hungry, desperate, unemployed people.
I took a message, okay? And if and when I run into an opportunity to tell the NSA where to shove it, yeah, I'll remember The S(nowden) Files... but until then, don't try and dictate priorities to me. We're in bad times right now man.
Right, because clearly if nobody ever revealed anything about the NSA spying, we'd still magically know about it anyways and we'd already be taking countermeasures.
The NSA's standard operating practice is to assume that a system has already been compromised. Borrow a page from their playbook: If your security and privacy is truly important to you, shouldn't you have already been taking steps to protect it? Do you not lock your doors, despite an absence of evidence of houses being broken into in your neighborhood? Do you not check your wallet after being bumped by a stranger, to make sure it's still there?
To borrow your own words: Seriously, how can you be so stupid?
The Snowden leaks are leading to a big change - it just isn't happening overnight.
Yes, I see the streets lined with protesters. I see mass letter writing campaigns. I see the public pressure is causing our president and other elected officials to condemn the actions of the NSA. On the evening news every night are stories of vigilante citizens smashing cameras and throwing away their cell phones, wearing T-shirts with anti-surveillance slogans, and more.
Actually, no I don't. In fact, it seems to have amounted to a tempest in a teapot. The only thing Snowden accomplished was giving the international community another bullet point on its list of "Reasons We Don't Like America"; And most of those reasons belay the more fundamental truth -- nobody likes someone who's doing better than they are. And our military is the best on the planet, and our economy the largest. At least for today. Most of these anti-american tears that websites like the Guardian run with are rooted in the simple human emotion of jealousy. And all Snowden's really accomplished, is given those people a sense of moral superiority to go with it.
So far all Snowden has done is take a bunch of things we already had good reason to suspect and provide some heresay evidence of; There haven't been any "smoking gun" documents revealed... not by him anyway. He bent over, mooned the USA, then got trapped in a Russian airport for a few months... and the only reason the Russians let him stay there, is because it gave them some small satisfaction watching the mighty United States whine impotently to them. And do you know why they found it so satisfying? Because the very agency Snowden fled from was instrumental in the Soviet coup de etat that caused the USSR to breakup and Russia to lose its status as an economic superpower.
All Snowden has done is given people who already had a side picked out a little extra in their christmas stockings. He hasn't convinced anyone to change teams. He hasn't caused mass insurrection; He hasn't even managed to get more than a few dozen people in front of the local courthouses carrying signs. Dimitri Skylarov managed more political activism than this guy.
So don't sit there and tell me "It's coming! Viva la revolution! You'll see... one day!"... Please. If it was gonna hit the fan it would have happened by now and you know it. Snowden's leaks won't even make the top 10 list of "Biggest things to happen in 2013", should we go back and compile such a list in, say, 2020. Now on the other hand... the legalization of marijuana and gay marriage, Obamacare, and the current Iranian crisis... those will make the list.
But without the leak, how would anyone even think action would need to take place?
I don't know with any certainty that Snowden's disclosures caused a fundamental shift in how people view the problems of government surveillance. If you were against it before, you still are. If you're for it, you still are. I don't see many people changing their opinions either way on the basis of what he has (or hasn't) said. While he certainly has caused a lot of people to talk about the problem, I do not see many people doing anything about it.
Acting on the information without revealing it would have guaranteed a stamp of "terrorist crackpot" and maybe a 3rd page article in a few papers.
Actions speak louder than words. Snowden would have made a much bigger impression by blowing up a data center than talking about it. NOT that I am suggesting that violence is the answer here; My example is illustrative, not recommended.
Would you rather small groups of people randomly taking action on suspicions and assumptions all of the time?
I would rather nobody who cares about making social change be doing anything "randomly", let alone taking action on "suspicions and assumptions". But there is no suspecting or assuming necessary to figure out the government has a massive surveillance network. They've been in bed with the telecom industries since the 1960s, and this is well and amply documented. Wiretaps have been part of TV law dramas for decades. It would be naive to assume they simply stopped with telephones when new technologies like the internet came along.
Yes leaking by itself accomplishes nothing, but how much on this front be accomplished without the leak?
It is not necessary for someone to prove that a human right is needed before one takes action to safeguard it; It should be obvious by merely observing what has happened to groups that lacked them. Our young men and women sign up everyday to defend freedom, without really know what they're signing up for. They take an oath to stand between who and what they love, and everything that would threaten it.
There is no chicken and egg problem here. Who was it that said eternal vigilance is the price of freedom? He did not say eternal discussion is its price -- we should listen, watch, and observe, much more than we talk. Afterall, we have two ears, but only one mouth.
You missed my point. When we're discussing a human rights award, it should be on the merits of the actions they took, not the consequences they suffered. It doesn't matter whether she took one bullet, or five hundred, or none at all, or whether she lived, or died. She stood up against an injustice and that is what is being rewarded... not that she couldn't get out of the way fast enough, or they were better armed, etc.
To say that taking a bullet somehow makes your action more noble than the guy sitting next to you doing the same thing, but not getting hit by the bullet, is a slap in the face to both people with fast reflexes, and every soldier who watched their buddy get turned into hamburger and thought: "Holy shit, that could have been me." The guy that got hamburgered signed up for the same thing as the guys that made it back. They had the same job. The same training. That's what makes is so damned hard to live with -- survivors guilt. There isn't a reason why it should have been him instead of you. Maybe some physics about artillery shells or some other abstract thing of no comfort... but the fact is, there wasn't a deliberate choice. Sometimes bad shit just happens to people. Getting fucked over doesn't earn you an award: Taking the risk of losing everything for a chance at doing good does.
The leak accomplishes a lot. Maybe not in the short term, but
But nothing. No good or service has been generated by the leak. The idea that speech, in and of itself, accomplishes anything is stupid; Were it otherwise, I could march out into the woods and talk to the trees and make a fortune. Words are not actions. Words are words. When people listen, and choose to take action because of them, then the words have value. Not until, or unless. The founding fathers didn't just sit down, bang out the Constitution, and then call it at that, having won the entire revolutionary war. They said what they had to say, to organize people to fight. And when they fought, and won, those words became meaningful.
Leaking by itself accomplishes nothing. Nadda. Zip. If it offends you, you should probably disconnect from the internet and go live in a tree somewhere.
If you can't see how the later is prone to be abused then you're really naive. But your signature shows that's not the case, and I can only laugh at the hypocrisy.
If you can't see how people who are starving really don't give a flying fuck through a rolling doughnut why job security matters more than dying in place over some idealized worldview, then you're really dumb. But your username d(u)mbasso shows that's not the case, so I can only laugh at your pathetically small penis.
because both seemed like self-serving political statements to me, but on reflection,...
On reflection, all awards are self-serving political statements.
It was far from the uncontrolled dump that Bradley Manning did, or the barely-controlled shitstorm that Assange supervised.
It never ceases to amaze me how quickly people get up-modded these days for using toilet humor while discussing serious topics of global relevance.
In the same vein, the leak, while angering many Americans, should be a huge benefit for citizens of every country, both outside the US, but also inside. A great gain for Europeans, as far as awareness of human rights issues.
The leak by itself accomplishes nothing; The activities disclosed had already happened by then, and the damage done. And there is little evidence to date that the leaks have dampened the spirits of those under scrutiny to engage in similar behavior. Knowledge, understanding, intelligence, and awareness only enables action; It does not, by itself, constitute action. In truth, one of mankind's oldest delusions is belief that an enhanced understanding of the problem will necessarily lead to that problem being fixed. Snowden may have pointed out that the United States is behaving trashy... but we have yet to find someone willing to take out the trash.
Malala gets this one hands-down. Both made very important statements we must pay attention to, but a fucking headshot beats hanging out in a Russian airport IMHO.
Arguably, they are risking the same thing: Both knew that they were taking a bullet to the head risk. Only one got a bullet to the head. If we're judging these people on the basis of the risks they took on behalf of human rights, they are equal. If we're only judging them based on how much punishment they took for making the choices they did, then all human rights' awards would be post-humous.
Although both were risking death, the fact that one of them escaped it apparently matters to you. I sincerely hope you are a minority here -- thinking like this leads to terrorism. Afterall, if you can only be recognized after being turned into a martyr...
Slashdot Mirror
It'd be helpful if you could tell us the difference.
There isn't one; the definition of forecasting is "to predict or estimate (a future event or trend)." I think he views prediction as more "crystal ball" and forecasting more "computer screen" ... but he tripped over his lack of finesse with the language and took a snarky to the knee.
Because it's easier to see a +2 comment go to +5 due to people seeing the comment than a 0 comment from an anonymous coward get any altitude at all.
That's only part of the equation. If you want to karma whore, you do three things; First, post early. Second, attach comments to highly rated ones (or ones you think will be). Third, don't be like me; Always go with the party line. Especially once your karma is 'excellent' because no matter how many upmods you get, it only takes one or two angry moderators to click your page, go into your history, and blow all their points on you to burn your karma out... and several people have multiple accounts here. I've run across them and had my karma croppy-flop from excellent to neutral in just a few minutes because I told an Apple fanboy their god was dead.
Nobody will give this post a +1, and therefore it won't be at +5 in two hours.
Hangon, let me give you a hand... I disagree with this man! There, you'll hit at least +4 now -- and disprove the theory. If there's one thing I've learned on slashdot, it's that everyone I disagree with gets atleast a +1 bump based simply on unmitigated fanboy hatred of my wonton slaughter of their sacred cows. It's sortof like reverse psychology as applied to nerds.
It is programmed by a set of open standards which gives any person or organization the tools to build support for the content which is relevant to society.
I think you need to lay off the koolaid man.
JPEG and GIF both have licensing issues; They are not free. The intended replacement for these, PNG, hasn't seen widespread adoption, can't do animations, but has no licensing issues. In fact, if you take a walk down a list of all the multimedia technologies commonly used on the web, MP3, MPEG4, h.264, AAC, surround sound... you will find yourself in a veritable desert when it comes to truly free standards. The standards may be 'open', that is, published... but a loose coalition of companies control all the key pieces.
In fact, the W3C, responsible for HTML, XML, CSS, etc., standards only two days ago decided to make documents about those standards available under an 'open source' license... optionally. Oh, but it gets worse. They're planning on introducing DRM and proprietary tech directly into the HTML5 standard; While you could conceivably use free technology, only the proprietary codec that will eventually be chosen for audio and video is guaranteed to be available on any HTML5-compliant browser.
A video game, designed in web standards, could be preserved for centuries by whoever deems it culturally relevant.
Copyright though means that they won't be able to even consider preservation for centuries, however. Many software licenses don't allow for backup copies... and it is highly doubtful you'll be able to keep that DVD you purchased it on alive for the next "150 years plus the life of the author", along with the equipment to read it, and some kind of adapter technology so that when the copyright finally expires, it might actually have a shot at being preserved.
If the W3C, or an industry body like them, creates an equivalent pseudo-native app platform... then great. For now, the web is the best we have.
What we have is a dystopian nightmare world of competing proprietary technologies, very little free/open alternatives, and billions being poured into the working groups responsible for setting these standards to ensure that every company involved gets a slice of the pie... meaning by the time they've gotten fat off their fill, you, the artist, will be starving. Again. Because before you can create art, you better pay a licensing fee, publishing fee, content storage fee, protection fee (for the drm to protect your art, of course), and ongoing monthly fees to your ISP.
No. Sorry, "the best we have" is not the web... it's stone tablets. Because those are about the only things someone doesn't have a patent on.
Developers would then be able to choose their algorithms for best suits their project, even native to web browsers with the upcoming WebCL."
If web browsers were people, that statement would have caused a mass suicide of them. Guys, stop trying to turn the browser into a platform. It introduces so many layers of complexity and security issues that it's a miracle anyone has any trust or faith in the internet at all. It's getting to the point where the only way to safely browse the net is to shove the entire browser into a virtual machine... and even that only manages to protect your own computer, say nothing of your online activities, credentials, life, etc.
We need to be making browsers simpler, not more complex. Feature bloat is making these things a leper's colony inside your computer... a cesspool of malware and vulnerability. Don't add to it by coming up with some new way for developers to directly access the hardware of your computer because you're too fucking lazy to write an app to do whatever it is, and want to cram it into the browser instead. You're just encouraging them.
Seriously, we need a 12 step program for these "web 2.0" people.
Just remember whoever fills in the vacuum left by this raging idiot (and I am being kind in calling him a raging idiot) is just as likely to be FBI, Interpol or another like kind government agency. You see the problem with having black markets is they don't attract the most ethical of people, you know the ones that practice their due diligence?
Actually, this isn't without precidence. We've been replacing arms dealers and drug cartel leaders with plants for years. Replacing a website would be far less risky, for similar gain.
You see the problem with having black markets is they don't attract the most ethical of people, you know the ones that practice their due diligence?
Those are separate issues. That said, you'd be surprised what a gun to your head can do for both your ethics and your desire to practice due diligence. Black markets have the same competitive pressures as regular ones -- in that the stupid, incompetent, and untalented, tend to be eaten up by people who lack those faults. But quantity has a quality all its own, as Stalin once said... and it's true in economics too. A large organization can tolerate a lot more fail than a small one, and drug cartels and mafias are no exception. I rather imagine managers in crime syndicates throw people under the bus to cover their own ass too... just they do it literally, not figuratively. :3
What's your appetite for risk? Do you want the well built site that's professionally run and might be a front for the FBI or the half ass site that is probably run by a raging idiot or the mafia? Pick your poison.
Truthfully... the ideal solution would be distributed. Nobody runs it; it's just a distribution platform. Decentralization has been a powerful antidote to law enforcement and governments alike for centuries. You make it all about one man, and you make it as easy as pulling a trigger to make it go away. Make it about a million men, and now you've got a problem.
Wrong on both counts there. For one, that's not an argument trotted out by anyone. It's a blatant strawman. I know of the argument you're referring to, and it's more complicated than that.
Yeah, for starters, this really has nothing to do with the NSA. It's about the "Land of the Free" denying people entry into the country because they're critical of a government agency here. I guess it's okay to bomb other countries to bring democracy to them, but if someone tries to bring it here it's all "Access denied."
But you know, that's not really the hypocritical part, it's just a dick move. The hypocritical part is how we threaten to bomb and invade other countries when they arrest US citizens who criticize the governments they visit, and we cry fowl when our own diplomats, journalists, and citizens are denied access to other countries because they've been critical of the government whose country they want to visit.
This isn't about the NSA... this is in fact comparatively worse than what the NSA is doing; The NSA just wants to watch "all teh thingz!" but this is an active and overt attempt to suppress free speech, not an (arguably) accidental byproduct of mass surveillance. It is not something an allegedly "free" government should be doing... no matter how much you dislike what someone has to say, if your country is as good as you claim it is, then you shouldn't be afraid of letting them in to see it. Maybe you turn a detractor into a supporter... wouldn't be the first time you know. Used to happen a lot around here about a hundred years ago.
This is a culture war. We have to win it by winning the hearts and minds of people all over the world... and a solid first step, is letting them visit our "free" country. Unless, of course, it isn't actually free, in which case... yeah. Keep them out. They may convince people here that things are better outside the Fox/CNN/MSNBC e-berlin wall that keeps us cut off from the actual democratic countries of the world. Open borders are for when you have something to offer... closed borders are when you have something to hide. Historically, this is how it's worked.
Do you have any evidence that this happened, or are you confusing Silk Road with Freedom Hosting?
You mean besides the criminal complaint posted in the article you were supposed to read before shoving your foot in your mouth?
Page 6: "as well as forensic analysis of computer servers used to operate the Silk Road website that have been located and imaged during the investigation"
Page 11: "... instructs vendors to 'vacuum seal' packages containing narcotics, in order to avoid detection..." "use a different address from the user's own address to receive shipment... friend's house or P.O. box"
"Since November of 2011, law enforcement agents participating in this investigation have made over 100 individual undercover purchases..."
Thanks to the Silk Road taking a percentage of all proceeds, they've been able to locate the ledger for the entire website; Every transaction made, as well as the so-called "tumbler" used to anonymize bitcoins used to make purchases on the website... as the transaction logs for "tumbled" bitcoins was also amongst the items recovered.
When you dig into the complaint it becomes painfully clear how sloppy this guy was: He had a Google+ page, a LinkedIn profile, youtube, etc., -- there is considerable captured traffic between the Silk Road webserver sent outside the Tor network, including e-mails and other accounts authorities are now using to collect the realworld identities of many of the administrators and regular contributors to the site. He didn't encrypt anything on the servers -- they didn't even need a fucking password to get this information.
Backup servers which had SSH keys to login to were also recovered, so what little was encrypted... well, let's just say the root password of the Silk Road might as well have been "1234".
Every PO box, every ship-to address... he kept it all. There was no data retention policy this guy used... he was a data hoarder, and the only reason it took the government this long wasn't because of how hard it was to track him down in real life, but because of the sheer crapflood of forensic data bogged down their entire cybercrime division. And get this... they bought the malware later used to infect Freedom Hosting off Silk Road!.
Someone should built a monument to this guy's stupidity... Tor might anonymize your IP address, but this guy fucked over the privacy of everyone that visited with gross incompetence and greed all on his own. The government didn't need to go the extra mile... all that stuff with Freedom Hosting getting infected (Hey, check out that malware sometime; It records which Tor sites you visit and when. Can't think of how Silk Road might have been affected there!) was just testing out their toys. It wasn't necessary, but you know... if you're gonna do it, might as well overdo it.
And yet, all we to show that mass surveillance of phones helps is your a hypothetical example that reads more like a CSI plot than anything that could actually work.
A CSI episode would have more catchy one-liners, and computers beeping while images flashed by in rapid succession instead of "LOADING... PLEASE WAIT". There would also be a snappy soundtrack and people yelling "Enhance!" at grainy surveillance footage, turning pixelated blob-people into pictures so sharp you can count the nose hairs on them.
What it wouldn't feature is weeks of intensive detective work stretching across a half-dozen law enforcement agencies and thousands of man-hours spent sifting through potentially relevant surveillance footage to drum up a few promising leads while the tip line rings off the hook with people calling in to report their neighbors who they know have nothing to do with the current crisis, but are really hoping the police come out and fuck with them because, you know, his dog shit on my lawn one too many times and now it's go time, bitches.
But it isn't an absurd statement that they could be so sheltered that their morals, while internally consistent, is far removed from what the rest of us would consider good.
This just in: People in radically different situations from each other may think different from each other. For example, the rich and wealthy people of Congress may not see much of a problem with shutting down food assistance programs that serve infants and single mothers, since it doesn't affect them or anyone they know.
That doesn't mean that they're going to suddenly turn into sociopaths. See, this is where people like you get it so very, very wrong: You see something that doesn't make sense in your worldview and assume this means they're mentally ill, immoral, or otherwise anti-social. People's morality largely derives from their circumstances -- but they still remain social. They make decisions based on what would help them (and by extension, those like them); This does not make them evil or immoral. You can argue it does make them self-centered egoists with some success, but you can't just call someone stupid, immoral, etc., simply because their lives aren't being lived in the same context as yours.
Will the government try to redeem these bitcoins? Wouldn't that be like saying that they accept that bitcoin is valid?
Your username here suggests you may not be up to speed on how the government operates. Allow me to explain;
Bitcoins are the main financial instrument used by terrorists on the black market to purchase guns, WMDs, drugs, and even children. So we seized them and will charge those found with them with terrorism, money laundering, etc., at the maximum dollar amount that these coins were ever traded at, come trial.
During the trial, the defendant may claim that we seized his/her property illegally. However, as bitcoins are not currency, they do not ever have to be returned. Further, being in possession of so many is bona fide proof of intent to distribute by itself, and thus falls under existing seizure laws that do not require a search warrant, or return of property, whether charged or not.
Hope that clears things up for you.
Sincerely,
-- Government Man, From The Government.
Silk Road practiced the use of Tor as well as anyone could have.
No, they didn't. They pretty much put a flare up saying where the servers were, ran unpatched servers that got infected with malware and compromised its users, and ... ready for the big surprise? ... The government then used the locally-installed malware to communicate outside Tor, after which it was pretty trivial to match realworld identities to bitcoin wallets and to forum posts and purchases through Silk Road.
Tor wasn't compromised; The systems running on top of it were. You can't blame the protocol for the stupid decisions of the people using it... this is like saying SSL was compromised when someone gets arrested for posting child porn on Facebook. "But... it was secured!" Yeah... and there's your picture, name, and address.
Tor anonymizes your IP address. It doesn't keep you from leaking information out via other means... like I don't know, say, making drug purchases online? They had to be shipped somewhere and you can't Tor your mailing address.
Justice delayed is justice denied. There's no reason why this can't be addressed at the moment either.
True, but people seem to think we need to grind everything to a halt until we can placate everyone's pet interests. Well, that's not gonna happen. So how about we start on Plan B instead: Figuring out how to fix something that is running poorly. The NSA and other law enforcement agencies around the world are using these technologies to good effect. We shouldn't throw that away because the early incarnations of the administration and use of these technologies is flawed.
you're just another one of those who believes that privacy is unimportant.
Straw man.
If you did think it was important, you wouldn't be...
Bandwagon.
(Failing that, then it's as I stated earlier: You argue just to argue.)
Ad hominid.
You seem to have missed the point. Your rebuttal seems to have demonstrated how surveillance technologies, mostly in the hands of private entities have aided after the event. The GGP implied that government surveillance did not stop events like these. In particular, the NSA surveillance.
If that was the point, it's a stupid point. Why do we have a justice system at all then, if there's no relationship between punitive responses to crime and a decrease in the severity and/or frequency of crime? There is, in fact, a relationship: It's basic psychology that if you see someone being punished for a behavior, you're less likely to engage in that behavior yourself.
Here you've cited a lack of surveillance. When the NSA surveillance fails to foil the most poorly planned mass shooting
This is a classic example of a cognitive error. You are taking the minority of examples where [government agency] wasn't able to prevent [crime] and concluding that [government agency] is therefore incompetent, without including in your analysis all the times where [government agency] was able to prevent [crime].
There's no point in surveilling everyone, you get so much useless information about who had what for lunch that useful clues are overlooked and lost.
Sure there is. You misunderstand the relationship between signals intelligence and its relationship to the overall intelligence cycle. The value of intelligence assets is based on three factors: Accuracy, timeliness, and access. The NSA approach gets high marks in all three. However this is only one small part of the overall intelligence cycle. Nobody looks at that data without a reason; it's just data stored somewhere until someone, or something, analyzes it or related data.
Let me give you an example; Let's say that tomorrow someone blows up a restaurant that is heavily frequented by the Jewish community to make an anti-israel statement. Cell phones and driver's licenses are recovered at the scene, as well as trace files off the cell phone towers in the area. The NSA processes this information searching for phones that may be registered anonymously or have made/received phone calls from people known to have ties with anti-semetic groups. They find one call that lasted only 5 seconds was placed at the same time as the blast, and it made several phone calls to someone flagged on a watchlist. Pulling previously-gathered logs from internet routers, it is revealed that the unknown cell phone was used at an internet cafe two weeks prior to the incident at the same time that internet cafe's internet traffic shows numerous google queries for to various local electronic parts supply stores. Following up on this lead, they go out to the local parts stores and grab a grainy surveillance camera footage of someone buying components that the FBI forensic lab reports was included in the wreckage and was probably used in construction of the IED; While they paid in cash, an ANPR system a block away installed at an intersection captured a license plate that also registered a hit on the watchlist. Now they have a potential realworld identity to followup on; A matching DMV record. They then pull phone and internet records previously stored for this individual and discover that two days before the blast, they were wired several thousand dollars in various wire transfers to several newly-setup accounts overseas. After monitoring those accounts for activity, 36 hours later, someone starts making the rounds in a city 100 miles away, withdrawing $300 at a time from ATMs from those accounts. By acting quickly with local law enforcement, they are able to anticipate which ATMs that person is likely to visit next while emptying those accounts, and one of the 13 locations yields a withdrawl at the same time an officer is present. They move in, and make the arrest. Terrorist captured.
Reread that last sentence, it's the biggest reason the NSA can and has done good. That doesn't excuse b
. The truth is that if by some miracle they did do an in-depth audit that recommend drastic measures that radically acknowledged the inherent unconstitutionality of the acts and called for trials, jail time, etc, it'd all well be ignored.
It wouldn't take just a miracle.. it'd take a note from God and an act of Congress too. And frankly, I'd believe news reports that Jesus had blasted his way back to Earth on a unicorn with rainbows crapping out all over the place and orchestras of angels blasting on trumpets over news that Congress decided Congress was in the wrong and decided to throw itself in jail.
President Barack Obama called for an independent group to review the vast surveillance programs that allow the collections of phone and email records. The members of the review group are:
... Doesn't matter. You're asking the foxes to guard the hen house. If you work for the government, you can't really be expected to provide an impartial audit of government activities. The end. The only time Congress appoints actual outsiders is when the majority party is able to excert enough power to get them appointed. Of course, this is heavily politicalized as well -- they don't appoint people without knowing what their answer will be.
This is dinner theatre for one.
Yes, because we all know how successful government spying on every citizen had managed to keep Muslim militants in line and cartels and gangsters from existing.
Yes... let's have a closer look, shall we?
Boston Marathon bombing
Caught with the assistance of a multitude of surveillance cameras in the area. The internet pundits identitifed the wrong people, repeatedly. This shows that not only is surveillance important, but that processing surveillance data is not something that an untrained, or even talented, individual can do.
Sarin Gas attack by Syria
Thanks to real-time satellite intelligence over the middle east, we were able to not only spot the attack, but able to warn local health care of the impending crisis. The casualty count was very low considering thousands were exposed; This was not accidental. As well, those same satellites allowed near real-time communication between activists and the global community, assisting in bringing prompt political pressure to the government to cease use of chemical weapons. As a direct result of that, a few weeks later, the government agreed to surrender its entire stockpile.
School shooting rampages
Cameras in schools have allowed us to quickly identify attackers and separate facts from fiction. One of the earliest examples is the Columbine massacre, where review of surveillance footage was able to provide immediate identification of the attackers, as well as their moment by moment movements within the school. Eyewitness accounts were highly divergent and many myths, including that they were purposefully targeting christians, came out of that. The camera, however, had no such agenda, and recordings set the record straight.
9/11
An unprecidented terrorist attack caught on film by dozens of eyewitnesses is a strong barrier against accusations that the government planned it, that the airplanes were loaded with explosives, and a great many other conspiracy theories. Videographic evidence has been able eliminate all of these. As well, a global network of satellites was able to gather valuable scientific data on contrails during the time where there were no flights over the United States; Being able to have high resolution copies of all clouds over the entire continent generated valuable data for weather forcasting and the impact on contrails in the natural environment.
1000 killed by car bombs in Iraq in September alone
Iraq lacks much in the way of surveillance. Many of those planting car bombs are never caught because there are no pictures until after the bomb explodes.
One Drug Killing every half hour in Mexico
Mexico contains very little in the way of surveillance gear, except that used by the drug cartels to track the movements of both rival gangs and local law enforcement. They have even built their own cellular communications network; The labor was provided by kidnapped telecoms employees. Needless to say, without access to surveillance equipment, Mexican authorities have no way to get a handle on the problem, and it is running rampant.
With protection like that, who needs them!
Your own examples provide an ample rebuttal to your snarky reparte here; In fact, surveillance has provided a great deal of protection in every case mentioned... and where it was lacking, unattributed violence and mass acts of terrorism is present.
I think this provides clear and unambiguous evidence that surveillance does help keep crime down; Not just those "muslim militants" and "cartels and gangers", but police officers as well. Dash cameras have led to more than a few corrupt officers being dismissed, and our courts are less clogged with traffic court cases than ever before -- thanks in part to impartial video footage that shows every detail. Conviction rates have improved as well, as anyone who watches the TV series Cops can attest to -- there's many things an officer misses during a pursuit that the camera records. Like how 7 minutes into the chase, they threw their drugs out the window, or a gun, etc. These are things officers can then go back and recover, before children come across them and injure or kill themselves.
They may well be a turning point in how Internet surveillance is conducted and more important, thought about.
The internet pundits still haven't realized that the main source of privacy-invasion isn't the government but their manager. And they're a lot less professional about it... and have fewer rules.
We're not much focused on the big picture down here.
Yes, I've noticed. But I still maintain that the ability to see the forest from the trees is a valuable skill; If only because it's so rare these days...
Then you aren't paying attention.
My well-reasoned replies to my emotional detractors notwithstanding, it may just be possible that I simply view other things as more important than what the NSA is doing right now. The NSA's surveillance is an abstract problem for libertarians and internet pundits. People starving, going without healthcare, not being able to get married -- all of which have been news in just the last few months... those things affect tens to hundreds of millions in a very direct and personal way, every day, right now. People like you blather on the internet spitting at anyone who says it's not a big deal...but in truth, it isn't.
It's a problem, but I have bigger priorities (as do most others) than "Is the guv'ment spying on me while I masturbate?" Priorities like watching people I know and love wither and die because of a lack of access to medical facilities. How is that even right in a country that has the largest economy on Earth? Take a walk through some of the inner city schools -- there's black kids there that look like holocaust victims from hunger and malnutrition. Detroit is a crime-ridden wasteland that is more dangerous to drive through than a village in Iraq filled with Taliban. We've had entire cities in the past few years literally washed into the ocean, and you can still see the devastation from space. Very little help has come to those people from our government.
So don't try and tell me I'm not paying attention because I find your little pet peeve about some government g-men keeping you under surveillance! In truth, you aren't that damned important. They don't care about you. I would fucking love it if the NSA setup a black van outside my house and monitored me. It might make the fact that I'm stuck in my mom's basement, unemployed, feel not as bad -- because I've had to pass up one job after another because I can't get decent healthcare with part time jobs or pretty much anything that brings in less than $23 an hour. And those jobs... they're as rare as unicorns right now. And before you go blithering on like some moron trying to change topics -- this isn't about me. I'm just one example amongst an entire generation of examples. There are over fifty million people right now just like me, and not all of them are as fortunate as I am to even have a roof over my head or the internet to make this post.
Get your head screwed on straight: Personal privacy is an issue, but it's not a priority and it doesn't trump more basic needs like food, shelter, and clothing -- and we need those right now. A lot of people need them. We are now coming up on year SEVEN and economists estimate that unemployment levels won't return to pre-recession levels for ANOTHER seven years. Don't tell me Snowden matters. Don't tell me the NSA is important. We have hungry people out there. Hungry, desperate, unemployed people.
I took a message, okay? And if and when I run into an opportunity to tell the NSA where to shove it, yeah, I'll remember The S(nowden) Files... but until then, don't try and dictate priorities to me. We're in bad times right now man.
Right, because clearly if nobody ever revealed anything about the NSA spying, we'd still magically know about it anyways and we'd already be taking countermeasures.
The NSA's standard operating practice is to assume that a system has already been compromised. Borrow a page from their playbook: If your security and privacy is truly important to you, shouldn't you have already been taking steps to protect it? Do you not lock your doors, despite an absence of evidence of houses being broken into in your neighborhood? Do you not check your wallet after being bumped by a stranger, to make sure it's still there?
To borrow your own words: Seriously, how can you be so stupid?
The Snowden leaks are leading to a big change - it just isn't happening overnight.
Yes, I see the streets lined with protesters. I see mass letter writing campaigns. I see the public pressure is causing our president and other elected officials to condemn the actions of the NSA. On the evening news every night are stories of vigilante citizens smashing cameras and throwing away their cell phones, wearing T-shirts with anti-surveillance slogans, and more.
Actually, no I don't. In fact, it seems to have amounted to a tempest in a teapot. The only thing Snowden accomplished was giving the international community another bullet point on its list of "Reasons We Don't Like America"; And most of those reasons belay the more fundamental truth -- nobody likes someone who's doing better than they are. And our military is the best on the planet, and our economy the largest. At least for today. Most of these anti-american tears that websites like the Guardian run with are rooted in the simple human emotion of jealousy. And all Snowden's really accomplished, is given those people a sense of moral superiority to go with it.
So far all Snowden has done is take a bunch of things we already had good reason to suspect and provide some heresay evidence of; There haven't been any "smoking gun" documents revealed... not by him anyway. He bent over, mooned the USA, then got trapped in a Russian airport for a few months... and the only reason the Russians let him stay there, is because it gave them some small satisfaction watching the mighty United States whine impotently to them. And do you know why they found it so satisfying? Because the very agency Snowden fled from was instrumental in the Soviet coup de etat that caused the USSR to breakup and Russia to lose its status as an economic superpower.
All Snowden has done is given people who already had a side picked out a little extra in their christmas stockings. He hasn't convinced anyone to change teams. He hasn't caused mass insurrection; He hasn't even managed to get more than a few dozen people in front of the local courthouses carrying signs. Dimitri Skylarov managed more political activism than this guy.
So don't sit there and tell me "It's coming! Viva la revolution! You'll see... one day!" ... Please. If it was gonna hit the fan it would have happened by now and you know it. Snowden's leaks won't even make the top 10 list of "Biggest things to happen in 2013", should we go back and compile such a list in, say, 2020. Now on the other hand... the legalization of marijuana and gay marriage, Obamacare, and the current Iranian crisis... those will make the list.
Get some perspective, man.
But without the leak, how would anyone even think action would need to take place?
I don't know with any certainty that Snowden's disclosures caused a fundamental shift in how people view the problems of government surveillance. If you were against it before, you still are. If you're for it, you still are. I don't see many people changing their opinions either way on the basis of what he has (or hasn't) said. While he certainly has caused a lot of people to talk about the problem, I do not see many people doing anything about it.
Acting on the information without revealing it would have guaranteed a stamp of "terrorist crackpot" and maybe a 3rd page article in a few papers.
Actions speak louder than words. Snowden would have made a much bigger impression by blowing up a data center than talking about it. NOT that I am suggesting that violence is the answer here; My example is illustrative, not recommended.
Would you rather small groups of people randomly taking action on suspicions and assumptions all of the time?
I would rather nobody who cares about making social change be doing anything "randomly", let alone taking action on "suspicions and assumptions". But there is no suspecting or assuming necessary to figure out the government has a massive surveillance network. They've been in bed with the telecom industries since the 1960s, and this is well and amply documented. Wiretaps have been part of TV law dramas for decades. It would be naive to assume they simply stopped with telephones when new technologies like the internet came along.
Yes leaking by itself accomplishes nothing, but how much on this front be accomplished without the leak?
It is not necessary for someone to prove that a human right is needed before one takes action to safeguard it; It should be obvious by merely observing what has happened to groups that lacked them. Our young men and women sign up everyday to defend freedom, without really know what they're signing up for. They take an oath to stand between who and what they love, and everything that would threaten it.
There is no chicken and egg problem here. Who was it that said eternal vigilance is the price of freedom? He did not say eternal discussion is its price -- we should listen, watch, and observe, much more than we talk. Afterall, we have two ears, but only one mouth.
Had the Taliban successfully
You missed my point. When we're discussing a human rights award, it should be on the merits of the actions they took, not the consequences they suffered. It doesn't matter whether she took one bullet, or five hundred, or none at all, or whether she lived, or died. She stood up against an injustice and that is what is being rewarded... not that she couldn't get out of the way fast enough, or they were better armed, etc.
To say that taking a bullet somehow makes your action more noble than the guy sitting next to you doing the same thing, but not getting hit by the bullet, is a slap in the face to both people with fast reflexes, and every soldier who watched their buddy get turned into hamburger and thought: "Holy shit, that could have been me." The guy that got hamburgered signed up for the same thing as the guys that made it back. They had the same job. The same training. That's what makes is so damned hard to live with -- survivors guilt. There isn't a reason why it should have been him instead of you. Maybe some physics about artillery shells or some other abstract thing of no comfort... but the fact is, there wasn't a deliberate choice. Sometimes bad shit just happens to people. Getting fucked over doesn't earn you an award: Taking the risk of losing everything for a chance at doing good does.
The leak accomplishes a lot. Maybe not in the short term, but
But nothing. No good or service has been generated by the leak. The idea that speech, in and of itself, accomplishes anything is stupid; Were it otherwise, I could march out into the woods and talk to the trees and make a fortune. Words are not actions. Words are words. When people listen, and choose to take action because of them, then the words have value. Not until, or unless. The founding fathers didn't just sit down, bang out the Constitution, and then call it at that, having won the entire revolutionary war. They said what they had to say, to organize people to fight. And when they fought, and won, those words became meaningful.
Leaking by itself accomplishes nothing. Nadda. Zip. If it offends you, you should probably disconnect from the internet and go live in a tree somewhere.
If you can't see how the later is prone to be abused then you're really naive. But your signature shows that's not the case, and I can only laugh at the hypocrisy.
If you can't see how people who are starving really don't give a flying fuck through a rolling doughnut why job security matters more than dying in place over some idealized worldview, then you're really dumb. But your username d(u)mbasso shows that's not the case, so I can only laugh at your pathetically small penis.
because both seemed like self-serving political statements to me, but on reflection, ...
On reflection, all awards are self-serving political statements.
It was far from the uncontrolled dump that Bradley Manning did, or the barely-controlled shitstorm that Assange supervised.
It never ceases to amaze me how quickly people get up-modded these days for using toilet humor while discussing serious topics of global relevance.
In the same vein, the leak, while angering many Americans, should be a huge benefit for citizens of every country, both outside the US, but also inside. A great gain for Europeans, as far as awareness of human rights issues.
The leak by itself accomplishes nothing; The activities disclosed had already happened by then, and the damage done. And there is little evidence to date that the leaks have dampened the spirits of those under scrutiny to engage in similar behavior. Knowledge, understanding, intelligence, and awareness only enables action; It does not, by itself, constitute action. In truth, one of mankind's oldest delusions is belief that an enhanced understanding of the problem will necessarily lead to that problem being fixed. Snowden may have pointed out that the United States is behaving trashy... but we have yet to find someone willing to take out the trash.
Malala gets this one hands-down. Both made very important statements we must pay attention to, but a fucking headshot beats hanging out in a Russian airport IMHO.
Arguably, they are risking the same thing: Both knew that they were taking a bullet to the head risk. Only one got a bullet to the head. If we're judging these people on the basis of the risks they took on behalf of human rights, they are equal. If we're only judging them based on how much punishment they took for making the choices they did, then all human rights' awards would be post-humous.
Although both were risking death, the fact that one of them escaped it apparently matters to you. I sincerely hope you are a minority here -- thinking like this leads to terrorism. Afterall, if you can only be recognized after being turned into a martyr...