There is understandably a tremendous amount of misunderstanding by the American people about how collection targets are designated, and there is a large body of law that governs how the process must take place. While it is true that almost any transmission of data, voice or otherwise, through this country can be monitored, the sheer scale of daily communications quickly renders random sampling useless. Call records are not call recordings - can you imagine just how much storage would be required to save for posterity the billion or so phone conversations that happen each day in this country? Even running a simple query on a database containing recent activity (not the conversation, just the fact that a call happened) can take hours. It is simply not done, both for time and practicality reasons - and because collecting on a non-designated target is very highly illegal.
Every intel collector and analyst is trained from day one in the law, whether they be military or civilian. They can all quote the name and contents of the document that governs the ways the NSA and our government may designate intel targets both within and without our own borders. Anyone who collects on a target that has not been sanctioned from on-high, even if it is his or her own phone number, is on a fast track to prison.
The targets that are being monitored within our own borders are so because the trail from overseas led back here. Known terrorists, affiliates, fund raisers, materials providers, etc., made calls to people here in the USA, or people in the USA called them. The foreign phone would already be under surveillance, and of course the connection to the USA should raise questions for any sane law enforcement agency. The law provides for monitoring US citizens in this and other very narrowly-defined cases, though they must still be officially designated as targets, which is not a simple process. Even the warrantless taps only give a day or so of leeway, the government must prove in a hurry that they really need to be listening in or all data must be purged.
And perhaps the most important reason that you can go through your day without worrying if someone is listening in to you asking your Aunt Bea to bring her special blueberry pie to the family reunion is that analysts are Americans and have Aunt Bea's too, and they have the same expectation of privacy that you have. If they participate in a big-brother system that monitors our populace at a whim, then it's only a matter of time before that system grows and starts to eat its own.
The intel community is a very paranoid place - both about what others are doing, but incredibly more so about that activities of its own members.
Darn. I'm really tired and all, but I can't use that as an excuse. I thought I had the its/it's rules nailed down in the second grade, but I guess not...
Man, you aren't kidding about lack of sleep. Before the project started, I hopped on the internet and researched extended-stay hotels in the area - the absolute cheapest was still $300/week, which I felt would consume too large a portion of this glad-to-be-working consultant's meager wages.
I lined up paid living arrangements with a friend who later flaked out, though I'm hoping that turns around... I'm extremely lucky to have family that helps out by having meals and clean laundry ready, but I'd rather have a reasonable commute and take care of myself. The Rodeo only goes for a few more weeks, so I might be able to push through and keep the $2,000 or so a hotel in the area would have cost me.
I was in the first phase of the Atkins diet when the project started, and I definitively know from past experience that I would not be able to maintain alertness or normal bodily functions if I was eating the typical high-carb, processed American diet. When I do eat what the USDA calls normal, I feel like I'm mainlining heroin. I spent the first 29 years of my life in a carbohydrate-induced fog, and I find I rather enjoy being clear-headed and energetic. I don't have cravings or hunger pangs anymore, and I look a lot better in my cowboy hat. (Boy, howdy.)
I'm working 7-days a week, 14 hours a day doing IT for the world's largest rodeo in Houston. Like you, I drive approximately 3 hours a day to and from work.
Even though both caffeine and carbs provide a short-term energy boost, I find that avoiding them completely makes me much more alert and energetic overall. The crash when the caffeine or insulin levels swing knocks me out cold.
Unlike you, my job has me running all day long, so I don't usually run into trouble until the drive home. If I've kept an even blood-sugar all day, I'm usually just fine. On days when I've had to grab a burger (or worse) for lunch, I sometimes have to stop on the side of the road and catch a short nap to stay safe. Sleeping on the side of the road, even in a well-lit rest stop, is a health risk in it's own right...
I've been interviewing for a position in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab at JSC, where for months they have been ramping up to perform mission training for astronauts. The NBL is where the space station and shuttle mockups are submerged under 6.5 million gallons of water to mimick the effects of zero-gravity in EVA, shuttle & station articulating arm, and escape scenarios. While I was there today, one excercise was running, with two astronauts ("suits") in the water. At least one excercise will be running each day for the forseable future, and many days two.
Needless to say, NASA and all it's subcontractors have invested a lot of time and money with the expectation that shuttle flights will resume as planned. I really want this job, so I hope that there aren't any more program delays!
From the original/. post: "...the request to seize Indymedia servers hosted by a U.S. company in the UK (covered in this previous slashdot story) originated from government agencies in Italy and Switzerland, not the United States."
The FBI complied with the request of these friendly nations. That's the only involvement our government had.
From the compulsive America-bashing that goes on around here, you'd be pissed either way - if we hadn't cooperated, then in your eyes we'd be guilty of "defying international law" or "estranging our allies". Sheesh.
People get upset that Africa is always a mess, but happily buy diamonds from the limb-hacking rebels who are causing most of the trouble in the first place.
Everyone knows that western civilization is completely enslaved to oil, but we voluntarily line up to buy our new Hummer "S.S. Fuck The Earth" H2's.
We get upset at the human-rights records some of our major trading partners, but buy up as much of their cheaply-manufactured crap as we can get our hands on.
Why is it that Liberals love to throw the term Fascist at anyone that doesn't support a huge government beaurocracy controlling every aspect of your life, cradle to grave? If you want that kind of government (socialism), there are plenty of countries out there that offer it. Pick one. Go.
The United States was was founded specifically to allow for and to promote self-determination. That means if you want it, you get out there and work for it. If you don't, no one is making you stay. Higher education, medical insurance, and everything else in this life come by hard work. The world doesn't owe you anything, get over it and stop whining.
In a truly Fascist government, negative comments would very quickly land you in a gulag, or much worse. This is also true of your supposedly enlightened Socialist and Communist "workers paradise" nations, for that matter. You seem to still be alive and free to do and say as you please - so drop the transparent rhetoric. No one who does not already share your worldview will take you seriously until you are intellectually honest in the way you communicate. Ditch the emotion-laden buzzwords.
Though none can be perfect, we have the most humane, dignified, and empowering government that the world has ever seen--but with our citizens trying to trade their every freedom for a dependence on feel-good programs and the thinly veiled motivations of foreigners who only stood to profit from human suffering, we are going to lose more than our self-determination. We will lose everything that made this country special and great.
Until the remnants of the registration forms are tested for fingerprint patterns that correspond with ripping up the sheets of paper, and those fingerprints traced back to someone other than the workers who are making the report, it is incorrect to blindly assume that the campaign workers are telling the truth. The alarming claim that those two workers are making is one that understandably gets front-page national media coverage, but weeks from now if the company is cleared and the workers discredited, the story will be buried someplace back in page 16. Because of how the media and the collective memory of most Americans work, the "victims" (in this case, Democrats) stand to gain a lot - even if the charges are eventually disproven. If the allegations are true, then of course the company officials must answer for them.
It certainly warrants the immediate attention of law enforcement and whichever election commissions have jurisdiction there, but until some prints consistent with document destruction are found, and traced to the managers, no one's story should be believed. It's too easy to fake.
More tactical boats are what the US Navy is building - when they say that they are nuclear subs, they mean that they are nuclear powered, not ICBM "Boomer" subs that are meant to deliver nuclear missles.
This is assuming, of course, that in your last sentence you're following submariner's affectionate tradition of calling your ship a "boat". The rule of thumb that I was brought up in the Navy with is that "boats can't cross oceans, ships can, and don't ever try to argue this point with a submariner."
I'm entering the Navy in a few months as a linguist, and if I get the option of which language to learn, I plan on choosing Arabic. To get a start on things early, I've been using Pimsleur's Arabic, and have been impressed.
Pimsleur's conversational approach recognizes that language is fundamentally an excercise in speech, and that orthography is merely an extension of the communication and mental processes that already exist in the spoken word. There are huge numbers of languages that never developed a writing system - but (next to?) none that are only written. Pimsleur says to learn to speak first, and learning to write what you've learned later on will be much easier.
The interactive feedback/reminder system seems to work for me in a way that no other computer-based language-learning method has. Both my Dad and I are having lots of fun with this, and I'll recomment Pimsleur to anyone who asks.
Before someone jumps down your throat, I'll point out (nicely) that Noah's Ark figures prominantly in the Jewish tradition, which we Christians inherited much of.
It never ceases to amaze me how emotional people get when someone sets out to prove or disprove some aspect of religious history - it's almost as if their egos need it not to be true...
I'm really suprised that no one has mentioned Kuro5in of kuro5in.org, an online community that shares many qualities with Slashdot. Kuro5in is arguably the most well known number-in-a-name personality, IMHO. Although it's not his real name, for all practical purposes it seems to be (as anyone who has read Tsutomu Shimomura & John Markoff'saccount of the pursuit and capture of Kevin Mitnik learned).
Slashdot Mirror
There is understandably a tremendous amount of misunderstanding by the American people about how collection targets are designated, and there is a large body of law that governs how the process must take place. While it is true that almost any transmission of data, voice or otherwise, through this country can be monitored, the sheer scale of daily communications quickly renders random sampling useless. Call records are not call recordings - can you imagine just how much storage would be required to save for posterity the billion or so phone conversations that happen each day in this country? Even running a simple query on a database containing recent activity (not the conversation, just the fact that a call happened) can take hours. It is simply not done, both for time and practicality reasons - and because collecting on a non-designated target is very highly illegal.
Every intel collector and analyst is trained from day one in the law, whether they be military or civilian. They can all quote the name and contents of the document that governs the ways the NSA and our government may designate intel targets both within and without our own borders. Anyone who collects on a target that has not been sanctioned from on-high, even if it is his or her own phone number, is on a fast track to prison.
The targets that are being monitored within our own borders are so because the trail from overseas led back here. Known terrorists, affiliates, fund raisers, materials providers, etc., made calls to people here in the USA, or people in the USA called them. The foreign phone would already be under surveillance, and of course the connection to the USA should raise questions for any sane law enforcement agency. The law provides for monitoring US citizens in this and other very narrowly-defined cases, though they must still be officially designated as targets, which is not a simple process. Even the warrantless taps only give a day or so of leeway, the government must prove in a hurry that they really need to be listening in or all data must be purged.
And perhaps the most important reason that you can go through your day without worrying if someone is listening in to you asking your Aunt Bea to bring her special blueberry pie to the family reunion is that analysts are Americans and have Aunt Bea's too, and they have the same expectation of privacy that you have. If they participate in a big-brother system that monitors our populace at a whim, then it's only a matter of time before that system grows and starts to eat its own.
The intel community is a very paranoid place - both about what others are doing, but incredibly more so about that activities of its own members.
Has anyone used VOIP-for-PDAs software with the Build-Your-Own-PBX solution mentioned a few days ago? Was it worth the effort?
Darn. I'm really tired and all, but I can't use that as an excuse. I thought I had the its/it's rules nailed down in the second grade, but I guess not...
One of the subdomains is my daily bread. ;0)
Man, you aren't kidding about lack of sleep. Before the project started, I hopped on the internet and researched extended-stay hotels in the area - the absolute cheapest was still $300/week, which I felt would consume too large a portion of this glad-to-be-working consultant's meager wages.
I lined up paid living arrangements with a friend who later flaked out, though I'm hoping that turns around... I'm extremely lucky to have family that helps out by having meals and clean laundry ready, but I'd rather have a reasonable commute and take care of myself. The Rodeo only goes for a few more weeks, so I might be able to push through and keep the $2,000 or so a hotel in the area would have cost me.
I was in the first phase of the Atkins diet when the project started, and I definitively know from past experience that I would not be able to maintain alertness or normal bodily functions if I was eating the typical high-carb, processed American diet. When I do eat what the USDA calls normal, I feel like I'm mainlining heroin. I spent the first 29 years of my life in a carbohydrate-induced fog, and I find I rather enjoy being clear-headed and energetic. I don't have cravings or hunger pangs anymore, and I look a lot better in my cowboy hat. (Boy, howdy.)
I'm working 7-days a week, 14 hours a day doing IT for the world's largest rodeo in Houston. Like you, I drive approximately 3 hours a day to and from work.
Even though both caffeine and carbs provide a short-term energy boost, I find that avoiding them completely makes me much more alert and energetic overall. The crash when the caffeine or insulin levels swing knocks me out cold.
Unlike you, my job has me running all day long, so I don't usually run into trouble until the drive home. If I've kept an even blood-sugar all day, I'm usually just fine. On days when I've had to grab a burger (or worse) for lunch, I sometimes have to stop on the side of the road and catch a short nap to stay safe. Sleeping on the side of the road, even in a well-lit rest stop, is a health risk in it's own right...
That is a really bad thing.
I've been interviewing for a position in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab at JSC, where for months they have been ramping up to perform mission training for astronauts. The NBL is where the space station and shuttle mockups are submerged under 6.5 million gallons of water to mimick the effects of zero-gravity in EVA, shuttle & station articulating arm, and escape scenarios. While I was there today, one excercise was running, with two astronauts ("suits") in the water. At least one excercise will be running each day for the forseable future, and many days two.
Needless to say, NASA and all it's subcontractors have invested a lot of time and money with the expectation that shuttle flights will resume as planned. I really want this job, so I hope that there aren't any more program delays!
From the original /. post: "...the request to seize Indymedia servers hosted by a U.S. company in the UK (covered in this previous slashdot story) originated from government agencies in Italy and Switzerland, not the United States."
The FBI complied with the request of these friendly nations. That's the only involvement our government had.
From the compulsive America-bashing that goes on around here, you'd be pissed either way - if we hadn't cooperated, then in your eyes we'd be guilty of "defying international law" or "estranging our allies". Sheesh.
Ah, crap - I can't even spill properly, neither. ;0)
People get upset that Africa is always a mess, but happily buy diamonds from the limb-hacking rebels who are causing most of the trouble in the first place.
Everyone knows that western civilization is completely enslaved to oil, but we voluntarily line up to buy our new Hummer "S.S. Fuck The Earth" H2's.
We get upset at the human-rights records some of our major trading partners, but buy up as much of their cheaply-manufactured crap as we can get our hands on.
Can I get an "Amen"?
Why is it that Liberals love to throw the term Fascist at anyone that doesn't support a huge government beaurocracy controlling every aspect of your life, cradle to grave? If you want that kind of government (socialism), there are plenty of countries out there that offer it. Pick one. Go.
The United States was was founded specifically to allow for and to promote self-determination. That means if you want it, you get out there and work for it. If you don't, no one is making you stay. Higher education, medical insurance, and everything else in this life come by hard work. The world doesn't owe you anything, get over it and stop whining.
In a truly Fascist government, negative comments would very quickly land you in a gulag, or much worse. This is also true of your supposedly enlightened Socialist and Communist "workers paradise" nations, for that matter. You seem to still be alive and free to do and say as you please - so drop the transparent rhetoric. No one who does not already share your worldview will take you seriously until you are intellectually honest in the way you communicate. Ditch the emotion-laden buzzwords.
Though none can be perfect, we have the most humane, dignified, and empowering government that the world has ever seen--but with our citizens trying to trade their every freedom for a dependence on feel-good programs and the thinly veiled motivations of foreigners who only stood to profit from human suffering, we are going to lose more than our self-determination. We will lose everything that made this country special and great.
Until the remnants of the registration forms are tested for fingerprint patterns that correspond with ripping up the sheets of paper, and those fingerprints traced back to someone other than the workers who are making the report, it is incorrect to blindly assume that the campaign workers are telling the truth. The alarming claim that those two workers are making is one that understandably gets front-page national media coverage, but weeks from now if the company is cleared and the workers discredited, the story will be buried someplace back in page 16. Because of how the media and the collective memory of most Americans work, the "victims" (in this case, Democrats) stand to gain a lot - even if the charges are eventually disproven. If the allegations are true, then of course the company officials must answer for them.
It certainly warrants the immediate attention of law enforcement and whichever election commissions have jurisdiction there, but until some prints consistent with document destruction are found, and traced to the managers, no one's story should be believed. It's too easy to fake.
Dislexics of the World, Untie!
They aren't trying to equate it to Watergate (i.e. say that it is equal). They are comparing the two events.
Dislexics of the World, Untie!
More tactical boats are what the US Navy is building - when they say that they are nuclear subs, they mean that they are nuclear powered, not ICBM "Boomer" subs that are meant to deliver nuclear missles.
This is assuming, of course, that in your last sentence you're following submariner's affectionate tradition of calling your ship a "boat". The rule of thumb that I was brought up in the Navy with is that "boats can't cross oceans, ships can, and don't ever try to argue this point with a submariner."
Dislexics of the World Untie!
Neat! Until now, the longest word with no repeating letters I knew was "Lycanthropes"! I've got to go alert my friends!
I'm entering the Navy in a few months as a linguist, and if I get the option of which language to learn, I plan on choosing Arabic. To get a start on things early, I've been using Pimsleur's Arabic, and have been impressed.
Pimsleur's conversational approach recognizes that language is fundamentally an excercise in speech, and that orthography is merely an extension of the communication and mental processes that already exist in the spoken word. There are huge numbers of languages that never developed a writing system - but (next to?) none that are only written. Pimsleur says to learn to speak first, and learning to write what you've learned later on will be much easier.
The interactive feedback/reminder system seems to work for me in a way that no other computer-based language-learning method has. Both my Dad and I are having lots of fun with this, and I'll recomment Pimsleur to anyone who asks.
Before someone jumps down your throat, I'll point out (nicely) that Noah's Ark figures prominantly in the Jewish tradition, which we Christians inherited much of.
It never ceases to amaze me how emotional people get when someone sets out to prove or disprove some aspect of religious history - it's almost as if their egos need it not to be true...
I'm really suprised that no one has mentioned Kuro5in of kuro5in.org, an online community that shares many qualities with Slashdot. Kuro5in is arguably the most well known number-in-a-name personality, IMHO. Although it's not his real name, for all practical purposes it seems to be (as anyone who has read Tsutomu Shimomura & John Markoff's account of the pursuit and capture of Kevin Mitnik learned).