The Senators are a bunch of morons and are the last group that should ever complain about someone lying. They are experts at prevarication and give unambiguous answers that always leave room for them to back track. Only a very select committee of Senators are privy to anything relating to classified US intelligence matters and that committee is responsible for determining what information can be safely released to the entire Senate. Any Senator claiming they did not know about certain intelligence programs or operations should first go after their fellow Senators on the foreign intelligence committee and ask them what they know and then go after the particular intelligence agency. This investigation was not being conducted by this intelligence committee. The vast majority of Senators and staffers do not even have the necessary security clearances needed for access to certain classified information about US intelligence programs. In this particular case the CIA discovered the Senate had possession of an internal CIA report that had not been legally obtained through the proper channels. The CIA could attempt to justify it's actions by claiming there had been a security leak (which there was) and they were investigating how the Senate got a hold of the document in question. The first logical step in the investigation would be obtaining proof the document was actually on the Senate computer system. The Senate constantly wastes time on these types of conflicts while doing nothing that would actually help the country and the people who put them in office. The Senate is more dangerous to the US public than the CIA and NSA combined. And the feckless Senators will do nothing of consequence in this cat fight because they are just barely smart enough not to get into a full blown conflict with agencies capable of destroying their political careers. After all the CIA has had a lot of practice changing governments around the world using subtle and not to subtle means. The Senate and the CIA deserve each other.
You can carry enough explosives on your back or in the trunk of a car and just walk into or just park close to any public building or public transportation system and detonate. Using drones to do the same thing would just take the "suicide" out of the classic "suicide bomber" gambit first popularized by Japan in WW2. And it could be quite fun taken pot shots at drones flying overhead with your trusty ole 12 Gauge. The only drones you should probably let pass unmolested are those racking a couple of Hell Fire missiles. The tag price for bagging one of those could be quite expensive to say the least. Life will never be a safe as people want it to be and if it was it would probably be pretty damn boring.
At no time did I say the US deserves a free pass for it's actions. But that same free pass is constantly being extended to countries such as Russia, NK, and Iran. It's come down to nobody can do any wrong and if they are doing something wrong it was because the US forced their hands.
Secret courts? Are you talking about the FISA court? Those proceedings are indeed kept confidential but it is hardly secret. As a matter of fact it has been around since 1978. Any information collected under the auspices of a FISA warrant cannot be used in any court against any defendant. And Russia uses it's transparent judicial system to efficiently prosecute anyone who dares challenge the state or attempts to organize political protests. The fact is the Russian or Chinese judicial systems are opaque and hardly ever publicly investigated or even debated while the US judicial system is debated and criticized endlessly.
On the whole skin pigmentation has played a relatively minor role in the overall history of human warfare. War is the original equal opportunity endeavor. Human history is filled with examples of people who when lacking an external enemy turn on one another. Since humans started fighting over access to nicer caves there has not been 5 minutes where there has not been some type of warfare going on somewhere on the globe. Fighting and killing one another is the most predictable and constant human traits.
Just how far back into the past are you willing to go to start righting all the wrongs in the world? Every square foot of land on the planet has been invaded and occupied by an ever changing cast of characters with the most strategic pieces of land having had their borders drawn in blood more than once. And the blood letting is still ongoing right this minute in many places around the world. The entirety of human civilization has been built upon might equals right. Civilizations get built using violence and get torn down with violence and that pattern still holds true today and will most likely continue to hold true until the planet is just a big radioactive ball of lifeless dirt. So how about you go start righting some wrongs perpetrated by people who have been dead for a few hundred years but I'd advise you to build up a significant arsenal before starting on your noble quest. Or you could just be happy with the fact that a small number of US citizens exercised their rights to stop a construction project on land they would rather keep the way it is. It doesn't really matter why they were against the project but I have seen people do the exact same thing to keep a strip mall from being built on land near where they live just to keep the traffic down. No need of sacred burial grounds or state sovereignty issues to bolster their arguments.
It has been the nuclear stockpiles of the US, China, and Russia along with the MAD doctrine which has basically neutralized the threat of a large scale nuclear attack. The premise has always been if one side or the other were to execute a nuclear strike there would be an immediate retaliatory strike within minutes. The problem with Iran having nuclear weapons is that their foreign policy doctrine has consistently, and quite openly, revolved around supporting non-state actors like Hezbollah, Hamas, and all the various offshoots as proxies to fight Israel and any Sunni aligned group in the ME they wish to hurt. If one of their proxies were to get their hands on a nuclear weapon and detonate it in the US or Europe there would be no immediate counter strike option. It could take months to positively identify were the weapon originated. Would there be the political will to launch a retaliatory nuclear counter strike months if not years after the original attack? Now if a nuclear weapon was detonated in Israel their investigation of the weapons origin would last about 30 seconds and Tehran would be a radioactive wasteland 30 seconds after that. The countries in the ME will be lucky if the Israeli's don't decide to take out Riyadh and Mecca at the same time just for spite.
Failing the whole class penalizes those who did not cheat or issue threats against the professor. The Universities decision to not allow the whole class to be summarily failed was correct. The only way failing the whole class would have been the correct thing to do would be if the entire class, without exception, cheated or broke other rules. How indignant would you be if you were in the class and did not cheat or participate in any of the immature harassment that the teacher was apparently subjected to and you failed? That is the shit storm the university was trying to avoid. It also doesn't mean the professor could not use evidence of cheating against individuals and fail them. And this case has absolutely nothing to do with banks being bailed out other than the use of the word "bailout" in the discussion.
Paying tuition does not mean a University or college never prevents anyone from failing out of school. Full paying students fail out of school quite frequently and are not "bailed out" in an effort to create future alumni. So your statement is patently false and offered with no proof. In this particular case I am sure there were some students who passed the required tests without cheating but ended up being punished because of a bunch of immature morons causing all the trouble. By providing security for this professor the university evidently took the threats of violence claims seriously. The University was correct in preventing the whole class from failing and now they should try and make an effort to prove which students were cheating.
The only result of Snowdens actions will be the NSA adding more compartmentalization to the data stored. User security access will be put under the microscope and every action will be logged and monitored, especially any thing related to copying files and downloads. Snowden accomplished two main things. He gave the US enemies around the world something to use for their propaganda against anything associated with the US. Even though those countries run their own intelligence services and do the same thing the NSA does or those who have actually been cooperating with the NSA. He should have limited his publishing to only information related to US domestic arena. He could have used all the data on foreign intelligence as leverage to return home and face no charges but he didn't. The second thing he did was put into motion sweeping security reviews of both their systems and employees. Other than those two items it has still been business as usual. The goal of creating a safe drop box is to send information and make sure the submitter remains anonymous.Once the data is delivered anonymously why do only certain persons or groups get to hoard that information instead of making it all accessible to anyone who wants to see it. Why should we automatically trust Assange and the ex-Guardian journalist to control the dissemination of the data?
Foreign Intelligence agencies do not need warrants or any other legalistic justification when spying on foreign countries. The only rule is don't get caught. While you may hear speculation about the Chinese or Russian espionage attempts you never hear them announcing they have caught the US running around in their high security systems and I seriously doubt they are so secure that they are invulnerable to outside attacks. While the world decried the US phone intercepts of foreign leaders at the same time someone released an intercepted phone call originating from the US embassy discussing the situation in the Ukraine. The origin and release of those recorded diplomatic telephone calls were questioned by no one.
There is no firewall to limit US internet users from accessing any source of information across the world. If someone chooses to watch only Fox News that is their decision and not something they are forced to do. The same thing applies to those who think the real truth can only be found in Pravda, The Guardian, or Al jazeera. The most unsettling fact is that people tend to gravitate to news sites, blogs, and other information sources that only present information they already agree with. Subtle but manipulative editorial lines create entrenched zealots who eventually are more interested winning arguments then they are about finding the truth. Anyone espousing a different opinion are labeled brainwashed fanatics and idiots. The Internet will be the catalyst for the next world war. The promise of instant global communication and collaboration provided by the internet never factored in human nature and the impact that would make.
International law? To invoke a law you need to be able to actually enforce those laws, often with force, and there only a few countries capable of even attempting that feat. China, Russia, and the US all have differing opinions on what international law really means let alone how they would go about enforcing those laws. And Russia is only on the list due to their inventory of ICBM's while China and the US have the ICBM's as well as financial power to shape world events.
"Due diligence"? "Imaging scenarios"? You have not presented any due diligence to support your incessant complaints and the scenarios are already staring you in your face. Provide your own proof to support your opinions. The Twitter and Facebook generation have become experts at inventing truth out of thin air and using the number of re-tweets and "likes" to define their truth. You have adopted the mindset that you and like minded individuals know the "truth" and anyone challenging your "truth" is deemed crazy. The US justice system and government is not even close to being perfect or always just but people unwilling to acknowledge the good and the bad are the ones ultimately responsible for a downward spiral. I used to give a shit about the direction of the country and world in general but now I just don't care. I want people such as yourself to see the true result of your actions even if that includes the irradiation of a large part of the world. We have already passed the point of no return so you best prepare yourself and I fervently hope you do not have any children who will be the ultimate victims of today's group psychosis. Decrying both real and imagined injustice has taken control of the discussion. People are infatuated with complaining and blaming those they deem responsible for the quality of their lives but they never offer up any detailed and most of all realistic actions to correct anything. The only outcome is anarchy and violence which in this day and age can be quite frightening and ultimately fatal to everyone across the globe. On the bright side at least we can stop worrying about global climate change declining natural resources, and over population.
"In the US, this has not been true for some time. You are asserting the very problems we're talking about. Secret Courts. Secret Evidence. Secret Process." Prove it. And is case of FISA warrants do you understand FISA evidence collected under FISA warrants can not be used in FISA warrants and they are used so information can be collected that may result in the issue of a normal warrant which can also be challenged in court.And here you go again with "Secret Courts" when in fact there is nothing secret about them. It's becoming clear that you have no clue about how the US adversarial court system operates.It is by no means perfect but neither are human beings. I really want WW3 to break out tomorrow because no matter how horrific that may be at least I would not have to listen to people who have no clue as to how the US in specific and the world in general actually works.
Exactly when was the right to challenge evidence in a court of law abolished? Or are you just mad that someone with the same mindset as yourself was convicted of a crime? The Patriot Act was first used in court trying to convict a professor at a Southern Florida University for supposedly funding and cheer leading those who were advocating violence similar to 9/11. The judicial slap down is one of the main reasons the US will not prosecute the prisoners in Cuba in the US. The US should just strap parachutes on all those still held at that facility and just air drop them wherever they were first captured and be done with it. That should give you enough information to do your own damn research. In the future I suggest you drop the political blinders and take time to investigate all sides of a conflict before you start carving your stone tablets. And please stop claiming you were ever an insider in the FBI or Secret Service. If you actually had the necessary clearances you would not be announcing that on Slashdot because those level of clearances give you no wiggle room if you divulge classified information. (The Secret Service is especially vigilant about "leaks" and would most likely be at your front door within 15 minutes of posting classified information) The technology in the 90's doesn't even come close to what is available today. I hate to admit it but I actually graduated with a BS in CS, MS in CS, and BS in Mathematics. I actually witnessed first hand the progression of technologies that massively changed social interactions, business interactions, and provided the capabilities to uncover information on individuals or organizations for various purposes. There was no MS, Google, or Internet when I started my career. However when the change came it was so rapid it was almost impossible to become experts on a technology or hardware platform before something new appeared. IT Security was an afterthought at the beginning. I have been in the IT field for over 30 years, the majority of the time spent as a consultant and while I have had varying levels of security clearances I have never been slavishly beholden to a specific company, government, or technology platform for any length of time. So I may be naive about a lot of things in the world but technology and how to exploit that technology is not one of those areas. An the "breadth of the problem" is reinforced daily by excessive use of hyperbole, misguided political propaganda, and well meaning but totally biased technical associations and prominent individuals, and last but not least the millions of idiots who think their life is so important that the government has drones on station 24 hours a day over their house and are collecting every piece of electronic data and communications emanating from them. The US government and all of its various agencies give incompetence, inefficiency, and out right stupidity a whole new Wikipedia entry. All the fuss over SIGINT is so misplaced and irrelevant domestically (at least concerning the governments actors, commercial and criminal actors are quite another matter) I am sure the heads of the FSB and MSS are paralyzed on the floor laughing their assess off over this entire NSA group therapy session It was not an accident that Snowden's travels occurred in 2 countries. His complaints about US security agencies pale in comparison to the Russian agencies and the microphone and location tracker they shoved up his ass as a condition to get a Visa. I exaggerate they most like just put the devices in his food. SIGINT may help get the information needed for a drone strike but unless they start arming the Hellfires with nuclear warheads the problem isn't going away. HUMINT is still the gold standard in espionage circles. So I am not worried about the government conducting surveillance on me. There are only so many hours in the day and concerns about the NSA or CIA don't even make the top 20 things I need to deal with every day. Besides from the day I was born the US government already has my birth certificate, SSN, auto registration
So you don't have any proof but you are wiling to assume the worst and make unsubstantiated claims and group think to justify your political opinions and world view. We have this little thing known as due process where anyone accused of a crime can challenge the evidence and the providence of that evidence against them and you do not have to be rich to challenge the evidence. if you do not challenge the evidence you get what you deserve. In a similar case the Patriot Act has been used twice in court and in both cases the charges were dropped and the judges opinion questioned the constitutionality of the Patriot Act. People continue to bitch and moan about the NSA "secret" data collection programs without ever realizing if they were "actually secret" how the fuck would we be arguing it? All the program acronyms and projects were listed on fucking employment websites along with the skill sets needed for the particular programs. The attempts to capture internet data was not a secret when the defining mass indiscriminate collection of data programs were shit canned because of the costs involved and the lack of usefulness. Of course the documents explaining this were never released because it might have put US actions in a more positive light. Even Snowden and his pet journalists have not released one piece if information that was not already easily discovered by anyone with an IQ over 50. The only thing that has been done is to selectively shape and release information that only supported a certain viewpoint or party line. In this particular case it has been Greenwald's goal to release only the information that supports his crusade against the US while dragging out the release to ensure his name stays in the headlines as long as possible. He is the liberal/progressive version of a Fox News editorial hack. And as vulnerable as your average citizen is concerning their electronic footprint the same risk also applies to the government. No one is safe from having their online activities scrutinized and that also includes the government. And all the clandestine, secretive, and intrusive government related operations are hardly secret seeing as how everyone who has paying the slightest bit of attention knows about them. It's hard to claim someone is hiding something when it is front page news.
No. The rampant misuse of the assets needed for the surveillance state and the misuse of those assets can be laid at the feet of the general public and not the government. For all the complaints leveled at the NSA there has been no proof that they have ever used that information against it's own citizens. Corporations siphon off personal information from the internet and sell it and use it to complement their businesses. (Google targeted searches by user is based on user history and is just one example) All that has been proven about the NSA is that they use their collected data to help fulfill their organizations mandate by using the data for foreign based purposes. They could do a lot of thing with that data but so far that has not been happening.
The US has the 3rd highest corporate tax rate in the world. The first two places being held by the economic powerhouses of Chad and the UAE. And while the US does allow corporations to reduce their tax burden using complex tax statues and even more complex accounting practices the fact is that European companies that move some of their operations to the US stand to significantly increase their bottom line operating in the US. The European tax rates, energy costs, excessive regulations, protectionist mindsets, and extravagant employee benefits make it harder for them to compete internationally. Employee benefits are without a doubt an area where most US companies need to make changes but the European alternatives come very close to creating an expanding public dole that rewards people who contribute little in the overall workforce creating a situation where people are more willing to take government handouts than to enter the workforce. The EU's weak immigration safeguards also exasperates the problem. Quality of life for workers is one thing but rewarding those who would rather subsist on government handouts instead of actually working for a living is not a model for success. The EU's investigations into both MS and Google are nothing more than mafia style shakedowns dressed up as anti-competitive investigations and have very little to do with actually providing local competitors with a leg up. There is currently no European competitor for Google and while Linux is a viable alternative and competitor of MS in some areas there is no other desktop centric OS and application stack vendor that could challenge the MS dominance. If you are going to penalize anti-competitive behavior you should at least make sure there are other competitors to begin with. While most people in the world have major complaints about their government leadership leave it to the Europeans to create a whole new layer of bureaucracy that sits on top of their own national governments and then expect corruption and governmental inefficiency to decrease. An extra level of bureaucracy that is even less accountable to those they oversee than their local governments are. Besides a unified currency and open border policies I don't see one damn thing that the EU has provided. They have no unified defense agreements because they still think the US has their back when the reality is far different. Even their unified currency policies are falling apart because a minority of members dominate the economic policies to the detriment of the small countries.
The US does not have to go after any EU based companies looking to give them a hard time all it has to do is create a more favorable business climate to encourage those companies to move some of their operations to the US. And that has been happening. Lower energy costs, reduced shipping costs, and far less government regulation will produce far better results than trying to shakedown successful companies with deep pockets which is exactly what the EU has been doing. The EU say they want to provide space for competitors but there are really no viable competitors in the areas they control. They should have addressed their concerns when Google and MS were just starting out but the Europeans were a sleep at the wheel when the IT revolution was happening in the US and have been trying to play catch up ever since.
"sociopathy" and/or "psychopathy" I don't see how these descriptors apply to a large company without resorting to making wide generalizations and assumptions based more on hearsay than actual facts. They seem to be attributes of individuals. People who criticize corporations as the root of all evil don't seem to realize that those very same corporations provide a lot of jobs for a lot of people. It would be nice to have those running the corporations to put more effort into adopting policies that support their employees and go the extra mile to ensure competitive salaries, good benefits, and job security even when the business may experience a reduction of profits due to the general economic conditions. Preventing mass layoffs triggered by the stock price dropping a few points would go a long way in a repairing a corporations image.
You can always start a non-profit company to sooth your conscience while satisfying your goals in life but there is nothing wrong about starting a company to make profits. MS, Apple, Google, and a whole bunch of other companies started out with nothing more than a few good ideas that eventually led to profitability. They didn't start off life as "evil" globe spanning billion dollar enterprises capable of throwing their weight and money around to increase their profitability.If you start a business from scratch with one of your goals being to reap monetary rewards from your work at what point do look around and say I have earned enough profits so I need to slow down or even shutdown my operations or someone is going to call me "evil"? If you want to start punishing success and remove the incentives that drive some people a reason to excel in delivering new and better products and services than you better hope the socialist utopian nirvana can deliver on it's promises.
I think a lot of people have forgotten that Stuxnext required someone on the inside who had access to the Iranian centrifuge lab to kick off the party. Cultivating that inside asset was probably harder, and definitely more dangerous, than engineering the virus.
Granted the post was of rambling nature but what factual statements are you contesting? The number of NSA employees? The lack of discussions about the type of IT infrastructure needed to do some of things being attributed to them? Or was bringing up that the NSA has never operated in a vacuum and that any changes in the organizations mandate should not leave the US vulnerable to all the other foreign intelligence agencies operating in the world. Not saying changes are not warranted but those changes should be balanced in such a manner that US security is not jeopardized.
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The Senators are a bunch of morons and are the last group that should ever complain about someone lying. They are experts at prevarication and give unambiguous answers that always leave room for them to back track. Only a very select committee of Senators are privy to anything relating to classified US intelligence matters and that committee is responsible for determining what information can be safely released to the entire Senate. Any Senator claiming they did not know about certain intelligence programs or operations should first go after their fellow Senators on the foreign intelligence committee and ask them what they know and then go after the particular intelligence agency. This investigation was not being conducted by this intelligence committee. The vast majority of Senators and staffers do not even have the necessary security clearances needed for access to certain classified information about US intelligence programs. In this particular case the CIA discovered the Senate had possession of an internal CIA report that had not been legally obtained through the proper channels. The CIA could attempt to justify it's actions by claiming there had been a security leak (which there was) and they were investigating how the Senate got a hold of the document in question. The first logical step in the investigation would be obtaining proof the document was actually on the Senate computer system. The Senate constantly wastes time on these types of conflicts while doing nothing that would actually help the country and the people who put them in office. The Senate is more dangerous to the US public than the CIA and NSA combined. And the feckless Senators will do nothing of consequence in this cat fight because they are just barely smart enough not to get into a full blown conflict with agencies capable of destroying their political careers. After all the CIA has had a lot of practice changing governments around the world using subtle and not to subtle means. The Senate and the CIA deserve each other.
You can carry enough explosives on your back or in the trunk of a car and just walk into or just park close to any public building or public transportation system and detonate. Using drones to do the same thing would just take the "suicide" out of the classic "suicide bomber" gambit first popularized by Japan in WW2. And it could be quite fun taken pot shots at drones flying overhead with your trusty ole 12 Gauge. The only drones you should probably let pass unmolested are those racking a couple of Hell Fire missiles. The tag price for bagging one of those could be quite expensive to say the least. Life will never be a safe as people want it to be and if it was it would probably be pretty damn boring.
At no time did I say the US deserves a free pass for it's actions. But that same free pass is constantly being extended to countries such as Russia, NK, and Iran. It's come down to nobody can do any wrong and if they are doing something wrong it was because the US forced their hands.
And if these guys are not subjected to any of the bad consequences you listed would you be willing to reevaluate your arguments?
Secret courts? Are you talking about the FISA court? Those proceedings are indeed kept confidential but it is hardly secret. As a matter of fact it has been around since 1978. Any information collected under the auspices of a FISA warrant cannot be used in any court against any defendant. And Russia uses it's transparent judicial system to efficiently prosecute anyone who dares challenge the state or attempts to organize political protests. The fact is the Russian or Chinese judicial systems are opaque and hardly ever publicly investigated or even debated while the US judicial system is debated and criticized endlessly.
On the whole skin pigmentation has played a relatively minor role in the overall history of human warfare. War is the original equal opportunity endeavor. Human history is filled with examples of people who when lacking an external enemy turn on one another. Since humans started fighting over access to nicer caves there has not been 5 minutes where there has not been some type of warfare going on somewhere on the globe. Fighting and killing one another is the most predictable and constant human traits.
Just how far back into the past are you willing to go to start righting all the wrongs in the world? Every square foot of land on the planet has been invaded and occupied by an ever changing cast of characters with the most strategic pieces of land having had their borders drawn in blood more than once. And the blood letting is still ongoing right this minute in many places around the world. The entirety of human civilization has been built upon might equals right. Civilizations get built using violence and get torn down with violence and that pattern still holds true today and will most likely continue to hold true until the planet is just a big radioactive ball of lifeless dirt. So how about you go start righting some wrongs perpetrated by people who have been dead for a few hundred years but I'd advise you to build up a significant arsenal before starting on your noble quest. Or you could just be happy with the fact that a small number of US citizens exercised their rights to stop a construction project on land they would rather keep the way it is. It doesn't really matter why they were against the project but I have seen people do the exact same thing to keep a strip mall from being built on land near where they live just to keep the traffic down. No need of sacred burial grounds or state sovereignty issues to bolster their arguments.
It has been the nuclear stockpiles of the US, China, and Russia along with the MAD doctrine which has basically neutralized the threat of a large scale nuclear attack. The premise has always been if one side or the other were to execute a nuclear strike there would be an immediate retaliatory strike within minutes. The problem with Iran having nuclear weapons is that their foreign policy doctrine has consistently, and quite openly, revolved around supporting non-state actors like Hezbollah, Hamas, and all the various offshoots as proxies to fight Israel and any Sunni aligned group in the ME they wish to hurt. If one of their proxies were to get their hands on a nuclear weapon and detonate it in the US or Europe there would be no immediate counter strike option. It could take months to positively identify were the weapon originated. Would there be the political will to launch a retaliatory nuclear counter strike months if not years after the original attack? Now if a nuclear weapon was detonated in Israel their investigation of the weapons origin would last about 30 seconds and Tehran would be a radioactive wasteland 30 seconds after that. The countries in the ME will be lucky if the Israeli's don't decide to take out Riyadh and Mecca at the same time just for spite.
Failing the whole class penalizes those who did not cheat or issue threats against the professor. The Universities decision to not allow the whole class to be summarily failed was correct. The only way failing the whole class would have been the correct thing to do would be if the entire class, without exception, cheated or broke other rules. How indignant would you be if you were in the class and did not cheat or participate in any of the immature harassment that the teacher was apparently subjected to and you failed? That is the shit storm the university was trying to avoid. It also doesn't mean the professor could not use evidence of cheating against individuals and fail them. And this case has absolutely nothing to do with banks being bailed out other than the use of the word "bailout" in the discussion.
Paying tuition does not mean a University or college never prevents anyone from failing out of school. Full paying students fail out of school quite frequently and are not "bailed out" in an effort to create future alumni. So your statement is patently false and offered with no proof. In this particular case I am sure there were some students who passed the required tests without cheating but ended up being punished because of a bunch of immature morons causing all the trouble. By providing security for this professor the university evidently took the threats of violence claims seriously. The University was correct in preventing the whole class from failing and now they should try and make an effort to prove which students were cheating.
The only result of Snowdens actions will be the NSA adding more compartmentalization to the data stored. User security access will be put under the microscope and every action will be logged and monitored, especially any thing related to copying files and downloads. Snowden accomplished two main things. He gave the US enemies around the world something to use for their propaganda against anything associated with the US. Even though those countries run their own intelligence services and do the same thing the NSA does or those who have actually been cooperating with the NSA. He should have limited his publishing to only information related to US domestic arena. He could have used all the data on foreign intelligence as leverage to return home and face no charges but he didn't. The second thing he did was put into motion sweeping security reviews of both their systems and employees. Other than those two items it has still been business as usual.
The goal of creating a safe drop box is to send information and make sure the submitter remains anonymous.Once the data is delivered anonymously why do only certain persons or groups get to hoard that information instead of making it all accessible to anyone who wants to see it. Why should we automatically trust Assange and the ex-Guardian journalist to control the dissemination of the data?
Foreign Intelligence agencies do not need warrants or any other legalistic justification when spying on foreign countries. The only rule is don't get caught. While you may hear speculation about the Chinese or Russian espionage attempts you never hear them announcing they have caught the US running around in their high security systems and I seriously doubt they are so secure that they are invulnerable to outside attacks. While the world decried the US phone intercepts of foreign leaders at the same time someone released an intercepted phone call originating from the US embassy discussing the situation in the Ukraine. The origin and release of those recorded diplomatic telephone calls were questioned by no one.
There is no firewall to limit US internet users from accessing any source of information across the world. If someone chooses to watch only Fox News that is their decision and not something they are forced to do. The same thing applies to those who think the real truth can only be found in Pravda, The Guardian, or Al jazeera. The most unsettling fact is that people tend to gravitate to news sites, blogs, and other information sources that only present information they already agree with. Subtle but manipulative editorial lines create entrenched zealots who eventually are more interested winning arguments then they are about finding the truth. Anyone espousing a different opinion are labeled brainwashed fanatics and idiots. The Internet will be the catalyst for the next world war. The promise of instant global communication and collaboration provided by the internet never factored in human nature and the impact that would make.
International law? To invoke a law you need to be able to actually enforce those laws, often with force, and there only a few countries capable of even attempting that feat. China, Russia, and the US all have differing opinions on what international law really means let alone how they would go about enforcing those laws. And Russia is only on the list due to their inventory of ICBM's while China and the US have the ICBM's as well as financial power to shape world events.
"Due diligence"? "Imaging scenarios"? You have not presented any due diligence to support your incessant complaints and the scenarios are already staring you in your face. Provide your own proof to support your opinions. The Twitter and Facebook generation have become experts at inventing truth out of thin air and using the number of re-tweets and "likes" to define their truth. You have adopted the mindset that you and like minded individuals know the "truth" and anyone challenging your "truth" is deemed crazy. The US justice system and government is not even close to being perfect or always just but people unwilling to acknowledge the good and the bad are the ones ultimately responsible for a downward spiral. I used to give a shit about the direction of the country and world in general but now I just don't care. I want people such as yourself to see the true result of your actions even if that includes the irradiation of a large part of the world. We have already passed the point of no return so you best prepare yourself and I fervently hope you do not have any children who will be the ultimate victims of today's group psychosis. Decrying both real and imagined injustice has taken control of the discussion. People are infatuated with complaining and blaming those they deem responsible for the quality of their lives but they never offer up any detailed and most of all realistic actions to correct anything. The only outcome is anarchy and violence which in this day and age can be quite frightening and ultimately fatal to everyone across the globe. On the bright side at least we can stop worrying about global climate change declining natural resources, and over population.
"In the US, this has not been true for some time. You are asserting the very problems we're talking about. Secret Courts. Secret Evidence. Secret Process." Prove it. And is case of FISA warrants do you understand FISA evidence collected under FISA warrants can not be used in FISA warrants and they are used so information can be collected that may result in the issue of a normal warrant which can also be challenged in court.And here you go again with "Secret Courts" when in fact there is nothing secret about them. It's becoming clear that you have no clue about how the US adversarial court system operates.It is by no means perfect but neither are human beings. I really want WW3 to break out tomorrow because no matter how horrific that may be at least I would not have to listen to people who have no clue as to how the US in specific and the world in general actually works.
Exactly when was the right to challenge evidence in a court of law abolished? Or are you just mad that someone with the same mindset as yourself was convicted of a crime? The Patriot Act was first used in court trying to convict a professor at a Southern Florida University for supposedly funding and cheer leading those who were advocating violence similar to 9/11. The judicial slap down is one of the main reasons the US will not prosecute the prisoners in Cuba in the US. The US should just strap parachutes on all those still held at that facility and just air drop them wherever they were first captured and be done with it. That should give you enough information to do your own damn research. In the future I suggest you drop the political blinders and take time to investigate all sides of a conflict before you start carving your stone tablets. And please stop claiming you were ever an insider in the FBI or Secret Service. If you actually had the necessary clearances you would not be announcing that on Slashdot because those level of clearances give you no wiggle room if you divulge classified information. (The Secret Service is especially vigilant about "leaks" and would most likely be at your front door within 15 minutes of posting classified information) The technology in the 90's doesn't even come close to what is available today. I hate to admit it but I actually graduated with a BS in CS, MS in CS, and BS in Mathematics. I actually witnessed first hand the progression of technologies that massively changed social interactions, business interactions, and provided the capabilities to uncover information on individuals or organizations for various purposes. There was no MS, Google, or Internet when I started my career. However when the change came it was so rapid it was almost impossible to become experts on a technology or hardware platform before something new appeared. IT Security was an afterthought at the beginning. I have been in the IT field for over 30 years, the majority of the time spent as a consultant and while I have had varying levels of security clearances I have never been slavishly beholden to a specific company, government, or technology platform for any length of time. So I may be naive about a lot of things in the world but technology and how to exploit that technology is not one of those areas. An the "breadth of the problem" is reinforced daily by excessive use of hyperbole, misguided political propaganda, and well meaning but totally biased technical associations and prominent individuals, and last but not least the millions of idiots who think their life is so important that the government has drones on station 24 hours a day over their house and are collecting every piece of electronic data and communications emanating from them. The US government and all of its various agencies give incompetence, inefficiency, and out right stupidity a whole new Wikipedia entry. All the fuss over SIGINT is so misplaced and irrelevant domestically (at least concerning the governments actors, commercial and criminal actors are quite another matter) I am sure the heads of the FSB and MSS are paralyzed on the floor laughing their assess off over this entire NSA group therapy session It was not an accident that Snowden's travels occurred in 2 countries. His complaints about US security agencies pale in comparison to the Russian agencies and the microphone and location tracker they shoved up his ass as a condition to get a Visa. I exaggerate they most like just put the devices in his food. SIGINT may help get the information needed for a drone strike but unless they start arming the Hellfires with nuclear warheads the problem isn't going away. HUMINT is still the gold standard in espionage circles. So I am not worried about the government conducting surveillance on me. There are only so many hours in the day and concerns about the NSA or CIA don't even make the top 20 things I need to deal with every day. Besides from the day I was born the US government already has my birth certificate, SSN, auto registration
So you don't have any proof but you are wiling to assume the worst and make unsubstantiated claims and group think to justify your political opinions and world view. We have this little thing known as due process where anyone accused of a crime can challenge the evidence and the providence of that evidence against them and you do not have to be rich to challenge the evidence. if you do not challenge the evidence you get what you deserve. In a similar case the Patriot Act has been used twice in court and in both cases the charges were dropped and the judges opinion questioned the constitutionality of the Patriot Act. People continue to bitch and moan about the NSA "secret" data collection programs without ever realizing if they were "actually secret" how the fuck would we be arguing it? All the program acronyms and projects were listed on fucking employment websites along with the skill sets needed for the particular programs. The attempts to capture internet data was not a secret when the defining mass indiscriminate collection of data programs were shit canned because of the costs involved and the lack of usefulness. Of course the documents explaining this were never released because it might have put US actions in a more positive light. Even Snowden and his pet journalists have not released one piece if information that was not already easily discovered by anyone with an IQ over 50. The only thing that has been done is to selectively shape and release information that only supported a certain viewpoint or party line. In this particular case it has been Greenwald's goal to release only the information that supports his crusade against the US while dragging out the release to ensure his name stays in the headlines as long as possible. He is the liberal/progressive version of a Fox News editorial hack. And as vulnerable as your average citizen is concerning their electronic footprint the same risk also applies to the government. No one is safe from having their online activities scrutinized and that also includes the government. And all the clandestine, secretive, and intrusive government related operations are hardly secret seeing as how everyone who has paying the slightest bit of attention knows about them. It's hard to claim someone is hiding something when it is front page news.
No. The rampant misuse of the assets needed for the surveillance state and the misuse of those assets can be laid at the feet of the general public and not the government. For all the complaints leveled at the NSA there has been no proof that they have ever used that information against it's own citizens. Corporations siphon off personal information from the internet and sell it and use it to complement their businesses. (Google targeted searches by user is based on user history and is just one example) All that has been proven about the NSA is that they use their collected data to help fulfill their organizations mandate by using the data for foreign based purposes. They could do a lot of thing with that data but so far that has not been happening.
The US has the 3rd highest corporate tax rate in the world. The first two places being held by the economic powerhouses of Chad and the UAE. And while the US does allow corporations to reduce their tax burden using complex tax statues and even more complex accounting practices the fact is that European companies that move some of their operations to the US stand to significantly increase their bottom line operating in the US. The European tax rates, energy costs, excessive regulations, protectionist mindsets, and extravagant employee benefits make it harder for them to compete internationally. Employee benefits are without a doubt an area where most US companies need to make changes but the European alternatives come very close to creating an expanding public dole that rewards people who contribute little in the overall workforce creating a situation where people are more willing to take government handouts than to enter the workforce. The EU's weak immigration safeguards also exasperates the problem. Quality of life for workers is one thing but rewarding those who would rather subsist on government handouts instead of actually working for a living is not a model for success. The EU's investigations into both MS and Google are nothing more than mafia style shakedowns dressed up as anti-competitive investigations and have very little to do with actually providing local competitors with a leg up. There is currently no European competitor for Google and while Linux is a viable alternative and competitor of MS in some areas there is no other desktop centric OS and application stack vendor that could challenge the MS dominance. If you are going to penalize anti-competitive behavior you should at least make sure there are other competitors to begin with. While most people in the world have major complaints about their government leadership leave it to the Europeans to create a whole new layer of bureaucracy that sits on top of their own national governments and then expect corruption and governmental inefficiency to decrease. An extra level of bureaucracy that is even less accountable to those they oversee than their local governments are. Besides a unified currency and open border policies I don't see one damn thing that the EU has provided. They have no unified defense agreements because they still think the US has their back when the reality is far different. Even their unified currency policies are falling apart because a minority of members dominate the economic policies to the detriment of the small countries.
The US does not have to go after any EU based companies looking to give them a hard time all it has to do is create a more favorable business climate to encourage those companies to move some of their operations to the US. And that has been happening. Lower energy costs, reduced shipping costs, and far less government regulation will produce far better results than trying to shakedown successful companies with deep pockets which is exactly what the EU has been doing. The EU say they want to provide space for competitors but there are really no viable competitors in the areas they control. They should have addressed their concerns when Google and MS were just starting out but the Europeans were a sleep at the wheel when the IT revolution was happening in the US and have been trying to play catch up ever since.
"sociopathy" and/or "psychopathy" I don't see how these descriptors apply to a large company without resorting to making wide generalizations and assumptions based more on hearsay than actual facts. They seem to be attributes of individuals. People who criticize corporations as the root of all evil don't seem to realize that those very same corporations provide a lot of jobs for a lot of people. It would be nice to have those running the corporations to put more effort into adopting policies that support their employees and go the extra mile to ensure competitive salaries, good benefits, and job security even when the business may experience a reduction of profits due to the general economic conditions. Preventing mass layoffs triggered by the stock price dropping a few points would go a long way in a repairing a corporations image.
You can always start a non-profit company to sooth your conscience while satisfying your goals in life but there is nothing wrong about starting a company to make profits. MS, Apple, Google, and a whole bunch of other companies started out with nothing more than a few good ideas that eventually led to profitability. They didn't start off life as "evil" globe spanning billion dollar enterprises capable of throwing their weight and money around to increase their profitability.If you start a business from scratch with one of your goals being to reap monetary rewards from your work at what point do look around and say I have earned enough profits so I need to slow down or even shutdown my operations or someone is going to call me "evil"? If you want to start punishing success and remove the incentives that drive some people a reason to excel in delivering new and better products and services than you better hope the socialist utopian nirvana can deliver on it's promises.
I think a lot of people have forgotten that Stuxnext required someone on the inside who had access to the Iranian centrifuge lab to kick off the party. Cultivating that inside asset was probably harder, and definitely more dangerous, than engineering the virus.
Granted the post was of rambling nature but what factual statements are you contesting? The number of NSA employees? The lack of discussions about the type of IT infrastructure needed to do some of things being attributed to them? Or was bringing up that the NSA has never operated in a vacuum and that any changes in the organizations mandate should not leave the US vulnerable to all the other foreign intelligence agencies operating in the world. Not saying changes are not warranted but those changes should be balanced in such a manner that US security is not jeopardized.