If they were really into that, they could as well open the numerous Netflix envelopes passing through them, rip copies, and put them back. Heck, for all we know, they may already be doing it — stealing Social Security checks and gift-cards has already been done by some enterprising USPS workers.
Yes, I suppose, you'll need to buy the equipment. The burner — even a good one — is still cheaper, than monthly maintenance and fuel of one USPS truck...
If the USPS were really smart, they could've offered the overnight delivery for an even lower price by taking the media from the sender, ripping it, transmitting the data to the recipient's local office, and making a new disk over there to deliver...
Ah yes, the less-than-human narrative. We also justified slavery on the grounds that black people we're [sic] fully human, too.
Slaves were human. Fetuses are not. I fail to see the connection, frankly. An argument (or "narrative") may be invalid in one case, but valid in another. You need to work better on your argument — but this is not a thread for it.
WHAT? What wealth are you referring to? The imaginary numbers someone plugs into a spread sheet to say we are worth a gigabazillion dollars? Wealth is in infrastructure, manufacturing capacity, ingenuity, and other "goods" like natural resources and agriculture. With the exception of farming, the US is at an all time low for every other item on that list.
Actually, no, we are quite high on exactly that list. Not as high as we could've been, if we stuck to a more pure Capitalism of the past, but very high anyway.
That said, the USA has a pretty hefty death toll on it's hands. Between Iraq and Afghanistan it's nearly 2 million.
No, it is not 2 million. It is not even 1 million.
But whatever the number, only a dozen or two of those were Americans. And that's, what I was talking about — citizens killed by their own government on bogus pretexts (such as being a "counter-revolutionary" in USSR, or a Jew in Germany).
A difference between 10 million (a conservative estimate of Soviet citizens killed by the Stalin's government in addition to the war dead) and "a couple" is so vast, it becomes qualitative, rather than merely quantitative.
Or do all the people killed by the various "conflicts" the US has gotten into in the past few years not count as people?
They don't count as Americans killed by the US-government itself. No, they do not. Stalin and Hitler had plenty of military adventures too — I was not complaining about the dead soldiers.
What about all the people killed by dictators propped up by the CIA to give them better business relations (read: exploitation) with a region?
Those people weren't Americans. In addition to the numerous foreigners, both Stalin and Hitler killed millions of their own ("counter-revolutionaries" and "untermensch" respectively). And that's the one difference. And the other, of course, is the sheer scale — nothing, that the US has done would amount to millions of people.
History would lead me to believe that mismanagement tends toward the "common" level if left to manage itself.
It would take several generations of severe mismanagement to "eat through" the wealth we have now. To destroy it as quickly as you seem to suggest we are doing, we would need a serious Civil War. Or, indeed, a truly large-scale foreign war. Neither is, fortunately, likely in the next 10-20 years to be sure.
So, as I was saying, neither has the US regime killed millions of its own, nor are the remaining citizens living in anything resembling poverty. We are far away from Stalin, Mao, and Hitler, and your argument would've been better made, had you not overreached with this kind of comparison.
Check, no world war level death toll but it's not exactly non-existent either.
No. No check. I was talking about millions killed by the regime itself — not by foreign enemies.
Checked your deficit lately?
The deficit is horrendous, but our existing wealth is staggering. It would require a civil war to destroy that wealth — an occasional mismanagement, however gross, by a nice-looking demagogue is not going to be enough to really cripple the country...
The USA has become everything we used to despise in Stalin, Mao, and Hitler
Mmm... Everything? Aren't you forgetting the two particularly despicable attributes of those regimes:
millions of dead
economic misery for the survivors
And, no, being unable to afford a new TV or a car, or even having to supplement income with food stamps does not compare to the actual economic misery that accompanied those Socialist regimes.
Surveillance sucks, but we are far from Stalin, Mao, and Hitler... Very, very far.
Neither of those give the police unlimited ability to impersonate me.
Once your phone lines are tapped, they can — technically — respond in your name to callers and even originate new calls. Faking your voice may have been problem before, but I'm quite certain, NSA have solved this particular limitation long ago.
Police have lied to suspects — and witnesses — including impersonations for decades and centuries. It is not illegal for them to do so.
Modern technology is different and, of course, the law enforcement adapts. Though I remain deeply suspicious of them, I don't see anything scandalously illegal still. Compared to this potential abuse, the actual abuse of power by the current Administration is far more troubling.
How is this different from perlustration of regular mail and bugging the phone wires? I did not like those either, but I don't see this new development as particularly illegal...
Why do you want a government unrestrained by the law?
I do not. I'm just pointing out, things aren't as clear-cut as some claim. For example, if there were fewer roadblocks between FBI and CIA communicating back in the day, the 9/11 attack could, very likely, have been prevented. And then we, likely, would've never seen the Patriot Act appear on the books — for just one example...
Neither you nor me know, how many attacks were successfully prevented. The number may be zero, as you imply, or it may be once-per-week — we just don't know.
Seriously, all NZ has to do is point a few of those major headlines out, and say "No thank you USA. We would be happy to assist you, LEGALLY, in any LEGAL investigation you may have, but the requests you send us must obey OUR soveriegn rights and laws.
Yes, and the US could say in return: "Ok, guys, you follow your laws to your hearts' content. But if we pick up evidence of somebody planning to release VX in Invercargill Art Gallery tomorrow, we will only inform you of it, if we obtained that information legally. And we'll use Royal Mail to deliver the notice to you — just in case."
For better or worse, governments are judged by their results, not means. I don't like it — it lets the Executive get away with too much, but that's a fact of life — the Boston Marathon bombing, likely, did more damage to Obama's Administration (despite the press' sympathies lying solidly with the Nobel Peace Prize winner), than NSA snooping on suspected terrorists damaged to Bush's Administration (despite the press being duly suspicious of government at the time). It is not limitless — NSA snooping on all of us is more damaging still, but the public can be quite forgiving of the means — as long as there are results.
heatedly whispering among themselves asking each other how they can break the law!
I'm not a cop and generally don't like them, but I do understand, how infuriating and frustrating it must feel to see a rapist or murderer walk free, because the arresting officer fumbled his Miranda-rights or some such. Don't you? Or when, indeed, some vital information passed by a friendly country can not be acted upon, because it did not arrive by "legal" channels...
And lose the cooperating of their American counterparts? There is very little difference between NZ, Australia, Spain, or United States in the jihaddists' eyes. If a particular target is not as well-defended, they'll strike there, whether it is in the Western, Easter, Northern or Southern part of the world.
Complaining about the potential abuse of a government's surveillance power is all well and good, but their actual results may well be quite good — they just wouldn't tell us so as not tell the enemy of how to evade future detection.
Now I personally am not at all sure, the potential abuse is a fair price to pay for the actual prevention — maybe, just maybe, loosing a few hundred of fellow citizens per year is better for the rest of the country, than giving the Executive branch the power to suppress opposition. Oh, wait...
How about reliable DNS? That, if it were in place from the beginning, would've prevented an entire family of attacks...
We can argue about could-should-woulda, but my main point remains — snooping by the American government is hardly the only danger to today's Internet-users and reducing the other threats would've been good, even if this one remained...
The internet-connected computers don't use encryption in this scenario though.
I'm not sure, the "scenario" is sufficiently well-defined in this conversation to make too many conclusions. I was simply responding to an assertion, that, due to an ISP-government collusion, there is no point in ISP-based security. My response was, that there are many other dangers on the Internet — besides government's snooping. And that while government's is a potential threat, certain other threats have already caused millions (billions?) of dollars worth of damage.
And that making of excuses, rather than a simple Google search
Sure. A Google search for that string will bring something up. If you accept that as evidence, then you can "prove" anything — as well as its opposite. Dzhohar Tsarnaev was framed. Moon-landing was a fake. No. You have to present links to credible sites (World Socialists do not qualify), that lists particular aspects of the trial that make it unfair. Simply throwing around claims is not enough.
Why was Bush's killing of Zarqawi acceptable given that the fucking bombs were guided in using laser painters from ground based troops?
As we all learned from "Battle L.A.", laser-painting can be done by even one trained troop. A small, well concealed team, will certainly manage. A much larger team would be needed to take the target alive — bodyguards and all — and that is not always available.
You still can't explain any difference between the Obama and Bush programme because there isn't one.
There is not one, heh? Coming from you, I suppose, that's an awfully large concession already... I'm glad we had this talk.
There could have been a Black person on the jury, but the prosecutors rejected him/her — for, get this, admitting to have watched FoxNews.
As for Zimmerman's "racism", well, the following bit was published a year ago — certainly time enough for everyone to have caught-up by now:
After interviewing nearly three dozen people in the George Zimmerman murder case, the FBI found no evidence that racial bias was a motivating factor in the shooting of Trayvon Martin, records released Thursday [July 12, 2012 -mi] show.
That would depend on the implementation, and on what exactly is routinely encryption-protected — and how. For example, if the DNS was secure from the beginning, a large number of actual high-profile attacks would not have been possible.
Slashdot Mirror
If they were really into that, they could as well open the numerous Netflix envelopes passing through them, rip copies, and put them back. Heck, for all we know, they may already be doing it — stealing Social Security checks and gift-cards has already been done by some enterprising USPS workers.
Yes, I suppose, you'll need to buy the equipment. The burner — even a good one — is still cheaper, than monthly maintenance and fuel of one USPS truck...
If the USPS were really smart, they could've offered the overnight delivery for an even lower price by taking the media from the sender, ripping it, transmitting the data to the recipient's local office, and making a new disk over there to deliver...
Slaves were human. Fetuses are not. I fail to see the connection, frankly. An argument (or "narrative") may be invalid in one case, but valid in another. You need to work better on your argument — but this is not a thread for it.
Actually, no, we are quite high on exactly that list. Not as high as we could've been, if we stuck to a more pure Capitalism of the past, but very high anyway.
No, it is not 2 million. It is not even 1 million.
But whatever the number, only a dozen or two of those were Americans. And that's, what I was talking about — citizens killed by their own government on bogus pretexts (such as being a "counter-revolutionary" in USSR, or a Jew in Germany).
A difference between 10 million (a conservative estimate of Soviet citizens killed by the Stalin's government in addition to the war dead) and "a couple" is so vast, it becomes qualitative, rather than merely quantitative.
Abortion kills a fetus, which is not (yet) a human being. It may or may not be deplorable anyway, but it is not murder.
And recession is merely a slow-down in growth. We are still getting richer as a nation, even if not as fast as a more Capitalist system used to allow.
They don't count as Americans killed by the US-government itself. No, they do not. Stalin and Hitler had plenty of military adventures too — I was not complaining about the dead soldiers.
Those people weren't Americans. In addition to the numerous foreigners, both Stalin and Hitler killed millions of their own ("counter-revolutionaries" and "untermensch" respectively). And that's the one difference. And the other, of course, is the sheer scale — nothing, that the US has done would amount to millions of people.
It would take several generations of severe mismanagement to "eat through" the wealth we have now. To destroy it as quickly as you seem to suggest we are doing, we would need a serious Civil War. Or, indeed, a truly large-scale foreign war. Neither is, fortunately, likely in the next 10-20 years to be sure.
So, as I was saying, neither has the US regime killed millions of its own, nor are the remaining citizens living in anything resembling poverty. We are far away from Stalin, Mao, and Hitler, and your argument would've been better made, had you not overreached with this kind of comparison.
No. No check. I was talking about millions killed by the regime itself — not by foreign enemies.
The deficit is horrendous, but our existing wealth is staggering. It would require a civil war to destroy that wealth — an occasional mismanagement, however gross, by a nice-looking demagogue is not going to be enough to really cripple the country...
Mmm... Everything? Aren't you forgetting the two particularly despicable attributes of those regimes:
And, no, being unable to afford a new TV or a car, or even having to supplement income with food stamps does not compare to the actual economic misery that accompanied those Socialist regimes.
Surveillance sucks, but we are far from Stalin, Mao, and Hitler... Very, very far.
Once your phone lines are tapped, they can — technically — respond in your name to callers and even originate new calls. Faking your voice may have been problem before, but I'm quite certain, NSA have solved this particular limitation long ago.
Police have lied to suspects — and witnesses — including impersonations for decades and centuries. It is not illegal for them to do so.
Modern technology is different and, of course, the law enforcement adapts. Though I remain deeply suspicious of them, I don't see anything scandalously illegal still. Compared to this potential abuse, the actual abuse of power by the current Administration is far more troubling.
How is this different from perlustration of regular mail and bugging the phone wires? I did not like those either, but I don't see this new development as particularly illegal...
Those who ‘abjure’ violence can only do so because robots are committing violence on their behalf. -- George Orwell, "Notes on Nationalism"
I do not. I'm just pointing out, things aren't as clear-cut as some claim. For example, if there were fewer roadblocks between FBI and CIA communicating back in the day, the 9/11 attack could, very likely, have been prevented. And then we, likely, would've never seen the Patriot Act appear on the books — for just one example...
So, what were you trying to say, again?
It does not matter, when it is reported. What makes it a potential abuse of power is that — unlike, for example, the IRS' power to grant or deny tax-exempt status, or the Labor Department's power to conduct audits — it has not been abused yet.
Yes, and the US could say in return: "Ok, guys, you follow your laws to your hearts' content. But if we pick up evidence of somebody planning to release VX in Invercargill Art Gallery tomorrow, we will only inform you of it, if we obtained that information legally. And we'll use Royal Mail to deliver the notice to you — just in case."
For better or worse, governments are judged by their results, not means. I don't like it — it lets the Executive get away with too much, but that's a fact of life — the Boston Marathon bombing, likely, did more damage to Obama's Administration (despite the press' sympathies lying solidly with the Nobel Peace Prize winner), than NSA snooping on suspected terrorists damaged to Bush's Administration (despite the press being duly suspicious of government at the time). It is not limitless — NSA snooping on all of us is more damaging still, but the public can be quite forgiving of the means — as long as there are results.
I'm not a cop and generally don't like them, but I do understand, how infuriating and frustrating it must feel to see a rapist or murderer walk free, because the arresting officer fumbled his Miranda-rights or some such. Don't you? Or when, indeed, some vital information passed by a friendly country can not be acted upon, because it did not arrive by "legal" channels...
Complaining about the potential abuse of a government's surveillance power is all well and good, but their actual results may well be quite good — they just wouldn't tell us so as not tell the enemy of how to evade future detection.
Now I personally am not at all sure, the potential abuse is a fair price to pay for the actual prevention — maybe, just maybe, loosing a few hundred of fellow citizens per year is better for the rest of the country, than giving the Executive branch the power to suppress opposition. Oh, wait...
Well, maybe, somebody is finally going broke underestimating the taste of the American public?
We can argue about could-should-woulda, but my main point remains — snooping by the American government is hardly the only danger to today's Internet-users and reducing the other threats would've been good, even if this one remained...
I'm not sure, the "scenario" is sufficiently well-defined in this conversation to make too many conclusions. I was simply responding to an assertion, that, due to an ISP-government collusion, there is no point in ISP-based security. My response was, that there are many other dangers on the Internet — besides government's snooping. And that while government's is a potential threat, certain other threats have already caused millions (billions?) of dollars worth of damage.
By making it harder to take over laypeople's Internet-connected computers — to use them as spam-relayes and to steal electronic documents from them.
Sure. A Google search for that string will bring something up. If you accept that as evidence, then you can "prove" anything — as well as its opposite. Dzhohar Tsarnaev was framed. Moon-landing was a fake. No. You have to present links to credible sites (World Socialists do not qualify), that lists particular aspects of the trial that make it unfair. Simply throwing around claims is not enough.
As we all learned from "Battle L.A.", laser-painting can be done by even one trained troop. A small, well concealed team, will certainly manage. A much larger team would be needed to take the target alive — bodyguards and all — and that is not always available.
There is not one, heh? Coming from you, I suppose, that's an awfully large concession already... I'm glad we had this talk.
As for Zimmerman's "racism", well, the following bit was published a year ago — certainly time enough for everyone to have caught-up by now:
That would depend on the implementation, and on what exactly is routinely encryption-protected — and how. For example, if the DNS was secure from the beginning, a large number of actual high-profile attacks would not have been possible.