if you know some of it is incorrect, how will you be able to use any of it?
By comparing the information obtained to other information obtained and to known or believed good information. One would investigate the information before acting on it.
Example: Three people all say the a similar thing, then it is highly probable they are all telling the truth. Example: One person says "Person Y, at location A, is in a cell." Then, Y at location A is investigated and observed. Example: Intel says person A maybe a sleeper and B says under interrogation that A is planning an attack.
One major switch is not every backbone and telecom system. It is one switch.
To put your logic in perspective, let us apply it to something else: Because a random sample of apple juice in juice boxes of one company was above the "level of concern" designated by the government, all juice boxes containing apple juice from all companies everywhere must be banned, gathered up and destroyed.
So, what you are proposing is that the US Government has decided to do incredibly intensive monitoring of one particular switch,
yes, especially if that switch is known or believed to have high value data moving across it; and
and no monitoring of any others.
no, they are probably monitoring other switches that are believed to have high value target data moving across them.
What the previous poster (and I) am suggesting is that it is far more likely that they just monitor everything, or at least quite a bit of everything.
4 words: Signal to noise ratio. Monitoring everything would provide too much data to analyze to find what would be of interest. Too much of what is monitored would be noise to effectively find the signal, the information they are wanting.
No, I don't think the NSA has a recording box in every dinky ISP in the country, but it does seem likely that they would monitor significant access points. Why wouldn't they?
Because of the technological effort it would require, especially to filter out the tiny amount if signal from the noise. It would be horribly inefficient. They would be better served to monitor traffic going to and coming from specific high value endpoints. That would cut down on the noise considerably.
But, one would not be stooping "down to the same level as the terrorists" because one would not be committing terrorist acts.
There is a big difference between terrorism and torture. Terrorism is indiscriminate violence on a civilian populace for the sake of instilling fear in the civilian populace. Torture is neither indiscriminate nor inflicted upon the civilian populace to create fear. The goal of terrorism is to create fear in everyone, the goal of torture is to extract information from a specific person.
Our founding fathers were considered terrorists when they created this country.
Please show a historical document of the era of the founding of the United States that labels the founding fathers as terrorists. Please list all the terrorist acts perpetrated by the founding fathers or the revolutionary army.
Then don't make unsubstantiated claims you can't prove, random internet dumbass.
Like you're in jail because they actually have taps in place at all times but you wouldn't believe it because you expected them to document this for you or something funny.
I am not in jail, therefore your statement must be false.
Actually, we could have use a few thousand people like me during the last 15 administrations to ensure respect for the law by both those in and out of the government.
While I am against leaking classified documents, I am also against the classifying of documents merely to allow some politician to save face. And, I also believe that the government, all of it, should respect the law.
You will know the difference when the actions on the intel gathered stops resulting in success.
If you're intelligence gathering is so bad you have to rely on torture, you don't belong in the intelligence business.
Which is why every military in the world has some form of SEER (survive, evade, escape, resist) school to help train soldiers to resist interrogation and torture, right? Again, if torture was of no value at all, then torture would not exist. No one would have used it after it proved worthless.
In order to do as you suggest, we must know the intelligence extracted and the actions taken. We do not have that information therefore we can not answer those questions.
We do know that it was reported in the media that the government has said the Gitmo interrogations have led to the prevention of at least one terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
torture doesn't prevent and hasn't prevented any terrorist attacks since 9/11.
Prove the above with references from reputable, neutral sources.
How about... I'm an American, and terrorism is my birthright?
That is a false statement. Terrorism is not a birthright, whether one is American or not. It is a political tool, an attempt to impose one's belief and/or will on others by use of fear induced by acts of violence.
Torture wouldn't stop me from doing anything, and in fact it would make me more likely to seek revenge in a destructive manner.
Torture may or may not directly stop you, but if an associate of yours who knows of your plans is tortured, there is a good probability he will give you up which would stop you. Then, you will be in custody and possibly subject to torture and not have the ability to "seek revenge in a destructive manner".
in fact, my very criminal record could very likely go towards proving such a thing.
Your criminal record and your statements is why we need a harsher criminal justice system.
Then, torture would never have worked and it would have been discarded shortly after it was first used. But, that is not the case.
A more realistic statement is that people will tell everything they know to prevent $BAD_THING from happening, and once they run out of the truth, they will start making things up.
Good to know that you would sacrifice the lives of thousands of people to relieve the discomfort of one. I sincerely hope all your family and friends die in terrorist attacks that could have been prevented.
1) Irrelevant 2) As we don't know the information extracted, we can not answer that question 3) Unknown because of the above 4) What makes you think the person tortured won't start with the truth and progress to fiction once his store of knowledge runs out?
Nonsense. A statement was made "Sometimes secrets are useful. Given all the money I pay in taxes I would hope my government is at least making plans to keep some of those secrets secret." A question was posed "Would you prefer that the torture at Guantanamo had been kept secret?" which is a fallacy by misleading vividness and a hasty generalization. I responded with a similar, yet opposite question. "Would you prefer another major terrorist attack that kills thousands of people?" He then responded with an unsubstantiated claim, to which I asked for proof.
Newsflash: torture doesn't prevent and hasn't prevented any terrorist attacks since 9/11.
Prove the above with references from reputable, neutral sources.
Moreover, torture only weakens image of USA in the world, probably provoking MORE attacks.
Moreover, terrorist attacks and public torture executions only weakens the image of Al Qeda and the other terrorist organization in the world, probably provoking MORE attacks.
The US government has taps on all internet backbones. Even if you go through a proxy, they will be able to identify your IP address if you access such information.
Prove the above with references to reputable sources.
In order for your argument to be valid, there can be no publicly available unclassified government documents. Your argument is demonstrably false because there are many publicly available unclassified government documents, some of which are damaging to the government.
Wikileaks is also a criminal enterprise for distributing, encouraging the distribution of, and conspiring to distribute classified documents.
Anyone in the United States who works for or supports Wikileaks is guilty of a federal offense, just like the leakers, and if convicted, eligible to be sentenced to upto 10 years in federal prison.
What makes you think that corporate programmers are necessarily going to do drudge work better than volunteers?
Judging from the quality of 99% of the FLOSS software out there, I would say that primary difference is that corporate programmers actually do the drudge work whereas the volunteers don't. Or, more specifically, no one volunteers for the drudge work so it doesn't get done.
Slashdot Mirror
By comparing the information obtained to other information obtained and to known or believed good information. One would investigate the information before acting on it.
Example: Three people all say the a similar thing, then it is highly probable they are all telling the truth.
Example: One person says "Person Y, at location A, is in a cell." Then, Y at location A is investigated and observed.
Example: Intel says person A maybe a sleeper and B says under interrogation that A is planning an attack.
One major switch is not every backbone and telecom system. It is one switch.
To put your logic in perspective, let us apply it to something else: Because a random sample of apple juice in juice boxes of one company was above the "level of concern" designated by the government, all juice boxes containing apple juice from all companies everywhere must be banned, gathered up and destroyed.
yes, especially if that switch is known or believed to have high value data moving across it; and
no, they are probably monitoring other switches that are believed to have high value target data moving across them.
4 words: Signal to noise ratio. Monitoring everything would provide too much data to analyze to find what would be of interest. Too much of what is monitored would be noise to effectively find the signal, the information they are wanting.
Because of the technological effort it would require, especially to filter out the tiny amount if signal from the noise. It would be horribly inefficient. They would be better served to monitor traffic going to and coming from specific high value endpoints. That would cut down on the noise considerably.
But, one would not be stooping "down to the same level as the terrorists" because one would not be committing terrorist acts.
There is a big difference between terrorism and torture. Terrorism is indiscriminate violence on a civilian populace for the sake of instilling fear in the civilian populace. Torture is neither indiscriminate nor inflicted upon the civilian populace to create fear. The goal of terrorism is to create fear in everyone, the goal of torture is to extract information from a specific person.
Please show a historical document of the era of the founding of the United States that labels the founding fathers as terrorists. Please list all the terrorist acts perpetrated by the founding fathers or the revolutionary army.
Then don't make unsubstantiated claims you can't prove, random internet dumbass.
I am not in jail, therefore your statement must be false.
Actually, we could have use a few thousand people like me during the last 15 administrations to ensure respect for the law by both those in and out of the government.
While I am against leaking classified documents, I am also against the classifying of documents merely to allow some politician to save face. And, I also believe that the government, all of it, should respect the law.
I suggest you learn what the Geneva Convention is and what it says before you make statements.
And, if you and many other Americans feel that way, then convince your elected leaders to do that. Democracy and all that, remember?
You will know the difference when the actions on the intel gathered stops resulting in success.
Which is why every military in the world has some form of SEER (survive, evade, escape, resist) school to help train soldiers to resist interrogation and torture, right? Again, if torture was of no value at all, then torture would not exist. No one would have used it after it proved worthless.
In order to do as you suggest, we must know the intelligence extracted and the actions taken. We do not have that information therefore we can not answer those questions.
We do know that it was reported in the media that the government has said the Gitmo interrogations have led to the prevention of at least one terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
No, it can not, no more than it can safely be assumed that aliens exist because of a mysterious crash in the desert many years ago.
That simple statement has just invalidated the rest of your post.
That is a false statement. Terrorism is not a birthright, whether one is American or not. It is a political tool, an attempt to impose one's belief and/or will on others by use of fear induced by acts of violence.
Torture may or may not directly stop you, but if an associate of yours who knows of your plans is tortured, there is a good probability he will give you up which would stop you. Then, you will be in custody and possibly subject to torture and not have the ability to "seek revenge in a destructive manner".
Your criminal record and your statements is why we need a harsher criminal justice system.
Then, torture would never have worked and it would have been discarded shortly after it was first used. But, that is not the case.
A more realistic statement is that people will tell everything they know to prevent $BAD_THING from happening, and once they run out of the truth, they will start making things up.
Good to know that you would sacrifice the lives of thousands of people to relieve the discomfort of one. I sincerely hope all your family and friends die in terrorist attacks that could have been prevented.
1) Irrelevant
2) As we don't know the information extracted, we can not answer that question
3) Unknown because of the above
4) What makes you think the person tortured won't start with the truth and progress to fiction once his store of knowledge runs out?
Nonsense.
A statement was made "Sometimes secrets are useful. Given all the money I pay in taxes I would hope my government is at least making plans to keep some of those secrets secret."
A question was posed "Would you prefer that the torture at Guantanamo had been kept secret?" which is a fallacy by misleading vividness and a hasty generalization.
I responded with a similar, yet opposite question. "Would you prefer another major terrorist attack that kills thousands of people?"
He then responded with an unsubstantiated claim, to which I asked for proof.
Please keep up or shut up.
There were attacks during a Democratic administration (Clinton, the first WTC bombing, the U.S.S Cole, etc).
Ergo, Democrats cause terrorist attacks.
Prove that 100% of information gained through torture can not be relied upon.
Newsflash: There hasn't been a successful terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11, after which terrorists were captured and tortured for information.
Prove the above with references from reputable, neutral sources.
Moreover, terrorist attacks and public torture executions only weakens the image of Al Qeda and the other terrorist organization in the world, probably provoking MORE attacks.
Prove the above with references to reputable sources.
Would you prefer another major terrorist attack that kills thousands of people?
In order for your argument to be valid, there can be no publicly available unclassified government documents. Your argument is demonstrably false because there are many publicly available unclassified government documents, some of which are damaging to the government.
Wikileaks is also a criminal enterprise for distributing, encouraging the distribution of, and conspiring to distribute classified documents.
Anyone in the United States who works for or supports Wikileaks is guilty of a federal offense, just like the leakers, and if convicted, eligible to be sentenced to upto 10 years in federal prison.
Contractors are not volunteers
What makes you think that corporate programmers are necessarily going to do drudge work better than volunteers?
Judging from the quality of 99% of the FLOSS software out there, I would say that primary difference is that corporate programmers actually do the drudge work whereas the volunteers don't. Or, more specifically, no one volunteers for the drudge work so it doesn't get done.