One of the rules for thinking for yourself while not being a lemming are #2: realize that a man's hatred or love of a group of people has nothing to do with the factual truth of what is being said. #1 is to let racism or ethnocentrism be HIS problem and stop anointing yourself the arbiter of all that is righteous.
That's cute and all, except European antisemitism is as endemic and as ingrained in their culture as racism is in America. It's a cultural no-no, but it's often still the guttural reaction of choice. And criticizing Israel is the natural outlet for this reaction. That is not to say that Israel doesn't have problems of its own that are worth criticism, but it certainly doesn't deserve all the shit it gets.
Nonsense. Criticism of Israel is not evidence of anti-semitism--period. If somebody criticizes Israel by saying "all Jews should drop dead" that's not "criticizing Israel," that's racism. A reasoned set of criticisms not based on the race or religion of Israelis (i.e. you can safely ignore as racism anything that attempts to use the word "Jew" as a pejorative,) is not "anti-semitism."
I didn't imply any such thing in my OP, you inferred the lot of it.
One of those rules for criticizing Israel while not seeming like an anti-Semitic cock...
There is only one rule for that; preface every criticism of Israel with the following:
"Don't get me wrong, I love Jon Stewart, but..."
For example:
Don't get me wrong, I love Jon Stewart, bit it seems to me the Israeli government uses Judaism as a weapon against their detractors, since nobody can say anything about Israel's bad behavior without being accused of anti-semitism.
This times a million: Distract from the actual legitimate criticism of the NSA (that it would have been better used to track down wall street swine who committing multiple felonies and should have been liable for thousands of years of prison time) by accusing the speaker of an invented anti-semitism.
One of those rules for criticizing Israel while not seeming like an anti-Semitic cock is #2: not to relate your statement to a conspiracy by banks(because stereotypes).
#1 is not to deny the holocaust, but you didn't do that, so congratulations.
One of the rules for not being a sheep is not to let other people's prejudices get in the way of legitimate criticisms of Israel, Wall Street, or anybody else. The perception, that i was connecting the two, is a result of your prejudice, not mine. I made a suggestion for a better use of such spying authority--i.e. point it at actual criminals, not private citizens. You made the leap to some sort of "conspiracy" of Wall Street and Israel.
So take yourself to task for being an anti-semite.
We KNOW all about the intercepts now, why is it a headline everytime The Guardian throws-out a new "discovery"?
Correction... WE know all about the intercepts now. But the mass audience the Guardian wants to reach isn't as well informed. Also, they appear to be attempting to leverage pressure from both internal targets of the NSA (i.e. citizens of the United States) and inappropriate external ones to exert more pressure on the government to do the right thing.
I mean, they paid on the "One day I will call upon you to do a service for me" variety plan, but here we are.
It's too bad that system wasn't trained on the charlatans on Wall Street so their crimes could have been accounted for and punished. You know these guys are stupid enough to brag on the phone and via email about their crimes... All the hysterical email leaks from the last crisis prove that out pretty handily. These guys are so arrogant they think themselves "above the law" because they "figured it out."
I have to ask: How'd you handle the bleakness of actually being in Fort Wayne? There are as many strip clubs as there are Starbucks. Which brings the "talent" in those strip clubs down to the appearance level of your average 40+ Starbucks barista.
The fact that we don't know just makes it worse. We have to assume that the entire US and everything in it is compromised.
For the moment, I'd say that is a wise assumption. If I were a non-US corporation or person I'd be assuming the exact same thing. Until there is a full, detailed accounting--of the uncomfortable "truth commission" variety--all but the staunchest pro-authoritarian Americans will believe it anyway, so there's no sense delaying what absolutely has to happen.
It may yet be that the capitalist interests that the NSA are damaging might in the long-run have to expend considerable lobbying dollars to reverse some of this perception by drastically reining in the NSA. Or we can write-off a good chunk of the money we'd have otherwise made by innovating online.
I'm glad that someone is attempting to quantify this. As someone who works in sales for hosted services, I saw this trend emerge virtually overnight with the Snowden leaks - the complete erosion of trust for any service hosted in the U.S., even if the actual, measurable impact to date any of my customers of being spied upon is exactly nil.
Now if only someone would compare the impact to the NSA's operating budget and draw some lines, things might get better. I've been called an optimist before, however.
"Actual" and "measurable" are two different things. The simple truth is we don't really know the extent of what the NSA is up to or whom they're sharing this data with. Already there have been calls for this treasure trove of private information to be "shared" with private companies so they can "help out" in the fight against terrorism. And the fact that these organizations have the guts to publicly lobby for such access says to me that likely somebody somewhere in private industry already has access to some or all of it through "connections" and now wants this sharing legalized so their access to that knowledge can be leveraged for greater financial gain out in the open, in front of stockholders.
Hes doing his job, whether you like it or not. Dont blame the police for laws you dont like.
No, he's not.
A police officer is expected to exercise sound judgement and reasonable discretion in the course of his duties. They are taught, explicitly, to deescalate situations, to utilize the minimum amount of authority and force required to maintain the peace and keep (in this case,) the roadways safe.
Perhaps the law was written with a "cop loophole" that allows them to nail you for doing something that is not dangerous and in no way inhibits safe operation of the driver's vehicle, or of any other vehicle (operating your phone at a stop light while your car isn't moving) but that does not mean the officer is required to vigorously enforce this asinine law. If I was this guy's C.O. I'd be up his ass for wasting so much of his time on such a meaningless offense.
What they are not paid to do is hound the general public over trivial, non-dangerous activities, such as this. What they are not paid to do is occupy themselves with "gimmes" while dangerous drivers are simply left to drive on by. Seriously, this guy must just stand on the side of the road flag cars down all day to have written that many.
I'm sure the family and loved-ones of a driver killed by a drunk (that this guy should have been out apprehending) will take great comfort in knowing this jackass was busy gold-bricking on "texting at a stoplight" patrol. That seems like a totally rational use of police resources and not at all an example of a government employee finding a way to get paid for focusing on some minute aspect of his job to the total exclusion of the actual work he was hired to accomplish.
I can say it faster.... Two words, in fact. Three if you count contractions two (one for each root word.)
They're delusional.
It's about propping up their ridiculous belief system in the face of all logic and sanity. It's about a fascist desire to enforce their moral and world view on everyone. Only the most arrogant, deluded fool would truly believe that "without christian god we wouldn't know murder is wrong!" Get real. Christianity has only existed for a couple thousand years but human beings have shunned and punished murderers since we've been living in caves.
The real problem is that Texas already has among the shittiest education systems in America, and as a result, their people are mostly uneducated, misinformed hilljacks that would be in the same straits as Mississippi if they didn't have oil wealth. They're just too collectively-stupid to succeed without the huge leg-up that those oil revenues provide them.
Actually, the TSA is quite allowed to "keep records of you." That's how their "speedy security bypass" for elite travelers that can't be bothered with the same checks the hoi polloi must endure.
Which is a voluntary program. People have chosen to provide their data to TSA in exchange for elimination of some of the security theater. They've balanced the costs and benefits and come to the conclusion that they want to avoid -- the same security theater that you are condemning. You don't don't want to go through it, so why should they want to?
Let's be clear: I don't want anyone to endure this nonsense. I was merely pointing out that the TSA is not, in any way, forbidden from "gathering data" about you.
In fact, as somebody else in this thread pointed out, the TSA receives a dump of the names, addresses, phone numbers, shoe sizes, and many other bits of detailed personal information for each and every traveler. The TSA isn't just "allowed" to gather information about travelers, it does so routinely and abuses it--relentlessly.
But the TSA has to treat me like a terrorist, because they're not allowed to keep a record of me.
Actually, the TSA is quite allowed to "keep records of you." That's how their "speedy security bypass" for elite travelers that can't be bothered with the same checks the hoi polloi must endure.
What TSA is not allowed to do is dip into the vast treasure trove of data the government has been gathering about all of us, illegally and unconstitutionally, since 9/11.
I've seen no arguments that demonstrates we 1) Can't live without the "Security" theatre procedures being used on travelers at our airports and 2) That any amount of privacy invasion of law-abiding citizens will produce "more security."
If you look at the people TSA has "caught" with their "procedures," none of them (Not a single one) has been a terrorist. There have been plenty of currency smugglers, drug smugglers, and dissidents captured, and their electronic devices subjected to search, but exactly ZERO terrorists have been caught at TSA. Which sort of pokes a hole in the whole "necessary to keep us safe" argument for TSA...
"let's write ourselves an exemption, but slam the door on anyone coming after us"
That's how most lobbying works, in a nutshell. Very few lobbyists are working towards "a good compromise that satisfies everyone"--they're playing for-keeps. It's what makes their lavish salaries so worth paying... You know, if you're the sort of scum that wants to rule the world.
Nor is it aggression to follow them on public streets to watch them.
Zimmerman did more than "watch." First he followed the kid in his car while cursing into his phone, so even if Martin can't hear what he's saying (or, especially if he can't hear Zimmerman is saying) he can see the guys facial expressions. An angry man looks like angry man. And he's following him... Then when the kid obviously didn't want to be anywhere near this creepy murderer anymore and changed course to walk on a foot path where Zimmerman's car couldn't follow, the creepy murderer followed him on foot!
The words you're looking for are "stalking" and "harassment." Both are illegal in all 50 states. It is harassment, at a minimum, to chase this kid through the neighborhood for no earthly reason other than he "looked-like" the profile Zimmerman had cooked up in his head for the "bad guys" who'd been breaking into homes in his neighborhood. Terrorizing Martin, chasing him, leaves open the possibility (vocalized by a prosecution witness) that Martin was in fear of his life while Zimmerman was following him.
A good dividing line between "legally observing somebody from a distance" and "pursuing and confronting" one of your neighbors kids might be "when you're making somebody so uncomfortable with your 'observation' that they run away from you, you're harassing them.
This new invention has already been pre-exploited under contract for the NSA, so any encryption derived from these techniques will still be breakable by them.
Please cite where I showed a lack of foresight? I thought the fact that I pointed out that they weren't remotely concerned about this issue when passing the law should be enough to indicate that I understood the issue, but perhaps I should have inserted 64-point sarcasm tags.
Ms Cooper said the situation must be "investigated and clarified urgently", adding: "The public support for these powers must not be endangered by a perception of misuse."
So, it's the public perception that's an issue here, not the misuse of powers. Interesting Ms Cooper, interesting. Do you have anything else to add?
This is how most politicians operate: It isn't a problem that they're nakedly abusing their power and violating the civil rights of all, so long as they aren't perceived to be abusing their power and violating the civil rights of all.
one of the MPs involved in passing the anti-terrorism legislation used for the detention has said: 'those of us who were part of passing this legislation certainly would not have expected it to be used in a case of this kind.'"
Of course you weren't: In fact, you weren't thinking about the potential for abuse at all when you passed this bill because even though you were warned by civil libertarians before the passage of the bill that such abuse was not only likely but inevitable, you were more afraid of the quivering masses of voters you believed would spend the next decade hiding under their sofas waiting for the end of the world to worry about such pleasantries. "This is war!" you told us, at the time.
Choke, now, on your own lack of foresight.
When the human race eventually gets around to causing its own extinction it will undoubtedly be caused by a total lack of foresight.
When we the public get that level of privacy then we will talk about companies, not before.
Your point is reasonable but irrelevant: This is a discussion of the cloud, not of individual liberties. I totally agree: Your 4th amendment protections shouldn't end once you save your data in the cloud. But it's a separate issue--the question was to the viability of the cloud, and that means business records have to be "safe" from seizure when they're stored in the cloud, otherwise the cloud is doomed. Sorry if I didn't genuflect hard-enough in the direction of the individual, but individuals cloud data is worth somewhere between "jack-shit" and "nothing." Business data, on the other hand, could be auctioned off for millions or even hundreds of millions by an unscrupulous NSA operative.
The US has hundreds of years of outdated infrastructure over a large area to deal with on its own so updating is going to be expensive and time consuming.
...And the reason we have 150 years of outdated infrastructure is that the argument that it "costs too much" to upgrade, replace or repair has won the day for much of the last 50 years.
"It's too expensive!" howls the conservative when asked to replace an aging bridge. And then when that bridge collapses and dumps a dozen tax payers and their vehicles in the river, the conservative howls "Government incompetence stikes again!"
I hope you're right, but often times it's not the technology, best practice, or even what's best for the company that wins; it's how do we grow so our institutional investors who own most of our stock stay happy with us. In the past year I've had several customers, none of them small, ping me about this. If they are asking us about it, it's on their minds. Like I said though, I think this is all a few decades out. The industry is really just starting to get it's bearings and there are still a number of technological challenges to overcome first.
While I agree there are some interesting (and some quite sexy) problems to be solved technically in the cloud arena, I believe it is shortsighted to assume this is all that has to change. In my opinion, most of the remaining obstacles are structural and/or systematic, and some of them are going to be quite expensive and possibly politically impossible to change.
The biggest non-technical hurdles for the cloud to conquer in the United States, as I see it, are:
1) Regulatory: As in somebody better rein-in the NSA or we can pretty much kiss this golden-goose good-bye. Also, we need to update our laws and property rights so that companies don't simply forfeit all 4th amendment protections because their data is on somebody else's hardware in somebody else's data center. Yes, I realize that should already be the case, but as a practical matter it isn't. We need to reform that or you can forget it.
2) Public Infrastructure: Ours is shite. Korea, a country that 50 years ago had people living in fucking grass huts (and in some rural areas, still does,) has better internet performance than we do. That's both pathetic and a show-stopper for a truly transformative cloud experience. If you move it all "to the cloud!" and then have to spend $10k/month on multiple gigabit Internet pipes and the associated services (think anti-DDoS) to make it work you might not have really saved any money... And you can't skimp on those Anti-DDoS services once everything is in the cloud, because a disruption there basically idles your entire enterprise. Before, a successful DDoS had little hope of disrupting anything but your external network, leaving your worker bees happily buzzing around. But once their buzzing can be brought to a halt by a DDoS? That's a catastrophic failure, not just an inconvenience.
3) Hedge fund assholes: These vultures will be looking to scoop up as many cloud operations and data centers as they can over the next few years in the hopes of cornering the non-Amazon market. It's how these people work, and when they do control a significant portion of the market you can look for the value proposition of the cloud to be mostly erased, with the new price increases flowing directly into their own pockets. This actually might also fall under "Regulatory" because really we need to start thinking today, right now, about how to keep these clouds from becoming "too big to fail." Because the other side of it is, once that happens we have another whole caste of businesses that will indefinitely suckle at the government teat, and that will never show a profit on paper for the rest of all eternity to keep that largesse flowing.
It's not part of his job to spread FUD. It just happens that people think this is a good strategy.
I'd say it is a good strategy as it has worked (to considerable effect) for decades in advertising. And because it has a track record, our insane laws in this country all but force a CEO to pursue any possible working/legitimate strategy to help the company succeed. Should it be that way? No, of course not.
If it balkanizes around NATO-defined lines(excluding Russia, China, and the non-US-controlled portions of Africa), civilized countries will have no problems with each other. Western Europe, US, Canada, Japan, Australia, and the like would have no problem talking with each other.
The only loss would be the countries that end up dragging down product quality, causing job losses, and otherwise making it a Very Bad Day in every way towards the First World. Perhaps if they westernized themselves and stopped being used as means to grind down First World workers, they might have a chance.
The whole irony in this is that Snowden would end up causing the greatest loss in freedom in the name of trying to cause a modest increase.
What makes you think it will balkanize in a way that's convenient? That's why a balkanized Internet is a bad thing: You have no predictable idea HOW it will be split up. It is (very easily) conceivable to me that a non-trivial number of those "civilized" countries would heartily favor cutting off Internet contact with us--if nothing else, it creates the perception that they're cutting off the NSA spying by cutting off the American public.
Let me put it to you this way: This NSA program is in the process of creating a demand for the very thing we've feared since day one--turning the Internet from a self-publishing medium into cable television. That is to say, a one-way medium that purveys only crap and costs 3-5 times what it should cost.
I fail to see how that's a "good thing."
Also, those "uncivilized" countries won't be that way forever. At some point they're going to want to buy our goods and services--if we balkanize to "protect" our "right" to spy on everybody and everything worldwide via the Internet I see it as a direct example of cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Is there really anything worthwhile on the non-Western Internet, at least from the perspective of most Westerners?
I know I couldn't care any less if I could no longer access Russian or Chinese websites, for instance. Due to language differences, they're already pretty much useless to me. I know this also holds true for most Americans and Australians, and many Europeans, too.
Yeah, I know, there are probably a small number of expats and academics who find some use in such information, but there aren't many of them. Aside from them, I don't think that Westerners in general would really miss those very foreign parts of the Internet if they suddenly disappeared.
Would you care if you could no longer send email to those countries? What about parts of Europe? What about India? India, China, and Asia represent something like 40% of the Human race... that's a huge portion of potential customers that now have a catastrophically negative image of storing their data in our country on our servers.
Slashdot Mirror
One of the rules for thinking for yourself while not being a lemming are #2: realize that a man's hatred or love of a group of people has nothing to do with the factual truth of what is being said. #1 is to let racism or ethnocentrism be HIS problem and stop anointing yourself the arbiter of all that is righteous.
That's cute and all, except European antisemitism is as endemic and as ingrained in their culture as racism is in America. It's a cultural no-no, but it's often still the guttural reaction of choice. And criticizing Israel is the natural outlet for this reaction. That is not to say that Israel doesn't have problems of its own that are worth criticism, but it certainly doesn't deserve all the shit it gets.
Nonsense. Criticism of Israel is not evidence of anti-semitism--period. If somebody criticizes Israel by saying "all Jews should drop dead" that's not "criticizing Israel," that's racism. A reasoned set of criticisms not based on the race or religion of Israelis (i.e. you can safely ignore as racism anything that attempts to use the word "Jew" as a pejorative,) is not "anti-semitism."
I didn't imply any such thing in my OP, you inferred the lot of it.
One of those rules for criticizing Israel while not seeming like an anti-Semitic cock...
There is only one rule for that; preface every criticism of Israel with the following:
"Don't get me wrong, I love Jon Stewart, but..."
For example:
Don't get me wrong, I love Jon Stewart, bit it seems to me the Israeli government uses Judaism as a weapon against their detractors, since nobody can say anything about Israel's bad behavior without being accused of anti-semitism.
This times a million: Distract from the actual legitimate criticism of the NSA (that it would have been better used to track down wall street swine who committing multiple felonies and should have been liable for thousands of years of prison time) by accusing the speaker of an invented anti-semitism.
Congratulations: Goebbels would be proud.
One of those rules for criticizing Israel while not seeming like an anti-Semitic cock is #2: not to relate your statement to a conspiracy by banks(because stereotypes).
#1 is not to deny the holocaust, but you didn't do that, so congratulations.
One of the rules for not being a sheep is not to let other people's prejudices get in the way of legitimate criticisms of Israel, Wall Street, or anybody else. The perception, that i was connecting the two, is a result of your prejudice, not mine. I made a suggestion for a better use of such spying authority--i.e. point it at actual criminals, not private citizens. You made the leap to some sort of "conspiracy" of Wall Street and Israel.
So take yourself to task for being an anti-semite.
We KNOW all about the intercepts now, why is it a headline everytime The Guardian throws-out a new "discovery"?
Correction... WE know all about the intercepts now. But the mass audience the Guardian wants to reach isn't as well informed. Also, they appear to be attempting to leverage pressure from both internal targets of the NSA (i.e. citizens of the United States) and inappropriate external ones to exert more pressure on the government to do the right thing.
I mean, they paid on the "One day I will call upon you to do a service for me" variety plan, but here we are.
It's too bad that system wasn't trained on the charlatans on Wall Street so their crimes could have been accounted for and punished. You know these guys are stupid enough to brag on the phone and via email about their crimes... All the hysterical email leaks from the last crisis prove that out pretty handily. These guys are so arrogant they think themselves "above the law" because they "figured it out."
I have to ask: How'd you handle the bleakness of actually being in Fort Wayne? There are as many strip clubs as there are Starbucks. Which brings the "talent" in those strip clubs down to the appearance level of your average 40+ Starbucks barista.
The fact that we don't know just makes it worse. We have to assume that the entire US and everything in it is compromised.
For the moment, I'd say that is a wise assumption. If I were a non-US corporation or person I'd be assuming the exact same thing. Until there is a full, detailed accounting--of the uncomfortable "truth commission" variety--all but the staunchest pro-authoritarian Americans will believe it anyway, so there's no sense delaying what absolutely has to happen.
It may yet be that the capitalist interests that the NSA are damaging might in the long-run have to expend considerable lobbying dollars to reverse some of this perception by drastically reining in the NSA. Or we can write-off a good chunk of the money we'd have otherwise made by innovating online.
I'm glad that someone is attempting to quantify this. As someone who works in sales for hosted services, I saw this trend emerge virtually overnight with the Snowden leaks - the complete erosion of trust for any service hosted in the U.S., even if the actual, measurable impact to date any of my customers of being spied upon is exactly nil.
Now if only someone would compare the impact to the NSA's operating budget and draw some lines, things might get better. I've been called an optimist before, however.
"Actual" and "measurable" are two different things. The simple truth is we don't really know the extent of what the NSA is up to or whom they're sharing this data with. Already there have been calls for this treasure trove of private information to be "shared" with private companies so they can "help out" in the fight against terrorism. And the fact that these organizations have the guts to publicly lobby for such access says to me that likely somebody somewhere in private industry already has access to some or all of it through "connections" and now wants this sharing legalized so their access to that knowledge can be leveraged for greater financial gain out in the open, in front of stockholders.
The Microsoft goal is to flush so much money down the drain it will become plugged up.
Vaguely reminiscent of sending wave after wave of your own men until the kill-bots reach their preset kill limit...
Hes doing his job, whether you like it or not. Dont blame the police for laws you dont like.
No, he's not.
A police officer is expected to exercise sound judgement and reasonable discretion in the course of his duties. They are taught, explicitly, to deescalate situations, to utilize the minimum amount of authority and force required to maintain the peace and keep (in this case,) the roadways safe.
Perhaps the law was written with a "cop loophole" that allows them to nail you for doing something that is not dangerous and in no way inhibits safe operation of the driver's vehicle, or of any other vehicle (operating your phone at a stop light while your car isn't moving) but that does not mean the officer is required to vigorously enforce this asinine law. If I was this guy's C.O. I'd be up his ass for wasting so much of his time on such a meaningless offense.
What they are not paid to do is hound the general public over trivial, non-dangerous activities, such as this. What they are not paid to do is occupy themselves with "gimmes" while dangerous drivers are simply left to drive on by. Seriously, this guy must just stand on the side of the road flag cars down all day to have written that many.
I'm sure the family and loved-ones of a driver killed by a drunk (that this guy should have been out apprehending) will take great comfort in knowing this jackass was busy gold-bricking on "texting at a stoplight" patrol. That seems like a totally rational use of police resources and not at all an example of a government employee finding a way to get paid for focusing on some minute aspect of his job to the total exclusion of the actual work he was hired to accomplish.
I can say it faster.... Two words, in fact. Three if you count contractions two (one for each root word.)
They're delusional.
It's about propping up their ridiculous belief system in the face of all logic and sanity. It's about a fascist desire to enforce their moral and world view on everyone. Only the most arrogant, deluded fool would truly believe that "without christian god we wouldn't know murder is wrong!" Get real. Christianity has only existed for a couple thousand years but human beings have shunned and punished murderers since we've been living in caves.
The real problem is that Texas already has among the shittiest education systems in America, and as a result, their people are mostly uneducated, misinformed hilljacks that would be in the same straits as Mississippi if they didn't have oil wealth. They're just too collectively-stupid to succeed without the huge leg-up that those oil revenues provide them.
Actually, the TSA is quite allowed to "keep records of you." That's how their "speedy security bypass" for elite travelers that can't be bothered with the same checks the hoi polloi must endure.
Which is a voluntary program. People have chosen to provide their data to TSA in exchange for elimination of some of the security theater. They've balanced the costs and benefits and come to the conclusion that they want to avoid -- the same security theater that you are condemning. You don't don't want to go through it, so why should they want to?
Let's be clear: I don't want anyone to endure this nonsense. I was merely pointing out that the TSA is not, in any way, forbidden from "gathering data" about you.
In fact, as somebody else in this thread pointed out, the TSA receives a dump of the names, addresses, phone numbers, shoe sizes, and many other bits of detailed personal information for each and every traveler. The TSA isn't just "allowed" to gather information about travelers, it does so routinely and abuses it--relentlessly.
But the TSA has to treat me like a terrorist, because they're not allowed to keep a record of me.
Actually, the TSA is quite allowed to "keep records of you." That's how their "speedy security bypass" for elite travelers that can't be bothered with the same checks the hoi polloi must endure.
What TSA is not allowed to do is dip into the vast treasure trove of data the government has been gathering about all of us, illegally and unconstitutionally, since 9/11.
I've seen no arguments that demonstrates we 1) Can't live without the "Security" theatre procedures being used on travelers at our airports and 2) That any amount of privacy invasion of law-abiding citizens will produce "more security."
If you look at the people TSA has "caught" with their "procedures," none of them (Not a single one) has been a terrorist. There have been plenty of currency smugglers, drug smugglers, and dissidents captured, and their electronic devices subjected to search, but exactly ZERO terrorists have been caught at TSA. Which sort of pokes a hole in the whole "necessary to keep us safe" argument for TSA...
"let's write ourselves an exemption, but slam the door on anyone coming after us"
That's how most lobbying works, in a nutshell. Very few lobbyists are working towards "a good compromise that satisfies everyone"--they're playing for-keeps. It's what makes their lavish salaries so worth paying... You know, if you're the sort of scum that wants to rule the world.
Nor is it aggression to follow them on public streets to watch them.
Zimmerman did more than "watch." First he followed the kid in his car while cursing into his phone, so even if Martin can't hear what he's saying (or, especially if he can't hear Zimmerman is saying) he can see the guys facial expressions. An angry man looks like angry man. And he's following him... Then when the kid obviously didn't want to be anywhere near this creepy murderer anymore and changed course to walk on a foot path where Zimmerman's car couldn't follow, the creepy murderer followed him on foot!
The words you're looking for are "stalking" and "harassment." Both are illegal in all 50 states. It is harassment, at a minimum, to chase this kid through the neighborhood for no earthly reason other than he "looked-like" the profile Zimmerman had cooked up in his head for the "bad guys" who'd been breaking into homes in his neighborhood. Terrorizing Martin, chasing him, leaves open the possibility (vocalized by a prosecution witness) that Martin was in fear of his life while Zimmerman was following him.
A good dividing line between "legally observing somebody from a distance" and "pursuing and confronting" one of your neighbors kids might be "when you're making somebody so uncomfortable with your 'observation' that they run away from you, you're harassing them.
This new invention has already been pre-exploited under contract for the NSA, so any encryption derived from these techniques will still be breakable by them.
Better luck next millennium!
Choke, now, on your own lack of foresight.
Choke on your own lack of foresight.
Please cite where I showed a lack of foresight? I thought the fact that I pointed out that they weren't remotely concerned about this issue when passing the law should be enough to indicate that I understood the issue, but perhaps I should have inserted 64-point sarcasm tags.
Even better:
Ms Cooper said the situation must be "investigated and clarified urgently", adding: "The public support for these powers must not be endangered by a perception of misuse."
So, it's the public perception that's an issue here, not the misuse of powers. Interesting Ms Cooper, interesting. Do you have anything else to add?
This is how most politicians operate: It isn't a problem that they're nakedly abusing their power and violating the civil rights of all, so long as they aren't perceived to be abusing their power and violating the civil rights of all.
This is also very similar to how MBAs think.
one of the MPs involved in passing the anti-terrorism legislation used for the detention has said: 'those of us who were part of passing this legislation certainly would not have expected it to be used in a case of this kind.'"
Of course you weren't: In fact, you weren't thinking about the potential for abuse at all when you passed this bill because even though you were warned by civil libertarians before the passage of the bill that such abuse was not only likely but inevitable, you were more afraid of the quivering masses of voters you believed would spend the next decade hiding under their sofas waiting for the end of the world to worry about such pleasantries. "This is war!" you told us, at the time.
Choke, now, on your own lack of foresight.
When the human race eventually gets around to causing its own extinction it will undoubtedly be caused by a total lack of foresight.
When we the public get that level of privacy then we will talk about companies, not before.
Your point is reasonable but irrelevant: This is a discussion of the cloud, not of individual liberties. I totally agree: Your 4th amendment protections shouldn't end once you save your data in the cloud. But it's a separate issue--the question was to the viability of the cloud, and that means business records have to be "safe" from seizure when they're stored in the cloud, otherwise the cloud is doomed. Sorry if I didn't genuflect hard-enough in the direction of the individual, but individuals cloud data is worth somewhere between "jack-shit" and "nothing." Business data, on the other hand, could be auctioned off for millions or even hundreds of millions by an unscrupulous NSA operative.
The US has hundreds of years of outdated infrastructure over a large area to deal with on its own so updating is going to be expensive and time consuming.
...And the reason we have 150 years of outdated infrastructure is that the argument that it "costs too much" to upgrade, replace or repair has won the day for much of the last 50 years.
"It's too expensive!" howls the conservative when asked to replace an aging bridge. And then when that bridge collapses and dumps a dozen tax payers and their vehicles in the river, the conservative howls "Government incompetence stikes again!"
I hope you're right, but often times it's not the technology, best practice, or even what's best for the company that wins; it's how do we grow so our institutional investors who own most of our stock stay happy with us. In the past year I've had several customers, none of them small, ping me about this. If they are asking us about it, it's on their minds. Like I said though, I think this is all a few decades out. The industry is really just starting to get it's bearings and there are still a number of technological challenges to overcome first.
While I agree there are some interesting (and some quite sexy) problems to be solved technically in the cloud arena, I believe it is shortsighted to assume this is all that has to change. In my opinion, most of the remaining obstacles are structural and/or systematic, and some of them are going to be quite expensive and possibly politically impossible to change.
The biggest non-technical hurdles for the cloud to conquer in the United States, as I see it, are:
1) Regulatory: As in somebody better rein-in the NSA or we can pretty much kiss this golden-goose good-bye. Also, we need to update our laws and property rights so that companies don't simply forfeit all 4th amendment protections because their data is on somebody else's hardware in somebody else's data center. Yes, I realize that should already be the case, but as a practical matter it isn't. We need to reform that or you can forget it.
2) Public Infrastructure: Ours is shite. Korea, a country that 50 years ago had people living in fucking grass huts (and in some rural areas, still does,) has better internet performance than we do. That's both pathetic and a show-stopper for a truly transformative cloud experience. If you move it all "to the cloud!" and then have to spend $10k/month on multiple gigabit Internet pipes and the associated services (think anti-DDoS) to make it work you might not have really saved any money... And you can't skimp on those Anti-DDoS services once everything is in the cloud, because a disruption there basically idles your entire enterprise. Before, a successful DDoS had little hope of disrupting anything but your external network, leaving your worker bees happily buzzing around. But once their buzzing can be brought to a halt by a DDoS? That's a catastrophic failure, not just an inconvenience.
3) Hedge fund assholes: These vultures will be looking to scoop up as many cloud operations and data centers as they can over the next few years in the hopes of cornering the non-Amazon market. It's how these people work, and when they do control a significant portion of the market you can look for the value proposition of the cloud to be mostly erased, with the new price increases flowing directly into their own pockets. This actually might also fall under "Regulatory" because really we need to start thinking today, right now, about how to keep these clouds from becoming "too big to fail." Because the other side of it is, once that happens we have another whole caste of businesses that will indefinitely suckle at the government teat, and that will never show a profit on paper for the rest of all eternity to keep that largesse flowing.
It's not part of his job to spread FUD. It just happens that people think this is a good strategy.
I'd say it is a good strategy as it has worked (to considerable effect) for decades in advertising. And because it has a track record, our insane laws in this country all but force a CEO to pursue any possible working/legitimate strategy to help the company succeed. Should it be that way? No, of course not.
But it is.
If it balkanizes around NATO-defined lines(excluding Russia, China, and the non-US-controlled portions of Africa), civilized countries will have no problems with each other. Western Europe, US, Canada, Japan, Australia, and the like would have no problem talking with each other.
The only loss would be the countries that end up dragging down product quality, causing job losses, and otherwise making it a Very Bad Day in every way towards the First World. Perhaps if they westernized themselves and stopped being used as means to grind down First World workers, they might have a chance.
The whole irony in this is that Snowden would end up causing the greatest loss in freedom in the name of trying to cause a modest increase.
What makes you think it will balkanize in a way that's convenient? That's why a balkanized Internet is a bad thing: You have no predictable idea HOW it will be split up. It is (very easily) conceivable to me that a non-trivial number of those "civilized" countries would heartily favor cutting off Internet contact with us--if nothing else, it creates the perception that they're cutting off the NSA spying by cutting off the American public.
Let me put it to you this way: This NSA program is in the process of creating a demand for the very thing we've feared since day one--turning the Internet from a self-publishing medium into cable television. That is to say, a one-way medium that purveys only crap and costs 3-5 times what it should cost.
I fail to see how that's a "good thing."
Also, those "uncivilized" countries won't be that way forever. At some point they're going to want to buy our goods and services--if we balkanize to "protect" our "right" to spy on everybody and everything worldwide via the Internet I see it as a direct example of cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Is there really anything worthwhile on the non-Western Internet, at least from the perspective of most Westerners?
I know I couldn't care any less if I could no longer access Russian or Chinese websites, for instance. Due to language differences, they're already pretty much useless to me. I know this also holds true for most Americans and Australians, and many Europeans, too.
Yeah, I know, there are probably a small number of expats and academics who find some use in such information, but there aren't many of them. Aside from them, I don't think that Westerners in general would really miss those very foreign parts of the Internet if they suddenly disappeared.
Would you care if you could no longer send email to those countries? What about parts of Europe? What about India? India, China, and Asia represent something like 40% of the Human race... that's a huge portion of potential customers that now have a catastrophically negative image of storing their data in our country on our servers.
We've really screwed ourselves here.
It's a good way to go.