I see. Is this particular article the first you have heard of all of this leak business? If so, there's a guy named Edward Snowden who began all of this leak business. You may want to google his name. Enlightenment should soon follow. Hint: this was not the first leaked document. His info is being released gradually. Unfortunately the scope of US spying goes far beyond this.
All of this is especially true if everyone is a terrorist. This is why a world police state is so necessary and why we all must give up privacy and embrace the inevitable ubiquitous video surveillance in our homes. In every room. Keep in mind that the greatest threats usually come from within. Thus the need for all of us to be watched very closely at all times by our protectors and benefactors who will keep us safe. It gets me all warm and fuzzy just thinking about all of that womb-like safety. Thank God for the NSA, CIA, and FBI. Without them we would surely all be dead by now. And by "we" I don't mean just Americans. The whole world is in their dept. God bless America, citizen!
Nice plan. Let me know when they get around to actually doing it and get caught. Also targeted industrial espionage isn't quite in the same category as spying on every citizen of France who uses email, instant messaging, SMS, or cellular and land line voice communication. IOW, pretty much everyone in the entire country.
This is what intelligence agencies do. And this is what they should be doing.
Well clearly spying on our allies is what ours do. Not everyone agrees that that is what they should be doing. Let me extend your logic. The armed forces exist to fight. That is their job. That is what they should be doing.
So once we finish up with Iraq and Afghanistan perhaps it's about time we invaded Canada and Mexico. Both have many natural resources we could be exploiting. Especially Canada with their large uranium deposits. Why pay for them if we can just take them for free? And since Canadians were not mentioned in the constitution they do not possess human rights. So even if millions of them have to die in order for us to get our free uranium that is perfectly okay. Probably the easiest way to get those deposits is a first strike nuclear attack, carpet bombing them with nukes. We are so close that there wouldn't be much warning. Of course their armed forces also exist to be used and they may have time to get off some missiles, but even if some of our cities get nuked that is okay too because nuclear missiles exist to be used. If they aren't used then what good are they?
Once we launch an entirely unprovoked first strike nuclear attack against our closest neighbor and arguably our closest ally then what is China and Russia going to be thinking? Probably something along the lines of, "Ruh Roh.". They may want to launch against us before we can launch against them, not trusting our assurances that we mean them no harm. But that's okay too because that is what armed forces do. That is what they are for. It's only natural.
If spying on US citizens is wrong then spying on foreign citizens is just as wrong. It's as simple as that. I disagree with your assertion that what is wrong for one human being to do to another is suddenly okay when it is a group of human beings (a government) instead. You may not personally believe there would be anything ethically wrong with my planting surveillance devices in your home, but at the very least it is a sneaky, dishonorable act. Certainly not something one would be proud of doing.
The point about rape is that anything can be justified when you ignore moral principles and base your behavior solely on your own narrow interests. Or at least what you think they are. Of course by claiming that government behavior and individual behavior goes by different standards it sort of tosses out any moral arguments. I suppose you could justify pretty much anything that way. How can we say, for instance, that genocide is wrong solely because we regard mass murder to be wrong when comitted by individuals? Personally if governments are to be judged by different moral standards from individuals I would prefer that those standards be higher, not lower.
That would have been an idiotic thing to do. He's a lot safer living in a country without an extradition treaty or even diplomatic relations with the US. Cuba comes to mind.
Allies are temporary and they are potential enemies, so the more you know about them, the less chance they will be a threat.
This is particularly true when you treat your allies and enemies exactly the same and when you routinely violate the human rights of their citizens and diplomatic staff any chance you get without the slightest pang of guilt because, as foreigners, they are unworthy of being treated well. Those dirty foreigners don't have any rights. I guess they can consider themselves lucky that we don't simply murder them all and grind them up to feed our cattle. They would have no basis to object because our constitution does not explicitly mention that foreigners also possessed human rights which should also be respected by our government. All of that "all men are created equal stuff" obviously only refered to American men. If the founders had wanted foreigners to have rights they would have explicitly mentioned that the limitations to our government's power also applied to: and then made a list of every country that existed at the time. The fact that John Locke, from whom most of the Founder's ideas about natural rights originated was himself a foreigner, a Lesser Homo Sapien or Homo Sapien 'Europa' need not be considered and is in fact a heinous ThoughtCrime.
Surely all of those poor unwashed savages outside of our borders can't really be considered human anyway. We can treat them as badly as we wish without worry. Well unless we thought they were a military threat. Then we can just nuke them before they can do the same to us. Any casualties on the other side would certainly be regretable in the same way that stepping on an ant's nest is regrettable, but, again, since the other side are rightless sub-human savages we don't have to feel bad about murdering, err I mean exterm, I mean putting them to sleep or sending them to a better place. Thank goodness we only have to think about ourselves and not care about anyone else! And since we are the baddies we don't have to worry about anyone preemptively nuking us before we can nuke them! Other countries might hesitate before simply exterminating tens of millions or hundreds of millions of human beings, but not us. Because we know that only US Citizens are fully human and worthy of having rights. I think I finally understand! Maybe I no longer even need to go to the re-education camp.
The only thing that still confuses me is whether Snowden is still human now that his passport / citizenship has basically been revoked. When the US government revokes your citizenship is it like a form of de-evolution? Is he no longer a member of the superior Homo Sapien 'Americanus'? After his citizenship is revoked is it then perfectly okay to torture him to death in gitmo since he no longer has any rights?
After 4 decades on this planet it still never ceases to surprise me that "everyone does it" or "everyone else is just as bad" still seems like a logical defense to some people.
Would raping little girls be okay if more people did it? If only it were more popular then none of us would have to feel bad about being a total piece of shit. The kind of person who does stuff like that does it because they don't care about the little girl that they are going to hurt or even kill. That other person, that other consciousness means nothing to them. Only their narrow interests matter. Sound familiar?
Pathological liars of all sorts are always adamant about how no one else is any different. "Everyone lies", they say. Dishonest salesmen and cops are the same. They defend their bad behavior by saying that everyone else is just as bad. Uh huh. As soon as I hear someone say that sort of thing I immediately know not to trust them or believe a word they say. And I'll keep a close eye on my wallet and all my other possessions as well. There's a good chance they lack any sense of empathy, of right or wrong: what we call a conscience.
Well I've got news for some of you. Not everyone will lie and steal even from their so called friends whenever they think they can get away with it. I have known a few pathological liars in my life and as soon as I discovered who and what they really were I broke off any contact with them. Period.
I wouldn't be friends with someone who planted bugs in my home. In fact I would consider them the opposite of friends. They wouldn't be welcome anywhere near my home ever again. It would be pretty clear that their intentions were not good. If I were one of the countries mentioned in these leaks I would immediately break off all diplomatic relations with the US. I mean, what the fuck is the point when it's obvious you are being treated in a manner indistinguishable from how one treats an enemy? At the very least it would seem sensible to strip search and cavity search anyone carrying a US passport who wants to enter or leave an embassy/consulate or any other sensitive location. Are you quasi-sociopaths starting to see the problem now?
And how does one draw the line between just being naughty and an act of outright war? Seems like that line could be drawn very finely indeed. If in our eavesdropping we discover that a foreign diplomat holds beliefs that seem inimical to our interests would it be okay to assassinate them? How about just fucking up their life so badly that they choose to quit their jobs? Maybe infecting one of their children with HIV for instance? After all, what is the point of making so much effort to gather all that intelligence data if we do not use it to further our interests? Isn't that what this is all about? Our interests? Aside from "everyone else is doing it", that is the justification for this behavior is it not? Of course it couldn't possibly be in our interest to treat our allies like we ourselves would want to be treated: with respect and honesty. No. So much better to prepare for outright war even with such highly unlikely foes as, say, Canada.
Espionage is fine when you are in a shooting war with someone and it's tolerable when it seems that a shooting war is imminent, but it is neither honorable nor civilized behavior. Not even if you have proof that the other side is doing the same to you, which I don't think any of you currently have by the way.
I'm sorry, but just assuming that everyone else is just as amoral and dishonest and untrustworthy and two-faced and is also treating us in a way that is indistinguishable from an enemy is not sufficient. Not if we want to be seen as the good guys. Clearly any such pretense would be laughable now. The enemy is us. We are the baddies.
Even if we knew with absolute 100% certainty that all of the people we were bugging were bugging us back just as successfully the old two wrongs don't make a right rule still applies. If we discovered that one of our allies were systematically raping our female diplomats would we respond in kind? I would certainly hope not.
This is not America It really isn't. At one time we actually stood for something. A principle. An ideal. To live free or die trying. 1984 was never intended as an instruction manual.
Would you become an exile from your birth country and risk spending the rest of your life in prison in order to publish fake information? I wouldn't either. Pretty much no one would. It would be insane and very, very stupid. So, yes, he automatically gets some credibility from the fact that, at 30, his life is completely fucked. I'm sorry, but nothing is worth that. Certainly no cheap attempt at making some sort of political statement via photoshop.
Best case he'll be spending the rest of his life looking over his shoulder, living in a third world country trying to survive off whatever savings he managed to accumulate and put somewhere where the US government can't get at it. Is it possible he's lying? Sure, but it is just so highly unlikely. It's also possible that the reason no one has seen him in Moscow is because he has been abducted by aliens. Maybe he is an alien himself and he flew away in a starship. You can't rule it out so, as you say, "there is no conclusion" that can be reached about whether or not Snowden is an alien or is right now accelerating away from this star system.
I think it's pretty clear that the US government simply does not have the manpower to read every single online communication in the world and if they can't read it it is useless. So is there some way we can fuck up their automated filters? It would be great if Snowden had information on the actual keywords that PRISM searches for to bump the communication over to a human.
How about an application that intentionally comes up with suspicous sounding emails that spam all of the NSA keywords. If each of us ran such a program and sent hundreds of such decoys per day their system would become useless for anything practical. Unfortunately this doesn't really work for voice communication.
Or at least don't visit the US. Don't try to make friends with a sociopath or a government that is indistinguishable from one.
Are we like one of those guys who enters a school with a machine guns and grenades? The students might smile at you, but really they just want to get away from you. I used to think we were the good guys.
I don't think going to Russia was ever in his long term plan. He was clearly hoping Hong Kong would not extradite him. At some point he changed his mind about that. Russia was likely just part of some short term strategy to avoid spending the rest of his life in prison for doing a good deed. At this point however he may have no choice but to apply for political asylum in Mother Russia. It may not be a Libertarian Utopia. Certainly no more than the US. But it's a hell of a lot better than a US prison or gas chamber. Even North Korea would be better than that.
I probably would have flown to Laos. Not as modern as Hong Kong, but no extradition treaty with the US. It's cheap, and the people are some of the nicest in the world. It might be considered Communist, but it feels freer than the US because no one really bothers you. On paper you're not at all free, but in practice you are often more free than in the US. But I guess Russia isn't so bad.
I agree that XP x64 is a decent OS. That is what I am running now. Along with Arch Linux and Windows 7 Standard Embedded. I don't like regular Windows 7 because it is so bloated. 12- 50 GB for an operating system? Seriously? My dog could write a more efficient OS. I don't see why an environment for running other programs has to be so big. My Arch Linux install is around 3 GB and that's with lots of stuff installed. My XP x64 install is bloated enough at around 6.6 GB, having grown from around 4 GB at install time. Doubling the bloat as a best case scenario without any significant benefit is not what I consider progress.
Is Win7 more secure? Yup. Is it a relief to be able to run as non-admin? Yup. I dislike the default GUI but that's mostly fixable. I don't feel that the OSX dock is anything worth emulating, but again that can be turned off. There is no search without indexing but I just use Agent Ransack instead and other third party apps to replace the missing functionality from XP. Still, running an embedded OS as a desktop OS is not without its problems. So I require XP as well at least until Microsoft gets its head out of its ass and starts showing some respect for my hard drive space and memory as well as for actually improving the OS and not just trying to make more money. But I don't think that has any chance of happening with Ballmer in charge. They have made progress in faster boot times as well as better security (from XP to Vista/7 only), but the bloat and sloppy programming overall is inexcusable.
Genuine improvements to an OS are basically what you see with Linux: small, incremental changes and bugfixes. There's no need for the kind of vast overhauls that MS feels they have to do to sell more copies. They accomplish nothing, at least nothing good, and they introduce lots of bugs. The embedded version of 7 is not too bad. I do end up with the most compatibility problems with the embedded system though. More even than XP x64. I probably just need to refine which components to add on my next install. Nevertheless some apps just won't install or run and then I'm left with either Linux or XP.
I am going to be buying a new high end video card within the next 4-12 months. Before this announcement I pretty much assumed it would be an AMD card because lately they have been ahead of Nvidia. I am typing this on XP x64. I also multiboot with Arch Linux and Windows 7 Embedded, but find myself using XP x64 much of the time.
I don't plan to give up using XP any time soon. So now AMD is simply giving up on customers like me. I very much liked having a choice between Nvidia and AMD. This is very unfortunate and AMD will lose customers based on this announcement. Starting with me.
Our government is a bit like a sociopath. We are nobody's friend. Everyone is merely a potential enemy. We spy on everyone. No exceptions. I'm sure we even spy on the UK and Canada as utterly pointless as that may be. If we ever ended up at war with either Canada or the UK then we'd almost certainly be better off losing anyway.
Of course, from Washington's POV the problem is not so much that we spy even on our friends, but that someone blabbed about it. They won't think about changing their behavior toward our allies. About acting honorably at least toward our allies. Rather they will think more about how badly they can punish the leaker. I can only imagine how badly they are itching to get Snowden's ass to gitmo and torture him to death in very creative ways.
I don't know what kind of "Libertarians" you are meeting, but the wikipedia entry is fairly accurate IIRC. Just look up the definition if you are confused. I'm a Libertarian because I support either genuinely minimal government or none at all and because I believe in the principle of voluntarism and I am against any sort of slavery to even the slightest degree. Probably the simplest way to think of a Libertarian is someone who believes that the original US system from, say, the early 19th century, is pretty close to ideal.
I am not at all uncomfortable with the term anarchist. Compared to democrats and republicans I'm close enough to an anarchist. I can see how they might see it that way. It's not totally accurate, but it's close and there are Libertarians who truly are anarchists. They are (or used to be) referred to as Anarcho-Libertarians. Basically they are anarchists who believe that without government intervention self-organizing systems will evolve to fill the niches that government would normally. As opposed to an anarchist who may not expect or want private versions of police and court and military etc to arise at all.
I dont' know how old you are, but the problem you are encountering may be that Libertarianism doesn't seem to be as popular among the newer Facebook generation. So you are maybe getting more false positives from people who just don't understand what the term means. I haven't met many Libertarians IRL, but most of those I have met do seem to understand what the term means and have usually been genuine Libertarians.
Most Libertarians that I have met do not feel any more attachment to the Republican party than to the Democratic one. In fact, it used to be that the Democrats seemed like closer allies due to the ACLU and the fact that Democrats really did seem to support civil liberties in the 80s and maybe to some extent in the 90s as well. Now both parties are pro police state of course and Obama has proven to me that they really are nearly indistinguishable even when it comes to civil liberties / human rights violations.
I do share some sympathy with the idea that Agnostics are basically Athiests without the courage to say so. Not that it takes so much courage anymore, at least here in the US. Nevertheless Agnosticism has a very specific meaning. It isn't a fuzzy concept at all. It is a distinct category. Again, it's pretty easy to look up the meaning if you are confused.
Athiest: There is no evidence for the existence of this entity you refer to as God and some definitions are even self-contradictory. Thus, what you are referring to by "God" does not exist except as an idea in your mind. That sort of thing.
Agnostic: The supernatural entity that you claim exists cannot be detected in any way. If it cannot be detected through experiments or through sensory data then it doesn't matter whether it exists or not because we wouldn't be able to know either way. The existence of that entity is truly unknowable. We cannot make any claims about its existence.
The important distinction is that an Agnostic does not make any hard claim that this or that deity does not or cannot exist. The claim is that even if it does exist it is unknowable. Although someone can be both Agnostic and an Atheist. The positions do not contradict one another.
Interesting story. I don't disagree with the conclusion. I have zero online presence under my real name. Googling my name will get my current address and maybe even my phone number, but there is no connection with that and anything I write online.
Of course the FBI or NSA or other government agency could connect to my real identity through my IP address, but nothing can be done about that except maybe only posting with Tor and/or from an internet cafe, even more ideally from an internet cafe in a country without friendly relations with the US.
When you google my name you mostly get several ordinary people with lots of information about them. If one of those people were a convicted felon I'd probably at least put up a LinkedIn page or something. Just so there is no question whatsoever that that is not me.
If you think that it's time to put an end to assholes running around blowing up everyone that disagrees with them and maybe a few hundred innocent bystanders (including their own people) as well
I don't think it's practical to try to stop our government from doing this. When living abroad I do try to let people know that I do not support such actions and didn't vote for any of the people who think collateral murder is justified. Nevertheless foreigners do tend to look at us as villains until proven otherwise.
One reason I like Wikileaks is they try to publish some of the secret crimes our government commits in our name. Although we will never be able to convince our countrymen that murder is not okay just because the victims were not born here, at least we can be aware of the war crimes and torture that our government is so fond of. That information needs to be out there.
If it makes you feel any better the FBI started an investigation on me while I was living abroad and they simply put their investigation on hold for over a year until I came back. So in practice they don't seem very international. Maybe for more serious crimes than what they were after me for.
If you google my real name, all you come up with is some young black dude who is presently an inmate in a Texas prison.
I also value my online privacy, but your situation is one of the few where I could actually be convinced to create an online presence. Someone googles your name and just gets a prison inmate? Not good. At least do a homepage / resume kind of think.
And then there's the little issue of having stolen $50,000 from his last employer. Literally just transfering it to his own bank account. Maybe he could get a job bagging groceries. But then there's no reason to believe he would have ever done better than that anyway. He's clearly destined for an Icelandic jail. He has that magical combination of stupidity and willingness to commit crimes. He'll probably spend half his life in jail which I guess is maybe not so bad in iceland. Wikileaks should have known better and some of them apparently did. Not that it really matters. If Assange gets extradited to the US he's fucked anyway. Little details like chat conversations aren't going to matter. Our corrupt court system would probably find a way to try him for treason even though he's Australian.
In Soviet Russia, You don't have a legal right to say you are going to go and shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still beating hearts. In Soviet Russia, That is pretty explicitely not covered in freedom of speech. In Soviet Russia, You don't have the right to say you are going to commit any crime, nevermind one that horrifying.
Further, In Soviet Russia, you can't say that, then add jk, and think that's somehow going to stop the police.
In Soviet Russia, This is less about freedom of speech, and more about one little gaming shit learning he can't do stuff like that in real life. In Soviet Russia, This isn't about some kid who pointed his fingers and said bang, this is about a kid who said HE WAS GOING TO SHOOT UP A SCHOOL FULL OF KIDS AND EAT THEIR STILL BEATING HEARTS.
FTFY. Please kill your entire family, and then yourself. With prejudice. In your will you can request that your bodies be shipped to North Korea, although I don't think you will find it repressive enough there. I am very serious about that recommendation to kill yourself. I really think you should consider it. Seriously.
But I'll admit, I'm just "paranoid" enough to believe that anyone who threatens to shoot up a school should get a knock on the door from the local authorities at the very least, because harassment is their job.
Slashdot Mirror
I see. Is this particular article the first you have heard of all of this leak business? If so, there's a guy named Edward Snowden who began all of this leak business. You may want to google his name. Enlightenment should soon follow. Hint: this was not the first leaked document. His info is being released gradually. Unfortunately the scope of US spying goes far beyond this.
The spying that is being spoken of against the EU
Nice try, but the US is spying against random citizens as well whether or not this particular release discusses that fact.
All of this is especially true if everyone is a terrorist. This is why a world police state is so necessary and why we all must give up privacy and embrace the inevitable ubiquitous video surveillance in our homes. In every room. Keep in mind that the greatest threats usually come from within. Thus the need for all of us to be watched very closely at all times by our protectors and benefactors who will keep us safe. It gets me all warm and fuzzy just thinking about all of that womb-like safety. Thank God for the NSA, CIA, and FBI. Without them we would surely all be dead by now. And by "we" I don't mean just Americans. The whole world is in their dept. God bless America, citizen!
Nice plan. Let me know when they get around to actually doing it and get caught. Also targeted industrial espionage isn't quite in the same category as spying on every citizen of France who uses email, instant messaging, SMS, or cellular and land line voice communication. IOW, pretty much everyone in the entire country.
This is what intelligence agencies do. And this is what they should be doing.
Well clearly spying on our allies is what ours do. Not everyone agrees that that is what they should be doing. Let me extend your logic. The armed forces exist to fight. That is their job. That is what they should be doing.
So once we finish up with Iraq and Afghanistan perhaps it's about time we invaded Canada and Mexico. Both have many natural resources we could be exploiting. Especially Canada with their large uranium deposits. Why pay for them if we can just take them for free? And since Canadians were not mentioned in the constitution they do not possess human rights. So even if millions of them have to die in order for us to get our free uranium that is perfectly okay. Probably the easiest way to get those deposits is a first strike nuclear attack, carpet bombing them with nukes. We are so close that there wouldn't be much warning. Of course their armed forces also exist to be used and they may have time to get off some missiles, but even if some of our cities get nuked that is okay too because nuclear missiles exist to be used. If they aren't used then what good are they?
Once we launch an entirely unprovoked first strike nuclear attack against our closest neighbor and arguably our closest ally then what is China and Russia going to be thinking? Probably something along the lines of, "Ruh Roh.". They may want to launch against us before we can launch against them, not trusting our assurances that we mean them no harm. But that's okay too because that is what armed forces do. That is what they are for. It's only natural.
If spying on US citizens is wrong then spying on foreign citizens is just as wrong. It's as simple as that. I disagree with your assertion that what is wrong for one human being to do to another is suddenly okay when it is a group of human beings (a government) instead. You may not personally believe there would be anything ethically wrong with my planting surveillance devices in your home, but at the very least it is a sneaky, dishonorable act. Certainly not something one would be proud of doing.
The point about rape is that anything can be justified when you ignore moral principles and base your behavior solely on your own narrow interests. Or at least what you think they are. Of course by claiming that government behavior and individual behavior goes by different standards it sort of tosses out any moral arguments. I suppose you could justify pretty much anything that way. How can we say, for instance, that genocide is wrong solely because we regard mass murder to be wrong when comitted by individuals? Personally if governments are to be judged by different moral standards from individuals I would prefer that those standards be higher, not lower.
That would have been an idiotic thing to do. He's a lot safer living in a country without an extradition treaty or even diplomatic relations with the US. Cuba comes to mind.
Allies are temporary and they are potential enemies, so the more you know about them, the less chance they will be a threat.
This is particularly true when you treat your allies and enemies exactly the same and when you routinely violate the human rights of their citizens and diplomatic staff any chance you get without the slightest pang of guilt because, as foreigners, they are unworthy of being treated well. Those dirty foreigners don't have any rights. I guess they can consider themselves lucky that we don't simply murder them all and grind them up to feed our cattle. They would have no basis to object because our constitution does not explicitly mention that foreigners also possessed human rights which should also be respected by our government. All of that "all men are created equal stuff" obviously only refered to American men. If the founders had wanted foreigners to have rights they would have explicitly mentioned that the limitations to our government's power also applied to: and then made a list of every country that existed at the time. The fact that John Locke, from whom most of the Founder's ideas about natural rights originated was himself a foreigner, a Lesser Homo Sapien or Homo Sapien 'Europa' need not be considered and is in fact a heinous ThoughtCrime.
Surely all of those poor unwashed savages outside of our borders can't really be considered human anyway. We can treat them as badly as we wish without worry. Well unless we thought they were a military threat. Then we can just nuke them before they can do the same to us. Any casualties on the other side would certainly be regretable in the same way that stepping on an ant's nest is regrettable, but, again, since the other side are rightless sub-human savages we don't have to feel bad about murdering, err I mean exterm, I mean putting them to sleep or sending them to a better place. Thank goodness we only have to think about ourselves and not care about anyone else! And since we are the baddies we don't have to worry about anyone preemptively nuking us before we can nuke them! Other countries might hesitate before simply exterminating tens of millions or hundreds of millions of human beings, but not us. Because we know that only US Citizens are fully human and worthy of having rights. I think I finally understand! Maybe I no longer even need to go to the re-education camp.
The only thing that still confuses me is whether Snowden is still human now that his passport / citizenship has basically been revoked. When the US government revokes your citizenship is it like a form of de-evolution? Is he no longer a member of the superior Homo Sapien 'Americanus'? After his citizenship is revoked is it then perfectly okay to torture him to death in gitmo since he no longer has any rights?
After 4 decades on this planet it still never ceases to surprise me that "everyone does it" or "everyone else is just as bad" still seems like a logical defense to some people.
Would raping little girls be okay if more people did it? If only it were more popular then none of us would have to feel bad about being a total piece of shit. The kind of person who does stuff like that does it because they don't care about the little girl that they are going to hurt or even kill. That other person, that other consciousness means nothing to them. Only their narrow interests matter. Sound familiar?
Pathological liars of all sorts are always adamant about how no one else is any different. "Everyone lies", they say. Dishonest salesmen and cops are the same. They defend their bad behavior by saying that everyone else is just as bad. Uh huh. As soon as I hear someone say that sort of thing I immediately know not to trust them or believe a word they say. And I'll keep a close eye on my wallet and all my other possessions as well. There's a good chance they lack any sense of empathy, of right or wrong: what we call a conscience.
Well I've got news for some of you. Not everyone will lie and steal even from their so called friends whenever they think they can get away with it. I have known a few pathological liars in my life and as soon as I discovered who and what they really were I broke off any contact with them. Period.
I wouldn't be friends with someone who planted bugs in my home. In fact I would consider them the opposite of friends. They wouldn't be welcome anywhere near my home ever again. It would be pretty clear that their intentions were not good. If I were one of the countries mentioned in these leaks I would immediately break off all diplomatic relations with the US. I mean, what the fuck is the point when it's obvious you are being treated in a manner indistinguishable from how one treats an enemy? At the very least it would seem sensible to strip search and cavity search anyone carrying a US passport who wants to enter or leave an embassy/consulate or any other sensitive location. Are you quasi-sociopaths starting to see the problem now?
And how does one draw the line between just being naughty and an act of outright war? Seems like that line could be drawn very finely indeed. If in our eavesdropping we discover that a foreign diplomat holds beliefs that seem inimical to our interests would it be okay to assassinate them? How about just fucking up their life so badly that they choose to quit their jobs? Maybe infecting one of their children with HIV for instance? After all, what is the point of making so much effort to gather all that intelligence data if we do not use it to further our interests? Isn't that what this is all about? Our interests? Aside from "everyone else is doing it", that is the justification for this behavior is it not? Of course it couldn't possibly be in our interest to treat our allies like we ourselves would want to be treated: with respect and honesty. No. So much better to prepare for outright war even with such highly unlikely foes as, say, Canada.
Espionage is fine when you are in a shooting war with someone and it's tolerable when it seems that a shooting war is imminent, but it is neither honorable nor civilized behavior. Not even if you have proof that the other side is doing the same to you, which I don't think any of you currently have by the way.
I'm sorry, but just assuming that everyone else is just as amoral and dishonest and untrustworthy and two-faced and is also treating us in a way that is indistinguishable from an enemy is not sufficient. Not if we want to be seen as the good guys. Clearly any such pretense would be laughable now. The enemy is us. We are the baddies.
Even if we knew with absolute 100% certainty that all of the people we were bugging were bugging us back just as successfully the old two wrongs don't make a right rule still applies. If we discovered that one of our allies were systematically raping our female diplomats would we respond in kind? I would certainly hope not.
This is not America It really isn't. At one time we actually stood for something. A principle. An ideal. To live free or die trying. 1984 was never intended as an instruction manual.
Would you become an exile from your birth country and risk spending the rest of your life in prison in order to publish fake information? I wouldn't either. Pretty much no one would. It would be insane and very, very stupid. So, yes, he automatically gets some credibility from the fact that, at 30, his life is completely fucked. I'm sorry, but nothing is worth that. Certainly no cheap attempt at making some sort of political statement via photoshop.
Best case he'll be spending the rest of his life looking over his shoulder, living in a third world country trying to survive off whatever savings he managed to accumulate and put somewhere where the US government can't get at it. Is it possible he's lying? Sure, but it is just so highly unlikely. It's also possible that the reason no one has seen him in Moscow is because he has been abducted by aliens. Maybe he is an alien himself and he flew away in a starship. You can't rule it out so, as you say, "there is no conclusion" that can be reached about whether or not Snowden is an alien or is right now accelerating away from this star system.
I think it's pretty clear that the US government simply does not have the manpower to read every single online communication in the world and if they can't read it it is useless. So is there some way we can fuck up their automated filters? It would be great if Snowden had information on the actual keywords that PRISM searches for to bump the communication over to a human.
How about an application that intentionally comes up with suspicous sounding emails that spam all of the NSA keywords. If each of us ran such a program and sent hundreds of such decoys per day their system would become useless for anything practical. Unfortunately this doesn't really work for voice communication.
Or at least don't visit the US. Don't try to make friends with a sociopath or a government that is indistinguishable from one.
Are we like one of those guys who enters a school with a machine guns and grenades? The students might smile at you, but really they just want to get away from you. I used to think we were the good guys.
I don't think going to Russia was ever in his long term plan. He was clearly hoping Hong Kong would not extradite him. At some point he changed his mind about that. Russia was likely just part of some short term strategy to avoid spending the rest of his life in prison for doing a good deed. At this point however he may have no choice but to apply for political asylum in Mother Russia. It may not be a Libertarian Utopia. Certainly no more than the US. But it's a hell of a lot better than a US prison or gas chamber. Even North Korea would be better than that.
I probably would have flown to Laos. Not as modern as Hong Kong, but no extradition treaty with the US. It's cheap, and the people are some of the nicest in the world. It might be considered Communist, but it feels freer than the US because no one really bothers you. On paper you're not at all free, but in practice you are often more free than in the US. But I guess Russia isn't so bad.
I agree that XP x64 is a decent OS. That is what I am running now. Along with Arch Linux and Windows 7 Standard Embedded. I don't like regular Windows 7 because it is so bloated. 12- 50 GB for an operating system? Seriously? My dog could write a more efficient OS. I don't see why an environment for running other programs has to be so big. My Arch Linux install is around 3 GB and that's with lots of stuff installed. My XP x64 install is bloated enough at around 6.6 GB, having grown from around 4 GB at install time. Doubling the bloat as a best case scenario without any significant benefit is not what I consider progress.
Is Win7 more secure? Yup. Is it a relief to be able to run as non-admin? Yup. I dislike the default GUI but that's mostly fixable. I don't feel that the OSX dock is anything worth emulating, but again that can be turned off. There is no search without indexing but I just use Agent Ransack instead and other third party apps to replace the missing functionality from XP. Still, running an embedded OS as a desktop OS is not without its problems. So I require XP as well at least until Microsoft gets its head out of its ass and starts showing some respect for my hard drive space and memory as well as for actually improving the OS and not just trying to make more money. But I don't think that has any chance of happening with Ballmer in charge. They have made progress in faster boot times as well as better security (from XP to Vista/7 only), but the bloat and sloppy programming overall is inexcusable.
Genuine improvements to an OS are basically what you see with Linux: small, incremental changes and bugfixes. There's no need for the kind of vast overhauls that MS feels they have to do to sell more copies. They accomplish nothing, at least nothing good, and they introduce lots of bugs. The embedded version of 7 is not too bad. I do end up with the most compatibility problems with the embedded system though. More even than XP x64. I probably just need to refine which components to add on my next install. Nevertheless some apps just won't install or run and then I'm left with either Linux or XP.
I am going to be buying a new high end video card within the next 4-12 months. Before this announcement I pretty much assumed it would be an AMD card because lately they have been ahead of Nvidia. I am typing this on XP x64. I also multiboot with Arch Linux and Windows 7 Embedded, but find myself using XP x64 much of the time.
I don't plan to give up using XP any time soon. So now AMD is simply giving up on customers like me. I very much liked having a choice between Nvidia and AMD. This is very unfortunate and AMD will lose customers based on this announcement. Starting with me.
Our government is a bit like a sociopath. We are nobody's friend. Everyone is merely a potential enemy. We spy on everyone. No exceptions. I'm sure we even spy on the UK and Canada as utterly pointless as that may be. If we ever ended up at war with either Canada or the UK then we'd almost certainly be better off losing anyway.
Of course, from Washington's POV the problem is not so much that we spy even on our friends, but that someone blabbed about it. They won't think about changing their behavior toward our allies. About acting honorably at least toward our allies. Rather they will think more about how badly they can punish the leaker. I can only imagine how badly they are itching to get Snowden's ass to gitmo and torture him to death in very creative ways.
I don't know what kind of "Libertarians" you are meeting, but the wikipedia entry is fairly accurate IIRC. Just look up the definition if you are confused. I'm a Libertarian because I support either genuinely minimal government or none at all and because I believe in the principle of voluntarism and I am against any sort of slavery to even the slightest degree. Probably the simplest way to think of a Libertarian is someone who believes that the original US system from, say, the early 19th century, is pretty close to ideal.
I am not at all uncomfortable with the term anarchist. Compared to democrats and republicans I'm close enough to an anarchist. I can see how they might see it that way. It's not totally accurate, but it's close and there are Libertarians who truly are anarchists. They are (or used to be) referred to as Anarcho-Libertarians. Basically they are anarchists who believe that without government intervention self-organizing systems will evolve to fill the niches that government would normally. As opposed to an anarchist who may not expect or want private versions of police and court and military etc to arise at all.
I dont' know how old you are, but the problem you are encountering may be that Libertarianism doesn't seem to be as popular among the newer Facebook generation. So you are maybe getting more false positives from people who just don't understand what the term means. I haven't met many Libertarians IRL, but most of those I have met do seem to understand what the term means and have usually been genuine Libertarians.
Most Libertarians that I have met do not feel any more attachment to the Republican party than to the Democratic one. In fact, it used to be that the Democrats seemed like closer allies due to the ACLU and the fact that Democrats really did seem to support civil liberties in the 80s and maybe to some extent in the 90s as well. Now both parties are pro police state of course and Obama has proven to me that they really are nearly indistinguishable even when it comes to civil liberties / human rights violations.
I do share some sympathy with the idea that Agnostics are basically Athiests without the courage to say so. Not that it takes so much courage anymore, at least here in the US. Nevertheless Agnosticism has a very specific meaning. It isn't a fuzzy concept at all. It is a distinct category. Again, it's pretty easy to look up the meaning if you are confused.
Athiest: There is no evidence for the existence of this entity you refer to as God and some definitions are even self-contradictory. Thus, what you are referring to by "God" does not exist except as an idea in your mind. That sort of thing.
Agnostic: The supernatural entity that you claim exists cannot be detected in any way. If it cannot be detected through experiments or through sensory data then it doesn't matter whether it exists or not because we wouldn't be able to know either way. The existence of that entity is truly unknowable. We cannot make any claims about its existence.
The important distinction is that an Agnostic does not make any hard claim that this or that deity does not or cannot exist. The claim is that even if it does exist it is unknowable. Although someone can be both Agnostic and an Atheist. The positions do not contradict one another.
Interesting story. I don't disagree with the conclusion. I have zero online presence under my real name. Googling my name will get my current address and maybe even my phone number, but there is no connection with that and anything I write online.
Of course the FBI or NSA or other government agency could connect to my real identity through my IP address, but nothing can be done about that except maybe only posting with Tor and/or from an internet cafe, even more ideally from an internet cafe in a country without friendly relations with the US.
When you google my name you mostly get several ordinary people with lots of information about them. If one of those people were a convicted felon I'd probably at least put up a LinkedIn page or something. Just so there is no question whatsoever that that is not me.
If you think that it's time to put an end to assholes running around blowing up everyone that disagrees with them and maybe a few hundred innocent bystanders (including their own people) as well
I don't think it's practical to try to stop our government from doing this. When living abroad I do try to let people know that I do not support such actions and didn't vote for any of the people who think collateral murder is justified. Nevertheless foreigners do tend to look at us as villains until proven otherwise.
One reason I like Wikileaks is they try to publish some of the secret crimes our government commits in our name. Although we will never be able to convince our countrymen that murder is not okay just because the victims were not born here, at least we can be aware of the war crimes and torture that our government is so fond of. That information needs to be out there.
If it makes you feel any better the FBI started an investigation on me while I was living abroad and they simply put their investigation on hold for over a year until I came back. So in practice they don't seem very international. Maybe for more serious crimes than what they were after me for.
If you google my real name, all you come up with is some young black dude who is presently an inmate in a Texas prison.
I also value my online privacy, but your situation is one of the few where I could actually be convinced to create an online presence. Someone googles your name and just gets a prison inmate? Not good. At least do a homepage / resume kind of think.
And then there's the little issue of having stolen $50,000 from his last employer. Literally just transfering it to his own bank account. Maybe he could get a job bagging groceries. But then there's no reason to believe he would have ever done better than that anyway. He's clearly destined for an Icelandic jail. He has that magical combination of stupidity and willingness to commit crimes. He'll probably spend half his life in jail which I guess is maybe not so bad in iceland. Wikileaks should have known better and some of them apparently did. Not that it really matters. If Assange gets extradited to the US he's fucked anyway. Little details like chat conversations aren't going to matter. Our corrupt court system would probably find a way to try him for treason even though he's Australian.
In Soviet Russia, You don't have a legal right to say you are going to go and shoot up a school full of kids and eat their still beating hearts. In Soviet Russia, That is pretty explicitely not covered in freedom of speech. In Soviet Russia, You don't have the right to say you are going to commit any crime, nevermind one that horrifying.
Further, In Soviet Russia, you can't say that, then add jk, and think that's somehow going to stop the police.
In Soviet Russia, This is less about freedom of speech, and more about one little gaming shit learning he can't do stuff like that in real life. In Soviet Russia, This isn't about some kid who pointed his fingers and said bang, this is about a kid who said HE WAS GOING TO SHOOT UP A SCHOOL FULL OF KIDS AND EAT THEIR STILL BEATING HEARTS.
FTFY. Please kill your entire family, and then yourself. With prejudice. In your will you can request that your bodies be shipped to North Korea, although I don't think you will find it repressive enough there. I am very serious about that recommendation to kill yourself. I really think you should consider it. Seriously.
But I'll admit, I'm just "paranoid" enough to believe that anyone who threatens to shoot up a school should get a knock on the door from the local authorities at the very least, because harassment is their job.
Fixed that for you, you fascist fuck.