The spies whine and spin it their way. If what they were doing was so innocuous, uncontroversial and even beneficial then they would be happy to be praised in the press. The fact is what they ware doing is deeply offensive to a large segment of society and they wish to hide it.
As to whether the terrs benefit or not, only the stupid ones might and they probably aren't reading. The non-stupid terrs have known about surveillence since before Echelon and adjust accordingly. They won't even infer any limits because they know the release is vetted to be incomplete.
The real effect of Snowdens releases is to confirm the tinfoil-behatted. Many fringe people have been saying much the same thing for 10+ years and been dismissed as lunatic paranoids. Now it appears they were right. Many people have egg on the face (congentially oblivious).
This might be [electrolytic] capacitor or some other component-level magic-smoke release. There is also the dreaded, much-discussed "wear" from re-writing flash memory -- worse than you think because blocks of 64 KB [typically] have to be erased and re-written to change any byte therein.
Linus, of all people, ought to know his kernel has options to minimize the re-writes, many of them developed to optimize laptops (like delaying writes). Another thing is to mount partitions (/etc/fstab anyone?) with `noatime` as an option (maybe 'nodiratime` too). Un*x and other Linux-like systems by default will re-write the access time for any disk inode read. Turning it off reduces disk write load (and seeks on slow disks). I've had it off for over ten years an not noticed any malperformance, althrough there are rumored to be some, somewhere.
I would be surprised if the NSA did _NOT_ have all (few dozen) the private keys behind the Certs of Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, and their ilk. Trivially easy to get:
1) Find credible evidence of certifiable badguy using service;
2) Make application to FISA court for all keys & gag;
3) Read _all_ traffic on the service, now or later (if cycles short at that time).
The obvious problem is that ISP does not have keys for just target badguy, so have to hand everyone's keys over. The solution is to switch to per-user keys after auth, but that is more trouble.
Just what did anyone reasonably expect? That in response to budget cuts a bureaucracy would suddenly get religion and root out the fat & waste? Why?
That fat and waste has resisted previous cuts and is remarkably good at protecting itself. Spends all its energy at self-defense. Otherwise it would have been long gone.
Useful activities spend at least some of their efforts at delivering services so has less for self-defense. Besides, they probably think they're too important to cut. And they are -- so what better way to stop the cutting?
If the Assange treatment didn't silence Snowden, then Snowden's fate is unlikely to silence similarly stout leakers.
Furthermore, there is a twisted logic necessary for [elected] tyrannies -- the tyrants may do whatever they like, but they are burning capital all the way and will fall when it is gone. Much less is needed to justify extreme measures to preserve "state secrets" than merely to send a message. The "justice" system is for grinding out messages.
Nice to get 400 GB of encrypts. It makes the keys easier to drop. But to work as "insurance", Mr Snowden either must trust other individuals with the keys. Or machines. Somebody/thing must act when he may not be able.
Under certain circumstances (nologin for a week, too many hits on "Snowden arrested|dead") then the individuals or machines spam out the keys. Potentially in waves if the big block has sub-blocks with different encryption keys.
I note with interest the USG did NOT promise to hold a speedy, fair public trial. And the point is not redundant any more than torture is.
I like to look for "negative knowledge" -- things that could reasonably have happened, and perhaps should have, but did not. Rejected options, certainly. While imperfect, this does yield insight.
Why all this attention on extra width? It might be useful for spreadsheets and some drawings/photos but it is horrid for text. You cannot see much in the short textboxes, and perhaps that leads to microfocus (nitpicking) and flame-wars. Besides, long lines are hard to follow and read (40 char optimum).
Of course you can rotate to portrait (xrandr) and when time allows (home/work), I do! Personally, I find 1960x1080 to be a bit long(!) but 1600x1024 or 1960x1200 is fine.
But line-count has been slow to increase -- VGA had 480 (lower than NTSC at 525 and PAL at 625), then 640, 800 and now 1080 as common max. Only double in 30 years? You can find 1200 without too much expense, but any higher gets expensive quickly. Aren't all these big LCD/LEDs all stitched together from subpanels anyways?
Skip the car analogies, I understand them much worse than computers.
If the computer were stolen property, then the rightful owner of course could consent to tracking software to recover it and whomever might be in the vicinity.
But if only a service ID had been stolen, that is a different matter. The easiest way to reduce loss in that case would be to deactivate the ID. Failing that, the user/thief might have had an expectation of privacy! Not easy to argue.
Yes, indirection via contractors/others will get around some Rules or Executive Orders. But it will not get around criminal culpability, where the concept of "accessory" is well established.
Their triangulation was specifically disallowed later by the issuing judge. It might be handy and convenient, but there is no legal permission or precedent for allowing such illegal intrusion (system takeover).
Please read less carelessly: warrants allow police to do things that would otherwise be felonies. Arrest and search can be allowed. Planting viruses and forcing transmissions do not have protection by warrants. "No warrants shall issue but..." is very closed-ended.
Sure it is -- arrest warrents allow trespass, breaking & entering, and armed kidnap. Sometimes "danger to others" or "exigent circumstances" are acceptable reasons. Would be for civilians too.
Do not kid yourselves, the police skate close to felonies. The more conscious amongst them are well aware of this and appropriately cautious.
... 'scuse me, but I see "unauthorized access to a computing system" and "theft of service" all over here. A badge should not be a free pass to commit crimes.
The fibbies might well have a warrent that would allow searching the machine, and a different one that would allow monitoring electronic conversations. But that is not the same as planting malware that creates transmissions. Not that the FBI transgressions are likely to be presented to a Grand Jury.
The interesting thing is this is a criminal trial where illegally obtained evidence and all results thereof can be excluded "fruit of the poisoned vine". So watch the admissibility rulings...
Before jumping at a "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" fallacy, how have other possible causes been eliminated?
There are a lot of new nasties in agricultural- and municipal wastewaters the mudbugs like living in.
Various growth hormones, for one, might be expected to have some effect, as might antibiotics and other drugs. For all we know, BPA might be good for crustaceans.
Why assume that polarization is bad? Merely because the underlying story is complex (far moreso than ever presented in any media) does not mean it deserves attention. Sure, the original authors might think so, many people do not care.
Worse (from the zealots PoV), people have an absolute right to choose not to care. For these people, perhaps polarization is an acceptable shortcut. The do seem to choose it.
I haven't done a full netstat trap'n'trace, but last I looked, the blue "f" on many pages sure looks like it opens a uniqueID IMG tag HTTP connection to *.facebook.com . From which a simple cookie query would reveal any fb.com cookies you leave available. So they could know you've visited the page whether you "liked" it or not.
I don't much like this tracking, so I create separate user profiles (Seamonkey/Firefox) for hazardous surfing. The profile has cookies for whichever site under quarantine and is only used for that site. Main profile swept clean of suspect cookies.
OK, with a warrant they can search. Break anything they need to. But compelling passwords is a different matter. Sure, they might break the device trying to get what is inside, but if you don't mind (or losing it at a border), I'm far for certain they can compel passwds (but can for civil discovery).
OK, lets say I want to try a "high port" -- why 2222 other than memorability? What ports are typical corp/govt/hotel/cafe router/firewalls likely to pass? What about the more anal firewalls?
FWIW throttling sshd can be done via MaxStartups in sshd.config.
In this case, it looks like they've added all the natgas pipeline losses & emissions -- both the fugitives (methane at high CO2 equivalence multiplier) and the turbocompressor stations. Nevermind that most are on conventional gas.
Frac'ing * drilling most certainly have some emissions (mud outgassing) but these are too small to make a nice headline.
Hmm... DHS used to claim only 10-15 miles, enough to cover checkpoints along I-10 around El Paso, TX. Papers, please!
Now some enterprising wonk has pushed this 10x in claiming 100mi. No doubt including coasts and international airports (Denver, St.Louis, Atlanta, Memphis,...) Nevermind the court decisions to the contrary.
These officials have sworn to uphold and defend the Constiution and then set about violating it, gives a measure of their honesty, integrity and honor -- ie - NIL . It is a sad oversight the US Constitution does not consider an offical's violation of their oath of office as treason. So mostly they face no consequences and will often take these fliers.
Most protests are ineffective because they rail against some wrongdoer in the hope of shaming them into reform. The effort is often vain because wrongdoers are very shame-resistant.
This is a little different because the EU is not [yet] a major wrongdoer with respect to privacy. The protest is more to bolster their nerve against heavy pressure from the US govt (a ne'er-do-well).
It enables the EU commissioners to say "The US is divided on this issue of privacy, with the govt saying one thing yet important people and organisations dissent)." So they get to do what they want anyways.
Peering dispute? Why? Just blackhole the packets! FT is presumably in control of their routers -- they do not need to allow pass-thru.
Of course customers will scream, and loud, but that is the choice -- charge for the traffic or live with the losses. The french probably don't want to, and think they can lean on GOOG who can and should give 'em the run-around. FT probably has the only fiber to Corsica and the Quai d'Orsay (English Whitehall, American Foggy Bottom) don't want to upset the natives. So an unfortunate attempt to treat business as power-politics.
Raving/.ers are right even at a deeper level. Do not mistake analysis for correctness, nor emotion for error.
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The spies whine and spin it their way. If what they were doing was so innocuous, uncontroversial and even beneficial then they would be happy to be praised in the press. The fact is what they ware doing is deeply offensive to a large segment of society and they wish to hide it.
As to whether the terrs benefit or not, only the stupid ones might and they probably aren't reading. The non-stupid terrs have known about surveillence since before Echelon and adjust accordingly. They won't even infer any limits because they know the release is vetted to be incomplete.
The real effect of Snowdens releases is to confirm the tinfoil-behatted. Many fringe people have been saying much the same thing for 10+ years and been dismissed as lunatic paranoids. Now it appears they were right. Many people have egg on the face (congentially oblivious).
This might be [electrolytic] capacitor or some other component-level magic-smoke release. There is also the dreaded, much-discussed "wear" from re-writing flash memory -- worse than you think because blocks of 64 KB [typically] have to be erased and re-written to change any byte therein.
Linus, of all people, ought to know his kernel has options to minimize the re-writes, many of them developed to optimize laptops (like delaying writes). Another thing is to mount partitions (/etc/fstab anyone?) with `noatime` as an option (maybe 'nodiratime` too). Un*x and other Linux-like systems by default will re-write the access time for any disk inode read. Turning it off reduces disk write load (and seeks on slow disks). I've had it off for over ten years an not noticed any malperformance, althrough there are rumored to be some, somewhere.
I would be surprised if the NSA did _NOT_ have all (few dozen) the private keys behind the Certs of Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, and their ilk. Trivially easy to get:
1) Find credible evidence of certifiable badguy using service;
2) Make application to FISA court for all keys & gag;
3) Read _all_ traffic on the service, now or later (if cycles short at that time).
The obvious problem is that ISP does not have keys for just target badguy, so have to hand everyone's keys over. The solution is to switch to per-user keys after auth, but that is more trouble.
While not for HTTP resources, I believe the first search engine (for FTP) was `archie` at McGill.
Just what did anyone reasonably expect? That in response to budget cuts a bureaucracy would suddenly get religion and root out the fat & waste? Why?
That fat and waste has resisted previous cuts and is remarkably good at protecting itself. Spends all its energy at self-defense. Otherwise it would have been long gone.
Useful activities spend at least some of their efforts at delivering services so has less for self-defense. Besides, they probably think they're too important to cut. And they are -- so what better way to stop the cutting?
Furthermore, there is a twisted logic necessary for [elected] tyrannies -- the tyrants may do whatever they like, but they are burning capital all the way and will fall when it is gone. Much less is needed to justify extreme measures to preserve "state secrets" than merely to send a message. The "justice" system is for grinding out messages.
Incredible how subservient the UK has become.
Nice to get 400 GB of encrypts. It makes the keys easier to drop. But to work as "insurance", Mr Snowden either must trust other individuals with the keys. Or machines. Somebody/thing must act when he may not be able.
Under certain circumstances (nologin for a week, too many hits on "Snowden arrested|dead") then the individuals or machines spam out the keys. Potentially in waves if the big block has sub-blocks with different encryption keys.
I note with interest the USG did NOT promise to hold a speedy, fair public trial. And the point is not redundant any more than torture is.
I like to look for "negative knowledge" -- things that could reasonably have happened, and perhaps should have, but did not. Rejected options, certainly. While imperfect, this does yield insight.
Why all this attention on extra width? It might be useful for spreadsheets and some drawings/photos but it is horrid for text. You cannot see much in the short textboxes, and perhaps that leads to microfocus (nitpicking) and flame-wars. Besides, long lines are hard to follow and read (40 char optimum).
Of course you can rotate to portrait (xrandr) and when time allows (home/work), I do! Personally, I find 1960x1080 to be a bit long(!) but 1600x1024 or 1960x1200 is fine.
But line-count has been slow to increase -- VGA had 480 (lower than NTSC at 525 and PAL at 625), then 640, 800 and now 1080 as common max. Only double in 30 years? You can find 1200 without too much expense, but any higher gets expensive quickly. Aren't all these big LCD/LEDs all stitched together from subpanels anyways?
If the computer were stolen property, then the rightful owner of course could consent to tracking software to recover it and whomever might be in the vicinity.
But if only a service ID had been stolen, that is a different matter. The easiest way to reduce loss in that case would be to deactivate the ID. Failing that, the user/thief might have had an expectation of privacy! Not easy to argue.
Their triangulation was specifically disallowed later by the issuing judge. It might be handy and convenient, but there is no legal permission or precedent for allowing such illegal intrusion (system takeover).
Please read less carelessly: warrants allow police to do things that would otherwise be felonies. Arrest and search can be allowed. Planting viruses and forcing transmissions do not have protection by warrants. "No warrants shall issue but ..." is very closed-ended.
Do not kid yourselves, the police skate close to felonies. The more conscious amongst them are well aware of this and appropriately cautious.
... 'scuse me, but I see "unauthorized access to a computing system" and "theft of service" all over here. A badge should not be a free pass to commit crimes.
The fibbies might well have a warrent that would allow searching the machine, and a different one that would allow monitoring electronic conversations. But that is not the same as planting malware that creates transmissions. Not that the FBI transgressions are likely to be presented to a Grand Jury.
The interesting thing is this is a criminal trial where illegally obtained evidence and all results thereof can be excluded "fruit of the poisoned vine". So watch the admissibility rulings ...
Before jumping at a "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" fallacy, how have other possible causes been eliminated?
There are a lot of new nasties in agricultural- and municipal wastewaters the mudbugs like living in.
Various growth hormones, for one, might be expected to have some effect, as might antibiotics and other drugs. For all we know, BPA might be good for crustaceans.
Rabble-rousing (ie inducing crowd behaviour) has always taken polemic speech.
Why assume that polarization is bad? Merely because the underlying story is complex (far moreso than ever presented in any media) does not mean it deserves attention. Sure, the original authors might think so, many people do not care.
Worse (from the zealots PoV), people have an absolute right to choose not to care. For these people, perhaps polarization is an acceptable shortcut. The do seem to choose it.
I haven't done a full netstat trap'n'trace, but last I looked, the blue "f" on many pages sure looks like it opens a uniqueID IMG tag HTTP connection to *.facebook.com . From which a simple cookie query would reveal any fb.com cookies you leave available. So they could know you've visited the page whether you "liked" it or not.
I don't much like this tracking, so I create separate user profiles (Seamonkey/Firefox) for hazardous surfing. The profile has cookies for whichever site under quarantine and is only used for that site. Main profile swept clean of suspect cookies.
OK, with a warrant they can search. Break anything they need to. But compelling passwords is a different matter. Sure, they might break the device trying to get what is inside, but if you don't mind (or losing it at a border), I'm far for certain they can compel passwds (but can for civil discovery).
OK, lets say I want to try a "high port" -- why 2222 other than memorability? What ports are typical corp/govt/hotel/cafe router/firewalls likely to pass? What about the more anal firewalls?
FWIW throttling sshd can be done via MaxStartups in sshd.config .
... figures don't lie, but liars figure.
In this case, it looks like they've added all the natgas pipeline losses & emissions -- both the fugitives (methane at high CO2 equivalence multiplier) and the turbocompressor stations. Nevermind that most are on conventional gas.
Frac'ing * drilling most certainly have some emissions (mud outgassing) but these are too small to make a nice headline.
Hmm ... DHS used to claim only 10-15 miles, enough to cover checkpoints along I-10 around El Paso, TX. Papers, please!
Now some enterprising wonk has pushed this 10x in claiming 100mi. No doubt including coasts and international airports (Denver, St.Louis, Atlanta, Memphis, ...) Nevermind the court decisions to the contrary.
These officials have sworn to uphold and defend the Constiution and then set about violating it, gives a measure of their honesty, integrity and honor -- ie - NIL . It is a sad oversight the US Constitution does not consider an offical's violation of their oath of office as treason. So mostly they face no consequences and will often take these fliers.
This is a little different because the EU is not [yet] a major wrongdoer with respect to privacy. The protest is more to bolster their nerve against heavy pressure from the US govt (a ne'er-do-well).
It enables the EU commissioners to say "The US is divided on this issue of privacy, with the govt saying one thing yet important people and organisations dissent)." So they get to do what they want anyways.
Am I missing something? DNS is the easiest (trivial) block to get around, just enter the dotted quad -- 207.97.227.239 in this case.
If all DNS traffic to their nameservers is blocked, you might need to enter some more (images.github.com) in your hosts file.
Really just a very low hurdle -- kinda like the US fiscal-cliff (just a sidewalk crack).
Peering dispute? Why? Just blackhole the packets! FT is presumably in control of their routers -- they do not need to allow pass-thru.
Of course customers will scream, and loud, but that is the choice -- charge for the traffic or live with the losses. The french probably don't want to, and think they can lean on GOOG who can and should give 'em the run-around. FT probably has the only fiber to Corsica and the Quai d'Orsay (English Whitehall, American Foggy Bottom) don't want to upset the natives. So an unfortunate attempt to treat business as power-politics.
Raving /.ers are right even at a deeper level. Do not mistake analysis for correctness, nor emotion for error.