I will tell you what their line will be: Our domestic programs are to protect us against terrorism, and any compromising of that program exposes us to and increased terror risk. Therefore, any leak inside the government is a threat to the anti-terror efforts.
IMNSHO, this is one of the scariest things that has happened in the US in my lifetime.
I think the reason that phishing attacks work so well is because we are taught from kindergarten to obey authority figures and jump through any bureaucratic hoops they present.
In the real world, there are affects of authority that act as a sign of validity -- the expensive building that the bank is housed in, the clothing of the person who is asking you to fill out a form.
In the online world, it is inexpensive to replicate any sign of authority, such as logo images, official colors, names, etc. It's all electronic so it's practically cost-free to duplicate, which isn't the same in the case of a branch office.
What we need is secure authentication and verification technology, like wide-spread PGP keys, and most importantly user education on how to use it.
"How do these people avoid getting busted? They have IP addresses that point directly to the fake server. Finding out who owns the servers and where it is should be fairly elementary.
Okay, so many are in another countries. But how many countries DON'T have laws against this? "
Because interpol is not going to get involved over a matter of a few hundred dollars, and the police in Springfield, Ohio are not going to team up with local police in Malaysia. The damage amounts are not worth the expiditure at this point.
"Not really. The troop I was in when I was a boy,we seperated into 3 smaller groups with a leader each. Then troop had one main leader. The one leader communicated to the 3 sub-leaders and they talked those in their own groups. This is a hierarchical structure and it's prevalent in many social structures. From community groups, church groups, book clubs, political organizations..."
No, Really. Hierarchical structures are very different than cell networks. And it shows, visibly, on a social network diagram.
You said that when you were a boy scout, you seperated into three smaller groups. How did you know there were two other groups besides yours? How did you know that the three sub-leaders reported to the troops' main leader? Already you know that you at one point were in a group that was later divided out into three smaller groups. You might know some of the boys in the othe groups from school, soccer, etc.
If you were being interrogated about your scout troops' structure, you would have a *lot* of info about it. Your interrogators would have a good idea of how many people were in your branch, and what the basic structure is -- one troop leader who oversees three group leaders of boys. You could probably name your leader, the boys in your group, and a few other boys and maybe another leader from your social knowledge outside of the scouts.
Also, since you had a meeting where you divided up into groups, you might also recognize the faces of the people you don't know the names of. You might be able to point them out in a photograph.
In a cell network, it's totally different. You only know the other guys in your cell, and maybe one or two leaders that you directly report to. Cells are purposefully kept small -- usually no more than 6-8 people. You have no idea if there are other cells in your locality, or none. Your leaders may claim to be Al-Qaida, but you have no way of knowing. You have no idea who your leaders report to, if anyone. So, if you get caught, you can only rat out the 5 other guys. Even if the cops arrest all six of you, the only intel that the cops get out of all six of you is who your leader is. And if any one of you get caught, you can bet that your leader will suddenly be hard to get a hold of.
"A covert cell structure is a method for organizing a group in such a way that it can more effectively resist penetration by an opposing organization."
"The organizational structure of covert cells is intended to limit the harm that can be done if members are captured and interrogated. Most members will only know the identities of other people in their own cell; only the leader of a cell will know the identities of leaders of other cells and communicate with them. By keeping cell size small, captives or double agents will have a very limited knowledge of the organization as a whole."
"This approach seeks to protect the larger organization from being compromised. By dividing the organization into many smaller groups, each of which is compartmentalized and only knows what it needs to know for its individual tasks, the damage that can be caused by outside penetration can be greatly reduced. Other cells can continue to operate independently."
That's why terrorist cells are so hard to bust up. Nobody knows anything. Law enforcement keeps encountering information roadblocks every step of the way. However, with social network diagram that included every phone call ever made, cell networks would stick out like a sore thumb.
I sympathize with your financial paranoia. I've become convinced lately that networking and being a good schmoozer are what let people keep their job in tough times -- qualities that are usually absent for a geek. You have to look out for number 1.
It's good that you have savings, but also consider diversifying your portfolio. If it's all in dollars, your might be screwed by the people in charge -- massive budget deficits, trade imbalance, outsourcing manufacturing... The dollar may not be worth as much in the near future as it is now. I would recommend looking at putting some money in other currencies as a hedge. Maybe Euros, Yen, Yuan... I'm not really an expert here, though.
You might be having the last laugh if your friends who have 300k+ houses encounter a 'market correction'. It would be a sad situation in general, but nontheless, look out for #1.
"You still need empirical evidence. That was my point."
That may have been your point, but that's not what you said. You said, "Exactly these types of programs are only good when you know in advance who your targets are".
This is my point: this type of data and diagramming bring new people to your attention, people who you weren't even aware of before. Let's take my example again. You had three suspects, people who were doing suspicous things. You had no reason to connect them, nor any reason to ascribe any ulterior or conspiratorial motive to them. But, once you have the diagram, you notice that they each have one degree of seperation from a couple.
Let's recap. In the beginning, you weren't even aware of Ron and Patti. After three suspects and the diagram, you now 1. you definately know about them, and 2. they are extremely suspicious. You didn't know in advance who your targets were, and now you do. ( The henchmen were never your targets -- they were only a few weirdos who had checked out a few odd books-- nothing to arrest anyone over ).
"A terrorist cell relational structure will look the same as the structure between a boy scout troop"
No, it won't. A terrorist cell is a different structure from a Boy Scout troop. A Boy Scout troop will have a cluster of well-connected dots -- everybody talks to everybody. A terrorist cell will have small clusters that link back to central people -- but they don't link amongst themselves.
In these diagrams, terrorist cells really stand out because they go against the human instinct to socialize and talk to everybody. You have to make special efforts to keep people from meeting and talking to their peers. Terrorists don't hold conventions where they meet and greet everyone. If you see such a structure where peers are not in contact with each other, it's suspicious. You can guarantee that the people who do connect the groups are making sure that the different groups aren't aware of each other's identities.
This is what makes terrorism cells so difficult for traditional law enforcement to track down. They don't have a typical social structure. If you catch a terrorist and interrogate him, you don't get very many names -- only his immediate peers and supervisors. His leadership has purposefully kept him in the dark so that he can't rat out the entire organization. The damage is limited. You then have to track or capture the next guy in the link. So it takes a long time to work your way through a terrorist network. You are practically going person by person.
That's why the government wants this technology so badly -- you can find cell organizations almost instantly.
"Exactly these types of programs are only good when you know in advance who your targets are."
That's wrong. These types of programs are good for bringing to you attention targets whom you weren't aware of previously.
Let's look at the example again. Supposed you found green 'Leslie' posting suspicious messages on a message board. Suppose red 'Martin J.' was checking out suspicious books from the library. Also, green 'Scott' has been ordering suspicious things over the internet. Is any of this suspicious activity related? Well -- just look at the diagram. Your three terrorism suspects have no direct link with one another. They are only in contact through two people, 'Ron' and 'Patti'. You weren't aware of Ron and Betty beforehand, but now they are prodiving links between people who are doing some suspicous things. Perhaps Ron and Patti are the behind-the-scenes masterminds who don't want to do anything that would raise suspicion. Instead, they were having Martin J., Scott, and Lelie doing the dirty work. If any of them got busted, they wouldn't rat out the others, because none of them were aware of each other -- only Ron and Patti.
So in fact, with this kind of data, you become aware of new targets, who are highly valuable targets, whereas before you had no idea that there might be any connection between suspects.
We have a democratic republic as our form of government here in the US. A republic is where representatives gather together and represent their constituencies. We are a democratic republic because we vote for who our representatives will be.
As a contrast, a simple republic could be where powerful, but not elected, people meet and represent their constituencies. A simple democracy is one man, one vote -- on laws itself. The simple democracy worked in ancient Greece, where only land-owning men were considered 'citizens'. Before the communications age, simple democracy would have been untenable -- it would simple take to long to propose laws and have discussion about them based on men moving paper around on horseback. But with the advent of the internet, people are now advocating Direct Democracy, where all the citizens of a country have a direct vote in various issues.
It's fairly easy to figure out what they are doing with the data. With a log of who called whom, when, and for how long, you can build a social network diagram like this. These diagrams tell you at a glance who are the most influential people. In this diagram, 'Ron' and 'Patti' are highly connected people. It's likely they are in a close relationship with each other.
If you wanted to destroy a terrorist network as quickly and cheaply as possible, you simply need to figure out the people at the nexuses of these social networks, and take them out. (In our example above, you would take out Ron and Patti -- they connect the green and red groups) The problem is, this also works for any other type of organizations -- ones that imposed martial law, for example.
Now, for most of the time, these social networks are almost entirely informal, based only on socializing. The thing of it is, they can quickly become the basis for any opposition or resistance movements ( think Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement ). If you wanted to go beyond fighting terrorism and, say, impose martial law and rule as a dictator, taking out rebellious, influential people ahead of time, or even afterwards, would make your life easier.
P.S. There is some kind of calculus that volunteers for congressional reps use for various types of communication. For instance, an email is assumed to represent the thoughts of 5 other constiuents, a phone call, 20, and a paper letter, 50. My numbers are a guess, but IIRC the paper letter carries the most weight as far as representatives surmising constiuent opinion based on feedback. So it would behoove your cause if you also sent a paper letter.
We don't know that the NSA was telling anyone at AT&T what it was doing or how it was going to use the information. It could be that the case filed requests information from the NSA that the NSA never shared with AT&T in the first place.
Even if the NSA only told a few AT&T executives, that's still better than having *everyone* know in public court documents.
However, can't court records be sealed for cases like this?
"Just highlights the fact that the fight for freedom never ends. the CIA would act like the KGB if they could. Same with any other government entity."
FYI, this case regards the NSA, not the CIA. I still think that the culture of the agency plays a large role as far as how much power it abuses. Rendition flights aside, I think the CIA still has a culture that supports our basic rights as Americans (they just had a very amoral view of accomplishing our goals overseas). Word is inside the agency, they are *extremely* unhappy with Bush's blaming the CIA for 9/11 when they did everything in their power to warn the president, and they are unhappy with Bush's political appointees who are now embroiled in scandal.
The security agencies are not filled with party loyalists like they were in Stalin's USSR or Hussein's Iraq. They are staffed by people who read 1984 and took the same civics class that you and I have. It would take a while, perhaps a generation or so, to overturn the culture and populate the agency with loyalists. If the Bush administration tried to do anything really serious in the near future, they would face tremendous backlash.
There is a difference between the phone company having records of the numbers you have dialed, and the government having complete phone records for every United States citizen.
We have passed a major milestone. In the court decision above, the information was there, and the government could go get it if they were so inclined. We now live in an era where everyone has a file. Remember when we heard about the FBI keeping a file on people like John Lennon and Muhammed Ali? Well, now the NSA has a file for you, and a file for me, and every other United States citizen. Sure, it's not a manilla folder with a photo of you, and there is not a Lincoln Continental with two FBI agents in it across the street from your house, but there is a file being kept, and updated constantly, of who you call and who calls you. The government is tracking everyone.
"You want a rational argument: The information the NSA is getting is illegal. There is a very specific legal process for obtaining wiretaps, and they aren't using it."
I dislike this program as much as anyone, and I'm no fan of GWB, but the sad fact is this isn't wiretapping. Wiretapping is when you 'tap into' a phone conversation and listen to it. This is just compiling records of who called who, when, and probably how long. They are not collecting information about the content of the call, which is what wiretapping laws protect against, in the broadest sense.
Again, I still think it's wrong, and it's extremely dangerous, but it's not wiretapping.
"Problem 1: We already have given up privacy. That's an inevitble part of living in human society of any kind."
That's tru. But in small societies, like small towns, villages, and hunter-gatherer societies, eveyone knows everyone else's business. There is equanimity in lack of privacy.
In our modern society, I have really no clue what the people in our government are up to. They might be chasing down terrorists; they might be plotting to install marshall law in the United States. I don't know. But they sure would be aided in their plans to become dictators if they had all the access they needed to citizen's private lives -- they could severely interrupt any attempts at organizing a resistance. That's why we need oversight of our government ( along with elected representatives, rule of law, etc. )
I think it's a little more sophisticated than that.
If you have a list of how has called who, when, and for how long, you can diagram out connections between people and see who are the most influential. Have a look at this image.
My guess is that they are looking for people who have influence, who are at the center of social hubs. These people are leader-like; they are charismatic and people want to listen to them. They have a lot of connections. They aren't consciouly trying to build an organization or influence people; they are just popular and social.
If you want to put the kabash on any fomenting organization, or group of people that are causing your problems, just 'take out' the few charismatic leaders. If you look at the image above, if you put 'Ron' and 'Patti' under house arrest, you would pretty much kill any communication between the red and green groups.
It's a way of keeping information from tavelling between people, so then people must rely on official news sources.
"Does anybody get the idea that Diebold simply threw these machines together, cobbled the code together from stuff lying around the shop, slapped some paint on them, and expected states to use them no questions asked?"
I think it's equal parts crappy production and braindead design -- you know, design where the manager says "Make sure the system is secure and has passwords, but make the passwords easy to remember so that we don't get locked out of the system." In this case "Make sure that there is someway that we can get in there if we have to -- you know, in case there is an emergency."
But given the state of the vote here in Ohio, I'm beginning to wonder if they weren't specifically designed for election stealing.
Yes, but can you have a sercure conversation with existing cell phone tech? Say you have a program that allows you to make secure calls -- who are you going to call? It's a question of market penetration.
Encrypted VOIP solutions are great if you have a modern computer with high-speed access. But think of how much communication happens over cell-phones these days. We would need pervasive free wi-fi and some kind of portable device that could run the secure app to protect ourselves from an abusive government.
I shudder to think what other information the government could get from cell phones over the cell phone networks... after all, these things have contacts, calendars, text messages. I can't believe that there aren't back doors built into phone OSes.
Let's assume that the theory is correct. Just because women can recognize from a face that some guy is a brawler and another guy is a nebbish, it doesn't mean that things play out perfectly afterwards. Maybe the nebbish doesn't want to raise the kid that came along 6 months after he met the girl.
This is not what "big government does". This is what a facist police state does.
I would bet that the governments of the western, industrialized nations, including most of Europe, The US and Canada, Australia and Japan, are "bigger" than Egypts' in any sense you can think of ( budget, tax revenue, number of employees, number of laws, etc. ). However, because their representatives are elected and the government employees consider themselves servants instead of power brokers, the "big governments" in those countries aren't locking up political prisoners.
I agree that locking up political prisoners is bad, but you are attacking the wrong philosophy here. Facism and a police state is the problem, not "big government".
I've heard that Brazil is on track to become totally self-sufficient this year with home-grown sugar-cane fuel and other fuels. That's what I'm talking about -- not 100 MPG cars or engines that run on water. I'm talking about not having to rely on Iran or Venezuela for our fuel. How about relying on Iowa and Kansas? Problem is, Shell, BP, et al wouldn't be making insane money anymore. They would just be making only decent money. So, we are going to continue shipping oil around the world so the oil companies can make outrageous profits on what amounts to basically make-work in this day and age.
If you are rich or poor, you want to make the most money on the least amount of investment. If you own oil, you want to continue making money now on the existing oil infrastructure, instead of having to give up some money as an investment to build a new infrastructure that will pay off in the future.
Yes, if you own oil, you also want to own new technology. But if you have your investment in the oil infrastructure, you want to make as much money as you can off of that investment. (I'm not talking about rich individuals or families so much as companies.) If alternative fuels came along now or in the very near future, they would degrade the profitability of this investment. It's best to forestay alternative fuels as much as possible so you can make the most money on your existing investment instead of having to sink more money into another investment.
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I will tell you what their line will be: Our domestic programs are to protect us against terrorism, and any compromising of that program exposes us to and increased terror risk. Therefore, any leak inside the government is a threat to the anti-terror efforts.
IMNSHO, this is one of the scariest things that has happened in the US in my lifetime.
I think the reason that phishing attacks work so well is because we are taught from kindergarten to obey authority figures and jump through any bureaucratic hoops they present.
In the real world, there are affects of authority that act as a sign of validity -- the expensive building that the bank is housed in, the clothing of the person who is asking you to fill out a form.
In the online world, it is inexpensive to replicate any sign of authority, such as logo images, official colors, names, etc. It's all electronic so it's practically cost-free to duplicate, which isn't the same in the case of a branch office.
What we need is secure authentication and verification technology, like wide-spread PGP keys, and most importantly user education on how to use it.
"How do these people avoid getting busted? They have IP addresses that point directly to the fake server. Finding out who owns the servers and where it is should be fairly elementary.
Okay, so many are in another countries. But how many countries DON'T have laws against this? "
Because interpol is not going to get involved over a matter of a few hundred dollars, and the police in Springfield, Ohio are not going to team up with local police in Malaysia. The damage amounts are not worth the expiditure at this point.
"Not really. The troop I was in when I was a boy ,we seperated into 3 smaller groups with a leader each. Then troop had one main leader. The one leader communicated to the 3 sub-leaders and they talked those in their own groups. This is a hierarchical structure and it's prevalent in many social structures. From community groups, church groups, book clubs, political organizations..."
No, Really. Hierarchical structures are very different than cell networks. And it shows, visibly, on a social network diagram.
You said that when you were a boy scout, you seperated into three smaller groups. How did you know there were two other groups besides yours? How did you know that the three sub-leaders reported to the troops' main leader? Already you know that you at one point were in a group that was later divided out into three smaller groups. You might know some of the boys in the othe groups from school, soccer, etc.
If you were being interrogated about your scout troops' structure, you would have a *lot* of info about it. Your interrogators would have a good idea of how many people were in your branch, and what the basic structure is -- one troop leader who oversees three group leaders of boys. You could probably name your leader, the boys in your group, and a few other boys and maybe another leader from your social knowledge outside of the scouts. Also, since you had a meeting where you divided up into groups, you might also recognize the faces of the people you don't know the names of. You might be able to point them out in a photograph.
In a cell network, it's totally different. You only know the other guys in your cell, and maybe one or two leaders that you directly report to. Cells are purposefully kept small -- usually no more than 6-8 people. You have no idea if there are other cells in your locality, or none. Your leaders may claim to be Al-Qaida, but you have no way of knowing. You have no idea who your leaders report to, if anyone. So, if you get caught, you can only rat out the 5 other guys. Even if the cops arrest all six of you, the only intel that the cops get out of all six of you is who your leader is. And if any one of you get caught, you can bet that your leader will suddenly be hard to get a hold of.
Here's a few select quotes from the wikipedia article:
"A covert cell structure is a method for organizing a group in such a way that it can more effectively resist penetration by an opposing organization."
"The organizational structure of covert cells is intended to limit the harm that can be done if members are captured and interrogated. Most members will only know the identities of other people in their own cell; only the leader of a cell will know the identities of leaders of other cells and communicate with them. By keeping cell size small, captives or double agents will have a very limited knowledge of the organization as a whole."
"This approach seeks to protect the larger organization from being compromised. By dividing the organization into many smaller groups, each of which is compartmentalized and only knows what it needs to know for its individual tasks, the damage that can be caused by outside penetration can be greatly reduced. Other cells can continue to operate independently."
That's why terrorist cells are so hard to bust up. Nobody knows anything. Law enforcement keeps encountering information roadblocks every step of the way. However, with social network diagram that included every phone call ever made, cell networks would stick out like a sore thumb.
I sympathize with your financial paranoia. I've become convinced lately that networking and being a good schmoozer are what let people keep their job in tough times -- qualities that are usually absent for a geek. You have to look out for number 1.
It's good that you have savings, but also consider diversifying your portfolio. If it's all in dollars, your might be screwed by the people in charge -- massive budget deficits, trade imbalance, outsourcing manufacturing... The dollar may not be worth as much in the near future as it is now. I would recommend looking at putting some money in other currencies as a hedge. Maybe Euros, Yen, Yuan... I'm not really an expert here, though.
You might be having the last laugh if your friends who have 300k+ houses encounter a 'market correction'. It would be a sad situation in general, but nontheless, look out for #1.
"You still need empirical evidence. That was my point."
That may have been your point, but that's not what you said. You said, "Exactly these types of programs are only good when you know in advance who your targets are".
This is my point: this type of data and diagramming bring new people to your attention, people who you weren't even aware of before. Let's take my example again. You had three suspects, people who were doing suspicous things. You had no reason to connect them, nor any reason to ascribe any ulterior or conspiratorial motive to them. But, once you have the diagram, you notice that they each have one degree of seperation from a couple.
Let's recap. In the beginning, you weren't even aware of Ron and Patti. After three suspects and the diagram, you now 1. you definately know about them, and 2. they are extremely suspicious. You didn't know in advance who your targets were, and now you do. ( The henchmen were never your targets -- they were only a few weirdos who had checked out a few odd books-- nothing to arrest anyone over ).
"A terrorist cell relational structure will look the same as the structure between a boy scout troop"
No, it won't. A terrorist cell is a different structure from a Boy Scout troop. A Boy Scout troop will have a cluster of well-connected dots -- everybody talks to everybody. A terrorist cell will have small clusters that link back to central people -- but they don't link amongst themselves.
In these diagrams, terrorist cells really stand out because they go against the human instinct to socialize and talk to everybody. You have to make special efforts to keep people from meeting and talking to their peers. Terrorists don't hold conventions where they meet and greet everyone. If you see such a structure where peers are not in contact with each other, it's suspicious. You can guarantee that the people who do connect the groups are making sure that the different groups aren't aware of each other's identities.
This is what makes terrorism cells so difficult for traditional law enforcement to track down. They don't have a typical social structure. If you catch a terrorist and interrogate him, you don't get very many names -- only his immediate peers and supervisors. His leadership has purposefully kept him in the dark so that he can't rat out the entire organization. The damage is limited. You then have to track or capture the next guy in the link. So it takes a long time to work your way through a terrorist network. You are practically going person by person.
That's why the government wants this technology so badly -- you can find cell organizations almost instantly.
"Exactly these types of programs are only good when you know in advance who your targets are."
That's wrong. These types of programs are good for bringing to you attention targets whom you weren't aware of previously.
Let's look at the example again. Supposed you found green 'Leslie' posting suspicious messages on a message board. Suppose red 'Martin J.' was checking out suspicious books from the library. Also, green 'Scott' has been ordering suspicious things over the internet. Is any of this suspicious activity related? Well -- just look at the diagram. Your three terrorism suspects have no direct link with one another. They are only in contact through two people, 'Ron' and 'Patti'. You weren't aware of Ron and Betty beforehand, but now they are prodiving links between people who are doing some suspicous things. Perhaps Ron and Patti are the behind-the-scenes masterminds who don't want to do anything that would raise suspicion. Instead, they were having Martin J., Scott, and Lelie doing the dirty work. If any of them got busted, they wouldn't rat out the others, because none of them were aware of each other -- only Ron and Patti.
So in fact, with this kind of data, you become aware of new targets, who are highly valuable targets, whereas before you had no idea that there might be any connection between suspects.
We have a democratic republic as our form of government here in the US. A republic is where representatives gather together and represent their constituencies. We are a democratic republic because we vote for who our representatives will be.
As a contrast, a simple republic could be where powerful, but not elected, people meet and represent their constituencies. A simple democracy is one man, one vote -- on laws itself. The simple democracy worked in ancient Greece, where only land-owning men were considered 'citizens'. Before the communications age, simple democracy would have been untenable -- it would simple take to long to propose laws and have discussion about them based on men moving paper around on horseback. But with the advent of the internet, people are now advocating Direct Democracy, where all the citizens of a country have a direct vote in various issues.
It's fairly easy to figure out what they are doing with the data. With a log of who called whom, when, and for how long, you can build a social network diagram like this. These diagrams tell you at a glance who are the most influential people. In this diagram, 'Ron' and 'Patti' are highly connected people. It's likely they are in a close relationship with each other.
If you wanted to destroy a terrorist network as quickly and cheaply as possible, you simply need to figure out the people at the nexuses of these social networks, and take them out. (In our example above, you would take out Ron and Patti -- they connect the green and red groups) The problem is, this also works for any other type of organizations -- ones that imposed martial law, for example.
Now, for most of the time, these social networks are almost entirely informal, based only on socializing. The thing of it is, they can quickly become the basis for any opposition or resistance movements ( think Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement ). If you wanted to go beyond fighting terrorism and, say, impose martial law and rule as a dictator, taking out rebellious, influential people ahead of time, or even afterwards, would make your life easier.
P.S. There is some kind of calculus that volunteers for congressional reps use for various types of communication. For instance, an email is assumed to represent the thoughts of 5 other constiuents, a phone call, 20, and a paper letter, 50. My numbers are a guess, but IIRC the paper letter carries the most weight as far as representatives surmising constiuent opinion based on feedback. So it would behoove your cause if you also sent a paper letter.
We don't know that the NSA was telling anyone at AT&T what it was doing or how it was going to use the information. It could be that the case filed requests information from the NSA that the NSA never shared with AT&T in the first place. Even if the NSA only told a few AT&T executives, that's still better than having *everyone* know in public court documents.
However, can't court records be sealed for cases like this?
"Just highlights the fact that the fight for freedom never ends. the CIA would act like the KGB if they could. Same with any other government entity."
FYI, this case regards the NSA, not the CIA. I still think that the culture of the agency plays a large role as far as how much power it abuses. Rendition flights aside, I think the CIA still has a culture that supports our basic rights as Americans (they just had a very amoral view of accomplishing our goals overseas). Word is inside the agency, they are *extremely* unhappy with Bush's blaming the CIA for 9/11 when they did everything in their power to warn the president, and they are unhappy with Bush's political appointees who are now embroiled in scandal.
The security agencies are not filled with party loyalists like they were in Stalin's USSR or Hussein's Iraq. They are staffed by people who read 1984 and took the same civics class that you and I have. It would take a while, perhaps a generation or so, to overturn the culture and populate the agency with loyalists. If the Bush administration tried to do anything really serious in the near future, they would face tremendous backlash.
"DOPA would prohibit sites that enable users to create their own content and share it."
Wouldn't this cover any web-hosting service?
There is a difference between the phone company having records of the numbers you have dialed, and the government having complete phone records for every United States citizen.
We have passed a major milestone. In the court decision above, the information was there, and the government could go get it if they were so inclined. We now live in an era where everyone has a file. Remember when we heard about the FBI keeping a file on people like John Lennon and Muhammed Ali? Well, now the NSA has a file for you, and a file for me, and every other United States citizen. Sure, it's not a manilla folder with a photo of you, and there is not a Lincoln Continental with two FBI agents in it across the street from your house, but there is a file being kept, and updated constantly, of who you call and who calls you. The government is tracking everyone.
"You want a rational argument: The information the NSA is getting is illegal. There is a very specific legal process for obtaining wiretaps, and they aren't using it."
I dislike this program as much as anyone, and I'm no fan of GWB, but the sad fact is this isn't wiretapping. Wiretapping is when you 'tap into' a phone conversation and listen to it. This is just compiling records of who called who, when, and probably how long. They are not collecting information about the content of the call, which is what wiretapping laws protect against, in the broadest sense.
Again, I still think it's wrong, and it's extremely dangerous, but it's not wiretapping.
"Problem 1: We already have given up privacy. That's an inevitble part of living in human society of any kind."
That's tru. But in small societies, like small towns, villages, and hunter-gatherer societies, eveyone knows everyone else's business. There is equanimity in lack of privacy.
In our modern society, I have really no clue what the people in our government are up to. They might be chasing down terrorists; they might be plotting to install marshall law in the United States. I don't know. But they sure would be aided in their plans to become dictators if they had all the access they needed to citizen's private lives -- they could severely interrupt any attempts at organizing a resistance. That's why we need oversight of our government ( along with elected representatives, rule of law, etc. )
I think it's a little more sophisticated than that.
If you have a list of how has called who, when, and for how long, you can diagram out connections between people and see who are the most influential. Have a look at this image.
My guess is that they are looking for people who have influence, who are at the center of social hubs. These people are leader-like; they are charismatic and people want to listen to them. They have a lot of connections. They aren't consciouly trying to build an organization or influence people; they are just popular and social.
If you want to put the kabash on any fomenting organization, or group of people that are causing your problems, just 'take out' the few charismatic leaders. If you look at the image above, if you put 'Ron' and 'Patti' under house arrest, you would pretty much kill any communication between the red and green groups.
It's a way of keeping information from tavelling between people, so then people must rely on official news sources.
"Does anybody get the idea that Diebold simply threw these machines together, cobbled the code together from stuff lying around the shop, slapped some paint on them, and expected states to use them no questions asked?"
I think it's equal parts crappy production and braindead design -- you know, design where the manager says "Make sure the system is secure and has passwords, but make the passwords easy to remember so that we don't get locked out of the system." In this case "Make sure that there is someway that we can get in there if we have to -- you know, in case there is an emergency."
But given the state of the vote here in Ohio, I'm beginning to wonder if they weren't specifically designed for election stealing.
Yes, but can you have a sercure conversation with existing cell phone tech? Say you have a program that allows you to make secure calls -- who are you going to call? It's a question of market penetration.
The problem is, what about cell phones?
Encrypted VOIP solutions are great if you have a modern computer with high-speed access. But think of how much communication happens over cell-phones these days. We would need pervasive free wi-fi and some kind of portable device that could run the secure app to protect ourselves from an abusive government.
I shudder to think what other information the government could get from cell phones over the cell phone networks... after all, these things have contacts, calendars, text messages. I can't believe that there aren't back doors built into phone OSes.
Why do women screw up?
Let's assume that the theory is correct. Just because women can recognize from a face that some guy is a brawler and another guy is a nebbish, it doesn't mean that things play out perfectly afterwards. Maybe the nebbish doesn't want to raise the kid that came along 6 months after he met the girl.
And you know what? Turning thrity means that you've completed three decades in your life. You are now embarking on your fourth decade! ;)
Just keep thinking happy thoughts.
It's the world's second andrdoid and its name is ever?
Does that make it The World's Second Android Ever?
Thank you, thank you!
I got fed up with nano's lack of a search-and-replace feature
Are you talking about ctrl+backslash functionality, or something else?
^\ (F14) (M-R) Replace text within the editor
Though it doesn't say so, you first enter a search string and then a replace string. You then get a confirmation on each instance.
This is not what "big government does". This is what a facist police state does.
I would bet that the governments of the western, industrialized nations, including most of Europe, The US and Canada, Australia and Japan, are "bigger" than Egypts' in any sense you can think of ( budget, tax revenue, number of employees, number of laws, etc. ). However, because their representatives are elected and the government employees consider themselves servants instead of power brokers, the "big governments" in those countries aren't locking up political prisoners.
I agree that locking up political prisoners is bad, but you are attacking the wrong philosophy here. Facism and a police state is the problem, not "big government".
I've heard that Brazil is on track to become totally self-sufficient this year with home-grown sugar-cane fuel and other fuels. That's what I'm talking about -- not 100 MPG cars or engines that run on water. I'm talking about not having to rely on Iran or Venezuela for our fuel. How about relying on Iowa and Kansas? Problem is, Shell, BP, et al wouldn't be making insane money anymore. They would just be making only decent money. So, we are going to continue shipping oil around the world so the oil companies can make outrageous profits on what amounts to basically make-work in this day and age.
If you are rich or poor, you want to make the most money on the least amount of investment. If you own oil, you want to continue making money now on the existing oil infrastructure, instead of having to give up some money as an investment to build a new infrastructure that will pay off in the future.
Yes, if you own oil, you also want to own new technology. But if you have your investment in the oil infrastructure, you want to make as much money as you can off of that investment. (I'm not talking about rich individuals or families so much as companies.) If alternative fuels came along now or in the very near future, they would degrade the profitability of this investment. It's best to forestay alternative fuels as much as possible so you can make the most money on your existing investment instead of having to sink more money into another investment.