As an independent developer, I can tell you why I avoid mobile devices in one word: variability. We follow w3c standards for our PC sites and have five browsers (Firefox, Crome, Opera, Safari, and Internet Explorer) to test against, each of which is free and each of which has a thousand pixels. In the mobile market there seem to be no standards, and ten versions of each browser, and ten versions of each operating system. Simply for testing we would have to fork over a couple thousand dollars for samples. The screens are small, yes, but worse is that the screens are of all sizes. Do we design for a width of 200 pixels? 300? 400? 500? Argh! Simpler to design for Firefox at 1024x764 pixels and let the wacko device you've got cope with scrolling.
From the viewpoint of the government, the American public appear to be enemies of the United States.
And from the viewpoint of seven billion poeple on this planet, the United States government appears to be the enemy of the American public.
The American people is the BOSS of the NSA; it's in the Constitution. The NSA has been lying to the boss, and they rightly have got their balls in a meat grinder.
Edward Snowden is MY MAN! He can sleep on my floor any time.
The NSA intrusion is already affecting U.S. business. My e-mail is at Yandex.com, which answers to the KGB, not the NSA. I use IxQuick, not Google. My web site is in Thailand. Any company today who creates a web site hosted in the USA is just stupid. There are perfectly competant hosting services outside the NSA's backyard.
I sent an e-mail supporting these eight companies regarding their hopes to limit the Feddie spooks. Yes, of course it is stockholder's equity that is being destroyed. But that makes it no less sincere. If the US can't hold back the NSA then NOBODY will use Google.com. Of course, it is ironic that Google's whole business plan is to know eveything about you. I don't want ANYBODY to know everything about me; I stopped using Google a year before Edward Snowden.
Ahah! There was that name! "Edward Snowden". This post will make it to the bowels of the NSA database. Creepy?
The weird part is that this problem was solved over two hundred years ago. It's called a "search warrant". You want to read my e-mails, go get a search warrant. Otherwise, keep your fingers out of my stuff.
I remember that there was great controversy about the Taliban, then in control of the country of Afghanistan. I would go to www.taliban.com and read what they had to say. It was in English. Then in July it was hacked and the front page was replaced by a picture of the American flag. A month or so later the United States invaded Afghanistan. A month after that www.taliban.com disappeared from the Internet.
The United States of America does not have to block web sites. If they don't like you, you just cease to exist. They control the top level domain names, right?
Oddly enough, I see that there is a site there now. I'll have to check it out.
I've also heard, don't remember where, that it is one big file and there are copies all over the world transported via Bit Torrent and the like. You know were and anyone can grab a copy of the encrypted archive.
I've also heard that the documents in that archive are originals, not redacted. The original would say something like "CIA Agent John Belushi did such-and-such." The redacted version, when released by Edward Snowden, reads "CIA Agent (name removed) did such and such." If they kill Snowden, the archive opens everywhere. Not only are secrets revealed, but names of agents are revealed, so those spies will be killed, perhaps by terrorists, perhaps by outraged neighbors.
A spy with any brains wants that archive to remain encrypted, so he wants Edward Snowden to live in peace in Moscow.
"old-fashioned gender roles, social order and monarchy".
I now live in Thailand and I love it. Those three words apply to my adopted country.
Freedom in gender roles does not mean dragging women out of the kitchen; it means the freedom to stay or go as she choses, and my wife choses to stay. Our son is being raised by his mother at home, not by some artiicial mother at a beaurocratic day-care center.
In Thailand society is supreme. In America The Law is supreme because they have no society. Society can be flexible and adaptable and forgiving; The Law is a formula for grinding you up. Here, if your neighbors don't like what you are doing, they will stop you, and the Law is one tool that they can use to stop you. If society likes what you are doing, it does not matter if it is illegal.
In Thailand we have a constitutional king. He is a VERY good man, and he cares about his subjects. His power is primarily leadership, but it is real. He loves his people and his people love him.
Twenty years ago I discovered that I would rather die in Thailand than live in America.
You said "And if anyone can suggest a reliable email provider that is NOT Google, MS or Yahoo, I am all ears.". Look into Yandex (www.yandex.com). It's located in Moscow. I have been using it for a year now. It seems reliable to me. And the most important thing to me is that Yandex does ***NOT*** report to the NSA.
Use multiple vendors located in multiple countries. I use Google translate, which reports to the NSA. My e-mail is Yandex, which is in Moscow and reports to the KGB. The NSA and the KGB don't talk to each other. I can use a search engine in Europe which does not talk to either. Bejing is my next market to shop at; what does China offer in the way of Internet services? Everywhere you go there will be someone watching you, but if you travel around it is different watchers. The Internet is GLOBAL - spread your business among many vendors all over the world and no one knows all about you.
Most manufacturers would give their eye teeth to have a product that their customers love as much as our users love Wincows XP. It does everything that our people need done, it is stable and secure and simple and they know it well. As tech support I know it well, too; on XP I don't have to search for "Where did Microsoft put the device drivers THIS TIME!"
But the problem that Microsoft faces is that they hire programmers, and programmers are change agents. If the program really does the job well, nobody will ever buy a new version. So they have to artificially destroy Windows XP in order to sell newer versions. Trojans, viruses, malware are all allies of Microsoft.
Sort of like getting a new wife every eight years, whether you want one or not.
I was at the hospital recently to get an HIV blood test. After I paid, the lady said I could go home. I said "But nobody has taken any blood out of me yet!" Truely, the NSA is good, but they're not THAT good! I think. Maybe they are that good. That would be convenient. No need to send your girlfriend in for a pregnancy check; just e-mail nsapao@nsa.gov and get the results over the Internet.
In the past century selling copies was a common method of financing; the entire book ecosystem is built around this concept. Similar is the movie ecosystem, which sold views until DVD's came along.
Recently the Internet has exploited the advertising method of financing. Newspapers and magazines have relied on this for decades.
RIch investors are not a new invention - it goes back thousands of years. This was how The Old Testament was paid for. Today nobody would know about Abraham except for the fellow who financed hand-written copies of the Torah. It is by far the oldest tradition. It's not evil. You pay to print your opinions, I pay to print my opinions. Millions read yours, maybe one or two will read mine. We both become part of the human cultural heritage.
Do you really expect a parent to stand over a kid whenever he's online? The original incident said that the suiical girl was bullied AT THE SCHOOL as well as on the Internet. There was no adult looking over their shoulders when they were talking on the playground.
Maybe this relates to the NSA? Maybe Americans want somebody looking over their shoulders all the time to make sure that nothing bad ever happens to them?
Shit happens. Get used to it. And teach your kid to deal with it. Also teach your kid not to do it. But don't expect anyone to protect your kid from other people; it can't be done. Not by the other kid's parents or the teachers or the playground supervisors or the police or the FBI or the NSA.
My immediate reaction was "How do I get rid of all this shit?" So I hunted around for an options / prferences control and could not find one. Not even clicking on my name gave me any options.
The current design is very simple - text in two colors. No file photos, no page full of garbage at the start. Just the news. Sownloads REAL fast. Read down until you see someting you recognize, then stop. Even the current mobile site is to complex for my patience; on my phone I have to wait 20 seconds for the stuff to stop bouncing.
Please, give me an "options" button, and there include a check list of what I want to see (news) and what I don't want to see (pictures).
Sure every country has a spy group. But every country does not have the SAME spy group. My search engine is in Europe. My e-mail is in Russia. My web site is in Thailand. You think the KGB is going to share data with the NSA? No way.
You use various services on the Internet. Get those services from different companies, different countries. If you use Google for everything, then Google knows everything about you, and Google will tell the NSA. Yandex will not tell the NSA; no way; Yandex is in Moscow. Google's business plan is to become an expert on you, and I don't want ANYBODY to be an expert on me. It's not about who you trust, it's about trusting nobody.
The most global thing about the Internet today is the American ego.
There already are non-US internets. Every country has it's own section of the "Internet". Most, like Thailand, have gateways through which all traffic in and out of the country must pass. Some, like Canada, don't care. Every country has it's own block of domain names, like *.co.th.
Oh yes, I fogot to mention another global factor: The bastards at the NSA. The NSA wiretaps the president of Brazil; Brazil does not wiretap Barack Obama.
My e-mail address is at Yandex.com. Yandex is in Moscow. My friends and I encrypt and sign messages using gnu PGP keys. The encryption is reliable. Yes, Yandex must answer to the KGB. But the KGB doesn't talk to the NSA.
Spread it around. Get your Internet services from different countries. E-mail, search, storage, web site, translation, maps, they don't have to all be Google, they don't have to all be in the USA. The Internet is global - spread it around.
My (48-year old Thai) girlfriend starts work at 6am and gets off at 6pm. She insists that means she works thirteen hours a day. It is amazing how incredibly dumb the average person is.
The Internet was invented at CERN to share research data among atomic scientists. Today the biggest use of the Internet seems to be Facebook.
The average IQ is supposed to be 100; until I moved to Thailand I had probably never even MET a person with an IQ below 110. Theory? Equations? Try "Unable to subtract 6am from 6pm". Science has all along been faced with the necessity of publishing conclusions, because the average person cannot comprehend the data or the formulas. Atomic science was ignored until Hiroshima; since then it is observed but rarely undrestood.
On every page of the site that I did for this company, in the upper right corner, there is a button labelled "BUG!". Click on it and a dialog box comes up that says simply "What's wrong with this page?" and has a big blank area to fill in. The dialog box has a "Submit" button.
What is not visible is that the JavaScript code for the BUG! button is grabbing all the information it can from the browser itself - what the current URL is, all the global JavaScript variables, name of the current logged-in user, time and date, browser type, web page contents, etc. All grabbed automatically.
And all stored in a special file on the server. The only thing the user has to tell me is what she doesn't like about that page.
The BUG! button was invented - by me - as a reaction to Bugzilla, which seems to be designed to keep users from reporting problems. I can ignore pointless bug reports, but I want to hear everything.
I swithced to e-mail from Yandex.com (based on Moscow) months ago. The KGB can read the data, but it does not share it with the NSA. My friends now encrypt all messages using OpenPGP keys. All your data gets stored somewhere, but spread it around so it isn't all stored in the same place. Washington, Moscow, Beijing don't tell each other your secrets. spread your business to all three and nobody knows everything.
Analogy: Your neighbor knows what time you leave for work in the morning. The office guard knows what time you arrive at work. But only by sharing information can they compute how fast you drove. Merged databases are much more dangerous than isolated databases.
The key to protecting your data: SPREAD IT AROUND.
P.S. I live in Bangkok. Edward Snowden can sleep on my floor any time.
The worst part about PRISM, IMHO, is that this debate should have taken place ten years ago.
The only (partial) fix that I can imagine this morning is a constitutional amendment saying that any law passed by congress has to be public. Secret laws ought to be unconstitutional, and thus inoperative. It would help.
My solution? Spread it around. Use different services from different vendors, and, if possible,in different countries.
Google can get an NSA letter demanding that Google tell them everything about Andy Canfield, and Google must comply. Yandex can get an NSA letter demanding that Yandex tell them everything about Andy Canfield, and the Yandex staff will laugh out loud. Yandex is based in Moscow. Yandex must answer to the KGB, just as Google must answer to the FBI, but the KGB and the FBI don't talk to each other.
Search engines in mainland China? Hard to read the prompts but secured against CIA demands. At the minimum use Google YouTube and Microsoft Bing; that way the NSA at least has to ask two different companies. I use Yahoo Image Search; that's three companies now. I'm still looking for a replacement to Google Translate.
Use different vendors for different services, preferably vendors in different countries, and all your information will not appear in a single unified database. Got some business? Spread it around.
Being an old geezer/geek, I can remember the 1960's. In 1960 every publication believed anything the U.S. Federal Government said. By 1970 we had taught the population, especially reporters, that the government MAY be lying to you. Some swung far to the opposite side, and assumed that any government statement was a lie.
Today we may be seeing a similar phenomenon. The U.S. Federal Government has run secret programs spying here and there. Does the government listen to every phone conversation in the USA? It is technically feasible, with datacenters scanning for key words. Of course the XYZ agencies would love to do it. And of course they would do it secretly. We are rapidly reaching the general assumption that if the government CAN spy, it WILL spy. And, of course, lie about it.
In the 1960's Uncle Sam lied and claimed not be lying. In the 2010's Uncle Sam spies and claims not to be spying. Do you believe him?
(Disclaimer: I don't have to believe him; I live in Thailand. They admit to spying on me.)
Edward Snowdon is a hero. I live in Bangkok. He can sleep on my floor any time.
It is debatable whether the PRISM program is good or bad. What is intolerable is that it is secret. The argument that is going on this week should have happened ten years ago. Democracy is not about elected dictators. Democracy is about public debate.
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As an independent developer, I can tell you why I avoid mobile devices in one word: variability. We follow w3c standards for our PC sites and have five browsers (Firefox, Crome, Opera, Safari, and Internet Explorer) to test against, each of which is free and each of which has a thousand pixels. In the mobile market there seem to be no standards, and ten versions of each browser, and ten versions of each operating system. Simply for testing we would have to fork over a couple thousand dollars for samples. The screens are small, yes, but worse is that the screens are of all sizes. Do we design for a width of 200 pixels? 300? 400? 500? Argh! Simpler to design for Firefox at 1024x764 pixels and let the wacko device you've got cope with scrolling.
From the viewpoint of the government, the American public appear to be enemies of the United States.
And from the viewpoint of seven billion poeple on this planet, the United States government appears to be the enemy of the American public. The American people is the BOSS of the NSA; it's in the Constitution. The NSA has been lying to the boss, and they rightly have got their balls in a meat grinder. Edward Snowden is MY MAN! He can sleep on my floor any time.
The NSA intrusion is already affecting U.S. business. My e-mail is at Yandex.com, which answers to the KGB, not the NSA. I use IxQuick, not Google. My web site is in Thailand. Any company today who creates a web site hosted in the USA is just stupid. There are perfectly competant hosting services outside the NSA's backyard.
I sent an e-mail supporting these eight companies regarding their hopes to limit the Feddie spooks. Yes, of course it is stockholder's equity that is being destroyed. But that makes it no less sincere. If the US can't hold back the NSA then NOBODY will use Google.com. Of course, it is ironic that Google's whole business plan is to know eveything about you. I don't want ANYBODY to know everything about me; I stopped using Google a year before Edward Snowden.
Ahah! There was that name! "Edward Snowden". This post will make it to the bowels of the NSA database. Creepy?
The weird part is that this problem was solved over two hundred years ago. It's called a "search warrant". You want to read my e-mails, go get a search warrant. Otherwise, keep your fingers out of my stuff.
I remember that there was great controversy about the Taliban, then in control of the country of Afghanistan. I would go to www.taliban.com and read what they had to say. It was in English. Then in July it was hacked and the front page was replaced by a picture of the American flag. A month or so later the United States invaded Afghanistan. A month after that www.taliban.com disappeared from the Internet.
The United States of America does not have to block web sites. If they don't like you, you just cease to exist. They control the top level domain names, right?
Oddly enough, I see that there is a site there now. I'll have to check it out.
I've also heard, don't remember where, that it is one big file and there are copies all over the world transported via Bit Torrent and the like. You know were and anyone can grab a copy of the encrypted archive.
I've also heard that the documents in that archive are originals, not redacted. The original would say something like "CIA Agent John Belushi did such-and-such." The redacted version, when released by Edward Snowden, reads "CIA Agent (name removed) did such and such." If they kill Snowden, the archive opens everywhere. Not only are secrets revealed, but names of agents are revealed, so those spies will be killed, perhaps by terrorists, perhaps by outraged neighbors.
A spy with any brains wants that archive to remain encrypted, so he wants Edward Snowden to live in peace in Moscow.
"old-fashioned gender roles, social order and monarchy".
I now live in Thailand and I love it. Those three words apply to my adopted country.
Freedom in gender roles does not mean dragging women out of the kitchen; it means the freedom to stay or go as she choses, and my wife choses to stay. Our son is being raised by his mother at home, not by some artiicial mother at a beaurocratic day-care center.
In Thailand society is supreme. In America The Law is supreme because they have no society. Society can be flexible and adaptable and forgiving; The Law is a formula for grinding you up. Here, if your neighbors don't like what you are doing, they will stop you, and the Law is one tool that they can use to stop you. If society likes what you are doing, it does not matter if it is illegal.
In Thailand we have a constitutional king. He is a VERY good man, and he cares about his subjects. His power is primarily leadership, but it is real. He loves his people and his people love him.
Twenty years ago I discovered that I would rather die in Thailand than live in America.
You said "And if anyone can suggest a reliable email provider that is NOT Google, MS or Yahoo, I am all ears.". Look into Yandex (www.yandex.com). It's located in Moscow. I have been using it for a year now. It seems reliable to me. And the most important thing to me is that Yandex does ***NOT*** report to the NSA.
Use multiple vendors located in multiple countries. I use Google translate, which reports to the NSA. My e-mail is Yandex, which is in Moscow and reports to the KGB. The NSA and the KGB don't talk to each other. I can use a search engine in Europe which does not talk to either. Bejing is my next market to shop at; what does China offer in the way of Internet services? Everywhere you go there will be someone watching you, but if you travel around it is different watchers. The Internet is GLOBAL - spread your business among many vendors all over the world and no one knows all about you.
Most manufacturers would give their eye teeth to have a product that their customers love as much as our users love Wincows XP. It does everything that our people need done, it is stable and secure and simple and they know it well. As tech support I know it well, too; on XP I don't have to search for "Where did Microsoft put the device drivers THIS TIME!"
But the problem that Microsoft faces is that they hire programmers, and programmers are change agents. If the program really does the job well, nobody will ever buy a new version. So they have to artificially destroy Windows XP in order to sell newer versions. Trojans, viruses, malware are all allies of Microsoft.
Sort of like getting a new wife every eight years, whether you want one or not.
I was at the hospital recently to get an HIV blood test. After I paid, the lady said I could go home. I said "But nobody has taken any blood out of me yet!" Truely, the NSA is good, but they're not THAT good! I think. Maybe they are that good. That would be convenient. No need to send your girlfriend in for a pregnancy check; just e-mail nsapao@nsa.gov and get the results over the Internet.
In the past century selling copies was a common method of financing; the entire book ecosystem is built around this concept. Similar is the movie ecosystem, which sold views until DVD's came along.
Recently the Internet has exploited the advertising method of financing. Newspapers and magazines have relied on this for decades.
RIch investors are not a new invention - it goes back thousands of years. This was how The Old Testament was paid for. Today nobody would know about Abraham except for the fellow who financed hand-written copies of the Torah. It is by far the oldest tradition. It's not evil. You pay to print your opinions, I pay to print my opinions. Millions read yours, maybe one or two will read mine. We both become part of the human cultural heritage.
Do you really expect a parent to stand over a kid whenever he's online? The original incident said that the suiical girl was bullied AT THE SCHOOL as well as on the Internet. There was no adult looking over their shoulders when they were talking on the playground.
Maybe this relates to the NSA? Maybe Americans want somebody looking over their shoulders all the time to make sure that nothing bad ever happens to them?
Shit happens. Get used to it. And teach your kid to deal with it. Also teach your kid not to do it. But don't expect anyone to protect your kid from other people; it can't be done. Not by the other kid's parents or the teachers or the playground supervisors or the police or the FBI or the NSA.
Anybody know how the Dutch company "Lavabyte" is coming along? When can I sign up?
It's crap like this that is causing U.S. technology to flee overseas.
Spread it around!
My immediate reaction was "How do I get rid of all this shit?" So I hunted around for an options / prferences control and could not find one. Not even clicking on my name gave me any options.
The current design is very simple - text in two colors. No file photos, no page full of garbage at the start. Just the news. Sownloads REAL fast. Read down until you see someting you recognize, then stop. Even the current mobile site is to complex for my patience; on my phone I have to wait 20 seconds for the stuff to stop bouncing.
Please, give me an "options" button, and there include a check list of what I want to see (news) and what I don't want to see (pictures).
Sure every country has a spy group. But every country does not have the SAME spy group. My search engine is in Europe. My e-mail is in Russia. My web site is in Thailand. You think the KGB is going to share data with the NSA? No way.
You use various services on the Internet. Get those services from different companies, different countries. If you use Google for everything, then Google knows everything about you, and Google will tell the NSA. Yandex will not tell the NSA; no way; Yandex is in Moscow. Google's business plan is to become an expert on you, and I don't want ANYBODY to be an expert on me. It's not about who you trust, it's about trusting nobody.
There already are non-US internets. Every country has it's own section of the "Internet". Most, like Thailand, have gateways through which all traffic in and out of the country must pass. Some, like Canada, don't care. Every country has it's own block of domain names, like *.co.th.
Oh yes, I fogot to mention another global factor: The bastards at the NSA. The NSA wiretaps the president of Brazil; Brazil does not wiretap Barack Obama.
My e-mail address is at Yandex.com. Yandex is in Moscow. My friends and I encrypt and sign messages using gnu PGP keys. The encryption is reliable. Yes, Yandex must answer to the KGB. But the KGB doesn't talk to the NSA.
Spread it around. Get your Internet services from different countries. E-mail, search, storage, web site, translation, maps, they don't have to all be Google, they don't have to all be in the USA. The Internet is global - spread it around.
As far as I know, she, like most people in Thailand, get paid by the day, not the hour.
My (48-year old Thai) girlfriend starts work at 6am and gets off at 6pm. She insists that means she works thirteen hours a day. It is amazing how incredibly dumb the average person is.
The Internet was invented at CERN to share research data among atomic scientists. Today the biggest use of the Internet seems to be Facebook.
The average IQ is supposed to be 100; until I moved to Thailand I had probably never even MET a person with an IQ below 110. Theory? Equations? Try "Unable to subtract 6am from 6pm". Science has all along been faced with the necessity of publishing conclusions, because the average person cannot comprehend the data or the formulas. Atomic science was ignored until Hiroshima; since then it is observed but rarely undrestood.
On every page of the site that I did for this company, in the upper right corner, there is a button labelled "BUG!". Click on it and a dialog box comes up that says simply "What's wrong with this page?" and has a big blank area to fill in. The dialog box has a "Submit" button.
What is not visible is that the JavaScript code for the BUG! button is grabbing all the information it can from the browser itself - what the current URL is, all the global JavaScript variables, name of the current logged-in user, time and date, browser type, web page contents, etc. All grabbed automatically.
And all stored in a special file on the server. The only thing the user has to tell me is what she doesn't like about that page.
The BUG! button was invented - by me - as a reaction to Bugzilla, which seems to be designed to keep users from reporting problems. I can ignore pointless bug reports, but I want to hear everything.
I swithced to e-mail from Yandex.com (based on Moscow) months ago. The KGB can read the data, but it does not share it with the NSA. My friends now encrypt all messages using OpenPGP keys. All your data gets stored somewhere, but spread it around so it isn't all stored in the same place. Washington, Moscow, Beijing don't tell each other your secrets. spread your business to all three and nobody knows everything.
Analogy: Your neighbor knows what time you leave for work in the morning. The office guard knows what time you arrive at work. But only by sharing information can they compute how fast you drove. Merged databases are much more dangerous than isolated databases.
The key to protecting your data: SPREAD IT AROUND.
P.S. I live in Bangkok. Edward Snowden can sleep on my floor any time.
The worst part about PRISM, IMHO, is that this debate should have taken place ten years ago.
The only (partial) fix that I can imagine this morning is a constitutional amendment saying that any law passed by congress has to be public. Secret laws ought to be unconstitutional, and thus inoperative. It would help.
My solution? Spread it around. Use different services from different vendors, and, if possible,in different countries.
Google can get an NSA letter demanding that Google tell them everything about Andy Canfield, and Google must comply. Yandex can get an NSA letter demanding that Yandex tell them everything about Andy Canfield, and the Yandex staff will laugh out loud. Yandex is based in Moscow. Yandex must answer to the KGB, just as Google must answer to the FBI, but the KGB and the FBI don't talk to each other.
Search engines in mainland China? Hard to read the prompts but secured against CIA demands. At the minimum use Google YouTube and Microsoft Bing; that way the NSA at least has to ask two different companies. I use Yahoo Image Search; that's three companies now. I'm still looking for a replacement to Google Translate.
Use different vendors for different services, preferably vendors in different countries, and all your information will not appear in a single unified database. Got some business? Spread it around.
Being an old geezer/geek, I can remember the 1960's. In 1960 every publication believed anything the U.S. Federal Government said. By 1970 we had taught the population, especially reporters, that the government MAY be lying to you. Some swung far to the opposite side, and assumed that any government statement was a lie.
Today we may be seeing a similar phenomenon. The U.S. Federal Government has run secret programs spying here and there. Does the government listen to every phone conversation in the USA? It is technically feasible, with datacenters scanning for key words. Of course the XYZ agencies would love to do it. And of course they would do it secretly. We are rapidly reaching the general assumption that if the government CAN spy, it WILL spy. And, of course, lie about it.
In the 1960's Uncle Sam lied and claimed not be lying. In the 2010's Uncle Sam spies and claims not to be spying. Do you believe him?
(Disclaimer: I don't have to believe him; I live in Thailand. They admit to spying on me.)
Edward Snowdon is a hero. I live in Bangkok. He can sleep on my floor any time.
It is debatable whether the PRISM program is good or bad. What is intolerable is that it is secret. The argument that is going on this week should have happened ten years ago. Democracy is not about elected dictators. Democracy is about public debate.