And even if most/all of what you have to hide is illegal, GET A WARRANT!
USGOV: "We DID get warrants! We made up an extra-Constitutional, secret-decoder-ring-court out of whole cloth, and it gave us warrants for everything, everyone, and everywhere at any time. See? All "legal"!"
Off-topic, but just out of curiosity, I wonder how many government/TLA big-wigs and/or their families drive "remotely-hackable" cars that could be made to "Michael Hastings" someone? Might be worth looking into.
TLAs and other nosy government types need to remember that this shiny tech they abuse is double-edged. We citizens can maliciously hack and do drones, too...and on a scale that's orders-of-magnitude larger.
That distributed piece seems unnecessarily complex to meet the chaffing use case, but eliminates certain accountability for individual queries.
I view this "Chaff" concept as analogous to an act of civil disobedience, in that the goal is not to avoid accountability, but to demand it.
Force the authorities to choose between trying to investigate/interrogate/raid/jail massive numbers of normal people that would result in widespread outrage & questioning of such policies & tactics by the government, or dropping such police state policies, actions, and tactics.
On a side note, respect to you for engaging with me in an interesting & thought-provoking discussion in a respectful, civilized, and reasoned manner. It's sadly becoming more and more of a rarity on/. and in the real world these days.
TOR enabled browser plugin, that generates spurious queries and referrers on every click.
Why TOR-enabled? Seems redundant. To attract more attention?
Setting aside the encryption==flagging++ for a moment, I thought the idea wasn't to hide but to flood the sniffing being done on normal domestic HTTP web and email traffic. They haven't got the manpower to send officials out to investigate every Aunt Grace and JHS student that happened to get flagged by using the plugin.
In a practical sense, I don't see much of an upside to incorporating TOR. Well, other than to further congest the TOR network, a feature which I don't personally put in the "plus" column.
Call it Chaff.
Nice. Now, to come up with the next-gen plugin, HARM.:)
I assume the case in TFA was just the feds telling Google long ago: "send us the IP address of anyone who makes any of the following queries" and more recently adding "pressure cookers and backpacks" to that list.
The answer to this behavior is for lots and lots of people to Google pressure cookers and backpacks.
Something like a browser plugin that, rather than Googling for random stuff "Scroogle"-style, randomly Googles keywords like pressure-cooker, etc.
So once again we have the government wasting huge piles of money and infringing the rights and privacy of everyone for a program that won't work...
The problem here is your definition of "working", in this context. You appear to believe them when they say the system is meant to catch terrorists, rather than monitor & control the general population, including congressmen and other politicians, judges, etc.
We aren't necessarily entitled to all the governments information, but full and complete information oh how our government runs is something a "free" country would be expected to know in detail.
If the cost of protecting us from the terrorists is to live in a police state, then I would prefer to take my chances with the terrorists.
But to the people in power making the decisions, people having rights and freedoms does not make them any richer or hand them more power over ever more people.
Ginning up fears over terrorist attacks in order to bring Orwell's police/surveillance-state nightmare to reality, does.
I had an idea, but my lawyer said it's illegal for simple citizens to own atomic bombs.
2nd amendment my ass...
Not true.
I've built three so far, and now I'm working on my first fusion device. I convince people who see them that they're just complicated high-tech home-built cappuccino machines.
Anyone have a few pounds of plutonium and a couple of gallons of deuterium I can borrow? I hate to bother the neighbors.
Hi NSA! Care for a cup of cappuccino? I make a cup of cappuccino that'll blow you away!
If they release enough information about their systems, perhaps one day someone or some group will come up with a way to at least partially work against it, or at least muddy up the data they are collecting.
"Come up with a way"?
How about burning all NSA buildings and other infrastructure to the ground, hanging any and all NSA personnel that can be found, and then move on to anyone in Congress and the Executive who supports/supported this shit?
You have it backwards. The purpose of the government is to enforce corporate law....
As long as government finds it to its' advantage. Government is like Darth Vader; "I have altered the agreement. Pray I do not alter it further". They have the goons-n-guns. They can take what they want if it suits them.
Lawyers, executives, & accountants make poor body armor.
The power of the purse. The power to buy whatever laws you want. The power to force the government to do your bidding.
Two things.
1. The NSA has detailed records of all communications of corporate CEOs/boards of directors, stockholders, etc etc, and all their family, friends, associates, business connections, etc. Not hard to blackmail someone when you have the power to ruin them and anyone they may care about (It would be tragic if your son/daughter/SO/etc were to...).
2. If (1.) above fails, there's always the fact that government has the ability and a monopoly on the use of deadly armed force. Government can literally put a gun to their head (or their family, etc) to compel them to do whatever they want.
Bottom line?
Monopoly on armed force plus total information awareness > campaign/bribe cash.
POTUS could have Gates or Zuckerberg or anyone else killed.
Like or hate the Tea Party movement they showed a good example of 1/6th of the American people getting fed up and changing the structure of a political party on multiple issues.
No, they showed a good example of an astroturfed movement that tricked people into giving the ultra-rich even more wealth and power than they had before.
Got any citations for that "astroturf" claim outside of Nancy Pelosi's unhinged screeds and waving the Koch brothers around?
All the TEA Party orgs I'm familiar with across several states were started by locals and survive almost totally on contributions from their members, and are usually running on a shoestring budget.
Try looking into George Soros and the multitude of political organizations and propaganda outlets he finances. He makes any political contributions by the Koch brothers look like couch change.
If you want an astroturfed, ginned-up group, look no further than OWS.
You know what I love to read about? Americans bitching about their taxes. Their infrastructure is falling down all around them, their schools, police, fire departments, utilities, etc. are all chronically underfunded. But lawdy lawdy, don't dare raise their taxes to try to FIX some of this stuff. From the outside looking in, all this complaining just seems so... what are the words? Stupid and shortsighted.
Americans pay enough in taxes that if the government actually spent them halfway responsibly and in the way they were sold to the public, the streets in America would be paved in gold (figuratively, not literally of course...waste of a good electrical conductor). The failing infrastructure is a testament to government waste & corruption.
If it actually mattered to Americans, you could fix the NSA thing just like the East Germans did: They walked up to their buildings in masses and demanded to look at the records. Then they destroyed lots of them. NSA is only potent as long as they can play divide et impera.
I agree.
We Americans need to organize a few million people to march on Washington D.C., the NSA/DHS/CIA/FBI HQs, and the WH, and demand the domestic spying capabilities and systems be destroyed/dismantled.
There is a difficulty of course: cripple the NSA, and you give free and secure communication to all sorts of undesirables.
"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" - Blackstone's formulation.
Individual freedom & privacy from government snooping is more important by orders of magnitude than the threat of criminals or terrorism. Damaged infrastructure can be repaired and dead politicians can be replaced, but freedom, once lost, will never return within the current generation's lifetime, or likely that of their children. *IF* & when it does return, the cost in lives and suffering will be enormous.
How would citizens ever throw off an abusive, evil government when elections are rigged, etc, if there is no ability for the citizens to communicate secretly? That ability is, IMHO, equal in importance to maintaining a free and open society as the right of the people to keep & bear arms.
Every student in LA Public schools gets a good education. Now that would be news.
Ain't gonna happen until the NEA/teachers unions and the federal Dept. of Ed. are gone. Until those are gone, the students actually learning will remain last on the priority list and the money will go straight down the rat-hole.
No, the second amendment does not secure your right to hunt ducks or deer.
It does secure your right to hunt congressmen should there be an open season for them.
I think the 2A should secure a perimeter around the Capitol Visitor Center long enough for a few dozen cement trucks to dump their cement down the secret elevator and ventilation shafts going down to the classified FISA court facilities located under the Capitol Visitor Center and persist until the bubbles stop. Rinse & repeat for NSA domestic data storage facilities.
Publicly posting all available personal data of judges and their families that serve on the FISA court might also serve to reverse this STASI-like system of secret courts and secret laws. Sunshine is the best disinfectant. Let's see how they like having the intimate details of their and their families' lives exposed.
Can't take the chance. Just going to eat my chicken raw, just like my ancestors did before they learned to cook with fire. I imagine they must have been much healthier then since their diet was more natural and not tainted with carcinogens. How many people have died from cancer through the eons that could have been prevented by staying away from smoke and fire?
"We'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent lifeforms everywhere and to everyone else out there, the secret is to NOT bang the rocks together, guys."
Where's the news? As soon as some politicians notice that some "illegal" tool, device, substance or whatever is useful to them, suddenly it's no longer illegal for them. They're perfectly fine with using some law/regulation/statute that they don't normally enforce (or just don't enforce against themselves) against select persons/companies/groups if it suits their purposes. See the attack on Gibson Corp. or the IRS debacle for recent examples.
But today, it's just logistically impractical to get the majority of 50 different state legislatures to come together.
They could do it over video links if they had the will. Physical presence is not specifically required except potentially for signatures, and that could be done either electronically or simply fast-messengered. The US Constitution wasn't signed by everyone all on one day.
It's more about fear about the reaction from the federal government, IMHO. A "sudden emergency" followed by a declaration martial law wouldn't be out of the realm of real possibilities.
That's entirely different from what the OP was discussing in the way of tortured & twisted interpretations of the existing plain language to fit an ideological/political agenda and avoid having all those pesky serfs^W^W^W^W^Wcitizens involved in the process, acting as if their will matters.
If the US Constitution is a "living and breathing document", then "rights" of any kind have no meaning and the government's power over the citizens is effectively unrestrained.
True but you either have these guns or your have a large standing army/navy etc. Why do you need both?
I'm all for returning to a more "civilian-soldiers on call with a small national core military" model as opposed to large standing military forces.
It won't ever happen if civilians are disarmed.
Currently, there is no hope that a large standing US military can be eliminated in the foreseeable future. The only real thing preventing the government from abolishing any and all rights as it pleases, and that protects the population from both the government and criminals outside of government (dang amateurs!), are guns in civilian hands.
Have you watched the "Innocents Betrayed" documentary I linked to above? Never mind the US Constitution or its' authors, the history shown in that piece alone is enough reason for any people anywhere to seek to keep guns in the hands of the people.
Slashdot Mirror
(BTW When did 'Legal' and 'extra-Constitutional' first evaluate as congruent?)
When it became useful to do so in justifying violating Constitutional limits on government power and the civil rights of American citizens.
Would be rather obvious, I would think.
Strat
And even if most/all of what you have to hide is illegal, GET A WARRANT!
USGOV: "We DID get warrants! We made up an extra-Constitutional, secret-decoder-ring-court out of whole cloth, and it gave us warrants for everything, everyone, and everywhere at any time. See? All "legal"!"
Off-topic, but just out of curiosity, I wonder how many government/TLA big-wigs and/or their families drive "remotely-hackable" cars that could be made to "Michael Hastings" someone? Might be worth looking into.
TLAs and other nosy government types need to remember that this shiny tech they abuse is double-edged. We citizens can maliciously hack and do drones, too...and on a scale that's orders-of-magnitude larger.
Strat
That distributed piece seems unnecessarily complex to meet the chaffing use case, but eliminates certain accountability for individual queries.
I view this "Chaff" concept as analogous to an act of civil disobedience, in that the goal is not to avoid accountability, but to demand it.
Force the authorities to choose between trying to investigate/interrogate/raid/jail massive numbers of normal people that would result in widespread outrage & questioning of such policies & tactics by the government, or dropping such police state policies, actions, and tactics.
On a side note, respect to you for engaging with me in an interesting & thought-provoking discussion in a respectful, civilized, and reasoned manner. It's sadly becoming more and more of a rarity on /. and in the real world these days.
Cheers!
Strat
TOR enabled browser plugin, that generates spurious queries and referrers on every click.
Why TOR-enabled? Seems redundant. To attract more attention?
Setting aside the encryption==flagging++ for a moment, I thought the idea wasn't to hide but to flood the sniffing being done on normal domestic HTTP web and email traffic. They haven't got the manpower to send officials out to investigate every Aunt Grace and JHS student that happened to get flagged by using the plugin.
In a practical sense, I don't see much of an upside to incorporating TOR. Well, other than to further congest the TOR network, a feature which I don't personally put in the "plus" column.
Call it Chaff.
Nice. Now, to come up with the next-gen plugin, HARM. :)
Strat
I assume the case in TFA was just the feds telling Google long ago: "send us the IP address of anyone who makes any of the following queries" and more recently adding "pressure cookers and backpacks" to that list.
The answer to this behavior is for lots and lots of people to Google pressure cookers and backpacks.
Something like a browser plugin that, rather than Googling for random stuff "Scroogle"-style, randomly Googles keywords like pressure-cooker, etc.
Poison the well. Make their systems useless.
Strat
So once again we have the government wasting huge piles of money and infringing the rights and privacy of everyone for a program that won't work...
The problem here is your definition of "working", in this context. You appear to believe them when they say the system is meant to catch terrorists, rather than monitor & control the general population, including congressmen and other politicians, judges, etc.
It's working just fine.
Strat
We aren't necessarily entitled to all the governments information, but full and complete information oh how our government runs is something a "free" country would be expected to know in detail.
[LarryTheCableGuy]
Well, there's your doggone problem, right there!
[/LarryTheCableGuy]
Strat
If the cost of protecting us from the terrorists is to live in a police state, then I would prefer to take my chances with the terrorists.
But to the people in power making the decisions, people having rights and freedoms does not make them any richer or hand them more power over ever more people.
Ginning up fears over terrorist attacks in order to bring Orwell's police/surveillance-state nightmare to reality, does.
Strat
I had an idea, but my lawyer said it's illegal for simple citizens to own atomic bombs.
2nd amendment my ass...
Not true.
I've built three so far, and now I'm working on my first fusion device. I convince people who see them that they're just complicated high-tech home-built cappuccino machines.
Anyone have a few pounds of plutonium and a couple of gallons of deuterium I can borrow? I hate to bother the neighbors.
Hi NSA! Care for a cup of cappuccino? I make a cup of cappuccino that'll blow you away!
Strat
If they release enough information about their systems, perhaps one day someone or some group will come up with a way to at least partially work against it, or at least muddy up the data they are collecting.
"Come up with a way"?
How about burning all NSA buildings and other infrastructure to the ground, hanging any and all NSA personnel that can be found, and then move on to anyone in Congress and the Executive who supports/supported this shit?
I figure that would make a good start.
Strat
But a licensed violent criminal!
[JackNicholas]
"Trained professionals!"
[/JackNicholas]
Strat :)
You have it backwards. The purpose of the government is to enforce corporate law....
As long as government finds it to its' advantage. Government is like Darth Vader; "I have altered the agreement. Pray I do not alter it further". They have the goons-n-guns. They can take what they want if it suits them.
Lawyers, executives, & accountants make poor body armor.
Strat
Two things.
1. The NSA has detailed records of all communications of corporate CEOs/boards of directors, stockholders, etc etc, and all their family, friends, associates, business connections, etc. Not hard to blackmail someone when you have the power to ruin them and anyone they may care about (It would be tragic if your son/daughter/SO/etc were to...).
2. If (1.) above fails, there's always the fact that government has the ability and a monopoly on the use of deadly armed force. Government can literally put a gun to their head (or their family, etc) to compel them to do whatever they want.
Bottom line?
Monopoly on armed force plus total information awareness > campaign/bribe cash.
POTUS could have Gates or Zuckerberg or anyone else killed.
Remember Michael Hastings(RIP)?
Strat
Got any citations for that "astroturf" claim outside of Nancy Pelosi's unhinged screeds and waving the Koch brothers around?
All the TEA Party orgs I'm familiar with across several states were started by locals and survive almost totally on contributions from their members, and are usually running on a shoestring budget.
Try looking into George Soros and the multitude of political organizations and propaganda outlets he finances. He makes any political contributions by the Koch brothers look like couch change.
If you want an astroturfed, ginned-up group, look no further than OWS.
Strat
You know what I love to read about? Americans bitching about their taxes. Their infrastructure is falling down all around them, their schools, police, fire departments, utilities, etc. are all chronically underfunded. But lawdy lawdy, don't dare raise their taxes to try to FIX some of this stuff. From the outside looking in, all this complaining just seems so... what are the words? Stupid and shortsighted.
Americans pay enough in taxes that if the government actually spent them halfway responsibly and in the way they were sold to the public, the streets in America would be paved in gold (figuratively, not literally of course...waste of a good electrical conductor). The failing infrastructure is a testament to government waste & corruption.
Strat
If it actually mattered to Americans, you could fix the NSA thing just like the East Germans did: They walked up to their buildings in masses and demanded to look at the records. Then they destroyed lots of them. NSA is only potent as long as they can play divide et impera.
I agree.
We Americans need to organize a few million people to march on Washington D.C., the NSA/DHS/CIA/FBI HQs, and the WH, and demand the domestic spying capabilities and systems be destroyed/dismantled.
Strat
There is a difficulty of course: cripple the NSA, and you give free and secure communication to all sorts of undesirables.
"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" - Blackstone's formulation.
Individual freedom & privacy from government snooping is more important by orders of magnitude than the threat of criminals or terrorism. Damaged infrastructure can be repaired and dead politicians can be replaced, but freedom, once lost, will never return within the current generation's lifetime, or likely that of their children. *IF* & when it does return, the cost in lives and suffering will be enormous.
How would citizens ever throw off an abusive, evil government when elections are rigged, etc, if there is no ability for the citizens to communicate secretly? That ability is, IMHO, equal in importance to maintaining a free and open society as the right of the people to keep & bear arms.
Strat
Every student in LA Public schools gets a good education. Now that would be news.
Ain't gonna happen until the NEA/teachers unions and the federal Dept. of Ed. are gone. Until those are gone, the students actually learning will remain last on the priority list and the money will go straight down the rat-hole.
Strat
So, in addition to being able to track your location by following your cell-phone, they'll be able to follow your teeth now.
It this related to those "Alien Probes" that we keep hearing about?
Not sure about that, but I understand that the procedure in these cases involves wrapping a wet towel around your head and getting your ass to Mars.
Strat
No, the second amendment does not secure your right to hunt ducks or deer.
It does secure your right to hunt congressmen should there be an open season for them.
I think the 2A should secure a perimeter around the Capitol Visitor Center long enough for a few dozen cement trucks to dump their cement down the secret elevator and ventilation shafts going down to the classified FISA court facilities located under the Capitol Visitor Center and persist until the bubbles stop. Rinse & repeat for NSA domestic data storage facilities.
Publicly posting all available personal data of judges and their families that serve on the FISA court might also serve to reverse this STASI-like system of secret courts and secret laws. Sunshine is the best disinfectant. Let's see how they like having the intimate details of their and their families' lives exposed.
Strat
Can't take the chance. Just going to eat my chicken raw, just like my ancestors did before they learned to cook with fire. I imagine they must have been much healthier then since their diet was more natural and not tainted with carcinogens. How many people have died from cancer through the eons that could have been prevented by staying away from smoke and fire?
"We'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent lifeforms everywhere and to everyone else out there, the secret is to NOT bang the rocks together, guys."
Strat
Where's the news? As soon as some politicians notice that some "illegal" tool, device, substance or whatever is useful to them, suddenly it's no longer illegal for them. They're perfectly fine with using some law/regulation/statute that they don't normally enforce (or just don't enforce against themselves) against select persons/companies/groups if it suits their purposes. See the attack on Gibson Corp. or the IRS debacle for recent examples.
FTFY
Strat
But today, it's just logistically impractical to get the majority of 50 different state legislatures to come together.
They could do it over video links if they had the will. Physical presence is not specifically required except potentially for signatures, and that could be done either electronically or simply fast-messengered. The US Constitution wasn't signed by everyone all on one day.
It's more about fear about the reaction from the federal government, IMHO. A "sudden emergency" followed by a declaration martial law wouldn't be out of the realm of real possibilities.
Strat
>a foundational document which is immutable.
According to Jefferson, it never was immutable.
The constitution is amendable by it's own design.
That's entirely different from what the OP was discussing in the way of tortured & twisted interpretations of the existing plain language to fit an ideological/political agenda and avoid having all those pesky serfs^W^W^W^W^Wcitizens involved in the process, acting as if their will matters.
If the US Constitution is a "living and breathing document", then "rights" of any kind have no meaning and the government's power over the citizens is effectively unrestrained.
Strat
True but you either have these guns or your have a large standing army/navy etc. Why do you need both?
I'm all for returning to a more "civilian-soldiers on call with a small national core military" model as opposed to large standing military forces.
It won't ever happen if civilians are disarmed.
Currently, there is no hope that a large standing US military can be eliminated in the foreseeable future. The only real thing preventing the government from abolishing any and all rights as it pleases, and that protects the population from both the government and criminals outside of government (dang amateurs!), are guns in civilian hands.
Have you watched the "Innocents Betrayed" documentary I linked to above? Never mind the US Constitution or its' authors, the history shown in that piece alone is enough reason for any people anywhere to seek to keep guns in the hands of the people.
Why is it people refuse to learn from history?
Strat