Not if the NSA's intent in doing so is to spy, directly or indirectly on US citizens. As I said, they can spy on me or random Russian/Saudi/Chinese guy no problem. But they're not meant to be snooping on US citizens any more than the US airforce is meant to be dropping bombs on Atlanta suburbs.
Meanwhile geeks, who do understand how computers work, instead of developing technologies supporting encryption and pricacy by default, have instead hopped into bed with big data and the NSA. There are more geeks helping the NSA builds a Stasi apperatus than there are geeks working on building a truely anonymous and untappable internet.
The more I think back to the likes of the whole Firefox self signed certs debacle, the more I see the NSA survellance apperatus collectively roaring with laughter at geekdom's heedless self-destruction of itself and the internet.
Reading history, you frequently come across periods where you wonder "How could people put up with this?" or "Why didnâ(TM)t they just do X" where X is the solution which was eventually reached 20 years later.
Looking at the modern world, I realise I'm living in just such a period. A pity I'm not longer "smart" enough to figure out what the current X should be. I guess I may have been a little too hard on all those "stupid" societies in the past.
Then again, maybe it's not wrong to think that they and we are just, actually stupid.
you know, I'm really upset and concerned about spying on me because I feel it violates my 4th amendment rights and is a slippery slope, but I'm relatively indifferent to spying on foreigners. Isn't that the point of the CIA/NSA anyway?
Yes it is. That is their whole point, and it should be only the whole.
I'm from Ireland, so it's actually OK for the NSA to spy on me and my communications. Americans should actually expect that the NSA is up to this and indeed a few shady activities abroad. That is what a spy agency is for, and should be paid for,
However, a spy agency is not for spying on domestic citizens. The NSA and CIA are absolutely not supposed to monitor domestic US citizens. That is not what they are for, or what they should be paid for.
This isn't very complicated. The NSA is an intelligence weapon, and can be compared to a missile or bomber. Americans might argue about targets, but most will agree that the US should have missiles and bombers and should use them abroad when nessessary. Most Americans would be outraged to discover that those missiles were being used at home on US citizens, and should be equally outraged that the NSA is being used at home as well.
"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort." If Snowden hasn't committed treason using this definition, I don't know what is then.
You're probably trolling, but the simple answer here is
a) He has not levied war against any of the States or the whole of them, and b) If he has given aid or comfort to enemies, then you should be able to name those and state the aid and/or comfort given them.
If you can spin either of those into a charge that will hold up in court, I'll be impressed.
You tell Universities that they will lose x% of their funding until y% of their Biology faculty consists of female professors with 2.1 children, and you'll see just how quickly those biological difference simply melt away.
Holder says he was lying?! Eric Holder? The attorney general whose office is responsible for Too Big To Jail? Who will not prosecute bankers. Who oversaw the Fast and Furious debacle? Who hounded Aaron Swartz to his death?
This is what happens when you put professional spinmeisters in charge of professional workers: Dysfunction.
Imagine putting a PR team in charge of the Doctors dealing with an epidemic. A doctor would like to announce quarantine measure, or tell people the full risks, or advise those who are sick, etc. If you had a PR man in charge, the whole epidemic would be treated as a mild flu, no-one would be informed, contagion would spread rapidly and thousands would die. "No matter", says the PR man, "We can spin that too.". But this misses the point.
If you allow spin and the press office to dictate the running of an organisation, then the organisation effectively will not run at all. No professional can work properly with an unrelated lay person getting in his way 24/7.
It's time to call PR men what they really are: Political Officers.
I think that this was all started by the Town hall protests, more specifically by the administration's reaction to it.
Shortly after the town hall meetings, and I think the birther campaigns, the Obama administration basically went on the offensive. They openly stated that they were going to call out and not stand idly by when similar things happened. The link, if it is true, sounds like an extension of that using the new Prussian apparatus set up over the last decade.
Granted the government's self-interest is to spin this story in their favour, but unless they are lying, given the fact that there are more urgent public sector needs that need to be met (eg. hospitals, food kitchens etc) the reasons they gave seem fairly reasonable in the circumstances.
There's nothing reasonable about pulling the plug on a national broadcaster, without notice, in the middle of the night, and turfing every employee out unilaterally onto the street. This is industrial relations amateur hour.
The guys in charge of Greece have no idea what they are doing. None whatsoever. The same could be said for most western government. The only things these guys know how to do right is overpay themselves.
No. The change in America following the Sep 11th attacks was only loosely related to previous Cold War policies. America was in many ways demilitarising and advancing throughout the pst Soviet Union 1990s.
Then Sep 11th came, and the USA went into a supercharged spiral of descent, economically, legally, politically and probably culturally. Like a traumatised patient inflicting self harm, the US continues to tear at the fabric of its own national identity in response to the attacks. I don't think it will stop until the patient is dead, or practically so. Madness does not follow reason.
If this doesn't make you angry, upset and outraged, what will?
I can't get angry anymore.
I've spent the last 12 years watching the western world, and my own country in particular, fall apart in slow motion. Everything I thought I knew about the politics and the rule of law has been been invalidated three times over to the point where I can't make beleive anymore.
How can I be angry at an outcome which I knew was inevitable? And outcome produced by a system that is inherently dysfunctional? I may as well become angry at a bird for eating a worm as become angry at the US government for doing what everyone saw coming since 2001. What happens when a government is given arbitrary powers, an eternal enemy, and a compliant judiciary and media? We all know what happens. The government being in the west does not make it different and anyone who ever thought so (I include myself in this) was a fool.
I used to think that eventually, the political class would stoop so low they would hit rock bottom, and the resulting public outrage would sweep them away. I no longer see a logical rock bottom, apart from a return to hunter-gatherer status. I see a slow collapse of the west in general, and the US in particular, along the lines of the Soviet Union, which spent 80 years dying.
In 100 years time, things may be different. But don't expect anger or change in the next 20. Expect decline.
What's the use of turning off an option in a browser made by a company that acts hand in glove with its domestic intelligence agency? How can anyone trust one checkbox in Chrome after this?
No. I'm not even surprised that the newspapers are surprised.
It's obvious that the media is getting its own back for Holder's tapping of AP phones a few weeks back. This is simply a petty power struggle between a pair of jilted political class lovers.
Unfortunately, the populace is stupid, and so we will continue to see such erosion of privacy based upon the flimsiest of disingenuous excuses.
The population is not stupid. But there's only so much ordinary people can do when the entire state, civic, and industrial apperatus has been seized by an essentially criminal class.
Actually, given the outrightly criminal nature of that banking system, this is not an unreasonable suggestion. We already know that the likes of HFT companies regulalry engage in DDoS attacks against exchanges, so the skillset for this kind of work is there.
There's only one solution to a completely corrupt system. Walk away from it. Broshius made the correct decision by leaving the game behind him.
You cannot change a corrupted institution from within. I'll repeat that. You cannot change a corrupted institution from within. There are too many people inside who have spent their lives justifying and profiting from their misdeeds, who are not about to turn over a new leaf or air their dirty laundry because you've made an appeal to their conscience. They killed theirs long ago.
The best thing to do is leave the rotten ship to sink all by itself. Every honest person who stands by a rotten game, or bankrupted bank, or broken political party is just propping up an at best amoral system, and usually an immoral and even illegal one. There is no obligation to stay loyal or remain in solidarity with a disloyal and dishonest organisation.
Broshius has done more for baseball as a law student that he ever could have as a player or a fan.
If Microsoft want to make a home media device for use in people's main living rooms, that's fine. It's actually quite a good idea. But such a device cannot be principally viewed as a games console.
I don't know about the rest of you, but aside from the occasional multiplayer split screen session, I play console games on a dedicated screen, either in a bedroom or computer room. I cannot play a game in a main living room, on a screen which in in demand by others for watching TV, films, or even browsing the internet. It's nice that this device can do so much, but flipping "channels" to whatever everyone else wants to watch is not conducive to the 4-6 hour gaming sessions I would like to have.
Some may call it anti-social, but to me playing video games is closer to reading a book than watching TV; it's principally an individual experience, and the living room is not the place to have it unless you are specifically playing co-op. I don't think Microsoft are serious about the Xbox One as a gaming console. It appears to be principally oriented around completely orthogonal capabilities.
If reporters come to understand that the administration came after them on a fishing expedition, which is what this was, they will not be happy.
Reporters are, on the whole, pretty unintelligent and shallow people who write the stories they are told, in the way they are told, by their editors, and who without such direct instruction quickly lapse back into gossip, lattes, and twitter feeds. I doubt most journalists have even heard of this story.
If Holder knew about Breuer's decision not to prosecute any bankers -- he did -- then he should fired for that alone. Unfortunately, Holder is in his position precisely because he did know this, and because he will uphold the law in as dysfunctional a manner as the administration desires.
Sometimes I think the only reason they are getting away with this is because Obama is the President and liberals and progressives are unwilling to challenge him, and conservatives are secretly cheering the whole thing on. But secretly, deep down, I understand that this is all just fallout from September 11th 2001, and that the United States of America will never be able to go back to the way it was.
Slashdot Mirror
Against what? The NSA spying on US citizens?
The Laffer curve is on record as having been dreamed up on the back of a napkin by Donald Rumsfeld during lunch hour. I am not making this up.
Not if the NSA's intent in doing so is to spy, directly or indirectly on US citizens. As I said, they can spy on me or random Russian/Saudi/Chinese guy no problem. But they're not meant to be snooping on US citizens any more than the US airforce is meant to be dropping bombs on Atlanta suburbs.
Meanwhile geeks, who do understand how computers work, instead of developing technologies supporting encryption and pricacy by default, have instead hopped into bed with big data and the NSA. There are more geeks helping the NSA builds a Stasi apperatus than there are geeks working on building a truely anonymous and untappable internet.
The more I think back to the likes of the whole Firefox self signed certs debacle, the more I see the NSA survellance apperatus collectively roaring with laughter at geekdom's heedless self-destruction of itself and the internet.
Reading history, you frequently come across periods where you wonder "How could people put up with this?" or "Why didnâ(TM)t they just do X" where X is the solution which was eventually reached 20 years later.
Looking at the modern world, I realise I'm living in just such a period. A pity I'm not longer "smart" enough to figure out what the current X should be. I guess I may have been a little too hard on all those "stupid" societies in the past.
Then again, maybe it's not wrong to think that they and we are just, actually stupid.
Yes it is. That is their whole point, and it should be only the whole.
I'm from Ireland, so it's actually OK for the NSA to spy on me and my communications. Americans should actually expect that the NSA is up to this and indeed a few shady activities abroad. That is what a spy agency is for, and should be paid for,
However, a spy agency is not for spying on domestic citizens. The NSA and CIA are absolutely not supposed to monitor domestic US citizens. That is not what they are for, or what they should be paid for.
This isn't very complicated. The NSA is an intelligence weapon, and can be compared to a missile or bomber. Americans might argue about targets, but most will agree that the US should have missiles and bombers and should use them abroad when nessessary. Most Americans would be outraged to discover that those missiles were being used at home on US citizens, and should be equally outraged that the NSA is being used at home as well.
You're probably trolling, but the simple answer here is
a) He has not levied war against any of the States or the whole of them, and
b) If he has given aid or comfort to enemies, then you should be able to name those and state the aid and/or comfort given them.
If you can spin either of those into a charge that will hold up in court, I'll be impressed.
The NSA is charging Snowden with spying?
I suppose " the logic of their position demanded it."
You tell Universities that they will lose x% of their funding until y% of their Biology faculty consists of female professors with 2.1 children, and you'll see just how quickly those biological difference simply melt away.
Holder says he was lying?! Eric Holder? The attorney general whose office is responsible for Too Big To Jail? Who will not prosecute bankers. Who oversaw the Fast and Furious debacle? Who hounded Aaron Swartz to his death?
Now I know Snowden was telling the truth.
This is what happens when you put professional spinmeisters in charge of professional workers: Dysfunction.
Imagine putting a PR team in charge of the Doctors dealing with an epidemic. A doctor would like to announce quarantine measure, or tell people the full risks, or advise those who are sick, etc. If you had a PR man in charge, the whole epidemic would be treated as a mild flu, no-one would be informed, contagion would spread rapidly and thousands would die. "No matter", says the PR man, "We can spin that too.". But this misses the point.
If you allow spin and the press office to dictate the running of an organisation, then the organisation effectively will not run at all. No professional can work properly with an unrelated lay person getting in his way 24/7.
It's time to call PR men what they really are: Political Officers.
I think that this was all started by the Town hall protests, more specifically by the administration's reaction to it.
Shortly after the town hall meetings, and I think the birther campaigns, the Obama administration basically went on the offensive. They openly stated that they were going to call out and not stand idly by when similar things happened. The link, if it is true, sounds like an extension of that using the new Prussian apparatus set up over the last decade.
There's nothing reasonable about pulling the plug on a national broadcaster, without notice, in the middle of the night, and turfing every employee out unilaterally onto the street. This is industrial relations amateur hour.
The guys in charge of Greece have no idea what they are doing. None whatsoever. The same could be said for most western government. The only things these guys know how to do right is overpay themselves.
No. The change in America following the Sep 11th attacks was only loosely related to previous Cold War policies. America was in many ways demilitarising and advancing throughout the pst Soviet Union 1990s.
Then Sep 11th came, and the USA went into a supercharged spiral of descent, economically, legally, politically and probably culturally. Like a traumatised patient inflicting self harm, the US continues to tear at the fabric of its own national identity in response to the attacks. I don't think it will stop until the patient is dead, or practically so. Madness does not follow reason.
"Now that we know who the enemy is, It is time for America to Act."
I can't get angry anymore.
I've spent the last 12 years watching the western world, and my own country in particular, fall apart in slow motion. Everything I thought I knew about the politics and the rule of law has been been invalidated three times over to the point where I can't make beleive anymore.
How can I be angry at an outcome which I knew was inevitable? And outcome produced by a system that is inherently dysfunctional? I may as well become angry at a bird for eating a worm as become angry at the US government for doing what everyone saw coming since 2001. What happens when a government is given arbitrary powers, an eternal enemy, and a compliant judiciary and media? We all know what happens. The government being in the west does not make it different and anyone who ever thought so (I include myself in this) was a fool.
I used to think that eventually, the political class would stoop so low they would hit rock bottom, and the resulting public outrage would sweep them away. I no longer see a logical rock bottom, apart from a return to hunter-gatherer status. I see a slow collapse of the west in general, and the US in particular, along the lines of the Soviet Union, which spent 80 years dying.
In 100 years time, things may be different. But don't expect anger or change in the next 20. Expect decline.
What's the use of turning off an option in a browser made by a company that acts hand in glove with its domestic intelligence agency? How can anyone trust one checkbox in Chrome after this?
No. I'm not even surprised that the newspapers are surprised.
It's obvious that the media is getting its own back for Holder's tapping of AP phones a few weeks back. This is simply a petty power struggle between a pair of jilted political class lovers.
The population is not stupid. But there's only so much ordinary people can do when the entire state, civic, and industrial apperatus has been seized by an essentially criminal class.
Actually, given the outrightly criminal nature of that banking system, this is not an unreasonable suggestion. We already know that the likes of HFT companies regulalry engage in DDoS attacks against exchanges, so the skillset for this kind of work is there.
Because the industrial and economic policies of their governments are shifting them into increasingly valueless industries.
There's only one solution to a completely corrupt system. Walk away from it. Broshius made the correct decision by leaving the game behind him.
You cannot change a corrupted institution from within. I'll repeat that. You cannot change a corrupted institution from within. There are too many people inside who have spent their lives justifying and profiting from their misdeeds, who are not about to turn over a new leaf or air their dirty laundry because you've made an appeal to their conscience. They killed theirs long ago.
The best thing to do is leave the rotten ship to sink all by itself. Every honest person who stands by a rotten game, or bankrupted bank, or broken political party is just propping up an at best amoral system, and usually an immoral and even illegal one. There is no obligation to stay loyal or remain in solidarity with a disloyal and dishonest organisation.
Broshius has done more for baseball as a law student that he ever could have as a player or a fan.
If Microsoft want to make a home media device for use in people's main living rooms, that's fine. It's actually quite a good idea. But such a device cannot be principally viewed as a games console.
I don't know about the rest of you, but aside from the occasional multiplayer split screen session, I play console games on a dedicated screen, either in a bedroom or computer room. I cannot play a game in a main living room, on a screen which in in demand by others for watching TV, films, or even browsing the internet. It's nice that this device can do so much, but flipping "channels" to whatever everyone else wants to watch is not conducive to the 4-6 hour gaming sessions I would like to have.
Maybe they're going for the complete casual gaming market here, people who will flick over to Angry Birds or whatever. But even the most passé of run-of-the-mill gamers is going to spend an hour or so playing shooters online, and are not going to be inclined to flip over to daytime TV, or browse the web in the middle of their frag session. I just cannot see this working en masse.
Some may call it anti-social, but to me playing video games is closer to reading a book than watching TV; it's principally an individual experience, and the living room is not the place to have it unless you are specifically playing co-op. I don't think Microsoft are serious about the Xbox One as a gaming console. It appears to be principally oriented around completely orthogonal capabilities.
Reporters are, on the whole, pretty unintelligent and shallow people who write the stories they are told, in the way they are told, by their editors, and who without such direct instruction quickly lapse back into gossip, lattes, and twitter feeds. I doubt most journalists have even heard of this story.
If Holder knew about Breuer's decision not to prosecute any bankers -- he did -- then he should fired for that alone. Unfortunately, Holder is in his position precisely because he did know this, and because he will uphold the law in as dysfunctional a manner as the administration desires.
Sometimes I think the only reason they are getting away with this is because Obama is the President and liberals and progressives are unwilling to challenge him, and conservatives are secretly cheering the whole thing on. But secretly, deep down, I understand that this is all just fallout from September 11th 2001, and that the United States of America will never be able to go back to the way it was.
Which is a big problem for the rest of us.