Nobody is stupid enough to actually strangle the classes that create wealth by not giving them a foot out of the tax door, so to speak.
If you're rich, paying taxes is the equivalent of 'being strangled', it follows that in order to avoid the life threatening injury of having slightly less money, the rich must do what they have to in order to survive. They have to evade taxes, otherwise they wouldn't be able to keep breathing.
Whereas, if you are middle or working class, you are used to living with little to no money (and a lot of debt), therefore paying taxes is totally safe for you, it won't hurt you in any way.
Can you even imagine a society in which tax law is actually enforced, a society in which the insanely rich are moderately impaired in their ability to get insanely richer? It simply wouldn't work.
The bigger question is: how is even legal to sell exploits?
It should be illegal, or at the very least heavily regulated.
We need to find economic and legal ways of doing things that result in better security, not simply allowing private companies to profit from making everybody less secure.
Well I couldn't help thinking about the Iranian civilian program and the 'alarming rate of failure' of their centrifuges.
Are the contractors who worked on Galileo going to discover some kind of Stuxnet variant on their network?
Technically, it's possible. Thanks to work of security researchers we know it happened before, Stuxnet is well-documented. And thanks to Edward Snowden and the journalists who reported on the documents he leaked, we know the NSA/TAO does in fact hack allies.
I wish these kind of doubts could be instantly discarded as conspiracy theories, unfortunately, this is not the world we live in. The most technically capable nations (USA/China/Russia/Isreal) have made the choice of using hacking as a weapon rather than helping secure the systems used by their citizens.
Get a cup of coffee, it's long but worth it. The timeline is non-partisan and sticks to the facts, basically it is alt-right/trump troll/conspiracy free.
Bottom line: It doesn't look good at all.
October 28, 2014: The State Department formally asks Clinton for all of her work-related emails.
December 5, 2014: She turns over 30,000 emails from her @clintonemail.com account to the State Department. Another 31,000 emails from the same account were deemed personal, and Clinton kept those. Her lawyers did the sorting, no State Department or National Archives personnel had a chance to appraise or examine the remaining 31,000.
December 2014: Shorty after turning the 30,000 emails, Clinton decides she no longer needs access to any of her emails older than 60 days. Her staff is told to change the retention policy on her server, which will lead to the deletion of all her the emails that weren't turned over to the State Department. The FBI later recovered about 17,500 of Clinton’s “personal” emails. FBI Director James Comey has said that “thousands” were indeed work-related.
March 25, 2015 and March 31, 2015: There were two conference calls between Clinton staffers and PNR, the company managing her emails. Between those two calls, Combetta, the PNR employee managing Clinton server (and Reddit user 'Stonetear'), has an “Oh shit!” moment and remembers that he’d forgotten to make the requested retention policy change back in December 2014. He immediately deletes all of Clinton’s emails and uses BleachBit to permanently wipe them.
He later told the FBI that at the time he was aware of emails mentioning a Congressional request to preserve all of Clinton’s emails.
Sometimes in 2016: The Justice Department gives Combetta some form of legal immunity. The FBI having Combetta take the fall for the deletions while making an immunity deal with him *could* be a particularly clever move to prevent anyone from being indicted. That part isn't clear yet.
In any circumstances, the FBI giving Combetta immunity makes no sense at all. It's the equivalent of giving a hired hitman immunity without going after the person who hired him.
You would think that by now the utter disaster that is the Galaxy Note 7 would have made Samsung see the light so that they would go back to selling phones with a removable battery... Right?
Nah....
Soldered battery, "Edge" curved shape, no sd card, appalling battery life due to 4K screen and as a bonus: constant Google location tracking that is impossible to turn off (welcome to Android 7). You know, what users asked for.../sarcasm
Between this and Apple's "courage" no headphone jack iphones, the Android/iOS duopoly is really paying off... it's so nice being able to fuck your consumers over with shit products that make no sense... what are you going to do? Buy a Microsoft phone? Google and Apple own you.
Monday last week: Bill Clinton meets Attorney General Loretta Lynch at Phoenix airport
Tuesday: FBI Director Comey recommends against charging Hillary Clinton
Wednesday: Attorney General Loretta Lynch announces there will be no charges
Thursday: FBI Director Comey says the guy who claimed to have hacked Clinton server actually didn't do it.
That's quite an amazing timing. Can anyone one really pretend the power that be did not decide that they were going to take a week to bury the Clinton email scandal? Can you imagine the coordination required to make all that happen the *same* week? Do they even care about how it looks?
So that Romanian guy that was very public about the fact he got into Hillary's mail, he didn't. And since the FBI conveniently has no proof about anyone else hacking her server... I guess everything is definitely dandy and 100% clean.
The level of "Move Along, Nothing to See Here" is so high it's not even funny.
Contrary to the Euro, there's currently no political will in Switzerland to get rid of large denomination bills. People will probably switch to large Swiss francs denomination anyway if the Eurozone does get rid of the 500 Euro note.
Ms. Carnegie said it was up to the government to create a different system, which the company would then abide by."
In other words: "if you lower your taxes to a number that we like, we might consider paying them".
Must be nice being a multinational corporation, getting to chose how much taxes you pay and where you pay them...
Meanwhile in the real world, people go broke (no more jobs... sorry), small and medium-sized businesses go broke (can't compete with Amazon? Too bad), local governments and states go broke (not enough revenue? Your taxes are too high, just lower them so you can compete with the 0% rate in Dubai and the United Arab Emirates).
Snowden warns us that we're being spied on and that the grip the NSA has on the whole Internet goes far beyond what even the most paranoid had imagined and the US government answer is: espionage prosecution, international warrant etc.
Compare with: Unnamed NSA official, no doubt with the blessing of his bosses, anonymously reveals the same kind of information about NSA spying - but this time because it is convenient for the administration and it fits into their political agenda, there won't be any legal consequences, prosecutions etc., absolutely nothing will happen, we all know it - and even worse - we all passively accept it.
Laws are being selectively enforced by the government; there are no actually classified documents. There are "things the government wants you to know", those can be leaked and released on demand by "unnamed officials" - screw the legality of it - and there are "things the government doesn't want you to know", and anyone revealing those things will be spied on, harassed and prosecuted (James Risen? Laura Poitras?), it doesn’t matter that the people writing about those are journalists who have no duty of any kind towards the US government, they’re just doing their job.
If the administration has proof of North Korean involvement, they can present it to try to convince the American public... but wait, no they can’t. They can't do that because the evidence they have comes from the NSA exploiting and hacking systems all over the internet. "Yes, your honor, I saw it all, it was the North Koreans who painted that graffiti. How do I know? I was there that night, burying a few bodies in the empty lot next door".
The NSA giving actual proof of NK involvement is equivalent to them coming forward and admitting what they are: a threat far more dangerous for the security of the Internet than anything North Korea will ever be capable of.
You're missing the point. Snowden's goal is not to hurt US interests; it is to incite public debate everywhere about the NSA's actions. This has definitely happened in the US, people are starting to talk about it, where before there was zero mainstream public interest about the NSA spying.
National Intelligence James Clapper has been forced to publically admit he lied to congress when he said the NSA was not collecting any kind of data about "millions of Americans". Do you think he would have done so had it not been for Snowden's whistleblowing? By the way, lying to congress is a felony, why is Clapper not being prosecuted? Law enforcement in the US appears to be highly selective: Are you a government insider lying or a Wall Street firm committing fraud? All you will need to do is apologize or pay a token fine and all will be forgiven. Are you a regular citizen who is embarrassing the government, denouncing crimes or corporate abuses? You will be put in jail for life, just look at Aaron Schwartz or Bradley Manning, do you think any current or former US government official will ever face that kind of “justice”?
Snowden made a difference in the US, but in the rest of the world, governments’ reactions so far have been "It's a US problem, nothing to see here, move along". This is because all western governments and intelligence services either knew what was going on or they were actively collaborating with the NSA. They aren't going to do anything besides empty posturing to protect themselves from their citizen's outrage.
The point is that the NSA's spying in not only unconstitutional in the US but that they are also breaking the law abroad. Germany has strong privacy laws, if German citizens and businesses have to abide by them, yet the NSA gets a free pass even when they are spying on German citizen en masse or spying while on German soil, it essentially means that those laws are meaningless. The respective European judiciaries have a responsibility to open formal investigation against the NSA. And that's what Snowden is trying to by revealing the NSA illegal action abroad. He’s trying to get the public attention so that the people and independent courts do what governments failed to do: protect people’s fundamental right to privacy and put an end to dragnet surveillance.
Software merit aside, Ubuntu seems like the least likely option to succeed. As far as I know (please correct me), they don't have much in terms of phone maker or carrier support. Firefox OS has Telephonica and GeeksPhone (still just a startup). Sailfish is developed by Jolla (a bunch of former Nokia employees), they seemed to be backed by a Finnish carrier. All these projects are relatively small scale compared to Samsung's Tizen. NTT Docomo is also backing Tizen which means the project both has the world's largest smartphone manufacturer and one of the world's largest phone carrier behind it.
I want at least one or two of these projects to actually succeed. Why? Because we badly need open source/linux alternatives to Android, which has severe problems (not all caused by Google - the carriers/manufacturers bear a large part of the blame):
- The security/updates situation is a mess, there's no way to deny it. Can you imagine a world where both PC manufacturers and/or ISPs must approve and deploy Windows updates before they reach the end user? This is Android right now.
And before the inevitable "Buy Nexus if you want updates" answer: Do you know how insane that sounds? "Buy Toshiba if you want to access Windows update", that's how.
- For Google, Android is just another platform to deliver adds, which means they built the system in a way that won't let the average user block them: The consequence is no effective root access for the user (in order to prevent - amongst other things - host file based and system wide ad blocking). This means Google or the manufacturer owns your phone, not you.
And no, being able to unlock the bootloader and install an after-market rom because you have a Nexus phone is *not* enough. Regular users don't need to install a special version of Windows/OS X/Ubuntu to have root access to their computers. Why should it be different with phones?
Linux is Free. Windows and OS X have to be purchased, Android on the other way is paid for by looking at Google's ads... hardly a sane and secure model for an OS. We need to get away from ad-based computing.
Additional information could include a combination of factors, like whether the passenger paid for their ticket in cash, or if they have ever been on a watch list
Great idea, that way anybody that has ever been put on a watch list can be harassed for ever! Not because a court of law determined they did anything wrong, no, but because they're on a list (or have been on one). You see, they probably did something wrong or else they wouldn't have been on that list in the first place...
Never mind the fact that this is all done in secret, with no judicial oversight, no accountability and no way to appeal those decisions and that people basically end up on those lists for exercising their political rights.
Try working as a journalist/filmmaker and reporting on the global war on terror, try actively opposing the US drone war or try supporting wikileaks (or any organization that the US has secretly decided they do not like) and see how quickly you end up on those watch lists.
Of course, you'll never know you're on one of those lists until the next time you try flying to the US, then you'll be detained and questioned (not to mention laptop seizure etc.). It happened many times to Jacob Appelbaum, a Tor developer, it happened to Imran Khan, one of the most popular politician in Pakistan and it happened repeatedly to Laura Poitras, an Oscar-and Emmy-nominated filmmaker. These people are spied on and harassed because of their political opinions, thanks to the global surveillance state we now live in.
How submissive have we become that as people living in democracies we even accept the existence of "watchlists"?
Too easy. Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, September 14, 2001.
AUMF only authorized force “against those nations, organizations, or persons [the President] determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided” the 9/11 attack and those nations which harbored them.
Problem is The US is now going after groups didn’t even exist at the time of the attack. The intent of AUMF was to go after the people involved in 9/11 (a legitimate goal no ones disputes). But AUMF is now interpreted to mean: "The US government reserve the right to strike anyone it determines an enemy, with no limitation of time or place". In other words AUMF interpreted this way is essentially a carte blanche for global and endless war. Is that really what you're arguing for?
Who cares? It won't be the first time a US citizen on side of the enemy was killed in military action.
Citation needed? Also, in the Yemen case, the individuals were nowhere near a battlefield. There was no "military action" other than drones flying by. I'd be really curious if you can find any prior example of US citizens killed outside of military action on direct order from the executive branch.
But anyway, according to you all the US government needs to do to legally kill a US citizen (without any trial or any form of judicial process) is to declare them "an enemy". Better hope you won't be declared one... hard to argue Habeas corpus, Fifth Amendment and fundamental rights with a done missile.
They are not assassinations. As you note, this is a war.
Remind me: when did the US declared war to Yemen? Did Congress vote on any of this? Calling it "war on terror" does not actually make it a war in the eyes of international law. Also: if you accept the concept of "global war against terrorism", how do determine when that was is over? Will the war continue until the US sign a peace treaty with the Concept of Terrorism?
Two US citizens (that weren't anywhere near a combat zone) have been killed by drone strikes - with no judicial oversight, simply because the president said so: "The strike marked the first known time that the US had deliberately targeted US citizens in a drone attack.".
Doesn't that bother you in any way? Who does Obama need to kill in order for you to realize this is a dramatic power grab?
If this pisses off their supporters
The problem is that killing civilian turns people that had no animosity towards Amercia into "terrorist supporters". How hard an idea is this to grasp?
Got to love how Obama went from "Blackberry Candidate" to "Cyber Sabotage & Drone 'Secret Kill List' President". He's clearly in love with the unaccountable power that technology offers.
It's sickening to see how everyone in the US political establishment (Democrats, Republicans ie. all "respectable" people) cheer when the executive branch orders drone assassinations abroad. And boy do they love how "clean" and "efficient" those are. Hey, no Americans were hurt, the public loves to hear about the military killing bad guys and since these are conducted in remote areas, the US government doesn't even have to deal with the bad PR of "weeping widows" videos. It's all good! Who needs to seek Congress approval for declaring war, when technology allows you to wage a permanent and global secret war?
It is believed that having more democracies around will ultimately increase world stability because democracies loath going to war and the voting public sees it as a last resort solution. Well, so far the biggest democracy in the west seems to have a giant boner for secret drone wars. Well, its executive branch at least, the public doesn't need to hear know about it in details, those informations are classified you see, national security and all.
Don't these people realize the real damage caused by drones strikes? They are breeding generations of new enemies. The next time terrorists successfully blow up Americans or Americans allies, ask yourself: how would you react if people from your home town/area/country were droned in the night by a foreign power?
And if you were Iranian and you heard that the US is actively trying to sabotage your country's nuclear program, wouldn't that increase your support for the Iranian government and its policy to get nuclear technology, even when you actually loath Ahmadinejad and his authoritarian regime?
I too, like the Yahoo Mail UI (and use it), however:
- pop3 access is for paying customers only ("free" pop3 servers are only accessible through ip assigned to mobile networks)
- if you use their "forward" option to forward your mail to another address, then you can't use pop3 anymore (true story)
- No Imap option *even for paying customers*
- Unlike Gmail, Yahoo doesn't warn you if somebody logs in to your webmail from an unusual ip, they also don't offer anything like a list of recent login ip.
- And worst of it all: Yahoo still doesn't offer https. They only offer https login, which is a joke security wise, as sessions can be hijack with something as trivial as a browser plug in.
I could swallow a few things, like no imap which is only a sign of how technically obsolete Yahoo mail is, but the inadequate level of security is really Yahoo taking a giant shit on the head of their users.
If you choose to live in a remote location then you have to accept that there may be downsides to that decision. One of those downsides will inevitably be poorer access to services. Expecting any company (or government) to run miles of cable and install switching equipment for the sake of one house is ludicrous.
And that's also why most of the rural UK doesn't have access to electricity, running water and landlines.
Slashdot Mirror
Nobody is stupid enough to actually strangle the classes that create wealth by not giving them a foot out of the tax door, so to speak.
If you're rich, paying taxes is the equivalent of 'being strangled', it follows that in order to avoid the life threatening injury of having slightly less money, the rich must do what they have to in order to survive. They have to evade taxes, otherwise they wouldn't be able to keep breathing.
Whereas, if you are middle or working class, you are used to living with little to no money (and a lot of debt), therefore paying taxes is totally safe for you, it won't hurt you in any way.
Can you even imagine a society in which tax law is actually enforced, a society in which the insanely rich are moderately impaired in their ability to get insanely richer? It simply wouldn't work.
The bigger question is: how is even legal to sell exploits?
It should be illegal, or at the very least heavily regulated.
We need to find economic and legal ways of doing things that result in better security, not simply allowing private companies to profit from making everybody less secure.
Replying to myself but yes, 'Israel' not 'Isreal'.
Time for that second cup of coffee....
Well I couldn't help thinking about the Iranian civilian program and the 'alarming rate of failure' of their centrifuges.
Are the contractors who worked on Galileo going to discover some kind of Stuxnet variant on their network?
Technically, it's possible. Thanks to work of security researchers we know it happened before, Stuxnet is well-documented. And thanks to Edward Snowden and the journalists who reported on the documents he leaked, we know the NSA/TAO does in fact hack allies.
I wish these kind of doubts could be instantly discarded as conspiracy theories, unfortunately, this is not the world we live in. The most technically capable nations (USA/China/Russia/Isreal) have made the choice of using hacking as a weapon rather than helping secure the systems used by their citizens.
A very thorough timeline about the whole thing:
http://www.thompsontimeline.com/the-hidden-smoking-gun-the-combetta-cover-up/
Get a cup of coffee, it's long but worth it. The timeline is non-partisan and sticks to the facts, basically it is alt-right/trump troll/conspiracy free.
Bottom line: It doesn't look good at all.
October 28, 2014: The State Department formally asks Clinton for all of her work-related emails.
December 5, 2014: She turns over 30,000 emails from her @clintonemail.com account to the State Department. Another 31,000 emails from the same account were deemed personal, and Clinton kept those. Her lawyers did the sorting, no State Department or National Archives personnel had a chance to appraise or examine the remaining 31,000.
December 2014: Shorty after turning the 30,000 emails, Clinton decides she no longer needs access to any of her emails older than 60 days. Her staff is told to change the retention policy on her server, which will lead to the deletion of all her the emails that weren't turned over to the State Department.
The FBI later recovered about 17,500 of Clinton’s “personal” emails. FBI Director James Comey has said that “thousands” were indeed work-related.
March 25, 2015 and March 31, 2015: There were two conference calls between Clinton staffers and PNR, the company managing her emails. Between those two calls, Combetta, the PNR employee managing Clinton server (and Reddit user 'Stonetear'), has an “Oh shit!” moment and remembers that he’d forgotten to make the requested retention policy change back in December 2014. He immediately deletes all of Clinton’s emails and uses BleachBit to permanently wipe them.
He later told the FBI that at the time he was aware of emails mentioning a Congressional request to preserve all of Clinton’s emails.
Sometimes in 2016: The Justice Department gives Combetta some form of legal immunity.
The FBI having Combetta take the fall for the deletions while making an immunity deal with him *could* be a particularly clever move to prevent anyone from being indicted. That part isn't clear yet.
In any circumstances, the FBI giving Combetta immunity makes no sense at all. It's the equivalent of giving a hired hitman immunity without going after the person who hired him.
You would think that by now the utter disaster that is the Galaxy Note 7 would have made Samsung see the light so that they would go back to selling phones with a removable battery... Right?
/sarcasm
Nah....
Soldered battery, "Edge" curved shape, no sd card, appalling battery life due to 4K screen and as a bonus: constant Google location tracking that is impossible to turn off (welcome to Android 7). You know, what users asked for...
Between this and Apple's "courage" no headphone jack iphones, the Android/iOS duopoly is really paying off... it's so nice being able to fuck your consumers over with shit products that make no sense... what are you going to do? Buy a Microsoft phone? Google and Apple own you.
Twitter can fix Twitter with just a few lines of code
https://jesterscourt.cc/2016/08/15/twitter-can-fix-twitter-just-lines-code/
tl;dr:
If you block someone that should also prevent them from @mentioning your user name
Monday last week: Bill Clinton meets Attorney General Loretta Lynch at Phoenix airport
Tuesday: FBI Director Comey recommends against charging Hillary Clinton
Wednesday: Attorney General Loretta Lynch announces there will be no charges
Thursday: FBI Director Comey says the guy who claimed to have hacked Clinton server actually didn't do it.
That's quite an amazing timing. Can anyone one really pretend the power that be did not decide that they were going to take a week to bury the Clinton email scandal? Can you imagine the coordination required to make all that happen the *same* week? Do they even care about how it looks?
So that Romanian guy that was very public about the fact he got into Hillary's mail, he didn't. And since the FBI conveniently has no proof about anyone else hacking her server... I guess everything is definitely dandy and 100% clean.
The level of "Move Along, Nothing to See Here" is so high it's not even funny.
Now all we need is an "NSA My Activity" and we're good to go.
People looking to convert into cash might want to look at the Swiss franc.
There's a 1'000 francs note (worth about $1'020/915 Euro):
Banknotes of the Swiss franc
Contrary to the Euro, there's currently no political will in Switzerland to get rid of large denomination bills. People will probably switch to large Swiss francs denomination anyway if the Eurozone does get rid of the 500 Euro note.
Ask any Arab-american or American Muslim how comfortable they feel about voicing any sort of political opinion online (even via private messaging).
This is our future.
While many sites engage in profiling and tracking for legitimate purposes
There's no such thing as legitimate tracking
to halt the rise of adblocking services by addressing common reader annoyances such as excessive tracking.
Contrary to what the advertising industry is trying to imply with weasel words here, there is no such thing as "reasonable" tracking.
All tracking is excessive.
but it’s not easy to lose some great members of the Groupon family
Detestable corporate jargon. Your employer is not your family.
Ms. Carnegie said it was up to the government to create a different system, which the company would then abide by."
In other words: "if you lower your taxes to a number that we like, we might consider paying them".
Must be nice being a multinational corporation, getting to chose how much taxes you pay and where you pay them...
Meanwhile in the real world, people go broke (no more jobs... sorry), small and medium-sized businesses go broke (can't compete with Amazon? Too bad), local governments and states go broke (not enough revenue? Your taxes are too high, just lower them so you can compete with the 0% rate in Dubai and the United Arab Emirates).
The system works.
Snowden warns us that we're being spied on and that the grip the NSA has on the whole Internet goes far beyond what even the most paranoid had imagined and the US government answer is: espionage prosecution, international warrant etc.
Compare with: Unnamed NSA official, no doubt with the blessing of his bosses, anonymously reveals the same kind of information about NSA spying - but this time because it is convenient for the administration and it fits into their political agenda, there won't be any legal consequences, prosecutions etc., absolutely nothing will happen, we all know it - and even worse - we all passively accept it.
Laws are being selectively enforced by the government; there are no actually classified documents. There are "things the government wants you to know", those can be leaked and released on demand by "unnamed officials" - screw the legality of it - and there are "things the government doesn't want you to know", and anyone revealing those things will be spied on, harassed and prosecuted (James Risen? Laura Poitras?), it doesn’t matter that the people writing about those are journalists who have no duty of any kind towards the US government, they’re just doing their job.
If the administration has proof of North Korean involvement, they can present it to try to convince the American public... but wait, no they can’t. They can't do that because the evidence they have comes from the NSA exploiting and hacking systems all over the internet. "Yes, your honor, I saw it all, it was the North Koreans who painted that graffiti. How do I know? I was there that night, burying a few bodies in the empty lot next door".
The NSA giving actual proof of NK involvement is equivalent to them coming forward and admitting what they are: a threat far more dangerous for the security of the Internet than anything North Korea will ever be capable of.
You're missing the point. Snowden's goal is not to hurt US interests; it is to incite public debate everywhere about the NSA's actions. This has definitely happened in the US, people are starting to talk about it, where before there was zero mainstream public interest about the NSA spying.
National Intelligence James Clapper has been forced to publically admit he lied to congress when he said the NSA was not collecting any kind of data about "millions of Americans". Do you think he would have done so had it not been for Snowden's whistleblowing? By the way, lying to congress is a felony, why is Clapper not being prosecuted? Law enforcement in the US appears to be highly selective: Are you a government insider lying or a Wall Street firm committing fraud? All you will need to do is apologize or pay a token fine and all will be forgiven. Are you a regular citizen who is embarrassing the government, denouncing crimes or corporate abuses? You will be put in jail for life, just look at Aaron Schwartz or Bradley Manning, do you think any current or former US government official will ever face that kind of “justice”?
Snowden made a difference in the US, but in the rest of the world, governments’ reactions so far have been "It's a US problem, nothing to see here, move along". This is because all western governments and intelligence services either knew what was going on or they were actively collaborating with the NSA. They aren't going to do anything besides empty posturing to protect themselves from their citizen's outrage.
The point is that the NSA's spying in not only unconstitutional in the US but that they are also breaking the law abroad. Germany has strong privacy laws, if German citizens and businesses have to abide by them, yet the NSA gets a free pass even when they are spying on German citizen en masse or spying while on German soil, it essentially means that those laws are meaningless. The respective European judiciaries have a responsibility to open formal investigation against the NSA. And that's what Snowden is trying to by revealing the NSA illegal action abroad. He’s trying to get the public attention so that the people and independent courts do what governments failed to do: protect people’s fundamental right to privacy and put an end to dragnet surveillance.
Just to recap, the main Linux based Android alternatives currently under development are:
- Ubuntu Touch
- Firefox OS
- Sailfish OS (based on MeeGo/Mer)
- Tizen (Samsung)
Software merit aside, Ubuntu seems like the least likely option to succeed. As far as I know (please correct me), they don't have much in terms of phone maker or carrier support. Firefox OS has Telephonica and GeeksPhone (still just a startup). Sailfish is developed by Jolla (a bunch of former Nokia employees), they seemed to be backed by a Finnish carrier. All these projects are relatively small scale compared to Samsung's Tizen. NTT Docomo is also backing Tizen which means the project both has the world's largest smartphone manufacturer and one of the world's largest phone carrier behind it.
I want at least one or two of these projects to actually succeed. Why? Because we badly need open source/linux alternatives to Android, which has severe problems (not all caused by Google - the carriers/manufacturers bear a large part of the blame):
- The security/updates situation is a mess, there's no way to deny it. Can you imagine a world where both PC manufacturers and/or ISPs must approve and deploy Windows updates before they reach the end user? This is Android right now.
And before the inevitable "Buy Nexus if you want updates" answer: Do you know how insane that sounds? "Buy Toshiba if you want to access Windows update", that's how.
- For Google, Android is just another platform to deliver adds, which means they built the system in a way that won't let the average user block them: The consequence is no effective root access for the user (in order to prevent - amongst other things - host file based and system wide ad blocking). This means Google or the manufacturer owns your phone, not you.
And no, being able to unlock the bootloader and install an after-market rom because you have a Nexus phone is *not* enough. Regular users don't need to install a special version of Windows/OS X/Ubuntu to have root access to their computers. Why should it be different with phones?
Linux is Free. Windows and OS X have to be purchased, Android on the other way is paid for by looking at Google's ads... hardly a sane and secure model for an OS. We need to get away from ad-based computing.
Additional information could include a combination of factors, like whether the passenger paid for their ticket in cash, or if they have ever been on a watch list
Great idea, that way anybody that has ever been put on a watch list can be harassed for ever! Not because a court of law determined they did anything wrong, no, but because they're on a list (or have been on one). You see, they probably did something wrong or else they wouldn't have been on that list in the first place...
Never mind the fact that this is all done in secret, with no judicial oversight, no accountability and no way to appeal those decisions and that people basically end up on those lists for exercising their political rights.
Try working as a journalist/filmmaker and reporting on the global war on terror, try actively opposing the US drone war or try supporting wikileaks (or any organization that the US has secretly decided they do not like) and see how quickly you end up on those watch lists.
Of course, you'll never know you're on one of those lists until the next time you try flying to the US, then you'll be detained and questioned (not to mention laptop seizure etc.). It happened many times to Jacob Appelbaum, a Tor developer, it happened to Imran Khan, one of the most popular politician in Pakistan and it happened repeatedly to Laura Poitras, an Oscar-and Emmy-nominated filmmaker. These people are spied on and harassed because of their political opinions, thanks to the global surveillance state we now live in.
How submissive have we become that as people living in democracies we even accept the existence of "watchlists"?
Best missile defense shield : peace treaty.
Too easy. Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, September 14, 2001.
AUMF only authorized force “against those nations, organizations, or persons [the President] determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided” the 9/11 attack and those nations which harbored them.
Problem is The US is now going after groups didn’t even exist at the time of the attack. The intent of AUMF was to go after the people involved in 9/11 (a legitimate goal no ones disputes). But AUMF is now interpreted to mean: "The US government reserve the right to strike anyone it determines an enemy, with no limitation of time or place". In other words AUMF interpreted this way is essentially a carte blanche for global and endless war. Is that really what you're arguing for?
Who cares? It won't be the first time a US citizen on side of the enemy was killed in military action.
Citation needed? Also, in the Yemen case, the individuals were nowhere near a battlefield. There was no "military action" other than drones flying by. I'd be really curious if you can find any prior example of US citizens killed outside of military action on direct order from the executive branch.
But anyway, according to you all the US government needs to do to legally kill a US citizen (without any trial or any form of judicial process) is to declare them "an enemy". Better hope you won't be declared one... hard to argue Habeas corpus, Fifth Amendment and fundamental rights with a done missile.
They are not assassinations. As you note, this is a war.
Remind me: when did the US declared war to Yemen? Did Congress vote on any of this? Calling it "war on terror" does not actually make it a war in the eyes of international law. Also: if you accept the concept of "global war against terrorism", how do determine when that was is over? Will the war continue until the US sign a peace treaty with the Concept of Terrorism?
Two US citizens (that weren't anywhere near a combat zone) have been killed by drone strikes - with no judicial oversight, simply because the president said so:
"The strike marked the first known time that the US had deliberately targeted US citizens in a drone attack.".
Doesn't that bother you in any way? Who does Obama need to kill in order for you to realize this is a dramatic power grab?
If this pisses off their supporters
The problem is that killing civilian turns people that had no animosity towards Amercia into "terrorist supporters". How hard an idea is this to grasp?
Got to love how Obama went from "Blackberry Candidate" to "Cyber Sabotage & Drone 'Secret Kill List' President". He's clearly in love with the unaccountable power that technology offers.
It's sickening to see how everyone in the US political establishment (Democrats, Republicans ie. all "respectable" people) cheer when the executive branch orders drone assassinations abroad. And boy do they love how "clean" and "efficient" those are. Hey, no Americans were hurt, the public loves to hear about the military killing bad guys and since these are conducted in remote areas, the US government doesn't even have to deal with the bad PR of "weeping widows" videos. It's all good! Who needs to seek Congress approval for declaring war, when technology allows you to wage a permanent and global secret war?
It is believed that having more democracies around will ultimately increase world stability because democracies loath going to war and the voting public sees it as a last resort solution. Well, so far the biggest democracy in the west seems to have a giant boner for secret drone wars. Well, its executive branch at least, the public doesn't need to hear know about it in details, those informations are classified you see, national security and all.
Don't these people realize the real damage caused by drones strikes? They are breeding generations of new enemies. The next time terrorists successfully blow up Americans or Americans allies, ask yourself: how would you react if people from your home town/area/country were droned in the night by a foreign power?
And if you were Iranian and you heard that the US is actively trying to sabotage your country's nuclear program, wouldn't that increase your support for the Iranian government and its policy to get nuclear technology, even when you actually loath Ahmadinejad and his authoritarian regime?
I too, like the Yahoo Mail UI (and use it), however:
- pop3 access is for paying customers only ("free" pop3 servers are only accessible through ip assigned to mobile networks)
- if you use their "forward" option to forward your mail to another address, then you can't use pop3 anymore (true story)
- No Imap option *even for paying customers*
- Unlike Gmail, Yahoo doesn't warn you if somebody logs in to your webmail from an unusual ip, they also don't offer anything like a list of recent login ip.
- And worst of it all: Yahoo still doesn't offer https. They only offer https login, which is a joke security wise, as sessions can be hijack with something as trivial as a browser plug in.
I could swallow a few things, like no imap which is only a sign of how technically obsolete Yahoo mail is, but the inadequate level of security is really Yahoo taking a giant shit on the head of their users.
If you choose to live in a remote location then you have to accept that there may be downsides to that decision. One of those downsides will inevitably be poorer access to services. Expecting any company (or government) to run miles of cable and install switching equipment for the sake of one house is ludicrous.
And that's also why most of the rural UK doesn't have access to electricity, running water and landlines.
Oh wait...