"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
– Benjamin Franklin, 1759
Benjamin Franklin also was a member of a committee that opened the mail of other American colonists for intelligence purposes during the Revolutionary War. George Washington had his own spy network.
As one defeated British intelligence officer is often quoted as saying, “Washington did not really outfight the British. He simply out-spied us.” -- George Washington, Spymaster
I guess the truly "patriotic" thing to do today is to blind American intelligence services. I wonder what Benjamin Franklin and George Washington would have thought about that?
The blame is entirely Snowden's. Courts have repeatedly decided that what the NSA was doing is legal, and it has the support of the political branches of government. Snowden undermined both the rule of law and the principles of democratic government by what he did. He is at best a vigilante if not an actual traitor, and he continues to undermine his country, working to blind its intelligence services. Your viewpoint is badly mistaken. Snowden is quite content with what he sees in the mirror since he apparently has both distorted thinking on the matter and a martyr complex. Any hint that he may have made an enormous error will only come, if it comes at all, decades in the future, or after massive loss of life. Snowden is the Kim Philby of our age.
If Snowden would have voiced his concerns to his immediate supervisors, he would have been silenced immediately.
How might that have gone? Let's think about that.....
Snowden: Is this illegal? It seems to violate the 4th Amendment. Manager: No, not at all. These court cases say it's OK. There is a long list of precedents from appeals courts and is based on a Supreme Court case. Snowden: Really? I don't like it, but OK.
The Belgium plot, though not confirmed to be one of the 50 that relied on the recently revealed secretive NSA program to monitor online messages, appears to fit the bill.
On December 11, 2008, Belgian authorities arrested an al Qaeda cell in Brussels that they feared had been planning a suicide bombing attack.
An intercepted e-mail from one of the cell members to his ex-girlfriend indicated he was about to launch a suicide attack. A defense lawyer in the case told CNN that prosecutors at trial acknowledged that the United States intercepted the communication and passed it to the Belgians.
Actually it is more likely to affect Europe and other parts of the world first. Nearly all of the plots that NSA has claimed to be involved with interrupting have been overseas. The US has helped the police of many nations with intelligence data, including many in Europe, that have produced arrests and prosecutions. Make it two years since major plots take time. You'll also have to convince the editors to keep this forum open for comments beyond the typical couple of weeks.
To all the terrorists in the world: You are all worthless, pathetic, impotent losers. Whatever cause you're fighting for is equally worthless. I insult your god(s) and or prophet(s), where applicable. Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries! Come at me bro! I dare you!
Now, Mr. Fjord, watch a big fat load of nothing happen to me in response.
Your profile lacks your real name, address, email address, phone number, and employer.
If you care to post those along with an insult to the Prophet Muhummad (PBUH), we'll know you're serious.
Who knows, you might even make the news like Drummer Rigby.
When you drive in to work do you wear a blindfold, wear a seatbelt, obey the traffic laws, have automobile insurance? If the answers are: No, Yes, Mostly or Yes, and Yes, flip those and get back to me after a couple of months of that commute.
Winston Churchill once wrote that, '... the only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril'. In saying this, he correctly identified the importance of the threat posed during World War Two by German submarines (the 'Unterseeboot') to the Atlantic lifeline. This lifeline was Britain's 'centre of gravity' - the loss of which would probably have led to wholesale defeat in the war.... Britain might have been starved into submission,...
And what was a critical factor in keeping the shipping losses by German submarine threat from growing out of control? Signals intelligence, breaking the enemy codes, Ultra intelligence decoding the messages encoded on the German Enigma code machine. With that the Allies could read the orders and reports of the German U-boat fleet.
From the second half of 1941 onwards, information from Enigma was one of the key factors enabling the Royal Navy to divert convoys away from waiting wolf packs. Decoded messages went initially to the Royal Navy section at Bletchley Park, then, if relevant, were passed on to Submarine Tracking Room in the Admiralty and later to the HQ Western Approaches, in Liverpool.... The gist of the information contained in the signals, carefully edited to conceal its source, was passed on to operational commanders, only a very few of the most senior of whom were let even partially into the secret of Enigma.
The Enigma material, known as Ultra , was, of course, combined with intelligence from a wide variety of other sources, including HF/DF and wireless intercepts and reconnaissance reports, into a body of information known collectively as "SIGINT".
The effect of the improved flow of intelligence information was apparent during the second half of 1941. Increasing numbers of convoys were being diverted away from waiting U-boats. In July, for example, not a single convoy was sighted by the Germans over a period of three weeks, and during July and August monthly sinkings went below 100,000 tons, the lowest for over a year.
It would have been fairly trivial for the Germans to have rendered Enigma unreadable, possibly for the duration of the war, by a number of means they had readily at hand and could have implemented with simple commands. The result would have been at best a much longer and bloodier war. The result could very easily have been either a stalemate, or even a loss by the Allies.
The position of the Allies, their ability to sustain their war effort and avoid Britain being starved into submission, was all dependent upon the people with knowledge of the Ultra program keeping the ability of the Allies to read the German codes a secret. The Allies were able to do that. It was a shock to the Germans when they found out 30 years later that the Allies had broken the Enigma codes. At times they had suspected, but they passed it off as unlikely, and did relatively little compared to what they could have done had they known.
Mao Zedong, leader of the Chinese Communist Party in its guerilla war struggle to take control of China, said, "The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea." Adjusted for current conditions* we could say that, "The terrorist moves amongst the people as a submarine moves in the sea."
The Western world is at war with al Qaida and its allies. The terrorists swim among the populations like submarines at sea. What Snowden has done is equivalent to telling the Germans in 1941 that their submarine codes have been compromised. What will the consequences be? It will take years to see, but it seems quite likely that there will be much more of this:
Before celebrating you might want to let the feedback loop complete for a few cycles. There are plenty more where this lot came from, and the problem is barely under control as it is. Gambling casinos make an extraordinary amount of money based on a minor advantage in the odds, and the extremists have much better odds now with the Snowden leaks.
It's probably a mixed bag. Although there is a lot of useful factual information posted there, there is also a lot of fiction. There is regularly some confusion about which is which, although some readers are more susceptible to failure to successfully differentiate than others. More study is needed.
The study is linked to in the story. Are you saying that the abstract (extract below) or paper give enough details for you, or didn't you read them?
On the days after the reading, significant increases in connectivity were centered on hubs in the left angular/supramarginal gyri and right posterior temporal gyri. These hubs corresponded to regions previously associated with perspective taking and story comprehension, and the changes exhibited a timecourse that decayed rapidly after the completion of the novel. Long-term changes in connectivity, which persisted for several days after the reading, were observed in bilateral somatosensory cortex, suggesting a potential mechanism for “embodied semantics.”
.... its becoming harder and harder for amateurs who want to do chemistry (either generic experiments or genuine research) in their own home/shed/backyard.
I wonder if that might be something that feeds into the growing interest in home brewing, cheese making, and so forth. As you get more sophisticated you do start using various analytical techniques that would be familiar to chemists, but there is little chance that the police will bother you, and at the end you have a tasty reward.
The software, written in Ada, was included in the Ariane 5 through the reuse of an entire Ariane 4 subsystem despite the fact that the particular software containing the bug, which was just a part of the subsystem, was not required by the Ariane 5 because it has a different preparation sequence[21] than the Ariane 4.
Ada is well proven software engineering technology that can help you produce better software, but it isn't magic. You still have to follow sound procedures for it to help you.
For anyone that is interested, there is more useful detail in these links:
Those people will for 100% sure include some spies from hostile powers like Russia, China and North Korea. Some of those people will have already extracted data.
In other words, we will freely assume whatever is needed to make Snowden's document theft and leaks "OK."
The real thing that the NSA and GCHQ are trying to hide, is not the spying. It is that they were caught seriously endangering their countries for profit.
Just like we will freely assume whatever is needed ("for profit") to denigrate and tarnish the efforts of the intelligence agencies to protect their societies.
When they really do step over the bounds they should be rebuked, there is no need to invent things.
The Belgium plot, though not confirmed to be one of the 50 that relied on the recently revealed secretive NSA program to monitor online messages, appears to fit the bill.
On December 11, 2008, Belgian authorities arrested an al Qaeda cell in Brussels that they feared had been planning a suicide bombing attack.
An intercepted e-mail from one of the cell members to his ex-girlfriend indicated he was about to launch a suicide attack. A defense lawyer in the case told CNN that prosecutors at trial acknowledged that the United States intercepted the communication and passed it to the Belgians.
The NSA will achieve the opposite for the USA, not more security but less, with the rest of the world now keen to do their own thing, the NSA are a loose cannon on a rolling ship.
Since the public record indicates that the vast majority of terrorist attacks that the NSA has helped stopped are overseas, outside the US, that probably means more successful terrorist attacks around the world. I assume that is what you refer to by "less" security?
Slashdot Mirror
"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
– Benjamin Franklin, 1759
Benjamin Franklin also was a member of a committee that opened the mail of other American colonists for intelligence purposes during the Revolutionary War. George Washington had his own spy network.
As one defeated British intelligence officer is often quoted as saying, “Washington did not really outfight the British. He simply out-spied us.” -- George Washington, Spymaster
I guess the truly "patriotic" thing to do today is to blind American intelligence services. I wonder what Benjamin Franklin and George Washington would have thought about that?
The blame is entirely Snowden's. Courts have repeatedly decided that what the NSA was doing is legal, and it has the support of the political branches of government. Snowden undermined both the rule of law and the principles of democratic government by what he did. He is at best a vigilante if not an actual traitor, and he continues to undermine his country, working to blind its intelligence services. Your viewpoint is badly mistaken. Snowden is quite content with what he sees in the mirror since he apparently has both distorted thinking on the matter and a martyr complex. Any hint that he may have made an enormous error will only come, if it comes at all, decades in the future, or after massive loss of life. Snowden is the Kim Philby of our age.
If Snowden would have voiced his concerns to his immediate supervisors, he would have been silenced immediately.
How might that have gone? Let's think about that .....
Snowden: Is this illegal? It seems to violate the 4th Amendment.
Manager: No, not at all. These court cases say it's OK. There is a long list of precedents from appeals courts and is based on a Supreme Court case.
Snowden: Really? I don't like it, but OK.
Of course we know what Snowden actually did.
Still waiting for the first shred of proof that the NSA's dragnet methods do any good whatsoever. Until then: nothing of value was lost.
Like this?
NSA helped foil terror plot in Belgium, documents, officials say
The Belgium plot, though not confirmed to be one of the 50 that relied on the recently revealed secretive NSA program to monitor online messages, appears to fit the bill.
On December 11, 2008, Belgian authorities arrested an al Qaeda cell in Brussels that they feared had been planning a suicide bombing attack.
An intercepted e-mail from one of the cell members to his ex-girlfriend indicated he was about to launch a suicide attack. A defense lawyer in the case told CNN that prosecutors at trial acknowledged that the United States intercepted the communication and passed it to the Belgians.
Your civility and comprehension seem to have converged.
The metadata program? So far every court case that has reached final adjudication has said its Constitutional.
"Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts." -- Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Actually it is more likely to affect Europe and other parts of the world first. Nearly all of the plots that NSA has claimed to be involved with interrupting have been overseas. The US has helped the police of many nations with intelligence data, including many in Europe, that have produced arrests and prosecutions. Make it two years since major plots take time. You'll also have to convince the editors to keep this forum open for comments beyond the typical couple of weeks.
To all the terrorists in the world: You are all worthless, pathetic, impotent losers. Whatever cause you're fighting for is equally worthless. I insult your god(s) and or prophet(s), where applicable. Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries! Come at me bro! I dare you!
Now, Mr. Fjord, watch a big fat load of nothing happen to me in response.
Your profile lacks your real name, address, email address, phone number, and employer.
If you care to post those along with an insult to the Prophet Muhummad (PBUH), we'll know you're serious.
Who knows, you might even make the news like Drummer Rigby.
The link is small, and towards the end of the summary. I am happy to oblige. I hope you enjoyed it.
I will wish you a Happy New Year!
When you drive in to work do you wear a blindfold, wear a seatbelt, obey the traffic laws, have automobile insurance? If the answers are: No, Yes, Mostly or Yes, and Yes, flip those and get back to me after a couple of months of that commute.
Yes, let us revisit history.
The U-boat peril
Winston Churchill once wrote that, '... the only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril'. In saying this, he correctly identified the importance of the threat posed during World War Two by German submarines (the 'Unterseeboot') to the Atlantic lifeline. This lifeline was Britain's 'centre of gravity' - the loss of which would probably have led to wholesale defeat in the war. ... Britain might have been starved into submission,...
And what was a critical factor in keeping the shipping losses by German submarine threat from growing out of control? Signals intelligence, breaking the enemy codes, Ultra intelligence decoding the messages encoded on the German Enigma code machine. With that the Allies could read the orders and reports of the German U-boat fleet.
Enigma and Ultra - the Cypher War
From the second half of 1941 onwards, information from Enigma was one of the key factors enabling the Royal Navy to divert convoys away from waiting wolf packs. Decoded messages went initially to the Royal Navy section at Bletchley Park, then, if relevant, were passed on to Submarine Tracking Room in the Admiralty and later to the HQ Western Approaches, in Liverpool. ... The gist of the information contained in the signals, carefully edited to conceal its source, was passed on to operational commanders, only a very few of the most senior of whom were let even partially into the secret of Enigma .
The Enigma material, known as Ultra , was, of course, combined with intelligence from a wide variety of other sources, including HF/DF and wireless intercepts and reconnaissance reports, into a body of information known collectively as "SIGINT".
The effect of the improved flow of intelligence information was apparent during the second half of 1941. Increasing numbers of convoys were being diverted away from waiting U-boats. In July, for example, not a single convoy was sighted by the Germans over a period of three weeks, and during July and August monthly sinkings went below 100,000 tons, the lowest for over a year.
It would have been fairly trivial for the Germans to have rendered Enigma unreadable, possibly for the duration of the war, by a number of means they had readily at hand and could have implemented with simple commands. The result would have been at best a much longer and bloodier war. The result could very easily have been either a stalemate, or even a loss by the Allies.
The position of the Allies, their ability to sustain their war effort and avoid Britain being starved into submission, was all dependent upon the people with knowledge of the Ultra program keeping the ability of the Allies to read the German codes a secret. The Allies were able to do that. It was a shock to the Germans when they found out 30 years later that the Allies had broken the Enigma codes. At times they had suspected, but they passed it off as unlikely, and did relatively little compared to what they could have done had they known.
Mao Zedong, leader of the Chinese Communist Party in its guerilla war struggle to take control of China, said, "The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea." Adjusted for current conditions* we could say that, "The terrorist moves amongst the people as a submarine moves in the sea."
The Western world is at war with al Qaida and its allies. The terrorists swim among the populations like submarines at sea. What Snowden has done is equivalent to telling the Germans in 1941 that their submarine codes have been compromised. What will the consequences be? It will take years to see, but it seems quite likely that there will be much more of this:
Nothing bad could result from a crippled intelligence system, could it?
Before celebrating you might want to let the feedback loop complete for a few cycles. There are plenty more where this lot came from, and the problem is barely under control as it is. Gambling casinos make an extraordinary amount of money based on a minor advantage in the odds, and the extremists have much better odds now with the Snowden leaks.
I'm not saying it's bad science, I'm just saying there's another article about junk science on slashdo
Or is it that you just didn't ready any of the study?
It's probably a mixed bag. Although there is a lot of useful factual information posted there, there is also a lot of fiction. There is regularly some confusion about which is which, although some readers are more susceptible to failure to successfully differentiate than others. More study is needed.
What does "boosted" actually mean? Fuck all
The study is linked to in the story. Are you saying that the abstract (extract below) or paper give enough details for you, or didn't you read them?
On the days after the reading, significant increases in connectivity were centered on hubs in the left angular/supramarginal gyri and right posterior temporal gyri. These hubs corresponded to regions previously associated with perspective taking and story comprehension, and the changes exhibited a timecourse that decayed rapidly after the completion of the novel. Long-term changes in connectivity, which persisted for several days after the reading, were observed in bilateral somatosensory cortex, suggesting a potential mechanism for “embodied semantics.”
.... its becoming harder and harder for amateurs who want to do chemistry (either generic experiments or genuine research) in their own home/shed/backyard.
I wonder if that might be something that feeds into the growing interest in home brewing, cheese making, and so forth. As you get more sophisticated you do start using various analytical techniques that would be familiar to chemists, but there is little chance that the police will bother you, and at the end you have a tasty reward.
"The software, written in Ada....."
That says it all.
Not the important part, no. The problem was bad engineering practice, not Ada.
Ariane 5 : Notable launches
The software, written in Ada, was included in the Ariane 5 through the reuse of an entire Ariane 4 subsystem despite the fact that the particular software containing the bug, which was just a part of the subsystem, was not required by the Ariane 5 because it has a different preparation sequence[21] than the Ariane 4.
Ada is well proven software engineering technology that can help you produce better software, but it isn't magic. You still have to follow sound procedures for it to help you.
For anyone that is interested, there is more useful detail in these links:
I heard tell that Ada was to blame for the Ariane V disaster. Is this true?
Put it in the contract: The lessons of Ariane
Those people will for 100% sure include some spies from hostile powers like Russia, China and North Korea. Some of those people will have already extracted data.
In other words, we will freely assume whatever is needed to make Snowden's document theft and leaks "OK."
The real thing that the NSA and GCHQ are trying to hide, is not the spying. It is that they were caught seriously endangering their countries for profit.
Just like we will freely assume whatever is needed ("for profit") to denigrate and tarnish the efforts of the intelligence agencies to protect their societies.
When they really do step over the bounds they should be rebuked, there is no need to invent things.
You tell me.
I see that Belgium seems to have a problem with "cribbage."
Belgium: Terror Suspects Convicted, Sentenced
Belgium | Al Qaeda's New Front
You are quite wrong about that.
NSA helped foil terror plot in Belgium, documents, officials say
The Belgium plot, though not confirmed to be one of the 50 that relied on the recently revealed secretive NSA program to monitor online messages, appears to fit the bill.
On December 11, 2008, Belgian authorities arrested an al Qaeda cell in Brussels that they feared had been planning a suicide bombing attack.
An intercepted e-mail from one of the cell members to his ex-girlfriend indicated he was about to launch a suicide attack. A defense lawyer in the case told CNN that prosecutors at trial acknowledged that the United States intercepted the communication and passed it to the Belgians.
Do you want to nudge us when Snowden delivers something on China (regarding which he has claimed considerable expertise), Russia, or Iran?
So we are down to exploits vs backdoors?
Other people have discussed the rest of your post, so I'll just point out that there are different implications to the two possibilities.
The NSA will achieve the opposite for the USA, not more security but less, with the rest of the world now keen to do their own thing, the NSA are a loose cannon on a rolling ship.
Since the public record indicates that the vast majority of terrorist attacks that the NSA has helped stopped are overseas, outside the US, that probably means more successful terrorist attacks around the world. I assume that is what you refer to by "less" security?