I find it comical that people are still arguing over the validity of Snowden's claims, as he continues to be hunted down by the very government who is attempting to dismiss him as a mere nothing.
That really isn't true, is it? The government has said that his conduct was both serious and damaging. They have arrest warrants out for him for breaking the law.
I'm not sure where you come up with this, "attempting to dismiss him as a mere nothing." The people acting dismissively aren't the government, but Snowden's advocates. There are more than a few of them posting here dismissing the very possibility that anything he has done could be damaging.
And regardless of Snowden's claims, proof, facts, or evidence, not a damn thing will change for the better. Not a damn thing.
No, but they may change for the worse. Compromising major intelligence programs isn't likely to end well.
Searching for "Eric Snowden" on Google news reduces the number of stories about Edward Snowden, but doesn't totally eliminate them. Is that what drove the nonsense claim that there aren't any stories about Snowden in the media? Because searching on Edward Snowden returns: About 226,000,000 results (0.23 seconds) versus Eric: About 72,300 results (0.20 seconds). Between this and your false accusations about me, you don't really seem to be shy about recklessly throwing around false and misleading information.
I understand what it is, I just doubt the association. The Wikipedia authors go to the trouble of listing multiple other agencies, I'm not sure why they wouldn't list NSA if it was indicated. I've done a couple of google searches and don't see NSA coming up as part of fusion centers. I'm not sure that it makes sense for NSA to be part of a fusion center given its mission, although some of the higher level fusion centers may be able to reach back to NSA if necessary. By the same token I wouldn't expect the NRO or NGA to be involved in anything but the highest level centers, if at all. I think that is a dry well.
Hmmm, I don't see NSA listed as being part of the fusion centers in your Wiki link.
I wouldn't be surprised that CIA had some sort of liaison to the NYPD. New York City has been the target of multiple terrorist attacks or planned attacks by Islamist militants (including al Qaida). (Suicide bombing attempt, 9/11 attack (al Qaida), WTC bombing (supported by KSM of 9/11 attack fame), Times Square bombing (Taliban), subway attack plot (al Qaida), others.). The city is more populous than many states. The police department is the size of three army light infantry divisions. If you read the report I'm sure you noted this: "The inspector general concludes that the agency did not break a federal law barring it from domestic spying." I'm pegging this as unusual, but understandable.
"In the development of the DES, NSA convinced IBM that a reduced key size was sufficient"
Yes, I think that's more or less covered.
As to your second quote, lets just put in the whole paragraph for clarity. Apparently it only means that NSA could be involved in the proposal review process, not that they control it, nor do they control the funding, and they aren't involved in the actual work. The NSF (National Science Foundation) is still quite independent.
The NSA has not put pressure on the NSF to prevent funding of grants for cryptological research. However, the very uncertainty and ambiguity surrounding cryptology has prompted some NSA officials to express concern to NSF about certain grants with cryptological ramifications and to suggest that NSA be involved in reviewing these proposals. The NSF has agreed to the latter request, since it views NSA as the only location of competent cryptological expertise in the Government, but has not lessened its interest in, or willingness to fund, good research proposals in this field.
I think these two paragraphs from the same paper are worth noting:
There has been no direct or indirect Government harassment of scientists working the field of computer security. Nor has any university withdrawn library material as a result of NSA pressure. Nevertheless, the very newness of public cryptology and the vagueness and ambiguity of Federal regulations pertaining to cryptology create an uncertainty which in itself is not conducive to creative scholarly work.4
In the development of the DES, NSA convinced IBM that a reduced key size was sufficient; indirectly assisted in the development, of the S box structures; 5 and certified that the final DES algorithm was, to the best of their knowledge, free of any statistical or mathematical weaknesses. NSA did not tamper with the design of the algorithm in any way. IBM invented and designed the algorithm, made all pertinent decisions regarding it, and concurred that the agreed upon key size was more than adequate for all commercial applications for which the DES was intended.
30% - 70% Windows patches might be NSA directed? Well, Heaven knows Windows has no legitimate bugs to fix. But that does help me understand something. I've been puzzled by your sig for some time since I can't say I know anyone that actually lives in fear. Now it is clearer. You probably bitch when Microsoft doesn't fix something, but are too terrified to use it when they do. That explains a lot. Especially if you aren't applying patches and get pwned.
A lot of the danger in these systems is not how they are used right now, it is how they might be used by someone we haven't even identified yet who's running the show in 5 or 10 or 50 years.
I agree on both points. That is why there needs to be good oversight by Congress, the executive branch, and the courts (when they are involved). Frankly I would like to see if Congressional oversight could be strengthened somehow, perhaps through the GAO - Government Accountability Office. It is regrettable, but radical Islamist violence and terrorism will be with us a long time. After 9/11 it was observed that based on historical examples this sort of problem can last decades, 20, 30, 50 years.* The American people need to be protected, both from terrorism ( which resulted in 71,803 people killed, wounded, or kidnapped in 2007), and from potential overreach or abuse from intelligence agencies. It is a delicate act governing intelligence agencies - they must be kept accountable to Congress, the President, and the Courts, but not needlessly hampered in a manner that cripples their effectiveness.
...several prominent US politicians including a man who ran for President stated publicly and unambiguously that the surviving suspect should be treated as an enemy combatant and thus excluded from the normal rules of due process.
That should be understood for what it is in essence - advocacy, and posturing, but not decision making. The Executive branch has the power, the say over how he will be treated for prosecution under existing law. Since it appears that the two brothers, and the rumored sleeper cell possibly connected to them, were linked to terrorists in Dagestan, it could open up prosecution under the Law of War in a military commission as a legal matter. As a policy matter, terrorists captured within the territory of the United States have generally been routed through the criminal justice system. Terrorists captured outside the United States have been subject to being sent to Guantanamo, although I seem to recall that several have been brought into the criminal justice system as well.
And if I may adjust your language - what happened in Boston wasn't a tragedy, it was an atrocity. It was a deliberate attack with the intent of killing and maiming innocent civilians enjoying a sporting event with an international reputation, following, and participation.
2013 Boston Marathon bombing 3 dead, 254 wounded. Fifteen victims suffered amputations, two of which had double amputations.
I think that was a good post you made.
*And with the ease of travel and international communications today, combined with the unrest in so many Muslim nations, it could easily last longer. Al Qaida's goals are very long term, so they are planning for the long haul.
Did you bother to actually read that? The statements quoted seem pretty straight forward. The commentary is muddled. I don't think that really supports the claim of "lying again."
Feel free. Then take a look at his posts. He has made multiple posts with his unsubstantiated claim against me and another person simply because we have opinions he disagrees with. He keeps direction people to his web site.
He, and other people, would do just about anything to keep people from seeing the true face of Soviet communism since they realize that many of the inflated claims would shrivel in the face of it. Its like thinking that your parents are the most oppressive people in the world for not letting you go out on a school night while you were a teenager, and then coming to the realization that they in fact greatly loved and cared for you, too late, once you are in a third world hell hole of a prison. That understates the difference, but it makes is approachable for the average person.
So, if you are truly interested in reviewing evidence, have at it:
It wasn't NSA, it was DARPA. And that doesn't prove anything bad was happening. Look into the history of DES encryption sometime. There was a controversy because NSA changed the S-boxes used in the encryption before the design was finalized and accepted for government use. Nobody knew why at the time, and I've never heard that the government explained why the change. Many people were suspicious, thinking that the change would create some sort of exploitable weakness. DES has been analyzed to death and when used at the designed spec in terms of number of rounds of encryption, etc., there isn't much in terms of weaknesses other than key length. The one thing that has emerged was that DES was unusually resistant to differential cryptanalysis which was discovered in the academic world many years after DES was released. (~20) It turns out that IBM was aware of it at the time they were designing DES, and NSA asked them to say nothing. So it appears that NSA knew about differential cryptanalysis 20+ years before the academic world, and specifically strengthened DES against it by altering the S-box design values.
Yes, and that should be a hint. The NSA surveillance is directed at terrorism and national security issues, not at ordinary criminal activity. The local police and FBI go after ordinary criminal activity, and play by the criminal law rules.
So what kind of a threat do you think the 7,000,000 Ukrainians were that were starved to death deliberately? Were they terrorists or "counterrevolutionaries"?
How about the 22,000 Polish officers and intelligentsia massacred in the Katyn forest?
"Odd, ain't it? How the US resemble more and more the Stasi after the Stasi is no longer..."
That better?
Not really, no. The Stasi was the "Shield and Sword of the Party," i.e. the East German Communist party. The thing that made the Stasi dangerous wasn't that they listened, but that they engaged in oppression of people that had religious faith, opposed the government, said things that were not politically acceptable, tried to form a new political party, etc. Their function was to keep the Communist party in change of the one party state of East Germany and repress any actual or potential opposition. The NSA does not do anything like that. If you want to claim that I think you need to offer some evidence.
As to the rest of your post.... It looks to me like you may support free speech in theory, but in practice are offended when someone has an opinion that is different from, or in opposition to, your opinion. You wish to silence me because my opinion is different than yours. That isn't really what free speech is about.
I'm not sure how, but you managed to get this badly wrong.
The US, UK, France, Germany, and many other nations are not terrorist nations, but they do have terrorists in them among the population. If a government is opposed to terrorism, but it has 5,000 terrorists among a population of 80,000,000, it has a terrorist problem, but it isn't a terrorist nation. It will be the terrorists, among other things, that will be of interest to the intelligence agencies.
National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander told a House committee Tuesday that more than 50 terror threats throughout the world have been disrupted with the assistance of two secret surveillance programs that were recently disclosed by former defense contractor Edward Snowden
If people were allowed to trade their own labor or goods without having to invoke the mandatory use of Federal Reserve notes/bits it would be much more difficult for the USA's Federal Government to put a toll on that transaction.
Yes, we get that Bitcoin is potentially useful for tax evasion. Can you spell out why that is socially desirable?
Indeed Bitcoin is a competing currency that allows people to bargain directly with one another which the Federal Government would interpret as competition
People do bargain directly with each other now. The government isn't involved in that. But if good or services are sold, that transaction tends to be subject to taxes, although not always. And that does ignore the underground economy that tends to involve cash transactions.
I don't think you are showing much of a case here.
The difficulty is that a group of persons must interpret the limits expounded in their constitution, and are not doing so well at it.
Spot on, but not in the way you mean. A big part of the problem is in fact problematic interpretation of the constitution, but it tends to be from a portion of the public and commentators. They are very enthusiastic and fixated on the fourth amendment, but tend to be oblivious to Article II of the constitution and its application and jurisprudence. People overlook the fact that the US is legally at war with the perpetrators of 9/11 - not just the original people that performed the attack, but al Qaida itself. The legal basis for that war is contained in the AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES passed by Congress - legally equivalent to a declaration of war in well settled law. Objections about the length of the conflict, or that it is against al Qaida are nonsense.
Many people get this pretty much entirely wrong. The NSA is performing necessary work to protect the United States and its allies and remains only a potential threat to American liberty. It is the IRS that has actually admitted to have engaged in political oppression against the political opposition to the current administration, and which is still being uncovered to be rooted out. The simple fact is that few people on Slashdot seem to be concerned about demonstrated political oppression in the United States by the IRS, but obsess about the NSA. The reality of the IRS is too boring for many to care about while the lurid fantasies about NSA can't be resisted. Squirrel!
It is a sign of very great confusion indeed to equate the actions of Western police and intelligence agencies acting to prevent terrorists attacks on their peoples with the raw power of Soviet communism used to enslave the people and destroy entire classes of people.
Whistleblower: The government is watching you. The wealthy elite are enslaving you. The politicians are oppressing you. These facts are obvious, and I have proof. Public: Meh.
Alleged whistleblower: The US government is watching for terrorists and spying on other countries. (Just like everybody else.)
Public: Good.
As for the rest of what you wrote - please point out where Snowden said any of that? About the wealthy and enslavement? About politicians and oppression?
What is both obvious and you proved is that you aren't sticking to the facts. You just have an axe to grind.
You don't really seem to be making the connection here. You admit that there is going to be a future terrorist attack, but you think the United States is conducting intelligence operations in other nations just to be jerks? Can you think of any other reason? Maybe to try and prevent that future terrorist attack? Do you see how that works?
National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander told a House committee Tuesday that more than 50 terror threats throughout the world have been disrupted with the assistance of two secret surveillance programs that were recently disclosed by former defense contractor Edward Snowden.
Do you realize that the UK, France, Germany, Russian, other European nations, China, and probably most other nations in the world conduct intelligence operations (spying) in and on other countries? Are you bitter about them too? Or just the US? If so, why?
Of course I'm not surprised. Goebels would be proud to see how well his lessons were learned and laugh on the irony of how his victors would call themselves moraly superior.
The Western allies, victorious over both Nazi fascism and Soviet communism, have been overall morally superior. If that isn't clear, you're missing out on some history.
There is little to separate Snowden from Philby. The full damage from Snowden has yet to be fully revealed, but it is already beginning to accumulate. That people confuse him for a hero speaks to the moral confusion of our age.
Slashdot Mirror
I find it comical that people are still arguing over the validity of Snowden's claims, as he continues to be hunted down by the very government who is attempting to dismiss him as a mere nothing.
That really isn't true, is it? The government has said that his conduct was both serious and damaging. They have arrest warrants out for him for breaking the law.
I'm not sure where you come up with this, "attempting to dismiss him as a mere nothing." The people acting dismissively aren't the government, but Snowden's advocates. There are more than a few of them posting here dismissing the very possibility that anything he has done could be damaging.
And regardless of Snowden's claims, proof, facts, or evidence, not a damn thing will change for the better. Not a damn thing.
No, but they may change for the worse. Compromising major intelligence programs isn't likely to end well.
Searching for "Eric Snowden" on Google news reduces the number of stories about Edward Snowden, but doesn't totally eliminate them. Is that what drove the nonsense claim that there aren't any stories about Snowden in the media? Because searching on Edward Snowden returns: About 226,000,000 results (0.23 seconds) versus Eric: About 72,300 results (0.20 seconds). Between this and your false accusations about me, you don't really seem to be shy about recklessly throwing around false and misleading information.
I understand what it is, I just doubt the association. The Wikipedia authors go to the trouble of listing multiple other agencies, I'm not sure why they wouldn't list NSA if it was indicated. I've done a couple of google searches and don't see NSA coming up as part of fusion centers. I'm not sure that it makes sense for NSA to be part of a fusion center given its mission, although some of the higher level fusion centers may be able to reach back to NSA if necessary. By the same token I wouldn't expect the NRO or NGA to be involved in anything but the highest level centers, if at all. I think that is a dry well.
What's the matter bubba? Windows got you down? Then check out OpenBSD!
OpenBSD: "Only two remote holes in the default install, in a heck of a long time!"
The OpenBSD project produces a FREE, multi-platform 4.4BSD-based UNIX-like operating system. Our efforts emphasize portability, standardization, correctness, proactive security and integrated cryptography. ...and more!
Offer maybe be invalid in Soviet Russia, Cuba, Brigadoon, Shangri-La, Lands End, and certain other localities.
And now, back to our regularly scheduled post-a-grams, after this message ...
Hmmm, I don't see NSA listed as being part of the fusion centers in your Wiki link.
I wouldn't be surprised that CIA had some sort of liaison to the NYPD. New York City has been the target of multiple terrorist attacks or planned attacks by Islamist militants (including al Qaida). (Suicide bombing attempt, 9/11 attack (al Qaida), WTC bombing (supported by KSM of 9/11 attack fame), Times Square bombing (Taliban), subway attack plot (al Qaida), others.). The city is more populous than many states. The police department is the size of three army light infantry divisions. If you read the report I'm sure you noted this: "The inspector general concludes that the agency did not break a federal law barring it from domestic spying." I'm pegging this as unusual, but understandable.
"In the development of the DES, NSA convinced IBM that a reduced key size was sufficient"
Yes, I think that's more or less covered.
As to your second quote, lets just put in the whole paragraph for clarity. Apparently it only means that NSA could be involved in the proposal review process, not that they control it, nor do they control the funding, and they aren't involved in the actual work. The NSF (National Science Foundation) is still quite independent.
UNCLASSIFIED SUMMARY: INVOLVEMENT OF NSA IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DATA ENCRYPTION STANDARD
The NSA has not put pressure on the NSF to prevent funding of grants for cryptological research. However, the very uncertainty and ambiguity surrounding cryptology has prompted some NSA officials to express concern to NSF about certain grants with cryptological ramifications and to suggest that NSA be involved in reviewing these proposals. The NSF has agreed to the latter request, since it views NSA as the only location of competent cryptological expertise in the Government, but has not lessened its interest in, or willingness to fund, good research proposals in this field.
I think these two paragraphs from the same paper are worth noting:
There has been no direct or indirect Government harassment of scientists working the field of computer security. Nor has any university withdrawn library material as a result of NSA pressure. Nevertheless, the very newness of public cryptology and the vagueness and ambiguity of Federal regulations pertaining to cryptology create an uncertainty which in itself is not conducive to creative scholarly work.4
In the development of the DES, NSA convinced IBM that a reduced key size was sufficient; indirectly assisted in the development, of the S box structures; 5 and certified that the final DES algorithm was, to the best of their knowledge, free of any statistical or mathematical weaknesses. NSA did not tamper with the design of the algorithm in any way. IBM invented and designed the algorithm, made all pertinent decisions regarding it, and concurred that the agreed upon key size was more than adequate for all commercial applications for which the DES was intended.
Nice reference, I'm saving the link.
30% - 70% Windows patches might be NSA directed? Well, Heaven knows Windows has no legitimate bugs to fix . But that does help me understand something. I've been puzzled by your sig for some time since I can't say I know anyone that actually lives in fear. Now it is clearer. You probably bitch when Microsoft doesn't fix something, but are too terrified to use it when they do. That explains a lot. Especially if you aren't applying patches and get pwned.
Your views are simple: It's all a plot. Windows is complex. Complex software has bugs: The danger of complexity: More code, more bugs
I'm reasonably certain that NSA isn't behind all the bugs and all the fixes.
Windows 2000 was released with 20,000 bugs
PS - I hope you do read the response I made to your post, and watch at least the first video. You will be better informed.
Here, lighten up. Enjoy a couple of my posts on something else.
Australian Air Force's Recruiting Puzzle Shown To Be Unsolvable
I prefer commenting on other subjects, but I consider this important. There are a lot of bad ideas being posted here, and I'm willing to address them.
A lot of the danger in these systems is not how they are used right now, it is how they might be used by someone we haven't even identified yet who's running the show in 5 or 10 or 50 years.
I agree on both points. That is why there needs to be good oversight by Congress, the executive branch, and the courts (when they are involved). Frankly I would like to see if Congressional oversight could be strengthened somehow, perhaps through the GAO - Government Accountability Office. It is regrettable, but radical Islamist violence and terrorism will be with us a long time. After 9/11 it was observed that based on historical examples this sort of problem can last decades, 20, 30, 50 years.* The American people need to be protected, both from terrorism ( which resulted in 71,803 people killed, wounded, or kidnapped in 2007), and from potential overreach or abuse from intelligence agencies. It is a delicate act governing intelligence agencies - they must be kept accountable to Congress, the President, and the Courts, but not needlessly hampered in a manner that cripples their effectiveness.
...several prominent US politicians including a man who ran for President stated publicly and unambiguously that the surviving suspect should be treated as an enemy combatant and thus excluded from the normal rules of due process.
That should be understood for what it is in essence - advocacy, and posturing, but not decision making. The Executive branch has the power, the say over how he will be treated for prosecution under existing law. Since it appears that the two brothers, and the rumored sleeper cell possibly connected to them, were linked to terrorists in Dagestan, it could open up prosecution under the Law of War in a military commission as a legal matter. As a policy matter, terrorists captured within the territory of the United States have generally been routed through the criminal justice system. Terrorists captured outside the United States have been subject to being sent to Guantanamo, although I seem to recall that several have been brought into the criminal justice system as well.
And if I may adjust your language - what happened in Boston wasn't a tragedy, it was an atrocity. It was a deliberate attack with the intent of killing and maiming innocent civilians enjoying a sporting event with an international reputation, following, and participation.
2013 Boston Marathon bombing 3 dead, 254 wounded. Fifteen victims suffered amputations, two of which had double amputations.
I think that was a good post you made.
*And with the ease of travel and international communications today, combined with the unrest in so many Muslim nations, it could easily last longer. Al Qaida's goals are very long term, so they are planning for the long haul.
Did you bother to actually read that? The statements quoted seem pretty straight forward. The commentary is muddled. I don't think that really supports the claim of "lying again."
Since you are apparently going to be mining tedious ore, you might as well take a look at the two posts I made here last week for a little relief.
Australian Air Force's Recruiting Puzzle Shown To Be Unsolvable
Feel free. Then take a look at his posts. He has made multiple posts with his unsubstantiated claim against me and another person simply because we have opinions he disagrees with. He keeps direction people to his web site.
He, and other people, would do just about anything to keep people from seeing the true face of Soviet communism since they realize that many of the inflated claims would shrivel in the face of it. Its like thinking that your parents are the most oppressive people in the world for not letting you go out on a school night while you were a teenager, and then coming to the realization that they in fact greatly loved and cared for you, too late, once you are in a third world hell hole of a prison. That understates the difference, but it makes is approachable for the average person.
So, if you are truly interested in reviewing evidence, have at it:
The Soviet Story (2008)
A Portrait of Stalin: Secret Police
Why Doesn't Communism Have as Bad a Name as Nazism?
The Black Book of Communism
The Black Book of Communism - (book review) by Daniel J. Mahoney
It wasn't NSA, it was DARPA. And that doesn't prove anything bad was happening. Look into the history of DES encryption sometime. There was a controversy because NSA changed the S-boxes used in the encryption before the design was finalized and accepted for government use. Nobody knew why at the time, and I've never heard that the government explained why the change. Many people were suspicious, thinking that the change would create some sort of exploitable weakness. DES has been analyzed to death and when used at the designed spec in terms of number of rounds of encryption, etc., there isn't much in terms of weaknesses other than key length. The one thing that has emerged was that DES was unusually resistant to differential cryptanalysis which was discovered in the academic world many years after DES was released. (~20) It turns out that IBM was aware of it at the time they were designing DES, and NSA asked them to say nothing. So it appears that NSA knew about differential cryptanalysis 20+ years before the academic world, and specifically strengthened DES against it by altering the S-box design values.
There is some history in this paper.
Extended Analysis of DES S-boxes
Yes, and that should be a hint. The NSA surveillance is directed at terrorism and national security issues, not at ordinary criminal activity. The local police and FBI go after ordinary criminal activity, and play by the criminal law rules.
So which groups are these?
So what kind of a threat do you think the 7,000,000 Ukrainians were that were starved to death deliberately? Were they terrorists or "counterrevolutionaries"?
How about the 22,000 Polish officers and intelligentsia massacred in the Katyn forest?
"Odd, ain't it? How the US resemble more and more the Stasi after the Stasi is no longer..."
That better?
Not really, no. The Stasi was the "Shield and Sword of the Party," i.e. the East German Communist party. The thing that made the Stasi dangerous wasn't that they listened, but that they engaged in oppression of people that had religious faith, opposed the government, said things that were not politically acceptable, tried to form a new political party, etc. Their function was to keep the Communist party in change of the one party state of East Germany and repress any actual or potential opposition. The NSA does not do anything like that. If you want to claim that I think you need to offer some evidence.
As to the rest of your post.... It looks to me like you may support free speech in theory, but in practice are offended when someone has an opinion that is different from, or in opposition to, your opinion. You wish to silence me because my opinion is different than yours. That isn't really what free speech is about.
Interesting. Does this make you a scab? Or just someone intolerant of opinions and viewpoints that differ from your own?
I'm not sure how, but you managed to get this badly wrong.
The US, UK, France, Germany, and many other nations are not terrorist nations, but they do have terrorists in them among the population. If a government is opposed to terrorism, but it has 5,000 terrorists among a population of 80,000,000, it has a terrorist problem, but it isn't a terrorist nation. It will be the terrorists, among other things, that will be of interest to the intelligence agencies.
At Least 4,000 Suspected of Terrorism-Related Activity in Britain, MI5 Director Says
'Mumbai-style' terror attack on UK, France and Germany foiled
Raids foil plot to bring 7/7 terror to Germany
NSA director: Surveillance foiled 50 terror plots
National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander told a House committee Tuesday that more than 50 terror threats throughout the world have been disrupted with the assistance of two secret surveillance programs that were recently disclosed by former defense contractor Edward Snowden
I hope this is becoming clear.
If people were allowed to trade their own labor or goods without having to invoke the mandatory use of Federal Reserve notes/bits it would be much more difficult for the USA's Federal Government to put a toll on that transaction.
Yes, we get that Bitcoin is potentially useful for tax evasion. Can you spell out why that is socially desirable?
Indeed Bitcoin is a competing currency that allows people to bargain directly with one another which the Federal Government would interpret as competition
People do bargain directly with each other now. The government isn't involved in that. But if good or services are sold, that transaction tends to be subject to taxes, although not always. And that does ignore the underground economy that tends to involve cash transactions.
I don't think you are showing much of a case here.
The difficulty is that a group of persons must interpret the limits expounded in their constitution, and are not doing so well at it.
Spot on, but not in the way you mean. A big part of the problem is in fact problematic interpretation of the constitution, but it tends to be from a portion of the public and commentators. They are very enthusiastic and fixated on the fourth amendment, but tend to be oblivious to Article II of the constitution and its application and jurisprudence. People overlook the fact that the US is legally at war with the perpetrators of 9/11 - not just the original people that performed the attack, but al Qaida itself. The legal basis for that war is contained in the AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES passed by Congress - legally equivalent to a declaration of war in well settled law. Objections about the length of the conflict, or that it is against al Qaida are nonsense.
Many people get this pretty much entirely wrong. The NSA is performing necessary work to protect the United States and its allies and remains only a potential threat to American liberty. It is the IRS that has actually admitted to have engaged in political oppression against the political opposition to the current administration, and which is still being uncovered to be rooted out. The simple fact is that few people on Slashdot seem to be concerned about demonstrated political oppression in the United States by the IRS, but obsess about the NSA. The reality of the IRS is too boring for many to care about while the lurid fantasies about NSA can't be resisted. Squirrel!
Only to those unfamiliar with Soviet history.
The Soviet Story (2008)
A Portrait of Stalin: Secret Police
Why Doesn't Communism Have as Bad a Name as Nazism?
The Black Book of Communism
The Black Book of Communism - (book review) by Daniel J. Mahoney
It is a sign of very great confusion indeed to equate the actions of Western police and intelligence agencies acting to prevent terrorists attacks on their peoples with the raw power of Soviet communism used to enslave the people and destroy entire classes of people.
Whistleblower: The government is watching you. The wealthy elite are enslaving you. The politicians are oppressing you. These facts are obvious, and I have proof.
Public: Meh.
Alleged whistleblower: The US government is watching for terrorists and spying on other countries. (Just like everybody else.)
Public: Good.
As for the rest of what you wrote - please point out where Snowden said any of that? About the wealthy and enslavement? About politicians and oppression?
What is both obvious and you proved is that you aren't sticking to the facts. You just have an axe to grind.
You don't really seem to be making the connection here. You admit that there is going to be a future terrorist attack, but you think the United States is conducting intelligence operations in other nations just to be jerks? Can you think of any other reason? Maybe to try and prevent that future terrorist attack? Do you see how that works?
At Least 4,000 Suspected of Terrorism-Related Activity in Britain, MI5 Director Says
'Mumbai-style' terror attack on UK, France and Germany foiled
Raids foil plot to bring 7/7 terror to Germany
NSA director: Surveillance foiled 50 terror plots
National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander told a House committee Tuesday that more than 50 terror threats throughout the world have been disrupted with the assistance of two secret surveillance programs that were recently disclosed by former defense contractor Edward Snowden.
Do you realize that the UK, France, Germany, Russian, other European nations, China, and probably most other nations in the world conduct intelligence operations (spying) in and on other countries? Are you bitter about them too? Or just the US? If so, why?
Of course I'm not surprised. Goebels would be proud to see how well his lessons were learned and laugh on the irony of how his victors would call themselves moraly superior.
The Western allies, victorious over both Nazi fascism and Soviet communism, have been overall morally superior. If that isn't clear, you're missing out on some history.
The Soviet Story (2008) (Goebbels is mentioned in this, by the way.)
A Portrait of Stalin: Secret Police
The Black Book of Communism
The Black Book of Communism - (book review) by Daniel J. Mahoney
There is little to separate Snowden from Philby. The full damage from Snowden has yet to be fully revealed, but it is already beginning to accumulate. That people confuse him for a hero speaks to the moral confusion of our age.