News Flash from 1917 - The British are now a key American ally, as are Canada, Australia, New Zealand.
Screwing key allies is a bad idea, so of course Snowden screwed them all by stealing and leaking top secret information on their intelligence programs.
NSA makes its saving throw and produces scrolls of law and court decisions. Your incantation fails.
It's interesting that you use the word "clearly" however. That is a lot like using "obviously," as in "obviously illegal." Many laymen have gone wrong on "obvious" questions of law, and even lawyers are cautioned that the lawyer that has himself as a client is a fool. I'd be curious to know if you even know what Article II of the Constitution is and its reach in law?
Take a careful look at the "retroactive immunity"...
The main effect of the "retroactive immunity" was to shield telecom companies against lawsuits from activists. You know the type - they would file lawsuits to block the 1944 Normandy D-Day invasion because it might harm the endangered Normandy black-spotted clam. Free Europe from Nazi tyranny and end the Holocaust or save the clam? They'll save the clam.
Surely you've noticed the many posts on Slashdot over the last several years in which people have in essence declared that they don't care how many Americans are killed like lambs at slaughter (and they should die "bravely") just so long as their uninformed minimalist and purist fringe views about the Consitution are followed without taking note of any legal developments since 1789 (or even earlier). For them the Constitution is a suicide pact. I have little doubt that the signers of the Constitution would find those views mad.
Foreign phone calls are generally going to have foreign phone numbers. I'm reasonably certain they can be distinguished with little difficulty.
Apparently you don't understand what is going on there. If you did you would realize how little that means. A preliminary injunction that is limited in scope to the individuals involved which is then put on hold is not a great victory. That is particularly true since even if the plaintifs ultimately "win" at the trial court they are almost certain to lose on appeal. These matters have been ruled on before and the judge in this case is not in line with existing precedent. The judge's reasoning is not in line with what the Supreme Court has already ruled. That means if he ultimately decides for the plaintifs it is highly likely his decision will be overturned. Also, if you bothered to look past the first return you would have seen that about a week later another judge ruled the program was legal.
So to answer your question, yes I "internet," but for various reasons I happen to have a better understanding of what can found regarding certain topics.
You don't know what you are talking about. Lets go through it.
1. The government that was supposed to be selling us oil at a cheap price has been a farce, leaving the door wide open for a terrorist organization much, much worse than the ones we even imagined back in '97 to take over. The people we were pretending to liberate are now screwed at a whole new level.
If you are referring to Iraq, that is pretty much pure rubbish. Iraq has been a functioning if troubled democracy since soverignty was restored to its government. There have been a number of elections, and the head of government has changed peacefully. Iraq still controls the majority of its territory, and the region controlled by ISIS is an extention of the territory it controls in Syria. ISIS is not all that different from the Taliban and al Qaida, and it is in essence an offshoot of al Qaida. Al Qaida was active in the 1990s, so your claim there is rubbish as well. The people of Iraq are far better off than they were under Saddam. You're piling rubbish to a whole new level.
2. The politicians who were supposed to be protecting our democracy from threats domestic and abroad have turned out to be so cowardly and corrupt that they can't be bothered to press charges when our secret agencies lie to them about such basic concepts as torturing people or killing American citizens.
Yet more rubbish. The proper members of Congress were briefed regarding enhanced interrogation, and legally those techniques did not constitute torture despite your opinion. American citizens that take up arms with the enemy to make war on the United States can be killed like any other combatant. Maybe you could examine all the trials and warrant serving that occurred on US Civil War battlefields. Hint: that didn't happen. Confederate soldiers were shot down without warrant, arrest, trail, or conviction. That's because it's war, not an action of the criminal justice system. Your confusion on this point results in more rubbish.
3. Said politicians can't muster the courage to back up their so-called liberation efforts with boots on the ground when we're faced with real opposition instead of a puppet that started to bore them.
No "boots on the ground,".... you mean like the 170,000 soldiers that were in Iraq, and around 100,000 in Afghanistan? You're confused again.
4. And of course, per your argument, they didn't even address the fact that an unpopular secret agency that consistently disregards the legal and constitutional framework of the government funding it pretty much defeats the entire purpose of a democracy, doesn't it?
Unfortuantely you've got it wrong again. The Congress has passed multple laws authorizing NSA activity, and the President has his own Article II powers that don't rely on Congress. The NSA's actions have been authorized, they apparently are within the limits of the Constitution. Since there have been several elections during this period it would seem that democracy in the US continues unimpaired. So, in short, more rubbish.
Just over a week ago the Russian ambassador to Denmark threatened Denmark with nuclear weapons. Please find me a comparable example of the US making a similar open threat involving nuclear weaopns anytime recent.
In an interview in the newspaper Jyllands-Posten, the Russian ambassador to Denmark, Mikhail Vanin, said he did not think Danes fully understood the consequences of joining the program.
"If that happens, Danish warships will be targets for Russian nuclear missiles," Vanin told the newspaper.
Nothing. The NSA exists because nations like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union existed, China, Russia, and North Korea still publicly threaten the US and other nations with nuclear weapons (and Iran hoping to join the club), and terrorist groups exist. If you think NSA exists because of "dishonest" politicains in the US you competely misunderstand the issues.
Although you are quit bright, at times you express some really bad ideas. This is one of them. Politicians are accountable to their constituents, and ordinary law enforcement will do fine, thank you. Keeping the military and intelligence agencies apolitical in a democracy is a good thing unless you have a taste for coups.
But let's be very clear that much of what the NSA is illegal, unconstitutional, and against various international treaties.
Let's be very clear that the real situation is that you wish that much of what NSA does is illegal and unconstituional. Unfortunately the law, courts, and Congress are against you. Your wish is just that, a wish, and it isn't coming true any time soon.
If the NSA wants to really start recruiting talent here is a novel idea. Start providing enough information to the "good" law enforcement (the NSA knows who they are) agencies to prosecute all the crooks holding government offices (appointed or voted in). If they started cleaning house, and given enough time clean.. people would believe they rehabilitated and were once again looking out for the average citizens best interests. The reputation as the Stasi is too well known for them to attract anything but the scum of the US for a very long time.
So you openly advocate having the national intelligence agencies spy on politicians to find incriminating evidence that makes them vulnerable, but you disparage the Stasi? Hmmmmm......
Ah yes, the "NSA" scene from Good Will Hunting. Overall it is a great movie, but that scene in nothing but polemic. The narrative is based on rubbish that most anyone with critical thinking skills should be able to identify.
You find that "persuasive," somehow, do you?
Not surprised I guess, you apparently think the NSA wants to be "popular." Hey guys! Who is the most popular secret agency!! That kind of defeats the purpose of being "secret" doesn't it?
Robert Shrum, a senior fellow at New York University's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, has been a senior adviser on many Democratic campaigns, including Dick Gephardt (1988), Al Gore (2000), and John Kerry (2004).
In politics there is certainly no linear relationship between amount of money and degree of success. Just ask the well-heeled Republican losers of presidential primaries past â" former Texas Governor John Connally, former Texas Senator Phil Gramm, and former Mayor and front-runner Rudolph Giuliani. Or how about Howard Dean, who raised and spent nearly $40 million before crashing and burning in the 2004 Iowa caucuses?
This holds especially true during the primaries when a truly tiny percentage of those eligible vote and basically allow the corporations to stack the elections, so no matter which team wins, they win.
And the evidence for this is ???? Completely lacking? And once again we come back to the point of there something on the order of 30,000,000 businesses in the US. And you think they come to some sort of agreement and collude on picking political leaders? You don't think there might be some evidence of this sort of massive effort, do you? How are the many contradictory goals and philosophies reconciled? You don't suppose that even if this was happening that the many different efforts would tend to cancel each other out?
The only real focus of the US government is to drive out all politicians who will actually represent their electorates and of course reading the speeches provided to them by their controlling corporations and voting as directed on the legislation as provided by lobbyists.
Is there a list somewhere of which corporation "owns" each member of Congress? Who does IBM "own"? Microsoft? AT&T? Hormel? Chipolte? MacDonalds? At most they have influence, but not control. If they really did have control then you wouldn't see burdensome regulation or laws passed, like Sarbanes-Oxley.
I'm not sure where you get your ideas, but you might want to start looking for a better source, and maybe expose yourself to a wider range of views.
Do you have any idea how many businesses and corporations there are in the US? Apparently not. Maybe you should look that up and figure out how that many entities are going to come to a single position. It's nonsense.
... we're tired of all these invasions to our rights to privacy because of an existential threat.
"+5 Insightful"? That's about right for Slashdot on this topic. At present the Darwin Awards are for individual achievement, but I can see the possibility of a day coming when it will become a collective, national, or societal achievement.
...This horrifically extends to the corporations that controls which politicians get elected....
Not that I would deny that corporations attempt to influence government policy and the laws that are made, but.... Could you explain how you think corporations "control" which politicians get elected? Corporations don't vote, it's illegal for them to try to control the votes of their employees, and they have limitations on how they spend money for political purposes. Do they do it through mind control? Mass hypnosis? Could you explain? It looks to me like you are exaggerating their influence, not to mention a few other things.
Since different corporations have different interests and goals, how is that reconciled if they control everything? How does that work if a very powerful corporation in one state disagrees with a weaker national corporation? What if different industries disagree on things? Is there a "congress of corporations" where this is all hammered out before they command the politicians to do their will? And who is it that gives the commands? What if they can't come to an agreement? Do you have any evidence of this sort of collusion?
How do you think the corporations control government agencies? Is it Sears, Walmart, or IBM that controls the FBI? Does Ford control the Social Security Administration, or is it Du Pont? Who controls the State Department? Ikea? AT&T? Go Daddy? I think there are a few holes in your theory.
There's no need to "google "disinformation"" since you've just demonstrated it. There is nothing claiming that NSA stopped the program. You just made that up, it's a straw man you use to spread FUD.
Sadly your comment is all too typical of the quality of comments in discussions of this subject matter. But hey! At least your lying FUD is popular, whereas the truth seldom is.
How do you think that will work out in the long run, basing positions and policy stands on lies and misinformation? I'm betting not well if practiced too widely.
Fitting the data isn't simply a question of the fitness of the theory, but also of the effort involved in applying the theory to the data to see if it explains it. TeVeS predicts gravitational lensing, for example, but someone had to figure that out. How much more could it explain if it was pursued at more than the level of a minor hobby? Hard to say. Theories besides Dark Matter get little in terms of funding, and going against mainstream science is risky for a career even if mainstream science is wrong on the issue.
Who do you think were the biggest opponents against civil rights issues for non-whites during the mid 20th century?
National Socialists, Fascists, and assorted white supremicists. Whom were you thinking it was?
The same rhetoric about gay marriage was espoused back then, only it was targeting interracial marriage. Verses from the bible were even used to justify it as a "sin".
Acutally no, it wasn't "rhetoric about gay marriage." It was rhetoric about interratial marriage. You should also know (in case you don't) that many African Americans take offense at that comparrison.
So called "gay marriage" is its own topic.
Christians, on the whole, have probably come to accept the idea that non-whites should be treated equally under the law, but that wasn't the majority opinion back in the 40's or earlier.
Where do you think the abolitionist (anti-slavery) movement came from, and when? It was from the Christian church, and well before the 1940s.
You seem to be confusing the positions held by a minor portion of some American churches with that of Christianity world-wide. That isn't a good assumption.
In 50 years it's not inconceivable to imagine that the majority of Christians will accept that gay and bisexual people should be treated the same as straight people.
They are. God loves people that engage in homosexuality or bisexuality and offers them the same forgiveness of sins in Christ as anybody else.
Slashdot Mirror
In the face of real enemies your rhetoric falls apart.
And, apparently, there were no safeguards set in place to detect such activities.
Apparently that isn't true since they have detected and punished the 1-2 people per year that act out in that manner.
If those statements were accurate than Snowden's "betrayal" would be meaningless.
Please explain your logic there. The quoted section would make Snowden's betrayal even more devestating, which it is.
The British have claimed the Falklands since 1690.
The Falklands are well outside of customary territorial waters for any country, let alone Argentina.
The people of the Falklands have voted to remain British in referendum.
Is your position based on anti-Imperialism rather than will of the inhabitants of the islands?
News Flash from 1917 - The British are now a key American ally, as are Canada, Australia, New Zealand.
Screwing key allies is a bad idea, so of course Snowden screwed them all by stealing and leaking top secret information on their intelligence programs.
"What aren't you..."?
Never mind.
There are (at least) two appropriate answers here.
1. The world inside your head seem to be an inversion of the world outside your head.
2. Every NSA leader that has betrayed the US and its Constitution is in prison. (Get the drift?)
Much of it is is clearly illegal.
NSA makes its saving throw and produces scrolls of law and court decisions. Your incantation fails.
It's interesting that you use the word "clearly" however. That is a lot like using "obviously," as in "obviously illegal." Many laymen have gone wrong on "obvious" questions of law, and even lawyers are cautioned that the lawyer that has himself as a client is a fool. I'd be curious to know if you even know what Article II of the Constitution is and its reach in law?
Take a careful look at the "retroactive immunity" ...
The main effect of the "retroactive immunity" was to shield telecom companies against lawsuits from activists. You know the type - they would file lawsuits to block the 1944 Normandy D-Day invasion because it might harm the endangered Normandy black-spotted clam. Free Europe from Nazi tyranny and end the Holocaust or save the clam? They'll save the clam.
Surely you've noticed the many posts on Slashdot over the last several years in which people have in essence declared that they don't care how many Americans are killed like lambs at slaughter (and they should die "bravely") just so long as their uninformed minimalist and purist fringe views about the Consitution are followed without taking note of any legal developments since 1789 (or even earlier). For them the Constitution is a suicide pact. I have little doubt that the signers of the Constitution would find those views mad.
Foreign phone calls are generally going to have foreign phone numbers. I'm reasonably certain they can be distinguished with little difficulty.
Apparently you don't understand what is going on there. If you did you would realize how little that means. A preliminary injunction that is limited in scope to the individuals involved which is then put on hold is not a great victory. That is particularly true since even if the plaintifs ultimately "win" at the trial court they are almost certain to lose on appeal. These matters have been ruled on before and the judge in this case is not in line with existing precedent. The judge's reasoning is not in line with what the Supreme Court has already ruled. That means if he ultimately decides for the plaintifs it is highly likely his decision will be overturned. Also, if you bothered to look past the first return you would have seen that about a week later another judge ruled the program was legal.
So to answer your question, yes I "internet," but for various reasons I happen to have a better understanding of what can found regarding certain topics.
You don't know what you are talking about. Lets go through it.
1. The government that was supposed to be selling us oil at a cheap price has been a farce, leaving the door wide open for a terrorist organization much, much worse than the ones we even imagined back in '97 to take over. The people we were pretending to liberate are now screwed at a whole new level.
If you are referring to Iraq, that is pretty much pure rubbish. Iraq has been a functioning if troubled democracy since soverignty was restored to its government. There have been a number of elections, and the head of government has changed peacefully. Iraq still controls the majority of its territory, and the region controlled by ISIS is an extention of the territory it controls in Syria. ISIS is not all that different from the Taliban and al Qaida, and it is in essence an offshoot of al Qaida. Al Qaida was active in the 1990s, so your claim there is rubbish as well. The people of Iraq are far better off than they were under Saddam. You're piling rubbish to a whole new level.
2. The politicians who were supposed to be protecting our democracy from threats domestic and abroad have turned out to be so cowardly and corrupt that they can't be bothered to press charges when our secret agencies lie to them about such basic concepts as torturing people or killing American citizens.
Yet more rubbish. The proper members of Congress were briefed regarding enhanced interrogation, and legally those techniques did not constitute torture despite your opinion. American citizens that take up arms with the enemy to make war on the United States can be killed like any other combatant. Maybe you could examine all the trials and warrant serving that occurred on US Civil War battlefields. Hint: that didn't happen. Confederate soldiers were shot down without warrant, arrest, trail, or conviction. That's because it's war, not an action of the criminal justice system. Your confusion on this point results in more rubbish.
3. Said politicians can't muster the courage to back up their so-called liberation efforts with boots on the ground when we're faced with real opposition instead of a puppet that started to bore them.
No "boots on the ground," .... you mean like the 170,000 soldiers that were in Iraq, and around 100,000 in Afghanistan? You're confused again.
4. And of course, per your argument, they didn't even address the fact that an unpopular secret agency that consistently disregards the legal and constitutional framework of the government funding it pretty much defeats the entire purpose of a democracy, doesn't it?
Unfortuantely you've got it wrong again. The Congress has passed multple laws authorizing NSA activity, and the President has his own Article II powers that don't rely on Congress. The NSA's actions have been authorized, they apparently are within the limits of the Constitution. Since there have been several elections during this period it would seem that democracy in the US continues unimpaired. So, in short, more rubbish.
Just over a week ago the Russian ambassador to Denmark threatened Denmark with nuclear weapons. Please find me a comparable example of the US making a similar open threat involving nuclear weaopns anytime recent.
Russia threatens to aim nuclear missiles at Denmark ships if it joins NATO shield
In an interview in the newspaper Jyllands-Posten, the Russian ambassador to Denmark, Mikhail Vanin, said he did not think Danes fully understood the consequences of joining the program.
"If that happens, Danish warships will be targets for Russian nuclear missiles," Vanin told the newspaper.
Nothing. The NSA exists because nations like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union existed, China, Russia, and North Korea still publicly threaten the US and other nations with nuclear weapons (and Iran hoping to join the club), and terrorist groups exist. If you think NSA exists because of "dishonest" politicains in the US you competely misunderstand the issues.
Although you are quit bright, at times you express some really bad ideas. This is one of them. Politicians are accountable to their constituents, and ordinary law enforcement will do fine, thank you. Keeping the military and intelligence agencies apolitical in a democracy is a good thing unless you have a taste for coups.
But let's be very clear that much of what the NSA is illegal, unconstitutional, and against various international treaties.
Let's be very clear that the real situation is that you wish that much of what NSA does is illegal and unconstituional. Unfortunately the law, courts, and Congress are against you. Your wish is just that, a wish, and it isn't coming true any time soon.
If the NSA wants to really start recruiting talent here is a novel idea. Start providing enough information to the "good" law enforcement (the NSA knows who they are) agencies to prosecute all the crooks holding government offices (appointed or voted in). If they started cleaning house, and given enough time clean.. people would believe they rehabilitated and were once again looking out for the average citizens best interests. The reputation as the Stasi is too well known for them to attract anything but the scum of the US for a very long time.
So you openly advocate having the national intelligence agencies spy on politicians to find incriminating evidence that makes them vulnerable, but you disparage the Stasi? Hmmmmm......
Ah yes, the "NSA" scene from Good Will Hunting. Overall it is a great movie, but that scene in nothing but polemic. The narrative is based on rubbish that most anyone with critical thinking skills should be able to identify.
You find that "persuasive," somehow, do you?
Not surprised I guess, you apparently think the NSA wants to be "popular." Hey guys! Who is the most popular secret agency!! That kind of defeats the purpose of being "secret" doesn't it?
How Much Does Campaign Spending Influence the Election? A Freakonomics Quorum
I hope you weren't scarred for life by John Kerry's loss.
The donor companies effectively choose who will get elected.
You believe nonsense.
How Much Does Campaign Spending Influence the Election? A Freakonomics Quorum
Robert Shrum, a senior fellow at New York University's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, has been a senior adviser on many Democratic campaigns, including Dick Gephardt (1988), Al Gore (2000), and John Kerry (2004).
In politics there is certainly no linear relationship between amount of money and degree of success. Just ask the well-heeled Republican losers of presidential primaries past â" former Texas Governor John Connally, former Texas Senator Phil Gramm, and former Mayor and front-runner Rudolph Giuliani. Or how about Howard Dean, who raised and spent nearly $40 million before crashing and burning in the 2004 Iowa caucuses?
This holds especially true during the primaries when a truly tiny percentage of those eligible vote and basically allow the corporations to stack the elections, so no matter which team wins, they win.
And the evidence for this is ???? Completely lacking? And once again we come back to the point of there something on the order of 30,000,000 businesses in the US. And you think they come to some sort of agreement and collude on picking political leaders? You don't think there might be some evidence of this sort of massive effort, do you? How are the many contradictory goals and philosophies reconciled? You don't suppose that even if this was happening that the many different efforts would tend to cancel each other out?
The only real focus of the US government is to drive out all politicians who will actually represent their electorates and of course reading the speeches provided to them by their controlling corporations and voting as directed on the legislation as provided by lobbyists.
Is there a list somewhere of which corporation "owns" each member of Congress? Who does IBM "own"? Microsoft? AT&T? Hormel? Chipolte? MacDonalds? At most they have influence, but not control. If they really did have control then you wouldn't see burdensome regulation or laws passed, like Sarbanes-Oxley.
I'm not sure where you get your ideas, but you might want to start looking for a better source, and maybe expose yourself to a wider range of views.
Do you have any idea how many businesses and corporations there are in the US? Apparently not. Maybe you should look that up and figure out how that many entities are going to come to a single position. It's nonsense.
... we're tired of all these invasions to our rights to privacy because of an existential threat.
"+5 Insightful"? That's about right for Slashdot on this topic. At present the Darwin Awards are for individual achievement, but I can see the possibility of a day coming when it will become a collective, national, or societal achievement.
...This horrifically extends to the corporations that controls which politicians get elected ....
Not that I would deny that corporations attempt to influence government policy and the laws that are made, but .... Could you explain how you think corporations "control" which politicians get elected? Corporations don't vote, it's illegal for them to try to control the votes of their employees, and they have limitations on how they spend money for political purposes. Do they do it through mind control? Mass hypnosis? Could you explain? It looks to me like you are exaggerating their influence, not to mention a few other things.
Since different corporations have different interests and goals, how is that reconciled if they control everything? How does that work if a very powerful corporation in one state disagrees with a weaker national corporation? What if different industries disagree on things? Is there a "congress of corporations" where this is all hammered out before they command the politicians to do their will? And who is it that gives the commands? What if they can't come to an agreement? Do you have any evidence of this sort of collusion?
How do you think the corporations control government agencies? Is it Sears, Walmart, or IBM that controls the FBI? Does Ford control the Social Security Administration, or is it Du Pont? Who controls the State Department? Ikea? AT&T? Go Daddy? I think there are a few holes in your theory.
So now we're supposed to believe
that it's stopped.
Mm hmmm.
(google "disinformation")
There's no need to "google "disinformation"" since you've just demonstrated it. There is nothing claiming that NSA stopped the program. You just made that up, it's a straw man you use to spread FUD.
Sadly your comment is all too typical of the quality of comments in discussions of this subject matter. But hey! At least your lying FUD is popular, whereas the truth seldom is.
How do you think that will work out in the long run, basing positions and policy stands on lies and misinformation? I'm betting not well if practiced too widely.
Name one unique plane from WW2 that is still flying.
I hope you don't mind that there is more than one.
Mid-Atlantic Air Museum
Get behind the wings of these authentic WWII warplanes
Make that MOND/TeVeS.
Fitting the data isn't simply a question of the fitness of the theory, but also of the effort involved in applying the theory to the data to see if it explains it. TeVeS predicts gravitational lensing, for example, but someone had to figure that out. How much more could it explain if it was pursued at more than the level of a minor hobby? Hard to say. Theories besides Dark Matter get little in terms of funding, and going against mainstream science is risky for a career even if mainstream science is wrong on the issue.
...but you are a very stupid person.
Coming from a brilliant person such as you I'll have to seriously consider that.
Who do you think were the biggest opponents against civil rights issues for non-whites during the mid 20th century?
National Socialists, Fascists, and assorted white supremicists. Whom were you thinking it was?
The same rhetoric about gay marriage was espoused back then, only it was targeting interracial marriage. Verses from the bible were even used to justify it as a "sin".
Acutally no, it wasn't "rhetoric about gay marriage." It was rhetoric about interratial marriage. You should also know (in case you don't) that many African Americans take offense at that comparrison.
So called "gay marriage" is its own topic.
Christians, on the whole, have probably come to accept the idea that non-whites should be treated equally under the law, but that wasn't the majority opinion back in the 40's or earlier.
Where do you think the abolitionist (anti-slavery) movement came from, and when? It was from the Christian church, and well before the 1940s.
You seem to be confusing the positions held by a minor portion of some American churches with that of Christianity world-wide. That isn't a good assumption.
In 50 years it's not inconceivable to imagine that the majority of Christians will accept that gay and bisexual people should be treated the same as straight people.
They are. God loves people that engage in homosexuality or bisexuality and offers them the same forgiveness of sins in Christ as anybody else.