You also don't have Privacy Act protected information on your computer, nor any other information that is protected by law. Many government agencies do.
There are many different ways info is classified as to sensitivity.
First, the most well known, the Privacy Act. Enacted in the Seventies, it protects your private information from accidental or deliberate exposure by requiring collecting parties to protect it from casual exposure. It limits that exposure by outlining just who is allowd to see it, and who the collecting agency can allow to have it.
There are other laws, too many to outline here, even if I knew them all, which require government agencies to protect information they collect from the public from disclosure. One of the most important is covering proprietary information, or more commonly called Trade Secrets. Many government agencies collect information on how things are made to ensure that the thing being regulated meets the requirements of the law. This information, since the gov't is allowed to collect it by law, is also protected by that same law, from being disclosed by the collecting agency. We have to protect that info as strictly as we do Privacy Act info.
Next would be operational data regarding the activities of gov't personnel in the day to day activities of doing their jobs. There are many different levels to this, as some jobs are less critical than others. Since some jobs, such as law enforcement, involve people's lives, theree are higher levels of classification to protect it. These levels require increasingly stringent measures to protect it from disclosure.
Then you have the formal government classification system. Everything classified above a certain level is protected by an almost insane set of special rules. I've never been involved in that, so they can't shoot me for talking about it, since I don't know enough about it to be dangerous. I just know that those systems that contain that kind of info are completely seperate, and can't even be connected physically to unclassified machines. 'nuff said.
All of this information should be encrypted, to protect it from accidental, or even, purposeful, disclosure. But that's the government, and that's as it should be.
You can encrypt, or not, as you choose, depending on how much you value your information, or your privacy. A lot of people do, just because they like to feel that their privacy is important, and they don't like people snooping, even accidentally.
Using a government computer is not like using your own. A government computer belongs to the government. When IT says "bring your laptop to us, we need to encrypt it", you can't refuse. If you do, they'll disable your account so you CAN'T use it! Or they'll take your laptop, and issue you a desktop - try taking THAT baby home every night!
When my agency issues a laptop, it is already encrypted - the whole HD - an employee has no choice. That is how it should be. Of course, user awareness is ALWAYS needed! But IT carries the prime responsibility to ensure basic procedures are in place that will protect the system. (Like encrypted laptops.)
I think you've got this backwards. Your ISP really, really doesn't keep logs for that long. they don't want to have to buy the disk space to do that. Didn't you read the recent articles where the gov't is trying to force ISPs' to keep this info longer, for just the purpose you fear?
And government agencies DO keep logs of agency internet activities - since our networks are smaller, the logs don't take up as much space, so we tend to keep them longer. Time varies by agency, I'm sure. And they keep them for just the purpose you mention - should an employee do something that should be investigated, they really do want that info available...
...and just how many hackers have a Cray at their disposal that's going to break the VPN encryption he's using to connect to the government's system? The VPN adds a whole different level of encryption to the mix. By the time that Cray breaks the encryption, any info he now has at his disposal is out of date by, say, 30,000 years...
Oh, and another comment regarding WEP - If you are connected through a VPN, as the White House Directive is requiring, whether you are using WEP, WPA, or nothing really, doesn't matter - the VPN connection carries with it a whole new level of encryption of its own. So from our point of view, WEP doesn't matter - OUR stuff is protected! Your own security is your own business...
P2P apps are not allowed in my Agency. They probably included this as an explanation for why; specific apps are not necessary for the explanation to be valid.
Since a LOT of people use P2P for pirating copyrighted material, that is also a valid statement. Just because its not ALWAYS used illegally, does not invalidate this statement for their purposes.
DOD is a BIG agency, with a lot of employees. It likely that many of them have routers capable of wireless tramsmission, but not new enough to use WPA. To enable the most people to be able to connect remotely, WEP is allowed. Notice that recent loss of laptops with sensitive info did NOT include DOD, nor did they include actual CLASSIFIED material. That stuff is covered under a whole different, and MUCH stricter, set of rules!
3 foot space? Covered adequately by other posters who know more about it than I do.
A LOT of people lose laptops. Civilians, government workers, and military. This statement is there for obvious reasons. People always need to be reminded, plus, statements like this are needed to remind employees that their employer thinks the issue is important. You cannot just take it for granted that people will just magically understand how you think. In addition, if this is included in such a presentation as this an emnployee can't later claim that he/she wasn't told! It's therefor a CYA for the organization.
My own agency uses a total encryption program that encrypts the entire HD. We take nothing for granted. Employees have no choice, laptops are issued this way. You don't like it, you don't get a laptop. We use a two step authentication procedure for remote connections, in fact, everything this article says the White House is demanding, my agency has been doing for over two years.
Has it cost a lot? Yes, this stuff isn't cheap. Is it worth it? Yes, you won't see my group in the news like this!
Does info get out in ways accessible to potential thieves? Probably, we have over 10,000 employees; it's hard to control the actions of that many people, and information can be copied in so many ways. But we do what we can; we only allow the use of encrypted laptops, desktops that are allowed home are also encrypted this way, too. As mentioned, two step authentication, firewalls, 24/7 firewall/WAN monitoring for suspicious activity. If a machine is caught broadcasting packets identified as coming from prohibited software, a technician is dispatched to remove it. User has no choice. Desktops are locked down, and special permission is required from a committee to allow local admin control for any user. Users can't even install their own local printers!
Users are required to review an annual Information Security Awareness presentation, via the intranet, so we can monitor compliance. If you don't view it within a certain time frame, your account is automatically disabled, and you then need special permission from an Associate Commissioner to get reconnected without viewing the show! This guarantees management attention to your failure to follow security procedures!
I have only touched on the most obvious arrangements, there are a lot of others that I can't reveal - I'd have to shoot all of you! I'm sure that there are others I don't know.
Does all of this guarantee we won't see a breach? No, I'm sure it doesn't. But it makes it much more likely that if one occurs, the headlines will make note of an employee that broke procedure and did something to get around agency safeguards, and will eventually report his/her prosecution.
We are not perfect, and we'll be the first to admit that. We ARE human, after all. (gasp!) BUT, just because we get our paychecks from Uncle Sugar doesn't mean we left our brains at the door.
Some agencies use the budget Congress gives us to do our jobs, and we try to do them without being told. We even try to close the barn door BEFORE the cow gets out!
I know that's a shock to some of you, but we really do try, and we most often get it right. You only read about it when we don't...
Old joke about "tank, tank, tank" notwithstanding...
Notice I didn't use the NRA's word "guns". I used the word "weapon". That means anything from simple poison, a club, gun, or nuclear bomb. And the statement is pretty much correct - without some kind of weapon, it is really, really hard to kill someone unless you are trained in unarmed combat.
Most murders are not multiple affairs. They usually take place one at a time. That means if you are willing to get up close and personal, any old thing heavy or sharp enough can do the trick if you are willing to get bloody. Use that weapon as a threat, you can disable and immobilize (tie up) any number of people, after which time you can still join the ranks of multiple murderers by killing them one at a time. It just takes longer, and a few more cajones, but, hey, if that's your thing...
Anyone trained in unarmed combat can tell you that many common, ordinary household objects can (and have been) used to kill.
My original point is still one I stand by; if you want to reduce the murder rate in any meaningful way, you have to get at the reasons WHY people commit murder. Don't count on controlling the implements of murder - you may as well start registering kitchen knives...
Ok, so translate that into the US. Just how long do you think that kind of warfare can go on until troops start refusing to fire on fellow citizens? Look at the stress our guys in Irag go through now, and they're facing people that are from a different culture, and mostly don't even look like us!
Yeah, what you say could work in the short run, but insurgencies are NOT short term afairs. A properly run insurgency could take YEARS to defeat, and a LOCAL insurgency isn't like Iraq - there's nowhere to withdraw your troops to, they're already home!
I stick by what I said - just because you have the fancy gadgets doesn't automatically mean you'll win. Doesn't mean you won't, either, but if you do, you'll EARN it!
Don't forget Washington D.C. Private gun ownership has been illegal there for many years, yet it has rated near the top of the country in murder.
The remark about New York is interesting, but it illustrates what anti-gun law folks have been saying for years - it's not the weapon that kills - it's the weapon bearer. If guns didn't exist, people would just find other ways to kill people they wanted dead. After all, murder wasn't invented with firearms, it just got easier for weaker folks to kill stronger ones.
Hmmm, let's see now, the gov't has all these fancy gadgets...and you say if we just have guns and IED's that we can't win? Interesting...
In another vein, just how much did the military spend in Irag last year...and the year before that? I ASSUME they're using all their fancy toys over there...
they are already forced to use stronger passwords, and if a user wants to write it down, we can't prevent it. I DO try to tell users not to file it under "passwords" in their rollodex!
No, we don't. I do know that this policy, and a few others about these types of storage, are definately being revisited, especially in light of the VA thing. I know that not allowing usb drives would be a PITA, but ya gotta draw the line somewhere.
Actually, IIRC, the telecommuter's boss and his boss both got dinged, too.
Don't make light of this, a number of people got really badly in trouble over this. As a measure of how seriously the gov't takes the situation, it is rare for any civil servant to actually get fired. In spite of the reforms of Jimmy Carter's days, it is still difficult to fire gov't employees. You'd better have your 'i's dotted and the t's crossed, too! Upper management hates to go that far, especially if the employee has over ten years in, and I think this guy had 11 or 12. Get fired like that, and you lose your pension and everything. So if they fired this guy, it's serious.
I work for another Department, and we take security very serious. ALL agency laptops are installed with a standard image using Ghost, an image that uses Pointsec to encrypt the entire hard drive. Yes, we take a performance hit, but to safeguard data, it's worth it. Users have no choice. It is installed before they get it, and when they are issued the unit, they are given the opportunity to set the password (at least 8 digits). If they forget it, they are told, the HD is toast, and must be reformatted. (not really, there are admin PWs we can use, but that makes them MUCH more careful!) They are warned not to store data on the HD, cause if the OS develops a problem, all we'll do is reimage it. We use an elaborate VPN system, with tokens, to allow employees to remotely connect. They don't need to keep data locally, and it is discouraged. With our setup, a lost laptop is just a lost item; a thief would have to reformat the HD to use the laptop. Our data is not accessable.
I seem to remember a case a few years ago where a man was convicted on growing weed in an outbuilding on a farm. It seems that the building had no windows, but the police used infrared imaging technology to detect the heat of the plant lights inside the building, so they could, in affect, 'see' through the walls.
Upon appeal, the court noted that, like light rays penetrating a window, (and police can raid a place based upon something in "plain sight") infrared rays, since they extend beyond the boundaries of the property, can be used similarly, and do not give a presumption of privacy just because they can't be seen by the naked eye. He lost and went to jail.
So I would assume that, by extension, the "leaking" of radiation from your property and detected by this new technology could similarly be construed to be fair game to law enforcement detection.
If you call the Israelis terrorists, you've got to admit that their opponents are, too. Terror is a tactic that both sides have resorted to since the State of Israel was formed. In Israel's case, they are surrounded by countries run by British installed (most of 'em) dictatorships that are busy using Israel's existance as an external threat to keep their own people focused on something other than their own governments' corruption and oppressive policies in order to stay in power.
If it weren't for that, the Palistinians' efforts to get back what the UN took from them would be as helpless as the Kurds'.
By now, both sides are bathed in blood, and that makes it harder to get people to step back and take a breath before actually talking.
In the US's case, our position has been on Israel's side since the beginning. Its kinda hard to change horses in the middle of the stream, and it certainly won't happen during this administration. The right wingers are too set upon making the Mid East situation resemble the conditions for the Second Coming of Christ to worry about actually attempting a real diplomatic solution. They think Christ will settle it.
America has traditionally backed nations with questionable governments, because in many cases, they were convenient foils to oppose, by proxy, other countries we could not confront directly without starting a war.
A lot of countries do that, including most of the others on the Security Council. It doesn't mean we like them or condone them. We're just using them, and like the other nations that do this, we'll drop 'em and move on when it suits our purposes. Doesn't make it right, that's just how the game of international politics is played. We don't always have a choice of who our "friends" need to be at any given point in time.
"But the thing is, like you say, US citizens are free to protest Gitmo. They're even free to toss out those politicians responsible for trampling americas reputation in the mud. Yet they do not. To me that's a mystery."
??? I really don't understand that statement. Americans are protesting gitmo and this administrations' policies on a regular basis. Don't say we don't "toss out" the bums, either, wait till either the mid-term elections or the next presidential election to make that statement. There is no national recall provision available in the US Constitution, save impeachment, and that's rare.
These issues are not a slam dunk, even in the US. "All politics are local" - and that goes as much for national politics in the US as anywhere else. A lot of people in the US vote for one party or the other in the US based upon just one or two hot button issues, and rationalize the rest. I am as guilty of this as the next guy, but sometimes I wish there was a third choice! (and not some nut job...) But the result is just what you see, an administration that is paying attention to those issues his far right wing constituency thinks are important, but when he begins to deal with other issues less important to them, he resorts to knee jerk reactions that not only don't do us any good, but are not what previous Republicans would have done in the same place.
Bush manipulated public opinion to get elected, just as most modern presidents have done. Its part of what it takes to get there, to have control of the party apparatus that presents a face of the candidate to the public that is more likely to get elected. This country is too big to allow the public to really get to know a presidential candidate as we really should - and the way they are presented on TV is designed to fool and manipulate us. Why else do they almost never present candidates' speeches in their entirety - just sound bites? Most voters never really hear what a candidate has to say, and most of us don't trust them to keep campaign promises, anyway (a WHOLE other subject altogether!)
Nations almost never sign these international declarations based upon face value. There is almost always some hidden (or sometimes not so hidden) agenda that drives the politics behind the scenes. The US, as many other nations may not sign one based upon some small clause or phrase that we don't agree with because it may contradict a US position somewhere else, or as a protest over another nation signing it, or as a way to manipulate anothger sountry into signing something else - there could be a thousand reasons why - maybe they're trying to entice Somalia to back us on something else? Who knows? International politics is just like politics everywhere else - its mostly hidden agendas, backroom deals, "pat my back I'll pat yours" kinds of things. Alliances can be here today, gone tomorrow, and many countries rarely say things they really mean in public.
The US could be just as upright in human rights as we say we are and as honest as Abe Lincoln was supposed to be, and we'd still have people spitting on us or what we stand for, because cultures are different, religious beliefs are different, and people the world over that run governments all try to do the same thing - stay in power. And in many countries, democracy, or anything like it, would mean they wouldn't be there any more, they may even be dead.
Don't think Americans all want everybody to have a government like ours, we recognize that our form of government isn't for everybody. What we really mean is that we would like for all people everywhere to have the opportunity to live under a form of government that they have chosen, and gives them a say in how to live their own lives, with as little or as much governmental influence as they wish, free of crime, etc., (add your own terms here).
Is it easy to get what we want? No, we can't always get what we want for others right here in our own country!
The current administration is a good lesson for us - that libe
Well, you don't really KNOW that there aren't warrants. You just have the press' word for it. How do you know they aren't asking for warrants for US citizens they find through this program? I assume the FISA court didn't just shut down, so I would guess they're still issuing warrants.
And yes, they probably do know who those numbers belong to, using on-line databases through Google or Yahoo just like you or I would! No need to violate the law, when they can get it legally and just look it up. Hey, they have a budget, too, and if they can get the info for free on line, they will.
No, in principle, I do agree that there is an alarming amount of chicanery going on, but let's not go overboard. Stick to the real issue, which is the government not using the FISA court like they should. This phone number networking thing is the press blowing smoke, looking for anything they can to nail Bush for.
yes, we DO regulate gene mutations of food, AND radiation devices - but I imagine there'd be blood on the table at the meetings between the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) and the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) over just who would be responsible for THAT one!
You sound pretty biased yourself! If that info is so available, reference some of it, but be sure it's an objective source, and not as biased in your direction as you say FDA is.
Sorry, but you hit a nerve. FDA is, as I mentioned in an above post, deliberately injected between the public and the industries it regulates. As with any government entity, its political biase is reflected by the current Administration. The Commissioner, after all, is appointed by the Pres and serves at his pleasure. And the Commissioner also runs the FDA in a pretty direct manner. He definately influences the way FDA does its job.
if you don't like it, vote for the other party next time.
Personally, I don't always like the things FDA does. I don't like the way they've sat on the morning after pill - and neither did the director of the Office of Women's Health at the FDA. She resigned - after a productive career in the government - specifically to fight that one issue!
Like I also said above - I've worked for FDA for almost thirty years, and find my fellow employees to be largely a dedicated hard working bunch. We work hard every day to ensure that your food, drugs, et. al., are safe, effective, and unadulterated. it isn't an easy job. Our budget, like the rest of the Feds, gets smaller every year, and the workload gets bigger. As our workforce gets older, its gonna get smaller, but the amount of work we do won't!
If you want that to change, lobby your congressman/woman, but if you succeed, expect your taxes to go up. Safety and effectiveness ain't cheap! You can also expect industry to continue to gripe about us - as they constantly do.
if you think we are industry flunkies - then why are FDA inspectors often required to be accompanied by US Marshalls when we seize products? We have been shot at, attacked and run out of establishments we have gone to to inspect. That doesn't sound like industry likes us much better, does it?
Like I said, we are deliberately placed between industry and the public - and its rarely possible to please both at once - and sometimes neither one!
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You also don't have Privacy Act protected information on your computer, nor any other information that is protected by law. Many government agencies do.
There are many different ways info is classified as to sensitivity.
First, the most well known, the Privacy Act. Enacted in the Seventies, it protects your private information from accidental or deliberate exposure by requiring collecting parties to protect it from casual exposure. It limits that exposure by outlining just who is allowd to see it, and who the collecting agency can allow to have it.
There are other laws, too many to outline here, even if I knew them all, which require government agencies to protect information they collect from the public from disclosure. One of the most important is covering proprietary information, or more commonly called Trade Secrets. Many government agencies collect information on how things are made to ensure that the thing being regulated meets the requirements of the law. This information, since the gov't is allowed to collect it by law, is also protected by that same law, from being disclosed by the collecting agency. We have to protect that info as strictly as we do Privacy Act info.
Next would be operational data regarding the activities of gov't personnel in the day to day activities of doing their jobs. There are many different levels to this, as some jobs are less critical than others. Since some jobs, such as law enforcement, involve people's lives, theree are higher levels of classification to protect it. These levels require increasingly stringent measures to protect it from disclosure.
Then you have the formal government classification system. Everything classified above a certain level is protected by an almost insane set of special rules. I've never been involved in that, so they can't shoot me for talking about it, since I don't know enough about it to be dangerous. I just know that those systems that contain that kind of info are completely seperate, and can't even be connected physically to unclassified machines. 'nuff said.
All of this information should be encrypted, to protect it from accidental, or even, purposeful, disclosure. But that's the government, and that's as it should be.
You can encrypt, or not, as you choose, depending on how much you value your information, or your privacy. A lot of people do, just because they like to feel that their privacy is important, and they don't like people snooping, even accidentally.
Using a government computer is not like using your own. A government computer belongs to the government. When IT says "bring your laptop to us, we need to encrypt it", you can't refuse. If you do, they'll disable your account so you CAN'T use it! Or they'll take your laptop, and issue you a desktop - try taking THAT baby home every night!
When my agency issues a laptop, it is already encrypted - the whole HD - an employee has no choice. That is how it should be. Of course, user awareness is ALWAYS needed! But IT carries the prime responsibility to ensure basic procedures are in place that will protect the system. (Like encrypted laptops.)
I think you've got this backwards. Your ISP really, really doesn't keep logs for that long. they don't want to have to buy the disk space to do that. Didn't you read the recent articles where the gov't is trying to force ISPs' to keep this info longer, for just the purpose you fear?
And government agencies DO keep logs of agency internet activities - since our networks are smaller, the logs don't take up as much space, so we tend to keep them longer. Time varies by agency, I'm sure. And they keep them for just the purpose you mention - should an employee do something that should be investigated, they really do want that info available...
...and just how many hackers have a Cray at their disposal that's going to break the VPN encryption he's using to connect to the government's system? The VPN adds a whole different level of encryption to the mix. By the time that Cray breaks the encryption, any info he now has at his disposal is out of date by, say, 30,000 years...
Oh, and another comment regarding WEP - If you are connected through a VPN, as the White House Directive is requiring, whether you are using WEP, WPA, or nothing really, doesn't matter - the VPN connection carries with it a whole new level of encryption of its own. So from our point of view, WEP doesn't matter - OUR stuff is protected! Your own security is your own business...
P2P apps are not allowed in my Agency. They probably included this as an explanation for why; specific apps are not necessary for the explanation to be valid.
Since a LOT of people use P2P for pirating copyrighted material, that is also a valid statement. Just because its not ALWAYS used illegally, does not invalidate this statement for their purposes.
DOD is a BIG agency, with a lot of employees. It likely that many of them have routers capable of wireless tramsmission, but not new enough to use WPA. To enable the most people to be able to connect remotely, WEP is allowed. Notice that recent loss of laptops with sensitive info did NOT include DOD, nor did they include actual CLASSIFIED material. That stuff is covered under a whole different, and MUCH stricter, set of rules!
3 foot space? Covered adequately by other posters who know more about it than I do.
A LOT of people lose laptops. Civilians, government workers, and military. This statement is there for obvious reasons. People always need to be reminded, plus, statements like this are needed to remind employees that their employer thinks the issue is important. You cannot just take it for granted that people will just magically understand how you think. In addition, if this is included in such a presentation as this an emnployee can't later claim that he/she wasn't told! It's therefor a CYA for the organization.
My own agency uses a total encryption program that encrypts the entire HD. We take nothing for granted. Employees have no choice, laptops are issued this way. You don't like it, you don't get a laptop. We use a two step authentication procedure for remote connections, in fact, everything this article says the White House is demanding, my agency has been doing for over two years.
Has it cost a lot? Yes, this stuff isn't cheap. Is it worth it? Yes, you won't see my group in the news like this!
Does info get out in ways accessible to potential thieves? Probably, we have over 10,000 employees; it's hard to control the actions of that many people, and information can be copied in so many ways. But we do what we can; we only allow the use of encrypted laptops, desktops that are allowed home are also encrypted this way, too. As mentioned, two step authentication, firewalls, 24/7 firewall/WAN monitoring for suspicious activity. If a machine is caught broadcasting packets identified as coming from prohibited software, a technician is dispatched to remove it. User has no choice. Desktops are locked down, and special permission is required from a committee to allow local admin control for any user. Users can't even install their own local printers!
Users are required to review an annual Information Security Awareness presentation, via the intranet, so we can monitor compliance. If you don't view it within a certain time frame, your account is automatically disabled, and you then need special permission from an Associate Commissioner to get reconnected without viewing the show! This guarantees management attention to your failure to follow security procedures!
I have only touched on the most obvious arrangements, there are a lot of others that I can't reveal - I'd have to shoot all of you! I'm sure that there are others I don't know.
Does all of this guarantee we won't see a breach? No, I'm sure it doesn't. But it makes it much more likely that if one occurs, the headlines will make note of an employee that broke procedure and did something to get around agency safeguards, and will eventually report his/her prosecution.
We are not perfect, and we'll be the first to admit that. We ARE human, after all. (gasp!) BUT, just because we get our paychecks from Uncle Sugar doesn't mean we left our brains at the door.
Some agencies use the budget Congress gives us to do our jobs, and we try to do them without being told. We even try to close the barn door BEFORE the cow gets out!
I know that's a shock to some of you, but we really do try, and we most often get it right. You only read about it when we don't...
References, please? THIS I gotta see.
Old joke about "tank, tank, tank" notwithstanding...
Notice I didn't use the NRA's word "guns". I used the word "weapon". That means anything from simple poison, a club, gun, or nuclear bomb. And the statement is pretty much correct - without some kind of weapon, it is really, really hard to kill someone unless you are trained in unarmed combat.
Most murders are not multiple affairs. They usually take place one at a time. That means if you are willing to get up close and personal, any old thing heavy or sharp enough can do the trick if you are willing to get bloody. Use that weapon as a threat, you can disable and immobilize (tie up) any number of people, after which time you can still join the ranks of multiple murderers by killing them one at a time. It just takes longer, and a few more cajones, but, hey, if that's your thing...
Anyone trained in unarmed combat can tell you that many common, ordinary household objects can (and have been) used to kill.
My original point is still one I stand by; if you want to reduce the murder rate in any meaningful way, you have to get at the reasons WHY people commit murder. Don't count on controlling the implements of murder - you may as well start registering kitchen knives...
Ok, so translate that into the US. Just how long do you think that kind of warfare can go on until troops start refusing to fire on fellow citizens? Look at the stress our guys in Irag go through now, and they're facing people that are from a different culture, and mostly don't even look like us!
Yeah, what you say could work in the short run, but insurgencies are NOT short term afairs. A properly run insurgency could take YEARS to defeat, and a LOCAL insurgency isn't like Iraq - there's nowhere to withdraw your troops to, they're already home!
I stick by what I said - just because you have the fancy gadgets doesn't automatically mean you'll win. Doesn't mean you won't, either, but if you do, you'll EARN it!
Don't forget Washington D.C. Private gun ownership has been illegal there for many years, yet it has rated near the top of the country in murder.
The remark about New York is interesting, but it illustrates what anti-gun law folks have been saying for years - it's not the weapon that kills - it's the weapon bearer. If guns didn't exist, people would just find other ways to kill people they wanted dead. After all, murder wasn't invented with firearms, it just got easier for weaker folks to kill stronger ones.
They didn't call it the Peacemaker for nothing!
Hmmm, let's see now, the gov't has all these fancy gadgets...and you say if we just have guns and IED's that we can't win? Interesting...
In another vein, just how much did the military spend in Irag last year...and the year before that? I ASSUME they're using all their fancy toys over there...
they are already forced to use stronger passwords, and if a user wants to write it down, we can't prevent it. I DO try to tell users not to file it under "passwords" in their rollodex!
No, we don't. I do know that this policy, and a few others about these types of storage, are definately being revisited, especially in light of the VA thing. I know that not allowing usb drives would be a PITA, but ya gotta draw the line somewhere.
Actually, IIRC, the telecommuter's boss and his boss both got dinged, too.
Don't make light of this, a number of people got really badly in trouble over this. As a measure of how seriously the gov't takes the situation, it is rare for any civil servant to actually get fired. In spite of the reforms of Jimmy Carter's days, it is still difficult to fire gov't employees. You'd better have your 'i's dotted and the t's crossed, too! Upper management hates to go that far, especially if the employee has over ten years in, and I think this guy had 11 or 12. Get fired like that, and you lose your pension and everything. So if they fired this guy, it's serious.
I work for another Department, and we take security very serious. ALL agency laptops are installed with a standard image using Ghost, an image that uses Pointsec to encrypt the entire hard drive. Yes, we take a performance hit, but to safeguard data, it's worth it. Users have no choice. It is installed before they get it, and when they are issued the unit, they are given the opportunity to set the password (at least 8 digits). If they forget it, they are told, the HD is toast, and must be reformatted. (not really, there are admin PWs we can use, but that makes them MUCH more careful!) They are warned not to store data on the HD, cause if the OS develops a problem, all we'll do is reimage it. We use an elaborate VPN system, with tokens, to allow employees to remotely connect. They don't need to keep data locally, and it is discouraged. With our setup, a lost laptop is just a lost item; a thief would have to reformat the HD to use the laptop. Our data is not accessable.
Just one more reason NOT to use Windows as my operating system!
You're talking about a VAT. its the only way to tax things like you are suggesting.
RTFA: "with instruments located 9 km from a nuclear power plant ..."
That's a bit farther than 600 meters!
I seem to remember a case a few years ago where a man was convicted on growing weed in an outbuilding on a farm. It seems that the building had no windows, but the police used infrared imaging technology to detect the heat of the plant lights inside the building, so they could, in affect, 'see' through the walls.
Upon appeal, the court noted that, like light rays penetrating a window, (and police can raid a place based upon something in "plain sight") infrared rays, since they extend beyond the boundaries of the property, can be used similarly, and do not give a presumption of privacy just because they can't be seen by the naked eye. He lost and went to jail.
So I would assume that, by extension, the "leaking" of radiation from your property and detected by this new technology could similarly be construed to be fair game to law enforcement detection.
If you call the Israelis terrorists, you've got to admit that their opponents are, too. Terror is a tactic that both sides have resorted to since the State of Israel was formed. In Israel's case, they are surrounded by countries run by British installed (most of 'em) dictatorships that are busy using Israel's existance as an external threat to keep their own people focused on something other than their own governments' corruption and oppressive policies in order to stay in power.
If it weren't for that, the Palistinians' efforts to get back what the UN took from them would be as helpless as the Kurds'.
By now, both sides are bathed in blood, and that makes it harder to get people to step back and take a breath before actually talking.
In the US's case, our position has been on Israel's side since the beginning. Its kinda hard to change horses in the middle of the stream, and it certainly won't happen during this administration. The right wingers are too set upon making the Mid East situation resemble the conditions for the Second Coming of Christ to worry about actually attempting a real diplomatic solution. They think Christ will settle it.
America has traditionally backed nations with questionable governments, because in many cases, they were convenient foils to oppose, by proxy, other countries we could not confront directly without starting a war.
A lot of countries do that, including most of the others on the Security Council. It doesn't mean we like them or condone them. We're just using them, and like the other nations that do this, we'll drop 'em and move on when it suits our purposes. Doesn't make it right, that's just how the game of international politics is played. We don't always have a choice of who our "friends" need to be at any given point in time.
"But the thing is, like you say, US citizens are free to protest Gitmo. They're even free to toss out those politicians responsible for trampling americas reputation in the mud. Yet they do not. To me that's a mystery."
??? I really don't understand that statement. Americans are protesting gitmo and this administrations' policies on a regular basis. Don't say we don't "toss out" the bums, either, wait till either the mid-term elections or the next presidential election to make that statement. There is no national recall provision available in the US Constitution, save impeachment, and that's rare.
These issues are not a slam dunk, even in the US. "All politics are local" - and that goes as much for national politics in the US as anywhere else. A lot of people in the US vote for one party or the other in the US based upon just one or two hot button issues, and rationalize the rest. I am as guilty of this as the next guy, but sometimes I wish there was a third choice! (and not some nut job...) But the result is just what you see, an administration that is paying attention to those issues his far right wing constituency thinks are important, but when he begins to deal with other issues less important to them, he resorts to knee jerk reactions that not only don't do us any good, but are not what previous Republicans would have done in the same place.
Bush manipulated public opinion to get elected, just as most modern presidents have done. Its part of what it takes to get there, to have control of the party apparatus that presents a face of the candidate to the public that is more likely to get elected. This country is too big to allow the public to really get to know a presidential candidate as we really should - and the way they are presented on TV is designed to fool and manipulate us. Why else do they almost never present candidates' speeches in their entirety - just sound bites? Most voters never really hear what a candidate has to say, and most of us don't trust them to keep campaign promises, anyway (a WHOLE other subject altogether!)
Nations almost never sign these international declarations based upon face value. There is almost always some hidden (or sometimes not so hidden) agenda that drives the politics behind the scenes. The US, as many other nations may not sign one based upon some small clause or phrase that we don't agree with because it may contradict a US position somewhere else, or as a protest over another nation signing it, or as a way to manipulate anothger sountry into signing something else - there could be a thousand reasons why - maybe they're trying to entice Somalia to back us on something else? Who knows? International politics is just like politics everywhere else - its mostly hidden agendas, backroom deals, "pat my back I'll pat yours" kinds of things. Alliances can be here today, gone tomorrow, and many countries rarely say things they really mean in public.
The US could be just as upright in human rights as we say we are and as honest as Abe Lincoln was supposed to be, and we'd still have people spitting on us or what we stand for, because cultures are different, religious beliefs are different, and people the world over that run governments all try to do the same thing - stay in power. And in many countries, democracy, or anything like it, would mean they wouldn't be there any more, they may even be dead.
Don't think Americans all want everybody to have a government like ours, we recognize that our form of government isn't for everybody. What we really mean is that we would like for all people everywhere to have the opportunity to live under a form of government that they have chosen, and gives them a say in how to live their own lives, with as little or as much governmental influence as they wish, free of crime, etc., (add your own terms here).
Is it easy to get what we want? No, we can't always get what we want for others right here in our own country!
The current administration is a good lesson for us - that libe
You fell "up" my stairs? Sounds like a lie: COUNTERSUIT!
I can see why you post as an Anonymous Coward with an attitude like that.
Well, you don't really KNOW that there aren't warrants. You just have the press' word for it. How do you know they aren't asking for warrants for US citizens they find through this program? I assume the FISA court didn't just shut down, so I would guess they're still issuing warrants.
And yes, they probably do know who those numbers belong to, using on-line databases through Google or Yahoo just like you or I would! No need to violate the law, when they can get it legally and just look it up. Hey, they have a budget, too, and if they can get the info for free on line, they will.
No, in principle, I do agree that there is an alarming amount of chicanery going on, but let's not go overboard. Stick to the real issue, which is the government not using the FISA court like they should. This phone number networking thing is the press blowing smoke, looking for anything they can to nail Bush for.
yes, we DO regulate gene mutations of food, AND radiation devices - but I imagine there'd be blood on the table at the meetings between the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) and the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) over just who would be responsible for THAT one!
You sound pretty biased yourself! If that info is so available, reference some of it, but be sure it's an objective source, and not as biased in your direction as you say FDA is.
Sorry, but you hit a nerve. FDA is, as I mentioned in an above post, deliberately injected between the public and the industries it regulates. As with any government entity, its political biase is reflected by the current Administration. The Commissioner, after all, is appointed by the Pres and serves at his pleasure. And the Commissioner also runs the FDA in a pretty direct manner. He definately influences the way FDA does its job.
if you don't like it, vote for the other party next time.
Personally, I don't always like the things FDA does. I don't like the way they've sat on the morning after pill - and neither did the director of the Office of Women's Health at the FDA. She resigned - after a productive career in the government - specifically to fight that one issue!
Like I also said above - I've worked for FDA for almost thirty years, and find my fellow employees to be largely a dedicated hard working bunch. We work hard every day to ensure that your food, drugs, et. al., are safe, effective, and unadulterated. it isn't an easy job. Our budget, like the rest of the Feds, gets smaller every year, and the workload gets bigger. As our workforce gets older, its gonna get smaller, but the amount of work we do won't!
If you want that to change, lobby your congressman/woman, but if you succeed, expect your taxes to go up. Safety and effectiveness ain't cheap! You can also expect industry to continue to gripe about us - as they constantly do.
if you think we are industry flunkies - then why are FDA inspectors often required to be accompanied by US Marshalls when we seize products? We have been shot at, attacked and run out of establishments we have gone to to inspect. That doesn't sound like industry likes us much better, does it?
Like I said, we are deliberately placed between industry and the public - and its rarely possible to please both at once - and sometimes neither one!