I am shocked, Camping and Cooking are my two biggest hobbies...
... now I wait.
Verizon & Obama: all your calls are belong to us.
- Thread starter strawman
- Start date
... now I wait.
Nah, easier to stop cooking with pressure cookers and using backpacks.
We only visit those where several pieces of data - or a suspicious lack of data - suggests we need more information immediately.I am shocked, Camping and Cooking are my two biggest hobbies...
BTW, your windows are pretty dirty. Could use a good cleaning.
My brother is a strong supporter of this line of thought. It's impossible to argue against him, either, he won't hear of it. All it sounds like to him is, "You want to be able to get away with crime!"
That same link has updated. It wasn't the NSA.
I'll be happy if we just rescind (most of) PATRIOT and FISA, actually. The whole "pass more laws because we're scared" mentality has caused sooooo much trouble.
EDIT: Especially with the DHS. I almost feel eliminating the DHS (especially as relates to airlines) would be worth even a 10x increase in the chance of being in an airplane crash*
--Patrick
*Even if you just count just the 39 worst world airlines, the average odds are 1:1.5million that there will be at least one fatality on your flight...and there's still no guarantee you will be that fatality. Just some random person on your plane.
Alittle more on X-Keyscore and what it can do: X-Keyscore gives NSA the ability to find and exploit vulnerable systems.
Privacy and other issues aside, that's pretty damn cool.
If we could get some more transparency and accountability built into the system (i.e. no more secret FISA courts, regular audits, etc.), I wouldn't really care about XKeyscore or Prism or any of those. In theory, and the actual leaked documents (not what the Guardian claims they say) seem to suggest this, the legal hoops required to be jumped through to even use the systems are extensive and the physical limitations of the system are prohibitive to the kind of use people are imagining. We need to make sure those hoops are binding and publicly visible.
If they only collected information from active suspects, and if they only stored collected information for no more than 12 months once an investigation becomes inactive, then they can collect as much as they want within those limits.
I don't want them collecting all the information all the time and storing it indefinitely. They should NOT have my information in there, at all, unless I'm the subject of an active investigation.
I don't want them collecting all the information all the time and storing it indefinitely. They should NOT have my information in there, at all, unless I'm the subject of an active investigation.
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
--Patrick
Fair enough. As of September 12, 2001, every man, woman, child, and pet has been the subject of an active and ongoing investigation. Anything else related to said investigation is classified.
...without probable cause and without due process. Throw in the fact that it is also not limited in scope, and you've got three strikes against it that should have had it thrown out at home as soon as someone whispered the phrase "Fourth Amendment" anywhere within a hundred miles of the border. Classified or not.
--Patrick
Today I had some family over, and an 11 year old cousin-in-law wanted to watch the Simpson's movie. It has been awhile since I saw it, but I couldn't stop laugh/crying when they got near the end. Does anyone else find this scene rather... prophetic?
Lavabit, provider of encrypted Email, forced to shut down, almost-certainly because of this. Here's the text from the front page of the website: http://lavabit.com/
Yikes. Wiki page on them, since the front page isn't very descriptive now.
Nope. The defense contractors that profit from it saw to that.
Stupid NSLs.
Nope.
Honestly, I don't have any huge beef against the NSA, just the people currently driving it. It's like they're doing donuts on my lawn all the while yelling, "Diplomatic immunity!" out the window.
--Patrik
GasBandit
Staff member
The NSA *is* the people who run it. Otherwise... there wouldn't be an NSA. Power corrupts, and you can bet your ass that such power as afforded them (or as they choose to claim for themselves, at this point) will be abused to its fullest extent whenever it suits them. We've entered a new Dark Age of Liberty.
McCarthyism is bad, and we're heading straight back towards it, in a new jacket. Doesn't mean there weren't any spies/traitors/whatever at the time, just that the reaction was horrible, out of proportion, ill-advised, etc etc etc.
Likewise, shutting down FBI, CIA, NSA, Homeland Security, whatever is all fine and dandy, but it's not going to make anyone feel more secure. You do need a federal government to protect against terrorism. The way they're going about it may be horrible and wrong, but that doesn't mean they're (the institution, not the methods) useless or unnecessary.
GasBandit
Staff member
It's not the FBI and CIA doing this, it's the NSA and the IRS. And "giving up essential liberty for security" yadda yadda. I'm not entirely convinced most of it isn't kabuki at this point anyway. What a coincidence that right as public outrage over the NSA is starting to boil up, all of a sudden Al Qaeda, which has been "on the run" and "unable to rebuild" until a week ago all of a sudden is such an immediate and credible threat we've got to abandon dozens of embassies across the middle east. Maybe it's true, but if it is, it illustrates how little security we're getting in exchange for all that liberty we've given up.
Oh, I agree - on both counts. It's way too accidental, and the balance between lost freedoms and gained security is buggered.
I'm just saying there's a certain amount of baby in the bathwater as well. NSA/IRS/whoever you want need(s) limitations and correction mechanisms. Checks and balances exist specifically to prevent (small) groups from gathering too much power together, and I'd say that there's already far too much power in too small a group - it's really technically quite possible for certain people to apprehend just about anyone indeterminately, without due process, and without right to a trial, simply by naming them "terrorists". And while I hope/assume that doesn't happen all the time, there's definitely lots of things going on without enough oversight to keep the power hungry from going power mad.
Countdown had a recurring segment called "The Nexus of Politics and Terror." Every time the administration (of any stripe) got caught with it's hand in the cookie jar for one reason or another, an alert or busted plot made the press to keep us all distracted and afraid.
The segment kept growing and growing and...
Another nice (and accurate) term for what the NSA is doing: Commandeering
From this: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/08/the-nsa-is-commandeering-the-internet/278572/
This whole thing is getting stupid. Honestly, I'm not surprised at how little the public cares about this or what our government is doing in general. This is why I feel more comfortable not engaging in the majority of politics anymore with certain exceptions, because I just don't believe it matters.
GasBandit
Staff member
Actually, more than half of us are rather upset about this.
The other half just wants to clap hands over ears and go "LA LA LA WE DON'T CARE WHEN IT'S OUR GUY DOING IT LA LA LA WAKE ME WHEN THERE'S A REPUBLICAN SCANDAL"[DOUBLEPOST=1376406417,1376406101][/DOUBLEPOST]Also, James Clapper looks like a goblin.
GasBandit
Staff member
I think it's more a symptom than a cause, really. But I agree, the system as it stands is broken, and remains so because reform is not in the interests of those in power.
Sorry, yeah, one of the symptoms is what I meant. Theres many, obviously.
In this case the republicans don't care because their guy started it, and the democrats don't care because their guy is expanding it.
But the politicians all now carry at minimum 3 phones with different phone numbers so they can talk to different groups without having them linked together.
Trust me, they'll care when one of them figures out a way to use the system in their election campaign. Can you imagine robodialers looking at all the phone numbers that yielded a donation last election, then calling all their friends, and their friends friends under the assumption that gullible people herd?
Wouldn't it be nice if the American public got a list of every number dialed by the president's phone, and all the numbers dialed by those numbers to the third degree?
Now that the russians most certainly have a copy of most of the data Snowden took with him, they will be hard at work cracking into this huge datastore the NSA are keeping in one nice location, just a ripe cherry suitable for plucking.
Ultimately they call this "increasing security" but as far as I can tell the data aggregation reduces our overall security.
But the politicians all now carry at minimum 3 phones with different phone numbers so they can talk to different groups without having them linked together.
Trust me, they'll care when one of them figures out a way to use the system in their election campaign. Can you imagine robodialers looking at all the phone numbers that yielded a donation last election, then calling all their friends, and their friends friends under the assumption that gullible people herd?
Wouldn't it be nice if the American public got a list of every number dialed by the president's phone, and all the numbers dialed by those numbers to the third degree?
Now that the russians most certainly have a copy of most of the data Snowden took with him, they will be hard at work cracking into this huge datastore the NSA are keeping in one nice location, just a ripe cherry suitable for plucking.
Ultimately they call this "increasing security" but as far as I can tell the data aggregation reduces our overall security.
It's a fishing expedition, but it's the kind of expedition where they don't use lines, they use trawling nets, and their bycatch rate is horrible.
--Patrick
Groklaw shuts down in response to 100% surveillance: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130818120421175
Quote from the article states the problem with this entire program better than I can:
Tragic to have them shut down. They were one of the "Good guys" out there.
Quote from the article states the problem with this entire program better than I can:
Fucking A. That's the problem, right there.
Tragic to have them shut down. They were one of the "Good guys" out there.