Big Brother Is Listening...

[Partha]

Harlowe, that's more of that 'both sides do it' stuff that drives me nuts.

The truth is, the President is using his powers to the limit. All Presidents do that. The problem is Congress won't set limits on Executive power. That's why you have nonsense like the War Powers Act, the PATRIOT Act, and the AUMF.

[Minute]

Everything I do on the PC is through an encrypted VPN that keeps no logs & that changes my IP & connection location every hour. I am fairly confident in it's security. None of that really matters though because my phone is connected to every fucking thing I do as well. So if they can make the phone companies turn over their shit it's irrelevant. I think it's all bullshit. I think my ISP should serve as my VPN & my phone company should do the equivalent. And they both should have fought tooth & nail to maintain that privacy... but nope. Instead I have to start trying to find crazy actual terrorist type strategies to employ to maintain even a smidgen of privacy.

[Harlowe]

That's my point Partha, both sides use it to the limit and that's a problem.

[Ddrak]

Everything I do on the PC is through an encrypted VPN that keeps no logs & that changes my IP & connection location every hour. I am fairly confident in it's security. None of that really matters though because my phone is connected to every fucking thing I do as well. So if they can make the phone companies turn over their shit it's irrelevant. I think it's all bullshit. I think my ISP should serve as my VPN & my phone company should do the equivalent. And they both should have fought tooth & nail to maintain that privacy... but nope. Instead I have to start trying to find crazy actual terrorist type strategies to employ to maintain even a smidgen of privacy.

Go the other direction. Send up so much suspicious looking stuff that they can't tell real action from false-flag.

Dd

[Partha]

That's my point Partha, both sides use it to the limit and that's a problem.

That's not the point. It's not a conscious decision. If it was a matter of 'sides' then Presidential power would be proscribed every time one party ran the Congress and the other one ran the Presidency.

[Tarfang_Trubasher]

Here's the whistleblower...

Edward Snowden exposes global spy grid

-TF

[Harlowe]

Some crucial facts appear to be inaccurate ..

http://www.zdnet.com/the-real-story-in- ... 000016570/

[Minute]

Everything I do on the PC is through an encrypted VPN that keeps no logs & that changes my IP & connection location every hour. I am fairly confident in it's security. None of that really matters though because my phone is connected to every fucking thing I do as well. So if they can make the phone companies turn over their shit it's irrelevant. I think it's all bullshit. I think my ISP should serve as my VPN & my phone company should do the equivalent. And they both should have fought tooth & nail to maintain that privacy... but nope. Instead I have to start trying to find crazy actual terrorist type strategies to employ to maintain even a smidgen of privacy.

Go the other direction. Send up so much suspicious looking stuff that they can't tell real action from false-flag.

Dd

LOL! Easy for you to say from AU Dd. They say I'm suspected of terrorist activity & I wouldn't get a lawyer, phone call, trail or anything.

[Kulaf]

Some crucial facts appear to be inaccurate ..

http://www.zdnet.com/the-real-story-in- ... 000016570/

Yeah gotta love it. The source of their intell was a contractor who had been on the job a whole 3 months. Wow I bet he just knows all the inner workings there at the NSA.

[Ddrak]

Some crucial facts appear to be inaccurate ..

http://www.zdnet.com/the-real-story-in- ... 000016570/

Yeah gotta love it. The source of their intell was a contractor who had been on the job a whole 3 months. Wow I bet he just knows all the inner workings there at the NSA.

Uh... 4 years, and on-and-off through the CIA for the 4 years before that. Also, Ad Hom much? Is your position that the slides are falsified or that his statements of fact are false? If so, what is your counter-position and based on what evidence?

Harlowe's article is attacking the journalistic hyperbole above the actual data reported, not Snowden himself.

Dd

[Kulaf]

Some crucial facts appear to be inaccurate ..

http://www.zdnet.com/the-real-story-in- ... 000016570/

Yeah gotta love it. The source of their intell was a contractor who had been on the job a whole 3 months. Wow I bet he just knows all the inner workings there at the NSA.

Uh... 4 years, and on-and-off through the CIA for the 4 years before that. Also, Ad Hom much? Is your position that the slides are falsified or that his statements of fact are false? If so, what is your counter-position and based on what evidence?

Harlowe's article is attacking the journalistic hyperbole above the actual data reported, not Snowden himself.

Dd

Well then this update is wrong:

Update June 10: And one more thing. In its original story, the Post calls the source of the documents "a career intelligence officer" who provided these materials "in order to expose what he believes to be a gross intrusion on privacy." We now know that the source was Edward Snowden, who was not an intelligence officer but an "infrastructure analyst" who had been in his current position with an external contractor for only three months. The "career intelligence officer" description seems exaggerated.

Personally I don't think this guy knows shit and is just blowing smoke. I especially loved the part in his video interview where he puffs up and says how he could wire tap anyone he wanted (3:32 in the video). What a crock of crap.

[Ddrak]

ZDNet is doing the opposite of WaPo and exaggerating in the opposite direction. He's been CIA/NSA employed/contract for about 8 years, since he was rejected for special forces. His *current* contract with Booz-Allen is about 3 months old, but he was contracted to the NSA for a long time before. He's certainly experienced enough to know what he's talking about, though you could make a good point that he's likely to overinflate his claims.

In any case, it appears most Americans are fine with the government tracking them if there's a "terrorism" badge applied to it. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013 ... -tracking/

The poll, co-sponsored by The Washington Post, surveyed 1,004 adults over the weekend and found that more than half of them, 56 percent, felt the NSA's dragnet collection of telephone metadata was "acceptable." Another 41 percent said it was unacceptable, and 2 percent were undecided.

Fully 45 percent of Americans believe the government should "be able to monitor everyone's email to prevent possible terrorism." That's exactly the same percentage that Pew found when it asked the same question 11 years ago, less than one year after the September 2011 terrorist attacks. Today, 52 percent said universal email monitoring would be unacceptable, versus 47 percent who believed it was unacceptable in 2002.

You'll get the government you deserve. :/

Dd

[Freecare Spiritwise]

[Harlowe]

Wouldn't doing this change his actions to more of a treason situation?
Snowden said that according to unverif ... e mainland

[Embar Angylwrath]

@ Freecare...

If I'm a Republican, its ok if Bush does it. If I'm a Democrat, its ok if Obama does it. That is what that table tells me.

@Dd... yeah, we get what we deserve as a government, and that makes me want to vomit. There are so many under informed, lazy people on both sides of the political fence. Societies mirror the environment. Many prey, few predators. Guess who most of the electorate are. Guess who the politicians (and those pulling their strings) are.

[Fallakin Kuvari]

Go the other direction. Send up so much suspicious looking stuff that they can't tell real action from false-flag.

Dd

I had actually contemplated this.

[Minute]

@Dd... yeah, we get what we deserve as a government, and that makes me want to vomit. There are so many under informed, lazy people on both sides of the political fence. Societies mirror the environment. Many prey, few predators. Guess who most of the electorate are. Guess who the politicians (and those pulling their strings) are.

Truth. It's why I've always thought there should be some kind of qualification to vote. Doesn't even have to be a difficult one. Like 5 random questions about the political stance of the candidate you want to vote for. If you can't answer them, then you don't get to vote. I mean maybe that isn't the answer, but there really should be some way of weeding out the masses of idiots who vote based on completely uninformed or worse falsely-informed information.

"Uhh... I voted for that guy because my dad's a republican..."
"I voted that guy because he's from Texas!!!"
"I voted for that girl because she cried on Opera =["
"I voted Republican because Obama is a Muslim from Kenya!!!"

[Partha]

@Dd... yeah, we get what we deserve as a government, and that makes me want to vomit. There are so many under informed, lazy people on both sides of the political fence. Societies mirror the environment. Many prey, few predators. Guess who most of the electorate are. Guess who the politicians (and those pulling their strings) are.

Truth. It's why I've always thought there should be some kind of qualification to vote. Doesn't even have to be a difficult one. Like 5 random questions about the political stance of the candidate you want to vote for. If you can't answer them, then you don't get to vote. I mean maybe that isn't the answer, but there really should be some way of weeding out the masses of idiots who vote based on completely uninformed or worse falsely-informed information.

"Uhh... I voted for that guy because my dad's a republican..."
"I voted that guy because he's from Texas!!!"
"I voted for that girl because she cried on Opera =["
"I voted Republican because Obama is a Muslim from Kenya!!!"

It's much shorter to just say 'Those other people shouldn't be able to vote.'

[Minute]

Naw Partha, this isn't a left-right or even a me-them statement. I think people who vote for candidates that I don't necessarily align with should count as long as they actually know enough about the person to legitimize their vote. If I can't answer a short questionnaire correctly about the person I'm electing to represent me, why should my vote count? We have certifications for most things that shows you qualify to do certain tasks. Drive, Teach, operate a forklift. The only qualification to vote is being born. And in my opinion that isn't enough.

[Ddrak]

Very important blowback from the NSA spying coming out - the rest of the world will no longer trust the US to manage a "free internet". Next time the US says "trust us" at an ITU meeting, Iran and Russia will call BS and no one will be able to rationally argue against them. The NSA has effectively set the wheels in motion for the US losing control on a world stage and the Balkanization of the internet as a whole. /golfclap.

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2 ... rom_t.html

Dd