These incidents also high-lights how lax the access control procedures are on this data; I hired a SysAdmin out of the military once and the stories he had to tell were incredible.

And now this.  An internal audit by the NSA reports that the agency violated the  privacy of American citizens thousands of times.  However, it was not the NSA who turned over the report to Congress, it was Snowden.

Crypto email vendor faces arrest for shutting down.

Seriously?

"Bearing in mind it is a new use of terrorism legislation to detain someone in these circumstances... I will write to the police to ask for the justification of the use of terrorism legislation - they may have a perfectly reasonable explanation."

Now that the NSA have provided us with new meanings for so many common words, this sort of action will henceforth be known as providing your Mr Miranda warning.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/a … -greenwald

Moar Fucwittery.

Emmeran wrote:

Sadly this isn't related to flavor of presidency we have been building towards this since the 70's

Sadly, you have to reach farther back than the divine right of kings to find the seeds of our imperial presidency.

Last edited by choad (2013-08-19 13:17:31)

On the plus side they seem to be wiping out partisanship with amazing efficiency; they have literally offended everyone.  The only question then becomes:  Can we pull ourselves back from the brink?

The normal course for amending the Constitution is for Congress to vote by a 2/3 majority for an amendment and then have the 3/4 of the states ratify it.  However, there is a provision in the Constitution for calling a constitutional convention without the consent of Congress. To do so, 2/3 of the state legislatures must agree to it.  Any amendments coming from the convention must then be ratified by 3/4 of the states.  Many conservatives are advocating for going this route and imposing term limits and fiscal responsibilities on members of Congress and strict limits on government's authority over our liberties.

I think it would be a good idea if we could keep the crazies out of the process.

I'm not sure guys but I'm not sure that having the Director of the CIA become President at one point then to later have the Secretary of Defense become VP well I think we can clearly identify the roots of this current situation.

Worst part is that I voted for both of them...

The logic of our days. Soon 2 plus 2 will equal 5 for you too.

The mood toughened just over a month ago, when I received a phone call from the centre of government telling me: "You've had your fun. Now we want the stuff back." There followed further meetings with shadowy Whitehall figures. The demand was the same: hand the Snowden material back or destroy it. I explained that we could not research and report on this subject if we complied with this request. The man from Whitehall looked mystified. "You've had your debate. There's no need to write any more."

During one of these meetings I asked directly whether the government would move to close down the Guardian's reporting through a legal route – by going to court to force the surrender of the material on which we were working. The official confirmed that, in the absence of handover or destruction, this was indeed the government's intention. Prior restraint, near impossible in the US, was now explicitly and imminently on the table in the UK. But my experience over WikiLeaks – the thumb drive and the first amendment – had already prepared me for this moment. I explained to the man from Whitehall about the nature of international collaborations and the way in which, these days, media organisations could take advantage of the most permissive legal environments. Bluntly, we did not have to do our reporting from London. Already most of the NSA stories were being reported and edited out of New York. And had it occurred to him that Greenwald lived in Brazil?

The man was unmoved. And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian's long history occurred – with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian's basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents. "We can call off the black helicopters," joked one as we swept up the remains of a MacBook Pro.

choad wrote:

https://cruelery.com/sidepic/theendisathand.png

~ click ~

The link above is not some 'noid sputtering agitprop. The US government's global surveillance is driving a wooden stake through what little remains of professional news gathering and I'm guessing if you haven't noticed this where you live, you're not paying attention.

Listen to Eastern European people and how they speak.  Those born and raised during the oppressive Communist times - when everyone spied on everyone else - speak in a monotone... completely flat-affect. No inflection.  No facial changes.  They do not smile.  They are utterly flat and without emotion.  (Hell, you can even hear it in the classic 'Russian' TV cartoon characters like Boris Badanoff and Natasha Fatale.)  It's a fact, and if you've ever traveled to these formerly communist countries you'd know well of what I write.  That's how deep the impact was to the psyche of the average person.  It fundamentally changed them.

Now listen to those born since the freedoms.  They speak now with a lilt.. with inflection.. with facial expressions.  They smile in public.  They will wave to a baby.  They will hug in public.  They have no fear of being 'outed' and being slammed in a prison somewhere or sent to the uranium mines (as many of my relatives were).

We are not far away from the former... I'd venture to say, it's already here.  If someone says they are a Republican or a conservative many of you will immediately hate them and stop listening.  So they hide it.  They play happy families.  They go along, smile and say nothing.  Or they act like they are on the 'home team' to cover.   This is already happening BIGTIME in the schools - kids won't speak up with ideas that aren't currently politically correct.  My kids spent their entire school years hiding their feelings and opinions and only speaking privately about them with very trusted few friends of a like mind.  Speaking out openly would mean bad grades from (largely) liberal teachers and tacitly (or openly) condoned ridicule by their peers (some of whom were indeed faking outrage to provide cover for their own real opinions).  They wrote wonderful papers about how awful conservative values are and how wonderful liberal icons and ideals are.  And they didn't believe a word of it.

Look at the reaction on this very board.  Folks who speak out against the current flow are subject to disdain and marginalizing.  They're stupid. They're insane.  They're clearly not playing with a full deck. They are not worth listening to.

...

I'm sorry. 

I'll lead the elephant out of the room now.

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Last edited by whosasailorthen (2013-08-20 18:23:04)

Emmeran wrote:

whosasailorthen wrote:

I'll lead the elephant out of the room now.

See now that's the deal with the far-right "conservatives", they are always seeing pink elephants everywhere they go.

As much as I appreciate the humor in your message, and I do, there's a nugget in there as well. 

Conservatives are very often described as 'far-right' or 'wing-nuts' even when it does not apply (and certainly does not in my case)... but it helps in marginalizing them better, doesn't it?  After all, if we can exaggerate someone's views to the point where they seem silly and over-the-top we can better ignore them as zealots or irrational beings.  One step from the funny farm. 

Oh, and that was another fun way to get rid of folks during the communist times - to send those who were 'unmutual' (with a nod to Number 2) to an insane asylum.  It happened a lot.

(Now we just send them to Florida.)

Last edited by whosasailorthen (2013-08-20 18:43:50)

Emmeran wrote:

Talk to the Tea Party my friend, those guys chased me out of the Republican ranks.

I don't disagree, and in fact I think they were the death-knell for the Republicans.  Until the GOP can contain their ultra-conservative membership and start to internally find compromise, they will continue to fail miserably.  Far-right and far-left extreme wings of BOTH parties are the reason someone who is open to compromise cannot win a national contest.  And more's the worse for all of us.  It is the death of negotiation and reason.

whosasailorthen wrote:

Emmeran wrote:

Talk to the Tea Party my friend, those guys chased me out of the Republican ranks.

I don't disagree, and in fact I think they were the death-knell for the Republicans.  Until the GOP can contain their ultra-conservative membership and start to internally find compromise, they will continue to fail miserably.  Far-right and far-left extreme wings of BOTH parties are the reason someone who is open to compromise cannot win a national contest.  And more's the worse for all of us.  It is the death of negotiation and reason.

I will agree, but will add this:  The Democratic party is currently run by leftists.  This is the reason the TEA party and other far right groups have gained momentum.  They have sprung into prominence as a reaction to the administration's policies.

"According to an NBC News report, an "overwhelmed" National Security Agency still isn't sure which files Edward Snowden took with him when he fled to Hong Kong more than two months ago."



HAAAAA ha ha ha ha ha!

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Judge John Bates wrote:

The sheer volume of transactions acquired by NSA through its upstream collection is such that any meaningful review of the entire body of the transactions is not feasible. As a result, the Court cannot know for certain the number of wholly domestic communications acquired through this collection, nor can it know the number of non-target communications acquired or the extent to which those communications are to or from United States persons or persons in the United States... it is impossible to define with any specificity the universe of transactions that will be acquired by NSA's upstream collection at any point in the future.

In keeping with the Administration's dedication to transparency, it only took a year-long lawsuit to get this out in the open.

Dianne Feinstein wrote:

As I have said previously, the committee has never identified an instance in which the NSA has intentionally abused its authority to conduct surveillance for inappropriate purposes.

Keith Alexander wrote:

The assumption is our people are just out there wheeling and dealing. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have tremendous oversight over these programs.

Well, maybe they did after all.

square wrote:

Those journalists reporting on classified documents are traitors!  At least, when they're not me.

A thousand more potential leakers -- never say never again.

With friends like U.S., who needs enemies?

Outsourcing strikes again!  Driven by privatization greed our national security has been completely compromised, unlike many others Snowden just went public instead of secretly selling it for top dollar.

Mind you I support Snowden's action but happily piss on Manning's betrayal.

People, you couldn’t trust any of these three guys to go down to the corner grocery for a pack of cigarettes

I drove to Berkeley to listen to Savio speak.  His message, which sounded pretty radical, was quite tame by today's standards.  He had a running feud with the university's president, Clark Kerr.  I recall that four floors of one dorm had huge letters taped to the inside of the windows which read:

Freedom
Under
Clark
Kerr

Saying Fuck in public was pretty bold back then.  In the days of J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI took any hint of Communist activity very seriously.  They came looking for me when I was just a kid handing out leaflets in support of Kennedy for president.  Apparently, the organization I volunteered for was on their list.

phreddy wrote:

whosasailorthen wrote:

Good think you weren't handing out Fair Play for Cuba Committee leaflets.  You should see what happened to the last guy.

http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/ … b54eef.gif

Where is that guy when we really need him?

Careful.  The internets have big ears.