square wrote:

Don't worry, the watchers are grabbing the watcher-watchers by the balls over here, too.

"You stole the documents we were hiding from you which proved we were lying, so we spied on you to find out how you did that" is not, exactly, the kind of argument that too many people are going to find compelling.

Now that all those righteous defenders of the American homeland have loudly and bravely condemned Snowden, surely they'll do the same for Delisle, Montes, and Aragoncillo any day now.

Oh, and documents kept away from the Senate Intelligence Committee?  It's over 9000!

Of course, truth is the first victim.

Meanwhile, "just metadata" reveals your medical details, excessive drinking, religion, and gun ownership.

Last edited by square (2014-03-13 23:43:52)

It appears that only available bandwidth can save us

phreddy wrote:

Sorry, but I have no problem with NSA recording every phone call in a country, so long as it is not our country.  I guarantee you our allies and enemies alike would do the same to us if they could, and maybe some of them are.

You might note that they did not name the country, it wouldn't take much to convince me that they are recording every byte of data we create.

It's looking more and more like everyone knew except us.  Congress, the courts, the tech companies were all in the know, but now they want to pretend they weren't.

To see those who want to aid criminals and enemies of the United States, look no further than Washington, Jefferson, and Madison.

The Framers are usually considered patriots. Yet they gave traitors and criminals in their midst such powerful knowledge about concealing evidence of skullduggery! Today every terrorist with access to a pocket Constitution is privy to the same text. And thanks to the Supreme Court's practice of publishing its opinions, al-Qaeda need only have an Internet connection to gain a very nuanced, specific understanding of how the Fourth Amendment is applied in individual cases, how it constrains law enforcement, and how to exploit those limits.

phreddy wrote:

square wrote:

To see those who want to aid criminals and enemies of the United States, look no further than Washington, Jefferson, and Madison.

The Framers are usually considered patriots. Yet they gave traitors and criminals in their midst such powerful knowledge about concealing evidence of skullduggery! Today every terrorist with access to a pocket Constitution is privy to the same text. And thanks to the Supreme Court's practice of publishing its opinions, al-Qaeda need only have an Internet connection to gain a very nuanced, specific understanding of how the Fourth Amendment is applied in individual cases, how it constrains law enforcement, and how to exploit those limits.

I disagree with the premise that the constitution is faulty because it provides too much protection for terrorists and enemies.  We've gone wrong by extending the provisions of the 4th Amendment to foreign nationals and known enemies of the state.  It is broad interpretations by the courts which have handcuffed our ability to secure state secrets.

There is something in what you say, although how you square that with the idea of equal protection is a poser. The greater problem is that 'state secret' has now come to be defined as 'politically (or otherwise) embarrassing information'.

Chinese hacking.

N.S.A. deputy director Rick Ledgett, who led the internal investigation of Snowden, claimed Snowden made no formal complaints. And if he complained personally to anyone, Ledgett tells Vanity Fair, he or she has not acknowledged it.

In response to this claim, Snowden replies, "The N.S.A. at this point not only knows I raised complaints, but that there is evidence that I made my concerns known to the N.S.A.'s lawyers, because I did some of it through e-mail. I directly challenge the N.S.A. to deny that I contacted N.S.A. oversight and compliance bodies directly via e-mail and that I specifically expressed concerns about their suspect interpretation of the law, and I welcome members of Congress to request a written answer to this question [from the N.S.A.]."

Also, STFU.

Emmeran wrote:

An exploit here, a bug there, what's an agency to do?

Honestly?  I'm not buying that one...

Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, along with dozens of other major tech firms, are actively opposing an initiative to prevent NSA spying known as the Fourth Amendment Protection Act, leaning on secretive industry lobbying groups while they profess outrage in official statements.

Wherever you go, there you are.

This data never expires.

Forget about the NSA, or the FBI linking civil databases. The private sector now does it more better.

Commercial private databases require no warrant to search and in most cases involving law enforcement searches you have no privacy rights.

Last edited by Johnny_Rotten (2014-04-16 10:35:02)

"Secret information centers, building dossiers on individuals exist today. You have no legal right to know about them, prevent them, or sue for damages. Our liberty may well be the price we pay for permitting this to continue unchecked. - Member, U.S. Privacy Protection Commission"

The House on Willis Avenue (24 Feb. 1978)
The Rockford Files: Season 4, Episode 21

Baywolfe wrote:

Hell, Choad, we don't even have a say in how our Credit Rating is calculated.  What chance do we have against the Military-Industrial Complex and their allies?

After seeing the live action effect of the APAM Cluster Munition, well our chances are exactly Zero against a determined force.  If nothing else calculate that you can put Four (4) complete MER packs on the Super Hornet, math tells us this equals 17,208 anti-personnel/anti-armor bomblets per run.  You go you 2nd Amendmentor's , that AR-15 shit is going to work out well for you!

square wrote:

Fuck you too, Vladimir.

Biting the iron fist that feeds you is probably not a wise move.  Young Edward's next truth campaign will be all about the gulags.

Russia's facebook falls to Putin.

~ click ~


[file photo: Vlad's cousin Ras]

Auto-edited on 2020-08-02 to update URLs

Meanwhile, the Inspector General, who is supposed to be the watchdog over Homeland Security, was altering reports and hiding evidence of wrongdoing in that agency.  By the way, this comes from a bipartisan Senate report.

The lead investigator told the subcommittee that he was directed by his supervisor "to delete derogatory information" -- information considered "potentially damaging to the administration."   

According to the report, the same investigator said he told an internal review team that he had concerns with deleting this material because: "The DHS OIG was sitting on information that could influence an election."

Emmeran wrote:

As amusing as it is to watch you try to explain how your "team" is different - this is a thread about the evaporation of our privacy and personal security, not about who caught who in what time worn political trick up in D.C.; please do not troll what has been an interesting and enlightening thread up to this point.

Perhaps you forgot who posted this thread about the Bush and Obama administrations.

phreddy wrote:

Emmeran wrote:

As amusing as it is to watch you try to explain how your "team" is different - this is a thread about the evaporation of our privacy and personal security, not about who caught who in what time worn political trick up in D.C.; please do not troll what has been an interesting and enlightening thread up to this point.

Perhaps you forgot who posted this thread about the Bush and Obama administrations.

No I didn't forget which is part of the reason I called you out for posting some "politics as usual" bullshit on this honorable thread.

phreddy wrote:

It appears that the guy who is supposed to investigate wrong doing in the administrative branches of government has covered up incidents which would have made Obama look bad just before the election.  That, my friend, is corruption at the highest level.

And that, my friend, is all we've seen in this nation for 30 years.

Tiresome, ain't it?

Auto-edited on 2020-08-02 to update URLs

It's not harrassing journalists when we do it.

[State Department mouthpiece] JENNIFER PSAKI: One more announcement for all of you: With World Press Freedom Day around the world on May 3rd, the department will launch its third annual Free the Press campaign later this afternoon in New York at the U.S. U.N. mission. Beginning on Monday and all of next week, we will highlight emblematic cases of imperiled reporters and media outlets that have been targeted, oppressed, imprisoned or otherwise harassed because of their professional work. . . .

Q: Otherwise harassed. Does that include those who may have been targeted, harassed, imprisoned and otherwise whatever by the United States government?

MS. PSAKI: I'm --

Q: No?

MS. PSAKI: I think you're familiar with our Free the Press campaign, Matt, but --

Q: Fair enough. So it does not include those who might have been harassed by --

MS. PSAKI: We highlight, as we often do, where we see issues with media freedom around the world.

Q: Right, I understand. But you would say that you don't -- the U.S. does not believe that it has a problem with press freedom, or if it does, that it's not nearly as severe as the problems in other countries.

MS. PSAKI: We do not. I think we can look at many of the problems --

On media press freedom?

Oh. Go ahead. And then we'll go to you, (Paul ?).

Did you have another question on media press freedom, or --

...

Q: If I could just go back to the overall, in general, the administration does not regard attempting to prosecute American journalists as an infringement of press freedom?

MS. PSAKI: I'm not sure which case you're -- what you're referring to.

Q: Well, there's several cases that are out there right now. The one that comes -- springs to mind is the James Risen case, where the Justice Department is attempting to prosecute.

And now there is this:

The one-page bill, reviewed by WND, calls for the Justice Department and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to “analyze information on the use of telecommunications, including the Internet, broadcast television and radio, cable television, public access television, commercial mobile services, and other electronic media, to advocate and encourage violent acts and the commission of crimes of hate.”

The bill does not define which actions by broadcasters would be considered to have encouraged violence, seemingly leaving that open to interpretation.

Down the shitter, indeed.  A hoax this time, but the fact that it is completely plausible is telling.

So when Quantified Toilets debuted at [the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing] this week, it was an immediate hit. The company claimed to have installed sensors in the Toronto Convention Center and other civic venues that would automatically analyze "deposits" in the toilets to detect a person's gender, drug and alcohol levels, pregnancy status, sexually-transmitted-infection status, and... smell.

square wrote:

Someone finally bothers to challenge Keith Alexander's bullshit, if only for laughs.

Gotcha wrote:

We could also look at terrorist attacks in the United States between 1789 and 1989, long before the NSA had the capability to monitor so much of our private communications. That seemed to work out okay too.

I think I’m more offended by this “warm & fluffy” thing than by anything else they’ve done.  Mind you that when I was a part of this whole machine nobody outside of the “Top Secret SBI, Catagorized” community even knew the NSA existed, the NSA was actually just a bunch of nobody bit-whackers trying to help like everyone else.  Now we see what happens when the programmers are allowed to be in charge...

Last edited by Emmeran (2014-05-02 00:30:53)