This story is getting bigger and bigger. Even though most Americans probably already knew, it is now official: the United States government, through its National Security Agency, is collecting the communications and data of all American citizens, and of non-Americans using American services, through a wide collaboration with the large companies in technology, like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and so on. Interestingly enough, the NSA itself, as well as the US government, have repeatedly and firmly denied this massive spying on Americans and non-Americans took place at all.
The project is called PRISM, which is fitting when you think about how data travels through fibre these days. The Washing Post has gained access to a set of very detailed slides from the NSA explaining how it all all works and who the NSA is collaborating with, and it includes all the big names in technology, from Apple to Facebook, from Google to Microsoft. It covers all information flows, whether from Americans or non-Americans. Considering virtually each and every one of uses one or more American services or software products, we are all targets. Nearly 1 in 7 intelligence reports in the US is now based on PRISM data.
What’s most peculiar is that the companies involved in PRISM all deny being part of it. The Washington Post contacted the companies involved, and Facebook and Apple said they have no knowledge of the program, and thus are not involved with it – which is odd, because the official government documentation clearly mentioned them. The Verge contacted Google, and the search and advertisement giant, too, denies involvement – even though they, and several of its companies like youTube, are listed as well. Microsoft was the first company to join the program (and is also denying involvement, others joined in later. Twitter has yet to join.
The PRISM program has access to everything – phone call recordings, file transfers, browsing history, email, your files stored on the internet, and so on. Just about anything you can imagine is part of PRISM. Suddenly, it starts to make even more sense why China is so hell-bent on creating its own alternatives to American products and services; they obviously knew about PRISM long before we did.
The program is technically legal and court-approved (by the FISA court), but that’s only because that FISA court convenes in secret, behind closed doors, is unchecked by the people, and rarely releases any documentation whatsoever. “I would just push back on the idea that the court has signed off on it, so why worry?” Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Washington post, “This is a court that meets in secret, allows only the government to appear before it, and publishes almost none of its opinions. It has never been an effective check on government.^aEUR
What’s more, when under oath only a few months ago in March 2013, the NSA, by mouth of director of national intelligence James Clapper, denied that the NSA and the US government was spying on its citizens. Six minutes and forty seconds in, a clearly fidgeting and uncomfortable Clapper responds “No sir. Not wittingly.” Looking back, it’s clear the guy is lying, as he’s showing all the telltale signs.
Clapper is clearly disconnected from reality, as his response to the uncovering of PRISM is borderline idiotic. In several press releases, he reiterates the program is legal (and thus, confirms its existence), and that the reports by The Washington Post and The Guardian contain several inaccuracies – but as a crystal clear sign of weakness, he doesn’t actually detail the supposed inaccuracies. Furthermore, and this is where he really goes off his rocker, he accuses the two newspapers of endangering the lives of Americans, and that reporting on PRISM is “reprehensible”.
Information collected under this program is among the most important and valuable foreign intelligence information we collect, and is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of threats.The unauthorized disclosure of information about this important and entirely legal program is reprehensible and risks important protections for the security of Americans.
PRISM isn’t even the worst of it. The NSA has collected records on every phone call made in the US in the last seven years, and has that data stored on servers right now. In addition, the NSA receives data on every American from US internet service providers and credit card companies. Combine PRISM data with this additional data – and probably from a variety of other sources – and it’s pretty clear the US is now officially a surveillance state, not much better or worse than China. In addition, the NSA has collected loads of information on non-Americans as well, which looks a lot like an act of aggression against foreign, independent nations to me.
But, my dear American and non-American friends, you need not worry. That same man, director of national intelligence James Clapper, says we can all safely go to sleep since the US government is bound by law and can’t sift through all this data at will. Of course, we all trust the US government. Right?
By order of the FISC, the Government is prohibited from indiscriminately sifting through the telephony metadata acquired under the program. All information that is acquired under this program is subject to strict, court-imposed restrictions on review and handling. The court only allows the data to be queried when there is a reasonable suspicion, based on specific facts, that the particular basis for the query is associated with a foreign terrorist organization. Only specially cleared counterterrorism personnel specifically trained in the Court-approved procedures may even access the records.
This scandal is growing like an oil stain, and even though the supposed ‘legal’ nature of it all will most likely mean nothing will happen, you’d hope some heads are going to roll here. Ideally, the program would be stopped the data destroyed, but that will never happen. It’s a universal truth in governance that a government’s power can only grow; it can never shrink. Once power is owned, it is never released. Government don’t shrink; they either grow, or topple.
One thing is clear though: while we were all worrying about data collected by Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, and others – we should have been focussing on the government all along. Just remember that if you buy an Xbox One, your next game console will have a microphone-equipped camera permanently peering into your living room, built by the first company to join the PRISM program.
It has been quoted to death the past 30 years, but we can now safely say that George Orwell was right – he was just off by 30 years. Welcome to the surveillance state.
“Hey Americans, welcome to the club. And here we were, afraid of Google!”
Are you going to retract that comment from the previous NSA article now Thom?
Uh, why? We all focussed on Google, even though it turns out everyone is involved, and much worse, the US government as well.
Turns out, they’re all bad, and that’s exactly what that statement conveys.
The difference is that the internet service providers are not just providing meta-data but the content as well: emails, photos, videos, file transfers, social network details as a live feed. In my opinion it’s far worse than what is being collected by Verizon, the meta-data without the content. Although I doubt any of the companies had too much of a say in things, yet I submit that Twitter’s omission is puzzling.
That said I’m not here to argue you with you. The article above is well written and addresses the necessary points, good work.
Edited 2013-06-07 12:03 UTC
It can’t be that hard for people with this kind of access to infrastructure to get each and every tweet even without Twitter’s cooperation.
Erm, I think that in English, the phrase means we were quite wrong to have entertained that previous fear as such, at least that’s the implication, more so than ‘a plague on all your/their houses’ which means they are all culpable, which is what you seem to want to express. I respect the fact that English is not your first language, and admire your highly proficient use of it. Had you said: “and we were afraid of just Google” or “and we were only afraid of Google” then (although they both have slightly different meanings again) you would have been nearer the mark. But you didn’t.
I say this as someone who has had to use other languages on a daily basis at different points in my life. I know it can be embarrassing to realise one is using a language incorrectly but that’s also how we learn – that is, not by simply making mistakes but also by acknowledging them.
Orf.
It was spot-on and well said… I really don’t see why anyone is calling for the retracting of a statement that is so damn… accurate.
You REALLY love teh google, huh Thom?
What you are doing is the classic “X is bad but Y is worse” argument that doesn’t change the fact that X IS BAD,mmmkay? Just because the US government, who unless your last name is Gates or Dell you aren’t gonna change, is doing something bad does NOT mean that I shouldn’t choose not to do business with a company that wants to give the NSA a run for its money.
But what amazes me is that with this it will give those in power 100% control of anybody that runs for any office, how is that? You can’t find anybody under 50 that doesn’t have some skeleton that if you had a recording of every single thing they had ever done online. Do they have a fetish that isn’t the red blooded big boob blonde? Have their ever gotten a clickjacker bug? because i can tell you that a LOT of those will send the PC to adult topsites, many of which have illegal underage images.
Basically what they have done is made the Ayn Rand comment about criminals 100% real, because with a record of everything that every person has done there won’t be a single person that can’t be ruined if someone with access so chose. I can just imagine what kind of monster they would be able to paint me as, considering how many infected PCs I’ve had to deal with.
But americans don’t have the money for universal healthcare.
“What luck for rulers that men do not think.” – Adolf Hitler
Really, the people in the USSR were better off.
Their bread and circuses were at least nutritious and intellectually enriching.
And they knew they could get their bread, unlike here. (And healthcare, too.)
Edited 2013-06-07 12:57 UTC
There were certain drawbacks to both soviet socialist and western capitalist systems. Yes, current free market economy and big corporations are very good at producing cheap entertainment for ignorant masses, unnecessary types of gadgets and services and, of course, on-demand custom luxury for 1% of “lucky people”. USSR’s system was rather focused on universal healthcare and total (or should I say totalitarian?) education for all (it says in Constitution as guaranteed citizen’s rights to be educated and healthy), everyone was forced going to elementary-to-high school and at least learning one profession. You’d have the opportunity to choose any University you like if you want to get high education. Of course you should work hard and know your stuff inside-out to be chosen out of many, but at least you’re not out of the picture if your parents are dirt poor and you came to Moscow or Leningrad or Novosibirsk from the very distant village.
Both capitalism and socialism are deeply flawed, in great part because of corrupted, greedy, overindulgent nature of human being, breeding and spreading corruption everywhere is what that type of humans do best. There will be no Utopian future with the society of universal peace and harmony until we keep that “devil” inside us alive and well. Something must be changed in our mentality and behavior, otherwise there will be no answer to prayers and cries of many suffering. Unfortunately, there are people, that believe humanity is TOTALLY ALRIGHT and it should be kept as it is currently – forever, securing the status Quo of those, who think of themselves as the modern-day aristocracy.
Oh well, I guess the saying is right – “People get the rulers they deserve”. Who am I to say anything against the all-agreeing society of cheap entertainment consumers, too afraid to look beyond Tomorrow and face the biggest challenges the life itself presents before our fragile modern civilization.
Which average worker was the first to own a car? Soviet or American? In which country and under which system average worker was able to sustain a wife and couple of children on his average wage?
Your flawed comparison forgets that the US had a few decades of headstart in the industrial revolution… (Russia at the beginning of XX century was quite underdeveloped, agrarian country, in a semi-colonial dependence)
You also forget about the bloody labour struggle in the US (some examples http://www.osnews.com/permalink?564752 …Ludlow very alike PoznaA" ’56; Lattimer even had also Polish workers)
And, more generally, the US style of development is unsustainable… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Human_welfare_and_ecological_foot…
You can’t possibly mean that. Think. The Soviet Union murdered tens of millions of it’s own citizens, maintained a vast complex of slave labour camps for most of the 20th century, suppressed all dissenting political activity, delivered shabby and poor living standards, prevented it’s citizens from travelling abroad or freely accessing foreign culture, news and information, and managed to devastate the environment. It also imposed all of that on many other countries in Europe through the use and threat of military force.
Western liberal democracy may be flawed and may have it’s own shabby moments but it delivers a quality of life and a degree of personal freedom that no other system comes close to.
I’ll grant you that (you could argue that the US has a similar body count of its own citizens, but it’s a stretch. That said, the US does murder its own citizens without due process).
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-pentagon-and-slave-labor-in-u-s-pr…
Check. (No source, but have you ever seen mainstream coverage of, say, the Green or Libertarian parties?)
Check.
I’ll partially grant you that one, but the corporatocracy in charge has done an excellent job of discouraging its citizens from doing so.
Check.
s/Europe/the Middle East
Except the US isn’t a democracy (and I’m not sure which definition of liberal you’re using), it’s a corporatocracy with a sham democracy.
This sort of silly ahistorial hysterical hyperbole helps no one understand modern politics or develop a sense of historical perspective. I assume it’s based on ignorance and lack of historical data. As a first step I suggest you ‘Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps’ by Anne Applebaum.
Just a few points.
It’s it estimated that the Soviet Union killed somewhere between 50 and 70 million of it’s own citizens in the 20th century. The biggest single killing episode was the deliberately engineered famine of the 1930s which was designed to break the back of peasant resistance to collectivisation in which around 10 million people starved to death. The best account of that I have across is ‘Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin’ by Timothy Snyder. Read it, it’s chilling.
As Anne Applebaum reveals, in her meticulously researched book, the Gulag was not primarily a mechanism of political repression but was actually a giant mechanism for forced labour. Up to a hundred million people were incarcerated as slave labourers in it’s system, often for decades, and deployed to open up the mineral wealth of the Siberian far east. Often whole professions (metallurgists, mining engineers, chemists, etc) were arrested and deported on mass to the Gulag when their skill sets were required. Tens of millions died of starvation and cold. The death toll in the Gulag was significantly larger than in the Nazis’ system of death and slave camps and the Soviet camp system was in operation for a much longer period.
Those Soviet citizens not in the Gulag were not only restricted from travelling abroad but through the mechanism of the internal passport prevented from travelling inside their own country.
The devastation of the environment in the Soviet Union was of a scale that has never been equalled, in part because all (ALL) independent or campaigning organisations were violently suppressed. Merely collecting a petition to protest against anything including pollution was illegal and would result in a prison sentence, as well as administrative punishment for one’s family (the banning of children going to university was common).
I could go on but I think you get my drift. I think it is an insult to the victims of the Soviet Union to casually belittle the scale and intensity of their suffering by making crass and vacuous comparisons between what they suffered and current problems in the US in order to make a cheap political point. Shameful.
We kill and enslave (prison) millions of black people every year for petty crimes. We kill and enslave millions of people worldwide either directly through our illegal military actions (iraq) or through our predatory economic policies.
The numbers aren’t as stark as with Russia (and I agree in general that the comparison is silly) but we do f things up on a pretty massive scale.
The USSR population at that time was estimated at a bit over 110 million (tops). So are you claiming with a straight face that the Soviet regime killed over 50% of its own people?
I’m not making the case that the purges and other murderous sprees of the Soviet regime were not insignificant, far from that. The communist regime visited plenty of misery on its own people. But you also seem to have your own agenda.
Also, if we’re going to bring genocide of people into this talk. Then percentage wise, the native Americans in what now is the USA sustained far worse culling. E.g. how many “redskins” can you see on the streets of any average American town nowadays. Modern day Americans should not be so quick to get on their soapboxes when it comes to indict other murderous regimes. We have a very very very checkered history ourselves.
Edited 2013-06-07 17:56 UTC
The 20th century if I remember correctly was a 100 years long.
You know how long a century is, congratulations?
The point was that you can kill a lot of people in that time period. At 7 million died in 1 year in 1933.
http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/stalin.htm
that is 10% of what he claimed to have died in the entire USSR’s existence.
The USSR did not last a whole century, more like 7 decades. And most of the purges and famine were carried out during Stalin’s tenure, which again was nowhere near one century in length. And that furthers my point: the horrific Ukranian genocide may have wiped out one quarter of the population. Just because something is horrific, it does not give license to not comprehend what 70 million deaths implies in the context of the overall Russian population at the time.
In any case, it is silly to go down the road of trying to create false dichotomies where citizens of one nation have some kind of higher moral standing because their own genocides “killed less people.” It completely dehumanizes the victims in all sides an turns them into fodder for cheap points.
Stalinist genocide(s) were crimes against humanity, and so were the whipping out of native populations in the creation of this country. Which is the point I was trying to make, before we go further down red herring road.
I know it didn’t last a hundred years. I was being trite.
Yes you are right.
But the whole point was that someone made a post being overly dramatic about the Modern USA.
I personally consider making up ridiculously huge numbers for effect, as to deflect possible criticism of the narrative of one’s own country, to be part of a overly dramatic approach as well.
The point is that comparing the USSR to the modern USA is ridiculous and you know it.
TBH this sort of shit I have come to expect of you.
ukraine had to 6-7 million murdered. That’s only a small portion of what the USSR.
You are right, I made a mistake. The 100 million figure is the total of all those killed by all communist governments in the 20th century and includes the 40 million killed by the Chinese ‘Great Leap Forward’ which itself was the single biggest episode of state killing in human history.
The figure for state killings in the Soviet Union is between 40 and 50 million.
Stalin once said: ‘Kill one man and it’s murder. Kill a million and it’s a statistic”
The point I was making still stands, which is that to try to compare the misdeeds of the US or any other liberal democracy to the misdeeds of the USSR is completely wrong and a terrible twisting of historical fact and ethical judgment.
I can’t believe I’m actually defending Tony Swash, but… you DO realize that he isn’t claiming it happened all at once, right?
…derp? How many Huguenots can you see on the streets of any average French town nowadays? How many Aztecs can you see on the streets of any average Mexican city nowadays? How many Iroquois can you see in downtown Toronto nowadays? And WTF does that have to do with anything?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence
Actually quite a lot. Latin American people are to a very large degree descended from native populations – that’s the “latino” look, you won’t really find people like that on the Iberian peninsula.
I read about this Anne Applebaum on wikipedia and it seems she was actually born in US and moved to Poland at some point. I wouldn’t read a book written by someone who is has all reasons to be biased on the subject.
I thinking it’s best to actually read a book before judging it.
Judging a history book based on where an author was born or has lived seems a particularly silly thing to do.
Personally I think her book is an exemplary example of historical writing, but feel free to try to change my mind – after you have read it
Yea, no thanks. I’ll read something written by the person who is more neutral. And person’s personal history does matter as it moulds them as they grow up.
The world governmental system is Anarchy. It’s a live-and-let-live sort of situation where Sovereignty is maintained through agreements and/or force.
The US governmental system is a Republic not a democracy. The people, limited in numbers by various “who can vote” schemes, choose a select elite who are entitled to vote on who becomes president.
“Democracy” and “Republic” are not mutually exclusive terms. Technically, in theory at least, the USA is a Democratic Republic.
Republic refers to the fact that the head of state is not a hereditary or arbitrarily imposed position. And the Democratic part implies an electoral process involving he citizenry.
For some reason a lot of people in this country don’t seem to understand even the basics of its structures. Which may explain its evolution…
Yes, the United States is a Republic. That is the same thing as saying that Canada is a Monarchy. Both statements are true, and neither says much of anything about whether or not each country is or isn’t a democracy…
You somehow manage to wordsmith that into sounding like a bad thing.
(hint, its not)…
Your from Toronto, care to describe how you “elect” a Prime Minister up there?
(hint – you don’t)
No, a Republic is not mutually exclusive from democracy but it’s not a pure democracy either now is it. I’d also clarify that, when more effort is put into limiting who can vote rather than educating and collecting votes from the maximum number of citizens.. maybe it’s worth taking a step back and having a look-see.
“Your from Toronto,”
Ssh, don’t tell. it’s a secret.
My understanding is that we vote for the local party representative. The representative of the party that wins the most regions becomes Prime Minister. Tell you what though, I’ll go do some reading to makes sure I have it right or correct my understanding if not.
We can also continue this when there is significant news of vote fixing in our elections.
Yup, had it correct. “Up here” we vote for the party we want to represent us rather than voting for a select elite who they may or may not vote for the party we wanted to represent us.
One correction for you also; we are not a monarchy. We are a parliamentary democracy. The royal family does not dictate policy down to the government but rather, the government decides policy without influence. In our case, the Governor General then rubber stamps whatever the parliament has decided.
That may be true, but it has nothing to do with electing a Prime Minister.
I hate to tell you but you do not elect your Prime Minister at all…
While there is a tradition that the seat is given to the party in power in the house of commons, ultimately it is the decision of the Governor General, who is Queen Elizabeth II’s viceroy. Prime Minister is an appointed position, and the monarchy can (and has) appointed people who are not even members of the House of Commons.
Canada is a Parliamentary Democracy. It is also a Monarchy. Just as the USA is a Representative Democracy that is also a Republic.
Also, I would say that the Monarchy having the ability to arbitrarily and unilaterally selected the head of government is a form of influence, or at the least a form of ace in the hole…
That is my point really…
In our case the Electoral College rubber stamps based on whatever the voters have decided (by regional delegation). Can a member of the electoral college go their own way? Yes. So can the Governor General… Its the same thing – I don’t understand why you would draw such a negative distinction between our methods and Canada’s – they are almost the same in practice, just not in form and function.
Edited 2013-06-10 20:28 UTC
Ditto everything you just said. Nice to have the opportunity to agree with you for once
Like US does with American soldiers in nonsense wars like Vietnam Irak and Afganistan
Guantanamo anyone? Or how about the concept of the domino effect that murder many foreign politicians like Salvador Allende
Like traveling to Cuba
Like still USA does on the rest of the world.
USA is no better or worst than the Soviet Union, all governments act the same, and those who don’t will if they face similar circumstances.
I will rather not take a side on this one since is a really complex matter, is not that simply as saying “Oh no the government is reading my tweets”.
Hmm, now that I read my own post it looks like I did choose a side^aEUR| interesting, I just became Switzerland.
Edited 2013-06-08 06:09 UTC
That’s mostly for foreign nationals so it’s ok because, you know, they’re foreigners and don’t deserve any freedom or rights. As for the Americans there? Well, they’re “obviously” terrorists so that’s ok too.
As bad as the U.S may be, and its plenty of bad, it’s nowhere near the USSR. Yet.
This is great example of false equivalence.
You mean, US soldiers kill US citizens in those countries?
And how many people are held in Guanatamo, as compared to Gulag?
Can you name more of these “many” politicians?
Great example. Forbidding citizens from visiting few countries considered hostile (which is, BTW, done by almost every country) as compared to almost total ban on visits abroad (less severe in case of socialist countries and almost total for capitalist countries).
A US soldier is also a US citizen, and when you send a soldier to die just because USA doesn’t like the political stance of some government I think is virtually the same as murder.
I don’t think is a matter of quantity but quality. As someone else pointed although Guantanamo prisoners are considered terrorist even prisoners have the right to a fair trial.
Jorge Eliecer Gaitan in Colombia and the many killed by the Operation Condor in Latin America which targeted every leftist activist, or the support of Ronald Reagan to central american rightist dictators that murdered hundreds of leftist activist.
Cuba has never been particularly hostile against north american tourists after the cold war.
As I said every county facing similar circumstances will do the same so we cannot call every other county better or worst.
Hostility towards Cuba was of course justified since they were about to point nuclear weapons against US but also remember that US supported Fidel Castro to overthrow their democratically elected president just because he wasn’t pro American.
And also the leftist leaders in the rest of Latin America were not particularly interested in supporting Russia or USA they just wanted fair labor conditions, the same rights that USA workers had won and enjoy. Yet the USA saw that as communism and targeted those counties as well.
Edited 2013-06-09 18:11 UTC
Just how many fair trials do you reckon were carried out in the whole Gulag system?
You, dear sir, have NO idea, what you’re blabbering about. Just some random western hippie nonsense.
Please, read the Applebaum book recommended by Tony Swash (I’m agreeing with Tony Swash on something, where and how do we mark the occasion?). If that’s a bit too neutral for you then a more devastating and personal touch is applied in “The Gulag Archipelago”.
Look, I know that this spying scandal (wow…I’m finally steering towards being on topic) is maddening and frivolous, and I agree with you. But this is NOWHERE near the scale of devastation applied in the Soviet Union or other stalinist regimes, for that matter.
I want to point out just this, because it is a really, really bad comparison in the context of the 20th century and since this is something no historian or the official US denies I think it should simply be known as a fact.
The US did indeed kill, murder and torture political activists at least from the 50s to 70s, which appears to be fall into the period you are talking about. There have been multiple operations, but the most famous and well documented one is COINTELPRO.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
Okay, I hope whatever you think about the US, I think it is good to know some history. Personally I come from a country that basically was the root of both world wars, so really not judging anyone.
Just a comment about this discussion in general. We could go on and on discussing which country is better or worse, but lets be honest there isn’t a country which has a lot of bad history and there also isn’t a country without many, many amazing people, just like I guess everyone knows someone that is pro-<something you consider bad> and you still know that person is a good, reputable person.
Also this doesn’t really get you anywhere. You can’t be like “uh, but it’s still worse there” and comparing usually doesn’t bring you far. It would mean if you are the best then you have nothing to do and that’s simply not true, because if you act like that you will eventually stall and then go backward and that’s the opposite direction you wanna go, because really, there isn’t a point where you have enough freedom, security, wealth to just sit down and do nothing and I think this discussion and this article shows that we are all far from where we wanna be.
Plus it did kill workers, somewhat earlier, seemingly as a sort of tolerated course of action…
(for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattimer_massacre or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre …this one even had a ~tank; generally, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Campaignbox_Coal_Wars & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:American_Labor_Conflicts )
58,000 Americans dead and probably over a million in the area (no way to know for sure, people are still dying thanks to the millions of pounds of mines and bombs dropped there) over the “non event” or false flag, whichever you prefer, that was the Gulf Of Tonkin incident.
You have the deaths under the Shah (put in by the USA) and another dozen or so dictators, you have COINTELPRO targeting minorities and those that didn’t follow the system, so yes the USSR killed more of their own people, the USA prefers to kill brown and yellow third world people.
Look up the “CIA and military interventions post WWII” map and look at how many countries have gotten a taste of that USA way of doing things, whether you think its better to kill your own people or kill other people? Well dead is dead, and while I doubt anybody will top Stalin on body counts just because you can’t beat the champ doesn’t make those deaths not count.
As an American I can say the country certainly doesn’t look anything like what I grew up in, you go to the flyover states and frankly it looks like the depression, boarded up buildings and closed down business districts, its really scary. It would be too easy to get someone like the crazy Austrian in power here, we even have our own replacement for the Jews, the illegals.
There does seem strangely little remembrance for the dead at US soil… (for example from the labour struggle http://www.osnews.com/permalink?564752 )
PS. And about “the country certainly doesn’t look anything like what I grew up in” …that’s still while consuming way more resources than anybody else ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Human_welfare_and_ecological_foot… ), what will it be once they dry up?
Edited 2013-06-15 00:03 UTC
The Soviet healthcare system was utterly abysmal. It was literally 100 years behind the best practice in Western countries. The Soviet medical staff were typically poorly trained, very poorly paid and unmotivated. Medical equipment was usually outdated and totally inadequate. Pharmaceuticals supplies were limited and frequently of poor quality.
Can you show me the source of that information or you just pulled it out of your ass? Medicine wasn’t as bad as you described it. Yes, it was technologically behind the capitalist countries, but there were many good specialists.
Also, I think they were actually more motivated to do their jobs than in capitalist countries. Why? Because doctors there had just above the average salary and not super-sky-high salary that doctors had(and still do) in the capitalist countries.
Therefore many of those USSR specialists were people who had genuine interest in the profession itself and not just the money they could get from it. There were even studies about this phenomenon. It turned out that people who do something purely for the money tend to produce poorer results than those who have enthusiasm for their field of work
[quote]”What luck for rulers that men do not think.” – Adolf Hitler[/quote]
ironic that Adolph Hitler pushed for universal healthcare.
Edited 2013-06-08 02:18 UTC
Surprised? . . . anyone?
Programs:
Prizm
Carnivore
Topsail
Basketball
the list goes on…
The phrase is TOTAL information awareness.
Edited 2013-06-07 12:51 UTC
There is a gap between collecting and being aware, and I always though this TOTAL thing make it wider, not smaller.
Anyway…
No wonder there is lobbying against user data protection laws to be put in place
This is going to act as a wake up call to governments and populations around the world, the worst thing the government could have hoped for.
My prediction is that we are going to start seeing the localisation of data servers and services in China, Russia, the EU and the Middle East. Underground and open movements may also develop services such as email and networking championing privacy and civil liberties.
One last note is the silence of all of this from the US government, most notably Obama who was responsible for its expansion. Even the NYT have opined that his administration no longer have any credibility.
No, it won’t. There’s plenty of cash to fill pockets with and plenty of pockets in need of filling — a handful of people will voice their dissatisfaction, but that’s all it’ll amount to.
China already have it in the pipeline, including their own cloud computing network. Wouldn’t be surprising at all if they knew what was going on.
Do you really think Middle Eastern countries are going to put up with this in the long run? No they won’t.
Regarding the EU, one can only hope they are not going to put up with their citizens freely being spied on overseas, but perhaps I’m being too optimistic.
Wake up call? About 100 Senators and 435 representatives didn’t see anything wrong with this.
Keep on dreaming. This is going to get much worse.
It’s all to keep you safe right! So you don’t get in the path of an exploding pressure cooker at a marathon, that kind of thing.
How and who is going to provide you access to those servers, and services from your house? AT&T? Verizon? Don’t you get it, once you turn on your computer and open a connection to the internet (browser,email,service,etc.), you are being tracked. So unless some pirate underground internet provider springs up in the us, operating outside of gov’t control….and good luck with that happening….Big Brother is watching you.
That’s what encryption is for. I’m pretty sure even IF, and it’s a huge if, NSA could break AES they couldn’t do it in real time or in a reasonable time for it to be useful.
I’ve known about prism for years. I assumed everyone else did too. Maybe it was just an unconfirmed rumor until now (but the name for it is the same) or something. I just assumed it was true, because it makes a lot of sense that the government would be tempted to do something like that.
Yeah, no. China wants alternatives so that they can have the same info on their subjects that the US does. And unlike the US, they actively remove information from these sites and imprison those who write things they don’t like. They are much heavier handed.
Edit:
I mean China is worse when it comes to dealing with its own citizens who are within its borders. Obviously, the US has used its intelligence gathered from programs like Echelon and Prism to identify subjects and locate them for drone strikes. That’s probably worse than being stuck in a Chinese prison. Although, I would think the criteria that get you on a drone list is much more serious than that which can land you in a Chinese prison. Maybe China sucks more, but they both still suck.
Edited 2013-06-07 13:42 UTC
Yeah, I heard about this years ago when I worked for a DoD contractor. I just assumed it was public knowledge.
Official documentation is the fine line between being a conspiracy nut and a respected journalist.
Bill Shooter of Bul,
I still remember headlines some 7 years ago when it was revealed that the NSA had it’s own datacenters right beside telephone carriers to conduct monitoring. We were told that the NSA only looked at the calls they felt were needed for the war on terror even though all calls technically ran through their data centers.
The legal case never got off the ground because Pres. Bush intervened. I guess the scope has just ballooned since then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_controver…
http://writ.corporate.findlaw.com/dean/20051230.html
http://www.npr.org/news/specials/nsawiretap/legality/
No, I’m not confusing it with that. I read about PRISM a while ago in some mainstream magazine. Atlantic? Economist? Something of that caliber.
Wired reported last year on the NSA’s construction of a monster data center. Can’t remember if the article mentions PRISM by name, but it does outline some of the practices that are currently being described in the news.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/
I seem to remember Ars Techncia articles talking about a similar program to PRISM that was going by the name “Total Information Awareness”. It made a stink in 2002 and was in theory shut down by congress in 2003 over privacy concerns. It seems like it got rebranded instead. Not entirely surprising.
“What’s most peculiar is that the companies involved in PRISM all deny being part of it. The Washington Post contacted the companies involved, and Facebook and Apple said they have no knowledge of the program, and thus are not involved with it – which is odd, because the official government documentation clearly mentioned them.”
Actually, assuming all of this is true it shouldn’t be peculiar at all. It’s very likely they’ve all been ordered to remain silent on the matter. It doesn’t make it any less wrong, but it does put them in a complex situation. Anyone who violates the gag order would likely face imprisonment, even if only confirming the program to reporters.
Or even, those companies told to put forward people who legitimately knew nothing, when the media came knocking.
Agreed, and this was always going to leak out. What’s surprising about this is that it took 5 years to leak to the public despite so many companies being involved. You do wonder how many employees at Apple/Google/Facebook are involved and aware of it. Perhaps it just highlights once again American culture, how seriously employees take confidentiality agreements over there.
And it’s also not certain that they are *unwilling* participants.
Read the leaked court order…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jun/06/verizon-tel…
If you parse the legalese what it basically says that acknowledging that you even know this agreement exists to anyone outside of the participants in the court order (the NSA and the FBI) is a breach of the court order.
In other words any company complying with this order is bound by law to say that they are not aware of it. Even admitting to the public that the order exists is breaching it…
What is the alternative explanation to these companies lying? That they’ve been hacked by the US government for the past 6 years without any of the noticing? Hmm, interestingly according to the BBC – Twitter were invited to join Prism last year but they said no.
Also if you look at the denial statements, they are more or less the same from many of the companies giving the impression this may all be coordinated. It’s a bunch of waffle. Not even one of the companies has threatened legal action to the Guardian, Washington Post or to anyone else for tarnishing their image.
That said other theories are appearing:
http://www.businessinsider.com/israelis-bugged-the-us-for-the-nsa-2…
Edited 2013-06-08 08:46 UTC
I like the part where the FBI complains about the shitty leads from NSA. It pretty much means that all this spying and spending of tax-payers money yields no useful results.
Well, at least not useful for what they’re supposed to be useful for…
It is okay until it’s used to protect citizens against terrorism.
BUT…
If it is used for any other purpose like the Echelon was…
Remember Airbus versus Boing case….
So, if you are evolved in ANY commercial bid against a major US-related company: use strong encryption with even your own algo !
Note that this comment has probably been recorded, so don’t vote for it ! :->
Oh, yeah invent you’re own encryption algo. That’s a bright idea. Very subtle …
MOLE ALERT!!!
…where are all the cyber warriors willing to do something about this? Why doesn’t someone roll up a bundle of services like e.g. e-mail + social media + calendars + contacts, with the premise that everything that can be encrypted will be encrypted, as few logs will be kept at all times as the law allows and where privacy is king?
I wouldn’t mind paying a few euros a month for such and I’m quite sure such an approach would garner some interest in the tech-crowd. Besides, I just don’t think the EU will do anything meaningful about this situation or they’ll try something half-assed and try to spy on people themselves.
They’re probably afraid of being targeted by the U.S. government… seriously, Aaron Swartz was the type of person who fought against this sort of thing, and look where he’s at now.
I think I would prefer to just use a service located in another country. It is clear that as long as this has been going on, companies are remaining truly silent. This, America, is just another reason why we’re losing jobs left and right to countries like Mexico, China and India. I would not be surprised if even more U.S. online/tech companies either shut down or pack up and move away after this. No one will even *want* to do business in this country.
Many would be looking for alternative email providers right after this, located outside of the US and deleting all their Facebook photos and so forth (though your data will probably be held by them forever regardless).
It’s not about having something to hide but about the principle of having your life logged in someone’s computer. There isn’t a bad chance that the information will either be abused, hacked or leaked in the future.
An email provider company located somewhere like Hong Kong with IMAP access for $5 or a month, maybe also packaging it together with a VPN service, or similar could make a heck of a lot of money.
Well, I’m switching over to Runbox ( http://www.runbox.com/ ) myself: they’re cheap, they seemingly have good reputation, Norway does, indeed, have some rather sane privacy laws there and they do provide IMAPS et. al. support. Too bad they ain’t got no CalDav – or CardDav – support.
The only thing actually effective “about this” would be to remove many entities being “used” for this purpose. It starts with ISPs recording all the bytes in and out your computer, and your mobile provider storing where you are, whom you call, who calls you, and what’s been talked about. Then all the apps, providing data to those running the services you’re using. The same for the web. Finally the several organs of investigation. It’s not just about the NSA. Investigation services are (partially) interconnected, some tighter, some more loose, so some information flow can be maintained. Think about IRS, state prosecution, police, municipal administration, depending on your country. And things “happening on the Internet” are never really “closed regarding a country”, so foreign parties can also participate.
It all starts with users, with their ability (and will!) to provide information. How can anyone posting stuff on “Facebook” still have the idea in mind that “nobody will know”?
So my conclusion is: In order to stop the spying, stop the spies from doing what they do, and stop their objects from happily helping them! This means: Remove their infrastructures, disturb their operations, cause trouble on their side.
Nobody will be going to do this. In many juristictions this is considered a severe crime, punishable with jail time. It’s simply dangerous and somehow suicidal to challenge any state or authority. They will justify their existence and defend theirselves at all costs.
First, it will have to be a “registered business” so people start recognizing it seriously. It will of course have to cost money (because “if it’s for free, it’s shit”). This creates several dependencies to the state (which runs the spying), and it will probably not officially allow a company to act against the state’s goals.
Alternatives do exist. They are commonly not in use. Only “few people” know about encryption and how to integrate it into everyday tasks. As long as I own a “smartphone”, can I really complain about being spied at? Remember that this is a nice “side effect” (one could claim: purpose) of such devices! (Oh, and the same applies to Internet use.”)
The common mentality of “I’ve got nothing to hide” and “I don’t care” (most important “argument”!), plus the increasing contribution to data collection is the problem why people are not aware of what’s happening to them.
Imagine big news: “Today, data of every US citizen has been leaked from the IRS databases and downloaded several thousand times from the Internet. Also mail contents, online banking passwords and phone conversations are currently freely available of all US citizens on the web.”
Not going to happen.
In Germany there was recently a discussion about a law that should force those who run “security-critical IT” to provide information when a security breach has appeared. Inform who? The victims? No, of course not. Who then? Some arbitrary state authority full of clerks with no clue what they are “administrating”?
Just imagine what would happen if companies and governmental installations would really have to care for data protection, because if they would not, it would always be big news! People would tend to get aware and ask questions. Unpleasant questions. “What are they doing with my personal data? Why do they make money by selling my data to companies to run targeted advertising at me? Why can’t I decide about what will happen to my data?”
Another example from Germany: The police has obtained lots of data from people attending a (legal!) demonstration. A high court has ruled that this has been illegal. Consequences? None.
Common argument: “It always happens to the others. It doesn’t happen to me. I have no virus.” Things need to “happen visibly to the masses” to get any attention, which is a requirement for developing own thoughts and drawing conclusions. We’re still far away from that process.
It’s not primarily a question of money. And keep in mind that money will also add “dependencies” (as described above).
Additionally, security of those services would have to be tested intensively. I’m not just talking about “in-house testing”, but on “all levels”. I’m sure you get the idea: The best encryption is useless when the ISP or the mobile carrier already stores the raw data beforehand. Keeping their customers’ data safe (and secret) is something companies claim, but often fail to deliver. The history has proven this fact.
Just imagine hacking (in a broad sense) would be legal. Companies offering secure solutions would be interested in actually delivering secure products, so they would employ good programmers and do proper testing. Today’s solution? Run advertisements, put some money here and there (to obtain dubious “certifications” totally unrelated to reality) and hope that nothing bad will happen. And if it does, try to ignore it or blame someone else. This is business as usual. And HR departments, accounting, and management is so much more important than skilled and loyal professionals developing good software and hardware solutions, right?
They already do, with the ISPs acting in hurrying obedience. Many datacenters will be built to process and store data. Whole businesses offer “solutions” to the states. Their executives are interconnected with the governments, so it’s a “win-win situation” for everyone: “You make the laws that say our spy software is legal, and we offer you the data you want.”
The constant dumbing-down of people in the EU will benefit those who plan and execute surveillance. Counter-measures will be fought and declared illegal. People in general won’t care. They are made to believe they live in a “democratic and free society with a competitive free market”, and anyone questioning this is a “bad person” and will be punished – because this is what those “terrorists” (everyone who’s against the governmental doctrine) deserve. People are lazy, and they fear the force and violence of the state, so they do not try to “deviate” and unleash that force.
For companies, it’s like playing a game. The game has rules. Those rules are arbitrarily constructed. They do not need to be in relation to reality, logic or rationality. As long as you play according to the rules, you might become rich, or at least you will not be harmed. If you don’t obey the rules, you’re out.
So I claim that any business claiming to provide a secure solution to communication with no ability of others to spy at, will be out of business soon. They probably won’t even find investors, because those who have money can always subject to governmental actions – and they’ve got “so much more stuff” to lose!
Allow me a final statement. I’m saying this for decades already: Everything that is technically possible will be done, no matter if the public will notice it. And data that has been obtained one time will not be deleted. Nobody deletes anything.
I’m expecting this notice soon: This text has been recorded and will be submitted to state security. Unperson! Open your door and be ready to be taken into custody. Your IT equipment will be examined and destroyed by clueless clerks. Then your face will be shown on TV so honest goodpeople can see how you asshole hackers look like who try to harm the state!!!
Pfh. Not logging everything, encrypting everything in a way that you can’t decrypt it and not voluntarily giving out all the information you can already goes a long way.
And? There’s plenty of countries that do not have laws that require you to divulge everything you’ve got on your servers.
You only seem to believe that it’s not worth doing anything unless you can fix *everything* at once, something that I disagree with.
It’s actually a very good start if you start this on your side (client side). Paying attention to what programs you use and what “data hygiene” you can exercise is important, and I would even say basic IT knowledge is mandatory. Sadly, in our society which can be characterized by “you don’t need to know shit about what you’re participating on” this is already “too much” for average users. Maybe a future “elite” of users will have some abilities to avoid being victims of governmental spying (to some degree), but for the masses, I don’t see this coming.
And? There’s plenty of countries that do not have laws that require you to divulge everything you’ve got on your servers. [/q]
That’s fully correct, but as I said, the Internet does not obey national borders. You need to have a whole “second Internet” (with all the encryption, privacy and security) that won’t have any compromized elements in it. Creating and maintaining such a massive structure is something I don’t see coming soon.
People usually do things that pay. And as soon as money is involved, obligations tend to increase. That is the big danger of sacrificing the privacy of a service when financial deprivations are knocking at the door.
Then I assume I did not express properly. English is not my native language. In fact, every single step is important and will add “sticks and stones” to those who are used to obtain all the data they want in an easy manner (because they are provided by the objects of the spying). Encrypting e-mail is a good start. Securing web sessions is also useful. The more complicated it gets for spies to obtain the information they want (which is, “all the information”), the better. Please reconsider my statements with this opinion.
No. Most of the interesting data resides on servers, not clients. Think of e.g. e-mail: all the interesting stuff is there on the servers and accessible and whatever client you choose won’t change that fact and as such the protection of your e-mail secrets and privacy is placed on the shoulders of the entity running the servers. Web browsers are an even better example of this: the client only handles input/output, the servers handle all the raw stuff, and no matter which client you choose Facebook or whatever can still access all your stuff.
The protection starts from servers.
Edited 2013-06-07 21:26 UTC
Of course servers offer a more centralized access to data, but it is basically generated on the client’s side. So if the access to the client is easier, you trade the centralization for distribution, and maybe that’s cheaper. You don’t need any new regulation to access stuff on servers when you can easily access the “buffered” data from the ISP in “clean plaintext”.
If’t usually easier to crack into a (moderately secured) server to steal user data (such as usernames and passwords) than to attack all the users, simply due to the “number of parts involved”, but the equation needs to take into account that client systems are in many cases much less secured than servers, and those who run them do not care. “If the PC says I have to enter my name and credit card number, I will have to enter my name and credit card number, because the PC knows what it does.”
Here’s a comparison from reality: There are cash terminals that read your card, you enter your PIN, the transaction is being processed by the bank to pay the stuff you have just bought. Some specific models are vulnerable to an attack vector which allows reading the card data (the data stripe content) and the PIN you entered via network. No fiddling with the device itself is needed. Deploy that attack on a big supermarket. It’s easier to get all this data delivererd by the individual devices via network than to attack one of the transaction servers involved.
Fully correct. By using any service, being paid or “for free”, you need to trust the company running that service to keep their systems clean and not hand data to whatever governmental agency might ask for it. However, this is subject to law.
You usually have the situation that there is some basic law, a constitution or something comparable which states that your personal mail is secret. Then there are other laws at lower level that discuss exceptions. And finally, everything can be accumulated under the umbrella “exception” and therefore be fully legal, even when it invalidates your citizen’s right stating that your mail is secret.
Browsers have caches that can be exploited. Some operating systems have sufficient vulnerabilities to avoid any further encryption on the service’s server, and you get all the precious details from within the web browser. Even “lower level” down, key loggers can record anything, and means of web diagnostics can be used to record even mouse movements (even if the browser is minimized). Again, this is an argument for “distribution vs. centralisation”, and it depends on what you want to spy at, and at what “costs”.
With the increasing use of JavaScript in web pages, along with “rich content” and interactivity, getting data from the browsers becomes more complicated, so accessing the “compressed results” from the servers is much more appealing. Insecure servers or company guidelines not valuing their users’ privacy are a big threat.
Those who run the servers are not primarily interested protecting them because it won’t add a financial benefit. And as long as the information on its way to the server can be easily wiretapped, securing the servers (and the services as a whole) against spying won’t help much.
Protection has to start in the users’ heads.
When they (1st) demand protection of their privacy and (2nd) become able to verify (!) the claims of the service providers, those will actually start acting.
Users with a more advanced skillset will of course run their own mail and web servers, avoid “data collectors” such as “Facebook”, pay attention to what they enter where, and be more conscious about all the steps involved in their communication habits. This sadly is nothing a comany (or, one company) can offer as a “ready-made solution” at the moment.
This is the only way to prevent a “two classes society” regarding information privacy and security. As long as people don’t care, nothing will happen. But the more steps they include to make it harder for dubious agencies to spy at whatever they do, and the more they demand service provider to value their privacy, the better the situation will become.
Sometimes I tend to imagine that the opposite approach could also work: What would happen if massive security breachers would happen and personal and financial data of politicians, high level executives and self-proclaimed “professionals” and “experts” would visibly leak to the public, together with secret contracts and calculations? When those who can actually decide about the course would become victims of spying, being personally exposed and identifyable? Would that change something? The mentality of “this doesn’t happen to me, it always happens to the others” would need to change to a more reasonable “it could also happen to me, so I need to take actions to prevent it”…
Okay, call me a pessimist, but I’m long enough in IT security research that I don’t trust those microchips any further than I can throw them.
This may not have been confirmed public knowledge before but everyone I know always assumed everything was being monitored without warrants. Warrants just get in the way. As the saying goes: Who watches the watchers?
I obviously think that total spying is not a bad thing. After all, this is for ours security. For yours and mine. Someone who does not cross the rules and laws will not be harmed by this spying. Only the criminals will. So be it.
Most of the outdoors murders in Israel, where I live, are now investigated based on the network of webcams that cover most of rural public areas. The result is obvious ^aEUR” drastic decline in number of outdoors crimes.
Spying to the right purposes is good. Public security is the right purpose ^aEUR” hence it justifies intrusion into personal space.
One of the reason for Microsoft buying Skype was that we were unable to hack Skype’s protocol. (At that time I was working in the group that implemented Network protocol parsers). Now we have the protocol description. Is it bad? Hell, no. The data collected by our survelliance is used against criminals and terrorists, not against ordinary users.
You freak me out.
Sorry.
Until the average person is deemed a criminal, at which point the police state has set in.
We already see large corporations lobbying to pass laws that turn pretty much everyone into criminals – why would you expect that not to continue. Now that we have “the technology in place” to prove that people are doing things that are against the law, I think it’s just a matter of time before we declare martial law on U.S. citizens and start locking them away in camps.
Well, I tend to disagree with you. At least until such laws are actually passed. Which, again, may not be a bad thing, since there are some currently legal activities which, to my opinion, should be punished by law.
And that’s the problem – the opinion of a few against the opinion of the many.
As I’ve said before – this is going to eventually lead to a revolution – a revolution that our government already sees coming and is trying their hardest to circumvent by spying on everyone and locking more and more people away in prisons for non-violent crimes, revealing their secrets, chilling free speech, and generally pandering to the rich and powerful corporations and financial institutions that run them.
You’re just a cog in their game, congrats.
“LAPD Revises Terror Policy but Still Labels Photographers as Potential Terrorists”
It’s the McCarthyism of the new age.
http://www.copblock.org/20499/lapd-revises-terror-policy-but-still-…
You’re saying it in such way that others may think it’s something bad…
“They wait, all of them from high to low, and they prophesy crisis, which is to say they pray for it. They know the power of their weapon, and our fear of it, and even a small crisis is better than none. But what they especially dream of is a profound crisis, that anguished crisis of the spirit which tears us to pieces every thirty or forty years, one that will soften our hearts to the tall fierce strangers who stand outside the door and cry salvation. They are certain the door will open; they have no doubts at all that a time will come when the prevalence of devils will persuade us that freedom is best defended by surrendering it altogether.
And perhaps they are right. Perhaps we don’t like freedom any more. Perhaps we have listened so long to the concatenation from the swamp that all unknowingly we have passed the point of no return, and now drift closer and closer to the heart of that thick, nadiral stupor in which men no longer want to be free. The midnight air stutters with the magic word, and men with pinched white faces steal through the street. They have long memories and the shortest tempers you ever saw, and they fondle guns instead of girls. Yet I do not dread them as much as I fear the others ^aEUR“ the silent ones, the contented, the alienated, the frightened, the acquiescent.”
– Dalton Trumbo, The Time of the Toad
It is incredible how naive people can be (you) and how totally people can forget history (you) and why certain protections were created in the first place (you).
Power *will* be abused. The US constitution specifically prohibits illegal search and seizure because it is a huge opportunity for government abuses. The authors knew this because it was written in a time when this was rampant.
Sometimes when govt has too much power they will use it against their own citizens, then how will you like your lower crime rates? You have to accept that short term minor safety is not worth the total loss of govt oversight because that can easily result in a much worse reduction in your safety.
I still think that lower crime rates now are much more important than theoretical possibility that some time in a distant future someone in the government will use this power to his own good.
After all, he is also watched, just like anyone else.
LOL, so please give me all your personal info, e-mails, texts, and allow me to listen to your phone conversations. I personally consider my safety more important than your privacy, so you should be OK with that, right?
If you are one of the G-men related to the spying on the citizens, you should already have access to all my personal data. If you don’t, probably either you don’t work for the government or you aren’t qualified enough. That’s the point of the article, isn’t it?
As luck has it, my better half calls me “g-man” because I tend to find the spot quite often. Now, hand over your privacy to me, thanks.
If you’re qualified, as your better half says, you should already have all my data.
zhee goot Americans are not so goot vith zhee humor apparently…
How will there be lower crime rates,well actually less people in jail when narco officers get a bonus for every arrest they make? It’s a full blown industry, prisons and everything around it.Ever seen a prison buisiness fair where all goods that directly and or in directly have some relation with the prison buisiness?
Big question is why does the government even care about doing this? is it just to protect us from stupid terrorists that are not technology savvy enough to hide their messages and intentions?
In case you didn’t notice, “terrorist” is the term that is applied to anyone that the U.S. government doesn’t like. That also means citizens of the U.S. themselves.
Tech savvy people are among the top of the U.S. “cyberterrorism” watch list, trust me.
Because they are idiot bureaucrats and collectively their behavior is irrational, impulsive, and short sighted.
Believe it or not most real criminals/terrorists are pretty thick.
Chris Morris is a satirist.
http://www.timeout.com/london/film/chris-morris-and-the-writers-of-…
http://boingboing.net/2010/11/04/fourlions.html
The idea of a master criminal/terroris is really just something Hollywood made up.
Edited 2013-06-07 18:24 UTC
Between Zohan and The Dictator, hasn’t this been covered already?
But anything from Morris is a lot funnier.
Can’t….. tthype…. llaughinhg too hbard…!!!
I can almost see how that would translate into a perfect comedy scene. Most likely the boat would be tied to a dock, and probably on just one side… so it sinks, hits the end of the ropes, and tips on its side, spilling out the explosives. With those gone, the boat would then shoot back up to the surface. So now I have this mental image of a bunch of guys peering down into the water right before the boat re-surfaces, knocking them all off the dock… or just landing on them, Loony Tunes-style.
Which PM? If it was Chretien, then in all fairness even Dubya couldn’t remember his name:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KwEDgpSWxo
Yep. I remember reading a line years back along the lines of “typically, people don’t turn to a life of crime because Bell Labs has a hiring freeze.” I’ve recently discovered Brian Krebs’ site (krebsonsecurity.com) and there are some fantastic examples. Like the thief/ves who incorrectly installed an “ATM skimming” device, so it came off in the hands of the first person who used the ATM… who drove off with it (as I understand it, the devices typically cost in the $2-5k range). Or the competing Russian pharma spammers who both tried to pay off corrupt officials to have the others arrested, essentially getting themselves into a bidding war.
Or the would-be suicide bomber in Russia, who used a cell phone for a detonator… and then had her bomb detonate early, because she forgot to turn the phone off and it received a spam SMS from the mobile carrier:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/killer-text-a-russian-suicide-bo…
Or the owner of a bulletproof hosting company who threw a temper tantrum on a Spamhaus-related mailing list because his IP ranges had been listed… claiming that the Spamhaus report didn’t have enough details, despite containing both the domains & the IPs. Then he proceeded to repeatedly claim that he’d taken down sites that were still up. Turns out the guy was ALSO notorious from having peddled “DDoS protection” services on IRC years earlier – which was basically a protection racket where anyone who didn’t purchase the service would coincidentally suffer a DDoS shortly after. Some of the responses on the thread were beautiful, took me back to the good ‘ol days of Usenet.
http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2011-January/030760.html
http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2011-January/030797.html
http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2011-January/030836.html
Well, I dunno. Some smart criminals came up with this surveillance thing where you monitor the population for “their own good”.
I thought that there was constitutional protection against overly-broad laws. The problem with such laws is that they can be applied arbitrarily. They might tell us that we have nothing to worry about because they are only targeting another group. If the law is broad enough so that they can choose any group, we have a problem.
If it was for the citizens’ own good, why did they deny it in the first place? The fact that they are now revealing the program to the public means no one can overturn the decision and all the pieces are in place. Seriously, if that’s the case, isn’t it something against the constitution?
Anyway, I think it’s time to move our information/data off the surveillance state.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XazLD5MHW0s
For me, there is nothing new, of course the NSA is monitoring everything, of course, for any intelligence agency the huge amount of personal information stored by Google, Facebook and others is too tempting to resist.
It is not probably the worst evil.
Another really worrying part is the employees of these companies, some of them have nearly unlimited access to that information.
History of espionage is full of stories about simple employees bribed, threatened or ‘convinced’ to provide information to all sort of questionable organizations and governments.
I hope that all the people working at FaceBook have no privacy for the FBI. Actually, they don’t deserve any for what they are doing.
Tapping these services/providers is a great way to stop terrorrists…. using them, I mean, they don’t even use Facebook or iCloud in movies. Maybe Google Calendar to plan their next attack?
Sure they only use it to stop terrorists, but you can use it to stop peadophiles too and we all want to protect our kids.
But wait, some people don’t pay all their taxes, we can trace them and then YOU have to pay less tax. We all want to pay less tax.
Even better, we can also find thieves who put pictures of stolen wares on Facebook. We don’t want people stealing our stuff. Go ahead and use the info for that too.
Or exchange the data with other countries, we can help each other out and stop bad guys worldwide.
In the end all these evil people will start avoiding these services and us, the good guys, will be on 24/7 supervision. No jokes about drugs, killing the president or insulting certain people, because then you have to explain yourself.
When I was young some kids always got angry and said they’d kill or beat up the teacher. This never happened of course. Now they say this on Twitter and it still doesn’t happen, but they still get arrested.
My point really is they say they’ll use it for one thing only, but in time they’ll keep expanding it. How can anyone say no to this. Who would protect dirty men who are after our kids, people who avoid taxes, thieves.
or stopping any crime.
However, the possibilities for industrial espionage and economic/stock manipulation are fantastic. Someone must have made, or are making, a mint off this…
What can I say? Welcome to the United Surveillance States of America. This news is mindblowingly disturbing in every way imaginable. With Google Talk being phased out and not too many XMPP services that I’ve found in the U.S. (out of interest of connection performance), this news has made it that much easier to decide that the XMPP service I choose will probably not be located in the United States.
it’s late, the comedy shows are going to be on TV soon. Why bother me with irrelevant information?
NSA has from things I have read, all data from all digital and analogue transmission sources from all around the world, all saved and all able to be visually analyzed at a seconds notice. The technology is glorious.
The “reporters” had to throw a fit because the AP and others were getting investigated, that news broke a week or so ago if you read the wires. Expect your normal internet broadcasts to go back to bread and circuses pretty soon.
When you are a pawn in a chessboard, or a battery to be used up and thrown away, why care about this nonsense. it’s all hopeless, it’s all by design.
there is no double edged sword with the internet, it is a surveillance tool plain and simple, and in terms of civilization in general the candle is burning on both ends from what I can see. You have logic and reason on one side, and you have a zoo on the other. logic and reason shouldn’t be the zoo keeper, and the animals in the zoo shouldn’t be let out of the cage. the cage of their own “minds”.
it’s so sick and completely common sense this has been going on for decades. haha, tell me when something I care about happens. Like when Ubuntu Phone OS becomes stable, or when I can get glass which works with my glasses.
good day.
Hi,
Deep in an underground basement in Arizona, there’s a nerdy little guy who only sleeps for 1 hour each day. It’s his job to read through all of the data collected by the NSA. People wonder how he manages to read all of it; but the answer is simple – he can read really fast.
Of course I’m joking. The point is that it doesn’t matter how much data they collect. What matters is how much of that data they can actually process.
– Brendan
I wonder how safe are those collected data? Maybe those Chinese hackers are collecting data not directly from google, facebook or other services, but from this “super hyper safe” government data centres
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Hi to all.
The discussion here is funny, americans talking about the ussr was never a highlight.
Now I am dutch and my wife is a former refugee from the czechoslovakian republic. We have compared how our childhood was. You may wonder, it was not that different nor was it bad on both sides.
Politicians be it east or west, rightwing or leftwing are all liars, they practise that for a living. And Thom is right governments will always try to increase their power.
If history has taught us something, then it is that when poor gets poorer and rich gets richer we get a war, revolution or something alike. All other symptoms like PRISM are a part of this pendulum.
We all see it happening but are unable to stop it.
You might ask if the human race is really “developed” or still nothing more than an anthill where the individual does not count.
I wonder if these revelations have any effect on the future of “The Cloud”?
I wouldn’t exactly classify any of this as revelations. Maybe if you’re truly naive or have your head buried thoroughly in the sand. Regarding your question, the question now becomes do you want to willingly hand your data over via “the cloud” or do you still prefer companies do it behind your back? The cloud is great and more effecient as it streamlines this process.