The point is that all of you morons voting like robots along party lines are destroying my country, from the inside, one fucking vote at a time. And it is sad. And it is painful. And it is almost unbearable to watch. You are destroying what this country is supposed to be about and turning it into something our children will have to suffer with.
Terrorists won. You morons saw to it. Our way of life is, in many ways, unrecognizable from what it was before 9/11.
When are you going to understand that a conservative Libertarian (as opposed to extreme and nearly anarchist) approach is the only path to recovery? Ultra limited government. They are OUR servants, we are not their property. They need to get the fuck out of our lives, homes, businesses, bedrooms, schools and more.
Time to take it back. Peacefully. Vote with intelligence. Email. Write letters. Make calls. Let them know who they work for. Reboot the system.
Obama is about the most dangerous thing that could have happened to your government. Why?
In most of the world outside from the US, after Bush's second term, you simply couldn't defend him. My family tends to be very pro USA (blindly), but with Bush, it got to the point that it was not "politically correct" any more to defend him, just about anybody criticized him.
But then comes Obama, likable and with a promise to make things better, everybody likes him, and in between promises and small steps forwards, he/his goverment/others/whoever slip in huge blows to human rights, privacy and freedom.
In my eyes, Obama is Bush with better PR.
And why is this dangerous, because with bush at least most people knew they wanted better, and now for most, this is good enough or even good, and it's not.
The result was actually something coming very close to an outright fascism. I know that's one of those words people throw around a lot, but we were coming close to that definition with the level of power the federal government was wielding domestically, and how much power they also gave back to private sectors, doing things like prosecuting citizens criminally for tort offenses.
So, no, Bush !== Obama. Obama is actually playing right out of the traditional democrat handbook, but the world has changed, and the New Democrat (TM) is an individual that wants the social freedoms traditional progressives offered without the nanny-state. Obama's losing the NDs in droves.
Libertarians keep trying to Co-opt this group, but it's not going to happen. We have a two-party state, and it's statistically infeasible to have anything but. I'd rather morph the group that didn't seat Bush into what I want than try to bootstrap a whole new party. Party politics is far too entrenched in this country for anything else to happen.
If Americans are just now getting upset about this, it's ultimately our own fault, as this was the fairly logically expected result of the Patriot Act, and we haven't really done enough to get rid of it. The 'right' response would have been to vote out every single Senator and House Representative that voted for such an egregious overstep on our liberties, but in reality, that ignores a whole slew of other interests those politicians may have supported.
If, for example, I am gun-toting civil rights advocate, a Senator that votes against an assault weapons ban comes out slightly ahead, even if that same Senator also voted for the Patriot Act.
If I'm a gay man, looking for federal recognition of marriage, I'm in the same boat. Someone who votes for gay marriage, but also against privacy, comes out ahead.
The net, basically, is that privacy is nobody's 'hot-button' issue because even while somebody can espouse the inherent ignorance of the "If you have nothing to hide..." argument, we, for the most part, don't have anything to hide. So while we don't acquiesce to these intrusions of privacy, we let them fall by the wayside in the wake of more important issues.
The real bitch of the matter, of course, is that Republicans are almost certainly going to scream 'outrage' to this new knowledge, even though it was Bush's policies that implemented their capability. Meanwhile, democrats will likely 'defend Obama' because it would otherwise reflect negatively on the party to not do so. In sort, it's political ammunition. The outrage we see won't even be universal. You'll probably see exceptions on either side (Lindsay Graham, Republican from South Carolina has already said this information "doesn't bother" him), and ultimately, if the 'blame' can be assigned in such a way that it advances someone's political agenda, that's what'll happen.
We need a simple and limited government that remains out of our lives in nearly every imaginable way. Every human being on this planet is born free. We created these monstrous governmental systems that, effectively, enslave us in one way or another.
I can't go for a swim in my local lake. My government will not allow it. I can easily swim 1500 meters or more. Swim every day. Yet, if I so much as stick my FOOT in the lake they'll warn me that this is not allowed.
Los Angeles County has a "no water contact" policy. I've had a lifeguard in a power boat rush over to me while walking with my children along the shore in six inches of water to tell us we could not get our feet wet. If I did try to go for a swim I could be arrested and fined. Really? Yes, really. And this is just one example.
I think this is the issue in a nutshell. Partisanship. Even people who do not like the Demopublicans... are 'partisan'. I know it was probably not intended, but your post provides illustration of the issue by way of example. I'd wager you, like the average Democrat and Republican, would vote for whoever towed your party line. And this vote comes regardless of whether or not the party line is good for the US. If a given policy is good for the US, then great! But this is not a necessity to gain your support... it is incidental.
The important thing for Partisans is not continuous improvement, but continuous compliance. It's far more important to a Partisan that we do things 'their way', than it is for us to improve ourselves.
We need to move away from Partisanship toward an environment where each issue is judged on its merits. Without regard to preconceived grand ideas that underlie some Party's philosophy on the 'right way to do things'. This is the only way we will get the continuous improvement we are looking for. By abandoning the, sort of, 'sacred cow', ideas that have gripped the nation's political discourse on every front.
I am a true independent in the full sense of the word.
To be fair, our system is based on political parties. If these were abolished and politicians had to run without party affiliation then one could vote outside clans.
I want an intellectually honest limited government that is fiscally conservative and socially, well, gets the fuck out of our lives. As an atheist it pains me to sometimes have to vote for uber-religious Republicans. Sometimes I have to choose between social and fiscal policies. Obama promised he would deal with all of it, and here we are we have wasted four years and are about to waste four more.
None of the extreme's are good. Extreme left, right and yes, extreme Libertarians are deranged and delusional lunatics who ought to be nowhere near our government. As an example, I love Ron Paul but some of his foreign policy ideas were nutty. I still think we need to quickly shift into something that is closer to a moderate Libertarian concept.
Beyond that, we need major structural changes in order to have a shot at recovering in FIFTY YEARS. Yes folks, do the math, recovery will take twenty five to fifty years. We've done a lot of damage to our country --all from the inside. Unions, entitlement programs, patents, tax code, Obamacare, IRS, Patriot act, NSA, EDUCATION, spending, political whore politicians, ignorant voters, budgets, OSHA, etc.
1) Lobbyists 2) Tort 3) The Federal Reserve / federal banker insider system
The lobbyists are powerful because of what they can buy, because of the nearly total power over the economy that the Federal Govt. possesses. If the politicians can't dictate economic policy, then buying them is worthless.
The desperate need for tort reform is obvious.
The Federal Reserve has failed, basically across the board over the course of its entire history. It has created an economy dependent on one bubble after another. It has devalued the dollar by 97% over its history, and particularly dramatically since the 1960s. The dollar used to be regarded as being "as good as gold," that's a bad joke now. It is currently, intentionally, inflating massive asset bubbles with trillions worth of debt monetization ("QE") because it stupidly thinks that's how you create prosperity (or they're really clever and intentionally trying to crash the economy). It has to be abolished, and the US monetary system has to be returned to a sound basis, rather than relying on dollar devaluation to fund the government (ie we need strict balanced budget laws).
I mean, democracy. Where the people decide for their rules directly. Where real democratic processes such as random trials are used, instead elections which by nature are heavily influenced by a tiny elite. Where the constitution itself is not written by those who will later rule the country (that's such an obvious conflict of interest).
Good luck, though.
It doesn't need to be 100% democracy, and it doesn't need to be 80-90% representative like US, either. It definitely needs to be a lot more towards direct democracy than it is in US now.
Also another huge problem that needs to be fixed in US, is making sure the incredibly skewed "money vote" is drastically reduced, by only allowing people to donate $100 per voter at an election, and no anonymous donations anymore.
Votes are supposed to be equal, but this alternative money vote system, created by lobbying in US, has really compromised to the point that you can almost discard the real vote system. When 70% of the voters want decision A vs decision B, but 90% of the donors want decision B, in the vast majority of cases the politicians go with decision B - because they were basically paid to do it.
But what's worse is that 90% of the funds usually comes from only a handful of people - therefore the incredibly skewed system. At least with $100 cap you can equalize it a lot.
What matters is that we have a massive unelected bureaucracy that is its own ulta-powerful branch of the government that sucks money and makes its own laws.
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch." -said by somebody
When more than half the country has an IQ of less than 100, democracy is deeply, deeply flawed. The only way to properly reimplement government is to replace corrupt representatives with trustworthy ones, and offer a voice and most importantly, CHOICE.
> The point is that all of you morons voting like robots along party lines are destroying my country, from the inside, one fucking vote at a time. And it is sad. And it is painful. And it is almost unbearable to watch. You are destroying what this country is supposed to be about and turning it into something our children will have to suffer with.
I'm sorry but this is a load of crap. The US gov't at all levels has always suffered from this problem due to the way it is structured. Blaming individual people for not participating in that system the way you think they should is completely unhelpful and puts the blame in the wrong place.
> Terrorists won. You morons saw to it. Our way of life is, in many ways, unrecognizable from what it was before 9/11.
This is not true. Although some policies and attitudes have changed since 9/11, US society has not fundamentally changed and the major problems pre-9/11 are the same post-9/11.
> When are you going to understand that a conservative Libertarian (as opposed to extreme and nearly anarchist) approach is the only path to recovery? Ultra limited government. They are OUR servants, we are not their property. They need to get the fuck out of our lives, homes, businesses, bedrooms, schools and more.
I find it funny that you slight anarchism here while claiming that a different type of political candidate is all that is needed to change society. Limited government isn't just about reduced budgets and programs, but removing the bureaucratic and hierarchical elements of government. Further, if you feel that existing political parties all are contributing to the problem, picking a different party isn't going to change anything.
> Time to take it back. Peacefully. Vote with intelligence. Email. Write letters. Make calls. Let them know who they work for. Reboot the system.
This isn't rebooting the system, this is how most people interact with and solicit the government already.
We have way more problems after 9-11. We've invented more problems, starting with the TSA that nudiescans and molests people -- the Patriot act, spying on Americans, other fear mongering.
The part you need to realize is, there already are on their way to your utopia. The point is, that you need a strong military, police and surveillance state in order to make the transition fully. There some people that don't like to be corporate slaves so you need power to force people into their brave new world! :)
Name the corporation that has the right to spy on us, and even when caught doing it contrary to the law, no one goes to jail over it.
Name the corporation that when it runs out of money on its stupid ideas just prints more or can raise its prices indefinitely and FORCE you to buy however much of its products that it wants you to.
Name the corporation that has the authority to break into your house in the middle of the night, shoot your dog, put a boot on your throat, then say, "Sorry we had the wrong house" ... with little or no negative consequences for their mistake.
Name the corporation that can sick its money collectors on you for disagreeing with them and then they'll audit your income over and over to make your existence miserable.
Name the corporate agents who have the legal right to manipulate the markets with the creation of new laws and bureaucracies and then can use that knowledge to do as much insider trading as they want to enrich themselves... and it's all legal.
Name the corporation that has the means and the authority take away your house, your children, your very life, and I'll be right there with you.
Until then, I'm going to go ahead and keep pushing against the government that has ALL of the powers mentioned above and that abuses those powers on a daily basis.
Most people who speak of limited government are speaking of the federal level, not local or state.
Since when did "private" become a bad word? F%!# that, "private" business is me, you, your neighborhood plumber, the dive bar on the corner, IBM, Microsoft, Google and a whole range of "in between" companies. Nothing about a firm being "private" makes it "bad". In fact, I'd argue that it's just the opposite... anything that can be provided by a private firm, participating in a free market, should be provided by such, or not at all. Note, however, that "private firm" does not necessarily equate to "corporation" OR to "for profit business". The range of "private" organizations also includes various non-profit cooperatives, communes and collectives.
Lets deregulate everything, because you know you can trust Corporations!
If we were really serious about minimizing government, there wouldn't be any Corporations, as Corporations are a legal fiction which depend on the State for their very existence.
I'm not sure where this leaves us, which is worse?
Choose individual candidates who believe in and you trust to legislate based upon some core principles. Examine voting records when possible since speeches can be useless.
Too many people get caught up in the complexity of noise issues that aren't that important. These noise issues are like the trade-in value of your used car when you go to buy a new one... or the infamous "under coating". They're just mixed in with the important issue (price of the car) in order to confuse you and maximize the power that the dealer has in the negotiation.
Government abuse comes from too much government power. Too much government power comes from too much legislation and too much money through taxation and money printing.
Vote for politicians who understand the beauty of the limitations created by our Constitution and who can push for following a more strict interpretation of it.
In the end, it's all about power. Power corrupts. We want the people in government to have only as much power as they absolutely need to do things that we cannot do (national defense, TRUE interstate commerce regulation, etc.) The rest of the power we grant them is just ripe for abuse.
The more we learn about the Obama admin, the worse it gets. This isn't a R vs D thing.
So the only way to the promised land, is via the path you laid out? I see what you did there.
In any case, any form of goverment, big or small, if unchecked, will use it's power for self-serving interest. Governments are formed by human beings after all...
In my opinion, from everything I've seen, the only thing they are bent on is protecting people like you from the increased threats of crimes, radicalization, and terrorism.
I know how that sounds, you can't figure out if I'm joking or if I'm a brain-washed moron.
But think of it this way, Obama did a 180 when he got into office because a) power-lust made him do it, or b) he gained access to a much more detailed and clearer picture than you have?
I don't disagree with what you said but I'm seriously in doubt if I really trust "voting", I'm in Brazil and over here seems like it's a lost case(uneducated population, obligatory voting <= marketing + corrupts power circle)
And these are just the high profile type cases that make some news.
Think of all the sad saps with a watery ditch on their property whom the EPA jackbooted into oblivion. Or gods help folks who did something so societally horrible as to sell raw milk and then had the FDA come in with their own SWAT folks.
Of course, I hope that is not the case here but people should be aware these things exist.
The US is behaving more and more like authoritarian regime - see no evil, hear no evil - no evil exists. And if someone sheds light on our misdealing - it is their fault and must be punished.
Nixon was born in the wrong time. Poor guy.
In the current political climate, why in the world wouldn't they?
And if you don't fight it now peacefully, you'll be fighting it in the streets in a bloody revolution, in a decade or two.
If we were to have a revolution here, even in a decade or two, we'd probably end up with something much worse than what we have now.
Our government listens in on more calls every year than in the whole of the US combined. All our telecommunications providers are forced to have the capability to intercept all traffic (phone and internet). Encrypted data must be stored for an unlimited time to facilitate possible decryption in the future. Our 'Team Digital Expertise' developed software that profiles social networks on which a suspect operates to use it in order to gather crime-related information.
Our police buys TomTom software-data to see when and where they can get the maximum amount of money if they photograph speeding drivers. (Safety is not their first concern, money is). Local and national police now use drones. The army is training how to spy on it's own civilians.
Our 'Camera Surveillance Act' allows images to be retained for up to four weeks and also facilitates the use of cameras for law enforcement purposes, whereas before the main purpose of camera surveillance was keeping public order. They're working on a pay-per-mile car tax system but activating it stopped when it turned out they were collecting more (personal) data than was technically needed to run the system and using the data for purposes other than those for which was collected. Every important road is viewed by camera's with license-plate scanning software. You can travel by public transport but a special card with chip and login/logout is required. You can purchase one without your name and address but you can only add money to it using your bank-account. The system tracks all travelers' movements (departure and end points for each leg of every journey), in most cases combined with the traveler's identity. It retains the data for seven years.
Our Dutch passport contains both fingerprints, facial recognition and RIFD. Every large city center is equipped with camera's with powerful microphones. Our Minister of the Interior announced plans to also store the biometric data in a central database. Dutch hotels are breaking data protection laws by photocopying guests' passports and identification cards because they are required by our government to do so.
The 'Electronic child file' records a child's development and environmental indicators from birth. Teachers are forced to build a profile of every child in their class along with a description of his/her family's situation. It received local media coverage when it turned out doctors are even recording when a child starts getting pubic hair. The government is also actively building a electronic patient file, containing all medical details of every person. Because of the workload they have asked insurance companies to help building this. (That got a lot of people's attention).
Privacy? There is no such thing.
Source: https://www.privacyinternational.org/reports/netherlands
To me, America is still the land of the slightly more free and little more brave!
I read this above report and can't believe it. When that this happen?
Our data privacy laws are thorough and sometimes an obstacle, but many projects got stopped because of privacy issues:
e.g. the digital stored medical records on ones health insurance card
The stop of the data retention directive by our beloved Bundesverfassungsgericht (they are awesome) is another milestone.
Core of our privacy law is that every person is entitled to reign over it's own data as the person pleases, thus every personal data processing is forbidden as long as there isn't a law allowing it.
But fear not my fellow neighbors, the EU comission (not so beloved) might overhaul the data privacy laws and you might gain citizen rights back: http://ec.europa.eu/justice/newsroom/data-protection/news/12...
I don't really care that they gather the OVkaart data (they can see that I go to work and back when the weather sucks, so what). What makes me steaming with anger is that they don't seem to be using it to IMPROVE the network. People are actually getting off the metro to get on a bus. Have the bus wait for those people, dammit! What's the use of data collection if it's not used?
Not to discredit your whole post but is this really the case. You can buy those 1 hour/24 hour/48 hour passes for cash. With a 1 hour one you aren't exactly required to check out if you don't use it again (on tram at least).
I moved to Amsterdam from Seattle last November, and have to say that I feel far less vulnerable here, information-wise. Perhaps if I compared the policies and behaviors of only the national governments, I would remember the US as the land of the free, but I prefer to take all levels of government and corporate power into account.
I mean, they collect all those phone records, internet records, they know your movement patterns, and now what? What good can you do with it for your citizen ?
For trading, he who has most data can get most in exchange for it. Sometimes, it's details about on-going deals between companies, where trading information might mean receiving information so one's national companies get a edge over foreign ones. Diplomats, airplane manufacturers, car manufacturers, oil companies are historical beneficiaries of information acquired by the NSA.
But leaders of nations also want information about their citizens. They need to identify other politically important people, influential groups, or where campaign money should (or not) be invested so that they get elected next election. With surveillance data, you can direct police forces to crack down on people or groups who would otherwise have an effect on election day.
Public fear of terrorism is what's being used to take away rights and liberties, especially in post-9/11 America.
I used to live in Amsterdam and I clearly remember that it was possible to top up with cash, has this changed? (only some machines in some stations got this cash option though, maybe all gone now)
Are you saying your country talks on the phone more than the USA? Every one of our phone calls gets recorded. Check out "Mark Klein", he's a whistleblower, formerly of AT&T.
I forget whereI read it but there is more to it than that but the gist of it is the existence of such a massive amount of data results in amazing discoveries.
Everyone should realize one thing that makes this news slightly less scary, but still scary nonetheless: the order only applies to "Verizon Business Network Services", which is not the entirety of Verizon Communications.
While this still means that the metadata from millions of phone calls by random people, possibly from phones not even on Verizon who were simply calling VBNS phones, have been vacuumed up by the government, it also means that not "all" Verizon phones are meta-tapped as the article seems to insinuate (tagline, picture caption).
Glenn has done incredible commentary and reporting for many, many years; I hope this story will be only the beginning of his contributions and shake-ups to the discourse and activism against the U.S. surveillance oligarchy. Anyone who hasn't been reading his pieces whenever they come out are missing a phenomenon in human history.
And as another user noted: "Although this only means that the order for VBNS was released - for all we know every telco could be under a similar order that just hasn't been leaked."
Edit: not sure what here is getting the downvotes exactly; I'm not trying to rain on anyone's parade, I just see "leaked court order shows all Verizon call metadata is seized" all over WaPo, Forbes, EFF etc and it's really a factual error. If we're exposing government corruption and authoritarianism, do we want to be credible or sensationalist?
they will request the same data from other providers in other FISA court applications. there is nothing in the request that makes it specific to Verizon Business. The legal justification used applies to all providers.
Sure: by whatever insane reasoning the government came up with to issue this order, they could probably issue orders for any other subsidiary of any other telecom, and I would not be surprised at all if they've done so many many times for many different time frames, but we don't have the definitive proof yet. Obama could come out tomorrow and say "we were just doing this for VBNS" and there's nothing anyone could say to refute him until another separate document is leaked.
If you want to go by some sort of Laws of Authoritarian Fluid Dynamics and say "if this order exists, there must be similar orders because if the government has the internal secret legal justification to do something for one company it would for all" then sure, there are orders for ever carrier.
Why don't I see Fox "News" presenters, and the like, crying daily on screen about the death of the USA over things like this? Unlike the birth certificate of Obama or attempts to being free health care to people, this really is destroying US citizen's basic rights. But no Fox tears and hysterics.
Why is that? I mean, surely this is a fantastic way to attack the "hated" Obama, surely. Aren't they all about "freedom"? Isn't this a huge open goal for the right?
From where I sit it looks like a very weird contradiction. Surely this is more of a threat than say gun controls? Clearly I'm missing something, but what?
Privacy issues are viewed in an entirely different light than gun control, and are frequently a darling of the left. For example, the EFF (source of this article) is considered as an extremely liberal left organization, and hated by many conservatives. Perhaps the feeling is that as long as you can maintain control of the government you and your side have nothing to worry about, and the guns are there in case you somehow lose control of that government.
Does seem to me though that there is little idealogical or political consistency in what the left and right campaign for.
I'm now wondering if it is the same here in the UK. That, I'll have to give some thought to.
Seriously? I've never seen it catch flak for being liberal. I've always tagged it as libertarian and off the spectrum.
See: Judge Andrew Napolitano (former New Jersey Superior Court Judge). He's a host on Fox News and does in fact regularly make an issue of these types of abuses. Take a look at his books:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Napolitano#Writing_caree...
Fox News is a 2/3 conservative bastion (and they're for big government, big spending, big military, big debt), but it also has a small mixture of libertarian "extreme right wing" Republican views as well (and those people are against the police state, against big government, pro civil liberties, etc).
Hands up. Im confused!!
If there were enough give-a-shit left in America, I don't think things would have gotten so bad to begin with. It's a broken, battered, unemployed, bankrupt, bitter nation being drown by a behemoth $6.3 trillion government system that nothing could possibly contain or restrain. The NSA has a budget the size of the economy of half the nations on earth.
Far easier to go back to playing Candycrush than try to do anything about the MASSIVE mess that is America.
More to the point, it's highly unlikely that this is an issue unique to Verizon; it's just the only one we've heard about so far.
If you can get into the businessman's head that the NSA is bad for business, they'll have a bad time pulling this kind of thing off.
If everyone thought this way, there would have been no revolution. At some point, enough is enough and I say that that point is way past.
My mobile device is tied to my phone, I have some work discounts attached to my service, I have a contract (which will gain fees for early termination). These issues make it highly improbably to truly do any action (when it comes to businesses).
However, there is a way politically to actually get something done, but that requires the masses to actually organize and take action.
It's easy to sit back and say "oh government this or corporation that sucks", we need to step up our game as builders of the software sitting on millions of devices.
This is a privacy arms race -- and right now we're losing.
That's what they did with Verizon. Verizon could not provide you with privacy no matter how much they wanted.
However, cryptography does help you as an individual user of a service. There's no reason we can't build systems which are provably secure and retain strict end-user data privacy.
Case in point: "Microsoft’s tweaks to Skype could facilitate wiretapping" http://www.extremetech.com/computing/132935-microsoft-tweaki...
If that has happened or not under the current system we will never know - which is the exact issue the OP was citing.
Fortunately the 1st Amendment is still mostly respected, at least relative to some of the others.
[Edit] Now, monetizing such software is an interesting problem.
Ripple/OpenCoin may have found one model: include a cryptocurrency that's used as credits in the system, and claim a large portion for yourself, which you can later sell. The problem is if they open source the software too early someone could easily create a new network with the currency allocated to themselves.
[Edit] Perhaps that could be solved with a new open source license that forbids forking the network.
10 OMG why did you not know about these terrorists, how could you have missed this?!
20 OMG now you are profiling _____! That is unfair just because they are ____
30 OMG you are invading the privacy of everyone!
GOTO 10
I have no solution myself, just complaining about the complainers since no matter what anyone does someone complains about it not being right.
You, as a government, have to choose one of those states. I personally prefer a government that will choose to stay on line 10, especially because profiling everyone will not prevent terrorism at all, unless it's in an orwellian dystopia.
And I prefer buildings blowing up once in a while to the alternative, even if one of my family or myself get killed on the explosion.
Under the FISA guidelines they can gather foreign data, but have to get a warrant for every US citizen they want to spy on. The NSA admitted they have an excess of domestic data because it's hard to filter out. So they have all this data available, and somehow we have to trust them when they say 'Oh, but we won't use it'...
To put a little perspective into things: I live in The Netherlands. A somewhat decently managed country (opinions differ!), with the highest rate of phone taps on civilians in the world. So all's not well on this side of the ocean, too.
The way I see things, there's a gliding scale between security on one end, and privacy on the other. I know the HN crowd generally gravitates towards the privacy end. But realize that a lot of people don't necessarily feel the same way. If you're a law-abiding, middle class citizen with a family, steady job and a mortgage, you're likely to give up a little privacy over security. I don't think there's anything massively wrong with that. What I do have problems with is the fact that they're being so secretive about it.
I have middle-class friends in Istanbul fighting a authoritarian government which is arresting people because of their statements on Twitter and Facebook - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/05/turkish-police-a.... So the data can easily be abused in a very negative way.
Maybe I'm the proverbial frog in a pot of boiling water, but I'm not outraged. I'm not really even annoyed. I don't know why exactly, but I think it boils down (no pun intended) to two different things.
First, I'm under no delusion that the US federal government has my personal best interest in mind with everything that it does. I think that usually the federal government as a whole has the best interest of the entirety of the American people firmly in mind, but it's a big behemoth that is often unaware of the individual.
Second, I willingly use technology every day in which people are actively monitoring my actions. Verizon didn't magically start collecting these data at the bequest of the government. Or even if they did (really, they didn't), they'll happily use it in their daily business operations. You're monitored every day by many, many corporations. Many people here have started businesses on that principle alone. Strangely, I trust the federal government more with how they'll limit the scope of their monitoring than I do the private corporations with whom I constantly interact through the use of their technology. Maybe I'm naïve.
But here's the thing. These are reasons why I'm not outraged by this particular event. The USA PATRIOT Act angers me. Our insane alarmist reaction to terrorist attacks (aka our endemic inability to apply simple statistics) angers me. The amount of money we waste in our military angers me.
But this? Meh.
Downvoting something that's contrary to your opinion just seems childish. If you disagree with me, tell me why I'm wrong...
Reeducation through labor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re-education_through_labor
Beijing Olympics Relocation: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02...
Tibet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibet#From_1950_to_present
Then we had the wacko Boston bombers. So, apparently the great, all powerful, all seeing, all knowing NSA didn't see those two wackos coming.
But, but, but, how could the poor, little NSA be expected to see two, obscure, wacko nutjobs?
Well, let's see: The Russians told us over and over that those guys were wackos and dangerous. Told us face to face, in plain English/Russian. No phone records, Internet data intercepts, super computers required.
Really sounds like 'security theater', like Senator Feinstein is having fun straining her arm patting herself on the back for "protecting the US" and a lot of middle managers in the huge NSA funny farm are having fun doing what not very good middle managers are wont to do, build empires. Gee, they can build their own giant facility in Utah, with rows, columns, and layers of racks of computers, disk drives, etc. with rivers of cables overhead all with its finger tips on the pulse of every little thing, except ignoring the wackos in Boston the Russians told us about in simple sentences, face to face, didn't even need a phone tap.
I used to live in Laurel, MD and, thus, have two pictures of the NSA:
First, when I was in graduate school, in our class in measure theory and functional analysis, we had an NSA employee also in the class. Nope, not the sharpest tack in the box. Really, a bit out of it. We're talking slow witted. I was the grader for the class, and as I recall he never got anything correct. He said nothing in class and lasted a few weeks, and then we didn't see him again.
Second, there's a great photograph taken, likely, at a Congressional hearing, of the head of the NSA and standing not far away Diffie Hellman or one of the RSA guys, etc. The Hellman guy, of course, had been explaining public key crypto-systems that heavily embarrassed the NSA and, really, essentially put it out of business for its stated mission, is smiling. As I recall, he had blond hair long, nearly to his waist. The head of the NSA, a real ram rod straight arrow, short hair, close shave, crease in his shirt, etc. is a sour looking puss. Torqued. Like he was just made a fool of, embarrassed, like he's just lost his self-respect, career, etc.
The evidence is that the NSA is a bunch of fumble bumblers collectively about three cans short of a six pack. We should be even more concerned about the NSA if there was good evidence that they were competent.
NSA has thousands and thousands of people. Even if some of the people are bright with good backgrounds, they will get lost in the mob of paper pushers, mediocre middle managers, and high end military brass.
First fundamental problem: Too much big gumment. Sorry, Senator Feinstein: Why don't you do something useful like help some grade school children read Mother Goose?
Second fundamental problem: Our democracy is short on well informed citizens. So, gumment just grows and grows. A problem? Sure: Mo big gumment, Ma! Hopefully the Internet can make some progress here. Or the technology that can let the NSA ruin the US can also let the US keep the NSA 'safe and effective' for the good of the US.
Supposedly Bin Laden claimed that he wasn't trying to defeat the US but just to have it so over react it would bankrupt itself. Whether he said this or not, there's a point there.
We're again back to the old "America always does the right thing after trying everything else.".
Money wasting, incompetent big gumment is a very ugly thing. If they try actually to do something, then they get even uglier. When they take the next step and really want to take over, then they are taking us close to Hitler, Mao, etc.
The US founding fathers were fully correct: "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.".
The thing for Congress to do is just to cut the budgets. How much? Recently there was a report that supposedly the wealthiest area of the US is Silicon Valley. Next was the hedge fund area of CT. Next? And the nominees are, Houston with its oil, NYC with its finance, Chicago with its "broad shoulders", Redmond with its computing, and within 100 miles of the Washington Monument with its big gumment. May I have the envelope, please? Yes, here it is. And the winner is (drum roll) within 100 miles of the Washington Monument with its big gumment.
Put it on a diet. Cut it back. Leave the money in the hands of the citizens. Then let that money be seed corn actually to get the economy going again.
Kings of old commonly bled their countries white, over their delusions of self-importance and especially their absurd foreign adventures. Now DC is doing the same.
For people leaving back packs with pressure cookers in public places, sorry 'bout that, but NSA, FBI, CIA, DHS, etc. clearly are no real solution. So, basically we just have to leave that issue to local police.
NSA, etc. are short on both safety for our democracy and efficacy for stopping the bad guys.
Yes, yes, we know that they are incompetent. But we have to understand: They are really, really expensive, a gigantic waste. Besides they trash the spirit and/or letter of the Constitution.
Just vote for guys in Congress who will cut their budgets. Let's get Detroit, etc. looking like 100 miles from the Washington Monument and that area looking more like Detroit.
The main purpose of the US is "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", not forever bigger and bigger big gumment. The main business of the US is business, not gumment. Gumment is there to serve the people, not force the people to serve big gumment. Senator Feinstein: Go help some children with Mother Goose.
When this disgusting heretic blob said on the news today that we have, quote, "this culture of leaks", I thought I will throw-up inside. How on earth would you want to call this "free country", "home of the brave", democracy, whatever, if people in the company called "government" that you hired and that you pay their salary from your own pocket, keeps everything secret from you, and take full advantage of that, while breaking the law and raping you in the wide open in the name of "terrorist" ? And then when someone in that company reports (to media) that bunch of people are breaking the law, they become a criminal and, as Feinstein said: "need to be persecuted". How can you believe, in your sound mind, that there will be ANY freedom left in this country within next 5-7 years?? HOW??
Guess what Feinstein? You are much bigger terrorist with your pen and big stupid mouth, than all the terrorist combine out there together!
When two terrorists explode bombs at a public event, I definitely don't want less "gumment." I want effective government.
In this case, every Senator knew about the wiretapping. Why did they allow it to continue? We elected our government. The government isn't the problem. We are. So in that respect, I agree with you. We're short on well-informed citizens.
But you want to emphasize "effective" gumment. Okay. So did I: I said that we should get the NSA being "safe and effective" for our country. "Safe" mostly means that the NSA doesn't trash our Constitution and ruin the US, and "effective" means what you want, catch the bad guys.
Now we come to the hard part: Catching the bad guys. In the case of Boston, as I pointed out, Russia told us. Russia was correct. So, really, it's getting clear: The NSA's ideas of all that 'big data' is not very effective. I know; I know; some of the Senators will say that in the secret hearings the NSA, FBI, DHS, CIA, etc. guys explain all the bad guys they stopped, bad guys that never made the news. Given Boston, I don't believe it! What I believe is that they go after some guy in the second grade in the lunch room who takes the bread from his sandwich, cuts it out to like like a gun, shows it around his lunch table, and the big gumment guys shut down the school. Or they go after Aaron Swartz. They are just not competent. So, they are not effective.
"Big" is always a threat: Ike warned about the military-industrial complex, and the bigness is much of the positive feedback loop that has it grow.
Sure, we'd both like more competence. Remember 9/11? Or, remember one of the core reasons? Right: Some semi-, pseudo-, quasi-bright guy had one of his better ideas: If a terrorist tries to take over an airplane in mid-flight, then don't resist and, instead, let him have it. Presto: Open, engraved invitation to 9/11. Bet you can't do that now. Even if managed to get on an airplane with various weapons, bet couldn't take over the plane and fly it into a big building. So, need the TSA, DHS, and NSA for that? Nope: Just change the silly rule that says give an airplane to any terrorist who asks.
Competence is more difficult. I'm all for more in competence. But big and competent don't go well together.
Look, it's not worth trashing our Constitution, setting up an organization that could take us to Hitler, and wasting the big bucks to set up an NSA that could catch another Boston bomber, even if such an organization could catch another bomber, which likely they can't. Heck, again, the Russians told us about those two loser, wacko nutjobs, which is much better info than we could have hoped for from the NSA, and still we did nothing.
Big gumment in England? Go after a guy because of something about pictures of nude children on his computer that turned out to be his grandchildren playing with water in the yard.
Big gumment in the US? Have some Department of Natural Resources (DNR) go after a couple with several cats, several dogs, and a five year old deer they had raised from a fawn whose mother had just been killed in an auto accident, really, a minute or so before the fawn was born. So the DNR has in their imagination that deer, with their hoofs, can hurt people. Of course, in this case, the deer has been just fine, in the house, with several dogs and cats, for five years, not even hurting the furniture. Big gumment.
And we have the Aaron Swartz case, gumment going wacko over some PDF files readily available to everyone at MIT for free and in paper form in nearly every research library in the world for the cost of photocopying. Big gumment.
We saw in the IRS case big gumment abusing its powers. Well, the NSA data would be an engraved invitation to more such abuses -- shakedowns, blackmail, payoffs, kickbacks, etc.
In reality, the more effective gumment you want will have to be smaller gumment.
There's a recent example with the F-35. Supposedly part of the problem with that program is that someone wants to change the specifications on some screw, so they have a meeting all day with everyone affected, 600 people, that is a representative from each of all the possibly affected subcontractors or some such. The solution? The Lockheed Skunk Works deliberately kept small enough to keep up communications and keep down the huge meetings.
For the NSA phone data, that sounds like the old project Total Information Awareness or some such. There has been a little company on a few floors of a not very attractive office building on the space of a shopping mall in a suburb of Boston. Once I went for an interview. I used to do 'artificial intelligence', i.e., 'expert systems', and they were big on that, likely from what some people at DARPA are still dreaming about. So, they wanted to get data on phone calls, maybe e-mail messages, postcards, whatever, with data on from, to, and date, and then build a big directed graph with an arc for each communication and a node for each person sending or receiving. Then they wanted to do some analysis of the graph, look for 'cliques' or some such. While they explained, I tried to stay awake, but being really interested was asking too much. BS. Total BS. But it looks like the graph people have taken over the NSA. All the brighter people in Russia are likely doing a ROFL. I'm not laughing: It's expensive, dumb, and dangerous. Just cut it back.
The Hellman guy was probably Whitfield Diffie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitfield_Diffie
It's all kind of a hilariously sad cycle:
1. Energy/resources corps "encourage" the US into war or political involvement/coups to protect their assets (i.e. oil rights in Iran, Iraq, etc. War involves much spending which goes to big contractors)
2. Meddling in the region provokes resentment from locals against US, breeding terrorism (more intelligence spending)
3. Terrorists strike back at US
4. US freaks out about terrorism, ups defense/security/intelligence spending which is outsourced to big contractors.
And in Viet Nam, a lot of oil was burned, and I have long guessed we burned enough oil to enable the power of OPEC. Keeping B-52 bombers in the air 24 x 7 in the 1950s also burned a lot of oil.
Part of the US overreactions is that from the President on down, it's easier to play cover thy ass by spending US blood and treasure than to speak the often sad, ambiguous, no good option truth to the American people. E.g., in Viet Nam, nearly no one in public office wanted to open themselves to accusations of "Who lost Viet Nam" as happened with "Who lost China" when Mao took over and drove Chang Kai Shek to Taiwan. We finally gave up in Viet Nam when nearly every young person in the country saw someone die in Viet Nam that they had known in high school and the demonstrations were too big to ignore. Even then, President Ford, at the last moment, tried for another big chunk of cash and supplies to Saigon. Congress didn't go along, but Ford had then tried to put the 'blame' on Congress. In some of the earlier days, say, after the Tonkin Gulf thing, there were only a few voices in Congress warning that we were heading for vast disasters with half-vast reasons.
But, we should be able just to say no to absurd foreign adventures and hysterical, ineffective overreactions at home; lot's of other countries do: E.g., in Afghanistan, the EU countries mostly stay out of harm's way. In Gulf War I, there was a fairly significant international effort to push Saddam out of Kuwait, but Gulf War II was essentially just a US effort. Why? For Gulf War II nearly all other countries looked at Saddam and saw a thug in Iraq and concluded that he was just Iraq's problem.
The old remark, maybe from Churchill, that "America always does the right thing after trying everything else" has some truth to it. We are too eager to squander our blood and treasure on absurd foreign adventures. And not just foreign: Now the NSA, FBI, DHS, and more are all going hysterical running around in circles, stirring up dust, and accomplishing next to nothing good and possibly doing a lot of harm.
But as soon as someone rolls back the DHS, the other party will be out for blood at the next pressure cooker in a shopping mall.
It's an old story: In medicine it was long, "The person is sick. We don't know why they are sick. We don't know what to do. But we must do something." which was often harmful. So, a few terrorists do this and that, take advantage of our old silly policy to give any airplane to any terrorist that asks, and we go all hysterical and start bankrupting ourselves and throwing away our Constitution.
Solution: Have the voters wise up. Get that by better information from the Internet. A current case is Syria: We could sit here and debate for hours which is worse, Assad or some of, maybe the most powerful of, the rebels. What do we want there, Assad, in with Iran, wants to attack Israel, a thug in his home country, or some rebels that might lead to an Al Qaeda takeover, turn Syria into a base for radical Islam, attack Israel, etc.? It's ugly there; people are suffering and dying; the US should do something? My guess is, the US should do little or nothing. The enemy of my enemy is my friend? Well, not always!
Here's a VICE documentary on it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL_3Qg-SADY
Litvinenko was assassinated by Putin for working for MI6, and the assassination was very carefully planned to end up in London to send a very pointed message. He was tasked with "getting nuclear materials out of Russia". Well, he managed that all right...
The more you know.
Seriously: this is well known, look for Telegraph coverage, radiation on the plane ("in his tea" cover - yeah, nice one), Litvinenko's business network connections and so on. Is Putin a nice guy? Nope, but poisoning is his personal signature, and MI6 aren't exactly angels either.
I'm sure I'll pick up more "down votes" from the HN crowd, but hey: I thought you were all wise to info-bubbles?
p.s.
MI5 is the internal Security division for the UK; MI6 is the external Security division for the UK
Helps if you know the difference, and for that matter - it helps if know that the FSB is also the domestic Security division, so wouldn't be contacting MI6 anyhow.
Top marks all around for generally bullshitting there.
But, heck, all we will get from the NSA and their Utah computers are leads that are just starting points.
As I recall, one of the US three letter acronyms, well before the Boston Marathon, actually did look into the two Boston loser, wacko nutjobs and then mostly dropped the effort. Looks like we needed just better police work.
Maybe this time the Russians actually tried to help. Good. Then Tchaikovsky's music isn't the only good thing from Russia! Maybe next time the Russians will try to fool us; they will accumulate a track record, and in time we will see.
Assuming that this document is real, perhaps it may provide sufficient leverage to force into the light whatever hides in the shadows. At least some of those who might authorize such a program will be earnest in intent; we would be wise to carefully consider their justification.
Maybe I'm just thinking too much about some comments and HN really has a demographics made of mostly neo conservatives.
Been wanting to point this out since yesterday. Thoughts?
TextSecure and RedPhone will secure the content of your communications, but I'm not sure they will prevent the "metadata" from being captured (who called who, for how long, ect).
The biggest hurdle to me effectively using these tools is convincing others to use them. Many people seem eerily not bothered by being spied on by their own government or private companies. It's a strange world...
"Big Brother" was about controlling behavior but grepping phone records is not.
edit: I'd be more upset about DNA database.
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:...
Thwarting the constitution is pretty simple if you have enough willing (or unwilling but coercible) participants in government. We have three co-equal branches of government. If two branches collude to thwart the constitution, they will always succeed because they can override the third branch. And of course if all three branches collude (as is arguably the case in the last 12 years), the constitution goes down without a fight.
-----BEGIN RSA PUBLIC KEY----- MFwwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQADSwAwSAJBAObAT8Pn+C1Ets8Ge/EyMgiOPzmy/Mzk N+ENpDYRJzqGoyS59QkI58GhYwIVkhmEEk2pjp6gqWPNjTzO0QI1KOUCAwEAAQ== -----END RSA PUBLIC KEY-----
So if you want to keep a secret from the government, why bother to use non-safe communication methods (public telephone network etc) at all? Aren't people who actually pose a threat to the society smart enough to use such tools?
Maybe the solution is to find people who are doing the actual "dirty work" (govt employees, or telco employees), and apply pressure there, making it an undesirable life choice to choose treason as a career. Many people in the USA go to work every day with an explicit task of harming Americans. Make them prefer to get a new job or file for unemplyment insurance.
What makes me really angry is that since that law has passed in Austria, we have to pay a so called "service fee" on all providers - which is 20EUR/year for all internet and mobile contracts. We basically pay for our own surveillance.
Sorry folks. We should have been well beyond the point of detached thought experiments about this. Change the power structures or change the power structures. They've gone too far in so many ways. Change from within, change from outside, or stay home and get what you deserve?
Don't want to be traced? Ditch technology... Hide from satellites...
The NSA, DHS, [INSERT 1984 department here] are just an effect of taxation (and borrowing from the Fed). These things will never go away if we keep funding them and giving sanction to them.
It's also disgusting and sad that we've poured billions into the War on Terror while people suffer everyday from cancer. I don't know anyone personally affected by terrorism, but I know 3 close relatives battling cancer. Which is the real threat?
Aside from the fact that I was a dumb 19 year old when I got caught hacking, the patriot act is what was used to catch me.
Perhaps the only thing they use the data for (if indeed it exists) it to programatically uncover underground pedophilia rings? Perhaps they use it to pre-empt mass shootings? Perhaps the country with the most powerful government in the world should have a little trust in it now and then?
The thing about that is that the government did those sorts of things in the past. When those became public, measures were put into place to check those powers. Some people feel that since 9/11/2001, many of those checks have been continually eroded.
More specifically:
> the logic is to assume that the document applies to all Verizon customers
Given the breadth of this order, it appears that there's no particular thing being investigated. It's just "fishing", ostensibly for national security purposes.
> then to assume that all telecom companies have been given similar documents
Once the government is asking "everything" from a particular company, using national security (as opposed to particularized criminal investigation) as the reason, what reason is there to assume they haven't ordered everyone else to do the same. Don't forget this is a secret order, the subject of which (a Verizon subsidiary) is legally barred from discussing with anyone. The document making the news here was leaked, and the leaker has committed a felony by doing so.
> ... then to assume that they are using that data for malicious purposes
I'm not sure anyone is arguing that they're doing anything malicious ... yet. But history as shown that this particular slippery slope isn't always a fallacy.
> Perhaps the country with the most powerful government in the world should have a little trust in it now and then?
One can, conversely, argue that the citizens of that country have a moral obligation to the rest of the world to keep their government's power in check precisely because it's so powerful.
If you had read up on the abuses of the patriot act, including giving telephone companies retroactive immunity so they could not be prosecuted, you would understand some of the distrust.
This is about the government covering up and hiding its actions and how they interpret the law.