Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans
eff.orgI hate to use this tone but, so be it. Maybe now you morons who continue to vote in the pieces of shit into our government who are bent on taking more and more power for themselves will wake up and figure it out? How much more proof do you need? Does this make you angry yet or is Obama still your diety? Oh, and Republicans don't get a pass either.
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.
I am not American, so I am not an as immersed in your politics as many of you so take it with a grain of salt but this is my opinion.
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.
Bush : wolf :: Obama : wolf in sheep's clothing ?
I'm not sure it's quite that simple. Democrats have traditionally been about large government and nanny-state policies. Something weird happened in the Bush leadership where we got the traditional conservative laissez-faire policy toward military and the private sector, but also large government/nanny-state policies indicative of Democrats.
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.
The problem isn't really with Obama, it's that the American people haven't done much against the government's attempts at power grabs. There are a variety of reasons for why not, ignorance being high on the list, but perhaps the most prominent reason is that we expect our government to keep us safe, for better or worse.
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.
> 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
Perfectly stated. Not sure what the solution might be other than removing layers of influence from politicians hands. What should they really be doing?
Perhaps we ought to hyper-compartmentalize their jobs. Te US Constitution is great, but it was written centuries ago. C'mon folks, a lot of it does not align with modern reality.
For example, healthcare laws ought to be in the hands of a team with relevant domain expertise. Why are we allowing ignorant representatives to have any say at all? Why is it that we dump it all on the laps of the Senate and the House. Most of those people are lawyers. Patent law is an example of the shit they can create. The House? Holy shit! Have you seen the kind of people who land those jobs? Why do they have so much power?
Te problem you allude to would be resolved if we divided-up decision making along domains. Now you can publish basic qualifications for each domain and create prerequisites for each position. Then people, if they care enough, would be able to vote for domain-specific representation.
I could then vote for someone who thinks along my lines when it comes to healthcare, gun control, budgets, building bridges, social programs, military spending, etc. different people, each with less overall power yet far more understanding and command of their chosen domain.
I want doctors to set healthcare laws, not lawyers or politicians. I want engineers and entrepreneurs to create intellectual property laws, not lawyers. I want qualified financial experts to set fiscal policy, not lawyers, politicians or the President. I want infrastructure experts to manage our infrastructure, not some politician who owes union thugs for their votes. I don't want unions nearly anywhere and particularly not in education.
It simply makes no sense to have the same person have rule-making power over topics ranging from encryption, surveillance and healthcare to education, defense and social concerns. They can't possibly be good at making decisions in all domains and they keep getting voted into office by catering to large groups behind major causes who they become prostituted to.
Perfect? Nope. Nothing is.
At the risk of losing whatever credibility I might have gained by my previous post, an alternative suggestion would be to simply take the power of legislation for non-legislative realms out of the hands of politicians.
Without getting into the merits of how large a government ought to be, it's not really debatable that the government isn't very good at providing services like the ones you described. There are pockets where the government has set up 'businesses' that have done well, the USPS has historically been pretty efficient, the Hoover Dam, Tennessee Valley Authority, etc., but those are the exceptions to the rule, and arguably, the latter two have only worked well because Congress has left them alone, while the former (USPS) has floundered recently because of political decisions with Congress driving.
This isn't necessarily meant to be the stereotypical "Get rid of big government" rallying cry that it might sound like, as I don't generally have a problem with the government setting up businesses that benefit interstate commerce, but the Hoover Dam and TVA have proven that there are ways to do that not involving government's continued interaction. Funds could be set aside for the promotion of general welfare and businesses/policies could be established that would be able to operate as federally owned businesses (in which federally owned is a far more efficient outcome than federally run).
The federal government seems to have forgotten about their past successes, or have forgotten that too often, their over-involvement has led to failures like the USPS, so I'm wary of new government enterprises subject to all the inefficiencies of Congress (Affordable Care Act being a prime example), which doesn't necessarily mean that I'm against the premise of health care for all, but says that letting that be a government-run enterprise is the least efficient way to get there.
Getting to federally owned instead of federally run is another way to get to your stated position, as, so long as we're able to keep political appointees away from the helm of these businesses, they'll be run by competent staff, and be able to fairly compete in the free market as equal competitors to that market, which will help prevent collusive policies, crony capitalism and the like from predatory cost inflation on things like health care.
I don't have any issues with what you are proposing. In more general terms what we might need is an open national discussion about how to mutate our government into something that will serve us well for the next century or so. This two-hundred year old system could be improved. Not thrown away, improved.
It's interesting to watch people in this thread misinterpret "limited government" to mean "no government" and actually focus on numbers. To be sure, we probably have too many people working in government (twenty million according to the us census). Yet "limited government" means "limited reach" much more so than "limited count". In other words, an improvement in quality.
Agreed especially on the 'no government' mantra. I think people have been, to an extent, conditioned by party lines to think in certain ways as well.
Oftentimes, I'll suggest eliminating a program from the federal government's purview and shifting its responsibilities down to the state, especially in cases where 'one-size-fits-all' policies don't make sense or where the dollars could be spent more efficiently within local reach (and especially where spend efficiency matters, which ought to be a bigger focus than it is), and the response is to parrot that 'program x needs to exist'.
I know I'm a libertarian, and yeah, that does come with a lot of baggage, but I like to think I'm more pragmatic and comprising than most, but suggesting we get rid of the Department of Education and shift the billions of dollars to the states doesn't mean I hate education, it means that those dollars matter, and one-size-fits-all plans aren't good for America (see: no child left behind).
Regarding 'limited reach', again, I completely agree, but I think that the fault lies with the citizenry. The Constitution, if read as a cautionary tale, basically predicted that this would inevitably happen, and it's our fault for not having been vigilant enough to prevent it.
Even today, despite all this outrage, I'm guessing by the next election cycle, it will have been forgotten. If anybody loses so much as a seat over this, I'll be very surprised.
There is nothing more intellectually childish than saying "x isn't working in this case, therefore x never works and should be totally abandoned." I agree 100% that 99% of people don't care about politics enough and vote blindly. Look at the turn out rate for primaries and years where people aren't voting for president. Libertarians like you are all talk. There plenty of places in this world with no government but you would never go there because they are 3rd world shit holes. Ask yourself, "why aren't there any first world countries that are prosperous that have libertarian governments?" You love government. You love roads, infrastructure, safe food, safe cars, you take things like electricity, water, and internet for granted, you bathe in government funded projects that have made your life better in every way. The answer isn't no government, it's better government. In some areas that means drastically reducing it's power and I think even the left most progressive could agree with the right most libertarian on many things. However it's just childish to say "no government". It's been tried before in the past, and it's being tried now, it never works. We do better when we work together.
No government? Who said that? Where?
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.
> No government? Who said that? Where? We need a simple and limited government.
No, no, no. Stop backpedaling. You said this before:
> Ultra limited government.
That's pretty close to "no" government, so his points still stand. The problem isn't government in general, any more than it is people in general. It's things that are broken or aren't working well.
It can just as easily be said about the private sector. Yesterday my UPS person claimed he tried to deliver a package but I didn't answer the door. Bullshit. I was home the entire time and he never came.
Did I go on a rant about the evils of the private sector and how everything needs to be socialized? No. I recognized that for every annoying experience I have with a private corporation I have 3 other good ones that make my life better.
No, ultra-limited government means a government with significantly reduced power, reach and size with respect to what we have today. It does not mean "no government". Considering how massive and all encompassing our governments are now, even after severely reducing it at all levels we'd still have quite a few people running our cities, states and country.
You can twist it any way you want but nobody is calling for no government, that would be insane.
It means damn near nothing, getting to ideologically have your cake and eat it too.
Reform is hard and involves details. Whining about "too much government" doesn't require any details at all. It's like Paul Ryan's budget plan that has huge line items of savings under, and I'm not making this up, "spending cuts" and "tax reform", with no further specifics. Hey, who could be against that? There's nothing negative about it, just some huge savings!
You want less government? Great. Get a marker and about 5 million pages in your printer and start printing out the US budget to mark it up for your suggestions. Because there isn't a single whole department you could cut without seriously screwing up society, you have to get into the weeds.
Want to cut this NSA program? Great, I agree with you. We do need the NSA around in some form with a smaller mandate, though.
Want to eliminate the FCC? You probably haven't thought about why it's illegal for me to buy a 1,000MW transmitter and drown out WNBC with Rick Astley on repeat.
Want to eliminate entitlements? You need a backup plan that won't have people dying in the streets, and actually spends less money. Looping in private contractors to spend more money or provide less benefits is not smaller government.
All 3 of these scenarios (and I could keep going) involve smarter government. Sure, saving money means "less" in some senses but the point is being smarter, not just randomly being upset at the aggregate size of things that you support in isolation.
> nobody is calling for no government
hop on the government paved roads to drive to a lake that you couldn't get arrested for trespassing on because the government has preserved it this long, then hop on the darpa/dod funded internet to complain that you can't go fucking swimming is the epitome of irony. Go fuck yourself.
It is better to remain silent and be thought...
May I suggest that getting an education might do wonders for your life? Just a thought.
resorting to ad hominems rather than reason, pretty typical for the moronic libertarian technophiles that seem to be all over hn.
Really? And "go fuck yourself" is "reason" how?
I am merely a mirror for the direction you chose to take. If you want to discuss the topic with civility I am all for it so long as you don't ask me to do things with my body I am quite literally biologically incapable of doing.
Merely reflecting the tone you've taken throughout this post. Then to use the passive-aggressive "May I suggest getting an education" bit is incredibly condescending, especially given that your position of less-government is universally better, after being scrubbed of the sensationalist rhetoric you are spewing, has literally 0 empirical evidence behind it. There is a reason Austrian economics is not taken seriously.
I especially like that fact that you asked less than 1.5 years ago about the best online CS program, then have the audacity to tell someone to get an education. You probably do not know jack shit about econ or cs.
Wrong on so many points.
Feel free to contact me privately with your real name and LinkedIn profile link. My email address is in my profile. I'll send you my LinkedIn URL and you can figure out just what kind of a moron I am.
You are a piece of work, aren't you?
Interesting that you went back and researched my comment history. So, your assumption was that I am a kid looking for a CS degree? Now, that's really funny! Thanks.
I just found it ironic that you tell someone to get educated, when you don't have a degree, which is pretty obvious given your inability to ignore rhetoric and respond to the merits of an argument. U mad
I wish HN had a way to kill-off these kinds of exchanges.
When someone opens a new comment branch with "Go fuck yourself" nothing good can follow. In retrospect I probably should have completely ignored this. I, in a very real sense, became part of the problem by providing a stage of sorts. I am sorry for that.
You know, maybe you out to calm down and think before you type.
If it makes you happy, yes you are right, I don't know jack shit about economics or cs. There, you won.
Getting a chubby at any chance to say "ad hominem" is also typical HN.
Given that the poster robomartin is less than 1.5 years away from asking what the best (undergrad) online CS degree is, I felt it was particularly apt in this case.
He didn't say nor have I ever heard a libertarian claim they wanted no government. I believe that's a different ideology.
He said, "Ultra limited government."
Does ultra-limited government include government-provided roads, infrastructure, safe food, safe cars, electricity, water, internet?
No reason it couldn't. It's not the size of a government that determines its efficacy, esp with the right kind of private-sector support.
Then it's a MEANINGLESS PHRASE.
Just because you don't like it or don't agree doesn't make it meaningless.
It means exactly what it says. There is nothing to show that an ultra-limited government cannot perform the needed tasks for society such as you provide. But I say there's a big difference between a government that provides what's needed for society and the monstrosity that's currently in place in Washington D.C.
When I say something along the lines of ultra-limited I mean I want most of the political decisions that affect my life to be decided on the local or state level before it becomes a federal issue. That's exactly how the US was designed, but that's not the way it is being run now. The federal government actually has a list of things it is to do, by the way Post Offices and Roads are covered so I have no problem with that, but a great deal of what it does goes way beyond that list.
My definition of a ultra-limited federal government? Simple. It's what the Constitution says it is.
> Simple. It's what the Constitution says it is.
Every single thing the government does today has been because of laws written by Congress, signed and enacted by the head of the Executive, and upheld by the Judiciary.
How can you even BEGIN to make the claim that it's unconstitutional?
That's the DEFINITION of Constitutional.
> Every single thing the government does today has been because of laws written by Congress, signed and enacted by the head of the Executive, and upheld by the Judiciary.
Incorrect. Many of things the government does today are done either within or outside of specific purported statutory authority (in the latter case, if there is a theoretical justification, it relates to inherent powers of particular offices that do not require legislation to activate) outside of the scope of theories of justification that have been challenged in the courts. Its also quite likely that at least some things government does today are things that have been rejected by the courts in the past -- and which would be again if they were challenged again (certainly, it stretches credibility to claim that, despite all the past missteps, many of which involved repeats of the same violation, the government has just recently become perfectly compliant.)
You imply that HUGE SWATHS of what the Federal Government are unconstitutional, and that's complete bunk.
If you disagree, figure out a way to get a court case, or write to your representatives or try to become one. That's how it works.
> You imply that HUGE SWATHS of what the Federal Government are unconstitutional
I'm not sure on what basis you infer that thing about HUGE SWATHS from what I said.
> and that's complete bunk.
While, contrary to your claim, I didn't say (or imply) that it was true, I also don't see the evidence that it is "complete bunk". Please present it.
Seriously? You're going to make me play this game?
"most of the political decisions that affect my life to be decided on the local or state level before it becomes a federal issue. That's exactly how the US was designed, but that's not the way it is being run now"
MOST... federal... the way it is being run now.
MOST means more than 50%.
And that's complete bunk: it is not the case that 50% of the political decisions made by the federal government that affect your life are unconstitutional.
> Seriously? You're going to make me play this game?
I'm not making you do anything. If I could, I'd make you read posts more carefully (including the attribution line) before responding to them, though.
> "most of the political decisions that affect my life to be decided on the local or state level before it becomes a federal issue. That's exactly how the US was designed, but that's not the way it is being run now"
That quote is neither from my post [1] that you responded to [2] with the claim that "You imply that HUGE SWATHS of what the Federal Government are unconstitutional", nor from any other post of mine, in this thread, nor, for that matter, from anywhere else, ever. It's from someone else entirely. [3]
And it doesn't say that most things that government is doing are unconstitutional (as you claim now), or even that "HUGE SWATHS" are not (as you claimed before), it says that if the government was strictly doing only what was Constitutional, then most issues would be decided at the local or state level, and that is not what is happening now. So, even if it wasn't for the fact that it was irrelevant to the post it was offered in response to, and misattributed to the wrong person, your characterization would still be wrong.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5839649 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5840037 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5838992
Maybe "ultra-" in this case was used to indicate that the limits would be strict, not that they would be extremely small.
Maybe "ultra-" is a meaningless phrase that makes people feel good, but conveys zero information content, and so it's not worthy of debate.
> Ultra limited government.
Pretty damn close.
Nope. A rough count shows that over twenty million people work directly for our govenments from local to federal.
http://www2.census.gov/govs/apes/11fedfun.pdf
http://www2.census.gov/govs/apes/11stlus.txt
If we reduced government by 90% by reduction, automation, privatization and outright agency elimination you'd still have two million people in government.
"Ultra-limited" does not mean "no government".
I think 50% to 75% could be a good range. So you'd still have somewhere between five and ten million people in government.
Also, "ultra limited" refers more to what they are allowed to do rather than how many.
Nice job busting out a rant that no one provoked.
"...When are you going to understand that a conservative Libertarian (as opposed to extreme and nearly anarchist) approach is the only path to recovery?..."
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.
Wrong. I voted for Obama the first time. Then, when I learned he had no clue, lied about everything, did not do as promised, plunged us into more debt, is a total union whore, etc, I voted for Romney.
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.
> Wrong. I voted for Obama the first time. Then, when I learned he had no clue, lied about everything, did not do as promised, plunged us into more debt, is a total union whore, etc, I voted for Romney.
> I want an intellectually honest limited government that is fiscally conservative and socially, well, gets the fuck out of our lives.
So you voted for a guy who ran on a platform that was the opposite? That government has a positive role to play in peoples lives and believed in progressive social causes?
> I am a true independent in the full sense of the word.
Oh, in the sense that you're not informed? I believe the term is "low-information voter". You might want to try that instead of "independent".
Voting within a system where you know, almost without a doubt, that only a Democrat or a Republican can win is really difficult. As an independent or libertarian you sometimes have to be pragmatic and vote for someone who might be aligned with some of what you think is important and hope to do some good. The alternative is to either waste your vote on someone who will not get elected or refrain from voting at all.
This isn't a simple problem. There are very few choices that actually make a difference.
I used my presidential voting record merely to point out that I truly don't follow party lines. Voting at all levels is important, not just for president.
> I voted for Romney
You are part of the problem. When someone is a fucking idiot, you don't vote for the slightly less idiotic idiot, you vote third-party. You are not independent, and it's an embarrassment to say you are if you only vote for the lesser of two evils, and not one that cares about our country, like Ron Paul, Gary Johnson, or Jill Stein.
> it's an embarrassment to say you are if you only vote for the lesser of two evils, and not one that cares about our country, like Ron Paul, Gary Johnson, or Jill Stein.
Its quite possible to think that, of Obama and Romney, Romney is the lesser of two evils, and to think that for any X in (Ron Paul, Gary Johnson, Jill Stein), Romney would still be the lesser of two evils when considering Romney vs. X.
Its also quite possible to believe that Ron Paul, Gary Johnson, or Jill Stein would be better than Romney who is in turn better than Obama but that, based on the information available at the time you go into the voting booth, that the plausible effects of voting for any of the third party candidates instead of Romney are, in declining order or probability:
1. No effect on the election outcome, 2. Increasing the probability of an Obama win 3. There is no #3
Based on this, it would be counterproductive to vote third party, and the responsible thing would be to vote for Romney.
(Note that none of this should be taken as indicating anything of my actual preferences among any of those candidates.)
> Based on this, it would be counterproductive to vote third party, and the responsible thing would be to vote for Romney.
This only stands if you want it to be counterproductive. A third-party candidate vote is never counterproductive. Even if it did increase the probability of an Obama win, or even if it did have no effect on the election outcome, why would it be a wasted vote? What you're effectively doing is raising publicity for the cause. Just because you'll have to suffer 4 more years of struggle doesn't mean it's all for nought.
> Even if it did increase the probability of an Obama win, or even if it did have no effect on the election outcome, why would it be a wasted vote?
If you think Obama is substantially worse than Romney and it increased the probability of an Obama win, its not a wasted vote, its a counterproductive vote. (That is, its a worse that decreases the expected realized utility.)
> What you're effectively doing is raising publicity for the cause.
There's better ways to do that that precede the voting booth, and which, if successful, eliminate the problem of counterproductive voting. At the voting booth, when those prior efforts haven't succeeded, you have to weigh the benefits of maybe microscopically advancing the PR for the cause by adding one to the count of protest votes against the microscopic possibility (times the expected magnitude of harm) of tossing the election to the least-favored of the major party candidate, and the policy consequences of that (which can, depending on the candidates choices, include a greater decrease in the long-term prospects of the kind of changes you want than the increase that would be expected from the PR value of a third-party vote, particularly if you think the major-party choices are between "basically maintaining the status quo" and "maintaining the worst features of the status quo while substantial reducing economic and political freedoms".)
Political engagement isn't limited to voting.
> Based on this, it would be counterproductive to vote third party, and the responsible thing would be to vote for Romney.
Exactly right. When faced with wasting your vote the intelligent thing to do is to try to mitigate damage and cast a vote for the person who is likely to do the most good where it matters. Obama, as it turns out, isn't even qualified to run a cookie-baking operation. We really needed someone with a deep understanding of business and economics at the helm. The only electable choice was Romney. Any other vote would have been a wasted vote.
So because Obama lied too much, you instead voted for the guy who probably told more lies than any politician in U.S. presidential history? And rather than voting for the libertarian who was running, you voted for the guy who campaigned on sending people to jail for getting abortions, using drugs, etc.?
Interesting voting pattern. To my mind, that pattern is another argument in favor of score voting (sometimes called "range voting") [1]. I'd vastly prefer score voting to our present plurality voting for all elections, and of course most importantly, national elections. This would have allowed me and you to score Obama, Romney, and Gary Johnson according to how well they match our ideals.
I grow increasingly weary of either "choosing the lesser of two evils" or "throwing my vote away."
I agree with you. The problem is that at one point you have to face the reality that the candidate you really care for can't win. How do you choose then? Do you not vote or try to mitigate damage by, yes, choosing the lesser evil?
Let's be real. This president versus that president isn't going to change a thing if most of their constituents just don't care.
You think voting for Romney shows that you learned anything? Shame on you.
As a non american, my theory about why your state is allow to abuse it's power to such a degree is that your democratic system disincentivize multiple parties and so a fair competition. I understand that the ruling party is the one with the largest share of votes rather than whatever group of parties who can agree to work with each other comprising the majority of the votes. You should need 50% of the votes to rule. That means making compromises with minority parties. Compromises is a good thing in the political sphere, not something to avoid. And it incentivizes voting on small parties. It may lead to some bad apples but at least you have slightly better environment for competition.
There are three particularly big problems in the US system today.
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).
Lobbyists - I agree serious repair/surgery is needed. Ideas?
Tort reform - Why? What, other than torts, provides a counterbalance to corporate and executive power? What, other than torts, protects the weak from the powerful? Most tort reform seems to be an attempt by a group to wipe out oversight.
The Fed - needs to be restricted to a smaller role: control of inflation.
But what about the TSA, FBI, NSA et al? What a miraculous event it would be were these agencies reduced to their pre-9/11 levels or better, to a level 20 years prior to that. IIRC the various states' attorneys-generals issued a statement that the Patriot Act was completely unnecessary, but here we are anyway.
Don't reboot the system, rewrite it. Instead of a representative government most western countries suffer, switch to democracy.
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.
Keep the representative system, but add a ton of direct democracy influences to it. You can even take real world examples from countries like Germany or Finland, I believe, where the citizens can create their own bills, and then pass them through a referendum.
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.
I think the state of California is a pretty good counter-example to the purported benefits of increased direct democracy.
As I understand it, one of the problems with California's referendum system is that there's no built-in requirement to fund the initiatives. A referendum system might work better if every initiative had to provide for its own funding, and/or the state constitution required a balanced budget.
<Insert obligatory comment about bread and circuses>
I think a representative system where we select representatives based on area of influence rather than geography could work well, with the option to override our representative's vote on our behalf on specific issues.
The Democracy vs the representative Republicanism are irrelevant.
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.
Well, actual democracy does start by writing a constitution¹ by mostly randomly selected people who will forbid themselves to exert any meaningful further influence on the system. That should address the bureaucracy problem.
[1]: I mean a constitution, not a set of super-laws such as the Bill of Rights. Something that state how political institutions should operate (Executive, legislative, judiciary, monetary, and the media).
Well, we don't have as complete a constitution as you specified, but I think we've pretty much proven that a constitution doesn't just enforce itself.
It's like introducing a constitution and elections to Afghanistan. They don't mean anything without the culture or "civil society" to back them up.
True democracy is a far worse sort of government than a representative republic because it is essentially mob rule.
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch." -said by somebody
Ancient Athens was not mob rule, as far as I know.
It was a much more homogenous mob than what we have in the US today, but it was still a mob.
As for citizen referendums, look no further than California to see the outcome of this "direct democracy". It still suffers from the Golden Rule, he who has the gold makes the rules.
"Democracy is little more than mob rule." -- Thomas Jefferson
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.
So, an elite should rule, because the general population is too dumb to rule itself. I'm not sure the premise is true, but I can respect the argument.
The problem is, how can the system tell the corrupt from the trustworthy? Certainly not with elections: (i) it didn't work, (ii) voters are too poorly informed, and (iii) if the people are too dumb to be trusted with policies, how can they be trusted with their vote?
Recursing back a little, what we really want is a friendly, competent, powerful, and stable governance. That pose a number of problems: we don't know what "friendly" really means, competence is hard to come by, and power is wickedly dangerous if the first criteria are not satisfied.
Name a conservative Libertarian candidate and I'll point out the socially regressive policies that make me not vote for them.
is it ironic that I can name the last libertarian presidential candidate, Gary Johnson, and you can't name a socially repressive policy?
by all means continue giving away your economic freedoms in order to signal your loyalty to social freedoms the president doesn't have control over anyway.
Gary Johnson?
Huh. Actually, I like this guy a lot, but somehow wasn't aware of him during the 2012 race. He's actually a Republican that I could vote for. It's a shame he was drowned out by people like Newt Gingrich and Michelle Bachmann.
What is a socially regressive policy and why are Libertarian candidates prone to them?
A socially regressive policy is something like making abortions illegal.
Libertarians aren't socially regressive, it's the conservative part that is
I do find it funny how abortion even rises to the level of audibleness in the conversation. We have a government that is consuming massively more of the GDP than ever, is grabbing more and more power at every turn, is subsidizing every kind of bad behavior from international banks to a horribly corrupt food stamp program of epic proportions.
Even if you hate the idea of illegal abortions, aligning yourself with "big government" in any way would seem to be a foolish move. Every day, you're building a government that's powerful enough to do whatever it wants. That means that when the right christian republican is in the White House with Congressional support who decides to make illegalizing abortion his issue... he/she does it. Just like Progressives have wanted government healthcare for the last century and then when they had a slim majority in Congress for 2 years with the presidency, they rammed through Obamacare and now we're all stuck with it.
> do find it funny how abortion even rises to the level of audibleness in the conversation.
Legalized abortion, allowing half the species agency over a basic biological function central to their ability to equally participate in society, is the single most important human rights issue since the outlawing of slavery. Of course it rises to the level of "audibleness." It should be deafening!
You completely missed the point.
When you give so much power to the government, it doesn't matter what your individual opinion is on abortion or any other noise issue.
You have given your opponent a checkmate because you allowed that opponent to take your queen earlier thinking that he was somehow your friend.
Your language of "audibleness" clearly refers to the importance of abortion versus privacy as issues, not any sort of long-term tactical battle. I'm not addressing the rest of your post, just the first sentence.
> sort
I think that a bubble sort can be effective in that it's easy to write and does the job.
I'm not addressing the rest of your post, just the one part that has nothing to do with what you were really saying.
I addressed the part that I most cared about. In privacy discussions like these, it's often the case that people lament the fact that the public cares more about things like abortion than the NSA collecting call metadata. My point is that the legal status of abortion (or gay rights, etc) is not the kind of minor issue that some people like to dismiss as merely "wedge issues."
On the list of things that aren't in the Constitution, abortion rights are far more important than "privacy."
You keep mentioning "privacy" as though I argued its merits relative to abortion. I didn't even use the word.
My post was all about the size and power of the Federal government trumping all other issues such as whether or not abortion is good or bad. Once you've abdicated your liberty, your ability to complain or resolve other issues is gone.
Outlawing murder would be something I consider moving in the right direction (pun intended)
I wasn't making a point on either side of the issue, just giving an example of a socially regressive policy
> I hate to use this tone but, so be it. Maybe now you morons who continue to vote in the pieces of shit into our government who are bent on taking more and more power for themselves will wake up and figure it out? How much more proof do you need? Does this make you angry yet or is Obama still your diety? Oh, and Republicans don't get a pass either.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
I've noticed that some people have a certain color blindness when it comes to these security/privacy issues. They just don't see them or "get" them. No amount of increased government intrusion would affect them unless it happens to them very personally and viscerally.
Even after a dramatic event, it's unlikely that they'll realize that they willingly walked all the steps to get to the point where they were suddenly and massively violated by the State. They'll look to blame other factors that they weren't responsible for supporting.
Such is psychology.
The US gov't has always engaged in the practices you mention against the people, although this has expanded since 9/11. The point is that this behavior isn't fundamentally different from past policies and doesn't represent a major change in the how the US operates (obviously this is a problem).
> The US gov't has always engaged in the practices you mention against the people, although this has expanded since 9/11.
Whoa! There used to be executive orders prohibiting assassination. There also used to be a prohibition on the CIA spying domestically. They had to pass a law that retroactively made it legal for the Telcos to hand over call data. Torture wasn't legal until Bush Jr.
Things have fundamentally changed.
Thats great, lets minimize government, lets privatize schools, police, prison, the fire department and everything else! "Ultra limited government" for the future! Lets deregulate everything, because you know you can trust Corporations!
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 self-given legal right to take ALL our data and store in insecurely.
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.
Sorry, but limited government doesn't mean no government at all. Most of what you describe should be the responsibility of the local government in your area which is far more capable of dealing with such matters as opposed to a massive central government that can care less about your community's well-being.
Most people who speak of limited government are speaking of the federal level, not local or state.
Thats great, lets minimize government, lets privatize schools, police, prison, the fire department and everything else!
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.
Vote Republican: Patriot act created Vote Democratic: Patriot act abused
I'm not sure where this leaves us, which is worse?
Get out of the Republican vs Democrat team mindset?
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 problem is that if NONE of the candidates adhere to my principles and I don't vote, SOMEONE wins by default.
Patriot act was overwhelming supported by Republicans AND Democrats when passed. Let's not rewrite history here.
The more we learn about the Obama admin, the worse it gets. This isn't a R vs D thing.
“The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.” ― George Orwell
It's funny how you call everyone BUT yourself, a moron. Oh wait, no it's not.
So the only way to the promised land, is via the path you laid out? I see what you did there.
You say that a conservative libertarian approach is the only path. I find it hard to believe it is the only option, tbh, and you provide no evidence --nor I have evidence to support that it is not. But, could it be that the problem is that the US citizens have no (effectively possible) way to effect power on the government? Could it be that with a two party system there is little incentive to cater to the constituents? Could it be that there is little incentive for Democrats to be anything other than a little to the left of the Republicans, and that there is little incentive for Republicans to be other than not Democrats? ... There are examples of countries out there with more government (lefties!!!) and a better life for their constituents.
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...
> Maybe now you morons who continue to vote in the pieces of shit into our government who are bent on taking more and more power for themselves will wake up and figure it out?
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?
Sadly, you forgot the most important factor in all of this: money. Vote with your wallet. Far more important and influential than voting once in 4 years.
Only if you have a big wallet. And that's the problem.
You could have deleted everything but the last line.
I'm afraid in this case voting for somebody else is just not going to be enough. History shows us the only way to really change the status quo is by massive mobilization akin to the Civil Rights movement.
Most of the conservatives I know just want to spend more money investigating Benghazi.
I wonder what the hell is voting for... this system is corrupted/failed already, politicians put millions and billions in marketing to get elected, sometimes with corruption money even(ruling party in Brazil admitted to it with a "everybody does it, it's normal" argument, also fucking lobbyists up there) and after they're there they don't have to answer to anyone anymore, it doesn't matter that the actions took by the government doesn't match the persona they marketed themselves to get there(As an outsider who rooted for Obama for his apparent reasoning and humanity, I'm severely disappointed with what I see), not to mention that probably in most countries the 'game' is already a two-party only play, with "you wouldn't want that other guy so pick me" as one of the prevalent voting reasonings, with parties getting more and more alike by the day, making the whole voting process look more like lucha-libre than a competition to me
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)
I lived in Argentina for a while. It's probably worst there. In many strange ways I see aspects of what I saw happening in Argentina happening here in the US.
I give this maybe 2-3 months before the whistleblower behind this is being prosecuted by the Obama administration for "harming national security and putting people's lives in danger, and/or espionage".
Jeez, isn't that poor Benghazi scapegoat who made that anti-Muslim video still rotting in jail for some bogus parole violation that normally no one would have done anything about?
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.
To notch up the paranoia a bit, the original court order document looks like it may contain some digital fingerprinting around the edges (either made by a certain class of printer or placed there prior to dissemination) that could lead authorities to the person(s) they originally distributed this specific copy of the court order to.
Of course, I hope that is not the case here but people should be aware these things exist.
I'd be really surprised if journalists who published leaks weren't well aware of digital fingerprinting, since protecting sources is integral to their profession.
Considering that journalists are not advising their sources to use Tor or anonymous remailers, not publishing PGP or S/MIME public keys as part of their contact information, and continuing to base their assumptions about technology on the reality of the 1960s, I am not sure why you would be surprised. Most journalists are as clueless about computing as the rest of the general population. The education system is doing an absolutely terrible job of educating people about technology, and journalism majors are not taught much about how computers work or how they can be attacked.
And killing puppies with chainsaw. Think of the puppies.
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.
Turkey is burning right this moment for (arguably) less evil by their government leaders.
There might be a reason that the original report is from a UK newspaper.
Take a look at your technology with an engineer's eye. If it can be done, they probably will. If it can be done easily they probably already are. You may as well just assume this is always the case.
In the current political climate, why in the world wouldn't they?
Of course. You should also be fighting it with every fiber in your body. Generations behind you gave their lives for rights like these, and the current generation seems to be giving them away because they are too busy chatting with friends on Facebook to care about it.
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.
I don't see any way to fight it now. What are your suggestions?
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.
I don't see any way to fight it now. What are your suggestions?
If you're a Verizon customer, you have standing to sue the government in a class action and challenge the constitutionality of its actions.
Have Congress pass laws to make such surveillance illegal. Stop using Verizon or any other carrier that complies (economic protest). Only use technologies that don't permit such spying. Pass state legislation that is counter to the federal mandate and create an uproar that way. The list goes on.
We're stil a democracy and when it comes down to it we're still a democracy that gives a lot of power to any one senator. If you have one dog in the fight - if the people in even one state can get their act together enough to elect someone on your side - there are things you can do to have your voice heard.
You really shouldn't feel so unempowered - despite the 1% rhetoric, it's still pretty much the best time in the history of the world for the little guy.
The law already exists: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_...
We just need the laws to be followed.
Aaron Swartz designed Victory Kit ( https://github.com/victorykit/victorykit ) with the beginnings of this exact use case in mind. What would you do if you passionately cared about an issue but lacked the massive funds required to mount a lobbying campaign? Start building grass roots social pressure by A/B testing your entire movement start to finish.
Have Congress pass laws to make such surveillance illegal.
Arguably it already is.
Nobody cares.
And if you lost faith in Congress, like 94% of Americans. You might also join a realistic effort to reform it: http://www.rootstrikers.org
(ran by Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law prof who also founded the Creative Commons movement)
Root Strikers is fundamentally misguided, they attack the symptoms instead of the cause. The root of all this corruption is how large the federal government is, any organization with that much power and money will be co-opted.
I don't agree. Good governance is possible, and size has little to do with it. If there is proper democratic control over government, government can be a force for good. Many northern European countries governments show this (they generally are trusted, and few people resent paying taxes).
Democratic control can provide equality and fairness, with every person one vote, rather than the market where some people having more impact than others, simply because they are richer.
Maybe because in America there hasn't been good governance for so long, trust is low, and the only solution many see is to simply chop down government to the minimum... but there are other solutions, actual democracy is one of them.
Develop new technologies that make this kind of thing impossible.
If they can't control said technologies, and put backdoors in them, then they'll make them illegal. That's a non-starter. A solution can only ultimately occur in D.C.
And if they make them illegal, they'll have their day in court.
I'd tend to agree the right place to start is building a technological solution to the problem. One that people actually will want to use.
Why not both? As we know, D.C. isn't always reliable.
Then you make new versions of said technologies that are harder to track/identify.
"I don't see any way to fight it now. What are your suggestions?"
Develop and deploy good cryptosystems, and encourage people to use them. My mother uses OTR to chat with me; she does not fully understand why it matters (or even that it is being used), yet our conversations are safe from prying eyes. Sure, it is just a small step, but it is better than nothing. A lot of small steps would quickly make the NSA's program prohibitively expensive (even for the NSA).
"The cypherpunks credo is 'privacy through technology, not legislation.' The law of the land can be changed by the next administration. The Laws of mathematics are more rigid."
The only realistic way to fight untargeted spying is to protect yourself from being made a target.
Can you still buy a pre-paid phone and remain anonymous on the phone bill in the states? Or they require ID now when purchasing such device?
Voice printing all but eliminates the idea of anonymity for tracfones. All they'd need is one conversation, and they can look for you from there on using your voice. They can back trace who you are by who you talk to and so on; relatively trivial to figure out who you are from there, particularly assuming you make a few calls and or reveal any details.
I'm skeptical how accurate voiceprinting can be after all the distortion/compression of a cell signal. If you have a device you use to have contacts you want to keep secret from the NSA, you probably shouldn't call your friends on it.
Having done some work with watermarking, I would assume it's extremely accurate. There is so much information that makes it through the transmission process: your speech cadence, inflection, pronunciations, word choice, interjections, background noise, etc. The only way I'd feel reasonably comfortable defeating something like voice printing is using a text-to-speech engine.
You are thinking about it from someone trying to understand another person through distorted comms. You aren't thinking about every other signal in the "speech" that is really quite easily identifiable with a reasonable margin of error.
You can do this anonymously, but it may take you a few tries. I've had the best luck with 3rd party T-Mobile dealers. Just give a name and decline showing an ID. Buy refills with cash at Walmart or wherever.
Dutch person here with a little insight what's to come for you guys. Some information about our tiny little country (in Wester Europe, very pro-US) with just 17 million people.
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
Fellow Dutchman here, and I couldn't agree more. I actually helped building the electronic patient file in two major hospitals, and I can't tell you enough about the massive clusterfuck that is. The government requires you to finish it before a certain date, only they provide you with the exact requirements after that date. Basic security measures like encrypting data? No way!
To me, America is still the land of the slightly more free and little more brave!
no, it is, fanfare.., Germany.
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...
Thank you for the reply. can't believe I forgot all about Germany! I sometimes joke we would have been better off (privacy-wise and financially) if we would have become a federal state of Germany in the '50s. Our Gilder was already linked to the German Mark and you are our largest trade partner. We seem to have the same financial 'hard money' line as well. I visit Germany a lot and am always amazed by the hospitality.
likewise! I was several times in NL and perceived you guys the cooler germans. This open minded culture I adored seemed so fixed to me. I hope this conservative backlash will diminsh.
American here, have only visited NL and DE for a few weeks, never lived there.
It was also my perception that the Dutch had a live-and-let-live toleration, that seems like the opposite of the monitoring regime described in the comment. (I'm not really referring to marijuana, I'm speaking more generally.) To this naive outsider, who admittedly has something of a crush on Amsterdam, that level of monitoring is puzzling.
But maybe all those bike roads and dikes point to another aspect of the culture -- a little too well-supervised and well-engineered.
I didn't think marijuana was such a big thing there? I was under the impression that it was mostly just a tourist thing rather than a real part of the local culture
Yes, but among (some) Americans, Amsterdam == "legal pot", and I wanted to say my Amsterdam crush wasn't about that.
Mostly agree, - but: How is this conservative?
Well to be honest, in retrospect the present Germans are lucky as compared to other countries that they already are educated either first, or second hand about the issue of government knowing everything. Another point could be made is that thank god it happened during the low tech era and not today because a Hitler-esque figure armed with a German equivalent of Google would positively fuck up the entire world with even better efficiency.
Germany occupied NL during that time frame, I'm sure the Dutch are familiar with it too. Most of Western Europe is, actually.
Sort of, yes, back then our state records showed nicely who was and wasn't Jewish. So we got a law that forbids religion to be listed in these records. And now we log everything else.
don't forget the Stasi (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit), in many ways it is more present to us.
What alas struck me as odd in Germany that after ww2 and the Stazi in east germany you still have manditory ID cards + registration when you move with the police! and you get upset about street view?
you dont have to tell the police when you move. only the local goverment (Einwohnermeldeamt)
In this context it sounds a little scary either way(don't the local police have access to local government records so same difference.) It could be quite innocuous, like being registered to vote, and needing to know in which local elections you can participate.
Countries that were part of or occupied by USSR have been there as well, I think.
This might sound like a Godwin, but I guess we're slowly building our own Stasi and need to experience it first before we realize what happened. If it's not too late.
With right-extremist nutters like Wilders, economical decline, and the singling-out of a certain demographic (muslims), which happens internationally, it's more likely than you think. Yellow stars embroidened on coats have been replaced with profiles in large databases containing a billion times more profiling data though, instead of a simple yellow-starred label.
Had you written gestapo it would have been a godwin. See germany has extensive multifaceted experience with police states.
It is about time that certain "accidents" are going to convince those bloody Germans how beneficial a stronger surveillance system is!
Conspiracy nut thinking? Not so fast my friend:
http://www.presseurop.eu/en/content/news-brief/3696611-what-...
Gladio is a very interesting topic! Especially since a BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst) group appears to have to been involved in the Münchener Oktoberfest-Bombings from 1980 killing 21 people.
I think both events are related. http://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/anschlag-auf-das-oktober...
And what about the censorship, and the illegality of penetration testing software?
Agreed. Imagine voting for you own major, sheriff, congressman and president! (This is no joke people, we can't. They're appointed from within their own ranks. We can vote for a specific party-leader and hope they win. But the always end up creating a coalition with 2 or 33 other party's and needing to compromise).
You think the US two party, first-past-the-post system is better?!
Why would normal citizens vote for the president? There are only two possible outcomes of that: a president gets selected who basically blocks what the rest of the government wants (this is how it works in the US and exactly what the FF wanted) or the people pick a president who would work with the government but would have been picked with your current system.
Yes its is it makes for a stronger government and reduces the influenced of extremists holding the country to ransom.
"Yes its is it makes for a stronger government and reduces the influenced of extremists holding the country to ransom."
The problem is that there is no real choice here; you have a right-wing party and a slightly more right-wing party, and then a bunch of powerless minor parties. Nobody is holding the country ransom because there is no real disagreement. Occasionally the parties clash over the budget (as they did recently), but on the whole the country has generally followed the same path for decades now.
Dumping Nuclear power in a hurry to keep the greens on side?
Remind me again how the large German cost line suffers regular tsunamis :-)
So you're upset because you're losing nuclear power (admittedly, that's a mistake)? You could be having indefinite detention, constant wars on ideals (as opposed to tangible entities), a failing school system, a system where the balance is tipped so far in favor of corporations (as opposed to labor) that it's practically a vertical line, and on and on but you're concerned about having less efficient power? The mind boggles.
I don't live in Germany or the USA :-) and having access to affordable stable power is quite an important thing in having a nice society to live in.
As your so keen on improving the lot of "labor" you are of course a union member and actively recruit and improve workers living conditions?
I got over 1000 of my members a better deal on their pensions and helped in gaining recognition for a bargaining unit in the UK.
>and having access to affordable stable power is quite an important thing in having a nice society to live in
Not nearly as important as avoiding having a bunch of lunatic extremists as two-party systems seem to devolve to.
I find the European governments of many parties all having a say in the government the best and closest to actual representation. I find the idea that the entirety of opinion in the whole US, all 350 million citizens, can be resolved to either Red or Blue absolutely idiotic.
Of course that doesn't happen, the parties both span the whole political spectrum, including complete overlap. I.e. the party name can be meaningless. It also means you can't be sure where a politician stands by his party alone. Contrast this with a european government where you stand with your party or you switch party. It's much easier to work out where someone stands.
>you are of course a union member
I certainly would be in a union but firms have been really good at keeping unionization out of IT entirely. But even better would be a government who recognized the power imbalance between corporations and labor and took steps to make things better on their own.
Like golden dawn in greece and of course italy and belgium have proved the point that PR is wonderful NOT
I hope this sentence was sarcastic.
No it wasn't you maybe need to read Mathew 7:3 and reflect on it.
You do know that other 1st world democracys look at the sclerotic nature of the US system and shake their heads.
One member of the US legislature commented on the BBC that the house of lords was more Democratic than they where in a lot of ways :-)
And don't get me started on the obsession with Barak's race and the fact that the GOP the party of Lincon Seward et al has been taken over by the "swivel eyed nutters"
I'm sorry, I don't have a clue what you're trying to say. You initially seemed to say that a two party system makes for a stronger government and avoid extremism. The US proves the exact opposite.
Now what's this about a beam in my own eye? And now you seem to be bashing how bad the US government is, yet we would be in agreement on this. Color me confused.
I don't actually think voting for judges and sheriffs is a good idea at all. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Arpaio
One example doesn't make a case. I'd argue that the system of electing sheriffs has overall worked tremendously well in the US. The alternative is appointment by insiders or a board, both of which are easily susceptible to corruption, and that can make it difficult to impossible to correct said corruption when it happens.
He's the guy his constituents want. I personally think voting for sheriffs is a good idea.
He's not the guy his constituents want. He is the guy 51.5% of his constituents want.
Giving the people what a majority of those people want is a very dangerous thing to do. Part of the theory being having constitutions is to limit the tyranny of the majority, though it is plain to see that in Joe Arpaio's case the limitations are not sufficient. What 51% of voters in Maricopa County apparently want is unacceptable.
Well, 51.5% is better than the small minority that would be served if he weren't an elected official - and the threat of losing his next election keeps him at least moderately accountable.
[insert Churchill quote here]
Oh, that guy. He's even know over here. (Journalists like to pick out the most 'interesting' persons). That guy scares me. You also vote for judges? Would it help if there was a maximum someone could get voted for? Like with your president?
It's ideal for most judges to be elected to life terms. That limits concerns about them needing to serve the politics of the minute to get re-elected. They can take principled stands without worrying about being thrown out. The Supreme Court has routine stood up to both Congress and the President, and they can only do that because they can't be removed (except under extraordinary circumstances of corruption).
It is ideal for some judges to be elected to life terms, but not most. This is because community standards change, and most judges don't have the scrutiny the Supreme Court is under.
In New York, most judges are elected to 14 year terms. There are a few exceptions, but mostly for traffic courts or administrative judges.
They do run in partisan elections, but they are limited with regard to claims they can make about opponents, and a non-partisan commission evaluates the overall qualifications of each judge.
Are there issues with politicalization? Absolutely. But don't make the assumption that election == politics, and appointment != politics. An elected judge at least nominally is accountable to the people. The examples where this system doesn't work well is usually when machine politics corrupt the process of electing judges. If the judge was appointed, chances are they would be accountable to nobody at all.
It's a state issue. Some states have appointed, for life judges and others use voting. Personally I think voted-judges are wrong for a lot of reasons but particularly because it makes judges political beings which they really ought not to be.
Another "Dutchie" here! :)
woohoo! Amsterdam!
Dane here. Todays headline in Danish news is that the government just learned that a database containing ID numbers of all people with a driver's license was hacked last year and an unknown amount of information may be leaked. The Danish ID numbers can be used to get just about any information on Danes, whether it's tax related, education, health, criminal records, addresses, bank accounts etc.
Holy cr*p. That's my nightmare as well. The Public transport system has been hacked many times. What is the Electronic Patient, Electronic Passport or Tax system gets hacked? Anyone could take all your information and you're screwed. I think anyone owning any system whatsoever should be FORCED to go public if there system gets hacked. (Especially banks!)
Just wait until it turns out that forcing all software to have back-doors wasn't all that great of an idea.
It never has been, all it guarantees is hackers will find it and exploit it as well.
Well at least it's still possible to buy a prepaid SIM card with cash which includes data for ridiculously cheap. And travel in towns on bikes with huge sunglasses and a hat. And buy tickets for traveling between cities with cash.
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?
My gripe too. When I forget to 'check out' in Amsterdam when transferring from metro to train I get fined, even though I did in fact 'check in' for the train. It's so mindnumbingly stupid to have the two check-in/out poles standing next to each other.
I'm willing to bet that the fines are the reason it's not automatic.
> 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
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).
You're right, you can buy the one-time cards and they won't be able to track you. But for regular travellers like myself those one-time cards are much more expensive than the ones linked to your bank account. Not to mention the hassle of having to buy a new card every day...
That hassle can in principle be totally mitigated. When you buy an OV-Chipkaart from a service desk (like an NS desk at a train station), they will not only charge you the 15€ (or whatever) fee, but they will also ask you how much you want to use to load the card. You can pay cash at such a desk.
You could probably also use those desks to reload the OV-Chipkaart with cash, but I've never tried that.
> You could probably also use those desks to reload the OV-Chipkaart with cash, but I've never tried that.
You should be able to, especially the older generation has trouble with modern payment systems and (perhaps rightfully so) mistrust paying stuff by card.
You can do that, I tried.
Oh I agree, but privacy isn't always convenient. I'm currently sitting in your country (weather is nice), but these comments do scare me a little.
I'm travelling through many countries and really haven't taken into account the local customs when it comes to online activity.
There are VPS' available from resellers like Digital Ocean, are they required to also comply to the above?
Yes and no. VPS' providers under Europeaian juridistiction will have to collect and store all the information of their customers (emails, telephone calls) but if you're an American customer to a Europian VPS provider and you host an email-server on that VPS, you aren't forced to save that data for use by the europeian countries.
Funny that this thread has become about the Netherlands.
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.
How can you "feel" information vulnerability? That's kind of a ridiculous concept. Everything you type into your computer could literally be broadcast onto a massive LED screen in a public square on the other side of the planet and you would never "feel" a thing.
True. When I was in the US I was weary to approach a police officer. To me they looked rather edgy. A 'don't f*ck with me attitude'. Our police are pussy's compared to yours! My travel agency even warned me for the police in the poorer parts of Missisipy. As a non-american I could not fully understand the English some people over there spoke. (Alabama and in The deep south). Oddly enough people over there thought I was from NY or something when I talked to them.
LOL, how are those rose-colored glasses working out for you? Of course you'd feel more free, everything that threatens your freedom is swept under the rug here! 'Massive uproar' (read: more than 3 newspaper articles) about something (like EPD)? Just shelve it and try again next year! Never takes more than 2 or 3 tries! Do you realize how extensive the data logging (phone and internet records, plus phone taps) is here? And while we may not have the technology just yet to do really impressive data mining, in a few years time we will (or rather, 'they' will) and there will be nothing left that is private, especially when (in 10 years time) cash payments will be relegated to only buying things costing as much as a packet of gum. Think that's crazy? Sure, that's what people said of me when I said the same thing about data mining debit card payments 10 years ago - and look what was in the news just two weeks ago! The biggest Dutch processor of electronic payments will start selling that data to BigCo for marketing purposes! Sure it's been called off for now, but see my first sentence; next year, they'll be a lot more careful about not making any noise about it when they introduce it.
> I moved to Amsterdam from Seattle last November, and have to say that I feel far less vulnerable here, information-wise.
Care to elaborate?
even without considering that you charge an anonymous card with your bank account, if you keep only one, it's quite easy to follow patterns still. Especially if they have already targeted a person and they have additional information, there are not so many people that check in X and check out Y on days W,Z.. and so on. The more additional info you have, the narrower the search space.
This isn't even true. At the railway ticket machines you can buy an anonymous card with just coins. Yes, it does cost 7.50 euro, and it does let you charge in 1 euro increments. Yes, the data is collected, but no, they are not allowed to use it on a case by case basis, only aggregated and only individual trips. Data has been thrown away with lawyers and auditors present to watch.
Weird thing is, nobody seems to care. I care, it's one of the reasons I will keep voting for the pirate party.
Same here, and it confuses the hell out of me. Everytime i tell someone about yet-another-privacy-issue, and each time they answer "well, i have nothing to hide".
I think the standard counterargument is started by asking them if they have any curtains or blinds and if so, why?
[or you can ask them if they'd be willing to have a streaming camera installed in their bedroom]
People who argue very strongly against government intrusion often seem to ignore the distinction between private and public spaces. I have no problem with any amount of recording equipment in public spaces. Anywhere that a policeman could stand and watch; I see a camera as an efficient aid. I won't let a policeman into my house unless they have a warrant - and not because I have anything to hide, but because upholding the principle is important.
Then surely those cameras should be available to the public as well. If anywhere a policeman can stand also counts as anywhere anyone can stand, and if it's a public space as you say, then the people have just as much right to see what's going on as the police. Public is public, right?
Is that not already the case with, for instance, police dash cams? Can't those be requested via the FOIA? (Except when the department decides the footage is "missing"/"corrupted"/"accidentally deleted"/etc., of course)
There is a distinction between public and private places, but there are also grades of privacy. If I am in my own home, I expect that no one will be watching me. If I am on a podium in front of a crowd, I expect that everyone will be watching me. If I am walking in a public area, I expect that only people who know me will notice me. It is that last expectation that omnipresent cameras shatter.
The difference between a person and a camera is that people get tired, miss things, have to eat, and cost a lot more money to maintain. For this reason, people are deployed only where necessary, while cameras can be deployed much more widely. It is the weighing of cost associated with sending a person that used to protect privacy in public places, but with electronic surveillance we lose that cost consideration as a check against surveillance.
"I have no problem with any amount of recording equipment in public spaces."
I do, because it increases the power of an already too-powerful police force. America is the world leader in throwing people in prison, we really do not need to give the police any more tools.
Someone I don't know listening to my phone conversation? Who cares. My neighbor seeing me naked? Now I care.
That's the answer you'd get.
Actually, in western Europe I'd expect the exact opposite reaction.
That counterargument doesn't work in the Netherlands: http://stuffdutchpeoplelike.com/2010/11/24/no-8-not-owning-c...
You're trying to prove a point by giving a single example. Those pictures on that website are expensive houses in Amsterdam where people like to show off their wealth in a "non-intrusive" way. Once you get into sub-urbal and rural areas, you won't find a house without curtains. At least in the whole 10 blocks around me, I haven't seen a single house without blinds or curtains.
You should show them this snippet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VM7HQ_zbdIw#t=8m00s
But yeah, until they see negative results, I doubt majority is going to start caring.
Thank you. This is an argument that I've made after much frustration and many other points. It never occurred to me to make it the center of my argument. You have no idea how glad I am to have seen this.
To which you respond, "Then why do you have your curtains drawn?" Most people parrot the "I have nothing to hide" line without realizing that they actually do want some measure of privacy.
You can also put it in terms of hackers: maybe they have nothing to hide from the government, but what about from hackers? People seem to be more concerned about that sort of thing. The same technologies that would thwart the NSA also happen to be good at thwarting other attackers.
Perhaps what they really mean is, "I have nothing to lose".?
If you have nothing to lose, then you only have information to gain by invading others' privacy.
I think people did care but we see these stories so regularly now, even though I know it's a bad thing, I find it hard to care.
Second, they get in the news once, minor uproar (particularly on the internet), then... nothing. Maybe in cases like the The Pirate Bay blockade, which gets through to certain news sites from time to time whenever they get a new domain name or host, where they remind the audience that for that single web page, ISP's have been made to censor it by court order (and need to update their blocked domain names / IP addresses)
and this is why media conglomeration is a bad thing.
>... I find it hard to care.
A name defines, your name and your privacy; defines you exclusive of everything and everybody else. Without privacy, arguably you do not exist.
Vote: Pi Rate Party International(PRPI) ...Krypto-Anarchic-Socialists?
I don't really get why governments would want to do most of this, it's mostly just a waste of money if they don't plan to establish a totalitarian regime.
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 ?
Mostly political power. Terrorism/military/police arguments is the short term answer, but the reason so much effort is put in is because politically, surveillance is a very valuable. The two primary uses of raw surveillance data (to my knowledge) is to trade it with other nations, and to give political leaders information about their citizens in order to stay in power.
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.
Don't you get it? The government tries to prevent terrorism!
Public fear of terrorism is what's being used to take away rights and liberties, especially in post-9/11 America.
"You can purchase one without your name and address but you can only add money to it using your bank-account"
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)
That's still possible, maybe not everywhere. At least this past Tuesday it still worked :-)
> Our government listens in on more calls every year than in the whole of the US combined.
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.
Yeah if everything is recorded automatically you are of course number one. Officially (what our government tells us) Dutch detectives actively 'tap' into and listen to more phone conversations a month than their American colleagues do in a year. Source #1: Tweakers (Dutch) http://tweakers.net/nieuws/53705/dagelijks-bijna-1700-telefo... Source #2 National Dutch newspaper: http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/2686/Binnenland/article/detai...
To clarify: the number of subpoenas for phone taps is higher, not neccesarily the number of taps actually in place.
Well, about the OVkart. I assume you were writing about this one. I visited Amsterdam and bought one with cash. Then I loaded it at Zuid also paying with cash. No paper trail. And I only did that because it was nearly impossible to pay with my Visa Electron. But that's another issue.
There are some. Most machines only accept a bank-card, not cash. There has even been a debate about it in parliament because psychiatric patients and refugees don't have a bank account. See: http://www.omroepwest.nl/nieuws/17-03-2013/ov-chipkaart-opla...
Oddly enough, reading this made me want to move my NL servers elsewhere :)
Where to ?
Also Dutch. Didn't know about the drones, got a link for that? I believe you (esp. given all the other crap they pull), I'm curious how and where they use the drones.
There have been 81 official drone flights the last 5 months using the 'Raven' drone. Police are now learning to control the 'Scaneagle'. Amsterdam cops have already broken 2 of their drones... See: http://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2013/05/09/bevestiging-na-kamervrag...
Thanks for that link!
btw did you ever notice that the NRC always uses the diminuitive ("vliegtuigjes", "little planes") when referring to drones? Of course, in this case it somewhat makes sense, because they are in fact tiny planes.
But they use the word not just for these surveillance drones, but also for referring to attack drones firing missiles and laying waste to villages in war zones. I'm not sure what to make of it, whether it's a bias, in general I consider NRC to be a quality paper. It's just such a very odd way to phrase it, and they're being very consistent about it. But imagine writing about abandoned "landmijntjes", or any other type of weapon/killing machine, in the diminuitive.
Slings? Wristrockets(tm), slingshots, rock?
Not to condone such an intrusive government but I've read that a lot of personal info is public record but with the result of, for example, being able to track diseases with great precision in families over decades.
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.
Regarding the public transport chipcard: you _can_ recharge them with cash. Using the machines of the railways, you can only use coins, unfortunately. But at least the machines of Amsterdam local transport accept bank notes.
Cross-posting from the other comment forum:
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?
this particular leaked document only applies to Verizon Business Network Services.
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.
The document that Greenwald presented, which is the only document of its kind so far, makes it clear that when it says "Verizon" it means "Verizon Business Network Services".
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.
You have to wonder what caused this specific order to be leaked though. That suggests it is unusual and worrying to the one who leaked it.
It may be that it is the first, and there is real fear of many more to come. I don't think it is in any reason to think that it is not absolutely certain that "if this order exists, there must be similar orders whether now or in the future (assuming no change to the system in the mean time) because if the government has the internal secret legal justification to do something for one company it would for all and will use that however it finds helpful."
As a Brit, can I ask:
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?
I'm American, and don't know if I have any more insight than you do. I think the issue is that both major parties in the US (at least publicly) prioritize security over privacy. Fox doesn't cry out about this because Fox viewers are rarely in uproar about such trade offs. If anything, I'd guess this policy has greater support among mainstream Republicans than Democrats.
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.
Understood.
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.
> the EFF (source of this article) is considered as an extremely liberal left organization, and hated by many conservatives.
Seriously? I've never seen it catch flak for being liberal. I've always tagged it as libertarian and off the spectrum.
I agree that they don't fit in well with the standard American left-right spectrum, and agree that they are closer to libertarian than liberal. But yes, I think they are perceived to be in similar position as the ACLU: somewhere to the left of the left. While in theory both of these organizations might be embraced by conservatives as protecting constitutional rights, in practice both are "liberal causes".
An odd citation, but appropriate considering I'm arguing about perception rather than reality: "The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a liberal and libertarian organization which promotes the protection of personal rights on the internet, particularly privacy and free speech. Category: Liberal Organizations"
Well you're slightly wrong.
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).
Hang on, conservatives for big government? Im sure I remember "big government" being the evil that was being fought off when Obama care was a big deal. Wasn't that conservatives?
Hands up. Im confused!!
As far as I can tell, conservatives are pro-anything-with-guns (Homeland Security, big military...), but against welfare and taxes for the rich. Democrats are pro-welfare and taxes for the rich, but just as happy to invade your privacy or bomb the crap out of your family if you are a bearded guy with a turban.
Fascism is a conservative ideology and believes in a fairly big government.
Conservative and liberal, particularly in American politics, are overloaded terms at times referring to social, economic and organizational preferences without making a blanket statement that covers all the three.
America sucks more every day. This really is a pathetic joke -- warrantless, covert surveillance of EVERY call made in the country. I predict the level of outrage won't match the scale of this crime, though.
Americans won't so much as lift their head away from Candycrush to bat an eyelash about it.
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.
Thats the real issue. People are really apathetic to the situation. Frequent response when brought up is that they have nothing to hide and it only makes them safer. But its not just the government's fault, we have news media driven by ad dollars. Fear drives viewership up and is good for business. If these programs weren't popular, our politicians wouldn't get elected. In our times, if your "soft" on terror, its like automatic disqualification in terms of getting elected.
What is your suggestion for "doing something?" I can't help that most Americans are wrongly educated about thinks like civil rights.
The absolute easiest thing? Outrage + phone calls / letters.
It would take a mere 1% of the US population to give a shit, and it would light D.C. up like a Christmas tree. Bury their phones and inboxes in just a few hundred thousand calls and emails per day and every member of Congress would instantly stand to attention and respond positive.
It's such a trivial % of the overall population as to be disgusting that it probably can't be mustered.
Next step down the line, Americans need to start caring about their civil liberties again. They need to start caring about their privacy again. They need to stop buying into the fake war on terror and drugs. They need to elect a President that isn't a fraud, someone who will use executive order powers - if necessary - to aggressively break the police state and domestic espionage racket. The US Federal Government is extraordinarily violent and militarized. It has to be de-militarized, and you could only do that by abolishing the military industrial complex. It'd require a President to openly talk to the US public about what was happening and why, it'd have to be a public conversation. This, realistically, can never happen until there's a collapse (leaving a vacuum of respected authority).
In a word, Americans need to take back responsibility for their own well being, and stop trusting that the government will fix or solve the destruction of the last decade (which the government caused). The key phrase is personal responsibility, it can't start anywhere else.
As an aside... there's always a lot of back and forth discussion here about Socialism vs Capitalism, the concept of big government, etc. You know why America can't emulate the Nordic model? Culturally, to its core, we have an aggressive, violent government (busy waging war 24/7 in a dozen countries). You know what happens when you have a BIG government that is aggressive and violent? It was a fantasy to ever think that aggression would always just point overseas.
Calling politicians won't work if both sides are called upon. They can work out a message to tell the public about how they're against spying but it will go on regardless. Money trumps everything. If there is economic or military incentive for something to be done - it will be done.
The only hope is to economically empower everyone so that a small elite doesn't form.
I actually disagree that this wouldn't help (but see below). It isn't really that easy for Congressmembers to respond to. If 1% of the population of every Congressional district called in over the next week, it would likely put real time pressure on Congressional offices.
There are two problems:
1. If we don't call in the only people talking to Congress are those with the money interest, and they can go after the easiest targets. This is why money currently trumps everything.
2. These form part of the economic structure that keeps the small elite in power.
Now, I totally agree with you when you say "The only hope is to economically empower everyone so that a small elite doesn't form." The problem is we have been running the wrong direction since the 30's (I think Roosevelt-era social democracy lead directly to Reagan-era neoliberalism) and with the over-regulation of small businesses and the under-regulation of large businesses that is a tremendous uphill battle.
If you sit down and map out the scope of corporate control over our individual lives, you will probably come to the same conclusion I have, that this is not only the vital struggle of our day, but is one we are badly loosing.
Indeed. Nothing is going to change until there is a collapse. Even then I fear what fills the power void will be worse than what you have now. The reason no one cares is because most Americans are in a comatose state. I've traveled to most US cities and some places in between and it continues to shock me just how stupid the average american is. They're drugged out on corn syrup, anti-depressants, street drugs and seemingly not educated at all about the rest of the world.
I know that sounds like I'm talking trash and being racist but this is a real problem. This should be talked about. America need to get its population healthy again, so they can think straight, be productive and create a better future. Long term it is in no ones interest to have a population of people this stupid.
Comatose is a good description. It's worth noting that those things you list are masks. Americans over-eat, abuse prescription drugs, etc. to hide from, effectively, the last 40 years (and what it has led to). The US standard of living has fallen massively since 1970. In the late 1960s our minimum wage was the equivalent of nearly $50,000 in today's dollars.
But you're wrong, the average American isn't stupid. You clearly haven't spent enough time with 'average' people. I know a lot of people that fall into the average camp in most respects, they're absolutely not stupid. Being drugged out on anti-depressants doesn't make someone stupid. Making poor choices also does not make someone stupid. In fact, you betray an embarrassing ignorance in saying so.
The average American is responsible for one the most productive economies in history (while simultaneously being the largest in history). Said average American manages to live in the most diverse large nation in history, while not constantly murdering each other in the streets by the millions. It's quite a feat that is likely to never be repeated again.
What you said isn't racist. American isn't a race.
I can't fathom however, the arrogance it takes to call hundreds of millions of people stupid. What does that make the other 5.5 billion people with combinations of little to no formal education, running water, indoor plumbing, that are frequently barely literate etc etc etc? That qualifies a billion people in China as being, what exactly, retarded? It's impossible, and ignorant, to label individuals that way.
Do you have a citation showing a fall in standard of living since 1970?
Elizabeth Warren's research would be a good place to start.
Sorry, I wish I had time to watch an hour-long YouTube video :( I was hoping that, if this claim were true, it would be easy to demonstrate with a graph or some numbers.
I linked to a relevant time stamp which has a graph and presumably "some numbers".
@adventured Maybe you haven't travelled outside America enough to notice?
You make the mistake of correlating wealth with the intelligence of the average person. The average person did not build the businesses that made America. And capital is a powerful tool, properly managed it grows exponentially.
By the way the average Chinese person is starter than the average American. Intelligence is not the same as education. Nor does having running water make you any smarter than someone who does not.
IQ's by nation. http://www.sq.4mg.com/NationIQ.htm
How would a Queenslander even be able to judge the intelligence of others?
:) you caught me. Fair call.
The Game Is Rigged
That's the thing with the "average American" (or in my case, the "average Dutchman"). For every intelligent, free-thinking mind on HN there's a bunch of morons dragging the average down!
The average is very important in a democracy. They can vote. Or choose not to!
Get away from the USD that American government is using to keep it's power. Get away from the banking system. Buy physical silver, gold (not ETF) or bitcoins.
The earlier everybody starts doing it the sooner the inevitable USD crash will happen.
The USD implosion will bring down the US Government, and it will end the unsustainable spending spree that pays for our expanding police state (and the NSA's Utah datacenter).
There isn't much time left on the clock. I'd say the Fed has less than 12 to 24 months before the next disaster hits, given the way the real estate and stock market bubbles have already been re-inflated. They won't be able to control rates much longer without losing control on the inflation wave flowing into housing and commodities (eg with oil now being 'normal' at $90). The next crash, which is inevitable, will be back breaking. It'll require the Feds to choose between over-funding the military and police state, or paying for social security and similar services.
Which nation is resisting these intrusions?
I didn't mean to imply it was unique to America. The sad thing is that it's a negative global shift against privacy. America's outsized influence on the world does bury it in responsibility for being a terrible role model / setting a bad precedent.
Seemingly all industrialized nations are dealing with these exact things at the same time (no coincidence, as it's being spurred by technology that is nearly universally available).
The United States used to. Remember we got FISA as a way of containing the intrusions (like that worked).
Well, when shit goes down the other party will call the "weak" so it is best to cover your ass.
A lot of comments in this thread area calling for the head of Verizon and recommending boycotts, but for how much of this is Verizon really at fault? If the NSA comes knocking and tells you to turn over X, you can't exactly say "no", can you?
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.
On the other hand, if you boycott Verizon to the point when (for an example's sake) they are broke, the next business the NSA comes knocking at the door will definitely be more reluctant.
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.
The trouble is, that's easier said than done. However, if there were any action feasible enough to do that would make it possible to: "get into the businessman's head that the NSA is bad for business." Then that will definitely be the way to go.
I don't think there is one action that will accomplish that, it has to be prolonged, consistent and proactive action.
Because we all know the NSA are a nice friendly bunch who will only be applying pressure at a corporate level and won't apply any pressure at all on a personal level to any of the key individuals in control of the company.
So roll over and take it like a champ?
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.
I don't know what the solution is, but I doubt it's "switch my service provider to AT&T."
Especially since AT&T data is probably routed to the NSA as well.
Well, if enough people say "enough is enough"... what next.
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.
There won't be an "enough is enough" pushback in the U.S. because the kind of privacy we're discussing is not valued by the public. The average response to hearing news like this is something like: "Unbelievable. Typical rotten politicians, I tell ya. So anyway, are we still on for seeing the new Iron Man movie this weekend?"
The segment of the population that feels strongly about these issues is small and ineffective. In fact, that's how it works with many negative government decisions. How many of your non-developer friends would participate in an uproar about software patent policy? I wonder how many other niches are facing similar situations.
may be start by refusing to sign contracts for anything other than what is absolutely necessary (like apartment lease, for example)? don't sign contracts for gyms, phones, cable etc? that would make it a tiny bit easier to switch between services?
It's kind of frightening that a boycott can be considered a better course to defend civil rights than democracy.
You reckon people are going to revolt? I have serious doubts about that.
Only when the social contract is violated will there be revolt. That contract, roughly 75 years old now, is currently on death notice, being funded solely by a printing press. Simply put, the promises can never be met.
If interest rates on US debt were just a mere 5% (reasonable given the risk), the $800+ billion per year in interest would instantly 'bankrupt' the government (whether that default occurs directly or via inflation). If one understands much about economics, one understands this outcome is inevitable, and likely sooner than later. Cheap debt binged and not repaid, becomes an expensive anchor around the neck eventually.
Can the US government really go bankrupt, though? I thought that was a central point that Reagan, Cheney, and Obama have made. It doesn't matter how much we spend because federal debt means nothing. The creditors can't really call it in without mutually assured destruction. Our debt is a WMD and no one in their right mind would pull that trigger.
Right. It's a boilerplate order. Some reliable reports say there are 50 companies that are NSA data suppliers. They request these orders as legal cover.
So let us boycott the government! Oh wait, unlike Verizon, the government will lock you up for doing that.
You can easily boycott the government without getting locked up: move to another country!
For US citizens it is really hard to get rid of their citizenship. And you pretty much have to pay US taxes as long as you are a citizen no matter where you live (and thus implicitly support the government).
>For US citizens it is really hard to get rid of their citizenship
Not sure about that. I've heard that you just need to go the embassy and you can get rid of it quite easily. However getting citizenship of another country may be a bit difficult for anyone in these times. You don't really want to remain stateless right?
I suggest every software developer take a course or two on cryptography and make privacy integral in the products you develop.
This is precisely the type of attitude we should all have as hackers.
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.
Who are the developers who go work on these projects for the government? I feel like this is some cutting edge technology they create, so they have to be some of the best, right? Is the money that good or is there an allure to having a security clearance.
Well, in this case there's no technology involved. The government simply told Verizon to hand over their records.
I like how ErrataSec put it: "Welcome to Echelon 2.0: Outsourced Edition"
I guess the money is that good.
Cryptography doesn't help at all when your government will require you by law to provide them with a decrypted dump.
That's what they did with Verizon. Verizon could not provide you with privacy no matter how much they wanted.
There's no expectation of privacy at the service provider level in this case. If Verizon, or any service provider, has access to the unencrypted data or the decryption mechanism, the system is insecure.
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.
There is one reason: the government will make sure there are laws which enables them to require providers to give them decypted dumps. If the provider says "can't do", they will be shut down.
In the end the government can force the OS vendors to install keyloggers.
The ones who make the law always win.
End-to-end encryption and p2p networks help in that respect.
And, above all, end-to-end cryptography doesn't protect you against traffic analysis, which is what the NSA is doing with this metadata (which allows them to choose targets subject to a full blown surveillance).
That is why you should put your servers in iceland or similar places. With asymetric encription there is no need; Only the user knows and not the service provider.
Why in Iceland ?
Google: Deniable Cryptography and Rubberhose(update: Waterboarding) Cryptanalysis
While this is sound advice there is the problem that if you get very big/popular the government can knock at your door with sealed court orders to enable things like wiretapping.
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.
Build open-source, encrypted, p2p networks.
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.
I've also been considering the possibilities of an OSS security focused business. Random thoughts:
* Build infrastructure necessary for other developers to build provably secure products on, license this.
* Free consumer versions, paid/managed versions for corporations and governments.
* Things like secure telephony have business models built in where you could charge per minute (or message) (and probably still be less than incumbent carrier minutes).
Just to let you know I am planning on doing a series at my blog on thoughts regarding key management of a secure telephony system. My overall thoughts are to have a very tightly controlled key change policy so that a wiretap is only possible where either a customer's certificate authority's key has been compromised (custoemrs would be expected to run their own CA's) or where new calls were being established between parties that had not called eachother before. An interesting property of the system I am thinking about is that when a wiretap would end the next call to a previously evesdropped target would generate a warning.
If you get there and want someone to bounce ideas off of or help out, feel free to let me know. (chris at efficito dot com).
The one huge problem I see here is that designing a managed version which could guarantee security against a wiretap order would be quite difficult. In essence you would have to push all key management issues to your users, and that leaves you a lot less to actually manage.
Has anyone come up with a solution? From my POV I see three things happen in what seems to be a never ending cycle:
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 can't please everybody.
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.
I can't say I'm surprised. It's well known the NSA is monitoring internet traffic (read this article in Wired, published in 2006: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/ip-telephony/these-photos-illustra...) and they have a massive data center in Utah which they use for foreign data collection (read: phone calls).
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.
It's not about whether citizens are law abiding, it's about whether the the government is using the data in a legitimate way.
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.
Which is why the government should not have broad access to your records and why "I've got nothing to hide" is a wrong attitude even for "good citizens": the government's definition of good and bad may shift (or become arbitrary).
As long as Americans want their government to do WHATEVER IT TAKES to protect them from terrorism threat (real or imagined), this kind of shit will continue to go on.
I'm an American and a Verizon customer.
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.
Am I being downvoted by someone who disagrees with my opinions, or did I do something wrong here?
Downvoting something that's contrary to your opinion just seems childish. If you disagree with me, tell me why I'm wrong...
it was not alarmist, it was just a convinient explanation to turn US into next China.
I realize there's some hyperbole here, but we're hardly "next China."
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
Gee, let's see: All that NSA 'big data', every phone call, from, to, time, etc.
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.
> Really sounds like 'security theater', like Senator Feinstein is having fun straining her arm patting herself on the back for "protecting the US"
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!
I realize I'm unfairly ignoring 90% of your rant, but I just want to say I disagree with "too much government" as the issue here. When my computer breaks, I don't throw away my computer. I fix the problem. Size doesn't matter. Focus does. Large organizations can have plenty of thoughtful focus, too.
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.
In the United States I'm not so certain that you can place the blame on uninformed citizens given that you effectively have a 2 party political system and both parties have been complicit in domestic surveillance.
In general, you put both the McDonald's and Wendy's close together in the best location on Main Street so that they can each get a good shot at half the business. Else one of those two is out at one end or the other of Main Street and gets only about 1/4th business.
Much the same for political parties: They look like there's not much difference. Some of the Dems are a bit left of Mao, and some of the Repubs are a bit to the right of Genghis Khan, still the actual parties want to look close to the center.
But where is the 'center'? And what issues are hot in the center? That depends a lot on the voting citizens and what the media thinks they can get away with pushing.
I contend that with better informed citizens, we would have had political debates on a much higher level, have just avoided The Great Recession because we never would have done something as dumb as the bubble blowing, and done much better on addressing the issues in foreign policy that got us to throw away a few trillion dollars, etc.
Clinton was paying off the national debt; without the costs of the wars and with the taxes from full employment instead of the unemployment from The Great Recession, we could have had the debt paid off by now or nearly so. Why would it be good to pay off the debt? Because then the US Treasury is not borrowing so much money and, then, interest rates are lower for the rest of us and, in effect, our economy has more 'seed corn', investment capital for growth.
For all those years since Clinton, we could have the economy charging ahead, without inflation, so fast that companies would be recruiting in the poor areas, providing buses from the poor areas to the offices, paid training in the offices, etc. It was happening in the 1960s.
Let's take one issue: Abortion. I claim that in reality, in practice, no matter what you believe about abortion, good, bad, or indifferent, actually there's no real issue. Why? Because Roe v Wade was decided about 40 years ago, and there's no chance it will be changed. When we are well on the way to getting 2/3rds of the House, 2/3rds of the Senate, and 3/4ths of the states ready to change Roe v Wade, abortion can be an issue again.
In the meanwhile, what is abortion in politics? Sure, a way to get some people all wound up over something that's not going to change. Why? Because some Repubs feel strongly that abortion is really bad and want to hear that some politician is 'against it'. Because a lot of Dems believe that someday they might need an abortion and want that option open to them so want to hear some politician is 'for it'. Either way, Roe v Wade's not going to be changed. So, with better informed voters, just informed enough to realize that Roe v Wade is 40 years old and a constitutional amendment takes the 2/3rds, 2/3rds, and 3/4ths, we could just quit talking about abortion and move on to, say, how to get the economy going and how to say out of absurd foreign adventures.
In our democracy, the voters get the government they deserve. Better informed voters stand to get better government. If the voters get smarter, then the two seemingly dumb-dumb parties will keep up with the voters.
I tried to make clear: Big gumment brings two problems. First, it wastes money. That's the smaller problem but still quite significant (we need to get our economy going, and wasting money hurts). Second, big gumment is a real threat to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" and nearly everything we want.
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.
while you make good points, please stop spelling it 'gumment', it makes you sound like one of the nutjobs.
I honestly had no idea what he meant by "gumment" and thought it was similar to a gauntlet or something. Had to say it out loud before I finally got it. Whats the fucking point of abbreviating something like government to gumment? It just makes you look unintelligent...
'Government' is too respectful.
'Gumment' has the contempt of some barefoot guy in the hills of east Tennessee out in the woods with a home built still. I find that contempt very appropriate.
Otherwise your point is well taken.
It made me hungry for gumbo.
I've never been able to figure the gumment/gubmint guys out. Are they making fun of rednecks? Or are they assuming the role of some sort of redneck freedom fighter? Do rednecks even say "gumment?"
I don't remember just where I got 'gumment', but I did spend a lot of time in Tennessee!
But, I stand corrected and more highly polished before the more sensitive HN audience and will use 'government' (cough, cough, upchuck).
But we should always keep in mind who's paying the bills: They are supposed to be working for us.
yeah, but when your computer breaks it doesn't pull out a firearm and order you to add drives, a better graphics card, more monitors and a faster internet connection. And then raid your bank account if you don't do it fast enough. Size does matter.
I don't think the government has done that to any US citizen regarding NSA wiretapping or data collections under FISA. Please don't conflate secret national security courts and closed meetings with fantasy. It doesn't help any discussion.
the fantasy would be if we didn't have the secret courts and illegal wiretapping by an administration that promised to be the most transparent in history.
"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 Hellman guy was probably Whitfield Diffie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitfield_Diffie
Thanks! I think you got it!
It's all a giant scam. All this technology requires huge IT contracts for some of the biggest corporations in the country.
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.
Your 1. is not the only spark of the process you describe, with considerable accuracy. E.g., the US bent itself all out of shape in Viet Nam and did a lot in Korea, and oil or assets of big US companies were not saved or much at risk or involved. But, yes, some big US companies -- Ike's military- industrial complex -- got big bucks.
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!
Have the voters wise up and then what ? Vote for either Romney or Obama ?
I don't want to oversimplify, but if the voters wise up, then we will get better candidates.
Also, supposedly both Clinton and W saw the housing bubble blowing and the threat but believed that politically there was nothing they could have done about it. So, they just hoped for the best -- and wrecked the US and advanced world financial system the worst since the 1930s.
With smarter voters, no way could Obama, the CBC, Frank, etc. get Fannie and Freddie to back junk paper that was the real gasoline for the heat for the bubble blowing. E.g., get the 'Frontline' piece with its interview with the COB of Wells Fargo: He was very clear. He saw the bubble blowing, told lots of the right people in various committees in DC, put such a warning in his annual report, and told people that we were not going to like the results. Still, we did nothing.
With better informed voters, a president could have put 10 minutes in one of his State of the Union addresses showing the strong parallels -- bubble blowing from over leveraged financial assets where the bubbles pop and wipe out much of the financial system and take much of the economy down with it -- with The Great Depression and stated clearly that the only responsible thing to do was to get a soft landing and save the country. Then have some meetings, say, about the CRA, Fannie, and Freddie, AIG, some of the CDS swap manipulations, the fast and loose work by the bond ratings agencies, the abuses of the variable rate mortgages and no-doc loans, etc.
In 1980 I was in Ohio and heard some of the stories about the suffering then in the Rust Belt. Just take a list about every bad thing that could happen to people, families, and communities, and that's what happened. So, got domestic violence, street crime, alcohol abuse, drugs, infant mortality, divorces, heart attacks, suicides, all through the roof.
Bad gumment can be really ugly stuff, hurt the middle class a lot and hurt the poor much more.
I'm no fan of Obama, and while I see a lot to like in Romney I thought that from his 47% remark on he just blew his campaign.
But my reading of Obama is that in part he reads the winds and sometimes goes with them, maybe only temporarily, reluctantly, ineffectually, but is willing to appear to go with the flow. Well, with better informed voters speaking more loudly, I suspect that he can actually pretend to go with the winds and at least mostly get out of the way as Congress does the real work.
I believe it's in the hands of the voters and, then, from the media, and now from the Internet.
It's simple. This movement in security and spying on your own citizens is driven by the military industrial complex.
Here's a VICE documentary on it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL_3Qg-SADY
Hopefully an official response can add some accountability to the process. I put up a White House petition here, which can hopefully get an official response: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/cease-overbroad-su...
well woudl you take what the FSB says on face value? I sure the FSB told MI5 that Litvinenko was a "wacko nutjob"
Ahem
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.
That was a Joke :-) and i was using FSB as its the most commonly know bit of the ex KGB and its the Security Service and SIS not MI5 and MI6.
But the line from Russia was that Litvinenko was a wrongun.
Certainly not at face value. Instead, have to take what they say as a starting point, a lead, but one from possibly a quite well informed source. Of course, we can't really trust the source, even if they are well informed.
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.
"Confirmed". Welcome to.. 2002? (Not to lessen the impact of the post, but, this is old news)
It's my understanding that at least some legal cases on the subject are hobbled by a lack of official evidence that such surveillance is under way. ("You can't prove that we're doing it, because all the documents are secret. The court thinks so too. Come back when you have proof.")
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.
Who needs a 4th amendment right? What has to be done to get the Gov to stop doing whatever it likes whenever it wants? I'm really losing faith in this country.
Technically it is well established that CDR's are not protected by the 4th Amendment. Cell site location data is another question and that is currently an area of evolving law with at least two circuits saying there may be 4th Amendment protections there.
I'm not sure what's more disturbing: that this is happening, or that the Obama administration can't keep highly classified documents under wraps. That document was labeled Top Secret and was supposed to remain so until April 12, 2038. This whole episode shows evil on the one hand and dangerous ineptitude on the other.
Why? The more scandalous the fact, the higher the chance someone from inside decides to blow the whistle.
It's not my job to know how they can keep these things under wraps; I don't work in intelligence. But I do know what "Top Secret" means. It means that it's not supposed to be on the front page of every major news website in the world, no matter how scandalous or controversial. That the people whose job it is to keep these things secret have failed miserably is of great concern - who knows what else is leaking.
I wouldn't worry, the Chinese already have anything that might leak in future.
It's easier to keep things secret when you're in the right. People are more inclined to assist the cause. All bets are off when you're in the wrong, and it's good we have patriots willing to leak this information.
The NSA will have dirt on everyone.
Does anyone else think the 2 posts about this issue here on HN have quite a bit of shills commenting? I hate to point fingers like this, but some posts I've read yesterday were so "weird" (read: "neo-con" propaganda) compared to usual HN culture that I was honestly creeped out. It's the kind of writing that tries to persuade people not to care, or to simply be ok with it, since (paraphrasing) "ATT has all the data already, so why care?".
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?
In addition to making your opinion heard to your senator and representative I would recommend using strong, vetted and open source encryption whenever possible. Whisper Systems is a good place to start for mobile security on Android.
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...
Question from a non-American: if not spying, what are they supposed to do?
The NSA is generally viewed as not operating domestically. This order shows otherwise.
They are supposed to be spying on non-Americans only. Keep in mind the US has a long-standing distrust of a porous boundary between military and law enforcement embodied in things like our 3rd Amendment, The Posse Comitatus Act, and more. These have been eroding fast unfortunately since Reagan era (and maybe even arguably since Carter signed FISA), but they are major aspects of American governance.
Who are you talking about? This order is about the FBI.
There is no other way. I think the "right to privacy" is childish.
"Big Brother" was about controlling behavior but grepping phone records is not.
edit: I'd be more upset about DNA database.
Yet another reason not to use Verizon. To be fair though, this is par for the course for the US government these days, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if other carriers are or will be targeted. Hopefully people are starting to see that our privacy laws are nothing more than cannon fodder for creative Justice Department attorneys. Freedom and privacy in the US have been nothing more than illusions for a very long time. These illusions are quickly being shattered, and that is a good thing because hopefully it will lead to (eventual) change.
Also confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Hundreds of Millions of Non-Americans
Directive 2006/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2006 on the retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks and amending Directive 2002/58/EC
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:...
Wikipedia
> The German Bundestag had implemented the directive in "Gesetz zur Neuregelung der Telekommunikationsüberwachung und anderer verdeckter Ermittlungsmaßnahmen sowie zur Umsetzung der Richtlinie 2006/24/EG".[17] The law became valid on 1 January 2008. Any communications data had to be retained for six months. On 2 March 2010, the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany ruled the law unconstitutional as a violation of the guarantee of the secrecy of correspondence.[18] As such, the directive is not currently implemented in Germany.
That, at least, is their official mission, which is supposed to exclude Americans.
This is pretty unconstitional, but there's a problem with the constitution and the government.
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.
It's a lot like Andrew Jackson's "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!"[1]
Why aren't we all using strong, private crypto for everything -- or at least for email? Nobody seems to using PGP? We "the people" have the technical ability to communicate privately but nobody seems to use it. What happened to Zimmerman and his followers? This is a solvable problem!
-----BEGIN RSA PUBLIC KEY----- MFwwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQADSwAwSAJBAObAT8Pn+C1Ets8Ge/EyMgiOPzmy/Mzk N+ENpDYRJzqGoyS59QkI58GhYwIVkhmEEk2pjp6gqWPNjTzO0QI1KOUCAwEAAQ== -----END RSA PUBLIC KEY-----
OpenPGP and similar strong encryption methods are widely considered unbreakable (with the current technology) and available as easy-to-use software packages. Is there any similar software which enables easy encrypted VoIP-style calls?
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?
The problem with OpenPGP is that it only encrypts the contents of the communication. The identities of the sender and receiver, as well as the time and other info are still vulnerable. This communication "metadata" is exactly what the article is referring to.
People are saying that no one can stop Congress or big companies, yadda yadda.
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.
This is happening in Europe since a while now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_data_retenti...
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.
You'd still pay for it one way or the other. It's the government, you/we pay for all of it.
Great... anybody think this planet is going to hell or is it just me? The creation of the space ship will be credited to some guy trying to live some place with proper privacy. The possible future described in the series Firefly seems to be more realistic every day. The only difference will the the reason for the war will be privacy.
Iiiiiiiiiii wanna beeeee anarchy.
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?
Interesting. as I recall the last President to reign in the intelligence services was Jimmy Carter.
And he was politically assassinated... All my friends' parents and my own often talk about Jimmy Carter as a man who just didn't have what it takes to be a President. Bang up job they did on him.
Well, he actually was a horrible president. He was politically assassinated by himself.
That is the dominant narrative, yes.
Ok, so is there any place/any country in the world that is balanced? not free for all/wild wild west where anyone can do anything (like parts of Africa) and not where the govt counts every breath it's citizens take? something in-between, a place more balanced?
Canada, according to Privacy International.
Don't want to sound like a smart ass, but I would have been more surprised if it were confirmed they WEREN'T spying on Americans. Its the American Government ???? Really, are Americans that naive to think that their own country doesn't spy on them.
The saddest thing here is that I read the top three headlines on HN in the morning (all of which were about this story), shrugged, yawned, mumbled to myself "well that's some news" and moved on.
William Binney at the last HOPE conference talking about the NSA spying program:
This won't stop. It will only get worse. We are the slaves of the system.. Ditch technology will reduce being spied on drastically, but we always have satellites & CCTV..
There's nothing you can do about this. You're the governments bitch. You are a slave of the system... Sad but true ;)
Don't want to be traced? Ditch technology... Hide from satellites...
I just want to know who the developers are behind these systems. How much did they sell their souls for? Are they reading Hacker News? I hope it was worth it, assholes.
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?
Wasn't there a story recently about how they record (the content of) every phone call? This seems to be a subset of that, so how is this news?
Paranoia Justified.
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.
I had already assumed this was the case.
Capability to do so has been present for a long time. I remember working on CALEA implementation in 1998.
Just making this clear but, when the government got a 400 Cassandra node cluster you guys didn't tilt ?
The only thing I don't understand is, why should I be worried if I'm not doing anything wrong?
Too bad they didn't release the court order which allows them to record the conversations..
Anyone who has been paying attention to the right media/news has known this for years.
Freedom is dead in America.
National Security - destroyer of civil and personal liberties everywhere
I've never considered Call Detail Records to be particularly private.
I hope all these up voters have emailed their representative.
The 2nd ammendment is there to protect the 1st.
since this is a leak, I'd suggest you americans to PLEASE press your government to reveal what other services they are imposing this, I see no reason why couldn't they be doing this with Facebook or other tech companies that are used ~globally~, and then it's a global espionage scheme. I'd like to know if I'm being spied right now too.
Before you down vote, maybe try it: I bet if the pros and cons were written down, people would actually find the aggregate magnitude of each to be similar.
I will never understand the inherent distrust America seems to have in their government. Every time a document like this is released, the logic is to assume that the document applies to all Verizon customers (which it does not), then to assume that all telecom companies have been given similar documents, then to assume that the government actually acts on this and randomly spies on people, then to assume that they are using that data for malicious purposes, and suddenly the government is evil.
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?
> Every time a document like this is released, the logic is to assume that the document applies to all Verizon customers (which it does not), then to assume that all telecom companies have been given similar documents, then to assume that the government actually acts on this and randomly spies on people, then to assume that they are using that data for malicious purposes, and suddenly the government is evil.
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.
Favoring privacy at the expense of hypothetical benefit is a conscious decision and is a matter of principle. For instance, the freedom to kick down doors in the middle of the night without warrants and drag people out of the building would undoubtedly result in some benefit, but I think there's a reason something like that hasn't yet become standard procedure. Moreover, I believe that trust is something that's earned.
Have you even read the order? It calls for all CDRs to be handed over.
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.
America was founded on the distrust of government. It's deeply rooted in its people.
Would you trust the same government that instigated massive wars in Vietnam and Iraq? The one that spies on the planet without permission. Kills thousands of civilians with drones. Actively prosecutes a zillion dollar fake war on drugs and terror as an excuse to run huge military and police bureaucracies and enrich the insiders involved in it. The one that has a military budget the size of the rest of the world combined. The one that has actively put more people in prison - political prisoners - than any other country in history (outside of maybe Stalin and Mao). The one that has shown absolutely no respect for its own governing documents, with Obama lately using the IRS to attack his political opponents, spying on the Associated Press, running from a big scandal on Benghazi and Fast & Furious, to actively expanding unconstitutional domestic spying programs. The government whose President can only be elected with a billion dollar campaign. The one whose Senators are all bought and paid for by a lobbying industry so large it's bigger than all the lobbying in the rest of the world combined. And on it goes.
You'd trust that monster?
We were warned by the founders about this, many times over. The warnings have become gradually unheeded. Washington in his farewell address warned against the kind of foreign entanglements that the US Govt. now specializes in instigating.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington%27s_Farewell_...
Are you calling drug dealers political prisoners? If not who are these political prisoners?
America was founded with an inherent distrust in government.