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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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Jun 11, 2013 - 03:59pm PT
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“but a greedy people without moral compass issue?”
It is a power issue: one being about the people who really run the world especially the ones in the US that think and believe that their moral compass needs to be stuff down our/your throat.
Guess you believe Ellsberg is a traitor but then again we would never have known the truth about the Viet Nam war and a few other things.
What is the CIA’s motto, "And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free”
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crøtch
climber
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Jun 11, 2013 - 04:06pm PT
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"Who's idea was it to put GPS circuitry in cell phones, do you suppose???"
Did you see that presentation by the CTO of CIA indicating that the accelerometers in your phone could be used to ID you with 99% accuracy. Your gait is that unique and diagnostic. We are snowflakes.
http://www.businessinsider.com/cia-presentation-on-big-data-2013-3?op=1
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Jun 11, 2013 - 04:15pm PT
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"What NSA criminal activity?"
However, NSA's United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18 (USSID 18) strictly prohibits the interception or collection of information about "... U.S. persons, entities, corporations or organizations...." without explicit written legal permission from the United States Attorney General when the subject is located abroad, or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court when within U.S. Borders.
Wikipedia
So, unless the FISC gave orders to tap everybody's electronic communication, the NSA is operating Out Of Bounds.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Jun 11, 2013 - 04:26pm PT
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"The temptation to sacrifice liberty to end suffering often becomes an attack on the reality of the liberty itself. Rebecca West, a prominent novelist and literary critic (and erstwhile mistress of H. G. Wells) said Huxley had “rewritten in terms of our age” Dostoevsky’s famous parable of the Grand Inquisitor from The Brothers Karamazov—“a symbolic statement that every generation ought to read afresh.”
“The Grand Inquisitor” is a story within the story, a troubled Karamazov brother’s case against both man and God. In his legend, Christ returns to earth in the fifteenth century and raises a child from the dead; this miracle causes a crowd and a commotion. The Grand Inquisitor, the cardinal of Seville, has Christ arrested and, sentencing Him to death, denounces Him for condemning mankind to misery when He could have made for them a paradise on earth. Underpinning his accusation is the problem of evil: how, if God is all-loving and all-powerful, could He allow man the autonomy to sin? Christ’s life and work held out the possibility of redemption, but left man the freedom not only to doubt but to cause unspeakable suffering. Man has not been equal to that responsibility. “For nothing has ever been more insufferable for man and for human society than freedom,” the cardinal tells Christ. “Turmoil, confusion, and unhappiness—these are the present lot of mankind, after you suffered so much for their freedom!” In the Grand Inquisitor’s indictment, he pits Christ’s offer of redemption against the church’s promise of security:
With us everyone will be happy, and they will no longer rebel or destroy each other, as in your freedom, everywhere. Oh, we shall convince them that they will only become free when they resign their freedom to us, and submit to us. Will we be right, do you think, or will we be lying? They themselves will be convinced that we are right, for they will remember to what horrors of slavery and confusion your freedom led them.
The cardinal’s argument reappears in a strikingly similar confrontation in Brave New World. When John the Savage sours on the wonders of the World State, he foments a riot among the Deltas and is brought before Mustapha Mond, the Resident World Controller for Western Europe. In the thematic climax of the novel, Mond defends his spiritually arid civilization by recalling the terrible history that preceded it. Love, literature, liberty, and even science itself are sacrificed in this most scientific of societies—all to serve the goals of happiness and stability. “Happiness,” Mond says, “is a hard master—particularly other people’s happiness. A much harder master, if one isn’t conditioned to accept it unquestioningly, than truth.” To achieve lasting social happiness, all else must be given up.
Each of these interrogations lays bare the fundamental compromise at the heart of that society. Both interlocutors avow a struggle, many years ago, to give up what is now at stake—faith for the Grand Inquisitor, truth for the World Controller—to “serve” the weak, debased, tormented human race, whose happiness depends upon the satisfaction of material wants and absolute submission to authority. “Only now,” says the cardinal, “has it become possible to think for the first time about human happiness. Man was made a rebel; can rebels be happy? ... No science will give them bread as long as they remain free, but in the end they will lay their freedom at our feet.” “Truth’s a menace,” says Mond, and “science is a public danger.... Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning. Truth and beauty can’t.” Against the ever-greater misery that appears to be the price of personal autonomy, both pose the question: Is man worth his humanity?"
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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Jun 11, 2013 - 04:31pm PT
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Next time you are in Safeway or Costco or any big chain store they use your signal to see where you run around and what products you stop at or the area to help in their research for better marketing. They know the stuff that does not get the attention they do not resupply.
Base 104 great post not only that but the ones now doing the contracting that scares me.
Koch industries
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Jun 11, 2013 - 04:36pm PT
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Spoken like a real spook:
Of one thing I am certain...we cannot allow personnel that have taken secrecy oaths to make up their own rules about what information can or should be divulged.
Unless, of course, you have a conscious and know right from wrong. It is brave the people who stand up to their task masters and expose their wrong-doings. Especially in the face of grave punishment as a result.
And I've seen stories about when folks take the internal Whistleblower route, the 9/11 Commission Report is full of such stories.
I know some of you might disagree, but frankly, there are things of which you just have no need to know. You might like to know, or wish you knew, but that's just not the way we work, and for the most part, you've all survived quite well not knowing the details.
Reminds me of a point in the film The Pentagon Papers where they guy says [paraphrased] "Most people in the US don't want to know how they got it, they just want to wake up and have it."
But then again, as Werner points out, we Americans are a bit numb in the brain.
I cannot/will NOT speak for Prism or NSA. I will tell you that NSA takes their responsibility under USSID 18 very seriously.
You cannot be serious, USSID 18 prohibits the collection of data on US citizenry, without an explicit court order. Or am I missing something?
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Jun 11, 2013 - 04:52pm PT
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Joe, you? Are you really having trouble comprehending? Here, I'm putting in bold the important phrase:
NSA's United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18 (USSID 18) strictly prohibits the interception or collection of information about "... U.S. persons, entities, corporations or organizations...." without explicit written legal permission
Now, isn't this all about the collection of information?
If not, do please tell me what the fuss is about.
And you want me to dig up real-life stories about folks who try to take the internal whistle-blower route, only to see their efforts 86'd (and themselves terminated)? Give me a couple of minutes...
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WBraun
climber
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Jun 11, 2013 - 05:05pm PT
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They can do anything they want.
No they can't.
Only if you are stupid .......
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rectorsquid
climber
Lake Tahoe
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Jun 11, 2013 - 05:11pm PT
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When the first high-quality color printers came on the market the Treasury Dept made Xerox and others put a secret serial number in the firmware that create a microscopic 'brand' on any document printed with those printers. Any document could be traced back to the printer from whence it came.
I wonder if anyone has ever had success using a color printer to make money, literally.
I don't think that the tags were for spying on all citizens, they were to thwart potential counterfeiters. Or maybe Not??!?!?!
Is is true that tasers leave confetti that has a serial number on it or was that just a dumb movie gimmick?
Dave
P.S. and why isn't "taser" in my spell checker?
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Jun 11, 2013 - 05:16pm PT
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Ah Joe, you got me.
Right now, many high-powered lawyers are making huge amounts of money, tax-payer financed, trying to resolve this very issue. Just how much data does the law allow NSA to collect and where does it draw the line on US citizens?
From what I heard from the talking heads on the radio, it's going to be a bit before they twist the laws to say "Yep, we gave the NSA unspeakable powers to do whatever the f*#k they want."
But you know (and I know you do), that isn't really what our Congress wanted to write into law. And you know it's a fact that the NSA overstepped it's charter when it went to collect untold volumes of data on US citizens. Their very code of conduct clearly outlines the boundary on US citizens.
To twist it any other way is just academic. You want the story to be written a certain way, they got authors by the dozen who will write it up that way. And now, theyhave to write it up that way, their hands are forced. But you know, and I know, it ain't supposed to be that way.
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SalNichols
Big Wall climber
Richmond, CA
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Jun 11, 2013 - 05:20pm PT
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K-man, you might not like the legal permission, but it is indeed there. Your congressperson has email, write them and bitch about changing the law. I can assure you, NOTHING is done without an appropriate warrant.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Jun 11, 2013 - 05:26pm PT
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Sal, are you saying that they have a court order to collect data on all US citizens? There is an order is that broad?
I will need to see in writing where the law says it's OK to collect data on all US citizens. And, like I said above, I was listening to some very well informed speakers on the radio, and they too were waiting for a description of how the law that passed could have been interpreted as such.
So, if anybody has the statute that gives the NSA broad authority to capture data on all citizens, post up and make me look the fool.
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AndyO
Social climber
Brooklyn, NY
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Jun 11, 2013 - 05:30pm PT
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FWIW, a guy I know was bootlegging transit passes in Europe using the printer at his job. When someone was caught with a stack of them, the cops read the microscopic serial number in the prints and tracked it back to his employer. He had already left that job, but forget about that future reference...
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Jun 11, 2013 - 05:33pm PT
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Bush eventually got warrants and never went on a full nation fishing expedition.
Let's be excruciatingly clear, W's crew didn't give a wit about the Constitution or Bill of Rights - again and again their conduct was both criminal and treasonous and they only had Aschroft/Gonzales/Yoo/republicans in congress cover their asses after the fact when word started to get out about their activities. All the activities being discussed in the media are authorized by and given cover by various Bush-era laws.
And look, after 9/11 it became painfully clear that war can be waged in ways our military can't protect us from. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out 9/11 was nothing compared to a terrorist attack with a small nuke. So that sad day the dead serious question became: how to stop a terrorist nuke attack?
And that remains the question to this day. What's clear now is that some folks came up with at least the idea of an answer: that likely perpetrators of any such attack in today's world are likely to have a digital footprint. Given that threat, in combination with the various authorization and congressional funding, our nation has clearly embarked on a digital 'Manhattan project' in an attempt to prevent such attacks.
And that project doesn't just involve phones and the internet. Our coasts / shipping lanes have rings of radiation detectors and satellite monitoring for ships which might attempt to leave those lanes. Containers leaving ports are scanned. Our subways are monitored for radiation as witnessed a few months back when a subway was halted and nuke-response team flooded in to the tunnels and pin-pointed a passenger undergoing a radiation-involved medical procedure which triggered their alarms. And you can bet your ass all airport luggage is being scanned as well.
But again being clear, Obama hasn't done this, the Bush crew were the architects of this approach, they set all this in motion, gave it cover, and Congress has been funding it all along under the auspices of the intelligence committees. What Obama has done is signed the appropriations that keep it going. And you can bet any president, a Ron Paul even, would have signed those appropriation bills because guess what? No president wants another 9/11 or worse happening on their watch and have anyone say they didn't do enough to try and prevent it.
But make no mistake, the blueprint for this surveillance build out was in-place a decade ago or the data centers we see up and running it today wouldn't exist - those data centers were planned, designed, paid for by W's crew. The continued build out and implementation does not need any more presidential involvement beyond signing appropriation bills and having the Justice department provide some minimal oversight. And that oversight is also minimal by design and by law.
Hey, it's a f*#king brave new world out there and all your digital toys aren't innocent - they don't just enable your next free latte and your porn habit. They vastly and equally enable the expression of malevolent intent and can be used to coordinate a devastating nuclear attack on one of our cities. What's that you say? You want both your privacy and and protection from a terrorist nuke attack? I'd say, ok, and would you like the Easter Bunny with that as well? Because make no mistake about it Bucko, the reason this is happening is because our military is useless against some of the most serious and likely threats against our nation.
And unfortunately, capturing 60% of the datastream 100% of the time or 100% of the datastream 60% of the time just isn't going to cut it relative to even hoping to 'get lucky' in stopping such an attack. It's more of an all or nothing deal and it's taken a decade just to build out part of the ultimate data collection foundation; it will probably take another decade of to get the analysis and auto-monitoring in place. Hell, we only just learned to do it and that took the invention of Google and Facebook and other social enterprises which had to step up to the 'big data' plate.
You can't really have it both ways - social privacy and protection from a terrorist nuke attack - something has to give and the president you elected before this one made the call on how it was going to go and the build out began. The idea that this president has been much more involved than signing the continuing appropriation bills for it is ludicrous. If he came out publicly and told us all about the program and said he was terminating it then republicans would claim he's leaving us defenseless in the same way they've claimed closing Gitmo would.
The framers of the Constitution didn't and couldn't have conceived of your iPhone; our rapidly evolving digital existence and the threats it enables represents a radical, cross-cultural, trans-national realignment of human reality on all fronts and we will all have to adjust and make painful trade offs. In the end, and all digital narcissism aside, the Internet isn't just for you, the front camera on your phone isn't essential, and all this sh#t could kill you without a single Chinese paratrooper dropping in on your front lawn.
And it isn't a problem you can solve by squeezing the government's access to money or cutting it's budget; this is viewed a strategic requirement for our national defense. And its part of an opening, evolving and continuous cyber-warfare where we are way, way behind the friggin' curve compared to China (we taught it to them). Cut the budget and they'll just shift funds to keep the funding levels for this steady as it's again viewed as critical to our national defense and in many very real ways, is.
Look, I'm all for the Constitution, hate the government, don't like paying taxes, but this, this sh#t is part of a new world which has never existed before and is evolving faster than any technology shift in human history. Really hard choices are going to have to be made as there's no going back to your imaginary white, digital-free, nuclear-family world that really didn't exist in the 50's outside of peoples imaginations. What's it gonna be...? Privacy or protection, because you can't have both and that's what this is all about.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Jun 11, 2013 - 05:41pm PT
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So at this point, since we know the NSA collects our data, we knowingly provide that data to a third party. I see.
But what about before the leak? Our phone conversations were not knowingly provided to third parties.
If I txt my bookie, only he and I are supposed to know about that conversation. That is, until The Guardian came around and told me otherwise.
Still looking ...
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lostinshanghai
Social climber
someplace
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Jun 11, 2013 - 05:46pm PT
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Wonder now if there will a run on these bags. Sh&t still waiting for guns and ammo to be on the selves. Not that I need them for the moment.
Smart [not that smart] cell phone on top of bag with signal ATT and the bars.
back of bag
As in the picture now you see it and now in the bag you don't. or they can not pick up the signal but still can do the work.
For 100% protection you would put the cell phone bag in the large laptop
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kennyt
climber
Woodfords,California
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Jun 11, 2013 - 05:50pm PT
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they're all bad,some just worse than others
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Jun 11, 2013 - 05:57pm PT
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Privacy or protection, because you can't have both and that's what this is all about.
Nice writeup healyje. Indeed, the day after 9-11, our Gov't was wrestling with the problem of having an enemy that was not a state (or state sponsored).
Carry your phone, take pictures with it. It does a great job of documenting your life, where you've been and where you're likely to go. That's the new digital age we live in, and you can love it or leave it.
My problem is that the carrot is "you want the evidence to be a mushroom cloud?" Although the stick is, "I see you went to that peace riot. Who did you talk to when you were there. And oh, sorry about the pepper spray stain on your tee shirt..."
Dissident is now a terrorist activity. And they can hold you without charge, indefinitely.
That's the mushroom cloud I fear.
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