omnibus PRISM/NSA/free Edward Snowden/encryption tutorial thread

i think i get where you are coming from DJP but honestly i think the task at hand is to link the NSA story to, say, this one:

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/06/lawsuit-mississippi-prison-mentally-ill

...which is that in the name of public safety, the appointed "guards" can do whatever they want

fyi that link needs whatever trigger warning nsfsanity ruinyourday tags you can throw on it

the constitution does not actually guarantee guns fyi

p. sure it guarantees one (1) per customer, please show up at city hall between 11am - 3pm for yours

that is my fave law enforcement trick, by the way. tell people with outstanding warrants that they have money waiting for them and then they come and get it and blammo! into the pokey. that's just good old-fashioned trickery. i think i saw that in a movie...

It's the one where the gangsters all get free tickets to the Yankees game and blammo!

i love that trick!

hey i'm here for my free motor boat...hey forgeddaboutit!!!! wait was it the simpsons where it was a free motor boat? best trick.

i have offered that deal

xp yes, which leads to the police manhandling Homer, who shouts, "Hey! My boating arm!"

even THAT guy lives in la la land and he's the whistler. well, he is 29. what does he know about anything...

a guy who works for Booz Allen probably doesn't have much first hand experience of the criminal justice system

this is a weird opinion piece by jeffrey toobin

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/06/edward-snowden-nsa-leaker-is-no-hero.html

it's not wrong but it seems to be totally missing the point

toobin is a disgusting jerk imo

that toobin piece is such bullshit

first of all, he apparently finds the idea that snowden might have had complex motives for releasing the NSA documents shocking! utterly shocking!

then, he makes out like this has any bearing on anything.

finally, there's this helpful suggestion to future snowdens:

they can take advantage of federal whistle-blower laws; they can bring their complaints to Congress; they can try to protest within the institutions where they work.

b/c that's worked out so well under the obama administration

fuck this guy

He is, rather, a grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison.

Toobin was on CNN last week saying the same nonsense last week before Snowden revealed himself

He is, rather, a grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison.

i love how the implication here is that his supposed "grandiose narcissism" is what should land him in prison

if that were true, 2/3 of political bloggers would be in guantanamo

^^^ tempting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgN6xkfgvls

http://bit.ly/16XNszo

http://www.people-press.org/files/2013/06/6-10-13-7.png

Roughly a quarter (27%) of Americans say they are following news about the government collecting Verizon phone records very closely. This is a relatively modest level of public interest. Only another 21% say they are following this fairly closely, while about half say they are following not too (17%) or not at all (35%) closely

WHY ? • 12 hours ago −

Edward Snowden, great American hero and true patriot. Thank you Mr. Snowden....stay safe & God Bless.

4448 up 244 down

i guess that shows how far "the internet" skews off IRL?

so only 1/3 of americans even follow any news whatsoever basically

says a lot

The question, of course, is whether the government can function when all of its employees (and contractors) can take it upon themselves to sabotage the programs they don’t like. That’s what Snowden has done.

i'd quote catch-22 here re "what if everyone thought that way" but then i'd have to think of a joke about "snowden"

I mean it's not even 'the internet' it's people who follow politics as a hobby vs normal people

the question of course

xp it's cnn.com

it's not a bad question but that's what a social contract is duh

right before this story came out i was reading something that said over 130 million american cell phones end up in landfills every year. and i though huh wow that's a lot of cell phones. to end up in the ground. then i forgot about it. then this story came out and i remembered again.

I'm worried about the goatee. Tomorrow Greenwald will get him into a pair of cargo shorts.

A January 2006 Washington Post/ABC poll—which was released in the wake of President George W. Bush’s “terrorist surveillance program”—found that 51 percent of Americans believed it was appropriate for the NSA to investigate suspected terrorists by “secretly listening in on telephone calls and reading e-mails between some people in the United States and other countries, without first getting court approval to do so.”

Pew highlights partisan shifts on the issue between 2006 and 2013, which may be attributed to a change of party in the White House. In 2006, 75 percent of Republicans and 37 percent of Democrats thought it was acceptable to monitor phone records in the name of national security. Today, 52 percent of Republicans and 64 percent of Democrats find it acceptable.

ha -- Chris Hayes just mentioned this.

so only 1/3 of americans even follow any news whatsoever basically

says a lot

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Monday, June 10, 2013 3:56 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

presumably this is about the same 1/3 of americans who vote; i wonder if it matters

not too much of a shock i guess that most democrats deep down loved the patriot act

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/06/10/how-to-get-that-balance-right-on-nsa-spying/

but this particular case is not yet settled law, what is my entitled white brain supposed to think

the1/3 of Americans who vote also tend to take cues from their favorite political party, neither of which is gonna tell them to be outraged right now xp

dems were pretty much ok with clinton's post-oklahoma city anti-terror act, can't imagine they wouldn't have been openly enthusiastic about patriot act if it'd happened under a dem pres.

http://trollthensa.com/

snowden checks out

Can anyone provide good links to in-depth explanations and analyses of what exactly the NSA is doing with Prism and similar programs? Seems like all the news is just about where Snowded is and what his girlfriend does for a living and whether or not he likes normal american flavors of ice cream as opposed to this faggy blood orange and cardamom stuff.

the hong kong thing is very very odd

yeah I mean scott said upthread his history made him seem like a spook; maybe he's a Chinese asset.

xp to analyze what exactly the NSA is doing with Prism there'd have to be some reliable information about what Prism actually is and does. If you want an idea of what the NSA might be doing with Big Data in general, check out http://www.palantir.com and infer from there I guess?

Palantir Gotham's precision data control, maintenance of data provenance, and robust accountability mechanisms can form the backbone of a rigorous privacy- and civil liberties-protective data handling regime.

co-founded by ron paul's #1 campaign contributor

haha for real? maybe I shouldn't apply for a job there.

(the greatest threat to our civil liberties is amoral engineers looking for exciting projects)

nah it's peter thiel, there is nothing actually libertarian about palantir

holy shit david brooks is the worst
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/11/opinion/brooks-the-solitary-leaker.html?hp&_r=2&

He betrayed the cause of open government. Every time there is a leak like this, the powers that be close the circle of trust a little tighter. They limit debate a little more.

He betrayed the privacy of us all. If federal security agencies can’t do vast data sweeps, they will inevitably revert to the older, more intrusive eavesdropping methods.

He betrayed the Constitution. The founders did not create the United States so that some solitary 29-year-old could make unilateral decisions about what should be exposed.

fuck this fucking moron