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

i think it's the more germane point, though

xpost

my partner briefly tuned into air america and she said it was all mocking and attacking snowden.

It would be interesting to know who these hosts are, since a lot of real ex-Air America hosts (Maddow, Sam Seder, Cenk) are praising this guy. But then there's Franken.

richard clarke - http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/worry-nsa-article-1.1369705

out of curiosity how are they spinning this at MSNBC?

Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow support him, dunno about Mr. Thrill Going Up His Leg.

― A deeper shade of lol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, June 12, 2013 7:25 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

support snowden or obama?

snowman

i feel like maybe kanye should postpone the release of his album just to drink this all in, you know

Snowden is actually Iceman in In The Loop.

i feel like maybe kanye should postpone the release of his album just to drink this all in, you know

who's the jackass now?

?

that's kanye responding to obama

Check this out: http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/06/11/the-nsa-and-insurrectionists-vs-institutionalists/

― A deeper shade of lol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, June 12, 2013 12:26 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

reading digby calling herself an insurrectionist sort of made me lol

what the fuck is this shit

http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/11/us/nsa-snowden-girlfriend

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/dam/assets/130611165225-linsay-mills-story-body.jpg

In a post on her blog, Lindsay Mills -- who described herself as a "pole-dancing superhero" -- said she was typing on a "tear-streaked keyboard."

"For those of you that know me without my super hero cape, you can probably understand why I'll be refraining from blog posts for awhile. My world has opened and closed all at once. Leaving me lost at sea without a compass," she wrote Monday, a day after American and British newspapers published Snowden's identity as the source behind their reports on the U.S. surveillance programs.

Sounds like CNN taking the "lost at sea" stuff on the blog seriously

he gave up a $400k job and a stripper girlfriend just to protect our freedoms

Wolf Blitzer reporting live from Lindsay Mills' window

becoming an enemy of the state and fleeing to hong kong's always been on my list of ways to avoid the breakup conversation too

fyi anyone checking out her flickr account has been flagged by the nsa

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/assets_c/2013/06/snowden-girlfriend-cropped-proto-custom_28.jpg

rescuing her from the grasp of the security state

becoming an enemy of the state and fleeing to hong kong's always been on my list of ways to avoid the breakup conversation too

― the white queen and her caustic judgments (difficult listening hour), Wednesday, June 12, 2013 2:27 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha max tweeted something abt "Edward Snowden in The World's Most Elaborate Way To Break Up With Your Girlfriend" that made me lol

members of the public appear more inclined to believe government surveillance was okay if it took place under the party to which they felt most closely aligned

basically Seinfeld's "rooting for laundry" assessment of sports fandom works for the National Infotainment State.

unlimited fixin's at the baked potato bar though. you gotta give credit where credit is due.

Supposedly he's still in HK, HK paper SCMP alledgedly spoke to him

members of the public appear more inclined to believe government surveillance was okay if it took place under the party to which they felt most closely aligned

I don't think it's necessarily hypocritical actually. the idea that some democrats are willing to give the federal gov't the benefit of the doubt when obama is in charge but didn't trust the federal gov't when george w. bush was in charge (and vice versa) shouldn't be shocking. it reflects a short-term view of things but it's not irrational.

it is irrational since Dick Cheney is sorta proud of O at this point

it's incredibly fucking nearsighted, bordering on absolute stupidity tho

xpost

most people don't have fleshed out views on these things

In a post on her blog, Lindsay Mills -- who described herself as a "pole-dancing superhero" -- said she was typing on a "Dr. Pepper-streaked keyboard."

I posted that gf stuff yesterday already tbh, I must be killfiled iirc

I was surprised nobody posted that gf stuff yet, the news came out yesterday

:-)

don't mean to be glib, coz this is important stuff, and i was actually involved in campaigning against the uk RIP act back in 1999/2000, but seriously, something about the way this guy snowden looks on the guardian website makes my skin crawl, and he's been there at the top of the front page for like 5 days.

It's as if a terrorist set off a dirty bomb that is slowly spreading snowden's face instead of radiation.

am i the only one here who has roughly zero faith that all of these "protections" in the form of indiscriminate data mining and algorithm-driven identifications of communications "patterns" will actually result in a thwarted terrorist attack? i can't be alone, right?

unless the NSA can prove to us that their methods actually get results (nobody in the administration has pointed to any examples, and we have a pretty flagrant counterexample in the form of the boston bombings), it's hard to take the very notion of a "trade off" between liberty and safety seriously. my sense is that they don't know what else to do, and the security apparatus interprets its remit broadly and by its nature develops more and more intrusive and expansive powers.

so to my mind this whole "debate"--at least as it's been framed in the MSM-- is happening on terms I can't recognize as legit.

am i the only one here who has roughly zero faith that all of these "protections" in the form of indiscriminate data mining and algorithm-driven identifications of communications "patterns" will actually result in a thwarted terrorist attack? i can't be alone, right?

the fbi has successfully thwrted plenty of its own terrorist plots in the last decade or so!

which ones? and did ubiquitous electronic surveillance play a role?

I believe KK means the entrapment kind they set up

"its own" was supposed to signal my sarcasm, lol

xp yep

btw David O Russell has an Abscam (google it) movie coming out this fall, so the '70s are BACK BABY!

except for the Democratic Party now being what we called rightwing Republicans back then

ARGO, ABSCAM, when do we get to the B's?

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/dam/assets/130611191623-lindsay-mills-02-story-body.jpg

I posted that gf stuff yesterday already tbh, I must be killfiled iirc
― Le Bateau Ivre, Wednesday, June 12, 2013 10:59 AM
i don't read threads before posting :B

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113416/nsa-spying-scandal-data-mining-isnt-good-keeping-us-safe

― curmudgeon, Tuesday, June 11, 2013 9:10 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This article explains why using big data to automate statistical prediction of terrorist threats is unlikely to work well - there's minimal data to learn from.

right--there aren't enough precedents for them to know what to look for. add that to the mountains of data they have to sift through....

disturbingly i feel like such a system would be better at tracing domestic dissenters, predicting rallies, etc. i'm not paranoid enough to think that it's what PRISM was designed for, but it will surely come in handy some day soon.

am i the only one here who has roughly zero faith that all of these "protections" in the form of indiscriminate data mining and algorithm-driven identifications of communications "patterns" will actually result in a thwarted terrorist attack? i can't be alone, right?

unless the NSA can prove to us that their methods actually get results (nobody in the administration has pointed to any examples, and we have a pretty flagrant counterexample in the form of the boston bombings), it's hard to take the very notion of a "trade off" between liberty and safety seriously. my sense is that they don't know what else to do, and the security apparatus interprets its remit broadly and by its nature develops more and more intrusive and expansive powers.

so to my mind this whole "debate"--at least as it's been framed in the MSM-- is happening on terms I can't recognize as legit.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Wednesday, June 12, 2013 11:47 AM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

having just finished Lawrence Wright's excellent The Looming Tower a few days ago, and suffering through instance after instance after instance of the CIA holding critical shit back from the FBI because oh no what if the FBI actually arrests these guys then our spy game will be ruined!1!1! I have to be curious how much that kind of divisional hatred might still be hindering anti-terrorism measures today...

disturbingly i feel like such a system would be better at tracing domestic dissenters, predicting rallies, etc. i'm not paranoid enough to think that it's what PRISM was designed for, but it will surely come in handy some day soon.

this is not enough of a problem for it to be a problem that needs to be solved

right--there aren't enough precedents for them to know what to look for. add that to the mountains of data they have to sift through....

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Wednesday, June 12, 2013 9:04 AM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

For the sake of clarity, data mining solves the "mountains of data" problem. The lack of precedents makes data mining ineffective.

Maybe I'm dense, but wtf does his girlfriend have to do with this? This story isn't about Snowden, who is just some 29 year old geek, f'r chissake. It's about the information Snowden released to the public and what that information means. He's just the gap through which this info emerged. The details of his life mean nothing.