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

So it's just going to be this way from here on out. Good luck to us all.

Article of the day: Under civil forfeiture, Americans who haven’t been charged with wrongdoing can be stripped of their cash, cars, and even homes. Is that all we’re losing?

If all this stuff was so secret, none of us would be discussing it. The system works!

lol

so it seems to me either

- al qaeda is not as decimated as we have been led to believe, and still capable of launching a fearsome attack
- the 'intercept' aspect of this is being played up, likely with leaks to republicans who can safely gin up 'just like 9/11' nonsense, as surveillance damage control

yeah i haven't come into this thread like SUSPICIOUS cuz it makes me feel like a stoner but um it's p fuckin suspicious

otm

Two brain dead Republicans, notably lobotomy victim Peter King, made the rounds of the talk shows yesterday saying the Obama administration was right to summon John Ashcroft from the dead to ask Admiral "Buster" Poindexter to reactivate color-coded warnings.

boo hiss:

The county’s district attorney, a fifty-seven-year-old woman with feathered Charlie’s Angels hair named Lynda K. Russell, arrived an hour later. Russell, who moonlighted locally as a country singer,

between that horrifying 'civil forfeiture' article and the newspaper shit and the NSA shit and the eminent attack/convenient distraction i...kinda want to go back to bed

You probably need a bunker, not a bed.

Or better yet: a bed in a bunker.

Make sure to put your bed bunker inside another bunker.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/us/tsa-expands-duties-beyond-airport-security.html?pagewanted=all

given their public-pleasing work, this is simply natural

soon we'll be employed by the NSA, spying on each other

although i was kind of shocked that the TSA's entire budget is 100 million dollars. that's less than one x-men: first class!

One potential endgame is that Total Information Awareness gets shutdown because it's unaffordable to run.

"If and when our government grabs Edward Snowden, and brings him back here to the United States for trial, what does this group do?" said retired air force general Michael Hayden, who from 1999 to 2009 ran the NSA and then the CIA, referring to "nihilists, anarchists, activists, Lulzsec, Anonymous, twentysomethings who haven't talked to the opposite sex in five or six years".

"They may want to come after the US government, but frankly, you know, the dot-mil stuff is about the hardest target in the United States," Hayden said, using a shorthand for US military networks. "So if they can't create great harm to dot-mil, who are they going after? Who for them are the World Trade Centers? The World Trade Centers, as they were for al-Qaida."

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/06/nsa-director-cyber-terrorism-snowden

Eff this guy.

"in which he confessed to being deliberately provocative"

i would imagine, after his conduct of late, that the WTC of the snowden set might be michael hayden

"honey when did we order 4000 pizzas"

etired air force general Michael Hayden, who from 1999 to 2009 ran the NSA and then the CIA, referring to "nihilists, anarchists, activists, Lulzsec, Anonymous, twentysomethings who haven't talked to the opposite sex in five or six years".

"nihilists, anarchists, activists, Lulzsec, Anonymous, twentysomethings who haven't talked to the opposite sex in five or six years" sounds like a description of CIA membership.

yeah, it's the Brit spies who are all queer, right?

Under civil forfeiture, Americans who haven’t been charged with wrongdoing can be stripped of their cash, cars, and even homes.

Cars and homes are for herberts, baby; I fly low.

nihilists

although i was kind of shocked that the TSA's entire budget is 100 million dollars. that's less than one x-men: first class!

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Wednesday, August 7, 2013 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm sure they get paid very little.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/08/dea-and-nsa-team-intelligence-laundering

Drug cases, on the other hand, made up 20 percent of all federal criminal cases filed in 2012, the second most prosecuted type of crime after immigration cases. If the government acknowledges it has to disclose when FAA evidence has been used to make a drug case—even if it's a tip leading to a pretextual traffic stop—the number of challenges to FAA evidence will increase dramatically.

And:

Taken together, the Fifth and Sixth Amendments guarantee a criminal defendant a meaningful opportunity to present a defense and challenge the government's case. But this intelligence laundering deprives defendants of these important constitutional protections. It makes it harder for prosecutors to comply with their ethical obligation under Brady v. Maryland to disclose any exculpatory or favorable evidence to the defense—an obligation that extends to disclosing evidence bearing on the reliability of a government witness. Hiding the source of information used by the government to initiate an investigation or make an arrest means defendants are deprived of the opportunity to challenge the accuracy or veracity of the government's investigation, let alone seek out favorable evidence in the government's possession.

those are unionized federal jobs

http://tsa.afge.org/represent.cfm

http://www.tsa.gov/careers/pay-bands

while it's true the lower pay bands are not great, this site claims the avg is around $15/hr

http://www.glassdoor.com/Hourly-Pay/TSA-Transportation-Security-Administration-Hourly-Pay-E41347.htm

so yeah you sound really classist

Wait, you think $15/hr is not low pay?

For the most part, living in a major US city, $15/hr does not go a very long way.

The minimum wage for a decent quality of life in Los Angeles is way over $15/hr. More like $20/hr, and even that falls short.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/07/obama-putin-talks-canceled-snowden

Cold War talk has commenced!

$15 is below median for just about every market, yes

but then again "but have you seen the type of people who are hired to do that work at the airport?"

when are the dudes who wrote the article about the al qaeda conference call gonna get arrested

so yeah you sound really classist

― R'LIAH (goole), Wednesday, August 7, 2013 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

but then again "but have you seen the type of people who are hired to do that work at the airport?"

― R'LIAH (goole), Wednesday, August 7, 2013 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Come on, dude. I am all in favour of a large(r) middle class. But the TSA is a joke.

paying ppl crap wages is a pretty good way to increase abuse/corruption

Exactly, Dr.

i have more than once been struck by the dull-witted, almost thuggish obstinacy of TSA workers, so i can only object so much

thank you for going on the record about the meritocracy

"Meritocracy" is a word I really only ever hear classists use.

as a meritocrat i can confirm your belief

"Meritocracy" is a word I really only ever hear classists use.

― i too went to college (silby), Wednesday, 7 August 2013 16:44 (10 minutes ago) Permalink

"open your ears" is an argument I really only ever hear p-funk use

Haven't heard that one. I'm more familiar with Motor Booty Affair.

everyone should start calling Benghazi "the motor booty affair"

That sounds dictatorial.

mister president the american people deserve to know the truth about the motor booty affair

http://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/Images/2013/8/2/20138222246288734_20.jpg

edvard dzhozef snouden

an intelligence official said the controversial NSA programs that gather data on American phone calls or track Internet communications with suspected terrorists played no part in detecting the initial tip. That official spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the spying publicly.

A U.S. official familiar with the threat information said the decision to close the embassies was based on a broad swath of information, not just the intercept

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/state-dept-posts-19-countries-remain-closed

Not to sound classist, but have you seen the type of people who are hired to do that work at the airport?
I'm sure they get paid very little.

― c21m50nh3x460n, Wednesday, August 7, 2013 10:57 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

TBH this sounds more racist than classist

most TSA officers just look uncomfortable and bored, which is what I'd be in about 30 seconds if I had their job