The security company RSA was given $10 million by the NSA to weaken one of their security products:
Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show that the NSA created and promulgated a flawed formula for generating random numbers to create a “back door” in encryption products, the New York Times reported in September. Reuters later reported that RSA became the most important distributor of that formula by rolling it into a software tool called Bsafe that is used to enhance security in personal computers and many other products.
Undisclosed until now was that RSA received $10 million in a deal that set the NSA formula as the preferred, or default, method for number generation in the BSafe software, according to two sources familiar with the contract. Although that sum might seem paltry, it represented more than a third of the revenue that the relevant division at RSA had taken in during the entire previous year, securities filings show.
If you work in a corporation, you may have used a RSA product like SecurID to access your corporate network. After revelations like this, any RSA product is automatically suspect. I assume most corporate security people, who are incredibly risk-averse and ass-covering, will never recommend a RSA product again. That’s certainly true for any international customer thinking about buying from RSA.
You can blame the NSA, you can blame RSA, or you can blame Snowden for leaking this, but this kind of thing was going to come out at some time. It was incredibly shortsighted for RSA to risk their company–and, really, the reputation of any US security company–for $10 million of quick revenue.
But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, because RSA is just another casualty of the out-of-control stupidity of the War on Terror. I had the unfortunate need to take a business trip this week, and while standing in the endless TSA line with crying children and miserable holiday travelers, I had yet another opportunity to reflect on how smart Osama bin Laden’s 9/11 strategy was. He knew that we were easily scared and prone to overreaction. He knew we’d pour millions of dollars into pointless security theater, and that a lot of our veneration of constitutional liberty was just lip service. So when I got my pat-down because the Rapiscanner decided that something under my armpits (powerful BO?) was suspicious, or when I watched people carefully separate out little baggies full of liquids and gels to counter a comic book threat, I had to once again appreciate the genius of that malignant fucker, because he’s still winning the long game.
Nunca el Jefe
It is precisely that experience, waiting in line in security at the airport, that highlights to me just how disparate the economic classes are these days, and how institutionalized we have allowed it to become. I’m talking about TSA PreCheck and how, for money or with enough “status” with the airlines, you are suddenly shown to the front of the line and may also have far less onerous security checks. It just makes the economic disparity in this country particularly visible.
/rant
Josie
I think that every time I go through that charade. And I am struck by how all of us (myself included) agree to participate in the stupidity because we don’t want some power drunk minor official to pull us out of line and ruin our travel plans.
danielx
Got that right. He succeeded beyond his wildest dreams; there are times when I don’t recognize my own country any more.
MikeJ
RSA sells software toolkits. Even if you’ve never bought anything from them, chances are that you use a product that uses RSA tech. It makes perfect sense to buy crypto libs rather than rolling your own. They’re really hard to do right, and once somebody has a good implementation it is almost always easier to just buy theirs.
I agree that nobody will ever buy from RSA again, but what company could you think is safe? RSA may have not only screwed themselves. They’ve made every American security company suspect.
Fred
The money, wasted time and tediousness are bad but the loss of dignity before the world is perhaps the greatest long term cost. It does not promote national security to have the whole world snickering at what fools Americans are for putting up with this shit. And believe it, they are snickering. And we are fools.
In one decade Team USA’s stature has been reduced from the indispensable nation to the idiot bully of the neighborhood. I thought we elected Obama to end the Bush nightmare.
Poopyman
@Nunca el Jefe: And if you fly corporate aircraft, security is probably just a friendly wave.
MikeJ
@Nunca el Jefe:
No, the security checks are just as bad. I don’t have a problem with letting people who are in airports two to five times per week go in front of vacationers, especially since the business travelers have usually paid more for one ticket than an entire family pays for theirs.
Alexandra
Bin Laden’s ‘Letter To America’ doesn’t mention anything about wanting to bleed the US dry by forcing you to increase security theatre. Instead, his prime motivations seemed to have been: Palestine, Somalia, Chechyna, Kashmir and Lebanon… plus oil, military bases in Saudi Arabia and the Al-Aqsa mosque.
What’s more, in his 2004 video:
Yes to understanding and provoking you, yes to drawing you into a long and expensive war in other parts of the globe. But nothing about domestic homeland security. Think it came way down the list of any considerations and is a fairly shallow and parochial way of looking at things.
Joey Maloney
It’s not clear that RSA was a willing co-conspirator with the NSA. They may have been dupes. I don’t pretend to have any real understanding of the math involved, but it was only relatively recently that the dual-elliptic curve random number generator was shown to be insecure.
Poopyman
It will be interesting to see what all the NSA contractors who use RSA fobs for ID and remote login will do.
Cervantes
To be clear: the security hole is not news. What’s news, if one did not connect the dots before, is the $10,000,000 payment.
Cervantes
@Joey Maloney: You mean they cashed the ten-million-dollar check without knowing what it was for?
Cervantes
That’s a charitable view. They are also beneficiaries and, therefore, self-interested cheerleaders. Or they were, anyway.
Waldo
@Alexandra: Yeah, I kinda doubt pat downs of mildly inconvenienced holiday travelers has OBL high-fiving Saddam in the 7th Circle of Hell.
Zifnab25
I don’t even know. People have been predicting surveillance states in the US since the 50s. I think we are attributing a great deal to Bin Laden that US officials were eager to implement anyway.
The Department of Homeland Security existed on paper week before 9/11. And a lot of this spying business isn’t new to Greenpeace or civil rights leaders or DEA targets or domestic terrorist organizations like the KKK.
What we’re seeing I’d the industrialization of information gathering and security (theater). 9/11 was the catalyst, but it just as easily could have been Oklahoma City or some scare about Chinese computer hackers. Our modern security state has been a solution looking for a problem for some time.
cathyx
I’m sure everyone here will blame Snowden for leaking this.
Poopyman
OT, I know, but while reading about the emergency spacewalk I happened to see this:
That’ll provoke some interesting reactions on this (south) side of the border.
qtip
Not trying to argue really, but “endless TSA lines” does not match my experience when I travel. I went through about 20 TSA lines this year and rarely had to wait more than 5 minutes. I don’t think I once waited more than 15 minutes.
Botsplainer
Clearly, the inability of glibertarian kajillionaires, narco thugs and would-be terrorists to feel that they have secure crypto on their communications, tax evasion schemes and money laundering gives me a sad. It’s funny that they have the unquestioning support of squealing, trembling, paranoid white guys, afraid that some gubmint minion might have access to the archives which show they were passing around the Obama witch doctor photoshop.
Cervantes
@qtip: Same here, more or less.
the Conster
@qtip:
Me neither – it’s annoying to undress and lose something you forgot was either in your purse or carry on like the little swiss army knives I keep on my key chains, but maybe because I’ve been beaten into submission, but I’m glad they check everyone, and the lines aren’t usually unbearable. I really REALLY don’t want to be blown up on a plane at 35,000 feet.
AnonPhenom
@Nunca el Jefe:
Those people are frequent flyers. They’re not the 1%. The wealthy are flying on NetJets, Flexjet and Avantair out of small regional airports where the “security” at the FBO knows how to behave and the beautiful minds of the plutocrats are unbothered by the sight and odors of the hoi pollloi.
9/11? What’s 9/11?
They know who the real threat is.
jayboat
@qtip:
Mostly they have their routine fairly well choreographed.
A few airports **cough*cough*laguardia*cough*midway*cough*cough** never seem to really have things 100% together, and if there’s any little hiccup… get ready to wait.
I think when one is traveling, especially on the homeward leg, the annoyances seem amplified.
Especially the TSA part, because we’re all generally annoyed with them to begin with.
But that’s just me… I fly a couple dozen times a year and it’s mostly bearable.
My biggest bitch is flight crews who seem oblivious to the volume level of the plane’s PA system.
Traveling in and out of Caribbean island countries by boat will give you a real sense of the complete ridiculousness of it all.
Schlemizel
@danielx:
Boy Blunder did tell us “the hate us for our freedoms” so they should certainly hate us a lot less now than they used to.
Robert Thau
To give RSA their due: when they took the money for the NSA’s pet random number generator, they may not have realized it contained a “back door”. The NSA might have been telling them that it was a particularly good algorithm for reasons they couldn’t disclose.
For what it’s worth, there had been one prior episode in which the NSA had made very similar claims (“this is better, but we can’t tell you why”), which were later shown to be legit. They’d been accused in the 1980s of weakening the DES cipher by asking for suspicious-looking changes which they wouldn’t explain. Those changes (which were made in the final version of the standard) turned out later to be completely legit — they made DES more resistant to a “differential cryptanalysis” technique which wasn’t publicly known at the time. And this, combined with a general charm offensive, was quite effective in establishing their reputation as nice, helpful guys who sometimes couldn’t say everything. Effective enough that it made everyone forget the prior episodes in which they had been caught putting backdoors in everything from Lotus Notes to the hardware crypto-machines sold by the Swiss firm Crypto AG.
That said, the particular gimmicked standard that was at issue here attracted suspicion almost immediately. No one has yet exhibited the back door in this particular variant of the algorithm — but it was demonstrated almost immediately that algorithms of a similar structure could have a back door known to the creator, which would be very difficult for anyone else to discover. Between that, and the existence of numerous other well-studied and (now, obviously) superior alternatives, it was a very strange choice for a library default.
Gin & Tonic
@Botsplainer: Reading comprehension fail. Narco thugs, etc were never mentioned in the OP. Corporate info sec is where the money is, and where the real paranoia and ass-covering is. If you had even a faintly passing familiarity with that world, you’d know. And the stain on not just RSA but *all* American software companies is very significant, in a sales and jobs way.
Incidentally, to those suggesting this is somehow new, Schneier wrote about the odd behavior of this algorithm in 2007. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/the_strange_sto.html
Schlemizel
@MikeJ:
Why do we all assume its only American companies? Its not like the US companies are more vulnerable to a bribe like this. Its also stupid and short-sighted to assume the the NSA is alone in the world in trying to gain this sort of edge. China, Israel and Russia are in the game for sure Japan, Germany, England and France would be remiss if they were not pursuing the same thing. My guess is that at least half the G20 either are in this game or partnered with one of the big 4 players to obtain the same tools to share. Buying a non-American made encryption product will buy you a false sense of security not better security.
Botsplainer
@qtip:
I actually find they’re pretty polite. When I notice one sliding into barking at passengers, I smile, say “good morning” and never have an issue.
There are a few other things that I do to ease the process.
1. I wear easily slipped off shoes or sandals, with no socks.
2. I wear a fleece jacket with zippered pockets, and when I start into the line, everything – wallet, cash, phone, headphones, change, watch, passport are zipped up – all I have to do is slip the jacket onto the belt.
3. I wear an open collar shirt or tshirt, so that my gold chain is visible.
4. If I’m wearing a belt, it is easily removable.
5. I bring no grooming items in carryon. They’re easily replaceable.
6. When going diving, I put my prescription mask, dive computer, reg and octopus and spare reg into my personal item bag and declare it as scuba gear as it is going through the X-ray (it looks weird on the scanner), and an inexperienced operator will stop it to check it unless an experienced one looks over a shoulder and confirms it.
7. I am always pleasant to them, it costs nothing.
I did buy into global entry and precheck. The global entry is pretty cool, but precheck isn’t completely bug free yet, and is a little spotty in airports covered.
Napoleon
@AnonPhenom:
It should be noted they are the same people that will not be effected by Paul Ryan’s commercial airplane ticket “fee” in the just concluded budget deal.
dpm (dread pirate mistermix)
@Cervantes: It took 25 minutes to clear this line. At 5:30 AM. Normally it’s a couple of minutes at that airport at that time.
Joey Maloney
@Cervantes: RTFA; it’s not clear what the ten mil was for, but the deal was negotiated by the suits, not the geeks, who quite possibly didn’t understand what they were signing.
Botsplainer
@jayboat:
McCarran in Vegas was the worst I ever experienced. It’s been over 10 years, and Allah willing, I’ll never have to stand that line again. It wasn’t the process that was screwed, it was the choking point configuration.
qtip
@jayboat:
Generally, I think lines/queues are annoying out-of-proportion to their length. A 10 minute wait for TSA feels like a long time but the next 60 minutes after security wandering around the airport or reading a book at the gate seems to go very quickly.
MattF
Note, towards the end of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SecurID
that RSA’s ‘two-factor authentication’ token was compromised two years ago. This was a very big deal in the security world. It wouldn’t surprise me if RSA goes under at this point.
Joey Maloney
@the Conster: I really REALLY don’t want to be blown up on a plane at 35,000 feet.
I don’t care to be blown up while standing in the densely-packed security line either, but I figure it’s only a matter of time before someone realizes that will make nearly as spectacular a mess on CNN as a plane.
Gin & Tonic
@Joey Maloney: The Reuters article is very informative. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/21/us-usa-security-rsa-idUSBRE9BJ1C220131221
By that point most of the smart people had left, and Bsafe was barely generating revenue, so the $10 mil was significant. The RSA of 2005 and on bears literally no resemblance to the 1990’s company of the same name.
Gin & Tonic
@Schlemizel: Buying a non-American made encryption product will buy you a false sense of security not better security.
The key is an open and peer-reviewed product. Questions about the security or back-door-ness of this algorithm were in the public literature within a year after the library was released.
Schlemizel
@Gin & Tonic:
There have been several people writing about this for a while now, Bruce is probably the best and best known. The problem is that the math is so far out there that it is damn near impossible to find people who can evaluate the work. In order to do that then need to have access to a lot of information these companies are not going to share for the exact reason it might allow a handful of people to break their codes.
Encryption is like a door lock, it keeps honest or lazy people from breaking in, it escalates the cost of breaking in and it gives the owner a sense that they have done something. The amount of computing power governments bring against encryption is mind boggling, even without backdoors they will break stuff commonly considered to be unbreakable.
Schlemizel
@MattF:
Who would you buy if not RSA? I work in IT security (CISSP and all) so I know the market. The worst mistake you could make would be to assume that anyone in that space is not already compromised also.
Also, as noted by a couple of people RSA’s weakness has been known for some time and yet they still sell their product & people are still buying it.
MattF
@Schlemizel: You can go back to Bingo cards. Analog, I know, but it works.
Robert Sneddon
Elliptic-curve is still difficult to break, it’s just breakable if enough billion-dollar assets are thrown into the project. It’s not a trivial process, nobody can decrypt a single email or phone call secured by an elliptic-curve algorithm in real time. Given a few days or weeks the NSA (and the Chinese, the Russians, the Belgians, the British etc.) can decrypt some messages secured by a single key if they’ve intercepted traffic they deem of interest and regard spending a few million bucks to do the job.
Elliptic-curve was best-of-breed encryption for a long while before the first public papers came out about five or six years ago indicating there were exploitable weaknesses — the reasoning behind the exploits is way above my pay grade but I take their word for it. EC is faster than the alternatives and back then silicon and computation was slower and more expensive per operation and that counted for a lot hence the wide uptake of RSA’s toolkits.
If you really want to be really conspiratorial about RSA you might look into the origins of the company and then you might have an idea why they’d take the NSA’s money.
Betty Cracker
@Botsplainer: For the record, your latest implication that only racists, libertarians and criminals can object to NSA practices is ridiculous, insulting and demonstrably false.
Barry
@Joey Maloney: “RTFA; it’s not clear what the ten mil was for, but the deal was negotiated by the suits, not the geeks, who quite possibly didn’t understand what they were signing. ”
So the people who are used to dealing with contracts signed a contract for $10 million, not knowing what the contract involved? (not specific tech details, but what was to be done in a general sense)
BruceFromOhio
@cathyx: Ummm… I’m thinking there are two paths here. One is: He took actions that brought this information to the public. So he did leak it. The other is: holy shit, this War On Terra security state surveillance bullshit has gone far enough, and its long past time to reign it in. Whether or not this is a corollary of Snowden’s leaking information to the public can be debated, either way it’s kind of pointless to shoot the messenger now.
If there is a lemonade stand to be built from this fucking lemon orchard we now find ourselves living in, it comes from this steady, clear-eyed research of the leaked information, and putting relentless pressure on the Legislature and the Executive to unwind this crap in a responsible manner.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Botsplainer: Yes, I can’t imagine any reason for anyone objecting to invasion of privacy unless they were drug dealers, terrorists, or passing around racist photos of Obama.
The last line, by the way, may seem like a bizarre non sequitur but is pretty much the key to understanding where this kind of sentiment comes from.
Botsplainer
@Gin & Tonic:
Narco thugs, deceitful kajillionaires and foreign criminal/terror organizations move their money and conduct their operations through seeming legitimate enterprises (that actually do some legit business) with names that look like Familienerbe GmBH or Extravaganza SA.
For a period of time, I was a registered overseas agent and could form offshore enterprises in Anguilla. These things were completely invisible to US authorities, and were a perfect vehicle to shield assets from creditors and vengeful spouses – you’d establish your entity there, deposit your money to Barclays or HSBC there in Anguilla, and run your life through a VISA card which was forever unreachable to your domestic oppressors. Of course, it was expensive to get the certification, and I charged a hefty premium.
Somewhere in late 2002 or 2003, I got inquiries from some financial outfit in Hong Kong asking me for pricing on setting up an unspecified number of them. I quoted what I thought to be fair (I would have had to hire a dedicated assistant solely for forming and tracking the things), and they said thanks but no thanks. Two months later, I get a pricing sheet showing that these guys have been setting them up in bulk, charging 10 dollars over the filing fee, with specialized quotes for already existing entities, depending on age (basically, back-dating the formation for the buyer – really useful for the commission of fraud). Spooked the hell out of me, and I lapsed the authority, never to do it again.
There’s an entire world of shadowy corporate entities out there, many waiting to be taken off the shelf and misused.
Matt McIrvin
@Joey Maloney: There was that shooting at LAX a little while ago.
I also find that security lines have gotten shorter and faster as the post-9/11 regulations have been incorporated into the design of the security areas and procedures.
I’m not sure whether I should feel good about this (it’s less of a pain in the neck), or bad (we’ve come to accept and deal with small violations that maybe shouldn’t happen). When the millimeter-wave scanners came into use, there was a lot of uproar about how strangers were looking under your clothes, and people were urging mass rejection of the scanners in favor of a time-consuming pat-down to throw a monkey wrench in the works. The scanners have been modified now so that they don’t do that, they just use some mystery algorithm to flag areas of concern on an abstract display. So does that mean we should stop being annoyed, or that the Man found a way to lull us? Anyway…
The worst I ever experienced was the first time I flew out of Boise, Idaho after 9/11. I think it was before the TSA had taken over airport security, but after all sorts of new regulations had come into place for the existing contractors. They had one gate operating for the whole airport, with no area in front of it where people could easily take off their shoes or empty their pockets, and they had to do all these new searches. The consequence was a line that wound completely around the airport’s staff offices and down the stairs to the baggage claim/car rental area on the lower floor. Eventually, they completely redesigned and expanded their security area, and things got better.
Botsplainer
@Betty Cracker:
Read it again. They’re the ones who benefit from the remedy that the squealing paranoids demand.
Schlemizel
@Gin & Tonic:
The ones I know about, like WiKID include modules that they do not release code for and I am paranoid enough that I can’t be convinced they are 100%, forever, secure.
But the biggest impediment is the same one security always runs into, management. Management that does not understand how to evaluate risk and for whom ‘risk-adverse’ means you don’t buy open source, you buy from a reputable vendor with a good customer base so if you are dragged into court you can use that as a defense.
But really what are most companies trying to do when they use RSA for remote access or file encryption? They are not worried about NSA, they are worried about their competitors or maybe China (who is way ahead of the game anyway). They are not worried about the government knowing what their bid for a job will be or the tricks in their product’s code they are worried about their competitors having that info.
jayboat
@qtip:
Word. I’m quite happy wasting as much of my time as I desire,
but… order me to wait in line for something I know is a waste of my time and …
well, let’s just say that die was cast a long time ago.
Like botsplainer, I try to give em a smile- couldn’t image having to do that job every day.
Really, just about any job in an airport doesn’t sound at all appealing.
Schlemizel
@Botsplainer:
You forgot HSBC, Western Union, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase&Co, Citigroup and Wachovia, all of whom were either caught or reliably implicated in narco-laundry.
Schlemizel
@Botsplainer:
You forgot HSBC, Western Union, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase&Co, Citigroup and Wachovia, all of whom were either caught or reliably implicated in narco-laundry.
BruceFromOhio
@Schlemizel: They are not worried about the government knowing what their bid for a job will be or the tricks in their product’s code they are worried about their competitors having that info.
This. Having some NSA spooks traipsing through my communiques and designs only goes bad for me when said spooks decide to go off the res and start picking sides for cash. I’d prefer they didn’t, but they are a lesser concern than a Russian hacker team storming ashore on contract and snorking 40 million of my customers debit transactions, or the formulae for next years statin products.
Cervantes
@Joey Maloney:
Not clear to whom? Here’s an excerpt from the article:
Not clear enough?
Gin & Tonic
@Botsplainer: Fascinating. What, exactly, does that have to do with the OP, your stupid response or my reply?
Botsplainer
@Schlemizel:
True. Those officers in private banking divisions in garden variety retail banks can get really squirrelly and are all too happy to climb into bed with malefactors. One guy in the office was regaling me with a story last week about how a banker was colluding with one bank customer in fucking over a business partner, who was also a customer of that particular banker. He showed me the email – they were cooking the strategy together.
Betty Cracker
@Botsplainer: “Squealing paranoids?” I guess that includes Senators Ron Wyden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, the ACLU and the majority of the American people, all of whom are on the record for dialing back surveillance powers. Look, if you want to argue that it’s okay for the NSA to bribe private companies to weaken encryption, fair enough. I just wish you’d consider dropping the “everyone who is concerned about surveillance is a racist, criminal, libertarian, dupe” line. It’s untrue, and it weakens whatever point you’re trying to make.
Botsplainer
@Gin & Tonic:
Quit being deliberately obtuse.
My point is that the corporations which buy this crypto stuff are not necessarily what you are trying to portray that they are, and can move money in furtherance of hatched plots in a heartbeat.
The screaming, squealing hysterics would use their paranoia to shut down any way to effectively deal with that, thus enabling extremely dangerous people to wreak great harm on everyone – not just comfortable white people who conduct transactions online.
different-church-lady
Right. Because, you know, nobody actually died on Sept. 11th or anything.
Botsplainer
@Betty Cracker:
Pretty much.
Assumes facts not in evidence. Call it “majority of self-absorbed, ass ignorant white people, who wouldn’t know oppression or pervasive surveillance if it bit them on the ass”.
Corner Stone
How anyone continues to describe this as “white people problems” is simply baffling.
Cacti
@Botsplainer:
White people problems is the specialty here at Libertarian Juice.
different-church-lady
Wait a minute… which one is the “pointless security theater”: the airport checks or the encryption software?
Botsplainer
@Corner Stone:
The guy down in the hood is a lot more worried about getting stopped by a cop for no reason, then getting tased and arrested for resisting.
How often does that happen for a paranoid Paulite who passes around an Obama as Hitler photoshop?
Cacti
@Botsplainer:
How often does a white teen get convicted in the court of public opinion for their own murder, while their killer walks free?
Omnes Omnibus
@Botsplainer:
At what point does it become okay, in your view, to be bothered by surveillance? BTW your “it benefits narco-thugs and money launderers” argument smacks of “if you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.”
ETA: It isn’t right when it is used to justify stop and frisk and it isn’t right when it is used to justify electronic searches.
Gin & Tonic
@Botsplainer: My point is that the corporations which buy this crypto stuff are not necessarily what you are trying to portray that they are, and can move money in furtherance of hatched plots in a heartbeat.
Quit being deliberately obtuse. What portion of the revenue of Google, Microsoft or Yahoo is attributable to laundering money for drug traffickers?
Cacti
@Omnes Omnibus:
And which of the two sucks up all the oxygen around the white, internet left?
Botsplainer
@Omnes Omnibus:
When it invades your space to become something you affirmatively interact with, like walking down the street and being asked where you’ve been, why you went, what you’re doing and where you are going.
You know, like any day in the hood.
The day that the NSA asks me why I pick on my fellow comfortable white people on the Internet, maybe I’ll be bothered. Other than that, I’m pretty sanguine.
Perfect crypto would render large-scale international criminal conspiracies unreachable given the speed at which money can currently be moved.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cacti: I recall people around here being pretty fucking worked up about Trayvon Martin. Don’t try to play off concerns about surveillance as a lack of concern about anything else.
@Cacti:
Well, the threads where you and Botsplainer come in and say surveillance is not a big deal and drop veiled accusations of racism get pretty long. My point is that both stop and frisk and warrantless internet surveillance are, in my opinion, violations of the Fourth Amendment. I am against both. You seem to not give a shit about one of the violations. Why?
Botsplainer
@Gin & Tonic:
Depends on how many gmail and ymail accounts are in use in criminal conspiracies, if you are looking at indirect attribution. I’ve been getting some mailers from google lately about some web team, if they’re in the site building business, they may well be facilitating some conspiracy contact point sites or Ponzi schemes.
Schlemizel
@BruceFromOhio:
The ‘cool’ thing is that the Chinese have already figured out how to break most of this stuff and have some fabulous Advanced Persistent Threats already buried deep within systems all over the rest of the world. A friend of mine found one & moved the system into a secure sandbox so he could play with it. he found the files that caused it & removed them then watched as the system used a different set of files to rebuild itself. He destroyed those files and watched as it rebuilt itself again. All that while the COTS anti-virus and protection stuff reported nothing.
That is at a company that is involved in security products and services. The bot was reporting to a known Chinese Army Command and Control server & sending who knows what (seriously, they are unable to determine what information was leaked back home). Many companies with Chinese competitors are discovering their secrets being used by their competitors and somehow or other the Chinese bids are always coming out just a bit lower than their Western competitors. It may well be that the Chinese have also found RSA’s back door and that of all its competition but worrying about the NSA and the RSA 2-factor is missing the much larger picture that none of this is really secure and it is not the NSA compines need to worry about.
Botsplainer
@Omnes Omnibus:
The disclosed Internet surveillance is not, in my opinion, a violation of the fourth amendment, as I have no reasonable expectation of privacy once I kick shit out to third parties and click agreements allowing sharing. Thus it is a difference in opinion. Mine is one informed by my non-paranoia and desire for a utilitarian approach to law enforcement.
Omnes Omnibus
@Botsplainer: Thanks for phrasing that as an implicit argument that my view is based on paranoia. Asshole.
Cacti
@Omnes Omnibus:
Good technique counselor, pretend that you are above the fray, while imputing bad faith to the other side.
Yet you know, at its heart, that this is a public policy debate between two legitimate concerns: privacy and national security. You point the accusatory finger at others asking at what point it becomes okay to be bothered by surveillance. One could easily ask you at what point do legitimate national security concerns begin. Can’t say that I’ve ever seen that out of you.
Your position seems to have a whiff of “see no evil, hear no evil” until it plows a plane full of people into the world trade center, then make the appropriate sad face and say “no one could have predicted”. (hey look, I can impute bad faith too!).
My other point remains. You can complain about the comment sections, but on the front pages of this largely white blog, how many posts on stop and frisk in the past year? How many on the NSA?
Betty Cracker
@Corner Stone: It’s not only baffling, it’s ignorant. Any self-appointed Lorax of the Poor and Non-White should realize that the people for whom he or she purports to speak ALWAYS bear the brunt of the erosion of civil liberties.
gratuitous
Someone get a chisel, and carve this in stone: “But this kind of thing was going to come out at some time.” Every time. The cutesy spooks aren’t nearly as cute as they think and it’s been conventional wisdom for millennia that there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, nothing secret that will not be known.
Once again, in exchange for a short (very short) term advantage or gain, someone sells out or buys out the rest of us. Gee, why do so many people hate us? Why do even our own citizens mistrust us? But if we let our guard down now, all those righteously aggrieved people will be at our throats in nothing flat. So we’d better crank up the oppression some more. Besides, there’s a buck to be made for the right people.
Corner Stone
@Botsplainer:
Good God.
So, this is a “white people’s problem” because it specifically does not bother you ?
And if you’re sanguine, then anyone who is not is paranoid? Or a crook?
Botsplainer
@Omnes Omnibus:
Name an actual effect that NSA data practices have had on your personal life beyond feeling discomfort on learning about them.
Has any disclosure about your communications cost you jobs or clients?
Has disclosure about your communications invaded valued personal or business relationships?
Has disclosure about your communications caused you bodily harm, impeded your movements, or forced you to take physical actions?
Botsplainer
@Corner Stone:
Pretty much, yeah.
Botsplainer
@Betty Cracker:
They’re used to being stopped in the street, beaten and tased.
Somehow, I’m thinking that an aggregation of data that can be unencrypted on the filing of a FISA warrant isn’t going to look the same to them as a “violation”.
Cacti
@Betty Cracker:
So, it’s really all for poors and non-whites?
The white savior rides to the rescue again!
Cacti
@Botsplainer:
Well, it would if they were as smart as their paternalistic white saviors on the internet.
Cassidy
@dpm (dread pirate mistermix): So, the premise of your low rent punditin’ is that the lines were longer and you were inconvenienced a week before a major family holiday? For your next trick are you gonna tell us what your can driver thinks and where the best Applebee’s salad bar is?
Omnes Omnibus
@Cacti:
Within the US, anti-terrorism efforts are largely law enforcement operations. I simply think that they should be held to the standards of law enforcement. If you want info that is not public record, get a court order. That’s all.
Cassidy
@Omnes Omnibus: They aren’t the same thing. One is the “random” stopping of young, black males for having the audacity of being you, black and in public while dressed in something some cop interprets as ghetto or thug. The other is whining that the government has information stores that was freely given to corporations in exchange for free shipping. They aren’t the same.
Botsplainer
@Omnes Omnibus:
Still waiting…
Name an actual effect that NSA data practices have had on your personal life beyond feeling discomfort on learning about them.
Has any disclosure about your communications cost you jobs or clients?
Has disclosure about your communications invaded valued personal or business relationships?
Has disclosure about your communications caused you bodily harm, impeded your movements, or forced you to take physical actions?
aimai
@Alexandra: Absolutely. The TSA thing really, really, didn’t take off and get crazy until after the “shoe bomber” and a case in the UK where, hypothetically, some muslim guys might have discussed (or might not) combinging “stuff” to make a bomb on a plane. IIRC all of our security behavior related to the bagging of liquids and the hysteria over water bottles stems from these two incidents one of which was so entirely fictitious that I think the guys involved got off because they either never got past the planning stage, didn’t have the tools or science ot get past the plannign stage, or the entire thing was a security state fiction by an overzealous UK police force.
Bin Laden had real goals and merely making us take off our shoes and stand in line like sheep really wasn’t one of them.
Betty Cracker
@Cacti: It’s really pretty simple, Lady Bountiful: Those who are running around saying that the poor and non-white are unaffected by surveillance overreach don’t know what they’re talking about. The erosion of civil liberties affects everyone, and anyone with a passing familiarity with US history knows those with the least power are typically those it affects the most.
Betty Cracker
@Botsplainer: The disenfranchisement of low income voters and unequal treatment of gay people doesn’t personally affect me. And yet I still care about both of those issues and recognize them as problems.
Omnes Omnibus
@Botsplainer: Sorry, mate. I didn’t realize that a violation of rights had to reach that standard before one could care about it.
Socoolsofresh
Good to see Botsplainer, Cacti, and now Cassidy come to admonish everyone that being spied on is only a white dudebro problem. Can’t wait to start hearing that anyone who cares about being spied on doesn’t care about poverty. Should happen soon enough.
Cacti
@Betty Cracker:
White savior betty, straining at gnats while swallowing the camels whole.
Minorities are already detained, handcuffed, tasered, maced, beaten, and even shot in public for their mere existence. But their real cause for concern is electronic surveillance…just ask any white savior.
Go play with your chickens, betty. I’m sure they find your insights brilliant and they never talk back.
Botsplainer
@Omnes Omnibus:
So you acknowledge that it hasn’t affected you and it is about your feelings.
Is that not paranoia?
Socoolsofresh
Love these spokespeople for the poor, telling us how poor people don’t care about privacy. They really are experts on what poor people care about.
Cassidy
@Socoolsofresh: I just answered a question from Omnes. Is it possible you don’t know the meaning if the words you write? Honestly, you guys are welcome to your circle jerk of not real problems. I have things to do today.
Cacti
@Socoolsofresh:
The brown-skinned teen with his face on the concrete and knee on his neck for no particular reason, should know that his real concern is whether or not the NSA has seen socoolsofresh’s Sailor Moon hentai collection.
Corner Stone
@Botsplainer: And how has stop and frisk personally effected you?
Omnes Omnibus
@Cassidy:
That happens to not be the case. Stop and frisk is, obviously, a more physically intrusive violation of privacy than looking at metadata, but an invasion of privacy doesn’t not depend on being physically intrusive.
@Botsplainer:
I have never been stopped and frisked. It is quite likely that it will never happen to me. I still am opposed to the practice.
No, I don’t feel persecuted. I think a particular set of laws and the governmental practices based on those laws does not comport with the requirements of the Constitution and I want the laws and practices to be changed.
Betty Cracker
@Cacti: My chickens are towering intellects compared to you. As for “white savior,” that would be you (if you’re white, I have no idea) and the other white people who try to race-shame anyone who is concerned about NSA overreach (which includes many non-white people, of course) and dictate the racially appropriate level of concern we’re allowed to hold on the issues of the day. Fuck you.
TooManyJens
@Cacti: Betty’s not telling anyone why their real concern should be. She’s not the one saying you can only be concerned about stop and frisk or electronic surveillance, but not both. That’s you.
And yes, I’m suspicious of people who freak the fuck out about NSA surveillance because freedom and yet are nowhere to be found when subjects like stop and frisk come up. But that’s not who you’re talking to.
Cacti
@Betty Cracker:
Disagree with betty, then set your watch for when the shrieking starts.
Have you forgiven the President for being right about Syria yet?
Cassidy
@Socoolsofresh: That’s kind if funny because I grew up poor and in the Army I spent most of time dealing with people like myself who came from urban poor scenarios as well as the guys from rural, poor communities. And now, as a Firefighter/ EMT in a rural county, I interact with poor people every day, a lot of whom are AA. I know, you were trying to be witty. Sorry to ruin it with facts. Keep practicing, though.
ellie
@Schlemizel: That is fascinating! I would love to read more about this type of spying.
Cacti
@Cassidy:
I have been both poor, and detained by police for no reason during my life.
Socoolsofresh posts like your typical, stepford suburbia, mom’s basement revolutionary, who has never experienced either.
Cassidy
@Omnes Omnibus: We’re just never going to agree there. One is several degrees more invasive with the potential of being deadly. The other is not.
Socoolsofresh
@Cassidy: I guess you and cacti feel like you have earned your credentials to speak for all poors, and all of the poors have told you, ‘we don’t give a shit about privacy!’ Good for you to spread the word of the poor!
different-church-lady
Forget it folks, it’s Bait-town.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cassidy: If I look in your window with binoculars, I am violating your privacy, right? But it isn’t physically invasive. I would guess that you don’t want me to do that.
Socoolsofresh
@Cacti: As Betty Cracker said before, the erosion of civil liberties affects everyone. Especially the poor. But it’s so good that they have chosen you to tell the rest of the world, ‘we don’t care!’
Cassidy
@Omnes Omnibus: Binoculars are an annoyance. A rifle scope otoh….
Botsplainer
@Omnes Omnibus:
To be fair, I’d probably drop my pants and waggle my bits at anybody who did that. But I’m obnoxious that way.
Botsplainer
@Socoolsofresh:
That aren’t generally conducting commerce over the Internet, because they’re paying such bills as they can with cash or money orders.
There is a surprising number of folks who go through life without so much as an email address or debit card, and are using prepay burner phones.
They’re living the unsurveilled dream of the dudebro….
Corner Stone
@Botsplainer: Any chance you’ll share your stop and frisk personal experience with us in this thread?
Botsplainer
@Corner Stone:
Never been stopped and frisked, but figure if it ever happens to me, I’ll moan as I get touched.
I figure that the process ceases at that moment.
Socoolsofresh
@Botsplainer: I know this is a crazy concept, but there are poor people who can use computers! I know, shit is crazy to comprehend! Also, poor people can have their own cell phones! It’s insane!
Botsplainer
@Socoolsofresh:
At the public library, at least until the funding dries up to keep taxes low for dudebros.
Yeah, lots of poor folks burning up prepay minutes doing blogs and shopping and commentary.
Socoolsofresh
@Botsplainer: Also, hate to break it to you, but the internet is not only exclusively used by white dudebros! Yes, even poor people know about and use the internet!
El Caganer
So the Muslim communities in New York that were being spied on by the NYPD were just experiencing white people’s problems? Help me out here.
Botsplainer
@Socoolsofresh:
Yes, some have found Facebook to stalk former lovers and others have found the free porn, but outside of that, there isn’t a lot of transacting occurring.
Corner Stone
@Botsplainer:
So you really don’t give a shit about the issue of stop and frisk, correct?
Because it hasn’t effected you personally, so if you believe it should be stopped you’re just being paranoid.
doug r
@qtip: Yeah, flying through SEA always seemed so efficient.
Socoolsofresh
@Botsplainer: Sorry man, its not 2001, where the internet and cell phones were still novel. The stuff is pretty ubiquitous these days, but keep on telling yourself that poor people cant handle using computers and cell phones.
SiubhanDuinne
@Cassidy:
And yet you don’t go do them.
elm
I sat through a sales pitch for this RSA product a few years ago (we declined) and this ought to be really bad for RSA’s business.
Basically, they would license us their ‘toolkit’, and we would integrate it with our software. Additionally, we could buy consulting services from them to make the integration easier and use their logo on our marketing materials.
Feature-wise, their libraries looked comparable to the free package OpenSSL. Their software also included a distributed key management feature, but that wouldn’t work for a lot of our use cases anyway.
As I saw it, the biggest thing they were selling was the RSA brand and logo. I was against paying for it even then, but now it has negative value.
Corner Stone
@Botsplainer:
For someone who has taken on the mantle of the poors, you don’t seem to value them in any actual way.
Oh wait, except as a talking point to make outrageous outrage occur!
That is their true value to you.
Botsplainer
@Corner Stone:
Ah, but I know that people have been stopped and frisked. It is a known, verifiable evil.
What can’t be shown is a case where the NSA has been using the contents of email boxes to wrongfully oppress patriots, dudebros or Mumia acolytes.
The Ancient Randonneur
It doesn’t matter if the NSA duped them into using the backdoored protocol or whether they knowingly accepted the bribe contract – either way RSA is untrustworthy – either because they sold out, or because they’re incompetent. Would you ever use an RSA product after this revelation? I wouldn’t. Oh, and who else was bought off by the NSA?
Corner Stone
@Cacti:
I want to get in on this! How many chits do you need to qualify as spox for the poors?
Or if I’m white I automatically am disqualified?
elm
On a couple of technical notes:
1. You can’t weaken cryptography in an asymmetric way. If you make it easier for the NSA to crack, then it is easier for Russian and Chinese spy agencies too.
2. Law enforcement actions against drug dealers, money launderers, terrorists, and child pornography distributors is done from at-rest data on seized servers. Its not done on in-transit data.
Corner Stone
@Botsplainer: Sorry, amigo. It’s pretty clear you’ve blown this one a little too far sideways to course correct now.
Villago Delenda Est
The MBA mentality…it rulz their world!
Socoolsofresh
@Botsplainer: With your amazing logic, the NSA shouldn’t care about spying on the internet, since terrorists, who are usually in remote areas of third world nations, hence poor, don’t know how to use computers and cell phones. So there isn’t much to glean by spying on digital things. According to you, the only plots they will stop are white dudebro plots. So you should be against NSA spying just for the colossal waste of resources.
Botsplainer
@Socoolsofresh:
You’ve clearly not had as many working class folks sit at your desk as I have in recent years. I see lots of burner flip phones, no landline, only email address belongs to a girlfriend which says something like “[email protected]”.
RandomMonster
I find myself in an interesting dilemma. On the hand, I think keeping a check on NSA surveillance powers (or any state powers) is essential to democracy. On the other hand, I don’t think actual NSA overreach is probably all that great. I will say though that belittling an argument as “white people’s problems” is a cheap rhetorical device. If that’s the case, why talk about ANYTHING AT ALL except racially motivated oppression? That deserves Betty’s “fuck you”.
I will also say that dpm saying that airport security is in response to a “comic book threat” is a terrible oversimplification. Airplanes are high-value targets for terrorists — when they go down (accidentally or intentionally), they do so in spectacular fashion. The media can’t leave it alone for weeks. That’s always been the case, even pre-9/11. I hate waiting in TSA lines, and I often think the TSA is incompetent and does dumb things, but in the end I’d rather put up with the small hassle than die screaming. I don’t like dealing with the DMV or the highway patrol, either, but I sure like driving on well-regulated roads.
Cassidy
@SiubhanDuinne: I’m sorry. Earlier I was dropping a massive shit into the toilet and considering a quick handie, but I had some time to kill. Now I just got done grocery shopping; nothing crazy, just lunch and dinner and what I need to make dinner at the station tomorrow. Later, we’re thinking of taking the kids to get their Santa picture and let them pick out their gifts for one another. Does that schedule meet your approval?
different-church-lady
Jesus fuck… it isn’t that poor people don’t use computers — it’s that poor people have more important things to be fucking concerned about than whether government snoops might be warehousing their futile on-line job applications. Things like, you know, making enough money to eat.
God damned abstract concepts don’t mean a fucking thing to people who have insufficient income. This isn’t rocket science. It’s true that civil liberty violations are the same whether you’re rich or poor — but it isn’t even remotely true that they get the same number on the priority list.
This would be very easy to recognize if y’all weren’t so intent on hitting each other over the head with nerf bats.
Corner Stone
@different-church-lady:
Wait a second. Poor people worry about providing food for themselves and/or loved ones? And eating is more important to them on a daily basis than the 4th amendment, or any abstract theory related to our constitution?
Well, I’ll be. Never would have thought about it that way. It all makes a kind of sense now, I guess.
Corner Stone
@Botsplainer:
I hope you enjoy the process of having your skull X-rayed. Because unlike me, the officer won’t be using a nerf bat.
Cervantes
@cathyx: So far as I know the information about the ten-million-dollar payment did not come from Snowden.
Cervantes
@Schlemizel:
As Osama bin Laden himself pointed out, if his actions stemmed from hating freedom, he might have attacked Sweden instead of us.
Cervantes
@dpm (dread pirate mistermix):
I hear you. I was just indicating that my typical TSA experience is, like that of qtip, less onerous than that.
Liberty60
Another perspective is that the climate of fear and anxiety the national security state creates, makes it more difficult to create the sense of shared community and trust between races, classes, and religions.
Terrified people are much more willing to turn a blind eye and “keep on walking” when they experience injustice- whether its online surveillance or stop and frisk.
If I had told you in 1999 that within a decade America would create a program of imprisonment and torture, without so much as charges or trial, and that the majority of Americans would turn a blind eye to it, I would have been laughed at.
But here we are.
Betty Cracker
@Liberty60: Here we are.
elm
@RandomMonster:
Several of the specific measures that the TSA has enacted (liquid limits and shoe-removal) were over-specific changes made made in response to far-fetched and/or improbable threats.
The shoe/underwear/anus bombers all tried to use very small bombs (under 200g of plastic explosives). A brief overview of successful terrorist bombings will reveal that that’s a laughably-small bomb. An expertly-packed and expertly-installed bomb of such a size *might* inflict enormous damage, but the crude devices that these guys used were of danger mostly to themselves and a few people in their proximity.
The liquid-bomb plot was stupid from the outset. Explosive synthesis is a delicate, time-consuming process that is not very well-suited for use in an airliner toilet. Rather than restricting access to liquids, it would have been wiser to allow travelers no more than 50 pounds of ice at a time and no more than 30 minutes in the bathroom at any one time.
Some security measures were wise. Locking cockpit doors and making passengers aware that they should fight back against hijackers have prevented a repeat of the 9/11 hijackings.
But a number of the supposed security measures employed by the TSA serve no security purpose and exist mostly for theatrics.
Edna Grossmam
@Robert Thau: The NSA was a whole lot sneaker in the DES matter than you think. They only prevented the most superficial use of differential cryptanalysis. It was the vendor’s team that thwarted the entire array of attacks differential cryptanalysis posed. The NSA would have left DES resistant to the first wave of DC attacks and hopefully the attackers who thought of it would have given up on the technique. But had they persevered, DES would have been severely compromised.
Liberty60
@elm:
And the theatrics have dual audiences, with a single message.
One audience is terrorists, the other is citizens; but the message is We Have things Under Control.
And what a sweeping message that is!
I am thinking of the lynchings of black people during Jim Crow- how it obviously was intended to terrify black people, but didn’t it also send a message to the white underclass? To demonstrate the savage punishment of stepping out of line and making trouble?
Who doesn’t feel just a bit cowed, just a bit anxious, when you are confronted by heavily armed officials at the train station, ariport, checkpoints?
So when it comes to political activism, of making noise and disturbing the established order, that message of We Have Things Under Control – especially when We is understood to mean the 1% in collusion with the government – takes on a darker tone.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@Waldo:
Neither Osama nor Hussein are dead, libtard.
Barack Hussein Obama has them in witness protection.
kc
@Corner Stone:
You don’t think Botsplainer and Cacti are approaching this in good faith, do you?
It’s just a way of trying to shut down discussion.
kc
@Botsplainer:
The guy down in the hood is a lot more worried about getting stopped by a cop for no reason
According to Botsplainer logic, only criminals should worry about being stopped by cops. If the “guy down in the hood” does get stopped by a cop, why he should just smile and say “What a lovely day, Officer!” like Botsplainer going through an airport security checkpoint and he’ll be just fine.
kc
@Cacti:
their paternalistic white saviors on the internet.
Dullard irony alert.*
*A phrase I wish I’d coined.
kc
@Botsplainer:
None.
Then again, random stop-and-frisk practices haven’t affected me personally, either, and yet I think the practice should be stopped.
Edit: Everyone beat me to it. I should stop commenting on dead threads . . .
Cervantes
@Edna Grossman:
For those who may not be familiar with the subject: an Edna Grossman was in the team at IBM involved in the specification and design of DES.
RandomMonster
@elm:
The shoe/underwear/anus bombers all tried to use very small bombs (under 200g of plastic explosives). A brief overview of successful terrorist bombings will reveal that that’s a laughably-small bomb. An expertly-packed and expertly-installed bomb of such a size *might* inflict enormous damage, but the crude devices that these guys used were of danger mostly to themselves and a few people in their proximity.
So these terrorists executed their plot poorly. Does that mean we shouldn’t search for explosive or incendiary materials?
Corner Stone
@kc:
Whhhuuutttt??
But I thought it was obvious from Botsplainer’s compassionate report on what those in the hood cared about, or Cacti’s determination that only Cacti knows what the poor and rough treated care about, that they were really good folk at heart. And just wanted us dudebros and dudebras to stop talking about something their constituents just don’t give a shit about.
This, my friends, has truly been a day of learning for me.
Corner Stone
@RandomMonster: That’s a little bit much from those comments, isn’t it?
Joey Giraud
@kc:
That’s right, turning this into a class issue is totally diversionary.
I don’t believe in using pie filters, but it’s getting damn tedious skipping over botsplainers and a few others digital diarrhea
And botsplainer still hasn’t explained bots. Not even close. His name is a lie.
Joey Giraud
What is the deal with this moderation system? Is there a list of bad words to avoid, or is it a case of being persona-non-grata?
At times it seems random enough to be used as a RSA key generator.
sharl
@Cervantes: I didn’t even know what DES was! Fortunately, good ol’ Wikipedia gives a run down of the now-superceded Data Encryption Standard.
There appears to be a lot of discussion of this history out there. A September post at Ars Technica by Peter Bright* looks pretty good IMO, “The NSA’s work to make crypto worse and better“.
……*he’s DrPizza on Twitter, fyi/fwiw.
A quick glance at the 79 comments there suggests that maybe a few of those are worth a look as well, although as a non-IT person I’m not really the best judge of that.
Singular
@kc: Botsplainer and Cacti… well, has anyone actually seen them together?
Cassidy is obviously another person, even more of a glib asshole.
Joey Giraud
@sharl: Not to be snarky, but IT people are generally not qualified to judge encryption algorithms either.
It’s a pretty narrow, deep field.
Joey Giraud
pie filter
nope… that’s not it.
how about damn?
nope…
maybe .. digital diarrhea
still hasn’t explained bots… lie liar skipped..
can anyone explain the moderation policy?
tedious.. maybe that’s the trigger word.
Cervantes
@sharl: Yes, Peter’s Ars Technica article is not bad. Thanks for the reminder about the comments; I have not had time to look at them (I know, it’s been months).
Omnes Omnibus
@Joey Giraud: WordPress has be acting weirdly for the past day or so.
Joey Giraud
@Omnes Omnibus:
Thanks.
Random software bugs me, unless it’s supposed to be random, like RSA *isn’t* apparently. :)
Cassidy
@Singular: thank you for your input brave Sir Robin.
kc
@Joey Giraud:
Well, I know from experience your comment will go into moderation if you say “Xana” – I mean, the brand name of a certain drug. Probably any drug.
Joey Giraud
@kc: Wow, that’s bizarre.
sharl
@different-church-lady:
Just wanted to see this again. Yes kids, it ain’t just a matter of what is important to us, but it’s a matter of how we prioritize those concerns. And the more fortunate we are, the more that prioritization is a matter of choice than necessity.
elm
@RandomMonster:
Um, no. Please re-read what I wrote.
The gist of it is this: The TSA’s focus on shoes and liquids is myopic, adds no actual security, and is nothing more than theater.
I hope it’s obvious that I don’t want guns, explosives, incendiaries, or knives (which were actually used in the 9/11 hijackings) on airplanes.
The personnel, patience, and money consumed in searches of shoes and restrictions on liquids could have been better put to use on less-invasive and more effective techniques. The specific implementation chosen was designed to be highly-visible, not to be very secure.
Corner Stone
@sharl: This is either really good snark, or something else that is not really good snark.
I’m curious as to which?
Cacti
@sharl:
Case in point:
1 million have signed up for new health insurance plans and 3.9 million have qualified for coverage from Medicaid expansion in the ACA.
All of them would be up shit creek if anyone had listened to the “kill the bill if there’s no public option” crowd of privileged wankers.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cacti: What exactly does this have to do with surveillance?
Cacti
@Omnes Omnibus:
Another example of an argument of the privileged.
The loudest yelps about the NSA on this blog come from people who have philosophical problems with it. The class of people who already have the boots of law enforcement on their neck have rather more tangible problems, that they wish got half as much attention from “progressives”.
kc
@Cacti:
Shouldn’t you be out sticking flowers in riot guns?
kc
@Cacti:
Clearly the only to solve those problems is to derail every comment thread about your pet agency, the NSA.
Corner Stone
@Cacti:
And yet, somehow, telling every one here to shut up, Shut Up, SHUT UP!! On an issue that arguably effects all citizens, but some prioritize lower than others, if at all, is the right solution?
It takes a really special reading of this blog, in particular, to come to the conclusion that no one here gives a damn about real problems that real people face.
Cervantes
@kc:
Read that ten minutes ago and have not stopped laughing.
Thank you.
Cervantes
@Corner Stone:
Well, reading isn’t exactly their forte.
Cacti
@Corner Stone:
Libertarian Juice cares deeply about middle class and white people problems.
We have an endless front page circle jerk about them.
Cacti
@kc:
Sorry to interrupt the circle jerk, dudebro.
The NSA is the worstest problem in the history of anything anywhere.
Fap away.
Corner Stone
@Cacti: Ok, friend, let’s unpack that.
Tell me there’s not multiple posts about the War on Drugs aka some people aka your neighbor. Tell me there aren’t multiple posts about immigration. Stand Your Ground laws. SNAP. Education and income inequality.
Tell us all that there haven’t been fundraisers not only for pets in need, but for people who couldn’t afford to have their pets treated or cared for any longer.
Go on dudebro. Tell us all here that this blog talks about sports and the NSA and how to take better pics of your pets.
You’re just an ignorant ass motherfucker that likes to get their dudgeon up to level 11.
Cacti
@Corner Stone:
It also talks about gardening and chickens.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cacti: There hasn’t been a libertarian FPer since EDK went away. I haven’t seen very many regular commenters who are libertarians as the word is generally defined. You may want to revisit your terms.
@Corner Stone: There have been a few posts on healthcare as well.
Cervantes
@Corner Stone: I’d add Richard’s items on the ACA and Kay’s on, among other things, voting rights.
Corner Stone
@Cacti: Yeah, and it talks about music threads and BoBo and McArgleBargle and the ACA and health care exchanges and equality and acts of aggression and stupidity of our elected officials and stupid TV shows and a lot of shit.
You seem to want a single issue blog. Maybe you should use your privilege to go on the intertrons and find it. Or not, whatever.
Corner Stone
God guys, give your fellow dudebro a second or two.
But, yeah, voting rights and voter suppression and Supreme Court decisions and a universe of shit that really, real deal matters to real people. Even if they have never heard of BJ and haven’t had a spare second to reflect on the state of the interwebs or nothing else.
That’s kind of the point. Dudebros like Cacti seem to want to pigeonhole a few posts a week into the only train running.
Mainly because he’s a douchebro.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: Cars in fields.
Cacti
@Corner Stone:
IOW: You keep harshing the circle jerk you big meanie, go away!
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: Girls on film.
Corner Stone
@Cacti: You and Cassidy seem to have a lot of repressed sexual tension. Lots of circle jerks and bukkakes and freshman frat gangbang parties and some other interesting terms. And, I mean, I totally support those interests for you. If that’s y’alls scene, then, by golly, choke each other out and wake up to a spooge filled wonderland.
I would include Botsplainer in that, but that dude has totally owned up to the fact that he’s wanking it any time someone is a victim of state sanctioned violence. So I think he at least has come to terms with his scene.
My prayer is that one day y’all can attain that kind of peace as well.
Cervantes
@Corner Stone:
Amen.
Cervantes
@Corner Stone:
Mea culpa.
Bill Arnold
@Cassidy:
I once spotted somebody looking at my house through binoculars from a car a 1/4 mile away. That was weird.
Cassidy
@Corner Stone: Don’t you have some offspring to disappoint with your alcoholism? It’s too close to Christmas for you to let us distract you from being a complete disappointment.
sharl
@Cassidy: Dude, that’s over the line. I find myself in agreement with you a fair amount, but not on shit like what you just posted.
CS, your inquiry above (#171), and the subsequent responses (both their content and their intensity) deserve a response from me. But I’ve got several things churning around in my head, so I’ll try to get it down to something coherent and not War-and-Peace length before responding (some hope for the former, maybe less for the latter). It may be awhile; off to think and do some chores.
ETA: It wasn’t snark. [And no, whatever I post won’t likely justify this build-up.]
Corner Stone
@Cassidy:
I’ll let him know that the complete stranger on the interwebs who is so frustrated by his utter inability to counter any argument I post, and is verbally sexually excited and most likely literally tumescent with the idea of physically assaulting me said, “Hi.”
He’ll probably say, “Geez dad, Cassidy *again*?”
What a little scamp he is.
Cassidy
@sharl: No it isn’t. Chickenshit is a nasty, cowardly waste of biological matter. The world will be a better place when it’s liver finally taps out.
Corner Stone
@sharl: I appreciate that but I don’t really merit any kind of response that takes any longer to think about than it does to type it out.
My question, or point, or issue or whatever, is that I am close to 100% sure that no one who has read this blog for very long needs it pointed out that hungry people are hungry. And starving people look to the keeping and well being of their loved ones before they worry about killer satellites from outer space. Or if anyone is tracking their phone calls to the food banks, shelters, or their place of worship.
I’m speaking overly broadly, but I think we all get that. I, personally, don’t need to be reminded of what priorities poor and hungry people have. My experience(s) don’t give me any more validity or voice about hurt/damaged/forgotten people than anyone else here, on the whole.
It just chaps my absolute ass to hear people say that if we can’t solve poverty today then we shouldn’t be bothering with that other non-existential bullshit. Or that somehow we have to do one thing, and one thing only, until we can do other things.
As our resident idiot savant Omnes Omnibus informed me the other day, most revolutions or uprisings were fomented by those with the time to do something about it. Well, no shit. That’s been my working contention for a good chunk of my adult life. People who are hungry or tired or traveling between three low wage part time jobs aren’t going to prioritize the 4th amendment. Obviously.
But why can’t I, a dudebro maximus, speak out on more than one thing at a time?
What immutable law tells me I can’t stand up for equal rights under the law, push back against fucked up budget deals that hurt the most vulnerable, stand up with people who want better outcomes AND scream my lungs off that the fucking Constitution matters to me? It mattered for the last 10 years and it fucking still matters to me now.
Movements/actions/changes aren’t one thing or one class or one person.
Corner Stone
@Cassidy: It’s always about the violence with you, man. Like that’s purification for you.
Any time you come to a place you can’t figure out you start threatening people. Challenging them to IRL violent acts.
How about you not be such a douchebro, and maybe you wouldn’t need to hold so tightly to all these violent fantasies you keep spewing at people?
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: Idiot savant? Gee, thanks.
Cassidy
@Corner Stone: I didn’t threaten any violence. You’re doing the damage to yourself. Was “tapping out” to much of an image for your delicate Texan sensibilities?
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: Maybe if I made you a foam santa it would be ok?
I just finished making one for my son, so that when he wakes up in the morning he can be happy for a minute and not think I’m a complete alcoholic failure.
I mean, he already knows I’m an alcoholic as the other day when I challenged him to a go-cart race around our neighborhood he told me, “Dad. That’s not a go-cart. That’s the cardboard box you just packed stuff home from Spec’s in.”
And I countered with, “Yes, but if it were a go-cart I would have dusted your ass!”
Then he called his mom and locked himself in his room.
But that’s beside the point! Christmas themed foam crafts! That’s my freakin’ point! Who wants one!?
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: I’d prefer a reindeer.
Corner Stone
@Cassidy: Yeah, it’s a mystery. Like when you call people chickenshits or cowards or how life would be better with them gone.
Listen, man. I have a small word to the wise for you. No one is going to mount their steed and ride out to meet you on the fields of honor. Your lustful dreams of savagely punishing those you disagree with are most likely going to go unrequited.
I suggest you get some help, as you seem to have transcended sublimated physical violence into some weird, oft expressed sexual frustrations.
Tractarian
had yet another opportunity to reflect on how smart Osama bin Laden’s 9/11 strategy was.
F that. Osama didn’t want you to wait in line and have to take your damn shoes off. He wanted you and your children dead.
Cassidy
@Corner Stone: You are a chickenshit and a coward. How else should I put it? Honestly, I don’t care about your delicate feelings and I do think the world would be better without you. That’s just being honest. You’re a waste of genetic tissue. You’re a weak, small minded disappointment of an alcoholic who contributes nothing but alcohol fueled and pathetic rants on a blog to make up for your inadequacies in real life. I’d feel sorry for you if I gave a single, solitary fuck about your existence. I do feel sorry for whatever offspring you’ve managed to produce. It can’t be easy having someone like you around, even if it is only partial due to the frequency of you inebriation, but hooray for small blessings right! So word to the wise, cirrhosis can be long and painful.
Corner Stone
@Cassidy: Tell uzz moar…vat vuzz you muzzer like?
Cassidy
@Corner Stone: Have another drink, sunshine. Keep doing us that favor.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cassidy: This is actually reprehensible. I am embarrassed for you.
Cassidy
@Omnes Omnibus: Not necessary. You can feel what you please, but I’m very comfortable in my disgust for Chicken Shit.
Tom
@qtip:
I went through one line this year at Newark and it took two hours for the hundreds of lower class citizens like me and five minutes for the upper class.
Cervantes
@Omnes Omnibus: On the one hand, here’s why we can’t help feeling embarrassed:
On the other hand, Milton’s knowledge of DSM-4 was probably somewhat limited.
Cassidy
@Omnes Omnibus: @Cervantes: You people are funny.
LAC
@kc: as opposed to the resident drunk cyber bully Corner stone. Please….