The Times seems to think that everyone in Silicon Valley but Twitter fell over backwards to give the NSA access to their data:
In at least two cases, at Google and Facebook, one of the plans discussed was to build separate, secure portals, like a digital version of the secure physical rooms that have long existed for classified information, in some instances on company servers. Through these online rooms, the government would request data, companies would deposit it and the government would retrieve it, people briefed on the discussions said.
Google in particular is pushing back hard on this one, with CEO Larry Paige, the chief legal counsel and the head of Google+ all issuing denials, though since those are mostly Google+ posts, nobody’s read them. Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook also said that they “hadn’t even heard” of PRISM, but that’s because none of his Facebook friends had “liked” it or mentioned it in a status update.
If there’s one thing America can do other than blow shit up in the Middle East, it’s to convince people around the world to trust our tech companies to send their email, store pictures of their cats, and keep track of who their friends are. PRISM has altered that trust, and for what? What real information about any sophisticated terrorist operation will be gleaned from Google, Yahoo or Twitter? As Fallows points out, if we must snoop on these services, why not do it transparently?
Osama bin Laden is probably chucking in his watery grave over the fact that our over-the-top reaction to the 9/11 attacks is still bearing fruit almost a dozen years later.
AA+ Bonds
LOL, we own the infrastructure, they don’t have a fucking choice
AA+ Bonds
“If there’s one thing America can do other than emails, it’s to convince people around the world to trust our President Barack Obama to bomb the shit out of their weddings, attack their utilities with cyberwarfare and send psychotic murderers to shoot up their villages while they sleep. . . . As Fallows points out, if we’re going to massacre these people, why not do it transparently?”
Emma
Ah… read any recent news lately? Or even the comments two posts below?
Comrade Jake
On the bright side, at least nobody’s still talking about Benghazi.
c u n d gulag
WWII.
Ever since then, Congress has decided to let Presidents do, what Presidents want to do, regarding involving our military.
And so, Truman went to the UN, regarding Korea, and Tonkin led to a full engagement in Vietnam, without too many complaints from Congress. And, in due course, Grenada, and the two Iraq adventures. The only real complaining I heard, was during Clinton’s term, and even then, we did what Clinton wanted to do.
As wars go, so went our “national security” issues – with Congress bowing to the President.
We can’t really complain now, because that “privacy” horse was led out of the barn, and let run free, a long, long, time ago. Now, people bitch about who’s riding the damn horse – but, after being let go, that point is moot.
It all began during the Civil War, when letters and telegrams were read, in the interests of “national security.” The same thing happened during WWI, and following the Russian Revolution. It continued during WWII and the Cold War. The moronic “War on Drugs,” led to still further massive erosions of our rights to privacy. And, following 9/11, and the idiotic “War on Terror,” and “The Patriot Act,” we have basically given up whatever privacy we have.
And people are shocked?
Shocked, that the NSA, and other agencies, to “protect” us, are data-mining? This is nothing new. Our government has long had the ability to monitor us, and our activities.
-Have a land-line phone? They capture who you called, and when – or who called you. And they’ve had the ability to listen in, for well over a century.
-Ditto, with cell phones – which can also track where you went, and when, with their GPS technology.
– Have an EZ Pass? They can track where your car was.
-Use some thing-a-ma-bobs on your key-ring from supermarkets for discounts? They know what you bought, and when.
-Use the internet? ALL of that, is captured.
Advances in technology are always used by governments, because the people in charge, want to stay in charge. That applied to Lincoln, and every President since him. And we can’t really say jack-sh*t about it now, because we’ve been relatively silent our whole lives. I was criticized, when I bitched about the privacy intrusions involved with our “War on Drugs.” What did I have to complain about, if I wasn’t using drugs? Surely, if I was bitching about it, I must be a drug-user, or trafficker. We’re only doing this, “to protect our children.” “What do you have to worry about, if you’re innocent?”
I’m neither surprised, nor shocked, because I know this has been going on, my entire life.
Do I like it? Hell no.
Do you? Probably not.
But at this point, what the hell can we do about it?
All a President has to do, is say that something is in the interests of “National Security,” and most people will say, “Oh, please, protect us! Do whatever you need to do, to protect us, and our families.”
Benjamin Franklin wrote, ” They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Keep that in mind, when the next terrorist attack occurs in America. Because, there will be one. And one after that. And after that one. And so on…
We have traded essential liberty, for the temporary security, between terrorist events.
That “privacy” horse has long left the barn. All we’re left with, is to criticize the person who’s riding it.
We bitched about Bush.
They’ll bitch about Obama.
But that “privacy” horse is out of the barn, running amok. We’re the ones who are locked in, and being observed.
And what can we do about it?
We can bitch all we want, but the moment the next terrorist attack happens, we’ll all, again – or, most, or enough of us will – beg the government to protect us.
So, again I ask, what can we do about it?
Matt McIrvin
The thing I’ve been wondering was why there wasn’t more of an outcry over Stuxnet. It was never stated out loud, but I got the strong, strong impression that the United States government was involved in developing that thing, maybe in collaboration with Israel. The relevant officials were all nudge-nudge-wink-wink, like they wouldn’t admit anything but we were supposed to be proud of what they were doing. And this was a piece of malware designed to deliberately infect computers belonging to uninvolved innocent people all over the world, in many cases causing damage or at least annoyance to businesses and individuals, just so it could do its thing when it got into an Iranian nuclear laboratory.
Yet I heard no calls for restitution. Was it just that there was never any smoking-gun article directly saying this thing was a US government creation? If Greenwald writes a Guardian column saying Stuxnet was American, will this be a big outrageous surprise all of a sudden? Maybe he should do a retrospective.
waratah
I thought the government was doing this for years. Surely the terrorists think the same. How will they communicate now?
Emma
*sigh * guys, as someone pointed down below CNET and the Times are questioning the PRISM report. One of the posters even identified PRISM as a synch program.
Comrade Jake
@waratah: well if you believe zero dark 30, bin laden was communicating entirely via a sole courier. Ironically, this is how we found him.
So I guess the question we all need to be asking is: did the terrorists watch Zero Dark 30?
mistermix
@Emma: The Times website, as of this moment, is still running all their PRISM stories without retraction, as are the Post and the Guardian.
Ultraviolet Thunder
Home at last and looking forward to catching up on the news in English.
Bring me up to date; does it appear to have dawned on yer average American that his privacy is a thing of the past or is this being treated like an overreach that knuckle rap will fix?
Comrade Jake
@Emma: you mean Greenwald got something wrong?!?!?!?
MattF
So, the government knows that I have conversations with my sister and with old friends living in various parts of the country. BFD. In fact, the government’s more-or-less unchallenged access to my financial records is much more revealing, and that’s been considered just fine since I-don’t-know-when.
waratah
@Comrade Jake: I would say yes, so now what? Have they used pigeons?
Emma
@mistermix: according to the CNET UK site which quotes CNET the Post has changed its story to drop the claims that companies were participating. I also looked at the CNET story. Sorry no link I’m on the Kindle. They say that the Post has backtracked. And that the NYT has an article further casting doubts on the story.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Emma:
No shit, talk about behind the times…lol! Get yer ass in gear mm, everyone is in full retreat on the ‘story’.
Everyone except GG, but that’s to be expected.
Comrade Jake
Ambers has an article up at The Week describing what he thinks PRISM does
http://m.theweek.com/article.php?id=245360#disqus_thread
Comrade Jake
A better linky
http://m.theweek.com/article.php?id=245360
Odie Hugh Manatee
@mistermix:
And all three are paragons of truthiness. Guardian has it’s new American interests (and GG) to look out for. Post and Times? Yeah, right…
The whole story stinks to high heaven. It’s like someone took one program with an evil sounding name (PRISM!) and laid it over an earlier story to hype it up.
When news reports are being changed to remove absolutes, you know something is up.
Steeplejack
Poopyman
@AA+ Bonds: This. The Huawei shoe that’s been on the other foot since Internet Day One.
Betty Cracker
@Steeplejack: Pesky prepositional phrases strike again!
mistermix
@Steeplejack: Fixed, thanks.
mistermix
@Emma: Here’s the Cnet story:
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/software/doubts-cast-on-us-govt-prism-snooping-program-50011444/
It repeats the denials from Google and Facebook that I linked in the post here. It says that the Post (not the Times, which is the story I linked) toned down their story. And it says this:
Well, shit, if Clapper says that the stories are inaccurate, then they must be, right? Why would he lie?
That story is a long, long way from a complete rebuttal of the existence of PRISM.
Steeplejack
@Betty Cracker:
It’s like hearing a guitar with one string out of tune.
Cacti
@Emma:
It’s going to take more than that to get our resident alarmists to let go of their latest shiny object of righteous outrage.
Because Ben Franklin said, “They who don’t accept every word of Glenn Greenwald as gospel, deserve to die,” or something like that.
Emma
@mistermix: look I get it. You’re one of those liberals that sit around waiting for democrats to screw up because it lets you show your independent cred. But the phone Metadata scooping and the PRISM thing are two separate things. I have no doubt that large scale metadata collection is going on. I have even in these very comments suggested some changes in the law and in the process. Bt when someone finds a job ad showing “knowledge of PRISM” as a requirement I start to wonder.
mikefromArlington
wonder if some dope didn’t make a typo and meant PRIISM, which is a Cac enabled authentification system which isn’t anything secret in nature at all. Wouldn’t surprise me.
http://www.apitech.com/products/ion™-priisms
mistermix
@Emma:
When the first sentence of your response is an attack on the messenger and not the message, I see just how strong your argument is.
Cacti
@Emma:
When one also considers the prior willingness of “whistleblowers” to leak White House e-mails on Benghazi with wholesale content fabrications, one begins to think a ratfuck may be in the works.
maya
So the revised motto for national security is:
Loose tweets sink fleets.
Cacti
@mistermix:
Good call!
Or not.
monkeyfister
@Comrade Jake:
I suspect that Greenwald is about three articles away from a very impressive shark jump… errrr– make that two, now: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/07/obama-china-targets-cyber-overseas
He appears to be running out of headroom.
But, I could be wrong.
NickT
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/
I think it’s pretty obvious that they have been collecting every piece of data they can get their cyber-paws on, whether PRISM is the right name for the program or not. The Wired piece makes it pretty clear that this is going on – and has been for a while now.
JPL
@monkeyfister: Greenwald certainly has an agenda. He might be hoping for a gig on Fox news.
NickT
@NickT:
Emma
@mistermix: I am not making an argument. I am offering evidence that contradicts, to some extent, yours. But you have your narrative. Go to it.
Baud
FWIW, the reporting I saw said that PRISM was one of the most significant source of intelligence in the President’s daily briefings. If accurate, it suggests that the intelligence community finds it valuable.
(Doesn’t mean it’s worth it, but it’s not nothing.)
Todd
That is some understated comic gold right there, Mix. Hidden, and almost an afterthought.
Well played! LOL
Suffern ACE
I’m thinking if changing my nym to West Nyack Jack. They’ll never catch me then.
Comrade Jake
@monkeyfister: LGF had a post up yesterday comparing Glenn Greenwald and Glenn Beck. Not completely fair, but some of GG’s pronouncements are comfortably out in tin foil hat land.
Emma
@NickT: Indeed they did. Their ability to collect metadata is not in question nor is the need to revisit issues of privacy and electronic data collection in this new linked world we find ourselves in. That is the problem. Congress will not do its job.
S.Irene
Ask the router companies–the ones forwarding the bits and packets.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@mistermix:
The Verizon deal is completely separate from the PRISM nonsense, check your stories. That and PRISM exists, it’s just not what GG’s fevered mind imagines it to be. It’s not a classified program and the government is looking for people with experience in it to hire. Hell, the comments at LGF are more informative than the claptrap circulating everywhere else. I’ve been reading everything I can on this and based on everything I have read so far, the story is nothing but hyped bullshit about existing programs that we have all known about for a long time. GG is now claiming that the US is working to destroy privacy protections the whole world over.
Shit, we can barely manage the messes we are in and now it’s world domination of privacy? Yeah, right.
The best part is the whole program costing $20 million…lol!
aimai
Why do people keep blaming the President? All of this passed through congress–congress controlled at different times by both parties. Its not that congress “gives presidents what they want” so much as it is that congress “gives the national security state” what it wants and pretty much always have. As long as we have “enemies”–in quotes because I don’t accept this definition of the entire rest of the fucking world–we are going to have a national security state in control of all three branches of government because its cheaper to pay spies off in toys and control than it is to explain to the people after the fact why there was a failure of preventive action. Although Bush proved, I suppose, that along with no one caring about deficits that if you just throw a war at people fast enough they will give you a mulligan on preventive everything: war, torture, bombing, etc…
Baud
@Emma:
This really is the crux of so many of our problems. I’m a believer in a strong Congress as an institution, but these yahoos are really making it hard.
the Conster
Obama made a point in his speech yesterday that we have choices to make as a society between security, privacy and convenience, once again infuriating everyone on the right and left by asking us to be adults and not being Big Daddy we can blame for our own poor choices, because we can only have two of those things. Privacy has been an illusion for a long time, and with every convenient service we use and every financial transaction we make in service to our consumption is a choice we made a long time ago. If we were citizens instead of consumers we would actually use our shock SHOCK! at the loss of our privacy to question our imperial foreign policy to support our resource hungry empire that is the justification for the security state, but We The Consumers value our stuff over our liberty. We have the government we deserve.
NickT
@aimai:
Let’s face it, Congress won’t even cancel wildly expensive and completely ineffective military hardware programs. They certainly aren’t going to do anything to stop the growth of the security state – which has been ongoing ever since 2001. Let’s remember that even the supposedly liberal Senator Feinstein has been a huge proponent of and defender of this trend. This really is a case of both parties do it – and unless we somehow miraculously find a genuine, better third party (what, here in paranoid lil America? sure, why not!), that’s how it’s going to be, no matter who the president is.
monkeyfister
@JPL:
I definitely think his pendulum is swinging back to the right… He claimed he was a “non-activist conservative Libertarian” when he wrote his first book, How Would A Patriot Act?” in 2006– the one that made Firebag Jane fall in love with him.
Alex S.
The whole business model of these internet firms is to sell their information. I would be surprised if they didn’t sell to the government.
I can’t muster much outrage about this whole issue. It was predictable, it is not as I’d like the world to be, it is another symptom of a rotten system that even Obama cannot overcome (and he doesn’t want to). Nothing will change. This whole surveillance system was designed by Congress and big business, and there are no incentives to make it stop. People simply don’t care about sharing personal information and it’s just too inconvenient to protect one’s privacy. As an example, I am simply too lazy to give up Google even though I don’t own a Facebook account.
I still think it’s good that this issue comes up. I once said that Greenwald is probably the most legitimate critic of Obama, but he argues from a vantage point a million miles away and his ‘How dare you!’ seems more directed at Obama supporters than Obama himself. In politics, the search for purity is in vain. Greenwald’s grandstanding is something that those who support Obama’s economic policies can’t afford.
monkeyfister
@Comrade Jake:
Yep– read that first thing this morning. Glenn’s apparently not happy with Charles Johnson’s scrutiny, either– according to the Twitter machine. Popcorn time!
keestadoll
@NickT: YEP.
cathyx
@the Conster: And I’m sure you felt the same way toward Bush when he said these words to justify the invasion of privacy. After all, he was just trying to protect us like Obama is.
different-church-lady
Gotta give props to Greenwald: it’s starting to look like he’s really upped his game. No longer content to troll just web liberals, he’s now trolling his own newspaper and the entire western press apparatus. Guy’s a beast, I tell you — makes Judith Miller look like a single-A bench warmer.
kc
@c u n d gulag:
You’re right, we should just relax and try to enjoy it.
the Conster
@cathyx:
Bush’s lying us into war and illegal wiretapping and politicization of every branch of government and the media’s complicity in all that was what I blamed Bush and the media for, but the security/privacy/convenience debate didn’t start with him and won’t end with Obama.
different-church-lady
@monkeyfister:
Glenn is never happy with the very concept of being scrutinized by anyone. I’d call him thin-skinned, but that would imply he has a skin at all.
monkeyfister
@different-church-lady:
Lizards have skin.
Booger
Am I the only person who thinks this is just the latest ridiculous military-industrial-homeland-security complex boondoggle? The “People with Secret-or-Above Clearances Full Employment Act?”
‘Needle-in-haystack?’ ‘Signal-to-noise?’ Does anyone actually believe this vast Hari-Seldonesque project can do anything but suck tax dollars from your wallet to the Virginia suburbs of D.C., and that server farm in Zion?? For FSM’s sake, we’re talking about stuff like 4chan and the comments section on Youtube! Keyboard Cat!
Data does not equal knowledge, but bullshit is always bullshit.
cathyx
@the Conster:So are you pro-patriot act then or against it?
different-church-lady
@monkeyfister: Are you calling GG a lizard? Hell, that’s gonna merit “UPDATE VII”.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@different-church-lady:
I can’t wait for him to be a regular on Alex Jones’ show. He will fit right in there.
NickT
@Booger:
Basically, I like David Simon’s take on this:
http://davidsimon.com/we-are-shocked-shocked/
monkeyfister
@different-church-lady:
Heh. Indeed!
the Conster
@cathyx:
I am for questioning the foreign policy that creates the blowback that creates a “need” for the Patriot Act. That’s the debate we’re not having, since everyone’s freaking about the privacy instead of the security.
monkeyfister
@Booger:
Good points here.
On this I think we need to stuff the Intertoobz with truckloads of MOAR LOLCATS!!!
That’ll teach ’em. And the GAO/IG reports will be much more fun to read… Worth the tax money, almost!
WereBear
It would take a miracle. Because we are structured for TWO parties, just as our justice system is adversarial and consists of a prosecution and a defense.
We don’t have third parties rising from the ashes of idiocy and incompetence. We have an evolving party which splits into a part that dies and a part that lives.
It’s baked in.
cathyx
@the Conster: You’re not questioning foreign policy if you’re not questioning what Obama is doing.
different-church-lady
@the Conster:
We don’t need security! Because we have FREEDOM!
monkeyfister
@the Conster:
Dead on the money. Exactly. But, we’re not supposed to notice that.
piratedan
@NickT: hjey hey hey…. who said that you could start posting stuff on here that would imply that sometimes the Government can do nice things or not be on some nefarious power trip?
I believe it all comes down to who is in charge, yes, there is power and information there that could be abused, but do you really think that the current guy in charge is likely to be the one to do it? If so, how in the fuck is any Republican politician above the age of 30 not in jail then or at least half of Congress and most of the Senate? Much less any of the Faux News and Right Wing hate media….
Hoodie
Apart from the likelihood this is being Greenwald-hyped to some degree, I’m kind of ambivalent about the government collecting this data. We long ago traded the quaint agrarian society of the founders for Twitter, on-line banking and Google Wallet. These tools provide tremendous leverage for private action, whether it’s terrorism or plain old financial fraud, so it should be expected that regulation and monitoring would increase. It took a hell of a lot more work to cook up a conspiracy using quill pens and parchment. The fact that bin Laden couldn’t trust electronic comms forced him into using physical means that led to his undoing.
Net libertarianism can be as stupid as old fashioned libertarianism. Having the same expectation of privacy in an electronic world that attaches to “persons and letters” is as naive as equating AR-15s with muskets. It may not be such a bad thing for the government to be collecting and monitoring such data, because otherwise you leave it solely in the hands of private and foreign actors. People steal identities and ruin lives using the net. The real issue is putting in democratic safeguards to reduce the likelihood of misuse by government officials, and it’s often easier to reign in government officials than private actors (witness the grief the IRS is getting over a molehill in comparison to the mountain of foreclosure and money laundering hijinks by big banks). In addition, maybe people could be a little more circumspect in their web use and think twice about indulging in every social media and e-commerce gimmick that comes down the pipe. That shit makes the Zuckerbergs rich, cash is better for local businesses.
Suffern ACE
@the Conster: if you give us a chance, we have ways reducing any topic to rights if expression and privacy.
NickT
@piratedan:
How is Antonin Scalia not confined to a madhouse along with Clarence Thomas? Damned if I know.
ps. Do they have any Republican politicians under the age of 30 these days?
ruemara
@cathyx: You’re not reading if you think that he’s not questioning and that this all boils down to looking at Obama.
agrippa
@Hoodie:
I agree.
I think that you put it very well.
Davis X. Machina
@the Conster:
This is no recent development.
The national security state starts to collect social security this year.
Higgs Boson's Mate
Aw you kids. More than twenty years ago I worked for a company that made mag tape based recorders for the government. The reason for using mag tape was that it was, and maybe still is, the champ for data density.We built helical scan tape transports in all sizes from automated continuous recording setups the size of a refrigerator for recording telephone calls at the exchange level to ones that would fit in a Samsonite suitcase. That last one was a beauty; it could record the digitized contents of the Encyclopedia Britannica on five inches of tape and it could record for twelve full hours. The enclosures for at least two dozen of them were in fact Samsonite suitcases.
The government has always collected every bit of information that it could. The adoption of internet data transfer and VOIP telephony has just made it easier to do.
different-church-lady
@Davis X. Machina: Fuck, Obama’s got our nuke codes now?!? Where is this gonna end?
Kay
@aimai:
I don’t even think we have to put it inn the context of “blame”
Blame is what freezes Congress. Can we just admit that? They don’t want responsibility for Nat Sec. They palm it off on the executive and courts any chance they get.
Why wait for one branch to retreat, to hand over power? That’s insane. They have to MOVE INTO the sphere the executive is occupying. I think they won’t do that because if they do, they are responsible for outcomes.
cathyx
@ruemara: I don’t see many people here questioning what Obama does, I see a lot of people defending and justifying everything he does.
different-church-lady
@cathyx:
One cannot possibly make that statement without being a troll. And I know you’re not a troll.
cathyx
@different-church-lady: I had to look at the top to make sure I was actually at balloon juice after reading that.
different-church-lady
@cathyx: I suppose I could be wrong about the second part…
piratedan
@cathyx: ok, I’ll bite, what is our current administration doing that is troubling you, or is questionable or that you have issues with…..
Davis X. Machina
@different-church-lady: It doesn’t end. That’s the gravamen of Wills’ argument. Presidents can blow up the world… The greater power implies the lesser power — and that’s what’s paralyzed Congress.
LAC
@cathyx: and we see a lot of paranoid whining from some folks here. Oh and purity pats on back…so I guess we are even, huh?
monkeyfister
@Hoodie:
Not much to disagree with there. Sure, hair-splitters and semantic parsers will do their thing.
I think it is healthy to be concerned with mission-creep, and whether those Democratic Safeguards are truly Safeguards, and not being circumvented, subverted, or perverted. We know that the Bushies scraped a lot of wriggle-room into the entire program, and wriggled mightily. Some of the worst bits were properly blocked or removed by the Court System, but still… Big Brother and Little Brother have grown to the point that people are starting to notice. That’s good. I hope it brings a better balance. My money is on the 1st and 4th Amendments winning the day over security.
RaflW
@NickT:
The more I read, from things like the Wired article, Ambinder, Fallows, David Simon, and various comment threads here, I come to this:
The problem is the FISA court.
I mean, I’ve been joking since like 1985 about my phone from time to time being monitored due to relatively tame student organizing. And I watched that Frontline episode six years ago that pretty convincingly connected the dots between the telcos and broad gov’t scoops of data. You sort of go “meh” at some point that the data is being gathered. Spooks gotta spy.
The problem, as Fallows suggests, is the total lack of transparency after the fact. Yes, the court needs to issue warrants in secret – having the press sit and watch open court proceedings that the NSA wants to intercept calls or e-mails to this or that Pakistani national would just possibly tip off said conspirator to STFU.
But there needs to be a trustable process (if such can exist, I’m not too sure) for opening records after X years. Of course the records would be scrubbed of some identifying details or intel gathering techniques. But right now we have no idea of the scope or limit on the use of the data gathered.
Ee’ll never get the NSA to pony up it’s info. But an independent and accountable judiciary is crucial to the operation of our country. Right now the FISA court is a black box. That’s a huge problem, and I think it’s the real problem missed in the hyperventilating about the (unstoppable and possibly not even desirous to stop) big data “grabs.”
cathyx
@piratedan: Renewing the patriot act, drone attacks, continued presence in Iraq and Afganistan, assault on whistleblowers, the justice department’s lack of bringing Bush admin war crimes to trial or Wall Street prosecutions, DOJ’s kill list.
Hoodie
@cathyx: He’s doing his job. He’s the chief executive of a massive economic and military power with thousands of personnel distributed across the globe, many of whom are at risk on a daily basis. He took an oath to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the United States to the best of his abilities and the abilities afforded to the departments he administers, including the CIA, NSA and DoD. Unlike Congress, he is required to act. The Patriot Act is law and has not been deemed unconstitutional and Obama has no power to rescind it. I have yet to hear of any cases that place that in doubt. Congress is dysfunctional, full of grandstanding loons, preening egotists and careerist wretches who refuse to do their jobs. That doesn’t mean the President doesn’t have to do his.
Kay
@cathyx:
But Obama made his own defense yesterday. He said all 3 branches are involved in this. He (essentially) said “they GAVE the executive this”
You can insist this is somehow personal to the executive, a matter of discretion or good judgment, but aren’t you then doing exactly what you’re claiming others are doing? If we just get a “good person” in there this won’t happen?
Aren’t you depending on “good man” rather than “good process”?
Violet
I laughed out loud at this one. So true.
monkeyfister
@RaflW: But there needs to be a trustable process (if such can exist, I’m not too sure) for opening records after X years. Of course the records would be scrubbed of some identifying details or intel gathering techniques. But right now we have no idea of the scope or limit on the use of the data gathered.
We’ll never get the NSA to pony up it’s info. But an independent and accountable judiciary is crucial to the operation of our country. Right now the FISA court is a black box. That’s a huge problem, and I think it’s the real problem that the hyperventilating about the (unstoppable and possibly not even desirous to stop) big data “grabs” misses.
Exactly correct.
the Conster
@Kay:
I assume by outcomes you mean terrorist attacks in this country, which is why you’re exactly right that Congress is useless and refuses to meaningfully address our defense budget. Imagine Obama (or any politician with a national profile) making the case that if we want more than an illusory expectation of privacy we have to forsake security because we all like our smart phones and our cheap foreign made consumer-bought-online crap too much, and a few terrorist acts here and there is the price we will need to pay for our empire fueled lifestyle choices. Try selling that to well, anyone. But, that’s essentially what Obama is asking us to consider by telling us that’s the debate we need to be having as a society.
@RaflW: I think this is right. The FISA court is the weakest link in the legality chain because searches are only legal if they say so.
different-church-lady
@cathyx: Right — the laundry list.
Every item on it has been picked apart and reassembled and squinted at and run under an electron microscope and carbon dated and spectral scanned, and still it’s the same damn laundry list every single time.
It’s not that the items on it aren’t worth examining. It’s not that Obama’s innocent of all of them. It’s that when the damn off-the-rack list is presented over and over and over again I start to think of it more like a cliche than an actual argument.
Keith
The government generally would not even need to have these companies’ cooperation to take that information; the network switches is where the action’s at, since most web sites to not use SSL to encrypt the data. Just a packet sniffer and the right software to put the packets together, and you’ve got a line to their traffic.
cathyx
@Kay: “They gave the executive this” and the executive had a choice to use it or not. Yes, I’m depending on a good man and he’s not acting like a good man.
NickT
@cathyx:
Hold on here, we are talking about a radically reduced presence in Iraq and a planned ending to the war in Afghanistan, for which we’ve already seen a draw down of troops and a timetable for leaving. Let’s give credit where it is due. You make it sound as if we were still at Bush levels of troop commitment.
the Conster
Help help I’m being moderated. I didn’t use any bad words, really. FYWP
different-church-lady
@NickT:
She said “presence.”
As in, if there’s any troops left in either country, that’s too many.
It’s a cool point of view, in that it gives you the ability to complain indefinitely.
‘Course, the argument kinda breaks down when you start to think about how many troops we’ve got in Germany right now…
NickT
@the Conster:
John Cole is clearly deploying PRISM to track your comments.
MomSense
Ok, so if any of you have ever had a real life gun nut conspiracy theorist show up at your house followed by hacking of your emails and atm and credit cards, who you gonna call?
There are bad guys besides the big, bad gubmint. Just as it is important not to sugarcoat the actions of our government over the years, it is dangerous to pretend that all resisters are benevolent. I hope the NSA/FBI are invading the hell out of the “privacy” of the scary dude who violated mine.
different-church-lady
@NickT: Fewer posts mean less stuff the NSA has to scan.
different-church-lady
@MomSense:
Yeah, but we expect them to take away our freedoms! At least they’re transparent about it!
[nods]
MomSense
@Kay:
He didn’t say they gave the executive this. He said the executive (Decider W) had this and that he was uncomfortable with this so he added to the oversight. It is now reviewed every 90 days both by the appropriate Judiciary and Legislative persons/committees.
Kay
@cathyx:
But if that’s your argument, if your only protection is a “good man” who says “I personally find this an over-reach” then you are making the same argument as those who say “it doesn’t matter, because I trust Obama”
I don’t think it should be within the frame of Bush compared to Obama. They’re individuals. Obama’s already said he thinks this is neccesary. Now what? You just keep saying, “well, if you were good you wouldn’t say that”?
What about the next President? What if he or she is even less good?
Villago Delenda Est
@aimai:
Oh, please. Kenyan Muslim Atheist Socialist usurper. This entire “scandal”, like the previous “scandals”, is simply about that one in the White House, and trying to tie something, anything to him as justification for impeachment. Never mind that, as you point out CONGRESS passed these laws and made all this possible.
the Conster
@NickT:
Tunch is eating them! PRISM is TUNCH!
MomSense
@different-church-lady:
Transparent? Yeah, no. Pretty sure he didn’t come to my house pretending to be interested in OFA, eat delicious homemade desserts and warn me that he was really a plant and that he would then hack into my email accounts, and bank accounts and violate my privacy.
Villago Delenda Est
@the Conster:
You’re being moderated to send your filled with code words post to the PRISM supercomputer where it will be broken down and your obvious wink-wink-nudge-nudge to both SPECTRE and THRUSH will reveal, at last, where their headquarters under the volcano is.
NickT
@the Conster:
He’s the new ROSEBUD.
White Trash Liberal
This country has needed to flip the script for over 60 years. The government demands Byzantine layers of secrecy. Yet the government demands transparency of its citizens. This needs to reverse, because the very machinations of empire depend on secrecy.
Why was I so upset over Manning and portions of Wikileaks? Because some of that information revealed convoy and patrol data that were mission essential in overseas theatre. This put lives at risk… Possibly those of my friends.
However, secrecy itself was crucial to enabling the mission creep which pushed the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq well beyond reason. Secrecy and “need to know” was the hoodwink that blinded us to the lies that pushed us into Iraq.
Without a strong angry citizenry, without a strong Congress, without a strong media… The only options available to undermine the security state are criminal. Facebook can easily become a tool of the new Stasi should we insist that it’s too late to resist encroachment.
Kay
@MomSense:
Right, I did listen, I just skipped his substantive defense.
His PROCESS defense is unimpeachable, though, as far as I can tell, and no.one has rebutted it.
He’s occupying his role. “Checks and balances” MEANS something. It’s not just words. They have to act.
I sort of loathe Feinstien, but she’s telling the truth when she says (a little smugly) “Congress won’t act”
Say what I will about her, at least she knows what her JOB is.
MomSense
@Villago Delenda Est:
The more acronyms this story generates the more I feel like I am watching the worst Get Smart episode ever.
Makes me long for the good ‘ole days of shoe phones.
jayboat
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
Now you’ve done it.
See that black SUV parked across the street?
the Conster
@Villago Delenda Est:
You’ve found me out. Remain where you are and the black helicopters will be arriving at your current location within minutes. The nice men in the matching windbreakers will ensure that you and your family will remain unharmed.
Hoodie
@cathyx: You apparently do not understand the structure of our government and the roles of the various branches. They gave the executive this power and he is pretty much forced to use it unless he can come up with a legal justification for not using it, particularly in the area of national defense, where the President is also Commander and Chief and risks dereliction of duty if he fails to act. Congress laid down the parameters regarding trading off personal liberty of electronic communications for security in the Patriot Act. It is a bad law in many ways, but it is still law. Everything the administration has done should raise questions in everyone’s minds about the wisdom of such laws, but to lay that at Obama’s feet is lazy.
Bush was derelict in his duty as President precisely because he let his personal feelings override his responsibilities as Commander in Chief. He put thousands of armed service and diplomatic personnel at risk on half-baked evidence. He didn’t even bother going to the equivalent of a FISA court. I’m sure he and his supporters thought and still think he was a good man, doing the right thing.
piratedan
@cathyx: that’s a very quaint list…. This is the thing that everyone else seems to forget, not only has the President had 8 years of the Bush idiocy to unfuck, he’s also had to do so with most the guys left over from the Bush and Clinton years. Christ almighty, he’s still got guys from his first term waiting to be confirmed in the judiciary and even filling positions elsewhere in the government (fer chrissakes, still can’t get the Consumer Protection agency funded thanks to those partisan fucks) thanks to the Turtle and his scorched earth policies and the country be damned.
so bully pulpit and all….
Drones are bad, sending in seal team six is worse, drones cause folks like Pakistan to hate us, think on how that would spin if we sent in an armed ops team every time you wanted to take out bad guys and if you think the collateral damage might be lessened because of the human factor being able to make a value judgement for being there there are kickbacks to that as well, namely our enemies would be able to assemble and plan in much more favorable environments and perhaps execute a few more Ops successfully.
In general I hate the drone program but I also understand the need for it and I am happy that the program is being moved to military oversight (such as it is) versus the CIA (which is apparently no oversight at all).
You see whistleblowers, I see leaks…. maybe we’re looking at different subsets here, I see cases where the AP Story and the Manning prosecution are warranted, as we find out why the government is after them. Maybe you have other incidents that are sticking in your craw.
Is this administration perfect, far from it. I wish that it did a better job of protecting it’s own. The Shirley Sherrod case for one, Susan Rice for another.
Do I wish that they had gone after the banksters harder and the malfeasance from the previous administration, yes… but that’s not this guy’s style, he’s been doing his best to not be partisan, to represent ALL of the people and not be the partisan hack that his predecessor was and try his utmost to be even handed. Too much so imho because as the pudding has shown, doesn’t matter a damn what he does, the other side could give a shit what he actually says and stands for, they’re agin it.
different-church-lady
@MomSense:
Wait a minute… that’s it! THIS is the answer to our pesky NSA problems!
MomSense
@Kay:
Congress won’t act and I’m not convinced they are out of step with the American public. We are terrified of the possibility of terrorist attacks. The entire city of Boston shut down for days after a bombing. They were calling for GITMO for the bomber. There were days of how the Obama administration had dropped the ball even though they had investigated the elder brother. What would have happened if the undie bomber had been successful? Or the NYC subway plot?
I am not defending Congress but I am saying that we have met the security state and it is us.
If we are going to demand changes from Congress we are going to have to do a lot of honest reflection about what we the people really want.
different-church-lady
@piratedan:
Some might actually be whistle blowers, others might actually be leakers. But who needs to bother figuring out which is which when the true purpose is to rant on the internet? Indeed, separating the two just throws cold water on the whole endeavor.
MomSense
@different-church-lady:
Yes!! It never works but we’ll keep using it anyway!
ruemara
@cathyx: That list of yours is so lacking in facts that you might as well be building an argument for astrology as good grounds for medical care.
And you know it. There’s a lot of details being left out to be desiring suitable condemnation of Obama. When the details are in place on each issue, it becomes far more of a longstanding issue of government itself and all the branches including several other president. Be honest. What are you looking for, a discussion of the issue, or the far more comforting repetition of what you’d like to believe.
the Conster
@MomSense:
This is exactly what I said in my moderated comment addressed to Kay – imagine Obama or any national politician explaining that in order to have more than an illusory expectation of privacy the price for all of our conveniences and cheap foreign made consumer goods bought online thanks to our imperial economic and military presence in the world is a few terrorist attacks here and there. Try selling that to well, anyone. We are consumers first, who like to think we’re responsible citizens so concerned about the Constitution, but we all need to look in the mirror before we lay it all at Obama’s feet.
piratedan
@different-church-lady: cold water…. yummmm, sitting here in Tucson where it’s supposed to be 106 is a very good thang inmho, but as always, ymmv. :-)
Kay
@MomSense:
I agree totally. I think the public is ready for a better balance between risk and security.
I have to say, though, it’s not all Congress. It’s how risk and then failure is portrayed. There’s this crazy, sometimes completely irrational rush to find WHO dropped the ball, WHO screwed up. I think that has changed over the last 20 years, not ten.
It’s as if these really complicated events can all be prevented if we just find the ” bad actor”
We saw it with Benghazi. It’s bullshit. The insane focus on what Susan Rice said?
Villago Delenda Est
@different-church-lady:
“Whistleblowers” and “Leakers” can be interchanged with “Freedom Fighters” and “Terrorists” in our mad “let’s toss a label on this person depending upon our perspective on him” rush.
At least Orwell gave us “duckspeaker” which you had to use your ideological noodle to determine if calling him a “duckspeaker” was praise or ridicule.
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: My sense of that statement was like yours — and with one addition: to me it really seemed like he was saying, “So I’ve given you my answer, what’s yours?” As with the end-of-war-on-terror speech, I thought he sounded open to having his own statutory authority curbed by further legislative action. And to me that’s the massive difference from Bush. I felt like Bush would say “I have plenary powers and you can’t stop me from using them,” while Obama tends to say “I have and will use the powers I’ve been granted by law, and if the law changes, I will change accordingly.”
NickT
@Kay:
It’s true, sadly. Our media is so geared for sensation, not news, that it’s very hard to pull back from the “life as paranoid drama” approach to security and terrorism.
Villago Delenda Est
@the Conster:
This assumes thinking, rational people. That excludes the 27% that are howling the loudest about the actions of the ni*CLANG* but were perfectly approving of anything that the deserting coward did.
Fred
I’ve alway figgered all electronic communications were being monitored in some over the top way. I’m just paranoid like that.
I wouldn’t really care if it weren’t for this nagging feeling that the guys in charge at NSA, Homeland Friggin Securty, et al where hired by George W Bush and that can’t be good. Did Bush ever associate with anyone who wasn’t a paranoic lunatic idiot? I thought we were electing Obama to root those mothers out but he opted for the ‘let’s all get along’ strategy. Seems he is finally figuring out that it wasn’t such a good idea but it’s just a bit late for that to do us any good.
cathyx
I would love to stay and rehash this same old tired argument over and over, but I have to go to work. Since I don’t have time to reply to anyone, just go back to any number of threads where these topics have come up, you reread the responses.
Villago Delenda Est
@NickT:
There job is to entertain the product that they sell to the advertisers: the audience. That’s what it all boils down to. That’s how they make their money. So the “news” must be as entertaining as anything else presented on the teebee.
MomSense
@Kay:
It is much easier to transfer outrage onto PBObama than it is to acknowledge that we have been complicit in this ourselves.
NickT
@cathyx:
Obviously.
NickT
@MomSense:
Right. If we didn’t as a nation buy into the fear and hype, we’d be in much better shape to have an honest conversation about this, rather than making it a matter of Obama is responsible for the potential death of my kitten all the time.
Jummy
Make no mistake about it: when they say “NSA” they mean to say the n-word.
Villago Delenda Est
@NickT:
I’m reminded of something locally,where right after 9/11 a local citywide block party went on as previously planned, and some were outraged, outraged that it wasn’t cancelled outright.
Which is playing precisely to what terrorist attacks are designed to do: disrupt normal day to day activities and have us cower in fear someplace as a means of effecting political change.
It’s basically encouraging those who use terror tactics to use them some more, because they’re working.
These are the people Ben Franklin was talking about. Many Americans exhibit their unworthiness to enjoy the freedoms so many have fought, bled, and died to establish and preserve.
MomSense
@Kay:
I don’t think this is the case at all. I think every single day even the most civil liberties minded of us trade privacy for ease of communication and commerce. We may not be mindful of this choice as we are making it, but we are still choosing communication and commerce knowing that our every online move is tracked and used to predict our future behavior.
Boston, Cambridge, Watertown–these are all very liberal communities. I didn’t see massive demonstrations of people refusing to hole up in their homes because of potential threats. People only took to the streets after the police gave the all clear sign.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@jayboat:
Aw, they talk mean but all they ever do weld me inside a 55 gallon oil drum and drop me five miles out to sea. And who doesn’t enjoy that?
piratedan
@NickT: she’s off to go and find her pony
Kay
@MomSense:
I think people in Boston treated it as a criminal process rather than a vague, ill-defined “threat” which is the terror approach.
I actually think we eventually get closer and closer to “criminal process” on The Terror. It’s a good solid process, people understand it, and we’ve spent 200 years with it.
I thought it was really interesting Obama made that comparison yesterday. That’s the real battle. It’s an old one. Is this more like crime or more like war? We have to decide.
Bostonians, IMO, said “crime”
Keith
@the Conster: Speaking of Tunch, my Tunch clone (ginormous orange and white fatty) just walked into the house with a live bird in his mouth. Broken wing and all. Since the bird is already pretty severely wounded, I’m letting him finish the thing off to put it out of its misery, but it’s amazing that seemingly fat, slow cats can catch and kill like that.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay:
Exactly. This was my major objection to the deserting coward approach: when one of these events happen, don’t elevate the perpetrators and give them credit for their politics, which is precisely what the deserting coward did. Treat it as any other disruption of law and order, as a criminal matter, with those tools. After all, those tools, it seems, were the ones that ultimately gave us Osama bin Laden’s lifeless body. I think it was a major tell when the deserter just came out and said he was not concerned with Osama, because Osama had served the purpose that the Dark Lord needed…an excuse, no matter how flimsy, to seize the natural resources of Iraq for the profit of the Dark Lord and his cronies. In return, the deserter and the Dark Lord gave Osama the recruiting tool he desired. Mutual benefit for evil persons.
The deserting coward and the Dark Lord both need to be given the Theon Greyjoy treatment.
different-church-lady
We approached it as a “Holy Shit this is going on right now!” thing. There was a lot of time for navel gazing and mental masturbation about civil liberties and coming up with the proper labels.
We had to leave all that shit to assholes in other parts of the country watching it on their TV screens and cramming it into their pre-defined narratives, one way or another.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@MomSense:
I don’t think most people are aware or have the brain reserve (between all the other shit they have to worry about – work, bills, health, kids, etc.) to truly grasp that. IMHO, many people just want to go along and get along doing their little thing. They don’t read the EULA because the EULA is long, boring lawyer-speak and if they had to read it for every single thing they did, they’d be paralyzed by information overload.
Also, too, even as I read about this, I think “WTF can I do?” I could live off the grid, but frankly, that would suck, and I’d lose my job. I imagine even most civil libertarians realize this. In a nation of 300 million, I am an ant. And hopefully I’m not an ant that gets caught up in something shitty.
NickT
@different-church-lady:
Personally I don’t see avoiding crazy young killers with guns as contrary to my civil liberties. Plus, we always had the choice to leave the house and wander around if we really wanted to see if we were going to be lucky.
Kay
@Villago Delenda Est:
That’s where rhetoric can make a real difference.
I was impressed with Patrick. He wasn’t ginning up fear or being self-aggrandizing.
I didn’t get that sense I always got with the Bushies, where they were both acting and watching themselves act. Playing a role In History.
MomSense
@Kay:
Except we have been incredibly complacent about what happens to criminals who have been treated inhumanely and unfairly with little being done to rectify the situation.
Long before 9/11 we declared a war on drugs and have caused all kinds of human suffering as a result. And I think it is an important question as to why that is. The people who are up in arms about the NSA liking the cat video you posted on facebook aren’t saying much at all about “stop and frisk”. The people who are outraged about dronez have been silent for decades about the use of police helicopters in certain areas and policing methods in general.
I’m not buying it at all.
different-church-lady
@NickT:
Well apparently you’re a coward who doesn’t care that we live in a police state. Or so I’ve been told by some of my leftist internet betters.
Wake up, Sheeple!
different-church-lady
@MomSense:
Yes. But then again, so have the drugs.
theturtlemoves
I guess the part about those slides that just didn’t pass the smell test for me was the $20 million number for each provider. I’m an IT consultant, somewhat senior but not at the top of the food chain, and I know what my own bill rate is. For the extent of the system people are trying to conjure up, $20 million wouldn’t even pay for hardware and bandwidth, let alone labor costs. Storage is cheap these days, but it isn’t free and you are talking about probably exabytes of data to store. And setting up a constant copying of data in real time or even on timer jobs overnight would seriously degrade the performance of the host systems, enough that the providers would be pretty pissed about the government making their products unusable for their customers. The portal thing, with copies being made on a per-request basis, based on subpoenas for very specific users over limited time-frames? Yeah, you could probably get that for $20 million. A vast system to replicate every damn thing running through GMail or HotMail all the time? No way in hell you are getting that for even $200 million.
Mike G
@Villago Delenda Est:
This.
These are the pants-wetting Glenn Beck audience who harp about “9/12”. They’re nostalgic for a moment in history when everyone was immersed in the fearfulness they marinate in all the time, and they could boss and intimidate others into conformity with their mindset.
different-church-lady
@Kay:
That’s because Patrick wasn’t thinking about using it as an excuse to invade Oklahoma.
the Conster
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS):
This is honest, and honestly where I am too. I keep out of trouble and live a very low profile life in the real world, and my online presence is confined to email, this blog and FB. I don’t shop online, except for a few items at Christmas. I couldn’t be more boring, but, I don’t have any illusions that I’m not an open book and am left to more or less hope that I’m not caught up in something shitty too. I honestly don’t know how to keep corporations and governments from collecting data except by making collection of it illegal, and then they’d do it anyway – it’s their nature and like asking a bird not to fly.
MomSense
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS):
I suppose I could live off the grid but that would be wicked boring! My problem with it is the sort of arbitrary absolutism. Dronez bad in all situations while simultaneously not giving mention to hellfire missiles on Apache helicopters — sort of clunky dronez or missiles launched from aircraft carriers.
I mean let’s all freak out about the government getting phone logs while google and netflix and facebook know everything about you. It is classic libertarian nonsense. It is like the people who hate big government but are perfectly fine with unelected mega corporations having control over major public goods and services. It doesn’t make any sense.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@NickT:
Well put. The difficulty is that honest conversations about big issues, like this one, are nearly impossible because of the money-politics-money² involved. There are now too many parties interested for their own reasons in expanding the national security apparatus.
Anyone else remember Muhammed and Malvo? If a dedicated person was committed to terror, even at the expense of their life like the attackers in Calcutta, then they could do so in any town in the country. Better to repeat “May this house be safe from tigers.”
different-church-lady
@MomSense:
The half baked thought I’m chewing on is supermarket loyalty cards: people don’t care if Big Groceries tracks everything you buy, and then sells that information to others, as long as they’re getting their 30 cents off that bag of Doritos in return.
So, really, if the NSA wants buy in, they should just say, “Hey, give us your passwords and we’ll take $50 bucks off your taxes.”
No… wait a minute…. ZOT!!! Let’s think like the airlines and sports stadiums do: “PREFERRED SPYING LICENSES”. You pay an annual fee of $2300 and the government leaves your data unscanned!
AxelFoley
@piratedan:
Heh, you should ask what ISN’T our current administration doing that’s troubling her. She says she sees no one questioning Obama here (really? I KNOW this isn’t her first rodeo), but all she ever does is throw shade at this President.
catclub
@waratah: There has been a demonstration of Internet Protocol over carrier pigeons, I think.
Moe Gamble
Can somebody remind Cole to let us know how Speak is doing?
Keith
@Keith: Good news(?) on the bird front – my cat got bored with it and went back outside to lie on the deck. So I put the bird in a box and let it out in the front bushes. It had its wings tucked back to where they didn’t look broken, and ran off somewhere. My other cats would have had its chest ripped open in about 5 minutes, so it kind of lucked out only getting attacked by the fat, lazy one.
Kay
@different-church-lady:
I’ve gotten so grateful for some level of humility. Some dope asked Patrick to OPINE on the criminal case because Patrick was in the DOJ a hundred years ago.
Patrick declined, amazingly. He said “I don’t know”
He doesn’t know. It’s a stupid question.
lojasmo
@cathyx:
Please see somebody for your condition.
RaflW
@the Conster:
And we don’t have ant idea what they say, or when they say it, or about whom.
Spitballing here, but I think 10 years after the warrant is approved, it needs to be released unless the applicant can provide a compelling reason why a mildly redacted version can’t be released.
Or some damn time frame and process. Indefinitely secret secrets about invasions of citizen privacy are a problem. Abuse is way too easy w/o any sunshine.
grandpa john
@cathyx: Have a good day,
I do hope you realize that most of the same old tired argument is coming from you.
piratedan
@AxelFoley: It’s like she’s channeling Lee J. Cobb’s character from 12 Angry Men or something
Tractarian
Right. Because, as he always liked to say: “Death to All Infidels! Or, failing that, Share the Infidels’ Phone Metadata With The Government! Bwahahahah!”
The Friendly Libertarian
Ari Fleischer has let the cat out of the bag: Obama = Bush. He said:
Also:
How does that make you feel, Obama voters? Are you ready to own up to the fact you voted for a fraud and a tyrant yet??
? Martin
Ok, I’m completely convinced that GG has this completely wrong. Finally talked to a friend of mine who run data centers and currently works for one of the companies accused of being involved in this.
He tells me that one of their bigger challenges is dealing with various kinds of subpoenas. The subpoenas request not only past data on an individual but ongoing data for that individual – so they have to extract a complex set of data for that individual, and then provide regular updates to whoever issued the subpoena and that’s all be done by hand. So he suggested that their workload goes up continually until the subpoena expires. Hypothetically, it would be easier all around if they could run an ongoing process that would selectively replicate data to an isolated, secure server. Think of it like an escrow account – the company could automatically and continuously dump in the subpoenaed data and the government could directly hook into it without a risk of hooking into non-subpoenaed data. This would allow the company to inexpensively comply with the subpoena and ensure that the government can’t access more than the court has specified. This is all sort of alluded to in our discussion, but I also got the sense there are more than one of these escrow systems running – maybe one for each agency?
This lines up with what someone else I know guessed at what this system might be (he’s a developer at a different one of the aforementioned companies that is familiar with the scope of the the data and what would be needed to implement such a system). He wouldn’t know anything about this (well, he knows about the replicating code, but that would have existed just for testing purposes), but was just guessing as to what might be possible and suggested the above.
jamick6000
@aimai:
I agree also I don’t blame bush for invading Iraq because congress authorized it.
Origuy
@catclub:
RFC 1149
Wikipedia says
IPoAC has been successfully implemented, but for only nine packets of data, with a packet loss ratio of 55% (due to user error),[2] and a response time ranging from 3000 seconds (~54 minutes) to over 6000 seconds (~1.77 hours). Thus, this technology suffers from poor latency.
Baud
@The Friendly Libertarian:
I feel fine. Ari Fleischer is trolling. Any liberal that takes him seriously deserves to be dismissed.
The Friendly Libertarian
@Baud:
Plenty of liberals are. It’s the subject of a rec list dairy at Daily Kos. When you’ve lost even Daily Kos….you know that the Obama admin is unraveling.
Baud
@The Friendly Libertarian:
That is quite possibly the funniest thing a troll has said on this blog. Thank you for that.
4tehlulz
@The Friendly Libertarian: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
the Conster
@The Friendly Libertarian:
OH NOES OBAMA’S LOST THE SELFMUTILATORS!
jamick6000
@Kay:
Really? I’d like to hear why. I’m not hopeful. To me, it looked like they shut down the entire city for a couple days and used every cop in the state to find a 19 year old in a boat. That’s not a crime response, that’s a terror response.
NickT
@The Friendly Libertarian:
What a poor, limp little white shrimp your trollery is these days.
The Friendly Libertarian
@the Conster:
?
Come again? Kos is the liberal base. This is like a Republican losing National Review.
kc
@MomSense:
“We,” my ass. Speak for yourself.
NickT
@The Friendly Libertarian:
332-206.
Read it and weep, loser.
Nathanael
So, people like Holder and Clapper and so on are *doing exactly what bin Laden said that the major goal of his terrorist campaign was*, namely “shedding the hypocrisy” and abusing Americans in the US the same way they abuse everyone else in the world…
Isn’t that technically “giving aid and comfort to the enemy”? In other words, treason?
Bruce S
@The Friendly Libertarian:
Ari Fleischer is engaged in a cynical and rather transparent attempt to rehabilitate his boss. The nonsense coming from these Bushoids claiming President Obama is their boss reincarnated reeks of desperation. You’re just a total idiot.
The Friendly Libertarian
@NickT:
I don’t care for Repbulicans, either. All the same ball of wax which is what I’m trying to get you serfs to realize.
Baud
@Nathanael:
No.
NickT
@The Friendly Libertarian:
Which is why you’ll always vote for the GOP while pretending that you give a rat’s ass about anything but your personal self-indulgence.
Try harder, unconvincing child.
The Friendly Libertarian
@NickT:
I vote for the Libertarian Party.
NickT
@The Friendly Libertarian:
Suuuure you do. Try harder, kiddo.
The Friendly Libertarian
Where’s the outrage here over Obama’s jihad against whistle blowers like Bradley Manning?
Let’s imagine if Bush was persecuting a brave whistleblower…there’d be non-stop outrage here. But since Obama does it, it’s OK, right?
What about the persecution of Julian Assange as well?
the Conster
@The Friendly Libertarian:
Kos has never been Obama’s base. Kos was John Edwards’ base.
NickT
@the Conster:
Imagine that, a “libertarian” lecturing liberals about who is in Obama’s base. Next he’ll be pretending that libertarians aren’t gold-buggering racists.
4tehlulz
>serfs
Awesome rhetoric, bro. You totally convinced me that you care about my well being while you piss on my head.
NickT
@4tehlulz:
Those California surfs are the best.
Emma
@The Friendly Libertarian: and bingo. You have given yourself away.
jamick6000
@MomSense:
The media loves to portray gun nuts as principled, concerned about freedom and the constitution and just having different cultural values than liberals. This is where most of our media being from cities on the coast is a major problem.
People in places with a lot of guns all KNOW these guys. They’re the ones who wear camo (but never joined the army), the ones who threaten to shoot your cat if it comes on their property. Everybody hates them and thinks they’re losers.
Ted & Hellen
Still dutifully pushing that completely unfounded propaganda, eh?
hahaha
NickT
@Ted & Hellen:
Isn’t it time you did the decent thing and married that dead chicken you are so intimately fond of?
Kay
@jamick6000:
They didn’t shut down the whole country.
I think the police response was over the top, but I think the stuff about “locking down the citizenry” from Ron Paul and others was nonsense, and insulting and patronizing to the people there.
I think the police response was excessive because they genuinely didn’t know a whole lot.
Libertarians constantly ask me to believe two contradictory things. That government is completely incompetent yet ruthlessley efficient and expert on police matters.
I don’t believe either of those things are true.
They were throwing more and more force in there because they didn’t know.
Ted & Hellen
@Comrade Jake:
Holy shit you’re a dumb fuck numb nuts.
Patrick in Michigan
I wrote a little something about this myself. It is found here.
I hate to say it, but he does have a point.
Give it a look. :)
srv
@The Friendly Libertarian: It works better if you call them Sheeple, cudlip.
Bruce S
@The Friendly Libertarian:
Daily Kos will always take the more liberal side in various debates. The difference between the GOP base and the Democratic base is that Democrats tend to support their issues and argue with each other rather than engage in hero-worship and lock-step partisan discipline. May not always be great politics and sometimes it gets hysterical, but it’s better than monolithic and brain dead. I often disagree with what I know of Kos – don’t read it just bump into it – but I’d rather be part of a coalition that represents diverse and contentious views than the kind of lock-stepping that characterized the right when Bush was President. What’s saddest about that NRO style is that when Bush’s failures that they’d bought into for years blew up and he was outed as the worst President in memory, they abandoned the guy and acted like he was a non-person they’d never known. From cult leader to non-person in a few short years. Now we see the same lockstep GOP partisanship in their rejectionist extremism from Day One of the President’s tenure. Liberals are no picnic but most of us are pragmatists at the end of the day even after all of the whining about half-loafs, but the right-wing is toxic, knee-jerk reactionary and, for all intents and purposes, is doubling down on circling their little white wagons and expressing their contempt for the majority of the country.
Xecky Gilchrist
@Bruce S: Agreed.
Also, Friendly Libertarian, I don’t go to Kos to find out what I think. Nor is it new for that site to be bashing Obama; read their comics for the last few years.
Baud
@Bruce S:
That was well said. Kudos to you.
Yatsuno
@Bruce S: Cats. Herding. Will Rogers. Nuff said.
jamick6000
@Kay: thank you
Bruce S
@aimai:
“Why do people keep blaming the President?”
Uh, because it’s easier to put his picture under a headline?
different-church-lady
@The Friendly Libertarian: You are aware it takes as little as a dozen recs to make that list nowadays, aren’t you?
different-church-lady
@NickT: Wouldn’t that be bigamy?
Todd
Had an interesting thought – for well over 99% of human history, we lived in small collective groups, in either agricultural/hunting combines or in villages. For this history, human societies knew all about what everybody was up to in the village – who owned what, who bought what, who was sleeping with who. Hell, parents had sex in the same room while their kids slept.
It was interesting, and the doings of society occupied society.
The industrial revolution made it possible for society to spread out and become less interconnected, and with the advent of motorized transit, we were able to spread out even further.
The digital age erased the distances and brought us back into contact again – that brief, fleeting notion of privacy is now gone. Why do you think that there’s popularity regarding the Kardashians, et al?
different-church-lady
@The Friendly Libertarian: Ah, that explains a lot.
the Conster
@Kay:
Rightwingers are like libertarians too with their cognitive dissonance about Obama – he’s an incompetent teleprompter reading affirmative action cheater executing his nefarious plan to destroy the country with his super secret social!st fascist thugs lurking under every wingnut bed ready to pounce on their guns. This is why we can’t have any rational policy discussons – there’s just no good faith to work with.
Ted & Hellen
@Kay:
Good God, you’re shameless.
Was Mr. Good Process on the ballot in the last two pres elections, or was it a, you know, actual human, Barack Obama, whose presence in the WH was supposed to make such a huge difference from that of Willard.
Fuck off.
Oh, and Hope and Change too therefore also.
Ted & Hellen
@FlipYrWhig:
What I admire is his deep sense of right and wrong, his firm principles and beliefs, his gelatinous backbone.
Kay
@jamick6000:
Well, think back, right? We don’t have to back that far. There wasn’t a national security response to Boston, in terms of Congress or the President.
“We” were expecting one, on this very site. We thought the whole spectrum of TERROR response would happen, from rhetoric to vows for more laws.
John actually posted on it. He wrote, essentially, “we can be more rational and measured this time”
We were generally, “Americans” and certainly the feds as far as Prez and Congress?
I think that’s progress. It might have been because Boston was crawling with security for the race and those two still got through, so a rational person would say, “wow, we probably can’t be 100% ‘safe’ ever”
NickT
@different-church-lady:
Like Ted and Hellen and his goat.
Chyron HR
@Ted & Hellen:
Is that also your new excuse for why “Nigvon” deserved to die, Tim? Because he, too, failed to dismantle the security state?
(I mean, since the much-vaunted video of him beating up a homeless man turned out to be some of that “completely unfounded propaganda” stuff.)
Josh
amen brother!!
MomSense
@Kay:
I agree that the “locking down the citizenry” stuff is nonsense. My point is that the citizenry decided to stay at home. I did not see Watertown residents saying Pfft I’m not going to hole up in my house because of some loser criminals.
If we are going to end the security state we have to make the decision that we are going to go about our day even if the subway might blow up or the sporting event might be bombed or the airplane might be hijacked or worse and not freak out. I don’t think we are anywhere close to making the decision that the risk of those things happening is less important than our absolute privacy.
grandpa john
@The Friendly Libertarian: So you are willing to now accept words from the lying hack as now being relevant. Heh.This implies much more about your cognizance abilities than it does about Obama’s character
Bruce S
@The Friendly Libertarian:
“the Obama admin is unraveling”
I thought it was consolidating a full-fledged Gestapo tyranny that had it’s boot on our necks. I think you were telling us that yesterday. This must be the first totalitarian regime to unravel in the space of 24 hours over of a couple of newspaper articles – the implications of which still haven’t been verified.
Kay
@Ted & Hellen:
You are, though. You talk constantly about Dear Leader and a cult of personality but your whole response is “replace bad man with better man”
Bill Clinton was absolutely terrible on civil liberties. When are you going to look to process instead of people?
Ruckus
@Villago Delenda Est:
OTOH, I worked for a company that sanctioned public events and we had several scheduled the weekend after 9/11. We rescheduled all but one of them because the people paying for them decided figured that the travel just to get there would probably be so disrupted that the events would be untenable. And they were right, including the one that decided to run anyway. So few showed up that the promoter lost his ass. I refrained from an I told you so, at least so explicitly stated. I could see a local street party type event but any national level event, not so much.
grandpa john
@jamick6000: he is responsible because he lied and distorted factsto vote to get them in favor of it.
Bruce S
@Todd:
“The digital age erased the distances and brought us back into contact again – that brief, fleeting notion of privacy is now gone. Why do you think that there’s popularity regarding the Kardashians, et al?”
I want Western Union, 3 network broadcasts and my land line back!!!
jamick6000
@Kay: that’s true and i’m glad there wasn’t a PATRIOT ACT II to come out of it. mostly agree.
but response on the ground was an embarrassment. shutting down one of the biggest cities in america and using thousands of cops and dogs and helicopters to find an asshole teenager in a boat is a mini version of occupying Afghanistan for over a decade to find a couple hundred pigs hiding out in caves.
MomSense
@jamick6000:
YES! I have had my cats threatened over the years.
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
Yes. But then again, so have the drugs.
Some of the drugs have done a lot of damage. But the results of the drug war have done much farther reaching damage, private prisons, drug dealer gangs/death squads in countries like Mexico, and for what? How many of our citizens are criminals for no good reason? How many states have removed/hugely lessened the penalties for pot? How many of our police departments are paying for their militarization by basically impounding property? And why, if the war was a justified one?
And please understand this is from someone who uses no illegal drugs and drinks maybe 5-10 drinks a year. I have nothing in it other than the cost is way too high, the collateral damage is way too high and the WoD is a failure. A very costly failure.
Maude
@Bruce S:
All of the scandals that the GOP are harping on are to make Bush look better and Obama worse. The GOP is tied to Bush and can’t shake him off. They are worried about this as 2014 approaches.
Kay
@jamick6000:
I sort of disagree although I thought it was excessive, just because they didn’t know. They didn’t know it was a 19 year old in a boat, they were operating on “terror ring” or whatever.
It’s too easy to look at what happened. ( after, now tgat we know) and work backward. They can’t do that. They have to act on what they know.
I run into it with juvenile sex offenders. Judges are afraid to make a mistake, because the potential damage can’t be mitigated, and is so profound. I sympathize with that. Tough call. My role is easier: ” let him out!”
Chris
@NickT:
Probably since about World War One, in its modern form (maybe longer?) And that’s just the government’s security state. The one percenters used to have the Pinkertons for the same purposes, where you didn’t even need the government middleman.
Todd
@Bruce S:
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Todd:
Yeah, except that the Age of Sail is what spread us out, and it was the Industrial Revolution that brought us back into contact through quicker travel (steamships and locomotives) and faster communications (the telegraph and the telephone).
We were much more diffuse as a species before the Industrial Revolution than after it. We were the most diffuse as a species in prehistoric times. Only smaller subsets- families and tribes- were ever in closer contact before the Industrial Revolution.
fuckwit
Rethug propaganda, the lot of it. OMG OMG HUFFPO AND GREENWALD AND FIREBAGGERS GET A LOAD OF THIS!! OMG OMG!!!111!!!!
Face reality: you have no privacy anymore. Anywhere, especialy online. Everything is tracked, not by the government but by private, unaccountable, 1%-owned corporations! And there’s no way to escape it.
To me, it’s much more horrifying to have corporations tracking everything we do, than to have the government tracking it. The 1% not only own everything, they now know everything too.
FlipYrWhig
@? Martin: dude, please re-post this on a susbequent thread where more people can see it. It makes a lot of sense to me: build a giant data set, then drill into the giant data set with a court order by applying rules. The idea of real-time monitoring of All The Internets didn’t make any sense to me. This does.
Ted & Hellen
@Kay:
Pathetic.
Are those processes enabled and directed by PEOPLE or other processes?
All laws are subject to interpretation. Of course it matters a great deal who is doing the interpreting. But you? After you get an aparatchik like Barack elected you then say “oh well, it doesn’t really matter who’s in office.”
Again, fuck off. You are a dem propagandist, nothing more.
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
I was only listening to the Obama speech because it was supposed to be on health care.
It was interesting, though. He CAME BACK to the podium after he did the “President walking away thing” because he appeared to be genuinely engaged, ready to challenge or defend.
It’s so rare that they actually respond, they’re so tightly scripted, it always gets my attention, a real back and forth.
The questions were GOOD, so that helps.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig: Give me a fucking break. I have a friend who’s brother used to have a room mate who is now running “large data centers”.
And he tells me that they’ve been told that under penalty of law they aren’t allowed to say anything about this.
“Companies are between a rock and a hard place,” said David Fidler, a cybersecurity expert and law professor at Indiana University. “They have to comply with these orders and can be compelled to do so. But they also know if word got out that they are doing this, then it is going to freak out users and their customer base. They’re trying to make sure they walk a fine line.”
Shit be happenin and shit
Bruce S
@monkeyfister:
Here’s another way of reporting this “OMG! Obama readies cyber-attacks!” story…
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/world/middleeast/us-helps-allies-trying-to-battle-iranian-hackers.html
Somehow, with specifics rather than insinuation of whatever one’s personal paranoia level might conjure it hardly seems cause for alarm. In fact, I would be disturbed if “Obama” wasn’t doing this.
I’ve got no problem with Greenwald doing his digging. I actually would rather have this debate – or at least the pieces of it that aren’t opportunistic, recycled or ginned up – than not. The basic issue is legitimate and all of this stuff is subject to abuse. (Sort of like our massive arsenal of missiles, tanks and bullets is subject to abuse. )The problem Greenwald is flirting with is that after a first flush of apparently original reporting – which usually means luck with certain sources who have identified you as useful to their own agenda – one faces the Bob Woodward problem of old dogs, old tricks and the onset of total hackery.
Corner Stone
@Kay:
I find this just stunning. Some of us have been saying this for years. Every time some person here said, “I trust Obama”, or “I trust Obama to do this more than X”.
We’d hop in and say, “Why trust in man when laws are what this nation is based on?”
NOW, it’s come down to the president has no choice but to use what’s at his disposal and he has no choice but to do same.
This is pretty awesome, in a sick and twisted kind of way.
Corner Stone
Clearly, she hates Obama and loves the Kthug…I mean, the Grunvald:
“The answer, according to the mathematician and former Sun Microsystems engineer Susan Landau, whom I interviewed while reporting on the plight of the former N.S.A. whistleblower Thomas Drake and who is also the author of “Surveillance or Security?,” is that it’s worse than many might think.
“The public doesn’t understand,” she told me, speaking about so-called metadata. “It’s much more intrusive than content.” She explained that the government can learn immense amounts of proprietary information by studying “who you call, and who they call. If you can track that, you know exactly what is happening—you don’t need the content.”
metadata
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Corner Stone:
And idea that ‘ZOMG, they’re listening to our every call and reading our every e-mail!’ has its basis in concrete fact where, exactly?
Bruce S
@Kay:
The way Obama has responded to this stuff is one reason I’m not getting hysterical. The other is I’ve just assumed this stuff was going on. While I’m not happy with this aspect of our world – mostly because I hate the idea of corporations knowing as much about me as they obviously do – I would have been more shocked if the government wasn’t plugged into it. I didn’t know this was news.
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: I don’t think that was Kay’s point, though. I thought she was saying that it doesn’t matter what individual is in charge, you have to change the practices. Which is why it’s not good enough _either_ to say “I trust Obama to do it right” _or_ “Obama should stop doing this,” but instead to say “Let’s do what we can to make sure no one has the power to do this.” Some people do treat these issues that way: to his credit, Greenwald is like that. Maybe you’re like that. I don’t have the memory for individual posters that you do.
Corner Stone
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): So the frost hasn’t thawed up there in the tundra yet, eh?
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: I’m sure the government CAN do all that. DOES the government do all that indiscriminately on everyone and then pounce when they find something untoward? Or is the government doing all that only on people subject to subpoenas, with the approval of judges, and such? Because if it’s the latter, that doesn’t seem nearly so worrisome as the former.
Bruce S
I am certain this notion that the government is tracking their every move or listening into their phone calls and reading their emails makes a lot of nut-jobs feel a hell of a lot less lonely and lost in loserdom. If you have don’t have a life, the idea that the government – or better yet Obama – gives a shit what you are saying or doing or stockpiling in your basement is a real boost to self-esteem. I’m pretty sure this explains an entire subset of websites and internet trolling.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig: It’s not just Kay though. Maybe it was unfair to single out her comment for my response.
But the prevailing notion now coming over this blog, beyond the attempt to schmear Greenwald as having the story semantically wrong if not substantially wrong, is now an attempt to convince us that Obama never wanted these powers but he now has no choice. The system has squeezed him of his essential goodness and left the process as the determinant feature.
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: Martin doesn’t strike me as the kind of poster who makes shit up to feel important.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig: I’m less comforted by a process with 99%+ approval rate from the judiciary arm.
Kay
@Bruce S:
I didn’t know about it. I don’t read a lot of civil liberties/ data mining stuff.
I also don’t think the state is comparable to a commercial entity because the state can put you away,
I don’t know what I think about it yet.
I think it’s obvious too much is “classified” though. That seems to have reached the point that it’s ridiculous.
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig: Martin has done a lot of things that do not inspire the same confidence for me.
Corner Stone
“If you’ve done nothing wrong then you have nothing to worry about.”
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: my feeling is that presidents will look to maximize their powers and dislike having them curtailed. Obama himself, in a way you probably find self-serving, has lately been saying a lot of things that cut against my view: that he started out a skeptic, has been persuaded that these projects are necessary, would like to see the AUMF voided, etc. I don’t think that’s his way of saying “I can’t help it!” but rather “Bind me with laws and I’ll respect those, give me carte blanche and I’ll act freely, it’s up to you, politicians and citizens, so bring it.”
Chris
@Bruce S:
It explains the entire right-wing-conspiratorial mindset, IMO, beyond the Internet and the privacy issues. “Everyone’s out to get me” is just a more dramatic rendition of “it’s all about me,” which is the foundation stone of conservatism.
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: I would love to see a more adversarial, civil-liberties-defending FISA myself. But of course that’s a bit like wanting a compassionate prosecutor. It’s probably not in the job description.
Kay
@Corner Stone:
Maybe that’s what you were saying, but it isn’t what cathyx was saying.
She said she wants him to be good and he’s bad. She said Bush was bad and now Obama is bad.
Even the NYTines is doing it. He’s “untrustworthy” on survellience. That’s personal. It’s fine, but if they’re going to.limit this to “good man/bad men” they can’t ALSO claim a culture of personality.
Chris
@FlipYrWhig:
I think whether or not Obama wants these powers curtailed, there are far too many people in Washington who would oppose him – as we saw with Gitmo, it’s not enough for the president to simply want something to happen. So, yeah.
Joel
This is one of those instances where “both sides do it”. With strong public support, no less. To be fair to the Democrats, ~30% of them opposed the Patriot Act extension, as opposed to ~5% of Republicans.
Baud
@Chris:
For purely strategic reasons, I don’t want Obama to curtail what he is currently doing. That would take all pressure off of Congress to debate the issue and maybe pass some lasting changes. And as we’ve seen, any chance we have to getting Republicans on board with reform depends on keeping them opposed to what Obama is doing.
Kay
@Corner Stone:
I never said Obama didn’t want these powers. I think the whole “want” frame is beside the point.
He defended both the substance and the process yesterday. He thinks he’s right.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Corner Stone:
This in itself is bullshit in that assumes that anyone looking at the metadata knows anything else about the entities linked to the metadata in the first place. You can see one phone number that receives numerous incoming calls from others (some call many times a day, some call once a day, once a week, or with no frequency) but makes no outgoing calls, and you can assume its a retail call center line, but it might turn out to be a children’s Bible story line, and that all of the callers are, indeed, children.
But there’s a chance that I call that Bible story line every day for shits and giggles, and that I’ve used my friends phones to dial that number to have them listen to the profound inanity of the stories, or the awful narration. Maybe I’m calling just in order to jam the line. Without the context of my call, there’s no way for anyone to know exactly what’s going on. The metadata can’t give you that, ever.
Kay
@FlipYrWhig: @FlipYrWhig:
You’d think they’d get that too much is “classified”
They’re going nuts controlling “leaks”
Failing at controlling “leaks”
Corner Stone
@Kay:
It’s not beside the point. Over and over again we’ve had commenters here tell us what Obama truly desired on this topic.
So the “want or not want” frame is definitely a viable topic now when people are affirmatively backing off to a new stand now.
LAC
@The Friendly Libertarian: oh sweet Jesus, are you high? Losing DKos? That is like losing a libertarian or a penny – not missed
Baud
@FlipYrWhig:
I’d like to see an end to the FISA court. It’s overkill, from what I know about it.
the Conster
@Baud:
One of the things I’m most enjoying about this whole kerfuffle is that Obama’s statements and maneuvering – “I’ll keep doing what I’m doing until you make me stop” (Obama = Bush for those of you following along) – is making the Congresscritters who supported Bush either (i) own their prior jackassery by allying with Obama which kills them with their base, or (ii) attack Obama from the left which if they take away executive power will probably make their own heads explode from the dissonance. It’s one way to move the Overton window on surveillance and executive power a fuckton.
Baud
@the Conster:
That, plus it’s taken some of the oxygen out of Benghazi! and IRS! Republicans would love a way to push past this and get back to those “scandals.”
the Conster
@Baud:
That’s the point Kay made upthread about Congress not wanting to deal with this because then they’re responsible for what happens, and nothing is worse for a politician than being responsible for something bad happening.
Baud
@the Conster:
That’s what “I blame Obama” is for!
NickT
http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/08/cooperation-methods-protected-innocents-from-prism/
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@NickT:
Beat me to it by a minute.
NickT
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
I must be growing old, padawan. Soon I shall resign the robe and our brothers will select the Sixth Patriarch.
the Conster
@Baud:
And, just like magic the top NewsMax headline is: Obama Never Told Us About Data Tracking.
Well now they know, so what are they going to do about it? WATBs, all of them. It will be fun to watch them all step all over their own dicks.
Omnes Omnibus
@FlipYrWhig:
Anyone who is ambitious and ruthless enough to successfully run for president will use whatever powers are available to him. While I trust Obama more than I would trust most other people who have run for president (why else would I vote for him?), he is still a guy who was ambitious and ruthless enough to successfully run for president.
different-church-lady
@Ruckus:
Rather depends on the person, and the drugs, no?
Baud
@the Conster:
Did you see the next headline:
Maybe the Special Prosecutor can find his missing tax returns. :-)
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@NickT:
As long as we’re making cinematic allusions, maybe it’s time GG finds out the identity of women claiming to be Evelyn Mulwray before he gets involved in the affairs of Mr. Mulwray. This will not end well.
Forget it, Glenn, it’s Chinatown.
? Martin
@Corner Stone:
And nobody did. Look, there’s a huge difference between what is being done and what’s possible to be done. What GG described is quite simply not possible given what has been constructed. That’s not some national security secret. That’s barely above the level of what companies provide in their 10-K.
And even if he was under penalty of law regarding this program, these aren’t the only subpoenas they deal with, and they aren’t under penalty of law in discussing the technical solutions for dealing with a subpoena from a state court. Hell, Facebook even has a page explaining some of this: https://www.facebook.com/safety/groups/law/guidelines/
Explaining how they would hypothetically streamline subpoena requests in general and the technical limitations of doing what has been described is hardly a violation of the law either. And it’s unclear to me if either of these guys would have knowledge to the system. I suspect the data center guy does, but the developer does not.
NickT
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid…
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@NickT:
When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
Kay
@Corner Stone:
Well, that works two ways. Over and over I’ve heard “I want the President to comply with the Rule of Law!”
“Rule of Law” means something. It’s specific. It’s not a general moral code. You can’t rely on Rule of Law then switch to, “but what is RIGHT?”
And if you’re going character or “good man” then don’t start flinging “cult of personality” because that’s just the other side of “I trust the President”
I think you have been consistently ” what is RIGHT” but since we’re doing “some say” there has been a lot of Rule Of Law. switchers.
? Martin
@Kay: But it’s not even trusting the president. It’s also trusting Congress and the courts. If they slap this stuff down, then it’ll be obvious we were wrong to trust Obama, but they seem to all be in agreement on this. This isn’t about the judgement of one person being suspect.
So the argument is that either everyone we’ve entrusted to run the government doesn’t understand the Constitution, or guys like Corner Stone don’t. That doesn’t seem so hard to me…
Liberty60
@The Friendly Libertarian:
That has got to be the most hilarious post I have read in a while.
DougJ, is that you?
Kay
@? Martin:
Right, but that’s not all of it. CS can ( and does, in this case) say “if that’s the law, it’s wrong”
That’s legit. That’s much different than “good man/ bad man”
Also, Obama doesn’t just think this is legal, he thinks it’s RIGHT. He said that. He said he reviewed it, added safeguards and it’s his judgment that he’s right.
I have some trouble with Congress complaining. I mean, what is the claim? They were forbidden from revealing it so they couldn’t amend or modify?
Really? If that’s true, if the President can stop them from lawmaking by slapping “classified” on it, then we have big problems.
LAC
@Kay: God bless you for trying to explain this,Kay. Have you met corner stone? Even if you used semaphore flags, smoke signals, plain English, had every translator of every language with you, it wouldn’t work. Narrative baby!! Remember, Obama bad!! And how dare you try to talk while he/she is moving the greenwald goalposts!
patroclus
@Liberty60: I agree! When Obama reads it, he’ll probably crack up! I’m sure he bases his entire Presidency on the rec list at DKos.
Renie
@NickT: Sounds like the story of the pay phones in Baltimore was the inspiration for one of the stories on The Wire.
? Martin
@Kay:
That’s bullshit. Congress has the authority here. If they didn’t like the program they could have written legislation to ban or modify it. Those that are complaining about it are only doing so because there wasn’t enough support to actually change it.
Now, I do take issue with the notion that these things can’t be discussed even in the abstract, but that’s a problem with us and the media. We just don’t want to bother.
Ted & Hellen
Kay exposed as a nakedly partisan, amoral propagandist.
Hope and change.
Ted & Hellen
Bots, 2008,2012: ELECT BO OR THE COUNTRY WILL BE DESTROYED.
Bots 2013: IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE AT ALL WHO IS IN THE WHITE HOUSE.
NickT
@Ted & Hellen:
At some point, TeddyTroll, you’ll figure out that licking your tiny little white nuts in public is not a valid form of argument.
patroclus
@Ted & Hellen: You’ve convinced me. I’m not voting for Obama ever again. Does your shtick ever change?
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@NickT:
Don’t put money on that.
lojasmo
@Ted & Hellen:
You are a destructive contrarian asshole, nothing more.
NickT
@lojasmo:
So far he’s mostly destroyed his own asshole.
Ruckus
@the Conster:
It will be fun to watch them all step all over their own dicks.
Wearing golf shoes.
lojasmo
@Corner Stone:
Your friend’s brother’s former room mate?
Your frequent and repeated intellectual dishonesty here aside, is there any reason your statement could be thought to have any merit?
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@lojasmo:
To be more fair and honest than he’ll ever be, that was snark in reply to someone else’s second-hand info.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
This (pdf.) just in from the DNI.
NickT
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
After further review, I feel you may well be deserving of the robe and title of Sixth Patriarch. However, before the investiture, I need to hear your answer to this:
Does Ted and Hellen have Buddha-nature?
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
That’s why I stated some drugs in the first line.
The rest of my post is about the entire WoD. I should have included something about our puritan past which has influenced our laws and culture to a large extent. To me this falls into the same area as suicide. Why should it be illegal to attempt suicide? Sure it affects others lives but as long as it doesn’t do actual harm to others why is it any one else’s business? You want to be a drunk or drug addict? Why should I care? Sure if I know you I may think this is horrible and it does have a cost to society, pretty much every thing does, but why is it my or your legal concern? That is not to say that we shouldn’t attempt to help people not harm or kill themselves but making it illegal? Isn’t that mighty presumptuous of us? And countries that have understood that they can control what you do to others, but they can’t control what you do to yourself are finding out that drug use goes down, that helping is much better than persecution. Better results with honey than a stick.
Yatsuno
YAY!!! 300 posts! Let’s aim for 400 people!
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@NickT:
I ran it through my Orb-All-Knowing and got this answer:
“Very doubtful”.
I ran it again and got:
“Don’t count on it”.
The third- and final, all-telling- try gave me:
“Outlook not so good”.
So I’m going with a big NO.
However, T&H, like everyone but Michael J. Fox, has at least a little bit of Elvis in him.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@NickT:
He’s destroyed himself?
FlipYrWhig
@lojasmo: uh, that was a joke. Martin said he talked to a friend who knew the subject of data-mining, I said his take sounded interesting and plausible, and Corner Stone in scoffing mimicked Martin’s claim (and mocked my credulity) by making up a friend of his own who said something different.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@LAC:
More like flushing a turd. I flushed it in 2005 and felt great afterward.
piratedan
well we also have to acknowledge that our Congress is not made up of our sharpest tools or even blunt blades. These are the same group of Republicans who keep stammering on about Obama not meeting their demands on cuts and proposed reductions from the budget without even checking the WH press releases that show that in fact he has met some of their requests and were completely clueless about it. The same group that has Republican leadership within the Congress that doesn’t bother to appraise the mouth breathers what’s actually been discussed proposed in legislation. So when these stalwarts of constitutional oversight are supposed to be the last backstop against Presidential overreach, maybe there’s a point to be made regarding how the majority of the R congressional delegation approaches most legislation as a TL;DR event.
Corner Stone
@lojasmo: I’m not going to give you any more details about them, lest you track them down and “go postal” on them.
Please don’t hunt them down and kill them.
But they have totally told me they can’t talk any further about this.
Ken_L
Remember many countries wanted to transfer management of the internet to an international agency and the USA objected because it risked making the web subject to political interference? That “you can only trust the good ol’ USA to protect the integrity of your data” line is looking SO persuasive right now.
Jasmine Bleach
@c u n d gulag:
I’ll give you a lot of that, but some is exaggeration (which is why they need all these new systems).
–Land line phones? ECHELON only started in the 1950s. In the 1940s phones had no digital components at all, so “listening in” to all calls would’ve been quite the challenge, really. I guess on that point, you’re right as far as today goes, but having the ability to “listen in for well over a century” is exaggeration.
–Cell phones, yep. Turn it off (remove battery) and/or don’t carry it 24/7 if you don’t want to be tracked (depending on the level of obscurity you want.
–EZ Pass type things? Don’t use them.
–Supermarket/pharmacy/etc. convenience cards? Don’t use them. (Unfortunately, that rules out good places like CostCo, but them’s the breaks for privacy.) Corollary to this–avoid using credit cards, and use cash instead whenever possible.
–All the internet is captured? Well, I’ll admit with the latest revelations that they ARE trying to get there. But the revelations actually reveal that they haven’t gotten all the way there yet. Assuming the slides are true, for example, before Oct. 2012 they didn’t have (complete) access to any of Apple’s internal services (iCloud, iTunes, AppStores, etc.).
The rule here is–don’t use large services (Google, Microsoft, Comcast, Apple, AT&T, Facebook, etc.) and encrypt all communications possible. Use TOR for surfing the web anonymously (though that is very slow). Use PGP for private e-mails (no evidence of it being cracked yet, or even really being very crackable) and disk encryption. Use encrypted XMPP set up on a private server for chatting (text, audio, video). Use well locked-down private server for file transfers, etc.
Shoot, as far as privatizing yourself against commercial entities, you can monitor and outright deny internet traffic using a number of common pieces of software. Lil’ Snitch will tell you whenever something is coming in or out of your network (EVERYTHING) and let you deny it if you so wish (great for software or viruses trying to “phone home” without you knowing–some viruses actually search your system for Lil’ Snitch and won’t install themselves if it is present). Things like Ghostery (a web browser plug-in) will block all commercial tracking sites (funny how the ads look less targeted now!). AdBlock will remove commercialism from your web browsing permanently if you’re so inclined.
You definitely won’t be able to privatize everything you do online, but you don’t have to assume everything is captured either and there’s absolutely nothing you can do. Yes, it’s a pain in the arse, but some of us are fighting the good fight out here!
AHH onna Droid
@Kay: it os the last five years amd you know who… The Negro inthe woodpile
Lee Atwater redux
LAC
@Ted & Hellen: Ted & Helen 2008: WE ARE ASSHOLES. Ted & Helen 2013: WE ARE BIG ASSHOLES.
Odie Hugh Manatee
OMG, GG and the Guardian have a new article out about another evil government program, “Boundless Informant“! Guess what it does? Collect more of the same data that PRISM does! There are slides to prove it also! Too!!
I’m quickly getting bored with this.
Ted & Hellen
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Oh good, perhaps you’ll stop reading and posting here.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@BJ’s Resident Sandusky Rape Apologist:
Worthless piece of shit says what?
Ted & Hellen
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
You need to fix your link, dumb ass.