Prism Program ( Big Brother gone too far?)

[Walsingham]

Manning and Assange would indeed be patriots if

 

1) We weren't living in democracies

2) Those democracies didn't already have mechanisms for whistle blowing responsibly

 

In a nutshell the rules are you go up your chain of command. If you think that's corrupt then you go to an _elected representative_. Because, and I can't emphasise this enough, they're elected. Their opinion on what's right or wrong is BETTER THAN YOURS because a whole bunch of people say so.

 

Assange and Manning aren't defending democracy. They're ****ing ignoring it. You know who I regard as making a genuinely heroic stand for democracy? The Afghan and Iraqi interpreters and informants ratting out the sectarian murdering bastards who are wrecking their countries. People who _might die_ for speaking out.

[BruceVC]

Manning and Assange would indeed be patriots if

 

1) We weren't living in democracies

2) Those democracies didn't already have mechanisms for whistle blowing responsibly

 

In a nutshell the rules are you go up your chain of command. If you think that's corrupt then you go to an _elected representative_. Because, and I can't emphasise this enough, they're elected. Their opinion on what's right or wrong is BETTER THAN YOURS because a whole bunch of people say so.

 

Assange and Manning aren't defending democracy. They're ****ing ignoring it. You know who I regard as making a genuinely heroic stand for democracy? The Afghan and Iraqi interpreters and informants ratting out the sectarian murdering bastards who are wrecking their countries. People who _might die_ for speaking out.

 

Actually Walsie in my world you are my defender of Democracy !!!!  

[BruceVC]

Well he is running for the senate here in the election in three months' time, if becoming a politician means being a patriot (ha).

 

 

I admit to being totally superficial in this regard - I back the information dump being released because it's interesting to read about.

 

Wait who is running for election, Assange? You can't be  serious?

[Meshugger]

Pretty much no one that i know talks about this or is remotely outraged.

 

Personally, i feel like that screaming evangelist in the corner of the street, shouting about the end of days and how people should change their ways immidiately. But just as the poor fool in the corner, i notice how nobody cares, they have other important stuff to do. Families to feed, a bank account to accumulate interest rates on and a job to do. With only neglect as my friend, i grow more distant to the society that i inhabit.

 

Since the US is doing it, so what is stopping any other country to do the same repugnant **** to its citizens? It's a cold, inhuman method that reeks of system optimization and process development. It is completely rotten. Nothing will be gained, that can not be gained through basic intelligence. Instead, we have an enormous data-bank of metadata that maybe can be used retroactively, all while Obama calling for trust in the government.

 

Hopefully i will see a revolution in my lifetime.

[BruceVC]

Pretty much no one that i know talks about this or is remotely outraged.

 

Personally, i feel like that screaming evangelist in the corner of the street, shouting about the end of days and how people should change their ways immidiately. But just as the poor fool in the corner, i notice how nobody cares, they have other important stuff to do. Families to feed, a bank account to accumulate interest rates on and a job to do. With only neglect as my friend, i grow more distant to the society that i inhabit.

 

Since the US is doing it, so what is stopping any other country to do the same repugnant **** to its citizens? It's a cold, inhuman method that reeks of system optimization and process development. It is completely rotten. Nothing will be gained, that can not be gained through basic intelligence. Instead, we have an enormous data-bank of metadata that maybe can be used retroactively, all while Obama calling for trust in the government.

 

Hopefully i will see a revolution in my lifetime.

 

You make some good points, but the USA has the advantage in this type of monitoring as most of the primary Social Media servers are housed in the USA and the technology comes from there. So its much easier for the NSA to integrate Prism into the systems that they want to monitor.

 

But I also think people do care, you mustn't become jaded

[Orogun01]

@To everyone that says they don't mind not having privacy: "Can I put webcams all over your houses and share the videos with whomsoever I please?"

 

At this point I really think that anyone that believes that the US has a democracy its either deluded or retarded, these type of post 9/11 paranoia programs are unconstitutional and quite unnerving to know that every day privacy erodes more and more.

BTW, I haven't found any mention of what level of clearance you need to access the information gathered by the program?

 

[BruceVC]

@To everyone that says they don't mind not having privacy: "Can I put webcams all over your houses and share the videos with whomsoever I please?"

 

At this point I really think that anyone that believes that the US has a democracy its either deluded or retarded, these type of post 9/11 paranoia programs are unconstitutional and quite unnerving to know that every day privacy erodes more and more.

 

BTW, I haven't found any mention of what level of clearance you need to access the information gathered by the program?

 

 

 

You make some concerning comments, if the USA isn't a Democracy then what is it? I would say it most definitely still is ?

Edited June 10, 2013 by BruceVC

[Orogun01]

It's an oligarchy ruled by a proxy government that stands in for the interests of corporations and massive private entities which are blatantly overt in their dealings with the government. If you have any doubt look for the Monstato Protection Act, this was a law that passed and it was actually written by a company. So when a corporation can be considered to be a person, money to be equal to speech and legislation is written by corporations rather than legislators; tell me, is that Democracy?

[Hurlshort]

@To everyone that says they don't mind not having privacy: "Can I put webcams all over your houses and share the videos with whomsoever I please?"

 

 

Throw in some editing and you have the vast majority of today's TV content.

 

I'm not saying I don't want privacy, but I will say this.  My life is simply not remarkable enough to warrant the attention.  If the government is watching me, it is simply a waste of time and resources.

[melkathi]

 

 

 

Really Zora? You honestly believe that a private  person  has the authority to decide what confidential information marked by a country as "secretive" should be made available to the  world. Did you read some of the reports and opinions he made public?

 

 

Honestly? the private person has about the same right to do that as some government twerp on the other side of the globe ina  country, on a continent I never visited, has to snoop through my private life

[Drowsy Emperor]

Manning and Assange are both awesome, true patriots and fine human beings who should be saluted for their fine principled stand against creeping authoritarianism and totalitarianism, and a culture that classifies anything and everything remotely embarrassing. And if they'd done the same thing to China or Russia both you and Bruce would think they were awesomeness personified and asterisk their national security.

 

(also newest stuff was six month old, none of it with a particularly secret classification, and per Sec Gates it didn't kill anyone at all)

 

US dissident goers to China to avoid persecution from government. Ed Snowden, you rapscallion and master of irony, I love you, and wish to bear your children.

 

^I think I'll hire you when I'm too lazy to type.

[Drowsy Emperor]

 

At this point I really think that anyone that believes that the US has a democracy its either deluded or retarded, these type of post 9/11 paranoia programs are unconstitutional and quite unnerving to know that every day privacy erodes more and more.

 

 

 

Give that you're a Cuban immigrant, are you really surprised? I would have though that any Cuban would have a pretty good idea of the difference between the official US ideology and its reality simply by knowing anything of Cuban history particularly its treatment by the US.

[pmp10]

My life is simply not remarkable enough to warrant the attention.  If the government is watching me, it is simply a waste of time and resources.

You are making the assumption here that innocence is a valid defense.

I'm not sure if modern governments can be trusted to care about such nuances.

[Drowsy Emperor]

BTW the program doesn't surprise me at all. I presume that everything much of the Internet communication is combed by surveillance algorithms - therefore everything as I already expected it to be.

 

The fact is that US power is eroding slowly and that no amount of electronic surveillance knowledge will help in what is essentially a rising economic and political conflict between it and the new powers on the world stage. Everything about military and economic capabilities of all countries is practically common knowledge now.

 

As for internal applications _ the tighter they crack down on internal strife, which has apparently intensified since Obama was elected - the worse it will get in the long run. 

[Gfted1]

[melkathi]

 

You are making the assumption here that innocence is a valid defense.

I'm not sure if modern governments can be trusted to care about such nuances.

 

 

*cough*guantanamo*cough*

https://www.change.org/petitions/president-obama-close-detention-facility-at-guantanamo-bay-2

[Hurlshort]

 

My life is simply not remarkable enough to warrant the attention.  If the government is watching me, it is simply a waste of time and resources.

You are making the assumption here that innocence is a valid defense.

I'm not sure if modern governments can be trusted to care about such nuances.

 

 

Defense against what?  Look at all the crud the IRS is dealing with now that it came to light that they targeted Tea Party activists.  We clearly need to stay on top of government agencies to make sure they aren't abusing their power, but the citizenship still has a lot of ability to do so.  

[Drowsy Emperor]

Snowden ...

In 2003, he enlisted in the US army and began a training program to join the Special Forces. Invoking the same principles that he now cites to justify his leaks, he said: "I wanted to fight in the Iraq war because I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression".

He recounted how his beliefs about the war's purpose were quickly dispelled. "Most of the people training us seemed pumped up about killing Arabs, not helping anyone," he said. After he broke both his legs in a training accident, he was discharged.

 

 

"Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world," he says. "I realised that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good."

 

 

He has had "a very comfortable life" that included a salary of roughly $200,000, a girlfriend with whom he shared a home in Hawaii, a stable career, and a family he loves. "I'm willing to sacrifice all of that because I can't in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building."

 

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance

 

Guy really has donkey balls.

Edited June 10, 2013 by Drowsy Emperor

[HoonDing]

Just another commie turncoat.

[Drowsy Emperor]

Just another commie turncoat.

 

Burn the red infidel

[Malcador]

*cough*guantanamo*cough*

https://www.change.org/petitions/president-obama-close-detention-facility-at-guantanamo-bay-2

Good joke.

[Orogun01]

 

 

At this point I really think that anyone that believes that the US has a democracy its either deluded or retarded, these type of post 9/11 paranoia programs are unconstitutional and quite unnerving to know that every day privacy erodes more and more.

 

 

 

Give that you're a Cuban immigrant, are you really surprised? I would have though that any Cuban would have a pretty good idea of the difference between the official US ideology and its reality simply by knowing anything of Cuban history particularly its treatment by the US.

 

There always was some element of doubt as the only source of information on the island was the government and they ran what amounts to a smear campaign against the US. It got to the point that it came off as a little bit obsessive-stalkerish. Still, all of that didn't exactly prepared me for actually experiencing this gap.

It has definitively gotten worse during the Obama administration, which I now feel comfortable saying that it may even worse than Nixon's.

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

Meh. This is a really inefficient way of gathering intelligence. Not only is it a truly massive amount of data per person, but so much of it is bound to be worthless garbage. I wonder what percentage of the Internet data is related to porn and cat pictures?

 

 

 

My life is simply not remarkable enough to warrant the attention. If the government is watching me, it is simply a waste of time and resources.

 

You are making the assumption here that innocence is a valid defense.

I'm not sure if modern governments can be trusted to care about such nuances.

Defense against what? Look at all the crud the IRS is dealing with now that it came to light that they targeted Tea Party activists. We clearly need to stay on top of government agencies to make sure they aren't abusing their power, but the citizenship still has a lot of ability to do so.

To be fair, when the Tea Party came along we saw a large increase of organizations applying for non-profit status. A tax agency focusing resources on groups that are anti-taxation actually makes sense to me. Edited June 10, 2013 by KaineParker

[Tigranes]

 

Pretty much no one that i know talks about this or is remotely outraged.

 

Personally, i feel like that screaming evangelist in the corner of the street, shouting about the end of days and how people should change their ways immidiately. But just as the poor fool in the corner, i notice how nobody cares, they have other important stuff to do. Families to feed, a bank account to accumulate interest rates on and a job to do. With only neglect as my friend, i grow more distant to the society that i inhabit.

 

Since the US is doing it, so what is stopping any other country to do the same repugnant **** to its citizens? It's a cold, inhuman method that reeks of system optimization and process development. It is completely rotten. Nothing will be gained, that can not be gained through basic intelligence. Instead, we have an enormous data-bank of metadata that maybe can be used retroactively, all while Obama calling for trust in the government.

 

Hopefully i will see a revolution in my lifetime.

 

You make some good points, but the USA has the advantage in this type of monitoring as most of the primary Social Media servers are housed in the USA and the technology comes from there. So its much easier for the NSA to integrate Prism into the systems that they want to monitor.

 

But I also think people do care, you mustn't become jaded

 

 

For years the US has been as big a seller of surveillance equipment as it has been a provider of anti-surveillance tools. Of course, the problem is that the surveillance equipment is usually sold by US-based corporations who, with their reputation on the line for profit, provide stuff that works (to countries like the Netherlands as well as 'those damn Muslims'), while US-funded circumvention tools don't often work very well, or are available to the users in the target markets, or, in extreme cases, nobody can work out if the state-funded & promoted tool even exists. (See: Haystack)

 

The fact that it's 'easier' for the US to do may be true, but the important point stands - that the US loses now even more moral authority in pursuing its Clinton secretary era agenda of 'Internet Freedom'. And the problem with that is, even if some might regard the current US commitment to Internet Freedom as a farce, it is an important farce; if IF becomes strategically not in the US's advantage, then you can expect that it will eventually shift its rhetoric on the Internet (it's a classic move: the Internet is dangerous now, so it must be regulated, blah blah), and then globally, we will see the Internet grow into a tightly watched network in a way that really is past the point of no return in a practical sense. 

 

It's easy to sit and say "it's just one tool, and the way this one tool works at this point in time doesn't seem to harm most innocent people", but that's not how history works. 

[Zoraptor]

Really Zora? You honestly believe that a private  person  has the authority to decide what confidential information marked by a country as "secretive" should be made available to the  world. Did you read some of the reports and opinions he made public?

Yep. Not everything of course as I'm not insane. Anything significant gets classified secret and above, and is not available to as many as 3 million people- what Manning had access to was the mundane and the embarrassing, not the dangerous. Basic sense says that you obfuscate the names of sources and the like precisely because you should be presuming that your information is not secure, if the US failed to do even that basic step it is their fault for not doing so and states about as strongly as possible that the stuff ain't important.

 

And it's everybody's obligation to do as their conscience dictates, not as a self protecting government does. Governments should classify as little as possible; not as much as possible, and if they're going to try and bury everything under a veil of "oh no teh tehrorists!" secrecy they need to be embarrassed as much as possible by leaks.

 

You can't be so naïve to believe that every international or diplomatic issue  between countries gets resolved in the media where we all know what is going on? There is a reason why we have  private meetings between countries where certain opinions are not shared with the public. This is the way the world operates and we sure don't need the likes of Julian Assange, who clearly had a vendetta  with the USA, choosing what needs to be bought into the public domain. Who gave him the right?

I dunno. Who gave any government the right either? Certainly wasn't me. Only thing I'm disappointed in is that he didn't leak our secrets as well as the US's, I'd love to see all the strategising surrounding the Trans Pacific Partnership and law sychronisations. Frankly, diplomacy and every government function would be far better off without the shroud of secrecy. It's certainly not there to protect the general populace, it's to protect the government.