Just my opinions...

Post #379,720 by Another Scott 8/21/13 9:28:57 PM Reply	Just my opinions... :-) I don't know the future better than anyone else. I don't work for the NSA and have no special insight on what goes on there. But I do have some experience dealing with DOD people. Any authentic Oversight of these explosively-expanding Snoops: is ITSELF 'Classified!' == You ain 't got no links to make any case for, Trust Me--I'm Honest! and similar doggerel the mind rejects-on-inspection (or it is a mind so Open that: there's no keeping anything In or Out of it.) Oversight is possible, and much is already in place. Is it enough? Probably not, especially when Congress seems to choose to refuse to do its job here (as well as in other areas). http://www.nsa.gov/a....shtml#oversight1 1. How are the activities of the NSA/CSS regulated and who monitors them? The U.S. Constitution, federal law, executive order, and regulations of the Executive Branch govern NSA's activities. As a Defense Agency, NSA operates under the authority of the Department of Defense. As a member of the Intelligence Community, NSA also operates under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. NSA/CSS activities are subject to strict scrutiny and oversight both from outside and from within. External bodies such as the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), the President's Intelligence Oversight Board, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the Department of Defense, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Department of Justice help ensure that NSA adheres to U.S. laws and regulations that are applicable to the Agency's activities. Internally, the Office of the Inspector General conducts inspections, audits, and investigations to make certain that NSA/CSS operates with integrity, efficiency, and effectiveness while the Office of the General Counsel provides legal advice. The Office of Compliance ensures the Agency conforms to the standards, policies, and standards under which it operates. Most importantly, each NSA/CSS employee is charged with knowing, understanding, and obeying to the fullest the laws of the nation. Nobody likes being a patsy. People who work for the government in those oversight positions take their jobs seriously, and they're outside of the chain of command of those they investigate. The committees in bold above have the power and the responsibility to fully investigate what the NSA (and the other 3-letter intelligence agencies) are doing. Just today a FISA Court ruling was declassified (along with a bunch of other stuff). The supposedly toothless, compliant court made the NSA make changes to some unconstitutional activities. See the DNI's new Tumblr for more (linky in another forum here). Who's on the House and Senate Committees? House majority members - http://intelligence....-majority-members House minority members - http://intelligence....-minority-members Senate members - http://www.intellige...mberscurrent.html These are the people who need to be railed at - not people working at the NSA. Rail at them to fully investigate what the NSA's been doing and release public versions of the information. Rail at them to make it impossible for them to collect any information from US persons without a specific warrant if that's your goal. Let's get some official information on whether Snowden and Greenwald's interpretations of what's been going on are correct or not. (I'm tempted to make some snarky remark questioning why Greenwald doesn't rail against the House for not doing its job, but I'll let it pass.) (No, I'm not naive enough to believe that some special report from Congress on the NSA will lead us all to sing Kumbaya. There are kooks out there who still claim to believe a bunch of nonsense about the attacks on the Pentagon and the WTC on 9/11.) Like everyone else, my opinions are based on my experiences and what I've learned over the years. PJ at Groklaw has had a visceral reaction to the recent reports and the arguments about e-mail. That's unfortunate, and I believe it is misguided. But she has to do what's right for her. RC said (roughly) that bureaucracies always want to increase their power, and moreso in the cases of the military or security organizations. And that is true. People get larger salaries and more power by having more people and larger areas to work on. But, remember that the NSA's area of operation is foreign intelligence. The FBI and similar groups cover domestic investigations. The FBI is jealous of their area and wants to protect it, just as any bureaucracy would. There's only so much money to go around - if the NSA tries to horn in on the FBI's area, there will be pushback. So, in a way, the bureaucracy is another protection against over-reach. Believe it or not. (And yes, I hear the guffaws from the peanut gallery...) I'm not afraid of the NSA spying on me. Not because of the "well, if you're not guilty then you have nothing to worry about" reasons commonly trotted out. But because the NSA has no institutional interest in me. Investigating me would be a distraction and make doing their job more difficult. It would not help them perform their mission. And it's illegal. But what about Hoover and all the other abuses? Times and the laws change. Hoover had no oversight - he was a force unto himself and had a lifetime appointment. Clapper isn't and doesn't. Clapper and Alexander and Brennan and Cox and all of the other heads of the three-letter intelligence agencies, all of them, have to follow the law. Spying on us is a distraction from their mission. What if Cruz is elected president and has a compliant Congress, Senate and Judiciary? Well, then they'll be able to do what they want under the changes they make to the system. Right? That's how our system works, isn't it? If you've got the votes, you get to make changes. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to agree to that would make that impossible, (even though I agree that it would be a disaster to have that dystopian future). I'm not willing to sign up for a BDFL to keep Cruz from winning, and I don't think that it's sensible to say that Internet communications is off-limits to investigation, or that a court warrant is required for any bit of data to be collected about me. The answer to all of these (real or potential) outrages is to elect sensible people to sit in government. If we can't do that, then no Constitution or laws or courts or whistle-blowers are going to protect us. The NSA isn't the problem. Yelling about the Stasi isn't the solution. I fear I've become too big a distraction, and too much of a lightning rod on this stuff. I don't mind, but I don't want to cause bad feelings among our little group. I think I've said about all I can to explain my position, so I'll try to shut-up for a while. :-) FWIW. YMMV. My $0.02. EOT. NO CARRIER. Cheers, Scott.
Post #379,724 by rcareaga 8/21/13 11:48:42 PM 8/21/13 11:54:18 PM Reply	Re: Just my opinions... I fear I've become too big a distraction, and too much of a lightning rod on this stuff. I don't mind, but I don't want to cause bad feelings among our little group. It's precisely because you've more than established your street cred as a reasonable person that you are being engaged rather than dismissed out of hand. You're not causing any bad feelings. Oh, sure, CRC was a little brusque, but you need to gauge that against pre-fatherhood CRC and I think you'll conclude that this was right up there with blowing you a kiss. I'm not afraid of the NSA spying on me. Not because of the "well, if you're not guilty then you have nothing to worry about" reasons commonly trotted out. But because the NSA has no institutional interest in me. But you're not an investigative reporter. Aren't you the least bit worried about these powers being brought to bear against the public's putative right to know what its supposed public servants are up to? I wish I could give you details, but I've frightened myself by now: About five or six years ago I sat in on a meeting with some Stasi types in my capacity as graphic designer. They wanted me to prepare some oversize graphics in a pending court case regarding a foreign infant who had died while it and its parents were detained by an arm of DHS. If you had been there, it would have put paid to any illusions you might have had about the essential decency of our secret police. If there was a fucking particle of compassion for the infant or for its parents in evidence, I must have missed it. And these are probably decent people in their private lives, but in their official capacity they are as impersonally heartless as any Third Reich railroad clerk who cleared the trains back to Poland. You dare not trust them to abide by "the law," particularly when "the law" has become so infinitely elastic. You need not reply. But I hope you'll reflect. cordially, Edited by rcareaga Aug. 21, 2013, 11:54:18 PM EDT Expand All History
Post #379,731 by boxley 8/22/13 8:39:05 AM Reply	they werren't lawyers were they? Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 58 years. meep
Post #379,732 by boxley 8/22/13 8:54:23 AM Reply	naw don't stop I start with a soviet shoe banging on the table saying they will bury us. They have, freedoms we took for granted are gone. New freedoms have arrived in the form of the civil rights act and others but the freedom to moce freely, associate with others are gone. In it's place is a system of checks usually by petty clerks with badges to see if you are allowed to go somewhere. Cops have always profiled, always will. DWB DWI DWH are used depending on the jurisdiction you are in. Too many times I have read or heard or watched cops using their authority to jail, arrest, beat people on a whim. In texas they are giving deep cavity searches to women totally against trooper regulations, texas law and common decency, because they can. I guarranty that higher up the food chain people are being targeted because of "gut instinct". You didn't admire reagan and his Iran Contra antics did you? Why don't you check and see where Negreponte and Poindexter are up to now adays? From the early days of ther OSS to today our government does bad things to people. Sometimes bad people. A lot of it used to be illegal and a jail sentence was handed out if caught. Now we have a giant get out of jail free card with the patriot act stapled to the front of it. When I compare the NSA with the Stazi it is because they are both doing/did the work of the state. Collecting massive amounts of information about it's citizens and diseminating that information to anyone with a government badge on it that wants to use that information for any purpose they wish. Do I think the average guy who goes to work at fort meade every day wear jackboots? No, The clerks who did the filing in Luybyanka worked hard, went home at the end of their shifts and got used to the screaming in the basement. Part of the job. Do what you are told. Get paid and keep your privileges. Of course the clerks at fort meade dont hear screaming unless its on a piece of information they are scanning Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 58 years. meep
Post #379,737 by rcareaga 8/22/13 9:56:48 AM 8/22/13 10:29:05 AM Reply	Good lord, boxley That was actually coherent. I could parse every sentence. Is it the lithium? BTW, only a couple of 'em were lawyers. cordially, Edit: Add this PS: You should be aware that when Khrushchev said* "We will bury you" he was employing an old Russian homily the sense of which was, as any native speaker would have understood, "We will outlive you; we will be present for your funeral." The Sovs never did get long-range planning right. It was misrepresented in the US press, and is still apparently misremembered, as having the sense of "We have Stakhonovite shock troops standing by to heap spadefuls of earth upon your still-living forms as you lie writhing in the trench." *And he was wearing both shoes when he uttered the line. Edited by rcareaga Aug. 22, 2013, 10:29:05 AM EDT Expand All History
Post #379,741 by mmoffitt 8/22/13 11:07:18 AM Reply	The misrepresentation was ... both intentional and highly useful to the Military Industrial Complex. We're still paying for that.
Post #379,742 by boxley 8/22/13 11:43:59 AM Reply	I know that it was meant that their system would bury ours It has. Everytime someone in a cave in the hills of pahktunland see's a cameraphone vid on youtube of cops jamming their fingers up some lady's cranial cavity because she may have thrown a cigarette but on the highway, he laughs and sez "we did that" Chaos at an airport. Moo lines of human cattle tickle them immensly. Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 58 years. meep
Post #379,776 by Ashton 8/23/13 3:03:02 AM Reply	Agree; it was a collective effort, though.. Khrushchev aside (however an early 'spiritual' antagonist to the US System)--yet unable to achieve a er, 'Red Plenty'-fulness of consumer gadgets amid simultaneous/massive military drain. Count up the individual-Outrages committed by 'us'/U.S. in too-many nations, locales, times--the total #of people injured doesn't need steenkin numbers: it's staggering. bin-L's utterly-cheap single (set of) Action!(s) was the Inflection Point though, IMO; add-in all those unfulfilled, persistent, individual feelings of Vengeance-denied: ..and 9/11 was >their< First physical==palpable event of striking-back at the Perpetrator of their loss, their pain and all that festering thirst for Vengeance ... against a (say) rich, bumbling and geographically-insulated bully. [Pretty simplistic/lots glossed over that was Not-evil, etc. but I'd bet on that simple/unsorted Vengeance-thing as the commonality of n-people.] bin-Laden may or may not have been prescient re. Murican response--at least to the devastating degree we now see was achieved. (But he has to be the #1 Champion of max-ROI on any biz deal ever made, no?) So.. now that we see ~ What we Are/ and have Been: how many of 'us' plan to become authentic humans, next? Hmm? Nobody Knoze.. Yet. Cosmic Humor, perhaps?
Post #380,112 by CRConrad 9/1/13 6:30:27 PM Reply	Driving While... Black, Indian, Homo? And what kind of Indian (if any); "Birdie num-num" or "Paleface follow Tonto"? -- Christian R. Conrad Same old username (as above), but now on iki.fi (Yeah, yeah, it redirects to the same old GMail... But just in case I ever want to change.)
Post #379,735 by mmoffitt 8/22/13 9:43:39 AM Reply	If I offended you, I apologize. I think people will have differing ideas about these topics based upon their own experiences. When I see what is happening in this country, I remember my late father's close friend, Kyril and his years in the Gulag for what he said. I remember being followed by KGB agents everywhere. I remember always referring to people we'd met in Soviet Russia as "my friend" and when the person under discussion wasn't clear to the person you were talking to, how you went into the bathroom, turned on every spigot full blast, leaned over into the sink and whispered the name into the ear of the other person. I remember looking for (and often finding) the microphones in every hotel room we stayed in while in the USSR. I remember seeing my classmate and friend Sergei accosted by agents as we were walking along the street and put in the back of a Zil to be interrogated about "What has the American told you?" I remember all of this crap in detail even though it happened more than 40 years ago and in reference to what has been happening in America I think to myself, "I know what the end game of this looks like." So, yeah, I'm guilty of getting a little emotional about this topic and I am vastly more accepting of the views of emoprogs (thanks for the new vocabulary btw) as a consequence. I feel this way and I never suffered anything myself over the kind of treatment millions have received that are the consequence of what we are tolerating right now.
Post #379,743 by Another Scott 8/22/13 12:04:51 PM Reply	No offense taken, and none given, I hope. Thanks. If you're ever in Budapest, stop by the Terror House. It's an amazing place, and it's good that they've kept it open as a reminder. http://www.terrorhaza.hu/en/index_2.html Cheers, Scott.
Post #379,773 by Ashton 8/23/13 1:46:51 AM Reply	Certainly none taken here, as well. When Box takes the time to craft complete sentences--incidentally proving to any in doubt, that: he Can--IMO this constitutes due respect for any sometimes-'opposition' ... nowadays so rarely seen elsewhere. I deem IWE to be an Aberration in any event.. not merely for its I-net-remarkable longevity (In an ocean of anticipated impermanence) but, aside from a very-occasional flake, we are that rarity: no dimwits hang-out here. Most here, I wot are aware of several instances when he has lapsed into flawless Queen's English, slyly enhancing his Point via the induced Gasps (?) Isn't that Cheating?!11ONE!! Obviously this thread could not-today resolve the huge Question of ... call it, again maybe: Just How corrupt is America/are Americans.. anyway? We each/all have duly noticed the paucity of ethical behavior within bizness, the too-often illegal performances of cops, today's literally Criminal behavior in Finance: from Top to Bottom-feeders, in each category. No need (or space) to list several more groups. Because there are forces clearly dedicated to maintaining as much chaos as possible (as we have ~~identified here, all along) and whose motives have often been dissected, methinks we'll be experiencing many more cusps--likely in rapid-succession--before it could become clear, not just How Murica might survive/heal/smarten-up?--but If. Meanwhile, as we remain in suspense, I trust it shall remain a pleasure to congregate here and try to keep these fuels from carrying-out their planned demolition-beyond-repair. *Hell.. IWE might have to form the First post-Apocalypse Cabinet!--should the ruling plutocrat Junta really screw the pooch, while raiding any scraps still left in the Treasury!.*
Post #380,116 by CRConrad 9/1/13 6:40:45 PM Reply	Nope, that's actually not the main effect. Ash: When Box takes the time to craft complete sentences--incidentally proving to any in doubt, that: he Can-- [...] slyly enhancing his Point via the induced Gasps (?) Nope. We knew that already, so the wow-can-he-actually-do-that? effect doesn't work any more; a surprise only works once. The humongous annoyance of his usual fucking gibberish, though, works every fucking time. And far from being alleviated, it is of course only aggravated by this occasional proof that it IS actually intentional. So, BOx-fucker: Write like the above all the time, please, or don't write at fucking all. Thank you. -- Christian R. Conrad* Same old username (as above), but now on iki.fi (Yeah, yeah, it redirects to the same old GMail... But just in case I ever want to change.)
Post #380,165 by Ashton 9/2/13 8:15:46 PM Reply	It could be a Right- Left- Orthogonal- brain dysfunction, in which case we might sympathize (or not.) Still, possessing no (other) direct experience with organisms in which normal cell-division of the [÷2] mitosis-kind somehow became ... [÷3??] I can't see how possibly I could empathize with some accidental metamorphosis of a discarded urine bag on some nameless asteroid in a belt around Uranus [presuming that Urea is ~Galaxy-wide.] Guess we have to be guided by the current Chair of Philosophy of Welcoming Aliens: Ripley. (No telling what destruction even One--loose amidst the flock--might wreak.) --premeditated Language-Murder-One, say? {{shudder}} :-0
Post #380,181 by CRConrad 9/3/13 4:36:46 AM Reply	Sorry, was that intended only for the BOx? Sounded like pure BOxlish to me; didn't understand a word. -- Christian R. Conrad Same old username (as above), but now on iki.fi (Yeah, yeah, it redirects to the same old GMail... But just in case I ever want to change.)
Post #380,211 by Ashton 9/3/13 4:48:03 PM Reply	IF !=a bi-brain like 'us', but has a tri-brain? THEN: Being alien: a likely explanation for: ~~Mission~~ Communication Impossible. Just a theory..

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