Re: He's offering an opinion piece - it's not persuasive to

Post #384,325 by Another Scott 12/17/13 8:51:36 AM Reply	Re: He's offering an opinion piece - it's not persuasive to The fuckers are reading my email too - what the hell am I supposed to do about THAT? A feature, not a bug. ;-) Seriously, the NSA collects lots and lots and lots of data. That doesn't mean that anyone looks at it unless they have a reason within their scope to do so. http://www.nsa.gov/p...id_FI_Targets.pdf (2 page .pdf). FWIW. Cheers, Scott.
Post #384,350 by pwhysall 12/18/13 1:25:42 AM Reply	Re: He's offering an opinion piece - it's not persuasive to If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged. And therein lies the problem. They've got the six lines. They've got six lines on everyone.
Post #384,355 by Another Scott 12/18/13 8:07:08 AM Reply	And that's our protection. There's too much chunder to sort through for them to spend time looking at our cat GIFs and pr0n search history. Or comments on politics and the like. They're not looking at us. Cheers, Scott.
Post #384,357 by pwhysall 12/18/13 8:32:54 AM Reply	Heh, no it's not. Computer analytical power increases exponentially annually and we haven't even gone quantum yet. They are looking at you - because you have to assume that as it isn't safe to assume that they're not. Honestly, is your defence of the NSA's violation of the constitution, in essence, "well they've got so much stuff they can't look at it all?" Dude. Please.
Post #384,359 by Another Scott 12/18/13 10:25:05 AM Reply	It's not their mission. The NSA is run and staffed by people. People who are evaluated every year to determine what they worked on, how well they satisfied their job requirements, etc. People don't get promoted if they don't do their jobs. They don't get raises if they don't do their jobs. People get demoted, fired, prosecuted, and imprisoned if they break the rules and the laws. If they get told by their bosses to do something illegal, they can and should report it through the proper authorities. "But what about Snowden! But what about contractors! But what about those guys at the IRS office that were snooping on celebrities and ex girlfriends!" Yes, sometimes people break the rules and the laws. No matter what laws and rules are in place, some people will break them. No human system is perfect. "But you're essentially saying that no human system can be trusted with such power! The NSA is too big! They have to stop "snooping" on the Internet!" No. Our protections, as Snowden himself said in one of his interviews when he revealed himself, are the the rules and processes in the system. Not the technology. Any technology can be misused. Any system without a particular technology can be misused if protections are not built into it. Have you registered with UPS to get package delivery e-mail alerts? That was quite eye-opening for me. When I did so, they asked me a series of questions to verify that I was who I claimed. They had home addresses for me going back something like 30 years. Addresses that I hadn't thought about in decades. It's a little creepy. Does it mean that UPS is "snooping" on me? No. It's not in the NSA's charter to snoop on Americans. It is illegal for them to do so without a court order. Are more protections needed to prevent them from having access to data from Americans, even in an incidental way? Maybe. Maybe not. Make the case, but don't go over the top about the NSA "snooping" on every American or that the Deep State is tramping on our rights. My $0.02. Cheers, Scott.
Post #384,364 by a6l6e6x 12/18/13 11:11:03 AM 12/18/13 11:40:36 AM Reply	Well said! Sometimes reality just sucks. :) Incidentally, I did that UPS thing in the last two weeks. Shocking questions. All based on ex post facto digitized public records no doubt. [edit]Give the ancient Italians credit with italics. Alex Edited by a6l6e6x Dec. 18, 2013, 11:40:36 AM EST Expand All History
Post #384,365 by drook 12/18/13 11:45:06 AM 12/18/13 1:30:05 PM Reply	Here's my problem U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 9, Clause 3: "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed" The problem with keeping all this information "even though they can't read it all" is that someone can decide tomorrow that something I did 10 years ago is now suspect, and they've got the evidence for it. No, I'm not saying that they will actually pass an ex post facto law, but they sure could develop a data mining algorithm to identify the "right" people to look at for activities that just became suspect. This is where you say, "Of course they could, that's their mission." :-/ [edit] tyop -- Drew Edited by drook Dec. 18, 2013, 01:30:05 PM EST Expand All History
Post #384,366 by Another Scott 12/18/13 12:16:50 PM Reply	Ok. And there's probably a good recent example of that... http://bangordailyne...one-call-records/ Posted Sept. 26, 2013, at 7:41 a.m. WASHINGTON Â The head of the National Security Agency delivered a vigorous defense Wednesday of his agencyÂs collection of AmericansÂ phone records for counterterrorism purposes, saying the program was helpful in investigations of the Boston Marathon bombing and the suspected plots against U.S. diplomatic outposts this summer. ÂIt provides us the speed and agility in crises, like the Boston Marathon tragedy in April and the threats this summer,Â Gen. Keith Alexander said at the Billington Cybersecurity Summit, a gathering of business and government officials. AlexanderÂs address follows calls by some leading lawmakers to end the program because of concerns that it invades AmericansÂ privacy without having proven its value as a counterterrorism tool. In a brief interview after his talk, Alexander said the program did not help identify the Boston suspects, brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev. But he said that by using the database of domestic phone call records, the NSA was able to determine that fears about a follow-up attack in New York City were unfounded. That's probably a clear example of "ex post facto", er, evidence. It's not an ex post facto law though. Should the NSA or other 3 letter agency be able to have such data on hand to allow quick searches in an emergency? Maybe, maybe not. I think it's reasonable to assume that such data exists, and will continue to exist with or without the NSA. And it's reasonable to assume that court orders requiring whoever has that data to give it up to law enforcement will also continue to exist. Perhaps at a moment's notice - computers do continue to get faster and more capable after all. Are we really safer or freer if the NSA can get the data instantly from Verizon (after a court order) as opposed to getting it instantly from their own server farm in Utah (after satisfying various national security requirements)? The only difference, it seems to me, is that people with different badges might be tempted to break (likely) similar privacy and access rules to access it. I haven't been convinced. Some have proposed that there be some sort of wall between the data that's collected and access to it. It seems to me that there is already a wall (the rules, laws and procedures), but maybe it needs to be thicker or higher. Having more people in the way between the data and the investigators might make things safer, but they might also increase the risk of unauthorized disclosure (witness Snowden). Oh, and IIRC, the NSA can only keep the metadata for 5 years, so rest easy. ;-) FWIW. Cheers, Scott.
Post #384,369 by pwhysall 12/18/13 12:36:59 PM Reply	Aw, come on. This is weaselling. They're reading your damn email. If someone invented a machine that could steam open paper mail, scan the contents, and re-seal it without trace, you know damn well the NSA would have the USPS install one in every sorting office in America. It's illegal. It's unconstitutional. They know it, and they know you know it, and they know you know there's not a damn thing you can do about it. Because no judge, no politician and no President is gonna stand up and fight when the opposition will go "bu-bu-bu THE TERRORISTS! WHY DO YOU HATE AMERICA SO MUCH!?" Your acquiescence is a bit depressing.
Post #384,372 by Another Scott 12/18/13 12:54:48 PM Reply	<sigh> Their biggest problem is separating the wheat from the chaff. Why would they want to intentionally add yottabytes of extraneous stuff to their servers when it is outside their mission? They have to get their funding from Congress - the NSA doesn't create money out of thin air. If they are intentionally storing stuff that is not part of their mission, then they are using money and resources that should be used for other things (thereby not doing that work and risking all sorts of bad things) and not doing the things that they should be doing (thereby risking all sorts of bad things). They aren't hoovering up the Internet because they feel like it, playing around like kids at Wonka's factory. The USPS logs all mail in its system - http://www.nytimes.c...il-mail.html?_r=0 Mr. Pickering was targeted by a longtime surveillance system called mail covers, a forerunner of a vastly more expansive effort, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, in which Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States Â about 160 billion pieces last year. It is not known how long the government saves the images. Together, the two programs show that postal mail is subject to the same kind of scrutiny that the National Security Agency has given to telephone calls and e-mail. The mail covers program, used to monitor Mr. Pickering, is more than a century old but is still considered a powerful tool. At the request of law enforcement officials, postal workers record information from the outside of letters and parcels before they are delivered. (Opening the mail would require a warrant.) The information is sent to the law enforcement agency that asked for it. Tens of thousands of pieces of mail each year undergo this scrutiny. Are they "snooping" on all of us? No. Is it unconstitutional? No. Is it overbroad and are there insufficient safeguards? Maybe, maybe not. The NSA doesn't read everyone's e-mails. They don't have enough money, enough people, enough time to do that. It's outside their mission. It's a distraction. I assume you're just as outraged at GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 and have let your MP know about it? https://www.mi5.gov....q/mi5-or-mi6.aspx <sigh> What I find outrageous is that we have people in Congress who have helped destroy the world economy, and that continue to fight sensible policies to lessen the suffering of people, and that refuse to work on the important problems that are facing our nation and the planet. This NSA-outrage stuff is small beans. FWIW. Cheers, Scott.
Post #384,374 by pwhysall 12/18/13 1:08:24 PM Reply	Scott, here's how they get around all that THEY LIE. They lie like a cheap rug, all the time, about everything. Clapper lied to Congress, and nothing happened. I don't know how you can possibly trust anything they say. If the director of the NSA said that the sun will rise tomorrow morning, I'd get a second opinion.
Post #384,380 by drook 12/18/13 1:35:05 PM Reply	That argument I'm sympathetic to What I find outrageous is that we have people in Congress who have helped destroy the world economy, and that continue to fight sensible policies to lessen the suffering of people, and that refuse to work on the important problems that are facing our nation and the planet. This NSA-outrage stuff is small beans. The sudden outrage by the same people who passed all this stuff, now that it's being used by a secret Muslim atheist Marxist socialist Nazi is almost enough to get me to totally discount it. Almost. -- Drew
Post #384,381 by Another Scott 12/18/13 1:36:38 PM Reply	:-)
Post #384,376 by a6l6e6x 12/18/13 1:14:58 PM Reply	Meanwhile, in 1941, the Brits in Bermuda... Miss Gardner was part of a small team of examiners who secretly went through mail that came in diplomatic pouches. The team were experts at what they termed ÂchamferingÂ. They could steam open letters, usually with a little kettle, and reseal them. They could also unwrap packages encased in a web of twine, examine the contents, and then put everything back as though the contents were never disturbed. http://www.royalgaze...SLAND01/710049995 As mentioned in the reference, USA after entering the war, took over examining all transatlantic mail. Hey, it's not on US soil! I got to see some pictures of this operation on a cruise to Bermuda. Alex
Post #384,388 by Ashton 12/18/13 6:55:56 PM Reply	J'Accuse..! that you are failing to emotionally comprehend the exponential function, both as Has occurred/yet worse! and manifestly: about the Futchah. (And yet: You Know all that math/physics stuff intellectually..) That isn't enough in a homo-sap milieu. [There are bookshelves-bursting-full: replete with Examples of a Prime Fact] We Know that all organization-employees Lie, some more/more often than others--starting with The (any..) President (as nexus for all the options.. that s/he's ... actually.. been tipped-to) Pollyanna Lives!!1ONE1! ... ... Et tu, Brute?
Post #384,392 by Another Scott 12/18/13 7:56:01 PM Reply	That's why the people working there matter. It's not the mathematics or exponential functions or Moore's law. Bertie had a few things to say about mathematics... http://www.brainyquo...randru402437.html ;-) It's not the server and sensor technology. It's not the size of the budget. It's not the press coverage that resulted from Snowden's leaks. It's not the organizations that are on one side or another in making their arguments. What really matters in this NSA stuff is the people. The people working there, the people doing oversight, and the people requesting information from them, the people writing the rules. You want the best people you can get working there in the trenches, and the best managers you can get directing them and looking over their shoulders. You want the best people you can get on the courts deciding sensible solutions when arguments are made about the law. And you want the best people you can get writing the laws in the first place. "But! But! People are flawed! People can't be trusted! You should be outraged!!!111" Sorry. Outrage and emotional thinking leads to things like the Patriot Act. It leads to bad laws and bad long-term solutions. It distracts people from important issues. Let's look over the report that was released today and see if changes they suggest make sense. Let's see if the proposed changes change the structure of the NSA in a way that eliminates the possibility of "snooping" on Americans, or whether there are instead modest tweaks or changes in process. I expect modest changes, and I expect Obama will have sensible things to say about them in January when he announces what changes he will make and propose to Congress. It gets tiring, to me anyway, to have so many issues apparently driven by outrage. I can only cope with so many demands that I be outraged per month. We point and laugh at people who get outraged about Obama's birth certificate or invasion by illegal aliens or Benghazi or Healthcare.gov or Kony 2012 or ... It seems to me that some who don't get worked about those things but get riled up about the NSA are suffering from (or perhaps blessed by) the same affliction. (I considered posting something about Snowden's and Greenwald's various posts on various issues over the years to further illustrate the point, but this is long enough as it is...) FWIW. Cheers, Scott.
Post #384,397 by boxley 12/18/13 9:18:12 PM Reply	need an James Angleton If I didn't dislike DC so much I would do it 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 #384,399 by Ashton 12/18/13 10:24:27 PM Reply	Fair. enough. (Emotionally comprehend does not at-all imply any Rage--that has other roots.) That state-of-mind merely adds-in to the intellectual Work: the wisdom-gleaned from [whatever soupçon of that Ideal has managed to diffuse-into all life experience], as one seeks some practicable next course of action--as I comprehend that phrase by E. Teller. Indeed.. now we have this Report (which I have yet to peruse--as thoroughly as it seems at all Seriously-done.) Next, we have All the political and other forces, their effects and BHO's Buck: Stopping Here. (We also have these matters allegedly bubbling-up towards the USSC and the possibility of that Third of the Govt. performing a lateral arabesque: so the confluence of these Two 'Deciders' is what awaits; USSC might decide to butt-in Before or After BHO--right? Thanks for your always sane words, the time/effort behind same. I know that we both assign more than token-importance to 'future effects' of these pending doings/Decisions--but I am 100% with-you in your earlier fine sentence re what our 'Solons' Ought to be considering! instead of the trivial BS with which so many are obsessed, thus paralyzed. IMO, the absence of Purpose, of apparent competence even--to focus on the truly-Vital! is a sound-enough reason for quite healthy-Rage: but not an excuse to become Rage Boy and fulminate perpetually about each absurdity. (Still, as the List grows longer of, simply, governance-Work!, evaded-by-clowns--rage is likely a continuing companion to the thoughtful-slice of the pie chart.) Maybe a crucial failure of the species is ~ our inability to force perpetual-adolescents to strive for adulthood. May January find for us at least a momentary exception to this sordid record. Statistically: even by accident would do; it's been a l o n g - r u n of unremitting Idiocy-personified: >9/11/01 I will even light a Special candle--would Witchcraft help? widdershins? Shooting-up a case of CoorsÂ horse-piss with a machine gun?
Post #384,402 by Another Scott 12/18/13 10:51:09 PM Reply	Thanks. I'll keep thinking about these things...

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