About that head-crawling thing..

Post #377,814 by Ashton 7/9/13 4:08:56 PM Reply	About that head-crawling thing.. Scott, you are a nice person--neither sarcasm nor cynicism remotely intended in that comment. I (or anyone not-you) can have no possible way of knowing the limits of Your imagination, that is to say --the extent that you Can..? imagine those thoughts we usually summarize as: The Dark Side. Most of our hints re. Others' Dark Sides come from fiction [ Smiley's People etc. etc. for the tales told by virtuosi of the calibre of an Alec Guinness (in the PBS version.) ] (There have been n books since Abu Ghraib, one of which is, American Torture [Michael Otterman] from ~'07. Recall skimming that at local lib. I may.. have first seen something on Mitrione in that, re. his 'teachings' in Uruguay [I tend to recall odd-names + odd-countries better than most other things.] This man was quite a Piece of Work--I conclude.) Point is: I've found in my travels that some folks simply Cannot (actually!) "imagine" the depravity that, for some others is a constant companion. I'm betting that this 28 yo fledgling do-gooder just Maybe Can extrapolate from--either within his own psyche, or via vivid tales from others: the now proven depravity of a Soo--and all who sail in her--and all the hangers-on who Love playing Spook. And he { wisely } fears that he wouldn't survive, either: A) The medieval contents + inhuman isolation 23/7 of the modern transistorized Bastilles of the US or, B) more directly, and an equivalent set of horrors: much sooner vengeance; sooner, but maybe not-so-quick, see? Do you See? C) Likely there IS no C: "serve time as a normal prisoner"--whatever That means in '13, amidst the highest %incarcerated of any Rich country extant. And angling for yet more funds. Lastly, if you imagine that the Labeled-core missions of the NSA and the [n+50ish?] 'agencies' so secret that their Names are [Classified] ... are All ye Need to Know about 'operations' and actual activities within / under the aegis of these Congressionally funded orgs? Then I respectfully suggest that you have yet to gauge the depravity of Messrs. Soo/Cheney et al, and the deeper 'capabilities' of some of their 'technicians'. Who Love their 'work'. I'm willing to bet that these and (probably better-informed) other examples of The Trade are known to this young person, and that his imagination is likely more experience-based than yours. So I'll cut him more slack than you are wont to do, here. He is not worried about the 'legal'/or its pseudo-logic; I believe he worries about the utterly irrational.. vengeful possibilities. (I Know.. what I Would/would-not Do, were I a candidate to be on any One of those minions' laser-dot sights. And assuredly it would not be to rely, as far as I could throw a cubic foot of depleted-Uranium--upon the Murican 'justice' system 2013.) As Obama hews increasingly towards bot-like behavior as results, de-facto, in (as Rand commented) a policy which equals==blow a Whistle? Get max-slammer-time, no matter what--BECAUSE you crossed >ME<, you.. >you< QUESTIONED MY AUTHORITY, you disgusting retread '60s-Hippie scum ... As He Goes There, I Go: Okay, mofo, you have exceeded Geo. Bush-Cheney-light and are now fully-into [Whatever words describe the asymptote of] accelerating totalitarian Uniformity/homogenization of the masses], via "fine weaseling Words" followed by Actions precisely emulating George W. ['I don't believe in 'Nation-building'.] Whatever fanciful musings attended BHO's near-coronation-Then: and the vacillations, unfathomable reticence /inaction in face of far-Rightful, premeditated obstructionism--Successfully Carried Out! --the sigma of that-all, probably means that No One next, with anything like an educated-Intelligence (?) shall ever get within spitting-distance of that Oval place, for what..? a generation? (If the place is even recognizable in that near-future.) Sorry, but I too must demur: simply, IMO, the kid means Not-to get gang-raped and eviscerated/conveniently anonymously. the %population in US jails, the %pop [at astronomical annual $Bs] now employed at-high-salaries in 'security'Tvia any other rubric --these constitute so obvious a trend that you don't need to read It Can't Happen Here (as most in US have not.) Migawd it's 77 fucking-years-Old! It's Happening Here, now and next. (Who Cares about that hoary ancient-wisdom stuff any more?) And there's no video [yet..] Now.. were I a Banker who had created $Bs of recursively-worthless Junk CDOs / ruined many lives ... ¡No es una probléma! er, USA.. USA.. USA.. USA..
Post #377,823 by Another Scott 7/9/13 7:55:15 PM Reply	Thanks, but... I've seen my share of the dark side of humanity, too. I may be too trusting, but I didn't just fall off the turnip truck. :-) (No slight intended.) I have no illusions about how the technology and the collected information could be misused. And I have no illusions that there are people at Ft. Meade and elsewhere who have broken the rules and spied on people (or tried to) in illegal ways at some time or other. I just don't see that it could happen the way Greenwald and Snowden describe given the limitations of current technology and the vast mountains of data out there. If you have a few minutes, look at some of the comments at Balloon-Juice. I find these compelling - YMMV, of course :-) http://www.balloon-j.../#comment-4525827 http://www.balloon-j.../#comment-4525855 http://www.balloon-j.../#comment-4525896 That strikes me as the reality of the situation. If enough people get riled up about this NSA system, it will be changed. It would be nice if the changes were a reasonable reaction to concerns based on facts and actual abuses or short-comings. But if too many people get riled up about things that aren't facts or aren't abuses and it causes changes that make things worse but satisfy the screaming, then Snowden's and Greenwald's actions will have hurt their cause, and the cause of everyone who cares about sensible policies. As Martin said in the first link, to control the ability of governments to collect private information, the only solution is policy. There is no technological fix. And policy depends on trust: citizens have to believe that the policy is being followed and that the policy is fair. If the policy is sensible but people don't believe it, then it won't work. So we need to know what the policy is and have a sensible debate about whether it needs to be changed or scrapped. But even with good policies, there are times when the bad people on the inside will only be stopped after the fact. I'm not naive about that. Taking at face value the comments of a young guy who has had wild swings of opinion ("people who disclose classified information should be shot in the nuts"/"I don't believe I have done anything wrong"), who vastly inflate their own importance ("I made close to $200k a year"/"I could wiretap the President of the United States"), and so forth, is a step I'm unwilling to take. He may simply be a flawed messenger, but his story about the nearly all-powerful NSA spying on everyone for $20M a year (the PRISM slide) doesn't pass the smell test for me. But I'm repeating myself. :-) You've worked in a high-tech publicly-funded organization. You know how slowly things move; you know that most people there don't see the big picture and that nobody knows how all the pieces work together (let alone some young guy who's been there a few months). You know how easy it is for PowerPoint presentations to obfuscate and to be misinterpreted even when no deception is intended (Tufte's examples). There's lots of reasons why Snowden's story could be different from reality. Maybe I'm wrong and Snowden and Greenwald have done a great service to us and the NSA has been spying on all of us individually and S&G will have managed to stop us all from being rounded up and sent to Guantanamo were we to step out of line. Maybe. We'll see. Thanks again. :-) Cheers, Scott.
Post #377,825 by Ashton 7/9/13 10:12:01 PM 7/9/13 10:40:11 PM Reply	'Twixt the 3, plus other samples: concur on several Indeed the bloon-juice folk have pretty-well parsed the range of possibilities. Probably the most incisive word found here--Martin's policy comment--is a large clue re. the achievable limits of public confidence -vs- effectiveness for the snoops. And yes, this guy Is unlovely--at 29 he should have outgrown the salary-brag and the wiretap-the-prez ploy. It's possible that he fits your emphases, and was? is? more interested in Self-adoration than in awakening the slumbering. OTOH: it looks--already--as if the Play has, maybe for the first Serious-time: successfully galvanized an authentic effort (just promised/not yet actual) of BHO et al to spell-out the Plan, the trade-offs.. via Public airing/contemplation of all the factors (amidst that tiny minority who ever delve at all.) 'We' don't Do that very well, if at all-- but as with the query of the US Prez [ Failsafe ] of the Premiere, after agreeing to nuke NYC: ..unless you can think that the gesture alone is.. sufficient???. (We know how that went.) This factoid alone, IMO can somewhat ameliorate his insouciance or vanity--perhaps enough that, along with this Public disclosure, there just might be tacked-on: Something intelligent re. Actual pukka Whistle-blowers, acknowledging that--in a society already infinitely-complex, homo-sap error and duplicity Shall Occur Regularly. ie We Need those suckers, even the unlovely ones. So then--there should be Publicly-discussed New RulesÂ on this agenda, concerning the Next {inevitable} Leaks. As it's a crap-shoot whether this guy's Valuable contribution outweighs his faults [what 'New' intel did he give the Russo-Chinese former-axis, of any consequence??] I declare then: it's a tie! re. what the fate of this guy 'ought' to be / (were there any Real 'justice' remaining in our current System.) Just another Morality Play, I wot. Ed: Bonus! from the firedoggers.. Denunciation of the Firebaggers and Shaming of the Obots Is that from The Rite of Spring? Edited by Ashton July 9, 2013, 10:40:11 PM EDT Expand All History
Post #377,826 by boxley 7/9/13 10:19:51 PM Reply	hurt what cause pass a law that if you dig into peoples private shit without a warrant you go to jail. Identify a suspect, convince a judge you have cause then ask for private data to be collected from the companies that hold the data. Done. If your argument is that several thousand people will die in attacks, thats the price of not living with the stazi police state. You do realize that the FUCKING GERMANS have a problem with what we are doing to our own people? 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 #377,836 by drook 7/10/13 9:58:50 AM Reply	LRPD I posted a little while back fits here I'd rather be wrong occasionally than live in fear and be right occasionally. -- Drew

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