111–120 of 157 posts
This is part of why the ACLU, EFF and NRA are the institutions I'm most in favor of donating to. The encroachment of civil liberties, increasingly intrusive actions from our own government and the like are getting pretty rediculous.
> ACLU, EFF and NRA I consider my neighbour being able to own an assault rifle as an encroachment of my civil liberties.
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It boggles my mind that post-Snowden people still think it's not possible for people to keep quiet about such things, I mean even Apple is able to maintain an enormous amount of privacy of things going on behind closed doors, the idea that one single person being blackmailed and not saying anything about it is difficult to believe.....I dunno.
What did Snowden change about any of this? The programs Snowden revealed were so well-known --- many of them having been reported in the press prior to Snowden's leaks --- that you can find them alluded to in the first edition of Applied Cryptography, back in the 1990s. Were you surprised by the Snowden leaks? Even after AT&T and Room 641a?
I'm still puzzled why so few people cared. In today's techno-social climate, it should go like hot cakes.
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I don't think that. I think DOJ and NSAs true priority is "maximize headcount".
To be clear: do you mean maximizing the headcount of the USA, i.e., preventing domestic deaths? Or (more likely) do you mean empire building in the sense of increasing the size and power of their own organizations?
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> ACLU, EFF and NRA I consider my neighbour being able to own an assault rifle as an encroachment of my civil liberties.
Cool, you must be OK with your friendly trustworthy government controlling and using far more devastating means to commit war crimes then.
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Cool, you must be OK with your friendly trustworthy government controlling and using far more devastating means to commit war crimes then.
I think you are confusing two issues here, but yes, I am happy for the government to have a monopoly on assault rifles, tanks, missiles and artillery.
This is part of why the ACLU, EFF and NRA are the institutions I'm most in favor of donating to. The encroachment of civil liberties, increasingly intrusive actions from our own government and the like are getting pretty rediculous.
> ACLU, EFF and NRA I consider my neighbour being able to own an assault rifle as an encroachment of my civil liberties.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The bad thing is that the reputation of the FBI and other such agencies is now such that an analogy with the Hoover days can no longer be rejected out of hand 'because they'd never do such a thing'. Not only that but when someone's life is as public as a politician - and their career dependent on that credibility - it takes far less than Hoover-era style blackmail to ruin such a person. So even if the FBI is no lon…
You're giving the FBI a whole lot of credit for their ability to orchestrate what would be one of the great conspiracies of the last 100 years: despite the fractious nature of modern politics, with politicians charging through revolving doors of office and then lobbying jobs all the while accusing the sitting President of being a traitor or even a foreign agent, not one of these attempts at blackmail has ever been br…
For example, those being blackmailed might not know or have any proof that it's FBI who's blackmailing them. The FBI of course has endless opportunities of plausible deniability, starting with "rogue contractor".
It all boils down to incentives: what exactly do you have to win from disclosing? What is the chance that people will believe you given that you have no evidence? And what would you even expect your audience to do about it? And how does that scenario compare to the worst that your blackmailer is willing to do?
It would be fairly easy for someone with the power of the FBI to rig the subject's incentives heavily in their favor, and to only pursue blackmail on subjects where they are fairly certain of success. At some point of proficiency a casual observer might not be able to distinguish it from lobbying!
We don't know if these things happen or not, but they're entirely possible. Stranger things have been leaked and declassified over the years.