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NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

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Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#111

Post by talmand »

wu-ikkyu wrote: post #95
yostrovs wrote: post #89

The word "Obama" is mentioned only once within the 81 comments so far posted...

Why is this worth noting? The surveillance state is far bigger than any one person and has been operating clandestinely for decades.

Maybe because the title and bulk of the article directly attributes the problems discussed to Obama and his administration? That the ability to abuse such things was made easier during his term? The problem may be bigger than any one person, but that doesn't mean we don't discuss their possible role in that problem.

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#113

Post by scaryspooky »

captainmuon wrote: post #97
lmm wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do I do, as someone who cares? No, seriously. Should I throw a bit more money at the EFF? Start my own political party, or enter an existing one and try to steer it in my direction? Try to get employed by one of these organizations and then promote a better understanding of their mission internally? Move to another country where people care more (which?) Identifying the problem is a good first step, but what can…

Start a revolution. I'm only half joking. I think we can't solve these problems within the current political and economical and system. We have to found a new radical political movement. A lot of the problems we face: the crisis of representational democracy, populism, unemployment, xenophobia, the surveillance state, terrorism, ... cannot be solved individually, but I believe must be fixed simultaneously. We got to…

> the crisis of representational democracy

This is only a crisis if you're the loser, though, which seems a bit like sour grapes.

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#114

Post by skybrian »

Sven-z wrote: post #52
endymi0n wrote: post #11

I think the most dangerous thing is that what Snowden predicted actually happened by now. After all the revelations, nobody is interested anymore. There's this general fatigue and powerlessness that leads to a feeling of "well, yeah, everbody knows by now... what's the news here?" - even for me as a security expert and privacy proponent. The real danger is nobody cares anymore, as this enables all further constitutio…

What do you mean nobody cares anymore? This is a very strange notion I see propping up more and more in people's minds, as they get overloaded with information they don't know what to do with. There are lots of very experienced people and resources allocated to this problem across the world working on it round the clock. But this is a hard problem. It's going to take multiple generations to achieve a mature resolutio…

I think it's less that nobody cares and more that there are so many things to care about and it's not clear what's worthwhile. Most of the suggestions people make are more-or-less symbolic.

It seems to me that outside elections, either being a lawyer or supporting the people who are has the most impact.

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#115

Post by [deleted] »

Sven-z wrote: post #52
endymi0n wrote: post #11

I think the most dangerous thing is that what Snowden predicted actually happened by now. After all the revelations, nobody is interested anymore. There's this general fatigue and powerlessness that leads to a feeling of "well, yeah, everbody knows by now... what's the news here?" - even for me as a security expert and privacy proponent. The real danger is nobody cares anymore, as this enables all further constitutio…

What do you mean nobody cares anymore? This is a very strange notion I see propping up more and more in people's minds, as they get overloaded with information they don't know what to do with. There are lots of very experienced people and resources allocated to this problem across the world working on it round the clock. But this is a hard problem. It's going to take multiple generations to achieve a mature resolutio…

[deleted]

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#116

Post by coldtea »

cxromos wrote: post #76
coldtea wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I call Bullshit on you. The one of the product of that excellent education system was Milosevic as well. Serbia with Milosevic started the last Balkan Wars in its desire to renew Dusan's Empire, or in common tongue, to make a greater Serbia. Rather that's the party line. Because other sides weren't angels either, and a lot of the atrocities/stories pilled on the Serbian side were manufactured BS. http://www.counter…

There's nothing about those wars that you can teach me, nor the idiot from the link posted.

Being directly involved (if that's what you mean by "can't teach me") doesn't help for more partial/accurate views.

The exact same answer as yours could be given by anybody on the other side as well.

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#117

Post by wtf_is_up »

mtgx wrote: post #19

So who's going to prison over these "illegal searches"? Oh, let me guess - nobody, because intelligence agencies seem to always be above the law?

Government oversight is a joke. You don't even have to obey subpoenas to show up to testify, as we saw with Bryan Pagliano.

[1]: http://observer.com/2016/09/not-a-single-democrat-held-clint...

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#118

Post by talmand »

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #48
ff10 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're exactly describing the reason why there is checks and balances. "People in power" is supposed to be a heterogenous group with different interests and formal functions. Your post suggests that it doesn't work properly in your country anymore. I wonder where exactly one could pinpoint the weak spots and systemic issues.

IMO the weak spot is that there's only one executive branch, and they have discretion over whether to enforce the law in any given case. They can choose not to arrest themselves, or prosecute themselves. If the system were structured with two executive branches, each of which had the power to enforce the law against members of the opposition executive branch, and a sense of opposition / competition could be maintaine…

Except now we'll have two executive branches with even more power that will secretly agree to work together against the other branches.

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#119

Post by coldtea »

marksomnian wrote: post #91
coldtea wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They'll start caring again about privacy when people start being dragged out of their homes in the middle of the night for participating in protests, not just against the government, but against large corporations, too. They still will not, since it will be others, and a small minority, that does that and gets dragged, etc. The problem is that a society that stifles those small minorities (from labor activists in e…

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Something like that.

Although this perhaps shows a society split into various fractions (jews, blacks, trade unionists, gays, etc), and each fraction is taken one by one, until it's time they come to get the author's fraction. I.e. everybody eventually gets "taken".

Whereas in my example, it's more a society that has a small amount of people who work for change, and they are the ones that get "put away"/stopped.

In this latter case, nobody explicitly comes to "get/put away" the majority. Their lives just deteriorate (worse laws, more discrimination, etc.) and they don't even know why.

Re: NSA secretly conducted illegal searches on Americans for years

#120

Post by talmand »

mlindner wrote: post #6
foobarbazetc wrote: post #2

Pleass stop posting circa trash.

Agreed. Impossible to read, horrible broken UI (pagination, really?). Fonts too large. Too much white space.

So, since the experience is bad it invalidates the information provided? Most information from the government comes to us in the form of simple documents, I guess we ignore that information as well?
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