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Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen

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Re: Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen

#131

Post by ams6110 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #109
sigzero wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clinton would have done the same. 9/11 was much different than the attacks in the 90s.

Clinton would have attacked Afghanistan, sure. But would he have stayed in Afghanistan and/or attacked Iraq? Those are the two items that have cost dearly.

There were two big reasons reasons the US went into Iraq. One was Saddam Hussein and WMD. Everyone believed that he had them, and it's a matter of fact that he had used them in the past. Though they were never found, it's not illogical to believe that he was simply able to move them elsewhere or destroy them before they were discovered. And taking out his regime would remove a large destabilizing factor in that part of the world (in theory anyway).

The other reason was to create a local distraction. To keep "the terrorists" occupied, their violence and attacks confined to that part of the world, and not in the US. In that sense, they "fell for it" too.

If the public need for "revenge" had been satisfied by attacking Afghanistan, I think Clinton would have stopped there. He was not a risk-taker, and he was totally driven by polls.

Re: Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen

#132

Post by accountswu »

kamaal wrote: post #80
bobsy wrote: post #27

If this is true doesn't it mean that Bin Laden won the war on terror? Every time I go to the airport I think this. Those full body scanners? Thanks to Bin Laden, now you practically get strip searched for every flight. You have to take off your shoes. You cannot take drinks on a plane. You then have everyone on edge no matter where you go. You and a friend play CounterStrike. You get on the bus and start talking abou…

Muslim here. I never understood both sides and their actions. I mean I find both Islamic fundamentalism and American actions all round globe both equally dumb. I don't think OBL ever had it as an explicit aim to pull down US militarily or culturally transform US into a Islamic state. That is impossible, and I assume somebody like him already understood that. I guess his aim was to drag US into a war and then reduce t…

Responding to update glanch that his profile is probably marked as a spammer and all comments made by him are greyed out (he probably is seeing them ok.

Begin quote:

glanch 35 minutes ago | link [dead]

"Fell for it"?

It's easy to "fall for it" when you are in the position to make a LOT of money for that fall. Cheney. Halliburton. Exclusive government contracts. Sickening.

Re: Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen

#133

Post by rglover »

I've always assumed when talking online, over the phone, wherever, that even if they (this is ambiguously referencing the government as a whole) weren't at that moment: someone could listen in if they wanted to. It's surprising to think that people still believe in the existence of total privacy (albeit any form of privacy).

Re: Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen

#134

Post by ams6110 »

rorrr wrote: post #2

Well of course they do. I would be really surprised if they didn't. That's why we should ENCRYPT EVERYTHING possible. Use HTTPS as much as you can.

The problem with encryption is that the data still have to be in the clear at the endpoints to be useful. That's where it'll be nabbed, by surreptitious keyloggers, screen scrapers, filesystem scanners, etc. Decrypting data in transit is still a very difficult if not impossible proposition as far as I know.

Re: Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen

#136

Post by law »

jayfuerstenberg wrote: post #49

Might I suggest having some fun with one's dossier? Like randomly doing the exact opposite of what you would ordinarily do on a daily basis. Here are some ideas... 1. Take the bus instead of driving your car. 2. Buy a pack of cigarettes if you're not a smoker. 3. Buy magazines you would never normally buy. 4. Attend a political meeting of the party you typically oppose. 5. Buy vegetarian food for a week if you're a m…

Apple has a patent on this.[1]

[1] http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sec...

Re: Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen

#137

Post by ams6110 »

beedogs wrote: post #82

I really fucking hate the right wing and its authoritarian ideology. It's like there are two separate and distinct species of people on this planet: those with empathy and compassion for their fellow man, and these kinds of assholes who just want nothing but control. It's one of the reasons I got out of the US. My worry is I won't be allowed to return one day.

You may be (roughly) correct about the two kinds of people, another way of saying that people are either "normal" or "sociopathic." But they don't cleave politically right and left on that basis. And there is plenty of empathy and compassion for one's fellow man on the political right, though there is a difference in philosophy about what helps him and what doesn't.

Re: Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen

#139

Post by KaoruAoiShiho »

kennon wrote: post #115
DanI-S wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should it be considered morally acceptable by those who vote? When have we had the opportunity to vote on it?

I understood mtgx's question to be based on practical grounds, not moral ones. But in answer to your question, I think of espionage as something akin to the military. Perhaps in an ideal world neither would be necessary, but unfortunately the world is not a utopia. Thus, from a realistic standpoint, spying is sort of like doing market research for a startup. It allows you to make predictive decisions instead of react…

I agree with international spying. If the other countries don't allow you that information, you must spy to get that information. A scenario of nations having bad or inaccurate information about other countries, their status and their intentions can make the world a more dangerous place.

However domestic spying seems kind of silly. You should just be able to collect the information you need voluntarily through census and and surveys, without resorting to spying. If they refuse to provide the information, get a warrant.

Re: Whistleblower Binney says the NSA has dossiers on nearly every US citizen

#140

Post by VikingCoder »

Math is fun!

You can buy a 2 TB HD for $99.99 right now.

The population of the United States is 311,591,917.

That's 7057 bytes per citizen, for a penny under a Franklin.

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg in EPUB format, in 2.3 MB.

Therefore, if you wanted to have William Shakespeare write as much text about every single citizen in the United States, as he wrote in all of his Complete Works, you would need 341.74 of those HDs.

Therefore, the raw storage would cost you $34,196.58.

The NSA's annual budget is around $3.6 billion.

Every year, the NSA could buy enough hard drive space to store 105,273 times as much text as the Complete Works of William Shakespeare, on every single U.S. citizen.

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