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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

#221

Post by gnaritas »

ams6110 wrote: post #137
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.

Worse, there a difference in philosophy about what is or isn't a problem, which is where most of the issues lie.

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

#222

Post by gnaritas »

mchmch wrote: post #87
Angostura wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You neglected to add those all important words "wake up sheeple". You're making extraordinary claims regarding the parallels with the Reichtag fire. I won't ask for extraordinary evidence, just reasonable evidence.

How about 1500+ experts including Registered Architects, Structural Engineers, Scientists, etc who are willing to go on camera and agree that there is no way the official story 9/11 is possible. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBCu_pvhnzQ

1500 is a meaningless number without knowing how many are on the otherside. If 1500 represents 1% of qualified expert opinion, then it's not very convincing.

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

#224

Post by jeisc »

ams6110 wrote: post #131
bryanlarsen wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Saddam was planning to sell his oil only in euros and bush and company could not stand for that.

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

#226

Post by tripzilch »

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…

> If this is true doesn't it mean that Bin Laden won the war on terror?

in all fairness, it's not like the American people put up much of a fight ...

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

#227

Post by rictic »

mkjones wrote: post #20
rictic wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not quite that bad. Even with a compromised certificate authority, it's not an invisible attack to do a man in the middle and inject their own certificate. Someone knowledgable could notice this discrepancy and raise a stink. Furthermore, Chrome (and soon Firefox) ships some known certificates for privacy important widely used sites (e.g. the major webmail services, torproject, etc) which prevents even this atta…

I think it's only a handful of certificats that are pinned (they call it "HSTS preloading" here: http://www.imperialviolet.org/2011/05/04/pinning.html ). While this does include gmail and some other Google properties, it doesn't seem to include any other major webmail services. Check out http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome/trunk/src/net/base/tra... for the list of what's in there (linked to indirectly from http://d…

Ah dang, for some reason I thought that hotmail and y!mail were in there too. It looks like there's a commitment (which CAs you'll allow to sign your cert) that's needed from the site owner for HSTS to work. I hope they get in there one way or another soon.

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

#228

Post by treelovinhippie »

boronine wrote: post #168
treelovinhippie wrote: post #89

I think soon people will realize that the only defense against this kind of data collection (and it's subsequent uses - which grow more powerful everyday) is to record your own life and know the same (if not more than) what governments and corporations know about you.

How will that work as a defense?

Record your entire life (everything). Encrypt and store the data. Workout some way for data scientists to anonymously and securely experiment on the data such that privacy is maintained and the data remains in your control and ownership.

The idea is that there are big companies out there now (including the government) that have huge databases of information on you, and they've been working hard for many years now in the background to find useful patterns in the data in order to sell-to/manipulate/control you.

If you can do the same research with your own data, you can know in advance (or catch-up to) what those companies already know about you. With that knowledge, you could perhaps develop something like an anti-malware application for "you".

So if sometime in the future, you begin seeing very targeted ads that begin manipulating your purchasing behaviour or even manipulating your opinions and thoughts... then the system could notice these attacks and warn you (because it knows your data, your interests and your weaknesses).

The end-game of what these companies are doing is to have so much data on individuals (and the distribution channels), that they are able to subtly manipulate and program their minds without the individual even noticing.

If you know the algorithms they've discovered within your data, you can protect your mind.

Anyway, that's just one advantage. I'm working on a startup now that does this.

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