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Stellar Wind (code name)

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Re: Stellar Wind (code name)

#151

Post by doktrin »

rmc wrote: post #128
demallien wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. I would be very wary of any article claiming that a religious group is preferred by a government because of their righteous lifestyle. It's just so many more opportunities for blackmail. You'd have to screen those candidates so carefully, and you couldn't even do the usual thing of asking their family, friends, neighbours etc, because these are precisely the people they are hiding their quirks from. If you have…

You'd have to screen those candidates so carefully I doubt that's even possible. How do you detect if a candidate is actually homosexual if they've been lying to themselves, their family and friends for decades? They're only homosexual activity might be the odd shame-filled masterbation session every few months, or the rare hook up. All it takes is one of those hook up people to blackmail the candidate.

It sort of depends on the candidate, I would imagine. High level clearance investigations typically involve a polygraph test, for instance.

Re: Stellar Wind (code name)

#152

Post by regehr »

czbond wrote: post #98
regehr wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in SLC and have met quite a few people over the last few years who lost jobs in the financial sector, usually in the NYC area, and subsequently moved to Utah.

I'm from Dallas, and love SLC (an avid outdoors-man). Why have the financial types you've run into said they've moved? Curious

They're just following the financial jobs!

I wasn't much of an outdoors person before moving to Utah and really, really like that stuff now too.

Re: Stellar Wind (code name)

#154

Post by anigbrowl »

jbooth wrote: post #115
ck2 wrote: post #70

On December 15th 2005, Barack Obama viciously denounced this and the Patriot Act. Which he now supports in the fullest.

Yeah, he deserves some big hypocrisy points on that. But where are the Republicans on this issue? After what feels like about 300 years of them calling Obama a fascist who's trying to turn America into the USSR every day, what do we hear from them when soviet-type stuff actually happens on his watch? Nothing. They're too busy with Benghazi and other non-scandals.

Who do you think put the Patriot act into place to begin with? At the time the GOP not only held the White House, but both houses of Congress. Among the first things they did on obtaining legislative control in late 1994 was start work on rewriting immigration law - resulting legislation so draconian that experienced criminal lawyers are often floored by its provisions when they have occasion to study it.

For example, an alien with a criminal record who is unable to prove their right to be present in the US on the spot can be detained incommunicado for six months before being entitled to any kind of hearing. This is a step forward; until a few months ago, the government was able to detain said alien indefinitely: http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=9721558833419753...

Bear in mind that the President is sworn to uphold the laws as they are, even when he disagrees with them; his powers are far more circumscribed by Congress than most people appreciate, viz. Obama's oft-repeated desire to close Guantanamo, which has gone nowhere because Congress won't authorize funds for setting up detention facilities on the mainland. It's not so much the case that Obama wants to know who you were calling last Tuesday as that he's supposed to maximize the government's legislated powers to defend the US from attack. If he ordered the NSA to suspend this sort of intelligence-gathering and subsequently a terrorist attack took place that could supposedly have been prevented, he'd be impeached. The whole Benghazi thing is arguably an effort to build momentum for impeachment, IMHO - if the GOP gained supermajority control of the Senate the current House would draft articles of impeachment in a heartbeat.

Re: Stellar Wind (code name)

#155

Post by [deleted] »

cdwhite wrote: post #60
[deleted] wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

Kemal. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v30/n17/perry-anderson/kemalism . I feel that "dictator", while technically accurate, doesn't have quite the right connotation---his rule didn't have the same totalitarian nature that those of Stalin, Hitler, Hussein, Castro, the Kims, etc. do/did to varying extents. (Or maybe I'm being oversensitive to questions of connotation.)

[deleted]

Re: Stellar Wind (code name)

#156

Post by dorian-graph »

demallien wrote: post #119
rmc wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversely a certain subset of Mormons are going to be very vulnerable to a certain type of attack that the regular (incl. more liberal subsets of) population would not be vulnerable to. A gay mormon (which is just as common as a gay catholic, or a gay atheist) will be likely to be in the closet. They would probably be ostracised by family and friends if they were outed, lots of people in the general community would…

Yup. I would be very wary of any article claiming that a religious group is preferred by a government because of their righteous lifestyle. It's just so many more opportunities for blackmail. You'd have to screen those candidates so carefully, and you couldn't even do the usual thing of asking their family, friends, neighbours etc, because these are precisely the people they are hiding their quirks from. If you have…

I'm a Mormon though not from Utah.

You still need to understand the Mormon culture and church more so. I'm not sure what you mean by being excluded (Excommunicated, shunned, offended?) isn't absolute, in fact, no one really is excluded from the church as all are forever welcome (Some extreme edge cases aside) back. This is in an ideal situation and I know that in some locations that maybe a local leader or some local members because of lack of experience, their own mistakes or whatever don't truly welcome and help someone return. I'm also curious what are some of the minor infractions that were induce someone being excluded from the Mormon community..

Not all Mormons hide everything from their family, friends and leaders. We're encouraged to do the opposite, actually, in appropriateness and relativeness especially so when it's something quite bad which are the things someone would be blackmailed about. You wouldn't go blackmailing someone because he didn't read the Ensign every month which is something a Mormon probably wouldn't really bother telling anyone.

Also, someone who is a Mormon probably has fewer things to be blackmailed about—lewd pictures, drunken mistakes, egregious offenses to others and the law, hidden relationships (Sexual or otherwise), etc. are not things we seek out, instead, we actively avoid those things and not only actions but locations (Bars, night clubs, etc.) where more embarrassing/illegal things tend to happen. This is based on what I've seen and learnt throughout my life and I'm not pretending that these are any great or completely accurate comments, simply some postulations.

Re: Stellar Wind (code name)

#157

Post by dorian-graph »

rollo_tommasi wrote: post #26
JPKab wrote: post #19

My brother worked for years in the intelligence community. One of the common stereotypes within the IC regards the fact that Mormons are heavily overrepresented, for various reasons that involve foreign language skills from mission trips, a reputation for respecting authority, abstinence from drugs/alcohol, family connections, ease of gaining security clearances, etc. The stereotype in the IC regarding Mormons is the…

It also has a bearing on the sorry state of U.S. human intelligence, since Mormons make terrible interlocutors with foreign informants.

As others have pointed out, you made a quite a sweeping generalisation. What I will add is that what other general groups of people have more emphasis and training on teaching skills and not because it's directly applicable to their career? I'm a Mormon. We have manuals (Publicly available, for example, Preach My Gospel[1] and Teaching, No Greater Call[2]) that focus on asking good questions, empathy and rapport, lesson plans (Interrogation plans?), understanding those you teach, studying and using resources (Scriptures), how to tell if the students are learning, different teaching methods, listening skills, etc. From an early age we have opportunities to teach too and this continues on forever—much to the disdain of some members though haha.

On my mission I spoke with everyone from those in prisons to the general populace to someone running for president of the country. He did become the president too. I/we did quite well in conversing with the apparent equivalent of foreign informants in the context of this discussion.

[1] http://www.lds.org.au/manual/preach-my-gospel-a-guide-to-mis... [2] http://www.lds.org.au/manual/teaching-no-greater-call-a-reso...

Re: Stellar Wind (code name)

#158

Post by bascule »

jauer wrote: post #137
bascule wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know exactly what's being collected: all the Internet traffic they can get their hands on. They have installed beam splitters on Internet backbones at facilities around the country: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A And are funneling all of the traffic to a datacenter in Utah with "yottabyte" scale capacity, with the goal of having enough capacity to archive the data for 100 years: http://www.wired.com/threat…

The mythos of Room 641A is troubling as it relies on the idea that spying at 10 or 20 such sites across a handful of providers actually sees enough internet traffic to build a useful picture of US internet activities. AT&T is just one of ~15 Tier 1 providers, never mind large number of tier 2 providers that carry the majority of internet traffic. There would need to be 1-10 such rooms in every NFL city and metro area…

Your expert analysis flies directly in the face of the testimony of former NSA analyst turned whistleblower William Binney. Given he wrote the software that underlies Stellar Wind, I'm going to go with his assessment of the situation.

His claim is that Stellar Wind was originally designed specifically for foreign intelligence gathering, then repurposed by the NSA to do domestic spying. Domestic spying was his motivation for leaving the NSA and becoming a whistleblower in the first place.

Re: Stellar Wind (code name)

#159

Post by rdtsc »

demallien wrote: post #119
rmc wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conversely a certain subset of Mormons are going to be very vulnerable to a certain type of attack that the regular (incl. more liberal subsets of) population would not be vulnerable to. A gay mormon (which is just as common as a gay catholic, or a gay atheist) will be likely to be in the closet. They would probably be ostracised by family and friends if they were outed, lots of people in the general community would…

Yup. I would be very wary of any article claiming that a religious group is preferred by a government because of their righteous lifestyle. It's just so many more opportunities for blackmail. You'd have to screen those candidates so carefully, and you couldn't even do the usual thing of asking their family, friends, neighbours etc, because these are precisely the people they are hiding their quirks from. If you have…

A skillful polygraph interrogator (erm... i mean operator) will know and make sure to dig into that. Morality related questions would play a big part in the process.

Re: Stellar Wind (code name)

#160

Post by notdrunkatall »

LowKarmaAccount wrote: post #101
rayiner wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is truly a scary thought is if the vast, mindless mass of people... This is why privacy advocates (and libertarians more generally), can't get more popular traction: the incredibly derisive and arrogant tone with which they address their fellow citizens, and their flippant, dismissive attitude towards democracy. Why should I listen to the opinions of someone who calls my parents, most of my friends, my in-laws…

Privacy advocates are not a subset of libertarians. Libertarians may be privacy advocates, but there are many privacy advocates that are not libertarians. Privacy advocacy is popular among the upper classes, because they really don't want anyone from the lower classes sticking their noses into their business. Libertarians are unpopular because some of their policies are deeply unpopular. For example, many libertarian…

>Privacy advocacy is popular among the upper classes, because they really don't want anyone from the lower classes sticking their noses into their business.

I hope that this is either patently untrue or you're just misled.

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