471–480 of 614 posts
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> Jeez, that's way too paranoid Of course it is, it's ridiculous. What the NSA is doing is despicable but why would that keep you from creating a user account or viewing a webpage from your computer?
Because some users do not have the privilege of doing even such rudimentary tasks, without the danger of being persecuted, prosecuted or worse by the tyrant regime they happen to be living under.
I don't understand why this is shocking (the photo- not the alleged spying)?
reform... ha!
Google will never do it, but they should drown the NSA in bullshit data. So much so it literally chokes the NSA's ability to spy on Google's services. Google is one of the few companies that could pull it off. They have $56 billion in cash and nothing to do with it apparently. They generate $12 billion in profit annually and growing. They have more financial resources, computing power, and brain power than the NSA do…
A better use of all that money would be to play the lobbying game the enemies of freedom so effectively play. This is the the thing I completely fail to understand. If all these huge tech firms with all this cash really care about privacy, people, US reputation, etc, then why are they not pouring their money in to politics like, say, the weapons manufacturers do? Why aren't they "buying" politicians?
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> Google had no knowledge Citation required. > Not only that, but Google launched a high-profile effort to encrypt the communications inside and between their data centers. When exactly was that announced? Before or after Snowden went rogue? If after, the agency had to tell the PRISM partners that they were going to be exposed if they were willing participants in hosting a back-door. Otherwise, they only got paranoid…
Technically, it's impossible to prove a negative. That said, what more evidence do you want than everything Google has done to combat this, including preemptively working to encrypt cross-dc traffic?
You do know that the national security apparatus can and does force companies to lie in press releases to the public about security- and privacy-related matters? Who's to say Google isn't flat out lying to us about that? There's no legal reason they can't lie to us if our secret courts force them to.
The problem now is we can't trust even the supposed "good guys" because the government has completely tainted the well with their secret courts and gag orders on companies (while still forcing them to comply).
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We're still talking about Snowden. This is the reason.
At this point I suspect Snowden has become a bit of an Emmanuel Goldstein. Any leakers who want to get their stuff out with some modicum of safety just need to get it to one of the usual suspects in the media, if the latter are willing to play the game (this does violate normal journalist ethics, then again this is not a normal situation). The leak can then be ascribed to "Snowden".
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I'm a US citizen. Born and bred. And, at this point, I can't in good faith say that I would blame you. I think it's pretty safe to say that getting rid of a President is no longer enough. My sense is that the people who make these policies really are "Beyond Elections". They are constants in our government. And appear unassailable. I doubt very much that we, the American People, could even IDENTIFY the people setting…
No. Sorry. The President does bear full responsibility. That's the nature of the job. If he wants to claim he wasn't aware, OK. But he is now and it's his responsibility to fix it. Again, that's the nature of the job. If the President wanted to eliminate these programs, they'd get eliminated. It would require the exercise of political will, but it absolutely could be done. The problem, actually, is right here, when p…
So when a President comes into office, they probably make it known that they have these N pieces of information, and well, they are going to do what they want unless said President wants those N pieces of information public.
Thats the really really scary realization here. Shadow government obtained through perfect intelligence with no checks and bounds.
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Consider Sally Smith, our hypothetical employee. She worked for several government and military agencies for years with a concentration in data center security. She has top-secret clearance. Before the Snowden revelations came out, I'd have strongly considered Sally Smith to be a good fit for a position dealing with data center security. Who wouldn't have?! Years of experience at high levels securing data centers? Le…
The Google hiring process seems to be very focused on discerning a candidate's practical knowledge not their on paper experience or recommendations. It would be silly to think that a general or senior government official would even have the technical knowledge to make a well informed recommendation of someone for a technical position.
The NSA can do this. They have the resources and the time to try. The only question is if they want a mole inside Google. Hell, I'd be shocked if large internet companies (Google, Yahoo, etc.) don't have agents from foreign and domestic intelligence agencies working there right now.
Betting on a companies hiring process to catch agents of an advanced persistent attacker is betting against house money in Vegas. You aren't going to win in the long run.
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At this point I suspect Snowden has become a bit of an Emmanuel Goldstein. Any leakers who want to get their stuff out with some modicum of safety just need to get it to one of the usual suspects in the media, if the latter are willing to play the game (this does violate normal journalist ethics, then again this is not a normal situation). The leak can then be ascribed to "Snowden".
For those wondering who "Emmanuel Goldstein" is, he's a character in the novel 1984 .
If that graphic - that taunting smiley face, drawn when it was assumed that no one was watching - isn't enough to outrage the general public, I don't know what it will take. This is not super technical - it's easily explained and should be easily understood by the masses. And it should cause outrage.
I actually assumed and tried to verify really hard that that was the original slide and not "artists concept". I just can't believe someone would present that. Beyond the hubris (which is literally unbelievable ref first sentence for my disbelief), it's just unprofessional and childish.