NSA tracking cellphone locations worldwide, Snowden documents show

Poetry is appropriate at funerals, and I too share a grim outlook for this country. That said, I would argue even further back than recently.

The federal government has been exceeding its authority since its inception, hell, if not before. James Madison, as president, couldn't figure out how to reconcile his responsibility to build a system of highways (which he thought was a fantastic idea) with the constraints on the federal government imposed by the Constitution.

Since that time, we've gone well beyond highways; We've implemented social security, medicare, medicaid, Obamacare. We've ratified the Constitution to allow for a federal income tax to support it all. We've banned alcohol, pissed everybody off, and unbanned it again. We've attempted to curtail the first, second, fourth, fifth amendments, etc.

We've got a nation full of people who voted in the last guy largely because they thought he'd give them affordable health care, ignoring that, at least in my interpretation of a limited federal government and separation of powers, our government should never have been allowed to grow large enough to be that way.

We've demanded that the government fix this thing, that thing, the other thing; clean our waters, enforce minimum wages, keep us safe from drug companies, fight our wars -- then we wonder how we've gotten to exist in a nanny state?

As a parent, it's always been hard to reconcile the notion of freedom with parenthood. In an ideal world, my child would be free to take drugs recreationally, sacrifice education for an early entry to the work force (or vice versa), prostitute herself for pay (literally, not figuratively)... but as her parent, I want none of those things for her, so I disallow them. In that same vain, if we treat our government like the father whose duty it is to protect us, it should not surprise us that the father bans us from potentially harmful activities, reads our diary, looks through our phones and follows us around in his car -- to keep us safe.

These are the things parents do. I don't know of a time it's occurred specifically, but I'm sure that I've unjustly grounded my child at least once. I'm sure that I've disallowed her from doing something that I would cheer on if done by an adult peer. I'm sure that I've invaded her privacy, and if she were an adult, possibly even violated her civil liberties. On three occasions in her 12 years of life, I've assaulted her by spanking.

Make no mistake -- I'm not advocating the government's actions, or excusing them... not in any way. I am very dumbstruck that so many share my condemnation of these actions, because so many people are those that voted for health care, for social security, for national defense, for the EPA, the FCC, the TSA, etc., for the safety that only a government all-father can provide. We've allowed this to go on for decades, perhaps most of the time we've been a nation, really. Our founding fathers warned us (well, most of them) that this would happen if we weren't vigilantly watching our government, and it has happened, precisely because we weren't vigilantly watching our government.

Or perhaps it's always been this way, with approximately half of our electorate desperately wishing our government would do far more, with the other half desperately wishing our government would do far less.

Either way, fixing it may be too far gone. As near as I've mapped back to, the idea of federal constraint hasn't really existed since the mid-30s, possibly even earlier than that. I try to vote Libertarian, but at a federal level, that's hard to do, and comes with its own baggage. Rand Paul, whom I agree with on a great many issues, has some views that perplex me, as did his father. I'm also not convinced that he isn't a consummate politician.

I disagree with many of Obama's political choices, but I did sincerely believe that he would try to live up to more of his election promises, promises that now seem like nothing more than the pre-election fodder that we get from every politician in recent memory. I worry that Rand Paul is no better, or that if there are forces controlling Obama's hand, that they won't similarly control his.

What's even worse than that is that I don't even know if our country can exist under the style of government that I want for it. It might well be that we're all better off in a socialist nation, where the government is indeed the caretaker for all, and that in order to have a nation that works, we should just succumb to that. It's not Constitutional, and I would pray that if we were in fact headed that direction, we'd at least try to ratify the Constitution, or abolish it altogether in lieu of its replacement.

Surely, the minarchist type of federal government the Constitution prescribes would lead to a far harsher nation with fewer large infrastructure problems, fewer social programs... but with it, we would indeed get far more freedom. And at least for me, sitting in the comfort of my living room, typing on the DARPA supplied internet, on the Macbook borne of foreign labor, paid for with the government's wage protections, fair and equitable treatment, and contract enforcement, that price is worth paying... but I fear it would be too high for too many, and the end result is a loop back around to exactly where we are.

Anyway, apologies for the rant. I don't intend to make a point, or convert anyone's political beliefs, or even elucidate anyone to my own political beliefs, which I have little confidence in at the moment -- but your reply resonated with me, and I felt it deserved a sincere response, even if it amounts to very little.

I get that this answer might seem overly terse, but there are a group of unnamed prisoners in Guantanamo Bay sitting there, not getting the benefit of due process that they are obligated.

Under the NDAA, the president has the authority to enshrine anyone he wishes, subject to zero oversight, to a similar fate.

Under the PATRIOT Act, we've bombed American Citizens suspected of possibly committing a crime in the future without the benefit of oversight, due process, or any of the Constitutional protections ordinarily afforded to American citizens.

Aside from that, there are far more instances throughout history, but those are the (IMO) most egregious offenses under the current administration at least.

There's a term for the idea that Damon hit upon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

Ok, if ever there was a time to bring out this particularly good industrial/ebm album, it is right now. In particular, this track, which includes samples of the above quotes:

    DIN_FIV
    Escape To Reality
    Track #3 - "Conspiracy"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2ktuDmEAv8

AFAIK no one ever asked Clapper (or any other NSA representative) to give a precise operational definition of the term "metadata". I don't want to hear what someone else thinks "metadata" is, I want to know how NSA operationally defines "metadata" internally and precisely when and where the usage(s) are made.

Voice:

I am on the telephone with you. My actual voice is the data. Is the digitization of my voice not metadata? After all, natural voice =/= digitized voice. So it seems that digitized voice could be, to the NSA, metadata and therefore subject to capture.

I know the NSA has software/hardware to translate digitized voice to text. Suppose all phone conversations are converted to text. Then is that text therefore not data but metadata? Once again, it seems that the text of all phone conversations could be, to the NSA, metadata and therefore subject to capture.

Fax:

I send a fax to you. What's on the sheet of paper is data. But is the digitized and compressed sequence of bits sent to you not metadata? It certainly is not the same as the original data. So it seems that the digitized fax could be, to the NSA, metadata and therefore subject to capture.

Still, were that not so, the NSA has OCR that can read handwritten or typed text from a fax and convert it to text. Is the converted text not metadata? It is certainly different from the original data. So it seems that the converted text from the fax could be, to the NSA, metadata and therefore subject to capture.

E-mail:

I e-mail you. The text I see before me is data. Once I press the send key, it is compressed through various software/hardware for rapid transmission as it passes over the TCP/IP/phone network. Is not that compressed text also metadata? Therefore it seems that e-mail content could be, to the NSA, metadata and therefore subject to capture.

IOW once data is processed through any transformation whatsoever then it could be defined as "metadata". Again I don't know NSA's exact definition (used internally) of what metadata is. There may be many different definitions. But since NSA's representatives raised the use of the term w/o defining it (and then used the metaphor of a library to draw questioners off track) I believe that they should be questioned again about precisely what "metadata" means when and where. Furthermore the question of what precisely the NSA captures should be driven to ground thoroughly.

Personal belief:

NSA considers the product of any transformation of data to be metadata. The NSA captures all voice, fax, e-mail, chat, sms, etc. and maintains it in digitized form. Regardless of origin, all communications end up in text format (with pointers back to the original digitized form) which is then subjected to semantic/content analysis (scanning for naughty words), and optionally (under control of an analyst) to social network analysis and AI software that analyzes events, objects, actors, their intentions, and possible variations in interpretation of the text.