I didn't see anyone ask. Does "mission accomplished" mean no more leaks from the Snowden pool?
What was the last leak, then, RSA security?
"By the way, RSA sucks! Mission accomplished."
Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished
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Re: Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished
#202But what has really changed? The NSA is under pressure from the public, less so from the intelligence and defense communities. If anything Snowden has caused those areas of government to close ranks even tighter. There's nothing a leader wants more than a highly visible enemy to unite his or her people. There are orders of magnitude more people who hate General Alexander now than there were two years ago. But his own…
"There's nothing a leader wants more than a highly visible enemy to unite his or her people."
This is a fair point. Though does that mean US citizens are now highly visible enemies that unite the US military?
A friend of mine participated in a GoRuck challenge in Portland. The team my friend participated in were mostly military or former military, trudging along in one of the most liberal, anti-military cities around. There were folks throwing out taunts (weirdly, most of them were on the top floors of buildings and other relatively inaccessible places). She said it was the first time she felt like kind of resentment and hate the military feels from civilians. She watched her teammates bear with it stoically, focusing on the mission. It was a sort of honor and duty servicemen feel when they stake their lives and sacrifice their innocence, dirty their hands to protect folks back home, even when those same folks don't appreciate it, can't understand it.
There's honor in that. Sadly, there are often agendas that abuses this. And there's always that nagging bit, that maybe all the stuff you've seen and done was for nothing.
The real change, I think, isn't a reform of the NSA. It's a greater and greater openness and awareness of the insanity of war and conflict. The root of the problem here isn't that the NSA are spying on ordinary people, it's that we've created enmity and now we're having trouble getting disengaging from conflicts. It comes from ordinary people demanding security, it's not something that can be pinned exclusively on the military.
Re: Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished
#203Jesus Christ some of the comments on that article. I wonder if there was some way to analyse what percentage of it is astro-turfing and what percentage is real red-blooded Americans just brainwashed into thinking government knows best. Americans you are lost. It's been nice knowing you.
If you think this is scary checkout Facebook groups such as Patriot Nation. It's so bad that it almost looks like satire, and then you visit these peoples profile pages and see they are real. People like the ones posting there, are.actually.real. Wow.
Re: Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
The whole argument about Russia being way worse than the US, and Snowden staying there is ridiculous. He isn't staying there as some sort of celebrity endorsement for the tourism program. He's staying there because it is the only place he was able to reach in time, as Russia is one of the few countries too big to be invaded by the US military.
He's there because he's a coward with no backbone. If he is so sure of his innocence, he'd be facing the court instead of propping up a government with terrible human rights record.
Bradley Manning called, he's asking for his day in court.
Re: Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished
#205But what has really changed? The NSA is under pressure from the public, less so from the intelligence and defense communities. If anything Snowden has caused those areas of government to close ranks even tighter. There's nothing a leader wants more than a highly visible enemy to unite his or her people. There are orders of magnitude more people who hate General Alexander now than there were two years ago. But his own…
"There's nothing a leader wants more than a highly visible enemy to unite his or her people." This is a fair point. Though does that mean US citizens are now highly visible enemies that unite the US military? A friend of mine participated in a GoRuck challenge in Portland. The team my friend participated in were mostly military or former military, trudging along in one of the most liberal, anti-military cities around…
"The root of the problem here isn't that the NSA are spying on ordinary people,"
what? no, that is exactly the problem. isn't it?
Re: Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well IMO it's kind of silly to care about the government snooping through my data when huge corporations are the ones who actually own the fiber and can siphon all the traffic they want -- then sell it. You're basically choosing between the US government or a combination of Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and Deutsche Telekom.
>> "You're basically choosing between the US government or a combination of Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and Deutsche Telekom." Honestly I'd be more happy with the telecom companies doing it. They can do much less harm with any data they get.
And you usually have a choice with corporations. You can see in ToS how they plan to use your data and they often let you opt out. You don't get that with government agencies. Often you don't even know your data is taken since they're monitoring as much as they can see.
Re: Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished
#207I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself. Despite a fair amount of indignation from the public, it seems to me that the majority has accepted the new surveillance reality.
The weird invasive thought I keep having is if Snowden could, if at all, be a limited hang-out-OP/MISO (PsyOp) to gauge just how much the public would accept. There have been enough revelations to see that the NSA got to keep what it is in entirety; mission accomplished.
Or, more cynically, that Snowden is a plot to eradicate expectation of privacy everywhere.
From Smith V. Maryland.
"If the Government were suddenly to announce on nationwide television that all homes henceforth would be subject to warrantless entry, individuals thereafter might not in fact entertain any actual expectation of privacy regarding their homes, papers, and effects."
FYI: Smith V. Maryland is the justification the FISA courts have used to argue surveillance is legal. It argues, in a nutshell, that when you route phone calls through a telecom you are forfeiting your expectation of privacy, and therefore your fourth amendment rights.
I am concerned that the surveillance industry may be trying to establish the legal precedent that because everyone knows about the surveillance, it is legal. This is a paradoxical argument: the logic would effectively be that if they told everyone they were doing it ahead of time, it would be illegal, but since they told everyone after the fact it is legal.
Now, I'm not a lawyer. This is my laymans understanding of the issue and I don't really have the body of knowledge regarding expectation of privacy to adequately discuss this. These are just the things that, as a layman, I am currently afraid of.
Re: Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
"There's nothing a leader wants more than a highly visible enemy to unite his or her people." This is a fair point. Though does that mean US citizens are now highly visible enemies that unite the US military? A friend of mine participated in a GoRuck challenge in Portland. The team my friend participated in were mostly military or former military, trudging along in one of the most liberal, anti-military cities around…
"The root of the problem here isn't that the NSA are spying on ordinary people," what? no, that is exactly the problem. isn't it?
No, it isn't.
Why is the NSA spying on ordinary people?
There might be a few bad actors, but all in all, folks in the NSA, and the military in general, actually think they are defending America from enemies. They are not far from wrong. There are actually some significant conflicts around the world, a lot more dirty stuff than what you hear from the Snowden disclosures. We American civilians are generally pretty sheltered from all of that. We actually think we're the good guys.
So the root of the problem is that we have conflicts at the world stage. If there were no conflicts, there would be no need for the military or intelligence agencies. It is that simple.
That might sound outlandishly impractical. Of course everyone has conflict. That's a given, right? Fighting over limited resources. Ideology. Unending cycles of revenge. These are rooted in human nature and emotions, stuff that can change, stuff that every single human has to deal with and learn how to handle. These concerns on privacy, while disturbing, are a distraction -- at best, a stepping stone for each of us to deal with the real issue: human nature.
Re: Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
I keep seeing on HN about how most Americans simply don't care about this issue and it being the reason there isn't more of an uproar. However, I have a different take: They have a different opinion than you. It's not that they don't care, are brainwashed, or "lost", it's just that they have a different opinion on the matter. Now I'm not saying they are right or wrong, but let's keep in mind that their opinion is jus…
They have a right to an opinion, but that does not necessarily mean that their opinion is valid. From Wikipedia on Validity: "an argument is valid if and only if its conclusion is logically entailed by its premises."
argument != opinion
Re: Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission’s accomplished
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree entirely. The genius behind the the US Constitution was its acceptance of the idea that power, no matter how just, will eventually corrupt, which is why our freedoms were supposed to be rather absolute. I think there are almost no sane reasons to infringe on a basic human right in general: the burden of proof should be on the government to do it selectively, and even then it should be treated with great sc…
It's Christmas Eve, and I'm enjoying my coffee and feel rather disinclined to get into a political argument, so I'll just toss a few thoughts around without intending to respond (I'll chat via email tho'). I agree that increasing power should be treated with great scepticism (But it isn't, honestly. And that's a shame). Point: Police power is inherently a use of force on the citizenry. The Army is the same, loooosely…
FYI, be careful what you post and respond to. I'm not sure if it was this comment, my many "Fuck the NSA" comments or something else, but it appears that all of my Internet traffic is now being routed through an EC2 instance in Ashburn, Virginia (which is very close to DC): http://i.imgur.com/IEcdqol.png
I noticed it while getting a bunch of inappropriate 403 responses on basically any website, and my location kept showing up as "Ashburn, Virginia" automatically on weather sites.