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Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

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Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#201

Post by king_jester »

robomartin wrote: post #72

I hate to use this tone but, so be it. Maybe now you morons who continue to vote in the pieces of shit into our government who are bent on taking more and more power for themselves will wake up and figure it out? How much more proof do you need? Does this make you angry yet or is Obama still your diety? Oh, and Republicans don't get a pass either. The point is that all of you morons voting like robots along party lin…

> I hate to use this tone but, so be it. Maybe now you morons who continue to vote in the pieces of shit into our government who are bent on taking more and more power for themselves will wake up and figure it out? How much more proof do you need? Does this make you angry yet or is Obama still your diety? Oh, and Republicans don't get a pass either.

> The point is that all of you morons voting like robots along party lines are destroying my country, from the inside, one fucking vote at a time. And it is sad. And it is painful. And it is almost unbearable to watch. You are destroying what this country is supposed to be about and turning it into something our children will have to suffer with.

I'm sorry but this is a load of crap. The US gov't at all levels has always suffered from this problem due to the way it is structured. Blaming individual people for not participating in that system the way you think they should is completely unhelpful and puts the blame in the wrong place.

> Terrorists won. You morons saw to it. Our way of life is, in many ways, unrecognizable from what it was before 9/11.

This is not true. Although some policies and attitudes have changed since 9/11, US society has not fundamentally changed and the major problems pre-9/11 are the same post-9/11.

> When are you going to understand that a conservative Libertarian (as opposed to extreme and nearly anarchist) approach is the only path to recovery? Ultra limited government. They are OUR servants, we are not their property. They need to get the fuck out of our lives, homes, businesses, bedrooms, schools and more.

I find it funny that you slight anarchism here while claiming that a different type of political candidate is all that is needed to change society. Limited government isn't just about reduced budgets and programs, but removing the bureaucratic and hierarchical elements of government. Further, if you feel that existing political parties all are contributing to the problem, picking a different party isn't going to change anything.

> Time to take it back. Peacefully. Vote with intelligence. Email. Write letters. Make calls. Let them know who they work for. Reboot the system.

This isn't rebooting the system, this is how most people interact with and solicit the government already.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#202

Post by noir_lord »

downandout wrote: post #191
FrojoS wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? The more scandalous the fact, the higher the chance someone from inside decides to blow the whistle.

It's not my job to know how they can keep these things under wraps; I don't work in intelligence. But I do know what "Top Secret" means. It means that it's not supposed to be on the front page of every major news website in the world, no matter how scandalous or controversial. That the people whose job it is to keep these things secret have failed miserably is of great concern - who knows what else is leaking.

I wouldn't worry, the Chinese already have anything that might leak in future.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#203

Post by meddlepal »

digitalengineer wrote: post #143
jacalata wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't actually think voting for judges and sheriffs is a good idea at all. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Arpaio

Oh, that guy. He's even know over here. (Journalists like to pick out the most 'interesting' persons). That guy scares me. You also vote for judges? Would it help if there was a maximum someone could get voted for? Like with your president?

It's a state issue. Some states have appointed, for life judges and others use voting. Personally I think voted-judges are wrong for a lot of reasons but particularly because it makes judges political beings which they really ought not to be.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#204

Post by Buzaga »

since this is a leak, I'd suggest you americans to PLEASE press your government to reveal what other services they are imposing this, I see no reason why couldn't they be doing this with Facebook or other tech companies that are used ~globally~, and then it's a global espionage scheme. I'd like to know if I'm being spied right now too.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#205

Post by mtgx »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #195
robomartin wrote: post #72

I hate to use this tone but, so be it. Maybe now you morons who continue to vote in the pieces of shit into our government who are bent on taking more and more power for themselves will wake up and figure it out? How much more proof do you need? Does this make you angry yet or is Obama still your diety? Oh, and Republicans don't get a pass either. The point is that all of you morons voting like robots along party lin…

Don't reboot the system, rewrite it. Instead of a representative government most western countries suffer, switch to democracy. I mean, democracy . Where the people decide for their rules directly. Where real democratic processes such as random trials are used, instead elections which by nature are heavily influenced by a tiny elite. Where the constitution itself is not written by those who will later rule the countr…

Keep the representative system, but add a ton of direct democracy influences to it. You can even take real world examples from countries like Germany or Finland, I believe, where the citizens can create their own bills, and then pass them through a referendum.

It doesn't need to be 100% democracy, and it doesn't need to be 80-90% representative like US, either. It definitely needs to be a lot more towards direct democracy than it is in US now.

Also another huge problem that needs to be fixed in US, is making sure the incredibly skewed "money vote" is drastically reduced, by only allowing people to donate $100 per voter at an election, and no anonymous donations anymore.

Votes are supposed to be equal, but this alternative money vote system, created by lobbying in US, has really compromised to the point that you can almost discard the real vote system. When 70% of the voters want decision A vs decision B, but 90% of the donors want decision B, in the vast majority of cases the politicians go with decision B - because they were basically paid to do it.

But what's worse is that 90% of the funds usually comes from only a handful of people - therefore the incredibly skewed system. At least with $100 cap you can equalize it a lot.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#206

Post by meddlepal »

alan_cx wrote: post #170
adventured wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you're slightly wrong. See: Judge Andrew Napolitano (former New Jersey Superior Court Judge). He's a host on Fox News and does in fact regularly make an issue of these types of abuses. Take a look at his books: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Napolitano#Writing_caree... Fox News is a 2/3 conservative bastion (and they're for big government, big spending, big military, big debt), but it also has a small mixtu…

Hang on, conservatives for big government? Im sure I remember "big government" being the evil that was being fought off when Obama care was a big deal. Wasn't that conservatives? Hands up. Im confused!!

Fascism is a conservative ideology and believes in a fairly big government.

Conservative and liberal, particularly in American politics, are overloaded terms at times referring to social, economic and organizational preferences without making a blanket statement that covers all the three.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#207

Post by sigkill »

killerpopiller wrote: post #147
dirktheman wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fellow Dutchman here, and I couldn't agree more. I actually helped building the electronic patient file in two major hospitals, and I can't tell you enough about the massive clusterfuck that is. The government requires you to finish it before a certain date, only they provide you with the exact requirements after that date. Basic security measures like encrypting data? No way! To me, America is still the land of the…

no, it is, fanfare.., Germany. I read this above report and can't believe it. When that this happen? Our data privacy laws are thorough and sometimes an obstacle, but many projects got stopped because of privacy issues: e.g. the digital stored medical records on ones health insurance card The stop of the data retention directive by our beloved Bundesverfassungsgericht (they are awesome) is another milestone. Core of…

Well to be honest, in retrospect the present Germans are lucky as compared to other countries that they already are educated either first, or second hand about the issue of government knowing everything. Another point could be made is that thank god it happened during the low tech era and not today because a Hitler-esque figure armed with a German equivalent of Google would positively fuck up the entire world with even better efficiency.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#208

Post by crusso »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #195
robomartin wrote: post #72

I hate to use this tone but, so be it. Maybe now you morons who continue to vote in the pieces of shit into our government who are bent on taking more and more power for themselves will wake up and figure it out? How much more proof do you need? Does this make you angry yet or is Obama still your diety? Oh, and Republicans don't get a pass either. The point is that all of you morons voting like robots along party lin…

Don't reboot the system, rewrite it. Instead of a representative government most western countries suffer, switch to democracy. I mean, democracy . Where the people decide for their rules directly. Where real democratic processes such as random trials are used, instead elections which by nature are heavily influenced by a tiny elite. Where the constitution itself is not written by those who will later rule the countr…

The Democracy vs the representative Republicanism are irrelevant.

What matters is that we have a massive unelected bureaucracy that is its own ulta-powerful branch of the government that sucks money and makes its own laws.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#209

Post by marchdown »

drostie wrote: post #139
dirktheman wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, you can buy the one-time cards and they won't be able to track you. But for regular travellers like myself those one-time cards are much more expensive than the ones linked to your bank account. Not to mention the hassle of having to buy a new card every day...

That hassle can in principle be totally mitigated. When you buy an OV-Chipkaart from a service desk (like an NS desk at a train station), they will not only charge you the 15€ (or whatever) fee, but they will also ask you how much you want to use to load the card. You can pay cash at such a desk. You could probably also use those desks to reload the OV-Chipkaart with cash, but I've never tried that.

You can do that, I tried.

Re: Confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Millions of Americans

#210

Post by freehunter »

kriro wrote: post #161
rvschuilenburg wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, and it confuses the hell out of me. Everytime i tell someone about yet-another-privacy-issue, and each time they answer "well, i have nothing to hide".

I think the standard counterargument is started by asking them if they have any curtains or blinds and if so, why? [or you can ask them if they'd be willing to have a streaming camera installed in their bedroom]

Someone I don't know listening to my phone conversation? Who cares. My neighbor seeing me naked? Now I care.

That's the answer you'd get.

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