211–220 of 420 posts
I think it's interesting to ask why these programs are so widely hated. These are national security assets: evidence gathered here will never be used in a drug case, or a tax evasion case. Why not? These tools exist for the bigger fish: the dozens of Soviet-era nuclear weapons believed to be missing, or the small amounts of dangerous pathogens that periodically vanish from research labs. These are what the government…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They hand out these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter You're not even supposed to reveal that you are complying (gag order). Google has been in the news recently about fighting one in court.
We have been fighting this US policy since 2006: http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt
That's kind of the point. They say, "Keep sending those updates. Otherwise you will go to federal prison." You say, "OK."
As a Kiwi it saddens me that the US and (and to some extent) NZ are descending into the style of government they proclaim to defend the world from.
If they are going to spy on their own citizens, why not protest by giving them something to spy on and hopefully increase their work load to something unmanageable.
I propose peppering every phone call, email comment etc with some choice trigger words of the day Al Queda.
Perhaps some hacker could come up with a plugin to do it automatically for us?
C4 semtex
I think it's interesting to ask why these programs are so widely hated. These are national security assets: evidence gathered here will never be used in a drug case, or a tax evasion case. Why not? These tools exist for the bigger fish: the dozens of Soviet-era nuclear weapons believed to be missing, or the small amounts of dangerous pathogens that periodically vanish from research labs. These are what the government…
Everything is a certainty given enough time.
In addition, Mr. Buffet may be a great investor, but what exactly how much would he know about terrorists or nuclear weapons? Probably as much as you and I.
Yes, this is bad. Yes, you are right to be upset. Yes you (not not really me, I'm not American and i avoid american hosting and hosting companies like amazon for exactly this reason) should change that. But honestly, are you surprised? Are you really? Government agencies have be building large datacenters, the EU loves data retention. There was no tin foil head required to see this.
I assumed this was already happening and surprised it's news.
Wasn't there a number of news stories in the past about the NSA collecting data from telecom companies and such. How is this time different?
EDIT: Found this, from May 2006: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-ns...
I think it's interesting to ask why these programs are so widely hated. These are national security assets: evidence gathered here will never be used in a drug case, or a tax evasion case. Why not? These tools exist for the bigger fish: the dozens of Soviet-era nuclear weapons believed to be missing, or the small amounts of dangerous pathogens that periodically vanish from research labs. These are what the government…
> It's important to remember that we still have a functioning democracy. If you -- Hacker News reader -- decided to run for congress tomorrow, you might not win, but you won't be killed, sabotaged, or secretly blocked.
To the contrarily, rival political individuals can map, with the help of ubiquitous wiretap, which people are a threat to their power. From that they can redirect police "focus" to either crack down on such threat directly, or any support group they might have. Political figures are commonly the second largest requester for domestic intel, only second to the secret police.
This is why've were trying to make it legal lately. They were already doing it. The same thing happened with the Patriot Act. It seems FBI/NSA "test-drive" a new illegal spying program first, and then lobby Congress to pass a law to make it legal (regardless of its constitutionality, as we've seen so far). I bet they would've wanted retroactive immunity , too, in these new laws. Also, let's see how those supporters o…
Congress: "ok"
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But we are not fooling anyone. There is not a single worthy human being in congress. Every single last one of them is a corporate shill and they are all opportunistic criminals.
I've lived under surveillance before, so I feel my perspective might be somewhat appropriate. I won't comment on the specifics (uninteresting and irrelevant, had to do with where I was living). I won't even make a statement about whether it's justified in my case or in general. I'd just ask everyone here to do one thing: Watch this, then ask yourself how you feel (if it doesn't go directly to 6:40, fastforward to it,…
I've lived under surveillance before, so I feel my perspective might be somewhat appropriate. I won't comment on the specifics (uninteresting and irrelevant, had to do with where I was living). I won't even make a statement about whether it's justified in my case or in general. I'd just ask everyone here to do one thing: Watch this, then ask yourself how you feel (if it doesn't go directly to 6:40, fastforward to it,…
And millions of americans should sign a petition to have this happen.