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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

#221
post #11

I give this maybe 2-3 months before the whistleblower behind this is being prosecuted by the Obama administration for "harming national security and putting people's lives in danger, and/or espionage".

Jeez, isn't that poor Benghazi scapegoat who made that anti-Muslim video still rotting in jail for some bogus parole violation that normally no one would have done anything about?

And these are just the high profile type cases that make some news.

Think of all the sad saps with a watery ditch on their property whom the EPA jackbooted into oblivion. Or gods help folks who did something so societally horrible as to sell raw milk and then had the FDA come in with their own SWAT folks.

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

#222

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…

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

#223
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dane here. Todays headline in Danish news is that the government just learned that a database containing ID numbers of all people with a driver's license was hacked last year and an unknown amount of information may be leaked. The Danish ID numbers can be used to get just about any information on Danes, whether it's tax related, education, health, criminal records, addresses, bank accounts etc.

Holy cr*p. That's my nightmare as well. The Public transport system has been hacked many times. What is the Electronic Patient, Electronic Passport or Tax system gets hacked? Anyone could take all your information and you're screwed. I think anyone owning any system whatsoever should be FORCED to go public if there system gets hacked. (Especially banks!)

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

#224

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…

> 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.

We have way more problems after 9-11. We've invented more problems, starting with the TSA that nudiescans and molests people -- the Patriot act, spying on Americans, other fear mongering.

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

#225
post #105

Dutch person here with a little insight what's to come for you guys. Some information about our tiny little country (in Wester Europe, very pro-US) with just 17 million people. Our government listens in on more calls every year than in the whole of the US combined. All our telecommunications providers are forced to have the capability to intercept all traffic (phone and internet). Encrypted data must be stored for an…

> You can purchase one without your name and address but you can only add money to it using your bank-account. The system tracks all travelers' movements (departure and end points for each leg of every journey), in most cases combined with the traveler's identity. It retains the data for seven years Not to discredit your whole post but is this really the case. You can buy those 1 hour/24 hour/48 hour passes for cash.…

even without considering that you charge an anonymous card with your bank account, if you keep only one, it's quite easy to follow patterns still. Especially if they have already targeted a person and they have additional information, there are not so many people that check in X and check out Y on days W,Z.. and so on. The more additional info you have, the narrower the search space.

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

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ev…

don't forget the Stasi (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit), in many ways it is more present to us.

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

#227
I'm an American and a Verizon customer.

Maybe I'm the proverbial frog in a pot of boiling water, but I'm not outraged. I'm not really even annoyed. I don't know why exactly, but I think it boils down (no pun intended) to two different things.

First, I'm under no delusion that the US federal government has my personal best interest in mind with everything that it does. I think that usually the federal government as a whole has the best interest of the entirety of the American people firmly in mind, but it's a big behemoth that is often unaware of the individual.

Second, I willingly use technology every day in which people are actively monitoring my actions. Verizon didn't magically start collecting these data at the bequest of the government. Or even if they did (really, they didn't), they'll happily use it in their daily business operations. You're monitored every day by many, many corporations. Many people here have started businesses on that principle alone. Strangely, I trust the federal government more with how they'll limit the scope of their monitoring than I do the private corporations with whom I constantly interact through the use of their technology. Maybe I'm naïve.

But here's the thing. These are reasons why I'm not outraged by this particular event. The USA PATRIOT Act angers me. Our insane alarmist reaction to terrorist attacks (aka our endemic inability to apply simple statistics) angers me. The amount of money we waste in our military angers me.

But this? Meh.

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

#228

Dutch person here with a little insight what's to come for you guys. Some information about our tiny little country (in Wester Europe, very pro-US) with just 17 million people. Our government listens in on more calls every year than in the whole of the US combined. All our telecommunications providers are forced to have the capability to intercept all traffic (phone and internet). Encrypted data must be stored for an…

I don't really get why governments would want to do most of this, it's mostly just a waste of money if they don't plan to establish a totalitarian regime. I mean, they collect all those phone records, internet records, they know your movement patterns, and now what? What good can you do with it for your citizen ?

Don't you get it? The government tries to prevent terrorism!

Public fear of terrorism is what's being used to take away rights and liberties, especially in post-9/11 America.

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

#229
Iiiiiiiiiii wanna beeeee anarchy.

Sorry folks. We should have been well beyond the point of detached thought experiments about this. Change the power structures or change the power structures. They've gone too far in so many ways. Change from within, change from outside, or stay home and get what you deserve?

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

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Thank you for the reply. can't believe I forgot all about Germany! I sometimes joke we would have been better off ( privacy-wise and financially ) if we would have become a federal state of Germany in the '50s. Our Gilder was already linked to the German Mark and you are our largest trade partner. We seem to have the same financial 'hard money' line as well. I visit Germany a lot and am always amazed by the hospitali…

likewise! I was several times in NL and perceived you guys the cooler germans. This open minded culture I adored seemed so fixed to me. I hope this conservative backlash will diminsh.
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