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Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

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Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#321

Post by AStonesThrow »

MisterTea wrote: post #273
sim7c00 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it would be too funny if that was a re sewage company. black vans with small print n.s.a. on it haha xD

door bell rings .... five men in dark suits standing outside ... hair on the back of my neck stands on end. I open the door, hands shaking with that burning feeling in my guts "Yea, how can I help you gentlemen" The tallest one, intimidating, gruff, ex marine perhaps, shoves a badge in my face: "N S A, National Sewer Agency" they push me aside and push inside my hosue .. a violation but what do I say?!? They look aro…

This is fairly close to reality, if you think about it

Medicaid here in Arizona is called "AHCCCS" which is pronounced "access" so imagine the fun homophonic confusion in a conversation about "do you have access?" "well I got access but then I lost it..."

Many conservative Christians have termed homosexuality as "Same-Sex Attraction" or SSA, so they often speak of "suffering from SSA" or being afflicted with it. When I applied to the Social Security Administration for disability, I couldn't help but notice, and their disability program is called "SSDI" which has nothing to do with Reagan's "Star Wars/Strategic Defense Initiative"

Nor do my dealings with the F.A.A. in the past several years have anything to do with a pilot's license or flight clearances; the Family Assistance Administration here doles out funds for food stamps ("SNAP", another good homophone, lets you purchase plenty of alphabet soup for the fam) and other basic needs.

https://xkcd.com/932/

Fact: The "Obamaphone" program didn't begin or end with President Obama. Discuss!

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#322

Post by 1oooqooq »

cj wrote: post #275
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> started the whole movement or whatever you'd call it for this push towards privacy I don't really like this framing because it makes it sound like if you care for privacy you are some form of fringe advocate. We should always try to reframe: Would you be ok with government employees or law enforcement indiscriminately opening your letters? Ask any senior and the answer is a clear no. So why are we discussing this a…

I wonder what percent of Americans would trade their privacy to bring their monthly cell phone bill from $100/mo to $0/mo in exchange for sharing texts and emails with a telecom company. I suspect the percentage would be surprisingly high. Unfortunately normal people don’t really care that much about privacy (even if we all think everyone should).

you mean, exactly like most the public on this site did when moving from Gmail and abandoning their isp provided email?

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#323

Post by neilv »

Side comment about suboptimal HN commenting or UI...

This post is about someone noteworthy dying, but the top relevant comment is followed by over a dozen screenfulls of text about a sewer inspection van, before you get to anything else.

If you start paging through it, do you close the browser tab in annoyance before you get to any further discussion of the person and why they're noteworthy?

> 4. Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died (eff.org) 1404 points by leotravis10 20 hours ago | flag | hide | 306 comments

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#324

Post by 0xffff2 »

neilv wrote: post #323

Side comment about suboptimal HN commenting or UI... This post is about someone noteworthy dying, but the top relevant comment is followed by over a dozen screenfulls of text about a sewer inspection van, before you get to anything else. If you start paging through it, do you close the browser tab in annoyance before you get to any further discussion of the person and why they're noteworthy? > 4. Mark Klein, AT&T whi…

Are you aware that you can collapse comments chains?

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#325

Post by bb88 »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #254
bb88 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're in a war of attrition (like the the US was in Afghanistan), and the other side already has agreed it's okay to kill innocents (9/11), then you're not going to win by fighting an "ethical" war -- whatever that means. I'm not going to defend the CIA/NSA for actions taken inside the country. On the other hand, I'm not going to second guess decisions happening on the ground in an active war zone.

The end never justify the mean, that's how you end up with concentration camps, massive executions and other atrocities. Beside, killing without distinction combattant and civilians didn't work, see the result of the American Afghanistan war. Even during the war, 99% of the country was to the hand of war leaders and talibans because everyone hated Americans. Guess why. It took only a handful of days for Talibans to d…

> The end never justify the mean

It's working so far for Russia. It worked for Germany in WWII until the US stepped and fought our way through Europe.

If you see a certain group as your sworn enemy for life which should be destroyed at all means possible -- then you will never have peace. All you can have is war.

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#326

Post by worik »

bb88 wrote: post #325
aucisson_masque wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The end never justify the mean, that's how you end up with concentration camps, massive executions and other atrocities. Beside, killing without distinction combattant and civilians didn't work, see the result of the American Afghanistan war. Even during the war, 99% of the country was to the hand of war leaders and talibans because everyone hated Americans. Guess why. It took only a handful of days for Talibans to d…

> The end never justify the mean It's working so far for Russia. It worked for Germany in WWII until the US stepped and fought our way through Europe. If you see a certain group as your sworn enemy for life which should be destroyed at all means possible -- then you will never have peace. All you can have is war.

> It worked for Germany in WWII until...

they took on the Russians

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#327

Post by fsflover »

shadowgovt wrote: post #307
fsflover wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately this spying is exactly what all the government wants, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...

It's also hard to make the case that it isn't, ultimately, what the people want, by "the standard you walk past is the standard you accept" principle. It's been nearly twenty years. If Americans were deeply, deeply bothered by the government spying on them, they'd have burned down this government by now. At most charitable, this speaks to a deep ignorance or apathy in the American electorate and American citizenship.…

> deep ignorance or apathy in the American electorate

Which party is against spying? The only possible action is probably protesting. This doesn't work well, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_enforcement_and_the_Occupy.... And spying is used against the protestors, too: https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/spying-occupy.

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#328

Post by speckx »

waterlu wrote: post #159
foobarian wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, why not both? If I was a shadowy agency I would start an actual legit sewer inspection company that does real sewer inspections. And then just collect and share a little extra data as needed. Nobody would be the wiser!

There’s an HVAC company like this also, I’ll bet. Corporate ventilation. A wonderful thing. Everyone needs it. No one suspects it. Or maybe it’s the aquarium guy. No, those are the guys making meth. Gotta love paranoia.

> Or maybe it’s the aquarium guy.

Shhhhh!

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#329

Post by neilv »

0xffff2 wrote: post #324
neilv wrote: post #323

Side comment about suboptimal HN commenting or UI... This post is about someone noteworthy dying, but the top relevant comment is followed by over a dozen screenfulls of text about a sewer inspection van, before you get to anything else. If you start paging through it, do you close the browser tab in annoyance before you get to any further discussion of the person and why they're noteworthy? > 4. Mark Klein, AT&T whi…

Are you aware that you can collapse comments chains?

Yes, or go up and hit "next", but I don't normally have to on HN.

With the mouse-over-to-and-click-on-tiny-gray-link UI, it's usually faster to autoscroll/scrollwheel or hit PgDn.

So if you start doing the usual way, and it's not working, that's frustration with the post.

And is it worth your time to figure out where to prune/skip within the tree, when you have to go navigate to the tree links. And probably have hide/next/prev multiple times, to get past the entire tree from where you realize.

If people had more UI-efficient tree operations (like in past threading newsreaders), and knew how to use them, then it would be easier.

But with what we have, we can get important posts where important comments are effectively suppressed, for many readers, just by putting a dozen pages of frustrating distraction in front of them.

Re: Mark Klein, AT&T whistleblower who revealed NSA mass spying, has died

#330

Post by lotsofpulp »

1oooqooq wrote: post #322
cj wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what percent of Americans would trade their privacy to bring their monthly cell phone bill from $100/mo to $0/mo in exchange for sharing texts and emails with a telecom company. I suspect the percentage would be surprisingly high. Unfortunately normal people don’t really care that much about privacy (even if we all think everyone should).

you mean, exactly like most the public on this site did when moving from Gmail and abandoning their isp provided email?

Why would ISP provided email be any more private than Gmail? If anything, I expect ISP provided email to be more compromised.
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