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US intelligence mining data from 9 US Internet companies in broad secret program

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Re: US intelligence mining data from 9 US Internet companies in broad secret program

#331

Post by intrazoo »

md224 wrote: post #317
Afforess wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The loss of privacy is massive in comparison to the lives lost to terrorism. More people die each year due to car accidents than have lost their lives to all terrorist attacks on US Soil. If the information that is being gathered is about safety, then why isn't the government isn't creating a massive program to strictly monitor highway speeds, traffic roadways, and increase traffic safety then? Answer: The informatio…

Here's a Devil's Advocate position (not necessarily my personal beliefs, so please don't downvote based on disagreement. Just rip it to shreds instead!): The fear of losing privacy to the government is based on the fear that this increased surveillance will be used by the government to smother dissent. This is a valid fear, but has the government yet used surveillance to smother dissent? If you can find a solid examp…

Most my examples would be of the US acting in cases that are technically illegal and only so related directly to this kind of surveillance (like ELF, bradley manning, mccarthyism (not to mention other, foreign policy related or historical atrocities)), I certainly do not think that, even if we pretend the US always has super great intentions, they are not always the best to have stick their hands in things.

I wonder if this fits your bill:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

And, from the little I know, the actual stifling part is [allegedly?] evident in malcom X and fred hampton cases, as well as others I might be missing.

Re: US intelligence mining data from 9 US Internet companies in broad secret program

#332

Post by rdl »

rsync wrote: post #280
rdl wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do something for mobile please? You're one of the most trustworthy providers, particularly if you build things on mobile so we don't necessarily need to trust you...

We're genuinely interested in what you mean by this ... Android devices are unix devices, and (I assume) either have ssh/scp/sftp/rsync in their userland or it can easily be placed there... If I had a modern phone, which I do not[1], I would probably just load duplicity[2] on it ? But now that I think about it, in the same way that I have zero data on my laptop, I assume I would also have zero data on my phone ? Plea…

I mostly meant build an API for iOS and get people to use it. I don't know much about android internals.

Re: US intelligence mining data from 9 US Internet companies in broad secret program

#333

Post by jhart3333 »

kevinalexbrown wrote: post #143

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,…

chailatte, your comment is dead. I think it triggered the beautiful prose filter.

Re: US intelligence mining data from 9 US Internet companies in broad secret program

#334

Post by adventured »

frisco wrote: post #130

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…

Warren Buffett isn't a valid reference on nuclear terrorism, first of all.

Second, his calculation is bogus, amusingly enough. The odds of the actual event occuring don't improve every year that goes by. That's assumes everything is static and unstoppable to begin with, among other false assumptions embedded into it.

It'd be like saying: given enough time, a nuclear bomb will go off in Greenland. That's not true at all, but if you calculated using Buffett's false premise, then yes, after N years it would have to happen (because his premise is that there's N chance per year, and then he treats the equation like a coin flip, where eventually it is supposed to be 99.99999% likely to land on heads, but that's false because every flip is independent of the last flip in reality; his calculation only works in an artificial reality / vacuum). In actuality, a nuclear attack could just as easily occur tomorrow morning as 80 years from now, and that completely debunks Buffett's point.

Re: US intelligence mining data from 9 US Internet companies in broad secret program

#335

Post by adventured »

enraged_camel wrote: post #215
frisco wrote: post #130

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…

>>Warren Buffet has predicted a major nuclear terrorist attack on an American city to be a "virtual certainty" given enough time. 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.

No, everything is not certain given enough time.

Because the facts of each iteration can completely alter the whole chain.

This is the argument that if you flip a coin enough times, heads MUST come up. But that is in fact not true. Each flip is completely independent of the last flip. Given enough time, there is in fact no law that says heads must occur.

Real life events work much the same way. Any given event can be interrupted. The 'everything is certain' premise doesn't work if a human exists and can stop or alter the process with free will (in any number of a zillion variable ways). For example, Buffett's calculation says that after, say, 100 years a nuclear bomb essentially must have gone off, but that's not true at all, because people can always stop it from happening and interrupt the theoretical math calculation (which only actually exists in a 'vacuum'). In any given year, the odds are N, but that does not in fact compound into following years inherently.

Re: US intelligence mining data from 9 US Internet companies in broad secret program

#337

Post by monkmartinez »

kevinalexbrown wrote: post #143

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,…

Chilling: William Binney in Dec 2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuET0kpHoyM … 20 to 30 trillion communications "stored" #Prism #NSA

Re: US intelligence mining data from 9 US Internet companies in broad secret program

#338

Post by adventured »

hindsightbias wrote: post #286
anigbrowl wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have such a massive program, according to many; the NTSB is a big bureaucracy and a lot of people consider the whole concept of speed limits and traffic police as a encroachment upon their freedom rather than a reasonable collective decision on how to share transit arteries. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. This seems a rather inappropriate apho…

> NTSB is a big bureaucracy Of 400 employees. If PRISM only really costs $20M/year (per the slide deck), it has to be the greatest bang-for-buck IT project in Federal history. I'd let it go if we can get rid of all those multi-billion satellite projects and 3/4ths of the staff. Damage to perceived 'rights' is OK, as long as it is done efficiently.

It clearly doesn't only cost $20 million. That would be ignoring the multi-billion dollar Utah data center required to store / analyze everything. The bandwidth / networking capacity alone would cost more than that to setup and operate.

They are getting a discount in this case however, as companies are doing a lot of the work for them.

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