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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

#471

Post by dragonwriter »

VikingCoder wrote: post #470
talmand wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you don't like it or don't agree doesn't make it meaningless. It means exactly what it says. There is nothing to show that an ultra-limited government cannot perform the needed tasks for society such as you provide. But I say there's a big difference between a government that provides what's needed for society and the monstrosity that's currently in place in Washington D.C. When I say something along the…

> Simple. It's what the Constitution says it is. Every single thing the government does today has been because of laws written by Congress, signed and enacted by the head of the Executive, and upheld by the Judiciary. How can you even BEGIN to make the claim that it's unconstitutional? That's the DEFINITION of Constitutional.

> Every single thing the government does today has been because of laws written by Congress, signed and enacted by the head of the Executive, and upheld by the Judiciary.

Incorrect. Many of things the government does today are done either within or outside of specific purported statutory authority (in the latter case, if there is a theoretical justification, it relates to inherent powers of particular offices that do not require legislation to activate) outside of the scope of theories of justification that have been challenged in the courts. Its also quite likely that at least some things government does today are things that have been rejected by the courts in the past -- and which would be again if they were challenged again (certainly, it stretches credibility to claim that, despite all the past missteps, many of which involved repeats of the same violation, the government has just recently become perfectly compliant.)

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

#472

Post by VikingCoder »

dragonwriter wrote: post #471
VikingCoder wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Simple. It's what the Constitution says it is. Every single thing the government does today has been because of laws written by Congress, signed and enacted by the head of the Executive, and upheld by the Judiciary. How can you even BEGIN to make the claim that it's unconstitutional? That's the DEFINITION of Constitutional.

> Every single thing the government does today has been because of laws written by Congress, signed and enacted by the head of the Executive, and upheld by the Judiciary. Incorrect. Many of things the government does today are done either within or outside of specific purported statutory authority (in the latter case, if there is a theoretical justification, it relates to inherent powers of particular offices that do…

You imply that HUGE SWATHS of what the Federal Government are unconstitutional, and that's complete bunk.

If you disagree, figure out a way to get a court case, or write to your representatives or try to become one. That's how it works.

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

#473

Post by dragonwriter »

VikingCoder wrote: post #472
dragonwriter wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every single thing the government does today has been because of laws written by Congress, signed and enacted by the head of the Executive, and upheld by the Judiciary. Incorrect. Many of things the government does today are done either within or outside of specific purported statutory authority (in the latter case, if there is a theoretical justification, it relates to inherent powers of particular offices that do…

You imply that HUGE SWATHS of what the Federal Government are unconstitutional, and that's complete bunk. If you disagree, figure out a way to get a court case, or write to your representatives or try to become one. That's how it works.

> You imply that HUGE SWATHS of what the Federal Government are unconstitutional

I'm not sure on what basis you infer that thing about HUGE SWATHS from what I said.

> and that's complete bunk.

While, contrary to your claim, I didn't say (or imply) that it was true, I also don't see the evidence that it is "complete bunk". Please present it.

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

#474

Post by VikingCoder »

dragonwriter wrote: post #473
VikingCoder wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You imply that HUGE SWATHS of what the Federal Government are unconstitutional, and that's complete bunk. If you disagree, figure out a way to get a court case, or write to your representatives or try to become one. That's how it works.

> You imply that HUGE SWATHS of what the Federal Government are unconstitutional I'm not sure on what basis you infer that thing about HUGE SWATHS from what I said. > and that's complete bunk. While, contrary to your claim, I didn't say (or imply) that it was true, I also don't see the evidence that it is "complete bunk". Please present it.

Seriously? You're going to make me play this game?

"most of the political decisions that affect my life to be decided on the local or state level before it becomes a federal issue. That's exactly how the US was designed, but that's not the way it is being run now"

MOST... federal... the way it is being run now.

MOST means more than 50%.

And that's complete bunk: it is not the case that 50% of the political decisions made by the federal government that affect your life are unconstitutional.

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

#475

Post by dragonwriter »

VikingCoder wrote: post #474
dragonwriter wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You imply that HUGE SWATHS of what the Federal Government are unconstitutional I'm not sure on what basis you infer that thing about HUGE SWATHS from what I said. > and that's complete bunk. While, contrary to your claim, I didn't say (or imply) that it was true, I also don't see the evidence that it is "complete bunk". Please present it.

Seriously? You're going to make me play this game? "most of the political decisions that affect my life to be decided on the local or state level before it becomes a federal issue. That's exactly how the US was designed, but that's not the way it is being run now" MOST... federal... the way it is being run now. MOST means more than 50%. And that's complete bunk: it is not the case that 50% of the political decisions…

> Seriously? You're going to make me play this game?

I'm not making you do anything. If I could, I'd make you read posts more carefully (including the attribution line) before responding to them, though.

> "most of the political decisions that affect my life to be decided on the local or state level before it becomes a federal issue. That's exactly how the US was designed, but that's not the way it is being run now"

That quote is neither from my post [1] that you responded to [2] with the claim that "You imply that HUGE SWATHS of what the Federal Government are unconstitutional", nor from any other post of mine, in this thread, nor, for that matter, from anywhere else, ever. It's from someone else entirely. [3]

And it doesn't say that most things that government is doing are unconstitutional (as you claim now), or even that "HUGE SWATHS" are not (as you claimed before), it says that if the government was strictly doing only what was Constitutional, then most issues would be decided at the local or state level, and that is not what is happening now. So, even if it wasn't for the fact that it was irrelevant to the post it was offered in response to, and misattributed to the wrong person, your characterization would still be wrong.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5839649 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5840037 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5838992

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

#476

Post by walshemj »

flyinRyan wrote: post #459
walshemj wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't live in Germany or the USA :-) and having access to affordable stable power is quite an important thing in having a nice society to live in. As your so keen on improving the lot of "labor" you are of course a union member and actively recruit and improve workers living conditions? I got over 1000 of my members a better deal on their pensions and helped in gaining recognition for a bargaining unit in the UK.

>and having access to affordable stable power is quite an important thing in having a nice society to live in Not nearly as important as avoiding having a bunch of lunatic extremists as two-party systems seem to devolve to. I find the European governments of many parties all having a say in the government the best and closest to actual representation. I find the idea that the entirety of opinion in the whole US, all…

Like golden dawn in greece and of course italy and belgium have proved the point that PR is wonderful NOT

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

#477

Post by einhverfr »

anemitz wrote: post #50
tlrobinson wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Build open-source, encrypted, p2p networks. Fortunately the 1st Amendment is still mostly respected, at least relative to some of the others. [Edit] Now, monetizing such software is an interesting problem. Ripple/OpenCoin may have found one model: include a cryptocurrency that's used as credits in the system, and claim a large portion for yourself, which you can later sell. The problem is if they open source the soft…

I've also been considering the possibilities of an OSS security focused business. Random thoughts: * Build infrastructure necessary for other developers to build provably secure products on, license this. * Free consumer versions, paid/managed versions for corporations and governments. * Things like secure telephony have business models built in where you could charge per minute (or message) (and probably still be le…

Just to let you know I am planning on doing a series at my blog on thoughts regarding key management of a secure telephony system. My overall thoughts are to have a very tightly controlled key change policy so that a wiretap is only possible where either a customer's certificate authority's key has been compromised (custoemrs would be expected to run their own CA's) or where new calls were being established between parties that had not called eachother before. An interesting property of the system I am thinking about is that when a wiretap would end the next call to a previously evesdropped target would generate a warning.

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

#478

Post by wybo »

dantheman wrote: post #92
wybo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if you lost faith in Congress, like 94% of Americans. You might also join a realistic effort to reform it: http://www.rootstrikers.org (ran by Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law prof who also founded the Creative Commons movement)

Root Strikers is fundamentally misguided, they attack the symptoms instead of the cause. The root of all this corruption is how large the federal government is, any organization with that much power and money will be co-opted.

I don't agree. Good governance is possible, and size has little to do with it. If there is proper democratic control over government, government can be a force for good. Many northern European countries governments show this (they generally are trusted, and few people resent paying taxes).

Democratic control can provide equality and fairness, with every person one vote, rather than the market where some people having more impact than others, simply because they are richer.

Maybe because in America there hasn't been good governance for so long, trust is low, and the only solution many see is to simply chop down government to the minimum... but there are other solutions, actual democracy is one of them.

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

#479

Post by lispm »

Create wrote: post #159
lispm wrote: post #46

Also confirmed: The NSA is Spying on Hundreds of Millions of Non-Americans

Directive 2006/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2006 on the retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks and amending Directive 2002/58/EC http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:...

Wikipedia

> The German Bundestag had implemented the directive in "Gesetz zur Neuregelung der Telekommunikationsüberwachung und anderer verdeckter Ermittlungsmaßnahmen sowie zur Umsetzung der Richtlinie 2006/24/EG".[17] The law became valid on 1 January 2008. Any communications data had to be retained for six months. On 2 March 2010, the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany ruled the law unconstitutional as a violation of the guarantee of the secrecy of correspondence.[18] As such, the directive is not currently implemented in Germany.

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