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from the surveillance,-surveillance-everywhere dept

Sat, Jun 29th 2013 12:00pm — ChurchHatesTucker

The elephant in this week's news has been Edward Snowden. While he's been quiet since ditching Hong Kong early in the week, the effects of his leaking of evidence of the NSA's spying on American citizens continue to reverberate.

Rep. Mike Rogers, head of the House Intelligence Committee (insert joke here), has twisted himself into logical knots in his attempts to condemn Snowden. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the NSA's former General Counsel went further and laid into the Washington Post's Bart Gellman for reporting on the NSA. Disappointingly, other journalists are lining up to smear The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald over trivialities. It makes you wonder if the FBI's undercover payroll is limited to WikiLeaks.

Despite the flagrant attempt at distraction, details continue to emerge. We finally have confirmation that the NSA has been bulk collecting email metadata. The NSA's general response has been to lie about the message and double down on messengers.

Aside from being blatantly unconstitutional, sifting massive data collections is unlikely to catch actual terrorists. Even a former East German Stasi officer recognizes the problems with the NSA's nearly limitless scope.

Fortunately, it hasn't been all bad news this week. The US Senate, at least, may have been belatedly woken to its oversight duties. In something of a surprise, the FCC has insisted that Telcos protect meta-data, which could alter the 'expectation of privacy' that we are afforded to something closer to that which we expect. Is it too much to hope that the Department of Justice will follow its own guidelines not to treat leaks as theft of government property?

Elsewhere, the Marrakech treaty managed to provide for the blind despite heavy lobbying, which seems to debunk the USTR's insistance that secrecy is necessary for treaty negotiations. The Kafkaesque No Fly List seems to have met with a skeptical judge, while across the pond the EU CoJ AG weighed in against the Orwellian "right to be forgotten." Finally, those attempts to smear Glenn Greenwald mentioned above ran into instant Internet mockery. No doubt it's his fault.

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Anonymous Coward, 29 Jun 2013 @ 12:09pm

you need to remember that had this treaty been 'negotiated' in complete secrecy, the USTR would have been able to stop the blind from having access to the various books and movies, because no one would have known they were in existence. as it is, not only were the blind prevented from having access, the USTR dont know who voted to stop them, such was the degree of secrecy!
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Jay (profile), 29 Jun 2013 @ 12:11pm

Re:
It's getting so bad that you might as well call copyright "corporate rights" because every time copyright wins, the public loses.
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Anonymous Coward, 29 Jun 2013 @ 12:17pm

Happy 4th
How is this for the fourth amendment?

http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/video?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId= 9037543
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Killercool (profile), 29 Jun 2013 @ 1:03pm

Re: Happy 4th
You mean the part where the police obtain a warrant from a judge (using the erratic driving common to drunks as probable cause) in order to collect blood to confirm legal drunkenness?

Yep. That IS how the fourth amendment works.
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That One Guy (profile), 29 Jun 2013 @ 1:14pm

Re: Re:
I'd go with 'Corporate privileges', not rights, as 'rights' suggests they are owed/deserve them, rather than just being granted them.

Not to mention privileges can be taken away if the beneficiary has shown they no longer deserve them...
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Anonymous Coward, 29 Jun 2013 @ 7:19pm

I just watched the one of the many HALO 4 movies on Youtube, You know the ones that fans make by cutting and pasting all cut scenes of the game, I cried when Cordana died.

With that said, oh boy the US government is looking more and more like the Covenant.
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Anonymous, 30 Jun 2013 @ 1:56pm

Wait...the NSA, an agency of the US government, claims it doesn't spy on people in the US, but spies on those OUTSIDE US jurisdiction? Bassackward government, as usual.
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Congress or Prostitutes of Hostile Elite?, 30 Jun 2013 @ 3:56pm

Re: Hostile Elite vs Gullible White Cattle
2 Jewish crime syndicates VERINT & NARUS do all this surveillance for NSA on America/Europe. this is not left vs right, GOP vs Dems, Socialism vs liberty. This is war against White people.

Why do hostile globalist elite defend Israel as a Jewish ethnostate with Jewish only immigration, but ravage White majority Europe/North America into a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural Gulag with non-White colonization?

The world is 93% non-White, only 7% White. But 3rd world colonizers are aggressively advancing their agenda to annihilate gullible Whites, just as China annihilates Tibet.

How long will gullible Whites cuckold for murderous anti-White elite, who confiscate our guns, infiltrate/subvert our banks/FBI/CIA, indoctrinate White kids in academia/mass media, plunder White jobs/wages, & butcher White soldiers in bankrupting wars?

"Native" Americans! invaded from East Asia. Yellow & Brown races committed 10-times more genocide, slavery, imperialism than Whites. Since Old-Testament, Whites have been victims of Jewish/Crypto-Jewish, Turkic, Muslim, N.African imperialism, slavery, genocide.

Gullible Whites should reject subversive anti-White ideologies -libertarianism, feminism, liberalism- & hostile slanders of racism. Peace to all humanity, but White people must organize to advance their interests, their fertility, their homelands. Spread this message. Reading list: http://goo.gl/iB777 , http://goo.gl/htyeq , http://amazon.com/dp/0759672229 , http://amazon.com/dp/1410792617
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