President Obama Says He'll Rein In NSA... Then Proceeds To Praise And Defend Everything They've Done
from the not-very-convincing dept
In an interview on Thursday, President Obama said that he's going to propose some "self-restraint on the NSA" and to "initiate some reforms that can give people more confidence." Of course, he's the boss of the NSA. He doesn't need to "propose" anything -- he can order them to stop. Furthermore, it appears that nearly everything else he talked about was supporting the actions of the NSA, so it's a bit difficult to take seriously this idea that there will be any significant decrease in NSA activity."The challenge is...we do have people who are trying to hurt us. And they communicate through these same systems," Obama said. "And if we're going to do a good job preventing a terrorist attack in this country, a weapon of mass destruction getting on the New York subway system, etc., we do want to keep eyes on some bad actors."That's misleading to inaccurate, depending on your perspective. The checks and balances are not all they're cracked up to be, with everyone pretty much reliant on the NSA telling the truth, combined with the fact that many of those responsible for "oversight" are so close with the NSA that they're more co-conspirators than actual overseers.
"I want to everybody to be clear: the people at the NSA, generally, are looking out for the safety of the American people. They are not interested in reading your emails. They're not interested in reading your text messages. And that's not something that's done. And we've got a big system of checks and balances, including the courts and Congress, who have the capacity to prevent that from happening," the president added.
Separately, can we drop this whole "they're not interested in reading your emails" bullshit? All people are saying there is "look you're a peon so shut up and deal with the fact that you have no privacy." That's ridiculous. Clearly the NSA is reading lots of people's emails (and getting data about them and what they do). While they might not make use of it today to spy on you in particular, that doesn't mean that it won't change in the future when suddenly you become "a person of interest" for whatever reason. It's easy for some people to think that the government won't ever care what they're doing -- but that can always change in a hurry and by the time it does, it's too late to start "worrying" about your privacy.
On top of that, recent revelations have made it clear that the NSA has no qualms at all about using information it gathers on non-terrorists that it doesn't like to try to destroy their lives. Sure, the NSA might not want to read your email today. But, piss off the wrong person tomorrow...
Separately, if they don't want to spy on me, let's make a simple deal then: stop doing it. It's hard to square this claim from NSA defenders that it's okay to spy on all of us because they don't want to spy on all of us. The right response is to stop spying on all of us. You want to go after the so-called "bad people," okay, then target those people but not everyone in hopes you might find some bad people mixed in there.
Oh, and once again, it's incredibly insulting how completely unconcerned the President and other NSA defenders seem to be about the rest of the world. Once again the message is basically: if you're not American, fuck you.
"The N.S.A. actually does a very good job about not engaging in domestic surveillance, not reading people's emails, not listening to the contents of their phone calls. Outside of our borders, the NSA's more aggressive. It's not constrained by laws," Obama said.But it can be constrained by their boss, who happens to be the President. Will he actually do anything?
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Filed Under: barack obama, foreigners, nsa, nsa surveillance
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* Once again the message is basically: if you're not American, fuck you. *
And then they are shocked when this attitude comes back to bite them.
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They don't really do anything directly, but a great many of them have this attitude about them that combined with global american politics and the media make for a really bad combination for perception.
Time for the US to take a step back and focus on fixing things at home rather than "lead" the world.
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I'm sure Obama agrees that this is a huge problem and he will work diligently to try to find the answer.
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Re: President Obama Says He'll Rein In NSA... Then Proceeds To Praise And Defend Everything They've Done
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The big parties are not sensibly presented by elephants or donkeys. The appropriate mascots are red- and yellow-necked weasels.
Bush believed what his puppeteers told him because he did not know better. Obama believes what his puppeteers tell him because he is trained not to know better.
America chose first a dunce, then a cynic to be president. Who will be next?
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what an absolute bullshit statement! the NSA may well not be confined by USA laws but every other country in the world has it's own laws and they should be respected and observed by every other country, not run roughshod over, just because it's the USA NSA! there would be all hell let loose if other countries were doing to the USA what the NSA has been doing to others, and were then caught in the act! look at the shit that has been thrown at Huawei over back doors built in to routers sold in the USA. it was complete bollocks and only done to try to throw people off the scent of scrutinising what the NSA were doing!
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If only there were something you could do about that....
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Fear propaganda. "...a weapon of mass destruction getting on the New York subway system..." Yeah, as if. If ever there were a dirty bomb or such detonated on US soil, the government should be considered suspect #1. They have the motive, means and resources necessary to carry out such an attack. I'm getting real sick and tired of hearing about the doomsday threat posed by cavemen from over a thousand miles away and their supposed "expertise" at bomb-making and breaches of a multi-billion dollar security machine.
"I want to everybody to be clear: the people at the NSA, generally, are looking out for the safety of the American people. They are not interested in reading your emails. They're not interested in reading your text messages. And that's not something that's done. And we've got a big system of checks and balances, including the courts and Congress, who have the capacity to prevent that from happening," the president added.
If they're not spying domestically then explain the political targeting of the IRS.
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Do you believe they actually give a damn?
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Methinks we are all considered "bad actors".
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What it actually means...
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NSA Files
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translation
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Future Snowden revelations
I've said it before, the likelihood that all this is just a passive data gathering in order to respond to threats without some ulterior intent to mold and shape opinions in a covert way is unlikely.
We already see tons of sock puppets and their social media and corporate assets shaping public opinion and creating filter bubbles to misinform and redirect public opinion. Given that propaganda is no longer illegal, it's a free for all for puppet masters and policy hacks to have free reign to cajole and influence overtly. One can only imagine what secretive goals and ends are being fueled by these means.
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My perspective differs
My perspective is slightly different: that's a lie.
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Location Tracking
It�s not just the Government and police. Until we get proper legislation making app developers have you op in instead of opting out, you will never know what you have downloaded to your mobile device.
Using a SilentPocket� allows you to take control of your own privacy when it comes to Smartphone tracking. With over 1,500,000 mobile app developed for smartphones, many of which are stealth and are eavesdropping on your every move. Some are capable of turning on functions on your phone like your mic, camera, GPS, address book and more, even when it has been turned off.
There is only one way to stop this if you really want to know for sure that you have control of your mobile device is to block all forms of wifi coming in or going out. Silent-Pocket
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Certain phones have been determined to have secondary power sources. For those phones, you are correct. For others, that may not be the case. Either way, that secondary power source will still not last nearly as long as the primary battery would with the phone "off" but still talking to the tower.
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Shield pouch that shit. It's not rocket science.
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Also, from NSA's own past admissions, they have a VERY POOR audit system, where employees could abuse the system, and they wouldn't even know about it YEARS LATER unless those employees come clean themselves. They've also recently said they can't search for internal stuff, and they probably aren't logging who's doing what either.
So WHY THE HELL would we believe when he says "everything is under the control"?! We have absolute no reason to trust them on their words anymore, and all the reasons to believe they are lying (especially since it seems to be a shameless habit of theirs).
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ERMAHGHERDED AGAIN!
Hello from Canada, we are not subject to the regime of the United Stasi of America understand. That makes YOU (U.S.A's alphbetical governmental police) an enemy combatant. Do you understand. Now stay on your side of the border. Thanks loads.
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Re: ERMAHGHERDED AGAIN!
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NSA's new targeting rules
The NSA has just announced a new breakthrough in the fight on terrorism. New government studies have just proven that all terrorists have inhaled oxygen at some point in their lives. With this new information, the NSA can now restrict surveillance to only those people that have at some point in the past taken a breath.
An NSA spokesman has been quoted as saying, "Now I know some of you may have inhaled at some point in your life. Many of us are guilty of that. But you don't need to worry. We are only going after the bad guys."
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To put this in context
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NSA's new slogal
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Re: NSA's new slogal
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Just wanted to say
My approval ratings of tech-dirt have gone significantly up!
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Business as usual...
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Absolutely.
Resident Obama will definitely do something.
a) He will reward the NSA miscreants for a job well done, encourage them to work even harder and to gather even more dirt on everyone alive, and keep on lying to the American People on a regular basis about how he will insure oversight on the NSA and all the other 3-letter agencies, until his stand-in is (s)elected to office by the Cartel of Corporate Concerns. And go to a).
Its nothing personal you understand.
Just business as usual.
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