When Vladimir Putin Is Envious Of Your Surveillance State, You've Gone Too Far
from the that's-quite-a-statement dept
Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a big press conference on Thursday, and spent some time talking about President Obama, Ed Snowden and the various US surveillance programs that have been revealed. Putin appeared to be quite supportive of the surveillance programs, saying that he believes that the US's surveillance programs are a "necessity" and "mainly directed at fighting terrorism," so there's not a real problem with them. He even defended collecting data on everyone "because you have to monitor not only a specific terrorist suspect, but rather his whole network of relationships." That Vladimir Putin would appreciate vast spying power is hardly a surprise. But this claim is raising some eyebrows:"How do I feel about Obama after Snowden's revelations? I envy him because he can do this without incurring any consequences."Did you catch that? Putin, the former head of the KGB, and very well known for using Russian intelligence services to his strong advantage is envious that President Obama has all this surveillance capabilities at his fingertips and that all of this can be revealed "without incurring any consequences." It seems like there should be a general rule of thumb: when Vladimir Putin is envious of your surveillance state, you've gone too far.
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Filed Under: barack obama, nsa, surveillance, surveillance state, vladimir putin
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Obama: YES, WE CAN.
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Why does "theconversation.edu.au" need a security certificate here, Mike?
Teh internets is showing more every day how it's a SPY GRID. The Stasi would be envious of even Techdirt's ability to SNOOP on everyone.
The NSA is kind of minor compared to commercial snoops, #1 being Google.
If you're serious about trying to stymy spies, kids, use the Firefox extension Noscript -- and be sure to remove Google's paid for whitelisting -- plus a hosts file to block known parasites and web bugs, at the least. But as this "security certificate" bit shows, those don't prevent all snooping: they're constantly working on new ways to not only snoop but correlate with all other sources.
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Re: Why does "theconversation.edu.au" need a security certificate here, Mike?
There are times when I am uncertain which is worse: our out-of-control spy agencies or the politicians who serve and enable them. Shadows in another form, either way, and equally dangerous. We must stop them somehow, before they take us over the edge of the abyss with them.
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Re: Why does "theconversation.edu.au" need a security certificate here, Mike?
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Re: Why does "theconversation.edu.au" need a security certificate here, Mike?
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Putin may be spreading disinformation
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Re: Putin may be spreading disinformation
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Heck, you've even had judges ordering some of those involved to do something, and the ones on the receiving end of the order just laugh it off and ignore it, so 'provocative jibe' or not, it's completely accurate.
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Re: Putin may be spreading disinformation
Funny(though not in the 'haha' sense)thing about the NSA is, with all the crap they've been caught doing, at this point pretty much nothing would seem to be too unbelievable for them to have done.
'They're tracking people from satellites!' used to be tinfoil hat territory, but now it's '...and the latest leak shows that the NSA can not only track a cellphone in real time, they can turn on the video and audio recording capabilities of it, even if you turned it off'.
With all the NSA has done, there is no 'too low', 'they'd never do something like that', there's just 'they might not have done X, but we don't have sufficient evidence to say either way yet'.
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"People used to laugh at my tinfoil hat, but now i sell them in the amazon"
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Just as moral as...
Is he equating spying to what I think he is?
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Re: Just as moral as...
Probably. You can get screwed by either.
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They cry and complain about how Federal Healthcare is some sort of violation of an amendment and when pushed say "uuuh... I guess the 10th??" Whereas we have these fourth amendment trampling going on and where are the cries now? No where? In fact they talk about how it's just fine and dandy? Like seriously, they got what they want. Something they could actually attempt to impeach the president on AND THEY SIT AROUND AND JUST COMPLAIN ABOUT HOW SOME DUCK WITH A BEARD SHOULD BE ABLE TO SAY WHAT HE WANTS!
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Yo, Momma.
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democracy is being killed off bit by bit, and all to the advantage of businesses, just like Orwell said. it's just a little bit behind his schedule. the really worrying thing is the industry that is trying to bring about democracy's downfall. surely there could have been a better choice than a fucking industry that exists on make believe, couldn't there? what a joke!! fuck up the whole world, all for the sake of forcing someone to watch a crap movie and make them pay to do so at that!!
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No consquences for the leader
Every foreign leader should be envious of how our leaders can do so much to erode our freedoms with no consequences.
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Welkom to the USSA
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