Pathological: Surveillance State Defenders Use Their Own Failure In Paris To Justify Mass Surveillance
from the shut-up-jackasses dept
We already wrote a bit about the absolutely ridiculous attempts to connect the Paris attacks of last week with Ed Snowden and encryption. But, of course, the surveillance state sees successful terrorist attacks -- which often demonstrate their own failings -- as a way to double down on getting more power. Take, for example, our old friend and former NSA General Counsel Stewart Baker.As pointed out by Marcy Wheeler, Baker used the Paris attacks to argue that it was evidence that the NSA should not shut down its Section 215 bulk collection of phone records.
NSA's 215 program was designed to detect a Mumbai/Paris-style attack. https://t.co/UelhvrlNPp Maybe this is the wrong month to drop it.
— stewartbaker (@stewartbaker) November 14, 2015
What the actual fuck, Stewart?
Look, it's one thing to use horrible tragedies to promote your own political desires. It's another thing entirely to use the out and out failure of these intelligence programs to argue that they're proof of why those programs work and/or should be expanded.
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Filed Under: bulk surveillance, executive order 12333, mass surveillance, nsa, paris attacks, section 215, stewart baker, surveillance state
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Oh, the irony.
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It failed to do so, so perhaps it is time to look at whether it is cost effective.
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Re:
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Terrorists encrypted in (wait for it) Arabic
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-the-baseless-terrorists-communicating-over-playstati on-4-rumor-got-started
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Re: Terrorists encrypted in (wait for it) Arabic
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Re: Terrorists encrypted in (wait for it) Arabic
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Re: Terrorists encrypted in (wait for it) Arabic
Honestly, if they genuinely thought that people who speak Middle Eastern and Asian languages might possibly pose a threat (give 'em a break, they've had fourteen years to get on top of this), don't you think they might have, like, hired a bunch of people who speak those languages fluently (by which I mean "They understand idiomatic/slang usage") in order to better keep an eye on them?
Well it seems to me they thought those nice chaps from the Middle East and Asia didn't pose a threat at all and meant us no harm until last Friday, 9/11 being an unfortunate blip.
It must sound like lunacy to some of you but if a small minority of people of certain ethnicities have demonstrated a capacity for carrying out horrible crimes to gain attention for their political ambitions, shouldn't we be tasking our "intelligence" communities with learning those languages and keeping an eye on people who express hatred towards the West and a desire to shoot, bomb, and kill us? That they apparently can't be bothered to do so is very alarming, to say the least.
But this was Belgium. Is it that much different in other Western countries?
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Maybe they did know about it...
I mean look at all the benefits that come with every terrorist attack, they get to pass more crazy surveillance laws. They get to increase military and defense funding. They get to blame all the activists and tech companies that actually care about privacy and freedom of speech...
Every terrorist attack is a boon for our government in some way - they just can't get enough of it.
At what point are they actually encouraging the attacks?
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Re: Maybe they did know about it...
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Re: Re: Maybe they did know about it...
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All that is required for evil to win, is for Good Men to do nothing.
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Re: Re: Re: Maybe they did know about it...
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I mean, the same happened with the Boston Bombing attacks.
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because they got busy with the Dick-Pic database
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Terrorism in return
Public officials parroting the "give us more power to prevent these from happening" should be considered the same brand of terrorism.
The public at large is a festering pile of shit that not only remains ignorant of the very terror in front of their faces they in fact are also busy choosing one terrorist over the other in a vain attempt to escape terrorism all together.
A government that says the solution to the terrorism plaguing you is the allow us to terrorize you like a boogey man in the closet is a government that is no better than the turds they fight.
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Can you hear us now?
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Re: Can you hear us now?
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NSA's 215 program was designed to detect a Mumbai/Paris-style attack. Maybe this is the right month to discuss why it was ever created in the first place?
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Has anyone here ever gotten a raise for proving that they can't do their job?
How about upgrading an antivirus program that got your system infected?
Perhaps a contractor insisted the only reason your new porch collapsed was because you hadn't paid them more money in advance?
Help me out here, I'm having trouble understanding 'Our money wasting program couldn't even do what we said it would, so we need more money to prepare for the next failure.'.
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Actually...
Probably off-topic here, but I DO know of people who were "un-sackable", who were moved out sideways and upwards (like a knight in a game of chess) because they were absolutely toxic in their position, and it was the only way their line-manager could get rid of them. Shuffle them into someone else's department.
Think Big Government, think Union...
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Seriously, if they had STOPPED an attack... I'd give them some credibility.
This just sounds like that sloppy teenager who doesn't care about his job, as a security guard."Oh, the museum got robbed? They must have, like, been all quiet and stuff. Its not my fault they were trying not to be seen. Maybe you should consider security."
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In the government, it's all about who's backside you kiss. In fact, being less competent can actually help you get promoted because you are less of a threat to those above you.
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It's certainly true in the one I work for.
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Re: Seriously, if they had STOPPED an attack... I'd give them some credibility.
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Constructive responses? In a flying pig's eye.
The only obvious response to this tragedy will be to unleash the Iranians, another short-term shortsighted misdirected "solution". No one else can put the boots on the ground, and insofar as the terrorists are largely the same people who attacked Iran in that nasty war, they have the revenge motivation, too.
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NSA looked for "Iraq knives chatter", but found instead
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No, they are using it as proof that not enough money and liberties have been sunk into the programs yet for them to be effective.
It's like when a fart-powered moon-rocket fails to take off: all you might need are larger beans.
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NSA analysts can't afford premium cable, so
Terrorists are too hard to understand, so they're like all those Spanish novella channels that everyone ignores.
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Taking their own failures out on civil liberties
And another
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Re: Taking their own failures out on civil liberties
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Sanity: beating them all senseless with a shoe, then hauling 'em out to (and stranding 'em on) an island that we've dubbed "Ark Ship B".
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"Paris Attack Could Renew Debate Over Encrypted Messaging Apps"
Yes, folks, it's all true: MALICE AND VIOLENCE _CAN_ CHANGE THE VERY NATURE OF MATHEMATICS!
2 + 2 still 4, after all the mindless violence in Syria and nearby? Uncertainty reigns, say mathematicians, in a flurry to review the Peano axioms and other fundamental laws of mathematics. "Until we've rechecked everything, there's no telling what may happen. It may have become impossible--or trivial--to find primes, factor large numbers, or solve NP-complete problems--all the operations involved in encrypting numbers are in doubt."
But all is not gloom-and-doom in the mathematics community. "This event has opened whole new vistas in Mathematical Sociology," says one researcher. "For future reference, we need to know exactly how many victims of violence it takes to change the laws of mathematics. Also, there seems to be a bizarre nonlinearity about the number of victims--100 million chinese or 10,000 syrian deaths have no apparent effect, while 100 french deaths has caused havoc. We need to determine whether it's the location of the deaths, or the ethnicity of the victims that actually triggers the havoc. Researchers for decades to come will be applying for government grants to resolve these issues. It is the biggest boon for mathematical research since last Tuesday!"
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Also, it's ridiculous that they're claiming that we know who's talking to ISIS at the same time as they're saying that encryption makes it impossible to know who the bad guys are.
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I didn't see the NYT article. But are they then (the Stewart Bakers of this world), saying that they know who's talking to who (because they can see the traffic), but they don't know what they're saying because the conversation is encrypted?
If that's the case they might have an argument. Three years ago, perhaps. Today, less so. Due entirely to their own deceit and arrogance they've lost people's confidence and trust.
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Encryption...
I have been expecting considerably more on the encryption front from Gov't than a couple of seconds sound bytes, but that may just be the nature of that game now.
Soon, there should be more requests and hopefully, refusals, to participate in "backdoors" and, as it was said, they spoke Arabic...
The French program failed as massively as the American program for gathering that crucial intelligence, but we cannot know this for certain. It was said in an earlier TD thread that any single government does not want to share their abilities with any other single government, because, if they did it for one, they would have to do it for others - I believe it was referencing the Chinese or something akin.
That's all I have to say about that...
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Re: Encryption...
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Re: Encryption...
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