Its very likely that the Snowden Files will eventually show us all that most of the online dangers - viruses, trojans, web-bugs, and the entire array of nasty man-made pitfalls - are really the work of a few western governments who want people to stay away from the one thing that has shown their deceptions and crimes time and time again; the Internet.
No wonder these same governments are having wet dreams about assassinating Mr. Snowden.
I do believe the Fed (and every other government on earth) has long ago realized that "government" is an obsolete concept and, like any intelligent creature faced with extinction, is doing everything in its power - (using taxpayer dollars) - to delay its inevitable demise.
While the (P)Residency of George Dubya certainly allowed the forces of fascism to rewrite the laws of the land in favor of criminal profiteering by the mega rich, it also had the unexpected backlash effect of showing the world's public that government was no longer needed to run a country.
George and his gang of crooked millionaires spent zero time on statesmanship efforts while rewriting the laws for their corporate partners and stealing anything that could be shipped to Kuwait for re-sale. Yet the USA did not fall apart, and folks went to work as usual and chaos did not ensue.
Those civilians worldwide; with more than three brain cells, noticed, looking back, that the USA ran just fine for over a decade without a real government in office.
So methinks it now behooves the current criminals in office to do the only thing they know how to do - get enough dirt on everyone so that nobody can say anything bad about them and they can keep their lucrative day jobs, feeding at the public tax trough and partying nightly with their 1000 dollar an hour hookers, on their million dollar yachts, till dawn.
"It's kind of amazing that President Obama and other NSA defenders are still arguing that the program is perfectly fine."
Hardly amazing at all.
Criminals by their nature, have very little respect for the law unless the law benefits them. Since Bush1, American law has been undergoing a huge rewrite, specifically to allow criminals the freedom they desire to pillage the nation, without fear of incrimination.
That the criminals occupying the White House and their cheerleading squads consider breaking the law to be "perfectly fine", is quite expected.
The criminals in office; because they profit thereby, and the cheerleaders; because they expect to some day be among the crooks in office, or at least benefit financially somehow from the process.
The benefits derived from all of that blackmail material they are collecting are so lucrative that the criminals in office have given only minor consideration to the unlikely repercussions of breaking the law, and in fact assume that their positions of power give them immunity to such repercussions anyway.
Where there is no chance of culpability, there is no reason to not break the law.
Criminals do not expect to be caught anyway. It is simply not a part of their nature. It is in fact the thought of getting caught that prevents most citizens from participating in criminal activities.
While it is often wisest to assume incompetence rather than malicious intent, such a kill switch would be very handy for the forces of Fascism during such orchestrated events as 9/11, where the Fed could instantly render all of the cell phones of all of the possible witnesses, inoperable. It would save them both time and effort during the inevitable cover-up process and allow for a much better public "education" of the Official Events, if there were no contradictory evidence floating about in the hands of unknown civilians.
After all, its silly to depend on real terrorists to get the job done right, unless you train them yourself.
Failing the creation of a large war to distract the population from the activities of the Commercial Government of the USA, the only other possible route would be a huge "natural" disaster that killed hundreds of thousands and left millions homeless across the USA.
There's a certain minimum limit to the level of an atrocity, or rather the public's reaction to it, that makes it effective. If there's too little damage, too few people die, the ruse might not work. This is why War is the favorite scam in these sorts of situations. Lot of damage and lots of death and lots of positive public response because we're used to war and know what to expect and can quite readily switch our anger with the government for anger against the new foreign foe.
But massive homeland disasters are the next best thing.
Looks like at least one of these spooks in high places has read "Steal This Book".
Damn it. This is simply getting too hairy. Their terrible PR is failing completely.
I can hear the war drums warming up to pull the country's attention to the plight of their sons an daughters lining up to go to war.
The public already knows too much and something must be done to distract the scrutiny now falling on the NSA.
Don't know where, but I know the boys have to start one really soon, or a lot of crimes and secret deals are going to be exposed to the one group that the US Fed does not want in possession of such awful facts - the US Public.
War is their only recourse - the only thing that will turn the public's attention away form this iceberg of a crime.
Should be less than 5 weeks from now to be effective. I wonder what country wins this lottery... I wonder if the Chinese will finance this US war too....
"...there are no benefits to the program. None have been shown."
Well there really are a whole bunch of benefits to the progams, absolutely rooms full of benefits in fact, but well, to show them to the public would be the same as incriminating one's self, you see and, well, we can't have that now can we.
Point is though, he aint lying.
The NSA and its contractual buddies in commerce, organized crime and industry have been reaping a serious shit load of benefits from the global surveillance programs for years.
You would be amazed just how hospitable an Anti-American Iraqui Official can be to a visiting US corporation head, after you've shown him a dosier of him and his girlfriend's telephone conversation transcripts, their private emails and an album of telephoto pictures of them doing the dirty through the windows of various meeting places.
Its just that anything that benfits the NSA in any way, is pretty much automatically gonna be detrimental to everyone else on earth... so showing all those accrued benefits - or for that matter, any of those accrued benefits to the public.... that's not gonna happen.
But amazingly, he aint lying on this particular aspect.
Looks like Darwin's Natural Selection in Action to me.
If the Russian government wants to really piss off its entire population and remove the lagest information access service in human history bit by bit or whole hog, nature says only that everyone else should quickly step back far enough to avoid being struck as the idiot falls.
There is no saving those who are determined to do themselves harm.
Blaming their social idiocracy on the frailty of children's psyches to withstand the awareness of biology, shows clearly how protected children act - such as those filling the ranks of government - when they grow up; devious and stupid.
I suspect every failed nation sounds like a whiny, spoiled little girl near the end.
Perhaps it is time to add a few small changes to standard American Democracy - like:
1. "Lying to the public while holding public office will render the liar unfit for public office anywhere in the USA, ever again. It could indeed be viewed as treason, since corruption in government weakens the nation and makes it easier for enemies to wreak havoc, in effect, aiding and abetting all enemies of the USA."
and...
2. "Once a year, the public gets together on the internet, to vote on which politicans should be ousted from office for dereliction of duty, criminal activity, dishonesty and impersonating a statesman, and then vote again to choose a replacement."
Yep, those two would go a long way towards creating and maintaining an honest government. Its certain that no such creature has existed at any time during human history.
To blackmail an organization like the Banking Industry, one must possess some evidence of very obvious very-wrong-doing by the organization - that the organization really does not want made public.
For the IntelComm to strong-arm the banks into anything and for the banks to not cry foul, it is absolutley necessary that the banks must be guilty of something they really do not want the public to discover.
Or is it more likely that; rather than strong-arm the banks - a one-sided attack - US Intel simply made a deal with the banks that they could not refuse - such that the banksters would be allowed to get their take on the deal, in cash, by simply playing bad-accountant and as a bonus, they were guaranteed both total unnaccountability under law for their crimes and bail-out cash provided by the US taxpayers to the tune of hundreds of billions, to restock their stolen/lost cash reserves - kick-backs delivered with smiles in all directions, whenever needed.
How much of that spending spree by the Fed, could the Intelligence Community siphon off for agency and private use with nobody ever becoming the wiser, in the chaos that accompanied the federal actions during the Bail-Out?
No "Bail-out" tally has ever been offered the public as to who got what, when, where, or how much, or how often, of the billions and billions of tax-payer's dollars that were being delivered apparently to the very banks who nearly bankrupted the planet.
Considering the timing, I cannot imagine the Intell Community, (puffed up by their immunity from scrutiny and guarantee of non-accountability by the Fed), NOT grabbing fistfuls of these skids of cash being sent to banksters month after month, or more likely diverting accounted numbers electronically to off-shore banks through their proprietary back-doors in the US banks' computer software.
Sounds more like the perfect heist setup for skimming a ton of cash from the tax-payer's pockets while the tax-payers are staring at the banksters, who; getting raises in pay, promotions, and making millions on the side legally, for their efforts, could care less.
"I'm curious, though, how either of these guys can continue making these claims given everything else that's been happening."
Curious?
Its not like anything you, or I, or anyone they lie to, could possibly interfere with their plans, their actions, their intentions, or their claims. They do not really work for us anymore, even though you probably think the law says otherwise.
Politicians merely manufacture the rhetoric from which history will be constructed, and so they create, in andvance, the verbiage which will be recorded, repeated and used by authority to officially prove the necessity of their secret actions and private intentions, should they get caught, or not.
Because only these "talking points" will ever be recorded for use by the official "recorders of events" they become factual reality, by default, due to there being no contrary commentary for the next generation - and much of this generation - to make comparisons with.
It is a politician's job to manufacture and disseminate these false events, causes, and reactions, and government's job to insure that only these 'falsified records' make it into postery's tale.
You might, for instance, note that ALL of their public testimony follows a recognizable set of guidelines for consistency, especially in the face of obviously contrary evidence and that every so often one of the major players: NYT, CNN, ETC., suddenly publishes a bizarrely misinformed (and mis-informing) article that basically gathers all the recent talking points into a nice neat bundle, and then presents the resulting conclusions, as easily repeated proven fact.
"why should those in any government agency be allowed to?"
Occupying Governments can never be held accountable for their crimes while in the Occupied Territory.
They are the conquerors and you are the conquered.
You have no legal recourse against those who now hold your country hostage - who use your labor for their own enrichment.
Just because your conquerors are your own countrymen, makes them no less your masters and no less above the laws of your land, because it is they who now make those laws.
Or rather, Snowden's captured intel might reveal that the NSA/ETC is diverting American Tax Payer Funds into known terrorists'/CIAssets' bank accounts to insure the problem (Terrorism) maintains the solution (Global Surveillance).
After all, if the Terrorist Threat disappears, so too does the "excuse" for global surveillance which would end the ability of US Federal Agencies to blackball, blackmail and manipulate anyone, anywhere, anytime.
Can you even imagine the amount of capital and raw power that is invloved in these new secret US operations and how far the members of the Federal Tri-Letter Agencies are willing to go to prevent the public from choking their golden goose?
I don't really wanna come between you and your attempt to show the world how silly the Anon Cow is, but the Anon Cow is doing a damn fine job of misdirecting the forum's debate away from Clapper and onto Wyden and - don't mean to be snarky here Mike, but you're just giving him/her fuel to fulfill his/her task.
And in truth, you have already blown every word he/she has posted, clean out of the water, and he/she is just poking a pointy stick through the bars of your cage right now cuz yer all pissed and such. He's got you repeating yourself.... repeatedly.
The best paid shills are those who can cause just enough ire and frustration in other posters to get them to keep responding to the detour topic, and keep them away from the actual subject matter that their masters want detoured.
Bonuses accrue when such shills can actually redirect all of the participants onto the new detour path and away from the actual subject matter of the article.
Double bonuses accrue when the false arguments prevent the entire forum from returning to the original topic long enough for the topic to die.
This critter is gonna get over-time and triple bonuses if ye don't just let him/her fade away back into the void.
"Wouldn't it be better to take more of an interest in how this country is governed and work for reform via the political process instead?"
Sure would.
But how do you propose we get the political process back from the corporations/organized criminals that now own it and run it like a business to insure the profits of its membership at the expense of the genral public??
Or did you not notice that the "authorities" no longer pay attention to the public's outcries, complaints and concerns.
The only way you're going to get "reform via the political process" is if you create that political process from scratch and manage to install it while being fired upon by federaly trained corporate paramilitary forces, the federaly owned military and any ex-military mercenaries that happen to be in the neighborhood and short of income.
Your government is long gone, bought out and replaced by criminals and their wealthy corporate masters. What you see as the political process, is merely the shadow play they present, that keeps folks like you trying to do the "right thing" via that very same now disfunctional "political process".
You can get just as much accomplished by throwing balled up socks off a bridge while whistling old Beatles' tunes.
Damn, its refreshing to see that someone is actually paying attention.
Absolutely correct.
In fact, the research for better methods of spying on the world's populations will get a huge boost now that the old cat is out of the bag.
In a year or so, they should have tech that'll do the job and leave no trace and a humungous secret budget to insure that the population remains ignorant of the new systems.
All they need now is a really big war to allow them to reprogram the next generation into believing that surveillance equals protection.
"When it comes to dealing honestly about the spying state of our nation, he's the kind of man you could fit into a briefcase if you gave him an enema."
I take it then that you are among that unique subset of humans that prefers being fucked in their sleep, as opposed to being fucked while awake.
In case you were asleep, the whole world is currently paying right now - nobody is safe from this blanket surveillance and the incriminations, blackmail, and character assassinations that it promises should anyone step out of line.
Never could understand why anyone would prefer to willingly bend over and take it up the dark side without a complaint, simply because they believed that to complain might mean it'll feel even worse, or happen more often.
I'd think that your reading of TechDirt articles might just be construed as "complaining" and possibly even as seeking relief from your tormentors, even if you do post responses that praise their irrefutable glory and omnipotent power.
"It also underlines why we should celebrate Snowden as a whisteblower who has performed a valuable service, not as a "traitor", since nothing of value was passed to the enemy."
It also points out rather forcefully, exactly what I've said all along. None of the NSA surveillance has anything whatsoever to do with terrorism - unless of course you believe that the NSA, FBI, CIA ETC. had no idea that all the terorist organizations were fully aware of the NSA Global Snoop&Scoop Programs and had long ago stopped using any communication medium that is open to the agency's interception and collection programs.
Eventually, barring another major war, the simple fact that this is all about extortion/blackmail and the theft of corporate/industrial/commercial secrets and research, will come out in the Snowden Wash.
I can only imagine that the perps involved in this scheme are doing everything they possibly can to get another war started ASAP, because nothing sweeps dirt under the carpet better than a really good war.
On the post: Victims Of GCHQ's Denial Of Service Attacks Start Asking Who Are The Real Criminals?
More False Flags
No wonder these same governments are having wet dreams about assassinating Mr. Snowden.
On the post: Really Bad Idea: Senator Klobuchar Wants To Mandate A 'Kill Switch' In All Mobile Phones
Just a thought.....
While the (P)Residency of George Dubya certainly allowed the forces of fascism to rewrite the laws of the land in favor of criminal profiteering by the mega rich, it also had the unexpected backlash effect of showing the world's public that government was no longer needed to run a country.
George and his gang of crooked millionaires spent zero time on statesmanship efforts while rewriting the laws for their corporate partners and stealing anything that could be shipped to Kuwait for re-sale. Yet the USA did not fall apart, and folks went to work as usual and chaos did not ensue.
Those civilians worldwide; with more than three brain cells, noticed, looking back, that the USA ran just fine for over a decade without a real government in office.
So methinks it now behooves the current criminals in office to do the only thing they know how to do - get enough dirt on everyone so that nobody can say anything bad about them and they can keep their lucrative day jobs, feeding at the public tax trough and partying nightly with their 1000 dollar an hour hookers, on their million dollar yachts, till dawn.
Just a thought......
On the post: Almost Everything About The Bulk Collection Of Phone Data Is Illegal
When laws are written by criminals....
Hardly amazing at all.
Criminals by their nature, have very little respect for the law unless the law benefits them. Since Bush1, American law has been undergoing a huge rewrite, specifically to allow criminals the freedom they desire to pillage the nation, without fear of incrimination.
That the criminals occupying the White House and their cheerleading squads consider breaking the law to be "perfectly fine", is quite expected.
The criminals in office; because they profit thereby, and the cheerleaders; because they expect to some day be among the crooks in office, or at least benefit financially somehow from the process.
The benefits derived from all of that blackmail material they are collecting are so lucrative that the criminals in office have given only minor consideration to the unlikely repercussions of breaking the law, and in fact assume that their positions of power give them immunity to such repercussions anyway.
Where there is no chance of culpability, there is no reason to not break the law.
Criminals do not expect to be caught anyway.
It is simply not a part of their nature.
It is in fact the thought of getting caught that prevents most citizens from participating in criminal activities.
On the post: Really Bad Idea: Senator Klobuchar Wants To Mandate A 'Kill Switch' In All Mobile Phones
Witness-free false flag operations
It would save them both time and effort during the inevitable cover-up process and allow for a much better public "education" of the Official Events, if there were no contradictory evidence floating about in the hands of unknown civilians.
On the post: Weird California Incident Last Year Points To The Real Threat To The Power Grid (Hint: It's Not Cyberattacks)
After all, its silly to depend on real terrorists to get the job done right, unless you train them yourself.
Failing the creation of a large war to distract the population from the activities of the Commercial Government of the USA, the only other possible route would be a huge "natural" disaster that killed hundreds of thousands and left millions homeless across the USA.
There's a certain minimum limit to the level of an atrocity, or rather the public's reaction to it, that makes it effective. If there's too little damage, too few people die, the ruse might not work. This is why War is the favorite scam in these sorts of situations. Lot of damage and lots of death and lots of positive public response because we're used to war and know what to expect and can quite readily switch our anger with the government for anger against the new foreign foe.
But massive homeland disasters are the next best thing.
Looks like at least one of these spooks in high places has read "Steal This Book".
On the post: Michael Hayden Calls Clemency For Snowden 'Outrageous,' Says It Sends 'Wrong Message' To Potential Whistleblowers
Unleash the hounds of war...
This is simply getting too hairy.
Their terrible PR is failing completely.
I can hear the war drums warming up to pull the country's attention to the plight of their sons an daughters lining up to go to war.
The public already knows too much and something must be done to distract the scrutiny now falling on the NSA.
Don't know where, but I know the boys have to start one really soon, or a lot of crimes and secret deals are going to be exposed to the one group that the US Fed does not want in possession of such awful facts - the US Public.
War is their only recourse - the only thing that will turn the public's attention away form this iceberg of a crime.
Should be less than 5 weeks from now to be effective.
I wonder what country wins this lottery...
I wonder if the Chinese will finance this US war too....
Oh we certainly are living in interesting times.
On the post: FISA Court Rubberstamps Yet Another Renewal Of NSA's Collecting All Your Phone Data
Spying on the World has Vast and Amazing Benefits
Well there really are a whole bunch of benefits to the progams, absolutely rooms full of benefits in fact, but well, to show them to the public would be the same as incriminating one's self, you see and, well, we can't have that now can we.
Point is though, he aint lying.
The NSA and its contractual buddies in commerce, organized crime and industry have been reaping a serious shit load of benefits from the global surveillance programs for years.
You would be amazed just how hospitable an Anti-American Iraqui Official can be to a visiting US corporation head, after you've shown him a dosier of him and his girlfriend's telephone conversation transcripts, their private emails and an album of telephoto pictures of them doing the dirty through the windows of various meeting places.
Its just that anything that benfits the NSA in any way, is pretty much automatically gonna be detrimental to everyone else on earth... so showing all those accrued benefits - or for that matter, any of those accrued benefits to the public.... that's not gonna happen.
But amazingly, he aint lying on this particular aspect.
On the post: Russian Authorities Threaten To Block CloudFlare And Other Key Infrastructural Sites
So stupid they get bragging rights...
If the Russian government wants to really piss off its entire population and remove the lagest information access service in human history bit by bit or whole hog, nature says only that everyone else should quickly step back far enough to avoid being struck as the idiot falls.
There is no saving those who are determined to do themselves harm.
Blaming their social idiocracy on the frailty of children's psyches to withstand the awareness of biology, shows clearly how protected children act - such as those filling the ranks of government - when they grow up; devious and stupid.
I suspect every failed nation sounds like a whiny, spoiled little girl near the end.
On the post: Rep. Mike Rogers Goes On National TV To Lie About NSA Programs And Snowden
Democrazy...
1. "Lying to the public while holding public office will render the liar unfit for public office anywhere in the USA, ever again. It could indeed be viewed as treason, since corruption in government weakens the nation and makes it easier for enemies to wreak havoc, in effect, aiding and abetting all enemies of the USA."
and...
2. "Once a year, the public gets together on the internet, to vote on which politicans should be ousted from office for dereliction of duty, criminal activity, dishonesty and impersonating a statesman, and then vote again to choose a replacement."
Yep, those two would go a long way towards creating and maintaining an honest government. Its certain that no such creature has existed at any time during human history.
Methinks it be way past time for such.
On the post: Report Suggests NSA Engaged In Financial Manipulation, Changing Money In Bank Accounts
Re: NSA, PROMIS Bank Surveillance
For the IntelComm to strong-arm the banks into anything and for the banks to not cry foul, it is absolutley necessary that the banks must be guilty of something they really do not want the public to discover.
Or is it more likely that; rather than strong-arm the banks - a one-sided attack - US Intel simply made a deal with the banks that they could not refuse - such that the banksters would be allowed to get their take on the deal, in cash, by simply playing bad-accountant and as a bonus, they were guaranteed both total unnaccountability under law for their crimes and bail-out cash provided by the US taxpayers to the tune of hundreds of billions, to restock their stolen/lost cash reserves - kick-backs delivered with smiles in all directions, whenever needed.
How much of that spending spree by the Fed, could the Intelligence Community siphon off for agency and private use with nobody ever becoming the wiser, in the chaos that accompanied the federal actions during the Bail-Out?
No "Bail-out" tally has ever been offered the public as to who got what, when, where, or how much, or how often, of the billions and billions of tax-payer's dollars that were being delivered apparently to the very banks who nearly bankrupted the planet.
Considering the timing, I cannot imagine the Intell Community, (puffed up by their immunity from scrutiny and guarantee of non-accountability by the Fed), NOT grabbing fistfuls of these skids of cash being sent to banksters month after month, or more likely diverting accounted numbers electronically to off-shore banks through their proprietary back-doors in the US banks' computer software.
Sounds more like the perfect heist setup for skimming a ton of cash from the tax-payer's pockets while the tax-payers are staring at the banksters, who; getting raises in pay, promotions, and making millions on the side legally, for their efforts, could care less.
On the post: NSA Defenders Ratchet Up The Rhetoric: Two Former Gov't Officials Urge Hanging Ed Snowden
Re: Contempt?
Precisely as intended.
On the post: NSA Defenders Ratchet Up The Rhetoric: Two Former Gov't Officials Urge Hanging Ed Snowden
Curious Blue
Curious?
Its not like anything you, or I, or anyone they lie to, could possibly interfere with their plans, their actions, their intentions, or their claims. They do not really work for us anymore, even though you probably think the law says otherwise.
Politicians merely manufacture the rhetoric from which history will be constructed, and so they create, in andvance, the verbiage which will be recorded, repeated and used by authority to officially prove the necessity of their secret actions and private intentions, should they get caught, or not.
Because only these "talking points" will ever be recorded for use by the official "recorders of events" they become factual reality, by default, due to there being no contrary commentary for the next generation - and much of this generation - to make comparisons with.
It is a politician's job to manufacture and disseminate these false events, causes, and reactions, and government's job to insure that only these 'falsified records' make it into postery's tale.
You might, for instance, note that ALL of their public testimony follows a recognizable set of guidelines for consistency, especially in the face of obviously contrary evidence and that every so often one of the major players: NYT, CNN, ETC., suddenly publishes a bizarrely misinformed (and mis-informing) article that basically gathers all the recent talking points into a nice neat bundle, and then presents the resulting conclusions, as easily repeated proven fact.
Probably just a coincidence eh! :)
On the post: Report Suggests NSA Engaged In Financial Manipulation, Changing Money In Bank Accounts
Re:
Occupying Governments can never be held accountable for their crimes while in the Occupied Territory.
They are the conquerors and you are the conquered.
You have no legal recourse against those who now hold your country hostage - who use your labor for their own enrichment.
Just because your conquerors are your own countrymen, makes them no less your masters and no less above the laws of your land, because it is they who now make those laws.
On the post: Report Suggests NSA Engaged In Financial Manipulation, Changing Money In Bank Accounts
Re:
After all, if the Terrorist Threat disappears, so too does the "excuse" for global surveillance which would end the ability of US Federal Agencies to blackball, blackmail and manipulate anyone, anywhere, anytime.
Can you even imagine the amount of capital and raw power that is invloved in these new secret US operations and how far the members of the Federal Tri-Letter Agencies are willing to go to prevent the public from choking their golden goose?
I see a new big war on the horizon.
On the post: Seven House Judiciary Members Demand DOJ Investigate James Clapper For Lying To Congress
Gonna give yerself an anurism....
I don't really wanna come between you and your attempt to show the world how silly the Anon Cow is, but the Anon Cow is doing a damn fine job of misdirecting the forum's debate away from Clapper and onto Wyden and - don't mean to be snarky here Mike, but you're just giving him/her fuel to fulfill his/her task.
And in truth, you have already blown every word he/she has posted, clean out of the water, and he/she is just poking a pointy stick through the bars of your cage right now cuz yer all pissed and such. He's got you repeating yourself.... repeatedly.
The best paid shills are those who can cause just enough ire and frustration in other posters to get them to keep responding to the detour topic, and keep them away from the actual subject matter that their masters want detoured.
Bonuses accrue when such shills can actually redirect all of the participants onto the new detour path and away from the actual subject matter of the article.
Double bonuses accrue when the false arguments prevent the entire forum from returning to the original topic long enough for the topic to die.
This critter is gonna get over-time and triple bonuses if ye don't just let him/her fade away back into the void.
Go punch a pillow instead. :)
On the post: Tone Deaf NSA Officials Tell Reporter It's Time To Reform The First Amendment
Re: Re: Re:
Sure would.
But how do you propose we get the political process back from the corporations/organized criminals that now own it and run it like a business to insure the profits of its membership at the expense of the genral public??
Or did you not notice that the "authorities" no longer pay attention to the public's outcries, complaints and concerns.
The only way you're going to get "reform via the political process" is if you create that political process from scratch and manage to install it while being fired upon by federaly trained corporate paramilitary forces, the federaly owned military and any ex-military mercenaries that happen to be in the neighborhood and short of income.
Your government is long gone, bought out and replaced by criminals and their wealthy corporate masters. What you see as the political process, is merely the shadow play they present, that keeps folks like you trying to do the "right thing" via that very same now disfunctional "political process".
You can get just as much accomplished by throwing balled up socks off a bridge while whistling old Beatles' tunes.
On the post: Hayden Says They Did Surveillance In A 'Madisonian' Way
Re:
Absolutely correct.
In fact, the research for better methods of spying on the world's populations will get a huge boost now that the old cat is out of the bag.
In a year or so, they should have tech that'll do the job and leave no trace and a humungous secret budget to insure that the population remains ignorant of the new systems.
All they need now is a really big war to allow them to reprogram the next generation into believing that surveillance equals protection.
On the post: Hayden Says They Did Surveillance In A 'Madisonian' Way
... and the winner is....
My nomination for Best Line of the year. :)
On the post: Ed Snowden Sends Open Letter To Brazil... Which The Press Blatantly Misrepresents
Re: Bag of tricks
In case you were asleep, the whole world is currently paying right now - nobody is safe from this blanket surveillance and the incriminations, blackmail, and character assassinations that it promises should anyone step out of line.
Never could understand why anyone would prefer to willingly bend over and take it up the dark side without a complaint, simply because they believed that to complain might mean it'll feel even worse, or happen more often.
I'd think that your reading of TechDirt articles might just be construed as "complaining" and possibly even as seeking relief from your tormentors, even if you do post responses that praise their irrefutable glory and omnipotent power.
Beware of that.
Well, have a good sleep.
On the post: Ed Snowden Sends Open Letter To Brazil... Which The Press Blatantly Misrepresents
for those who missed it
"It also underlines why we should celebrate Snowden as a whisteblower who has performed a valuable service, not as a "traitor", since nothing of value was passed to the enemy."
It also points out rather forcefully, exactly what I've said all along. None of the NSA surveillance has anything whatsoever to do with terrorism - unless of course you believe that the NSA, FBI, CIA ETC. had no idea that all the terorist organizations were fully aware of the NSA Global Snoop&Scoop Programs and had long ago stopped using any communication medium that is open to the agency's interception and collection programs.
Eventually, barring another major war, the simple fact that this is all about extortion/blackmail and the theft of corporate/industrial/commercial secrets and research, will come out in the Snowden Wash.
I can only imagine that the perps involved in this scheme are doing everything they possibly can to get another war started ASAP, because nothing sweeps dirt under the carpet better than a really good war.
Next >>