Internet Zen Master (profile), 5 Aug 2013 @ 1:07pm
Re:
Honestly, pointing out that there's four different common opinions of Snowden is actually the most accurate thing one could say on Wikipedia right now.
The crowd that things everything the government does is automatically bad probably sees Snowden as a hero for (re)revealing some of the shady activities the most secretive agency on the planet has been doing for quite a long time, along with all the more recent surveillance-y shenanigans.
Then there's the group who see Snowden as a traitor (most of them probably have security clearances and may have a little more faith in the government than others).
For everyone else, he falls into the whistleblower/dissident category.
So it's a pretty accurate description of Snowden's public image right now.
Internet Zen Master (profile), 5 Aug 2013 @ 10:25am
Re:
Refcontrol forge is basically a program to help get around blocks, correct? Could explain why you can see it and people who aren't using Mozilla can't.
Internet Zen Master (profile), 2 Aug 2013 @ 10:26am
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Agreed. Even when the highlight/analysis occasionally seems borderline hyperbolic, it's still gets the discussion on issues which could directly impact the course of future technology started, which is better than letting shady actions by governments and corporations float by unnoticed (especially if involves copyright/trademark/patent abuse).
Internet Zen Master (profile), 1 Aug 2013 @ 3:11pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: can the entire congress now be impeached?
I understand your idea for the 6 month period, but logically it just doesn't make much sense given how much the political landscape can change in six months. A great bill that might have almost unanimous support at the beginning of the review period might have next to zero support by the end. Why? Not because the population doesn't like it, but because lobbyists from the special interests against that bill will be hammering on those old men every day for six months trying to get them to withdraw their support.
Just to clarify, you're saying that anyone can challenge the constitutionality of the proposed law, or previous laws that existed prior to the amendment?
Internet Zen Master (profile), 1 Aug 2013 @ 12:28pm
Re: Riiiiggghhhht...
I can't believe I'm saying this about something related to AOHell, but the guys training your class to be AOL reps were brilliant. By telling your reps that it was possible to access celebrities accounts and then warning them not to do so, they deliberately left a forbidden fruit[the accounts] level of temptation[indirectly telling you it was possible to access said accounts] in front of you and the rest of your training class.
By doing this they were able to weed out all the "untrustworthy" employees [those who accessed the accounts] because they could potentially end up as a liability for AOL if they became full reps for the company, since the probability of them eventually stalking their favorite celebrities email account, or ending up as an inside source for all the gossip rags and paparazzi would be much higher because they accessed the accounts even after being explicitly warned not to do so.
Quite a creative way to evaluate the reliability of someone. Hung out the privacy of the celebrities through their email accounts as bait, but considering the chanc of a potentially company-destroying scandal if emails from private AOL accounts (celeb or otherwise) started getting leaked to the "press", in theory the tradeoff was worth it.
Didn't help AOHELL in the long run though, but there were other factors involved there...
Internet Zen Master (profile), 1 Aug 2013 @ 11:20am
Re:
It's like that the NSA went into "Oh shit the terrorists are at the gates!" mode immediately after the Boston Bombings, so the chance that they actually di prevent any further bombings directly connected to the two brothers are (purely speculating) somewhere between 59 to 95 percent.
Prior to the Boston Bombings it was more like:
NSA employee 1: "hey, this guy looks suspicious, and the guys over in Russia are telling us that he might be a terrorist. Shouldn't we pass this along to the other agencies?"
employee 2: "Nah, it's probably nothing. Let's go get drunk and sing karaoke instead!"
But that's government competence for you. Only useful AFTER the crap hits the fan.
Internet Zen Master (profile), 1 Aug 2013 @ 10:51am
Re: Re: Re: can the entire congress now be impeached?
While I get what you're talking about (secret laws being passed/laws being negotiated behind closed doors without public input [what else is new?]), both of those amendments are terrible ideas.
-You think that Congress is a bunch of lazy incompetents who aren't doing their jobs now? Think about what would happen if we put laws on display and had to wait for half a year before they could be finalized. Nothing could get done! Granted, most of the stuff Congress actually does these days is usually completely useless, but tying their hands doesn't help matters.
-Allowing the constitutionality of any law to be challenged by anybody (let's go with all voting-age "adults" for the sake of argument) just because they can is a absolutely TERRIBLE idea. The court system is already overloaded as it is. Think about what would happen when all the Tea Partiers start popping out of the woodwork and challenging the Affordable Care Act simply because they can. It's bad enough their representatives among the House Republicans try to gut the damn thing at least twice a day in Congress instead of focusing on actual problems facing the country.
We don't need the entire Tea Party joining in on that stupidity.
Internet Zen Master (profile), 1 Aug 2013 @ 10:29am
I just... wow...
Okay, it's official.
Cameron and is ilk are the idiots of the week (if not the year) in terms Internet competence.
I mean, the idea that someone in the Duma over in Russia wants to ban profanity from the net ("vulgarity has no place in a civilized conversation." No shit Sherlock!) was bad enough, but this is just...
For fucks sake, Cameron's absurd belief that the filters can filter the content with 100% accuracy is making the late Ted "Series of tubes" Stevens look Internet literate.
Internet Zen Master (profile), 31 Jul 2013 @ 3:01pm
Re: Re: Re: Haaaaayyyyyyyy!
Pretty much.
The phrase "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" is rather applicable to the NSA right now.
Of course, this assumes that the organization is a "BBB and isn't actually a completely malevolent group of assholes/control freaks out to try and secure more power for the organization, rights of the American populace be damned.
It's probably a combination of both mentalities scattered throughout the entire NSA staff, now I think about it (pure speculation on my part though).
However, it still doesn't justify the blatant invasions of people's privacy by any stretch of the imagination.
Internet Zen Master (profile), 31 Jul 2013 @ 2:23pm
Re: Haaaaayyyyyyyy!
Actually, having more haystacks is a good thing (in theory anyway). By collecting "needles" about a person of interest from various the haystacks, the government (well, the NSA mostly) looks for "suspicious patterns" ('suspicious' being in the eye of the beholder and the "dots" mentioned) involving said person of interest. If the target generates enough red flags at the same time, the NSA "connects the dots" and comes to the conclusion that their target is actually a threat to the safety of the US.
So by increasing the number of haystacks available to them, the NSA gets a clearer picture of the subject's activities, and (theoretically) decreases the probability that they might label an innocent person as a "terrorist suspect" by mistake. Which is actually a pretty good idea, except for the part where you have to violate everybody's privacy in order to do it.
Of course this is just speculation I'm basing on the information that we've learned so far. Perhaps the NSA is just a paranoid, Benevolent Big Brother (BBB for short) trying to protect Americans the only way it knows how. However, the way it's going about things now is doing more harm than good to America in the long run.
Internet Zen Master (profile), 31 Jul 2013 @ 12:39pm
Pg. 28
"Over 300 terrorists have been captured using intelligence from XKeyscore"
Perhaps their claims that "we've stopped terrorist attacks with this surveillance!" might have a little credibility.
Of course, we'd be taking a leap of faith and assuming that all the terrorists the NSA has helped stop are actually terrorists who were planning to, well, cause terror among the general populace (American or otherwise), and not some unlucky bastard who got a nasty case of "mistaken identity" and was dragged in with the real threats because the government couldn't risk letting the guy go because he'd make a big fuss about everything.
Internet Zen Master (profile), 30 Jul 2013 @ 3:14pm
Can't even get the political label right
"Extremist liberal views"? Um, what? Last I checked, Masnick's views political views (as far as I can tell) tend to revolve around a) wanting the government to do it's job properly without having to give it more power, and b) getting the government to mind it's own business (usually in terms of the Internet).
In terms of the political compass placement, Masnick seems more centrist merged with "Internet libertarian", if anything.
If Rogers does try and sue for defamation (which is rather hard to prove in America, from my understanding of the laws), I suggest someone contact the folks at Popehat and see what happens.
Internet Zen Master (profile), 30 Jul 2013 @ 12:04pm
Legal obligations
Brenner objected to Wyden "putting Clapper in the impossible position of answering a question that he could not address truthfully and fully without breaking his oath not to divulge classified information."
Hence Clapper's "least untruthful" comment. It seems that he had to tell that lie of omission when answering Wyden's questions since he's bound by law not to talk about classified intel, which I suppose somehow overrides his obligation to tell Congress the truth.
Stupid, but that's how it probably works.
That being said, if government didn't have the "we must classify everything, regardless of what it actually is!" mentality, they might not have this problem.
Internet Zen Master (profile), 29 Jul 2013 @ 3:52pm
About that whole publicity thing
The government's logic (for once) is rather sound. For example:
There are two terrorist groups: the People's Front of Judea and the Judean People's Front. Both groups claim to be the better choice to fight "the evil West", but for the most part they're just small fry compared to everybody else.
Now if the US government announced that it was going after the People's Front of Judea and not the Judean People's Front, it would have justified the existence of the People's Front of Judea, because those "evil heathen Americans" view them as a threat instead of their rivals the JPF.
This could (theoretically) cause members of the Judean People's Front to defect and join up the cause with the People's Front of Judea instead, uniting the more competent members into a bigger, more dangerous group, instead of keeping the two organizations divided and bickering amongst themselves while the US sat back and took them out without announcing to the rest of the world which one was more of a problem.
The "increase recruitment if we talk about them" makes sense. But the bigger question is: who the hell was dumb enough to put that classified bit at the end of the charge against Manning? The charges of "aiding AQ and AQAP" were sufficiently damning. Did someone decide to just throw everything and kitchen sink at Manning in order to make sure something would work?
Internet Zen Master (profile), 26 Jul 2013 @ 11:54am
Wait wait wait
The NSA's deepest, most closely guarded secret is that they have got a literal Schrodinger's cat locked up somewhere in their headquarters?
Animal cruelty! Someone call ASPCA! And PETA! (Hey, if PETA tries to throw fake blood at the NSA building and they get arrested for it, it's a win-win for everyone, right?)
On the post: Someone Using A US Senate IP Address Edits Wiki Entry To Change Ed Snowden From 'Dissident' To 'Traitor'
Re:
The crowd that things everything the government does is automatically bad probably sees Snowden as a hero for (re)revealing some of the shady activities the most secretive agency on the planet has been doing for quite a long time, along with all the more recent surveillance-y shenanigans.
Then there's the group who see Snowden as a traitor (most of them probably have security clearances and may have a little more faith in the government than others).
For everyone else, he falls into the whistleblower/dissident category.
So it's a pretty accurate description of Snowden's public image right now.
On the post: Two Key Points: Copyright Isn't The Only Business Model; And When Done Wrong Makes Other Models More Difficult
Re:
On the post: Two Key Points: Copyright Isn't The Only Business Model; And When Done Wrong Makes Other Models More Difficult
Re: Re:
Wonder why the hell that is... I could see this happening for something related to the NSA, but for copyright? Not so much.
On the post: Moscow Metro Deploying Cell Phone Tracking System To Fight 'Thieves' And 'Terrorists'
Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: NSA 'Leaks' Own Documents Before Senate Committee Grilling; Inadvertently Reveals Its Previous Lies To Congress
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: can the entire congress now be impeached?
Just to clarify, you're saying that anyone can challenge the constitutionality of the proposed law, or previous laws that existed prior to the amendment?
On the post: Peru Proposes Default Internet Censorship Requiring Opt-in To View Pornography
Ugh...
picardfacepalm.jpg
On the post: NSA Boss & Defenders Insist NSA Can't Abuse Surveillance Systems; Forgets To Mention It Already Has
Re: Riiiiggghhhht...
By doing this they were able to weed out all the "untrustworthy" employees [those who accessed the accounts] because they could potentially end up as a liability for AOL if they became full reps for the company, since the probability of them eventually stalking their favorite celebrities email account, or ending up as an inside source for all the gossip rags and paparazzi would be much higher because they accessed the accounts even after being explicitly warned not to do so.
Quite a creative way to evaluate the reliability of someone. Hung out the privacy of the celebrities through their email accounts as bait, but considering the chanc of a potentially company-destroying scandal if emails from private AOL accounts (celeb or otherwise) started getting leaked to the "press", in theory the tradeoff was worth it.
Didn't help AOHELL in the long run though, but there were other factors involved there...
On the post: NSA Boss & Defenders Insist NSA Can't Abuse Surveillance Systems; Forgets To Mention It Already Has
Re: Re:
Shame on Misrepresentative Mike Rogers for sharing the same name as Mister Rogers, the only famous person who really cared about "the children" 1000%.
Pity we don't have any politicians like that.
On the post: Bradley Manning Gets Punished Twice Because He Accessed Information 'With A Computer'
Need a major software upgrade
21st Century: "Uh, old guy, EVERYTHING is on computers these days!"
1980s: "Oh... Uhm, well, don't do it or well charge you with two crimes for the price of one!"
21st Century: "You seriously need to upgrade to the modern world you crazy geezer."
All in favor of tossing out the CFAA and starting over, or heavily revising the thing, please raise your hands. *raises hand*
On the post: President Obama: NSA Surveillance Was Necessary To Make Sure Boston Bombings Weren't Part Of Bigger Plot
Re:
Prior to the Boston Bombings it was more like:
But that's government competence for you. Only useful AFTER the crap hits the fan.
On the post: NSA 'Leaks' Own Documents Before Senate Committee Grilling; Inadvertently Reveals Its Previous Lies To Congress
Re: Re: Re: can the entire congress now be impeached?
-You think that Congress is a bunch of lazy incompetents who aren't doing their jobs now? Think about what would happen if we put laws on display and had to wait for half a year before they could be finalized. Nothing could get done! Granted, most of the stuff Congress actually does these days is usually completely useless, but tying their hands doesn't help matters.
-Allowing the constitutionality of any law to be challenged by anybody (let's go with all voting-age "adults" for the sake of argument) just because they can is a absolutely TERRIBLE idea. The court system is already overloaded as it is. Think about what would happen when all the Tea Partiers start popping out of the woodwork and challenging the Affordable Care Act simply because they can. It's bad enough their representatives among the House Republicans try to gut the damn thing at least twice a day in Congress instead of focusing on actual problems facing the country.
We don't need the entire Tea Party joining in on that stupidity.
On the post: Cameron's Anti-Porn Program Tells ISPs To Do The Impossible: Only Block Bad Content; Don't Block Good Content
I just... wow...
Cameron and is ilk are the idiots of the week (if not the year) in terms Internet competence.
I mean, the idea that someone in the Duma over in Russia wants to ban profanity from the net ("vulgarity has no place in a civilized conversation." No shit Sherlock!) was bad enough, but this is just...
For fucks sake, Cameron's absurd belief that the filters can filter the content with 100% accuracy is making the late Ted "Series of tubes" Stevens look Internet literate.
On the post: Senator Leahy Calls Bulls**t On Claim That Metadata Collection Stopped Terrorist Attacks
Re: Re: Re: Haaaaayyyyyyyy!
The phrase "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" is rather applicable to the NSA right now.
Of course, this assumes that the organization is a "BBB and isn't actually a completely malevolent group of assholes/control freaks out to try and secure more power for the organization, rights of the American populace be damned.
It's probably a combination of both mentalities scattered throughout the entire NSA staff, now I think about it (pure speculation on my part though).
However, it still doesn't justify the blatant invasions of people's privacy by any stretch of the imagination.
On the post: Senator Leahy Calls Bulls**t On Claim That Metadata Collection Stopped Terrorist Attacks
Re: Haaaaayyyyyyyy!
So by increasing the number of haystacks available to them, the NSA gets a clearer picture of the subject's activities, and (theoretically) decreases the probability that they might label an innocent person as a "terrorist suspect" by mistake. Which is actually a pretty good idea, except for the part where you have to violate everybody's privacy in order to do it.
Of course this is just speculation I'm basing on the information that we've learned so far. Perhaps the NSA is just a paranoid, Benevolent Big Brother (BBB for short) trying to protect Americans the only way it knows how. However, the way it's going about things now is doing more harm than good to America in the long run.
On the post: Latest Leak Shows NSA Can Collect Nearly Any Internet Activity Worldwide Without Prior Authorization
Pg. 28
Perhaps their claims that "we've stopped terrorist attacks with this surveillance!" might have a little credibility.
Of course, we'd be taking a leap of faith and assuming that all the terrorists the NSA has helped stop are actually terrorists who were planning to, well, cause terror among the general populace (American or otherwise), and not some unlucky bastard who got a nasty case of "mistaken identity" and was dragged in with the real threats because the government couldn't risk letting the guy go because he'd make a big fuss about everything.
On the post: Staffers For Rep. Mike Rogers Apparently Claim They Could Sue Me For Defamation
Can't even get the political label right
In terms of the political compass placement, Masnick seems more centrist merged with "Internet libertarian", if anything.
If Rogers does try and sue for defamation (which is rather hard to prove in America, from my understanding of the laws), I suggest someone contact the folks at Popehat and see what happens.
On the post: Staffers For Rep. Mike Rogers Apparently Claim They Could Sue Me For Defamation
Re:
On the post: Former NSA Lawyers Attack Senator Wyden For Hinting At NSA Surveillance Excesses That Are Now Confirmed
Legal obligations
Hence Clapper's "least untruthful" comment. It seems that he had to tell that lie of omission when answering Wyden's questions since he's bound by law not to talk about classified intel, which I suppose somehow overrides his obligation to tell Congress the truth.
Stupid, but that's how it probably works.
That being said, if government didn't have the "we must classify everything, regardless of what it actually is!" mentality, they might not have this problem.
On the post: Feds Say It's Classified Info To Say Who We're At War With
About that whole publicity thing
There are two terrorist groups: the People's Front of Judea and the Judean People's Front. Both groups claim to be the better choice to fight "the evil West", but for the most part they're just small fry compared to everybody else.
Now if the US government announced that it was going after the People's Front of Judea and not the Judean People's Front, it would have justified the existence of the People's Front of Judea, because those "evil heathen Americans" view them as a threat instead of their rivals the JPF.
This could (theoretically) cause members of the Judean People's Front to defect and join up the cause with the People's Front of Judea instead, uniting the more competent members into a bigger, more dangerous group, instead of keeping the two organizations divided and bickering amongst themselves while the US sat back and took them out without announcing to the rest of the world which one was more of a problem.
The "increase recruitment if we talk about them" makes sense. But the bigger question is: who the hell was dumb enough to put that classified bit at the end of the charge against Manning? The charges of "aiding AQ and AQAP" were sufficiently damning. Did someone decide to just throw everything and kitchen sink at Manning in order to make sure something would work?
On the post: Intelligence Officials Can't Keep Story Straight: Snowden Both Did And Did Not Get Key NSA Secrets
Wait wait wait
Animal cruelty! Someone call ASPCA! And PETA! (Hey, if PETA tries to throw fake blood at the NSA building and they get arrested for it, it's a win-win for everyone, right?)
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