...you have to understand that Comey's answer isn't Comey's, it's Obama's.
If one believes that it's good news, since Alexander's view is also, by the same definition, Obama's, especially since Obama hasn't fired him. If Comey represents Obama (and not Comey's boss Holder) that is good news.
Also what is disturbing in Comey's response is that he seems to promote the belief that there are some special first amendment rights that are granted just to professional journalists over all other citizens.
I agree with your comment but note that government is always the laggard, not the vanguard, and the tide does seem to be moving in the right direction on this one.
Perhaps I'm giving him too much credit, but Comey comes off as legit in the quoted snippet.
Rogers tries to get Comey to agree with him, but Comey first says, "hey, first amendment but sure, so I don't call a member of congress an asshole, to be 100% technical: your question, most narrowly construed, is true." Then he won't agree with Rogers even though the ball is served up for him to hit. Finally he says, "look, we're looking into the whole situation" instead of "yes we're doing the criminal investigation you want us to."
I think the whole program should be disbanded, but at least here's one guy from the NSA who does not come off as an ass, at least in this case.
DV Henkel-Wallace (profile), 30 Dec 2013 @ 12:24pm
Re: This is a different filter...
I know O2 is a mobile provider, but what you describe is the sans-nutrality future: Comcast will sell you a "basic" internet package that will get you access to Facebook, Google, Twitter, and NBC; a "teen" add-on that adds Tumblr and a few more (that teens won't even use probably); and various other add-on packages. Sorry, no netflix package for you!
DV Henkel-Wallace (profile), 17 Dec 2013 @ 11:06am
"Digitally enabled services" is pretty sketchy
I looked at the summary report. Once you get past the typos (they say "millions of dollars" when they mean "thousand of dollars" -- we're not talking about three hundred trillion) it shows that there are a lot of guesses and exclusions.
One big point is that that report talks about exports (and imports) and ignores internal issues. But the TPP would affect internal business too, which makes the number presumably a LOT larger.
The important part is that ⅓ of the number ($105 Bn) is royalties and licenses which include TV/Film/Music as blaktron theorized, but also software and patents. Looking at who gets access to TPP negotiations, it does look like the tail is wagging the dog: the "stakeholders" who get to participate in the negotiations represent perhaps 10% of the money under discussion.
Hit and run drivers may escape detection because highly-classified material about Britain’s surveillance capabilities have been published by the Guardian newspaper, the government has claimed.
A senior Whitehall official said data stolen by Edward Snowden, a former contractor to the US National Security Agency, could be exploited by motorists and other nonfinancial criminals.
It could also put lives at risk by disclosing locations of speed cameras to terrorists, doggers and hostile foreign drivers, he said.
The claims emerged as lawyers for the Home Office launched a hard-hitting defence against a legal challenge which is seeking to establish the partner of a Guardian journalist was wrongly detained at Heathrow airport in August.
The High Court heard in a statement from Oliver Robbins, the deputy national security adviser for intelligence, security and resilience at the Cabinet Office, that publication of stories based on Mr Snowden’s stolen material had caused “real and serious damage” to national security.
Revealing the capabilities of MI5, MI6 and the government listening post GCHQ would make it easier for “speeders to evade detection” and for “hostile foreign states to identify our traffic lights and take steps against them”, said Mr Robbins.
He added that the disclosures risked making it easier for “drivers to cover their tracks online”.
Mr Robbins’ nine-page statement did not go into detail about how paedophiles would benefit from the Guardian’s stories about the security services.
However, it is well known that many driver use the internet to share routes and to locate potential destinations. They also use “peer to peer” groups on the web to communicate with other motorists.
Any clues about how to evade detection which have been provided by Mr Snowden’s leaks could help motorists to cover their tracks.
Mr Robbins’ statement also said the data risked putting the lives of members of the Armed forces at risk from insurgents overseas who willfuly drive on the wrong side of the road.
Lawyers for David Miranda claimed the police and security services breached the law when they stopped him at Heathrow airport in August and seized nine electronic devices which contained 58,000 secret documents.
Edward Snowden
Mr Miranda, the partner of Glenn Greenwald, a Guardian journalist who has written a series of stories based in the leaks by former CIA contractor Edward Snowden, is also claiming his human rights were breached.
“It is right that the police should take action when an individual is suspected of driving highly sensitive vehicles that do not use petrol or otherwise support excuses for military adventurism overseas and thus seek to undermine our freedoms,” said Mr Robbins’ statement.
“There was and continues to be great concern about the potential harm which could result from the travel by miranda to left hand drive states
“The Security Service believed that the onward transmission of Miranda posed a significant threat to UK national security.”
DV Henkel-Wallace (profile), 18 Oct 2013 @ 10:31pm
Just call them what they are
Campaign fundraisers.
Election Facilitator.
It doesn't sound so sinister when you hear that Duke Energy hired a lobbyist or Facebook opened an office in D.C. But if you hear that Exxon hired a new Chief Election Facilitator it would be calling a spade a spade.
Actually the part that should worry us is in the phrasing
The part that really worries me is this phrase:
"If it is found legal..."
Really what he should be saying is, "Unless it is found to be illegal..." but we have entered a permissions culture mirror world where now some things are illegal unless declared otherwise, rather than legal unless explicitly banned.
This is the bad news! Areo, the networks etc are small potatoes compared to this seemingly pervasive presumption of illegality.
There's absolutely no reason to put a link-shortened HREF in a regular blog post where space is not at a premium. It turns the link into unrecognisable glop. Clicking one becomes an unnecessary mystery.
In the realm of commenters fixing bugs in the article....
My comment is about .001% as useful Christina's comments, but I couldn't resist:
We apologize for any confusion and would like to thank the commenter for adding further details.
Mike, if you'd like to thank the commenter, please feel free. Mention her name too.
(sorry, it always bugs me when the plane lands in the USA and they say that they "would like to be the first to welcome you to..." and then never get around to doing so!)
Speaking as an MIT grad: although I'll wait until Hal's investigation is done, my theory is that this was driven by the IS department. When I was there, IS was basically like the IS/IT department of any big corporation: monolithic, conservative, and not particularly interested in the "mission." Academic departments (especially EECS of course, but also ME, aero-astro, architecture and I'm sure many more) took care of their own computing needs rather than deal with IS, which mainly dealt with the libraries, administration, business school and the like. And MIT is a pretty loose place, so if IS decided "Gadzooks, Hakorz!" and wanted to run with the ball probably the administration figured there was something to it and the academic departments probably didn't even notice.
There is some good news: 1> there's a new president, so there's no axe to grind / backside to cover at the top in terms of doing diagnosis. 2> Hal Abelson has incredible integrity and is also the main guy responsible for the existence of open access like Open Courseware so was an outstanding choice to look for problems.
My guess up front could be wrong -- perhaps there was mendacity involved. But I will believe whatever report Hal produces, and I will be quite astonished if it's anything other than IS running essentially open loop and nobody else paying attention.
By the way the noun was "the arpanet" not "arpanet". There were arpanet protocols like NCP (replaced later with IP, TCP and UDP) just as there are internet protocols, but they were/are used with the arpanet and the Internet.
FWIW, since most of us used case-insenstive systems, and frequently uppercase defaults, capitalization isn't really a big deal: ARPANET, arpanet, ARPAnet...unlike the Internet, which is the mongo big internet of them all.
On the post: Mike Rogers Tries To Make The Case That Glenn Greenwald Should Be Prosecuted For 'Selling Stolen Material'
Re: Re: Comey comes off OK here
I agree with your comment but note that government is always the laggard, not the vanguard, and the tide does seem to be moving in the right direction on this one.
On the post: Mike Rogers Tries To Make The Case That Glenn Greenwald Should Be Prosecuted For 'Selling Stolen Material'
Re: Re: Comey comes off OK here
On the post: Mike Rogers Tries To Make The Case That Glenn Greenwald Should Be Prosecuted For 'Selling Stolen Material'
Comey comes off OK here
Rogers tries to get Comey to agree with him, but Comey first says, "hey, first amendment but sure, so I don't call a member of congress an asshole, to be 100% technical: your question, most narrowly construed, is true." Then he won't agree with Rogers even though the ball is served up for him to hit. Finally he says, "look, we're looking into the whole situation" instead of "yes we're doing the criminal investigation you want us to."
I think the whole program should be disbanded, but at least here's one guy from the NSA who does not come off as an ass, at least in this case.
On the post: UK Porn Filter Blocks Porn Filter Advocate Claire Perry's Website [Updated]
Re: This is a different filter...
On the post: Digital Exports Dwarf Other Industries, So Why Is The USTR Ignoring Them?
"Digitally enabled services" is pretty sketchy
One big point is that that report talks about exports (and imports) and ignores internal issues. But the TPP would affect internal business too, which makes the number presumably a LOT larger.
The important part is that ⅓ of the number ($105 Bn) is royalties and licenses which include TV/Film/Music as blaktron theorized, but also software and patents. Looking at who gets access to TPP negotiations, it does look like the tail is wagging the dog: the "stakeholders" who get to participate in the negotiations represent perhaps 10% of the money under discussion.
http://www.bea.gov/international/pdf/trends_in_digitally_enabled_services.pdf
On the post: TAFTA/TTIP: What Price Transparency?
Seems like the EFF could go
On the post: GCHQ Used Fake Slashdot Page To Install Malware To Hack Internet Exchange
What about techdirt?
It still can't protect against MITM attacks from someone who has compromised a CA, but that's presumably a small number.
On the post: UK Gov't Losing The Plot: Now Claiming Snowden Leaks Could Help Pedophiles
s/paedophile/driver
A senior Whitehall official said data stolen by Edward Snowden, a former contractor to the US National Security Agency, could be exploited by motorists and other nonfinancial criminals.
It could also put lives at risk by disclosing locations of speed cameras to terrorists, doggers and hostile foreign drivers, he said.
The claims emerged as lawyers for the Home Office launched a hard-hitting defence against a legal challenge which is seeking to establish the partner of a Guardian journalist was wrongly detained at Heathrow airport in August.
The High Court heard in a statement from Oliver Robbins, the deputy national security adviser for intelligence, security and resilience at the Cabinet Office, that publication of stories based on Mr Snowden’s stolen material had caused “real and serious damage” to national security.
Revealing the capabilities of MI5, MI6 and the government listening post GCHQ would make it easier for “speeders to evade detection” and for “hostile foreign states to identify our traffic lights and take steps against them”, said Mr Robbins.
He added that the disclosures risked making it easier for “drivers to cover their tracks online”.
Mr Robbins’ nine-page statement did not go into detail about how paedophiles would benefit from the Guardian’s stories about the security services.
However, it is well known that many driver use the internet to share routes and to locate potential destinations. They also use “peer to peer” groups on the web to communicate with other motorists.
Any clues about how to evade detection which have been provided by Mr Snowden’s leaks could help motorists to cover their tracks.
Mr Robbins’ statement also said the data risked putting the lives of members of the Armed forces at risk from insurgents overseas who willfuly drive on the wrong side of the road.
Lawyers for David Miranda claimed the police and security services breached the law when they stopped him at Heathrow airport in August and seized nine electronic devices which contained 58,000 secret documents.
Edward Snowden
Mr Miranda, the partner of Glenn Greenwald, a Guardian journalist who has written a series of stories based in the leaks by former CIA contractor Edward Snowden, is also claiming his human rights were breached.
“It is right that the police should take action when an individual is suspected of driving highly sensitive vehicles that do not use petrol or otherwise support excuses for military adventurism overseas and thus seek to undermine our freedoms,” said Mr Robbins’ statement.
“There was and continues to be great concern about the potential harm which could result from the travel by miranda to left hand drive states
“The Security Service believed that the onward transmission of Miranda posed a significant threat to UK national security.”
On the post: Lobbyists Looking To Call Themselves Something Else: Here Are A Few Suggestions
Just call them what they are
Election Facilitator.
It doesn't sound so sinister when you hear that Duke Energy hired a lobbyist or Facebook opened an office in D.C. But if you hear that Exxon hired a new Chief Election Facilitator it would be calling a spade a spade.
On the post: DailyDirt: Can We At Least Agree On The Meanings Of Words?
Literally
Q: You know why kleptomaniacs don't understand puns?
A: Because they take everything, literally!
Thank you, I'll be here all week. Try the veal.
On the post: Eric Schmidt Still A Fan Of Figuring Out A Way To Erase The Past
Actually changing your name is not a bad way to do it
Unfortunately you can't do it selectively, and there will likely be agencies that will sell the service of connecting the old name to the new.
But I know when I changed my name at marriage my publication record essentially vanished.
On the post: Why The Networks Are Really Afraid Of Aereo: Time Warner Cable Says It Might Offer Aereo-Like Service
Actually the part that should worry us is in the phrasing
This is the bad news! Areo, the networks etc are small potatoes compared to this seemingly pervasive presumption of illegality.
On the post: DailyDirt: Engineering The Perfect Taste
Please don't use link shorteners
On the post: Dutch Government Realizes That Non-Original Works Don't Deserve Copyright
In the realm of commenters fixing bugs in the article....
Mike, if you'd like to thank the commenter, please feel free. Mention her name too.
(sorry, it always bugs me when the plane lands in the USA and they say that they "would like to be the first to welcome you to..." and then never get around to doing so!)
On the post: Oh Wait: MIT Already Made All Its Research Open; So Why Was It So Against Aaron Swartz?
Probably Institutional structure and blindness
There is some good news: 1> there's a new president, so there's no axe to grind / backside to cover at the top in terms of doing diagnosis. 2> Hal Abelson has incredible integrity and is also the main guy responsible for the existence of open access like Open Courseware so was an outstanding choice to look for problems.
My guess up front could be wrong -- perhaps there was mendacity involved. But I will believe whatever report Hal produces, and I will be quite astonished if it's anything other than IS running essentially open loop and nobody else paying attention.
On the post: The Case Against Aaron Swartz Was Complete Garbage
Re: Just a guess but...
On the post: The Case Against Aaron Swartz Was Complete Garbage
Re: Just a guess but...
On the post: The Case Against Aaron Swartz Was Complete Garbage
Why would a judge prevent him for asking for help?
On the post: Google Doodles Obvious Nod To...Some Games...Or Something...
Games
Calling it "the games" is putting the cart before the horse.
On the post: When WSJ Flunks Internet History, Blogs Step In To Educate
"The" Arpanet
FWIW, since most of us used case-insenstive systems, and frequently uppercase defaults, capitalization isn't really a big deal: ARPANET, arpanet, ARPAnet...unlike the Internet, which is the mongo big internet of them all.
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