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[Link]

Ezra Klein postulates that Obama himself leaked the documents.

That would be a 24-worthy twist.

Michelle Malkin: Bush's Spying OK Because He Supported 'War on Terror'

This, unfortunately, falls right in line with reality.

 

[Oblivion]

Michelle Malkin: Bush's Spying OK Because He Supported 'War on Terror'

Retarded as that is, this is one case of blatant hypocrisy that mind end up being useful.

 

[Oblivion]

“I wish the hurricane hadn’t have happened when it did because it gave the president a chance to be presidential,” Romney said in reference to Hurricane Sandy. “But, you know, you don’t look back and worry about each little thing.”

Oh god, Mittens...

 

[Black Mamba]

Oh god, Mittens...

Choice A: Sandy was a tragic event I wish never happened. Was Obama helped by it? I don't know and really the only topic that matters are the lives affected.

Choice B: fuck Sandy, it made Obama look good. Wish it never happened.


Good choice, mittens.

 

[Oblivion]

Choice A: Sandy was a tragic event I wish never happened. Was Obama helped by it? I don't know and really the only topic that matters are the lives affected.

Choice B: fuck Sandy, it made Obama look good. Wish it never happened.


Good choice, mittens.

It's even worse than that. Mittens isn't even saying he wished Sandy never happened, but rather he wished Sandy didn't happen at that time.

 

[Aaron Strife]

Woe is me! Sandy inconvenienced my chance at being the most powerful man in the world. I guess I'll just have to comfort myself with my millions and mansions.

Also like how "Obama is a weak ineffective president!" is somehow compatible with "If only this national crisis didn't happen, then Obama wouldn't have a chance to be an effective strong president!" That's exactly why he should be president!

 

[el retorno]

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/gop-sen-...ntroversy-why-would-that-work-out-any-better/

The growing outrage over the NSA surveillance programs, authorized by the Patriot Act, which came to light yesterday, made its way to the floor of Senate Friday morning. Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) referenced the programs as justification for members of both parties to oppose the “sweeping” immigration reform proposal.

“Did the American people have any idea that the Patriot Act would empower the National Security Agency to spy on all Americans through their cell phones and their computers?” Lee asked his fellow senators. “What makes any of us, least of all any conservative, believe this immigration bill is going to work out any better?”

“The lesson we should be taking from our recent mistakes is not that we need to pass better huge, sweeping new laws,” he continued, “but that we should instead undertake major necessary reforms incrementally, one step at a time, and in the proper sequence.”

Lee used the NSA controversy, along with conservative opposition to Obamacare, to reject the idea of “thousand-page bureaucratic overhaul” as inherently creating “far more problems than they intend to solve.” He added, “We can achieve comprehensive immigration reform without having to pass another thousand-page bill full of loopholes, carve-outs and unintended consequences.”

Of course, this is not the first time a member of the Republican Party has used the big news of the day to argue against comprehensive immigration reform. Following April’s Boston Marathon bombings, Rep. Steve King (R-IA), believing that a Saudi national was responsible for the attacks, cautioned against moving forward with a bill that he said amounted to “amnesty.” At the same time, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) used the Boston bombings to argue in favor of immigration reform, saying the background checks on undocumented immigrants could have prevented the attacks.

I give up, the GOP will use anything to stop anything reasonable.

Some reporter should ask him if he supports full repeal of the patriot act and to start over with his fondness for incremental reforms.

 

[Oblivion]

Louis Gohmert: "The recent news of the NSA spying on the American people shows a greater need than ever to permanently ban abortion!"

 

[el retorno]

Louis Gohmert: "The recent news of the NSA spying on the American people shows a greater need than ever to permanently ban abortion!"

Poe's law

 

[CharlieDigital]

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/gop-sen-...ntroversy-why-would-that-work-out-any-better/


I give up, the GOP will use anything to stop anything reasonable.

Some reporter should ask him if he supports full repeal of the patriot act and to start over with his fondness for incremental reforms.

“Did the American people have any idea that the Patriot Act would empower the National Security Agency to spy on all Americans through their cell phones and their computers?” Lee asked his fellow senators. “What makes any of us, least of all any conservative, believe this immigration bill is going to work out any better?”

What in the actual fuck?

"We shouldn't pass any more bills -- EVER -- because look at this fucking bill that we passed!"

WHAT. IN. THE. ACTUAL. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK.

 

[FLEABttn]

“Did the American people have any idea that the Patriot Act would empower the National Security Agency to spy on all Americans through their cell phones and their computers?”

Some did. You did.

 

[gcubed]

Some did. You did.

I think most did.

 

[Black Mamba]

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/gop-sen-...ntroversy-why-would-that-work-out-any-better/



I give up, the GOP will use anything to stop anything reasonable.

Some reporter should ask him if he supports full repeal of the patriot act and to start over with his fondness for incremental reforms.

He basically argued Congress should never pass a law ever again...

I feel bad for The Onion politics writers. They're going to be replaced with 1 guy who just copy and pastes real articles.

 

[Link]

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/gop-sen-...ntroversy-why-would-that-work-out-any-better/



I give up, the GOP will use anything to stop anything reasonable.

Some reporter should ask him if he supports full repeal of the patriot act and to start over with his fondness for incremental reforms.

Wow, I don't even...

 

[Particle Physicist]

Retarded as that is, this is one case of blatant hypocrisy that mind end up being useful.

What do you mean?

 

[Link]

What do you mean?

The faux outrage from the right about anything Obama does could lead to pushback against the Patriot Act.

 

[Particle Physicist]

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/gop-sen-...ntroversy-why-would-that-work-out-any-better/



I give up, the GOP will use anything to stop anything reasonable.

Some reporter should ask him if he supports full repeal of the patriot act and to start over with his fondness for incremental reforms.

I knew they would do stupid shit like this. Outraged over a program they themselves voted for and funded, they will now block the vote for something completely unrelated! Fucking pricks.

 

[Particle Physicist]

The faux outrage from the right about anything Obama does could lead to pushback against the Patriot Act.

Ah, I wish. No way they do it. They will just continue to use it as further justification to oppose anything Obama or the Democrats want. I doubt the assholes in congress will get rid of the Patriot act, or even weaken it in any way. That includes Democrats as well.

 

[Tamanon]

The faux outrage from the right about anything Obama does could lead to pushback against the Patriot Act.

Nope, it won't. Too many supporters of it on both sides of the aisle. The reason Congress specifically gave the President and the Executive branch that much power is that the American People don't correctly understand the separation of powers. Allows them to make political hay out of getting someone else to do what they want.

 

[The Librarian]

I dunno. After reading David Simon's piece, I find myself not as upset, and unable to get myself too upset, about this whole NSA surveillance thing:

Yes, I can hear the panicked libertarians and liberals and Obama-haters wailing in rare unison: But what about all the innocent Americans caught up in this voracious, overreaching dragnet? To which the answer is obvious if you think about the scale of this: What dragnet?

Your son’s devotional calls to 1-800-BEATOFF? Your daughter’s call from the STD clinic? Your brother-in-law calling you from his office at Goldman with that whispered insider-tip on that biomed stock? Is that what you’re worried about?

Take a deep breath and think:

When the government grabs the raw data thousands of phone calls, they’re probably going to examine those calls. They’re going to look to establish a pattern of behavior to justify more investigation and ultimately, if they can, elevate their surveillance to actual monitoring of conversations. Sure, enough.

When the government grabs every single fucking telephone call made from the United States over a period of months and years, it is not a prelude to monitoring anything in particular. Why not? Because that is tens of billions of phone calls and for the love of god, how many agents do you think the FBI has? How many computer-runs do you think the NSA can do? When the government asks for something, it is notable to wonder what they are seeking and for what purpose. When they ask for everything, it is not for specific snooping or violations of civil rights, but rather a data base that is being maintained as an investigative tool.

 

[Gotchaye]

I dunno. After reading David Simon's piece, I find myself not as upset, and unable to get myself too upset, about this whole NSA surveillance thing:

I think this justifies not panicking, but it's still reasonable to be really upset. There are two big issues with this even if I'm not actually worried about the prospect of some government drone going over hours and hours of video chats looking for nudity. Edit: Although I would also understand people being really upset at the idea that it's at all possible for someone else to be reading their filthy Skype messages. People value different sorts of privacy. I can accept privacy-through-effective-anonymity, but many can't get over that their real name and picture might be attached to something like that.

The first is precedent. We will eventually have computers that can efficiently sort through all of everyone's interactions online. It's going to be important that, when we do, nobody has access to all of those interactions to sort through.

The second is that while the government may not be able to meaningfully monitor everyone, it can retroactively monitor someone. If you're suspected of a crime, someone can go to the database and pull out everything you've done on the internet in the last decade. So there's a lack of privacy just when you'd need it most. More generally, you have no real privacy from the moment you gain any sort of notoriety, retroactive to however long they've been stockpiling data.

 

[The Librarian]

I think this justifies not panicking, but it's still reasonable to be really upset. There are two big issues with this even if I'm not actually worried about the prospect of some government drone going over hours and hours of video chats looking for nudity. Edit: Although I would also understand people being really upset at the idea that it's at all possible for someone else to be reading their filthy Skype messages. People value different sorts of privacy. I can accept privacy-through-effective-anonymity, but many can't.

The first is precedent. We will eventually have computers that can efficiently sort through all of everyone's interactions online. It's going to be important that, when we do, nobody has access to all of those interactions to sort through.

The second is that while the government may not be able to meaningfully monitor everyone, it can retroactively monitor someone. If you're suspected of a crime, someone can go to the database and pull out everything you've done on the internet in the last decade. So there's a lack of privacy just when you'd need it most.

I agree that people should be worried and cautious about the use of the data, but the data collection itself isn't something to get too upset over. To prevent authoritarian overreach, and certainly, abuse, it's punishing those who misuse the data. Both of your points concern misusing it.

 

[el retorno]

I agree that people should be worried and cautious about the use of the data, but the data collection itself isn't something to get too upset over. To prevent authoritarian overreach, and certainly, abuse, it's punishing those who misuse the data. Both of your points concern misusing it.

Gotchaye's post is good. I'll add my questions.

Why not prevent data collection so they can't misuse it? Your trusting that they never will.

What is the justification for the collection? why can't they get a warrant for a more specific tracking program based on probable cause like the 4th amendment requires

This really sounds like justification because of course Obama won't do anything bad with it, so don't worry. Obama is gone in 3 years, the NSA and PRISM won't be.

 

[empty vessel]

I agree that people should be worried and cautious about the use of the data, but the data collection itself isn't something to get too upset over. To prevent authoritarian overreach, and certainly, abuse, it's punishing those who misuse the data. Both of your points concern misusing it.

How do you reckon you're going to find about about misuse given the acceptance of virtually carte blanche government secrecy? The Fourth Amendment is all about restricting the collection of "data" (evidence is nothing if not data) and is based on expectations of privacy. This is specifaclly to prevent the misuse of data learned about citizens by the government (e.g., political embarrassment or leverage). As the government continues to erode those expectations, the Fourth Amendment becomes a dead letter (which it is perilously close to being already).

 

[speculawyer]

So much of this is ridiculous. First of all, you all voted for people who approved the Patriot Act so you have no one to blame but yourselves.

And then people freak out . . . oh no! The FBI knows who I call! *Goes and posts picture of throwing up at a party on the FaceBook page*

 

[el retorno]

This is a good post on why were not worried about Orwell but something different

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/06/verizons-records

But one thing I haven't seen enough of in the coverage of the latest surveillance scandal is a reminder of what it is we're afraid of when the government collects such immense amounts of data in sweeps of our personal information. It's not the totalitarian fear that an agency that knows exactly where we are and who we're talking to at all times would find it easier to round us up; we're not a totalitarian state, and in any case, in modern America, if the police want to arrest you, they'll be able to find you. The legitimate fear boils down to two things.

The first is the possibility of illegitimate pressure based on information we didn't intend to be made public. Everyone has secrets; everyone has things they'd prefer not be publicly known. If a detective who suspects you of committing a crime knows that when your wife called you at 11.30pm on Wednesday you were at the apartment of your attractive co-worker, that detective is likely to threaten to release that information to convince you to sign a confession. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that when we say "the government", we are actually referring to huge numbers of different agencies and individuals, each of which have their own interests and will use whatever information resources they get their hands on to pursue those interests.

The second is the fear that a pattern of circumstantial activity will lead us to be falsely incriminated, or to suffer administrative penalties that don't even require any actual indictment. In the era of the no-fly list, it's not clear what set of activities are enough to get you to pop up on somebody's computer screen at DHS and turn your life into a Kafkaesque hassle-dome. Did you visit Qatar, then Pakistan, then Qatar again? Did you spray-paint artistic graffiti on a sidewalk that turned out to be too close to Dick Cheney's daughter's house? We don't know; our security agencies will never tell us. Giving the NSA a vast database of phone calls, and inviting them to search for correlations that might be predictive of terrorist activity, is likely to generate a massive number of false positives.

It's not just the government that we need to watch here; the phone companies themselves routinely store call and location data from your phone, aggregate it, and sell it to third parties. Hopefully the FCC will ban that practice except with user consent, when it votes on it later this month. It would also be a good thing if the NSA were blocked from routinely mining patterns from every phone call made in America in the hopes of finding something that matches up with terrorism. Another approach would be to see whether we can erect clearly enforced firewalls that prohibit the NSA from sharing its knowledge that you were in bed with your mistress with prosecutors. Then again, the fact that different intelligence agencies weren't allowed to pool their knowledge was precisely what outraged Americans in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks.

And as for reining in the data-gathering activities, I'm a bit sceptical that blocking the NSA's routine court-monitored requests will go very far towards curtailing their other mind-boggling data-harvesting efforts. A while back I had a conversation about this with a longtime digital-freedom hacktivist who had initially been a senior advisor in the WikiLeaks project. I asked him what he thought were the most important political projects to protect online privacy and organisational openness. He said that ship had sailed; it was too late to carve out a zone of electronic freedom. The architecture had already been defined; the telecoms corporations and the government can learn whatever they want about you, and there was no way to undo what had been built. So, I asked, how did he plan on protecting himself against America's crusade against WikiLeaks? He didn't, he said. He had a family to consider. He'd dropped out.

 

[el retorno]

So much of this is ridiculous. First of all, you all voted for people who approved the Patriot Act so you have no one to blame but yourselves.

And then people freak out . . . oh no! The FBI knows who I call! *Goes and posts picture of throwing up at a party on the FaceBook page*

I'm not worried about pictures I post. I lose that expectation of privacy.

My phone-calls? My internet searches, my private emails, my browsing patterns I never consented to them being tracked and there is no reason for them to be. Especially not with the user data intact.

 

[The Librarian]

Gotchaye's post is good. I'll add my questions.

Why not prevent data collection so they can't misuse it? Your trusting that they never will.

What is the justification for the collection? why can't they get a warrant for a more specific tracking program based on probable cause like the 4th amendment requires

This really sounds like justification because of course Obama won't do anything bad with it, so don't worry. Obama is gone in 3 years, the NSA and PRISM won't be.

As Simon points out, the government isn't collecting all that data to find out about a specific person, they're collecting it to use as an investigative tool. I never said I would trust the government to not abuse it, but that the solution lies in punishing those who misuse the data. Someone will eventually misuse the data! It's going to happen! Then we should punish that person. Other than that, it's stupid to just ignore it.

Your second question is too vague for me to answer. A more specific tracking program for what? How would they use this? They have to have a database from which to use this.

As for your last point – look, the government has all kinds of information on me. Namely my birthday and my taxes. I have no idea if they're abusing my taxes information, but it's not like they shouldn't pretend that data is there. Most of us here, including you if I'm not mistaken, are for a single-payer healthcare program where the government would have data about your health. How would we know they're misusing that? How do we know the government is misusing its medical records on veterans and the elderly and the poor?

I understand the caution and the skepticism, and it's healthy to have, but until I see a misuse of this data, I can't get too upset about it.

 

[Dr. Pangloss]

As much as I dislike the data mining, I wonder why everyone is shocked. Waking up today, I did not feel that my government was anymore oppressive than it was a month or even a year ago. Hell, the government has been doing this forever. The even bugged MLK back in the 1960s. This is nothing new. All governments seek to maintain the system they find themselves in.

What we should be concern with is abuse of the system against non-threatening entities: i.e. those that are politically non-violent, used for blackmail purposes, or for personal enrichment (corruption). To think that a government does not monitor its citizens is incredibly naive. What do you think all those polls people do on Obama's approval are about? Just a roundabout way for measuring people's satisfaction with their government. The only thing I think would make it better is for it to be more open and transparent.

 

[Black Mamba]

As much as I dislike the data mining, I wonder why everyone is shocked. Waking up today, I did not feel that my government was anymore oppressive than it was a month or even a year ago. Hell, the government has been doing this forever. The even bugged MLK back in the 1960s. This is nothing new. All governments seek to maintain the system they find themselves in.

What we should be concern with is abuse of the system against non-threatening entities: i.e. those that are politically non-violent, used for blackmail purposes, or for personal enrichment (corruption). To think that a government does not monitor its citizens is incredibly naive. What do you think all those polls people do on Obama's approval are about? Just a roundabout way for measuring people's satisfaction with their government. They only thing I think would make it better is to make it more open and transparent.

Are you saying the gov't is trying to not allow a data mineshaft gap?

Spoiler

so sorry, I had to

 

[el retorno]

As Simon points out, the government isn't collecting all that data to find out about a specific person, they're collecting it to use as an investigative tool. I never said I would trust the government to not abuse it, but that the solution lies in punishing those who misuse the data. Someone will eventually misuse the data! It's going to happen! Then we should punish that person. Other than that, it's stupid to just ignore it.

Your second question is too vague for me to answer. A more specific tracking program for what? How would they use this? They have to have a database from which to use this.

As for your last point – look, the government has all kinds of information on me. Namely my birthday and my taxes. I have no idea if they're abusing my taxes, but it's not like they shouldn't pretend that data is there. Most of us here, including you if I'm not mistaken, are for a single-payer healthcare program where the government would have data about your health. How do we know they're misusing that? How do we know the government is misusing its medical records on veterans and the elderly and the poor?

I understand the caution and the skepticism, and it's healthy to have, but until I see a misuse of this data, I can't get too upset about it.

This kind of thinking gives way too much data to the government, there is a large difference between your tax information (which the government has a right to know) and private communications. And as EV said the entire point of the 4th amendment is that they can't just collect things as "an investigative tool" without reason.

I don't know why your waiting for someone to misuse it as they have no need for the data to begin with. that prevents any chance of it being misused instead of punishment after the fact.

this was great responding to this post on gizmodo today

This has to be the most stupid, most selfish post ever written in the history of Gizmodo, and that includes my own very supid ones.

A post clearly written by a twentysomething who needs to read more history books. Who needs to be aware of what really is at stake here. Who needs to see beyond his bellybutton and his Xbox.

Yes, Kyle, the world doesn't give a shit about you and your antics*. Or mine. We are, most of us, irrelevant at an individual level. Until we are not. Until someone decides to use whatever information they have available to do something against someone. Individually or as a collective.

Kevin Drum wrote this in Motherjones today:

At the same time, maybe we should still be surprised to hear Obama say something like this: "But I know that the people who are involved in these programs... They're professionals. In the abstract you can complain about Big Brother and how this is a program run amok, but when you actually look at the details, I think we've struck the right balance."

Sure. And it's possible, even likely, that these professionals aren't abusing the data they've collected. Yet. But does Obama really think that a government that collects this kind of stuff won't abuse it eventually? That's vanishingly unlikely.

One example of what Kevin says: there was nothing wrong with Germany computerized census of 1933—made with the first IBM perforated card machines—until the Nazis got to power and started to create lists of jews complete with address in a matter of minutes. UNCHECKED access to big data is what enabled the Holocaust.

Millions of people—literally about 70 million—died in the war that followed, fought to save and preserve the rights that you so easily disregard in this article because, as you argue, nobody gives a shit about you. You have nothing to hide.

But, in reality, some people give and will give a shit about you. Not about the porn you watch, but about who you are, what your spending habits are, and a million other things. And that people can be a government or can be someone who reads Gizmodo, some imbecile who hates you for whatever reason and works at the NSA, happens to have access to your information and can use it to do something.

Have no doubt: if the information is there, it can be used for less noble purposes than "fighting terrorism". Whatever that means. I didn't see PRISM stopping the Boston bombings, for example.

If you can't see WHY you should care about this situation, then I will not be sorry if something happens to you or anyone you love when, in the future, the world ends up in a similar situation than in 1939. Hopefully, that will not happen. But, if history has told us something, is that is HAS happened. Many times. And it will probably happen again. And I'm not talking about Nazis coming back, but governments and corporations getting ideas about how to use Big Data unchecked.

That's why you should care.

* I do care about you. You're one of my writers and humans in Gawker.

Better to stop it now. before any damage is done.

As much as I dislike the data mining, I wonder why everyone is shocked. Waking up today, I did not feel that my government was anymore oppressive than it was a month or even a year ago. Hell, the government has been doing this forever. The even bugged MLK back in the 1960s. This is nothing new. All governments seek to maintain the system they find themselves in.

What we should be concern with is abuse of the system against non-threatening entities: i.e. those that are politically non-violent, used for blackmail purposes, or for personal enrichment (corruption). To think that a government does not monitor its citizens is incredibly naive. What do you think all those polls people do on Obama's approval are about? Just a roundabout way for measuring people's satisfaction with their government. The only thing I think would make it better is for it to be more open and transparent.

I don't want to defend what they did to MLK but at least in that time you had to have done something for them to start spying on you. Right now I'm nothing but my data might be stored. What if I do something in 10-20 years? are things from today going to be dredged up?

Now by using the internet their keeping data. Before your even suspected of wrongdoing, that's whats got me upset. That and the self-censorship and behavioral changes caused by constant fear of being watched.

 

[Gotchaye]

As Simon points out, the government isn't collecting all that data to find out about a specific person, they're collecting it to use as an investigative tool. I never said I would trust the government to not abuse it, but that the solution lies in punishing those who misuse the data. Someone will eventually misuse the data! It's going to happen! Then we should punish that person. Other than that, it's stupid to just ignore it.

Your second question is too vague for me to answer. A more specific tracking program for what? How would they use this? They have to have a database from which to use this.

As for your last point – look, the government has all kinds of information on me. Namely my birthday and my taxes. I have no idea if they're abusing my taxes information, but it's not like they shouldn't pretend that data is there. Most of us here, including you if I'm not mistaken, are for a single-payer healthcare program where the government would have data about your health. How would we know they're misusing that? How do we know the government is misusing its medical records on veterans and the elderly and the poor?

I understand the caution and the skepticism, and it's healthy to have, but until I see a misuse of this data, I can't get too upset about it.

But these concerns about the possible misuse of data justify limiting the scope of data collection!

You ask "How would we know they're misusing that?" Exactly! It's really hard to know if the data is being misused. So only going after people who we know have misused data is probably not going to work very well.

There's a certain amount of data collection which is necessary to make an efficient single-payer healthcare system work. I support that data collection, because whatever disadvantages it has are outweighed by the advantages of single-payer.

Likewise, we've got to have taxes. There's going to be data associated with that. We have to collect this data.

It's really hard to see what good all of this NSA data is doing or could do that would justify its potential for misuse.

 

[Dr. Pangloss]

This kind of thinking gives way too much data to the government, there is a large difference between your tax information (which the government has a right to know) and private communications. And as EV said the entire point of the 4th amendment is that they can't just collect things as "an investigative tool" without reason.

I don't know why your waiting for someone to misuse it as they have no need for the data to begin with. that prevents any chance of it being misused instead of punishment after the fact.

this was great responding to this post on gizmodo today



Better to stop it now. before any damage is done.



I don't want to defend what they did to MLK but at least in that time you had to have done something for them to start spying on you. Right now I'm nothing but my data might be stored. What if I do something in 10-20 years? are things from today going to be dredged up?

Now by using the internet their keeping data. Before your even suspected of wrongdoing, that's whats got me upset. That and the self-censorship and behavioral changes caused by constant fear of being watched.

Our government has been doing a census with a question about your religious affiliation since its inception and there hasn't been a religious holocaust yet. Also, you should not worry about what you did 10-20 years ago. That is why we have a statue of limitations.

The only issue would be using the data to break the 5th amendment and have you self-incriminate yourself with the data. Your assumptions about the government being this ruthless to come after you imply that they are pretty determine and smart about doing it. And being the smart and ruthless government that they are, they then will build a more airtight case against you than some post you made to your Facebook wall. You would have to get out of your chair and commit an outright hostile act.

And once the government starts rounding people up, then most will see it for what it is. If they couldn't keep this program quite, then how would they keep the incarceration of political dissidents.

 

[The Librarian]

This kind of thinking gives way too much data to the government, there is a large difference between your tax information (which the government has a right to know) and private communications. And as EV said the entire point of the 4th amendment is that they can't just collect things as "an investigative tool" without reason.

I don't know why your waiting for someone to misuse it as they have no need for the data to begin with. that prevents any chance of it being misused instead of punishment after the fact.

The government can find a lot of things about you pretty easily even without all this data collection. What matters is if they abuse, and if they violate your private conversations. Now, I certainly don't support them renewing requests for information every three months, but if they did after some sort of incident like the Boston marathon bombing, I don't see that as unreasonable. That's probably my biggest problem with it.

I didn't say skepticism wasn't wrong, just that I myself can't get too upset unless I see the data being misused.

this was great responding to this post on gizmodo today

Better to stop it now. before any damage is done.

Right. So a dictator is going to rise to power in the US and is going to target a certain ethnic group for mass enslavement or extermination. Okay.

You ask "How would we know they're misusing that?" Exactly! It's really hard to know if the data is being misused.

You can say that about any data the government collects.

 

[Gotchaye]

You can say that about any data the government collects.

Well, yeah. I thought I made that clear. So with anything like this there's some balance to be struck between how much good we derive from allowing the government to collect and store the data and how much harm is derived from the associated loss of privacy. What's the argument for PRISM that justifies the unprecedented scale of the data collection?

 

[The Librarian]

Well, yeah. I thought I made that clear. So with anything like this there's some balance to be struck between how much good we derive from allowing the government to collect and store the data and how much harm is derived from the associated loss of privacy. What's the argument for PRISM that outweighs the unprecedented scale of the data collection?

I wasn't taking about PRISM. I was talking about the NSA.

 

[Gotchaye]

I wasn't taking about PRISM. I was talking about the NSA.

I thought PRISM was the "NSA surveillance thing". What am I missing here?

Edit: Oh, the phone records stuff. Same deal, basically. Not as bad as PRISM, but, still, what's the point?

 

[The Librarian]

I was talking about seizing of phone records only.

 

[Aaron Strife]

So the frontrunner in the race to replace Michele Bachmann, Tom Emmer is even crazier than she was.

woo.

 

[B-Dubs]

So the frontrunner in the race to replace Michele Bachmann, Tom Emmer is even crazier than she was.

woo.

How is that even possible?

 

[Kinvara]

How is that even possible?

Black magic was probably involved.

 

[el retorno]

Our government has been doing a census with a question about your religious affiliation since its inception and there hasn't been a religious holocaust yet. Also, you should not worry about what you did 10-20 years ago. That is why we have a statue of limitations.

The only issue would be using the data to break the 5th amendment and have you self-incriminate yourself with the data. Your assumptions about the government being this ruthless to come after you imply that they are pretty determine and smart about doing it. And being the smart and ruthless government that they are, they then will build a more airtight case against you than some post you made to your Facebook wall. You would have to get out of your chair and commit an outright hostile act.

And once the government starts rounding people up, then most will see it for what it is. If they couldn't keep this program quite, then how would they keep the incarceration of political dissidents.

I don't think that's what going to happen (the holocaust example) it just shows how if right now its not scary it can be in the future and why we should only acquiesce to only the needed.

And my fears are founded on the fact, not that the data will be used officially, but unofficially if all this data is stored forever whats to stop a hacker or another to steal data later and use it to blackmail someone. this is a far fetched fear and I don't see it happening soon but it undermines the "data will always be safe argument" these programs are setting presidents for a future were it won't be so far fetched. And its not only political statements.

The holocaust example (not mine by the way) was just an example of "its not important, until it is" How can we be sure this info isn't going to find its way to other governments? What if I travel abroad?

I was talking about seizing of phone records only.

The metadata of EVERY PHONE call in america is reasonable? That data includes locations, length, who you were talking to, etc. This is only the stuff that's been leaked to. Others have talked about them actually listening to calls

And don't give me obama's word that they are not. Because he's lied about the phone records and the data mining program. His word now means nothing.

 

[Tamanon]

So, what's the positive use case for all this data they're collecting? I mean, why are we talking about misuse? How can they use it in ways that aren't misuse?

And, if the good uses are e.g. checking out terrorism suspects, what's wrong with the standard process of, you know, getting a warrant and so forth?

The only positive I can see is if we're operating on a time sensitive manner and companies would take a while to parse the data themselves.

 

[eBay Huckster]

Some did. You did.

Well, to be fair to Mike Lee on that point only, he HAS voted against reauthorization every time it's come up.

 

[el retorno]

So, what's the positive use case for all this data they're collecting? I mean, why are we talking about misuse? How can they use it in ways that aren't misuse?

And, if the good uses are e.g. checking out terrorism suspects, what's wrong with the standard process of, you know, getting a warrant and so forth?

Until we have something like a quantum computers I don't get it. There's no way the NSA can even really find anything useful quickly unless they knew what they were looking for, which would mean they didn't need everything. And a narrower warrant would be sufficient.

 

[Kevitivity]

The faux outrage from the right about anything Obama does could lead to pushback against the Patriot Act.

If you read the newspapers, the Left is pretty outraged too.

 

[CharlieDigital]

So, what's the positive use case for all this data they're collecting? I mean, why are we talking about misuse? How can they use it in ways that aren't misuse?

And, if the good uses are e.g. checking out terrorism suspects, what's wrong with the standard process of, you know, getting a warrant and so forth?

1. Easier to process the data in the event where a credible threat surfaces if you are already familiar with processing:

1.a. That massive volume of data - in other words, the infrastructure to compute and extract data is already in place and proven.

1.b. The schemas of the data are already known.

2. The data can be processed incrementally (i.e. stream databases) as opposed to processed on-demand which would potentially take much longer to compute and aggregate data.

3. Easier to deal with imminent threats if data is processed in a stream manner as opposed to on demand after a warrant given the volume of data

4. The large datasets give them a platform to prove out the technology and even provides drivers for creating new compute techniques for dealing with massive datasets. It's one thing to develop experimental techniques, software and hardware for processing the data but another to actually do it.

 

[The Librarian]

I don't think that's what going to happen (the holocaust example) it just shows how if right now its not scary it can be in the future and why we should only acquiesce to only the needed.

And my fears are founded on the fact, not that the data will be used officially, but unofficially if all this data is stored forever whats to stop a hacker or another to steal data later and use it to blackmail someone. this is a far fetched fear and I don't see it happening soon but it undermines the "data will always be safe argument" these programs are setting presidents for a future were it won't be so far fetched. And its not only political statements.

The holocaust example (not mine by the way) was just an example of "its not important, until it is" How can we be sure this info isn't going to find its way to other governments? What if I travel abroad?

I think you're getting a bit ridiculous in your worries. What do you mean if you travel abroad? What do you think is going to happen to you? What does you doing something twenty years ago have to do with anything?

The metadata of EVERY PHONE call in america is reasonable? That data includes locations, length, who you were talking to, etc. This is only the stuff that's been leaked to. Others have talked about them actually listening to calls

And don't give me obama's word that they are not. Because he's lied about the phone records and the data mining program. His word now means nothing.

Unless I'm mistaken, that article doesn't say anything about listening to the calls, only that the ability of the government to record them. Which we already knew.

As for seizing phone record data being reasonable, I've already said I'm not convinced that the tri-monthly renewal is reasonable. As a response to an event like, say, 9/11, and if nobody breaches phone calls or text messages or what have you, and that data is used to prevent any other immediate future attacks, then yes, I would say that's reasonable.

 

[jamesinclair]

I think I know what the next scandal is....

Millions spent to hire people to post on the internet about how Obamas spying is ok.

Admit it, half of you are paid shills.

 

[The Librarian]

I think I know what the next scandal is....

Millions spent to hire people to post on the internet about how Obamas spying is ok.

Admit it, half of you are paid shills.

Well, yeah. Of course I'm a paid shill. It's all part of Obama's nanny state and the gifts he gives out. Along with birth control.