Big Brother is Watching You

[Ombudsman]

Stalinist huh? You are good with the transfer propaganda method. You aren't making coherent arguments. There does appear to be something wrong with your mental processing. Why do you avoid my question about autism? It would certainly explain a lot about your interactions with others and your overly literal definitions of words. Once again, how is a screen name "personal information"?

[Ombudsman]

Once again, how is a screen name "personal information"?

Once again, I don't think aliases are "personal information" and have not said that I do, not once. Pay attention! However, it's clearly what banni was referring to with "NAMES" since your near outing of Partisan62's real name was dealt with well before and was not at issue when banni posted the rule.

It's not clear at all or he would have had said "screen names." Since aliases are not personal information, then your whining about my use of Mr. X makes no sense, since the warning says, "NO PERSONAL INFORMATION REGARDING POSTERS IS TO BE POSTED. THIS LIST INCLUDES LOCATION, IP ADDRESSES, NAMES, ETC."

So seriously, what's wrong with you? Histrionic Personality Disorder is another likely possibility but your dodge on the autism question seems to suggest I was closer with that one.

[Ombudsman]

Yet more dodging, more projection and more transfer. Very telling. Since you admit aliases aren't personal information then all your whining about my referring to one makes no sense at all since prohibition is against posting personal info.

Are you capable of honest communication or should I expect more non-sequiturs, equivocation, name. calling, playground taunts and obsession of Partisan?

I don't actually know his real name by the way, not that using it would have outed him as you are wont to say. Or are you implying he's gay too? That would explain a lot.

[Ombudsman]

Let's take a break from Vrede's nonsensical ramblings for a second. This guy offers some interesting points.

There are four reasons it’s right for the National Security Agency to move our phone records to its secure data warehouse.


First, the records must be preserved for purposes of investigation and prosecution, and the phone companies do not hold them indefinitely.

Second, they’re much less secure in dozens of phone company databases than they are with our military (NSA being a part of Department of Defense).

Third, NSA and FBI couldn’t do court-approved searches effectively with the data in multiple private databases.

The fourth reason is the most important, and I’ve not heard any mention of it: We simply can’t have many un-cleared people in all the phone companies knowing what investigations our anti-terrorism people are pursuing, much less doing the searches for them. That would expose our security and privacy much more than the database queries by the small NSA group operating under the rigorous NSA and FISA controls.

I hope the radical civil libertarians in Congress, right and left, will stop the fear mongering and focus on ensuring adequate controls rather than disparaging the program’s sound rationale.

Robert D. Smith

Greer

http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article ... ne-records

[Wneglia]

Booz Allen Hamilton Tentacles

[O Really]

Or, looked at another way, if there were a large percentage of rejections, would that not show a pattern of prosecutorial overreach? Given a choice, would you rather the requests presented to Court be consistently within the law and approved, or frequently asking for something the law does not allow and thus being declined? Not that those are the only alternatives, but ya gotta look at what you have. Or, we could just start with the idea that the court does indeed approve everything without regard to whether the request is legal. Seems a bit of a stretch to me. Even ickey Republicans usually - usually - take their judicial responsibilities seriously once they're on the bench.

[O Really]

... Plus, remember, "legal" is Patriot Act "legal". So, what we're talking about is a rubber stamp for an abominable, and largely untested thanks to SCOTUS timidity, law - doubly bad.

Well now that's the thing, isn't it? I'll be happy to stipulate for sake of discussion that the standards for getting access to the data or setting up some surveillance are too low. But the judges can't just make up new standards as they go along, can they? And the prosecutors can't reasonably be expected to say, "I know I only have to bring in a screenshot from some unverified website, but I'm voluntarily bringing in several volumes of real evidence," can they?

Why are the judges automatically suspect just because they (apparently) follow the (bad) law as it exists? PATRIOT is the demon here - not the FISA judges nor the NSA.

[O Really]

So - who would you like to see guarding the foxes? Supposedly Congress is, but you say they aren't. So, for example, I wouldn't mind the ACLU lawyers being the ones to review and/or look over the judges' shoulders, but I suspect there are some who might consider them biased themselves. So we get somebody else to look over the ACLU shoulders? And then somebody else to look over theirs? At what point might we say, "OK, we've got enough people looking, now all you guys go do your jobs and we'll quit stressing out over it."

[O Really]

China, Russia, Ecuador . . . whatever one thinks of Snowden this ain't going too well for Obama, the NSA, and the US.

I'd be really interested in knowing what Mr. Putin would do if it were a Russian who had disclosed secret Russian information. I'd say the fact that Snowden seems to still be walking on the green side of the grass is pretty good evidence he's getting a better chance than in most countries you could name.

[bannination]

Sorry, NSA, Terrorists Don't Use Verizon. Or Skype. Or Gmail.

For me it's not really about the watchers. The program should be shut down all together. If the program has to remain for whatever reason, it should be justified and have so much red tape it's almost impossible to be useful.

[O Really]

The writer of the article seriously underestimates the degree of knowledge and expertise at NSA. But in any case, taking his point literally, maybe "real" terrorist leaders don't use cells or skype. Maybe it is only the bottom-feeders. How many leaders of stuff have been tracked by following the bottom feeders up the chain?

[bannination]

The writer of the article seriously underestimates the degree of knowledge and expertise at NSA. But in any case, taking his point literally, maybe "real" terrorist leaders don't use cells or skype. Maybe it is only the bottom-feeders. How many leaders of stuff have been tracked by following the bottom feeders up the chain?

Well, that's up to them to justify. They work for us. So far..... nada.

[Ombudsman]

The writer of the article seriously underestimates the degree of knowledge and expertise at NSA.

He also overstates the expertise of your average suicide bomber.

[O Really]

If you guys want me to join you in a general lament over the loss of privacy in general and the actual and potential negative effect it could have on the individual and society, I'll be happy to do so. But you're not going to get me excited about the fact that the NSA can collect and review records that are already collected and accessible to hundreds or thousands of people who don't themselves happen to have my own best interests at heart.

[bannination]

If you guys want me to join you in a general lament over the loss of privacy in general and the actual and potential negative effect it could have on the individual and society, I'll be happy to do so. But you're not going to get me excited about the fact that the NSA can collect and review records that are already collected and accessible to hundreds or thousands of people who don't themselves happen to have my own best interests at heart.

That's understandable.

(Even though I know the NSA has access to much more.)

[O Really]

What, the US doesn't assassinate people around the world? Since when?

.

I'm sure it has and does.
What I'm saying is that the fact Snowden is still alive means either (1) The US is giving him more chance than Putin, for example, would; or (2) the CIA is the most incompetent agency ever if he's still "hiding" in the Moscow airport.

[O Really]

(Even though I know the NSA has access to much more.)

Of course it does - but the current uproar is over the phone data. And that's significant, too. We (collectively) get all in an uproar over something relatively - relatively - harmless that we find out about, but don't spend much time agonizing over all the things people are doing that we don't know about, absent any noticeable symptoms resulting.

[Cowboy]

We (collectively) get all in an uproar over something relatively - relatively - harmless that we find out about, but don't spend much time agonizing over all the things people are doing that we don't know about, absent any noticeable symptoms resulting.

Why would you get upset over something you don't know about and has no symptoms?

[O Really]

We (collectively) get all in an uproar over something relatively - relatively - harmless that we find out about, but don't spend much time agonizing over all the things people are doing that we don't know about, absent any noticeable symptoms resulting.

Why would you get upset over something you don't know about and has no symptoms?

My phrasing was awkward. Sorry. What I mean is, the various alphabet agencies do a lot of stuff we don't know about. When we find out about it, we tend to jump to the conclusion that since we didn't know about it, therefore it must be evil. Even if we hadn't seen any prior symptoms. F'rinstance, the abuses of McCarthyism were widely known because there were many people accused and blacklisted that a lot of other people knew personally and knew they weren't "commies." Not that I'd defend McCarthy in any case, but if he had stuck with persecuting the ones who actually could be proven to be subversives, his political cleansing would be more likely to have been seen as a good thing. Now, however, even if NSA hasn't gotten caught working down their personal enemies list from their phone data, we still think they are almost by definition up to no good.

[bannination]

(Even though I know the NSA has access to much more.)

Of course it does - but the current uproar is over the phone data. And that's significant, too. We (collectively) get all in an uproar over something relatively - relatively - harmless that we find out about, but don't spend much time agonizing over all the things people are doing that we don't know about, absent any noticeable symptoms resulting.

Like terrorism? Really, I mean - lets put all the gobs of money they are throwing at this into cancer research (or any medical research for that matter), I bet there would be an order of a magnitude more lives saved. Also, if this program is -relatively- harmless, then why such a big deal that Snowden is leaking details that anyone paying attention, already knew!

I doubt you disagree with me about putting the money somewhere it actually counts, I guess I'm just venting.