(Ted Rall’s blog)
Gail Collins, at the NYTimes:
… Does the N.S.A. really need all the stuff it’s collecting? Ever since the attack on the World Trade Center, the agency has been exploding. It has an enormous operation outside of Washington, and it is building another million-square-foot complex in the Utah desert. It collects an estimated 1.7 billion pieces of communication a day.
“When you have the ability to get more and more data, the natural inclination is to get as much as possible,” said Representative Henry Waxman, the former chairman of the House oversight committee.
Those of us who have seen the show “Hoarders” know that more is not always better, and “as much as possible” is sometimes covering up a pile of dead cats. After all, the government didn’t fail to stop the attack on the World Trade Center because of a lack of data. It had lots of information about Al Qaeda and its plan to stage an attack on America. The problem was with follow-up.
And the N.S.A. has been known to go overboard. During the administration of George W. Bush, it decided to drop a modest in-house plan for data analysis in favor of a gargantuan program called Trailblazer, which funneled more than $1 billion to private consultants and turned out to have the additional liability of not working. The official who fought most vigorously against it was rewarded in 2010 by being charged with violating the Espionage Act when he released information to a reporter.
That was only one incident, but we do seem to have an ominous combination: an agency with a bad record on thriftiness, and practically everything it spends money on is secret. “It’s a tough balancing act,” an Obama administration official told me. “It’s incumbent on us and Congress to do the job of scrutinizing the budget, both in terms of cost and efficacy.”…
Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, what’s on the agenda for another Saturday night?
MattF
Another case of “When I hear the words ‘business opportunity,’ I reach for my revolver.” Also, this:
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-rent-a-tire-20130609,0,2490443,full.story
Teddy's Person
This is the take away line for me. The Republicans don’t want a functioning, efficient government. They want an apparatus for funneling tax dollars into wealthy donors hands.
the Conster
So the only answer is to fill up the NSA’s servers with live cats on roombas. Suck.on.this. Obama!
Baud
But Obama’s NSA is destroying all of the world’s privacy for only $20 million.
Efficiency!
PsiFighter37
@MattF: I think the logical next step is renting the body of the car and renting the wheels separately. When Hertz and Avis start doing this, you can thank me for the advance notice.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
This (pdf.) just in from the DNI.
Comrade Jake
Beyond a certain scale, the data is useless unless you have a means to intelligently sift through it. Having all of the data is almost like having none of it. Needle in a haystack, etc.
Collecting all this data isn’t where the costs lie, IMO. It rests in the analysts who are doing the algorithmic work.
Amir Khalid
@Teddy’s Person:
As I recall, this was how Mitt’s presidential campaign handled the information systems that were supposed to get out the vote to defeat Obama — and wound up crashing on election day.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
Is it worth it? I don’t know. But let’s not pretend that there isn’t a security benefit to a program like PRISM. If you want to argue against it, great. I might even be on your side. Be understand that it is a trade-off.
Lolis
Going for dinner and then to see The Purge with a friend. I heart Ethan Hawke.
Amir Khalid
I simply don’t understand the thought process behind this Swedish train operator’s uniform code.
Comrade Jake
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): there’s a security benefit to taking our shoes off at the airport too though, right?
I’m just giving you the business. So much security theatre. I feel like asking a TSA employee “Why do I have to take off my shoes if the elderly woman in front of me doesn’t? How do you know she’s not a terrorist?”
Yatsuno
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): My odds of dying in an auto accident are an order of magnitude greater than dying in a terrorist incident. That cost/benefit analysis doesn’t really work in the modern world. I also know fear is a very easy thing to exploit in these situations. So even though I don’t see the benefit, the Joe in Peoria does.
Plus someone is getting rich off this.
@Amir Khalid: I find their solution creative. But if they really want to push the envelope they should get kilts.
Keith G
I heard the President say ( in regards to the proper amount of surveillance)
Come on Mr President, I did not vote for you twice so that you could turn into just another wanker politician. The only reason this debate is in front of us is that someone squealed on two operations that you very much showed no inclination to talk about . Please try to avoid sounding like an Orwellian twit.
mai naem
I saw this linked to on my twitter feed:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/imagined-letter-president-obama-president-bush/story?id=19350973#.UbOsE_nVB1U
I cannot believe that Matthew Dowd has the unmitigated gall to write this sheet. This mofo who made his money off Dubbya and then took off as soon as he’d made his money and,oh, when his precious son was going to be deployed to Iraq. Then, all of a sudden, he finds religion. Religion about how maybe Dubbya wasn’t all that great. Here’s one smarmy POS I would like to slap.
Yatsuno
@mai naem: Holy fuck. Someone hand him a towel. He’ll need it after that fapping.
joe gamba
@the Conster: Another thing we might do is to send many, MANY, emails, Twitter messages and Facebook communications with as many of the govt’s code words that their algorithms search for (never end a sentence with a preposition!)
It’s a shame to have all those people getting so few really enjoyable or significant emails…..just sayin’
Dead Ernest
Anyone else have the thought cross their mind; “maybe I don’t really want to comment on this thread, bring a bit of unwanted attention to myself…”
/Really Most Sincerely Dead Ernest (so no point thinking any further about me.
steve
If mccain had won in 2008 we’d now have 6 solid GOPers plus the erratic kennedy on the SCOTUS.
Let the hypotheticals sink in on that for a while.
gogol's wife
Is there no other topic of discussion in the entire world?
How about an Esther Williams thread?
Keith G
@steve:
So are you suggesting that it is not a good thing for citizens to communicate their feelngs and expectations to the current administration?
Elizabelle
Belmont Stakes in a minute. Go horses. NBC.
? Martin
@Comrade Jake:
I think it’s a question of latency. If something happens and you need to sift through the data, and you don’t already have it, how long does it take to get it? I guarantee the answer is “a long fucking time”. And a LOT of data collection is done on this basis alone.
So I suspect they aren’t actively using much of the data. I’d bet anything that the scope of it is there for when they need it, and they simply don’t know what they need, so they take as much as they can. It’d be interesting to see what their response times are to an event. If they get a lead on an event, how quickly can they extract new intel out of that dataset. If the answer is “a long fucking time”, then yeah, this is a huge waste of time, money, and effort. But running simple analysis against a couple hundred billion records can be remarkably fast – seconds, provided everything is already structured.
Easily 50% of my databases are almost always idle. They’re updated daily, but there are periods of time when I only have a few hours to turn something around. If I decided to source the data when the request was sent to me, I’d never get it done under deadline, so I need to keep all the data properly set up and ‘hot’. And I need to back it up, and so on. The setup cost of doing it isn’t any more than if I did it on-demand, and the cost to maintain it is negligible. It’s all automated. Hardware is cheap. These kinds of things tend to be >99% fixed, upfront costs in dollars and manpower. You use your manpower when there isn’t a crisis, building what you anticipate you would need in an emergency, so that when that emergency happens, you’re up and going. It’s not unlike FEMA. If they start shopping for bottled water the day the hurricane hits, they’re fucked. They need to run warehouses and stockpile the stuff when it’s nice out, so that when the hurricane hits, they just roll the trucks out. It’s a latency problem.
1.7B records sounds like a lot, but if a record is 1KB, we’re talking about 2TB of data per day. That’s $100 in consumer hardware. Even at enterprise/national security caliber stuff plus the manpower to continually upgrade, that’s pretty damn cheap. So I don’t think this is easily attacked from a cost perspective.
It keeps coming down to effectiveness, and would we be more tolerant of suffering through whatever these systems may have prevented? I don’t know. We have a pretty shitty record of responding rationally to acts against us. This whole apparatus was erected as a response to an act against us, after all.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Yatsuno: I couldn’t bring myself to read it, but here’s Michael Grunwald’s response
Amir Khalid
@Yatsuno:
Aren’t skirts for men kilts by definition?
Being a tropical person, my idea of warm weather is different from that prevailing in Sweden. I found Swedish spring weather quite, uh, bracing. I’d be just fine with long pants in summer. I’m just puzzled by the “shorts for men cannot, skirts for men OK” company rule.
mai naem
@MattF: The rent to own tire outfits have been around a while. I remember hearing about them at least 3 if not 5 years ago. Part of my job means that I run into a few youngish people who don’t make a lot of money and sometimes we’ll start talking and one finds out that a lot of them make really stupid financial decisions. I think our schools/parents do a really crappy job of teaching kids household finances. They don’t understand compound interest, period. They don’t understand interest rates and the effect of them on pay day loans, credit cards, housing, cars etc. Instead of teaching HS seniors macroeconomics, they should teach them basic household finances.
Xecky Gilchrist
@gogol’s wife: Is there no other topic of discussion in the entire world?
No, and this blog is going to go full firebag soon enough.
El Caganer
@gogol’s wife: Well, that depends. Did she work for the NSA?
Bill Arnold
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
Thanks for posting that link. Very interesting. There are some weasel words/sentences if you look for them, but overall it does seem like they are trying hard to give the impression that they are trying to stay arguably compliant with the fourth amendment. I guess that’s good. Don’t know how true it is for the aggregate of all programs that can potentially gather information about U.S. residents.
gogol's wife
@Xecky Gilchrist:
Aside from late-night drunk posts and wonderful Betty Cracker posts, there has been nothing but this for the last several days. Even the “open threads” have to begin with AmeriKKKa cartoons.
Baud
@Keith G:
That’s lame. Just because Obama didn’t invite this debate doesn’t mean he isn’t willing to engage the debate that has been thrust upon us.
? Martin
@Yatsuno:
But we know how people act in response to an auto accident. Even when 3,000 people a month die in auto accidents we don’t go after Detroit like we went after the Muslim world after 9/11. The issue isn’t the cost/benefit analysis of preventing the death, it’s the cost/benefit analysis of preventing our reaction to the death. That’s how it’s always been. If our reaction is nothing, then we spend nothing. If our reaction is to demand a $2T war, then I’m okay spending a few billion dollars preventing that reaction.
Amir Khalid
@gogol’s wife:
I suggested an Annette Funicello thread when she died. To which John Cole said, “Fuck Annette Funicello.”
Thomas F
@gogol’s wife: @Xecky Gilchrist: “Firebag” has been defined down by you all to mean “any discussion of politically inconvenient topics for the President.” If you want mindless, echo-chamber defenses of President Obama rather than some form of critical analysis, both Zandar and Imani Gandy have their own blogs.
Yatsuno
@gogol’s wife: The expired equine has not yet been flagellated enough. Plus there’s so much doubt now I’m betting on nothingburger.
Ultraviolet Thunder
So glad to be home in our lovely fragrant neighborhood after a week on the arid high plains.
We’re gonna catch dinner and pick up a dumb movie to veg in front of. My wife is REALLYREALLY looking forward to Joss’ Much Ado About Nothing but it’s only open on the coasts. When it comes to the local art house we will be in line the first night.
gogol's wife
@Amir Khalid:
That’s cold! She was sweet.
jeffreyw
Kitteh wants to be free.
Ultraviolet Thunder
@gogol’s wife:
That’s cold! She was sweet.
It was meta. You had to be there.
gogol's wife
@jeffreyw:
I want all of dem!
Yatsuno
@jeffreyw: Kitteh wants to be MINE! SQUEE!!11
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
I wear shorts unless it is way too cold, which is rarely in so cal. And I run into this on occasion, the idea that adults do not wear shorts. Kids have to wear shorts but adults have graduated to long pants. It is one of the most asinine old traditions that I have ever run across.
gogol's wife
Edited to remove a huge spoiler. I wasn’t thinking.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Amir Khalid:
NFW! The temperamental little shit!
Anyone who can send herself up so joyfully as Ms. F did here is deserving of much more respect.
michelle
@? Martin:
Quite right. The problem here is that the vast majority of people do just the opposite. Living in a hurricane prone area, I’ve seen it innumerable times — unprepared people scrambling for limited resources and screaming at stores for running out.
I have the feeling that the people who are squawking about this the most would be ok if the Feds just collected data on certain people.
I just wish they would quit calling it “wiretapping.” That’s not what’s going on.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Yatsuno:
If you don’t see the benefit of preventing someone from blowing up subways in New York, you’re fucking blind. As I said, maybe that benefit isn’t worth the price we’re paying, but it is very real. There are a lot of people, such as Anne Laurie in the original post, who are at least implying (and some are outright stating) that there is no benefit to these programs. If that’s the argument you want to make, you’re going to get crushed.
Ultraviolet Thunder
I always forget things about spring. Like how the birds go into a bath frenzy when you turn on a sprinkler. And walking around, suddenly smelling some amazing floral aroma and not being able to tell which abundantly blossoming bush it’s coming from.
Violet
I did a lot of gardening last night because it was unusually dry (as in less humid) for this time of year. Trimmed back the salvia. Put in some summer annuals. Added a ton of compost. Mulched the cucumbers because they keep getting wilty in the sun.
This morning I went on a garden tour, which was fun. Funky garden with a nice pond as well. Turns out the owner knew a woman I used to live near, so we got to exchange stories about her–she was a character.
Then we got some rain today. Not much, but every bit helps since technically we’re still in a drought.
And tonight it’s burgers on the grill and homemade fries cooked in home-rendered tallow. Last time I made them they were fantastic. Can’t wait.
In other news, I have fallen in love with these freeze dried pomegranate arils (seeds). They’re so crunchy. Love them!
mai naem
@Yatsuno: I dislike Mark McKinnon and Matthew Dowd intensely. There were both Texas Dems turned Repubs. These were part of the bunch who were around when Texas went from at least at least light blue to bright red and they just defected because they didn’t want to be on the losing team. See this piece by Sidney Blumenthal http://www.salon.com/2007/04/05/matthew_dowd_2/. Also too, he’s MoDo’s brother.
YellowJournalism
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): Loved that movie as a kid. “Do you know how to Jamaica Ska?”
Anne Laurie
@gogol’s wife:
Well, very few commentors cared about safer strawberries, or even mocking Willard Romney.
It’s a political blog. We’re gonna talk about politics, and sometimes we’re not gonna agree with each other about politics, either.
Raven
I have assumed that since 1969 they were looking back at me through my TV. Don’t give a fuck either.
FlipYrWhig
@Keith G: that doesn’t sound “Orwellian,” though. Orwellian would be a statement like “everything we do is for your own good.” No Orwellian worthy of the word would say he encouraged debate.
elmo
Open thread? Then I will whine bitterly about getting ready for next month’s move. Ye gods, moving sucks donkey balls. Moving while you work 14 – hour days is even worse.
Gin, tonic, and wine. The only way I’m getting through this.
Also the new Star Trek sucked.
Yatsuno
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Read what I wrote please. I stated I don’t see the benefit but I know a majority of people do. That means toning down something like this or getting more controls in place is very unlikely in the current environment in this country. And yeah it sucks.
And this:
is needlessly hyperbolic. You know full well there are many more methods beyond phone traffic monitoring that prevent terrorists from striking.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Bill Arnold:
Oh, I agree that there might be some dodges there, but it does put lie to a claim or two (and not trifling claims) presented as fact by a few so-called journalists.
Violet
@elmo: Moving really does suck. Doing it every so often does help you go through things and purge a bit, which is generally a good thing. Hopefully it’ll go reasonably well. You have my sympathies.
gogol's wife
@Anne Laurie:
Sometimes the threads with low numbers of comments are the best and most interesting ones. At least when you decide to read them you know they won’t have devolved into a trollfest.
schrodinger's cat
@Amir Khalid: I think he rocks the skirt, nice legs too.
schrodinger's cat
@Anne Laurie: How about the fate of immigration reform. I haven’t seen a single post on it.
MattF
@elmo: Yeah, the last time I moved was, I’m hoping, the last time. I have one piece of furniture that has been moved four times, and every time it’s been moved someone got injured. And I’ve warned them: “It’s basically an inch-thick block of marble. It’s heavy and awkward. Be careful.”
? Martin
@Anne Laurie: I would have commented on the safer strawberries, but we have the benefit of buying local. As in ‘we can walk 5 minutes to the field and pick them’. Do they cost more? Who the fuck knows – we know the guy who grows most of our vegetables. I don’t care if they cost more. We grow most of our own fruit. Waves a lemon in front of his laptop camera but FYWP can’t see it.
Strawberries are an expensive and relatively high tech crop, and while the work is really hard on the body, it actually pays not terribly ($15-$20/hr if you’re good – you won’t get rich off of that, but you can also do it when you’re 16 or have no education) and the workers are treated pretty well because it’s the major leagues of agriculture – it draws the best workers. So it seems like an odd crop to put the health spotlight on because it’s by far the easiest to accomplish it on, and it’s a crop that has a lot of price resilience to handle the effort. Move that over to some other crops and it’s much harder.
Violet
@Anne Laurie: I appreciated the one about the safer strawberries. Farming is one of my areas of interest and the control companies like Monsanto have over our food appalls me. Add to that the poor conditions for farm worker and the unnatural food storage techniques and the whole food chain is exploitative and chemically controlled. I would enjoy even more posts like that.
Sometimes the low comment count is a factor of timing than content, imho. If posts all show up at the same time, one with worthy content doesn’t necessarily get the attention it deserves.
schrodinger's cat
@? Martin: What kind of lemons? Can you grow Key limes?
Chyron HR
@Thomas F:
Boo! Hiss! The heretics! Let’s sacrifice them to our GOOOOOOOOODDDDDDDD!
schrodinger's cat
@elmo: I liked it till about 3/4 of the way. The climax was too stupid to digest.
schrodinger's cat
@gogol’s wife: So what did you finally end up wearing for graduation?
Narcissus
@schrodinger’s cat: All possibility of political progress has been overshadowed by non-scandal “scandals” and media “scandals” about things we’ve known about for years (Total Information Awareness, Carnivore, Room 641-A, etc.).
Ryan C
@Comrade Jake: But when they accumulate all this data, and incompetent data miners look through it, don’t you worry about the results?
elmo
@Violet:
Thanks. Partner and I are moving from VA to MD so we can (a) be closer to the water and (b) get married. Super excited, but uggghhhhhh moving.
elmo
@schrodinger’s cat:
Exactly. Stupid and cheap. Among other issues, what government would ever freeze and give up a cure for every known disease?
wmd
Repost of January “they’re coming for your guns” link just showed up on facebook. Notice how ObamaCare, UN, Planned Parenthood and other Faux News boogiemen are used in the paranoid raving.
YellowJournalism
@Chyron HR: Tunch?
Violet
@elmo: Yeah, it really sucks. You can always hire people to help you move. You can even hire them for bits of it–packing boxes, putting boxes in vehicles or truck, unloading boxes, etc. You don’t have to hire them for the whole thing.
I had a POD delivered when we moved. It held the stuff from the garage and some other stuff. A lot of it was heavy and awkward and I was the only one available to unload it. So I hired two guys for about two hours. Didn’t cost that much and I tipped them well. It was in July and HOT. Worth every penny.
Good luck with your move. Sounds like it’s going to be great once you get moved.
Amir Khalid
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
That’s what I thought too.
Mandalay
I don’t like sticking up for the odious Anthony Weiner, but the “liberal” NYT really stuck the knife in on him today.
Weiner was campaigning in Harlem, and (predictably and reasonably) voiced his opposition to NYPD’s stop-and-frisk-unless-you-are-white policy:
Fair enough and good stuff, except this was the headline the NYT gave him: “Weiner Criticizes Police Stops, but Offers No Alternative“.
WTF? If you oppose something that is illegal, immortal and counterproductive, the obvious alternative is to stop doing it. Was Weiner supposed to have proposed an alternative way of illegally harrassing non-whites? This is like going after Obama with the headline “Obama opposes waterboarding but offers no alternative”.
Weiner is still an almighty asshole, but the Times really hit below the belt on this.
srv
Once stumbled onto a thread where an rf engineer did a rough calculation on what it would take to monitor cell phone conversations from space. It’s possible, and it would fantastically expensive and large.
They don’t need Verizon
Can’t find the math, but here’s what they’re supposed to look like
http://reseau.echelon.free.fr/reseau.echelon/satellites.htm
Omnes Omnibus
On the agenda? Watching Breathless on TCM in about 20 minutes. Obviously.
RSA
@Comrade Jake:
This is my take as well. Martin’s point above about latency is well-taken—in some exascale scientific data analysis, it’s impossible to record all the data coming in—but there are other issues. For intelligence analysis, some algorithms that might be useful are intractable, there’s way too much ambiguity in the available data, and it’s often the case that analysts have only a general idea of what they are looking for. (I’m not an expert but I talk informally with people who do this kind of work.)
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
Mmm . . . Jean Seberg.
Omnes Omnibus
@Steeplejack: Hence, among other reasons, the “Obviously.”
Tom_B
They wanna know whether you “like” Ben and Jerry’s or Haagen Daas, but they have no central database that tells ’em if you have an Uzi or an AK-47 (and how many)? Wacko priorities, if you ask me. I worry somewhat more about school/mall shooters than the less frequent Middle Eastern nut jobs, though I do see clear value in tracking communications to failed states ending in “-stan” or “Arabia”.
MikeJ
@Omnes Omnibus: I wonder which translation of the final line they’ll use?
mk3872
So glad to see the Liberal Tea Party wing of the Democratic party flip their wigs last week over Spencer Ackerman’s & Glennwaldo’s typical paranoia and over-reaction to a data collection program which doesn’t do what Spencer & Glenn claim it does.
Yesterday, the Gen. Clapper declassified the details of PRISM and it shows that it can only be used to track foreign non-US residents, must pass through FISA and is not sitting & collecting all of Facebook, Bing, Google, etc. data for mining.
Simply put: you were all completely misled by the Glennwald clan.
Once everyone here realizes that he is paranoid, vindictive and anti-gov’t (aka Ron Paul’s best friend) then you’ll start pushing back against these phony “scoops”.
AHH onna Droid
@Amir Khalid: private operators of public transit are asshats. Public gets to be the same absent heavy public collaboration. They dont bring the piblic in on ev er y detail, who pays for.and uses it? Red flag.
Mandalay
@? Martin:
I think you are on the right lines, but more precisely: it’s the cost/benefit analysis of preventing our reaction to death where the government can be held responsible.
We don’t hold the government accountable for car deaths, but we do hold them accountable (and potentially responsible) for deaths arising from terrorist attacks. So what does the government do? It spends billions of tax dollars on minimizing the possibility of terror attacks. It does not do this because it cares about the health of its citizens. since if that were the case it would do far more about big killers such as obesity and smoking.
It does it to cover its ass.
Omnes Omnibus
@MikeJ: Bitch. TCM will use “Bitch.”
cckids
@Raven:
Ha! When I was 3-4 years old, I firmly believed that the shows we watched on TV were actually happening in someone’s house somewhere. And that somewhere, someone was watching our lives.
Considering that we were seeing “I Dream of Jeannie”, Mannix & Bonanza, I always felt sorry for the people watching us.
gogol's wife
@schrodinger’s cat:
On Saturday I wore a light dress but with a long sweater. When outside I had a raincoat on over that. That was okay. But for graduation I decided to wear a light dress again because usually the robe makes me hot and I thought it was going to be in the 60s. But it wasn’t and I froze my rear off. The wind was horrible.
AHH onna Droid
@Mandalay: Donchano consistently harrassing, dehumanizing and demotivating teens of color in new york keeps manhattanites safe [from having to compete with them for jobs when they grow up.]
gogol's wife
@Omnes Omnibus:
They’re going to show Truffaut movies on Fridays through the entire month of July. Should be interesting.
2liberal
so did anyone ever resolve the general struck / general stuck question? he’s probably dead, right?
AHH onna Droid
@elmo: amen, bro. The new Star Trek did suck. Even if it had a cgi cable car in the background of one scene.
mclaren
Wrong question.
Capabilities create intensions, as the U.S. Army war college likes to say, so all this information is priceless raw material for the legislature and the American military-police-prison-surveillance-torture complex to create new crimes out of.
Find new patterns of behavior in the vast reams of data, criminalize it. Bingo: instant job security.
Incidentally, we notice from our data-mining that you’ve been skipping commercials on your DVR and downloading copyrighted movies and failing to come to a full stop at stop signs while driving to work. $5000 fine for each plus parole with daily drug tests, citizens.
There’s a reason why U.C. Berkeley police lieutenant James PIke was making $150,000 a year.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@srv:
That’s nothing but a satellite that would pick up the radio waves and beam them back to Earth. We’ve had those since Telstar I went up in 1962. We’ve employed satellites specifically for the purposes of picking up the communications of other nations since shortly after that.
The problem with putting satellites into orbit is that doing so is expensive and detectable. It can’t be done in absolute secrecy.
mclaren
@Omnes Omnibus:
Proof once again that this sock puppet calling himself Omnes Omnibus is a PFC stuck in a Pentagon basement, ordered to scream insults at anyone who dissents from the U.S. military-police-prison-surveillance-torture complex.
Out here in the real world, private, we have this thing called “Netflix.” Don’t need to wait for Godard’s Breathless to come on cable TV.
Tell your commanding officer you need a promotion and a pay raise. The people at Balloon Juice are onto you.
JPL
@gogol’s wife: I had no idea she was still alive so it did surprise me when she died.
mouse tolliver
@the Conster:
Or pictures of Jon Hamm going commando. Suck on that Big Government Spy Agency!
pokeyblow
Well, I’m sure Obama has no choice other than to oversee the creation of an American Stasi.
Because of Max Baucus.
the Conster
@mouse tolliver:
I see what you did there.
JPL
@the Conster: I found it informative.
piratedan
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): oh yeah? I have it on the downlow that such a thing is already happening and was the basis of a couple of movies, maybe you’ve heard of them, You Only Live Twice AND Moonraker. It’s completely laid out for you over at Breitbart.com…..That fake volcano location is one of the biggest CIA secrets EVAR!
the Conster
Blackhawks just beat Quick, now 1-0. Stanley Cup final is gonna be kickin’ it old school.
lockout
I’m looking forward to bratwurst!
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@piratedan:
Volcanoes? Well, shit, ya got me there! Where’s Derek Flint when you need him?
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
t@mclaren:
And there goes Spec. McLaren again, donning his insane lefty Bolshevik mask to discredit both the middle and the left. The third stripe is imminent!
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren: Good fucking Christ, you’re an idiot.
Yatsuno
@Omnes Omnibus: SHE HAZ PROOFS!!! AND ALL CAPS!!! INCONTROVERTIBLE EVIDENCE!!!!
pokeyblow
@Omnes Omnibus: No dis, but Breathless is one sucky movie.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
I think mclaren may have been making a joke. But I’m not entirely sure.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yatsuno: It’s funny because I’ve been firebagging over Fourth Amendment stuff all week, but I suppose it is just cover for my real agenda.
Maude
@pokeyblow:
I couldn’t stand it. It was boring.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Mnemosyne:
This is at least the second time with the joke this week, then. The first rendition included eemom and you, too.
Omnes Omnibus
@pokeyblow: @Maude: Wrong and wrong.
Anne Laurie
@2liberal:
According to Legacy.com’s Social Security records, nobody using his legal name has died in the past year. So, he’s not commenting here, or posting on his blog. Whether that’s because he’s taking a break — which he’s done before — or no longer capable of doing so is an open question, unfortunately.
I still hope he’ll pop in one of these days, to yell at us some more.
Spaghetti Lee
Honestly the talk here about this issue has been pretty damn depressing. I could have figured there would be people arguing that a massive government data farming was inevitable, not important enough to fight about, etc. That’s pretty standard. I admit I was surprised about people who argued that this was a good thing, and that people arguing for personal privacy on principle are not just wrong but dangerous and subversive. Well, now I know.
Raven
Wow, Badlands is badass! Hadn’t seen it in years but it’s a masterpiece. Spacek is unereal and Sheen is batshit crazy. Malik’s first feature!
SiubhanDuinne
@mai naem:
It would be so perfect if he were, but I think not. MoDo’s Wikipedia bio says she was born in 1952, “the youngest of five children.” Matthew’s bio says he was born in 1961. MoDo’s conservative brother (maybe they all are, but the one who occasionally writes her column for her) is named Kevin.
pokeyblow
@Spaghetti Lee: Trust Obama. He knows what’s best. Look forward, not backward.
ruemara
@Thomas F: Are you implying that there has been critical analysis? Obama=Bush really isn’t trenchant. And that seems to be the level of regurgitated ideology that is demanded.
the Conster
@Spaghetti Lee:
Who here has argued that personal privacy on principle is dangerous and subversive? I’ve read almost every thread and don’t recall anyone making that statement.
Chyron HR
@Spaghetti Lee:
Wow, that’s shocking. You should totally post some juicy quotes from all these people who called you “dangerous” and “subversive”.
? Martin
@schrodinger’s cat: We can grow anything here on the coast. There’s an apple tree next to the lemon and grapefruit next to that. Neighbor has guava, orange, and a mess of others. But it’s a meyer lemon tree. It’s a bit slow to produce in summer, but we can pull 1-2 lemons a day the rest of the year.
Maude
@Omnes Omnibus:
That’s my opinion. I think the movie was pretentious and it stank.
You may like it, but that doesn’t mean you’re wrong. To each his own.
Cacti
Anne Laurie knows that if Miss Hilly was elected, she’d have never enforced that legislation she voted for.
? Martin
@RSA:
Yeah. I think it’s only valuable if you know the identify of one endpoint of the data and you then look for patterns that radiate from that endpoint. If you don’t the identity of either endpoint (which would apply to probably every one of us) then it’s near useless. The problem is that once you get the identity of one of those endpoints (via subpoena, most likely) you have no way of knowing what it’s going to connect to unless you have everything. Therefore, you try and collect everything. It’s all about discovery, and you can’t discover what you don’t have access to.
Raven
@Omnes Omnibus: Ever see “Elevator to the Gallows?”
Omnes Omnibus
@Raven: Not that I recall.
? Martin
@Mandalay:
Yeah, that’s a better refinement. We’re not always rational about that though. We will sometimes hold the government accountable for car deaths, by way of insufficient regulation, and demand change. We’re seeing that now after Newtown. Has anyone tried to hold the gun makers accountable? Not really. But a lot of money is being poured into the gun debate, and there will be electoral consequences to it. And sometimes there are economic consequences, as in the case to rush to war.
Raven
@Omnes Omnibus: Similar sort of French crime flick but Miles did the soundtrack by watching the film and playing.
“The score by Miles Davis has been described by jazz critic Phil Johnson as “the loneliest trumpet sound you will ever hear, and the model for sad-core music ever since. Hear it and weep.”
I highly recommend it, Jeanne Moreau was an icon in French cinema and Malle filmed her without makeup causing a great stir:
Cacti
@mk3872:
You must not have been here long. It’s not that Anne Laurie is easily misled. It’s that she’s a bitter PUMA and wants to believe the worst about the “inadequate black man” who denied Miss Hilly her patrician right to the White(s) House.
Raven
Band of Outsiders (1964) or “Bande à part” is worth a look too. These films do not follow a standard American plot structure but they are amazing.
RSA
@? Martin: That’s pretty much my understanding of things, too.
Raven
@Cacti: Back off motherfucker.
Omnes Omnibus
@Raven: I’ve seen that one.
Cacti
@Raven:
Ooooh. Internet tough guy.
Raven
@Cacti: Yea yea, you and your loudmouth bullshit need to be yammerin about tough.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Raven:
Even if the only good scene in it was this one. And it’s not the only good scene.
Raven
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): I love this version
Cacti
@Raven:
You gonna reach through your screen and fix my little red wagon, gramps?
Raven
@Cacti: Don’t waste your breath asshole, I pied you.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Raven:
I like this version.
Omnes Omnibus
@MikeJ: They went with “puke.”
Raven
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): Great s scene.
Bill Arnold
@Spaghetti Lee:
I think there is general recognition that (mixing some metaphors here) the genie is out of the bottle and growing exponentially, and we probably can’t re-bottle it, but hey, maybe we can force the genie comply with a carefully defined and complicated set of rules that map to Fourth Amendment compliance, and continuously adapt them to an exponentially growing genie.
In other words, it’s a hard problem, mainly the political problem of restricting the government from abusing ever-more-capable technology. Since surveillance powers are nearly un-rescindable politically, the vigilance must be constant in the face of political changes and events like scary terrorist attacks.
Aggravating the problem, there are shifting views on privacy to contend with, driven in part by experience with new technologies, and generational differences. And also there is government secrecy, sometimes deep, sometimes just obscurity, about many surveillance programs, which makes direct vigilance by the citizenry extremely hard to accomplish.
I am weirdly optimistic, not sure why.
tybee
@gogol’s wife:
house across the street from me had a signed esther williams pool.
pool had a leak so they tore down the sides and filled it with dirt.
now all that’s left is her signature on the pad where the pump used to sit….
is that close enough? :)
Raven
@tybee: Well that was a suckass couple of days in Savannah!
? Martin
@Spaghetti Lee:
You recognize that once the public has voluntarily spread their data all over the fucking place and entrusted Google and Facebook to not sell it (which they do), it’s a bit difficult for Congress to then conclude that the public is really worried about their data remaining private. No?
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Raven:
Yep. And watching dancing>watching fighting. ; )
Spaghetti Lee
@? Martin:
Well, first, I hate the same thing coming from corporations. Second, I don’t really buy the “Well, you use the internet/a cell phone/a credit card, so your privacy opinions are null” argument as anything but weapons-grade smugness. It’s like what Megan McArdle says about poor people. Third, I don’t think that “all your personal information, to be used at our discretion” is an acceptable price for using Google or FB. A lot of people seem to think it is, but I don’t think that battle’s lost quite yet. I think they got that power because people still treat internet businesses differently than other businesses. Imagine if someone from the grocery store showed up everyday to snoop through your cupboards and tell you what you should buy instead.
Steeplejack
@Anne Laurie:
How sure are you that you have his correct legal name?
Omnes Omnibus
@Spaghetti Lee: You and I are pretty much on the same page on this.
michelle
Exactly what I suggested before.
mai naem
@SiubhanDuinne: I stand corrected. I read it somewhere, years ago and never questioned it.
? Martin
@Spaghetti Lee:
They do that now thanks to our loyalty cards.
Look, I’m not saying it’s a good thing. I only use one social media tool. Other than my work Google accts, I don’t use Google either. I don’t like the privacy intrusion either. But I’m very clearly in the minority on this and I accept that. The public simply doesn’t care. And government is aware of that.
Anne Laurie
@Steeplejack:
He sold me a couple Charlie prints, maybe four years ago, using the name I checked. It’s also the name he used to sell his hummingbird prints through the gallery that someone — SiubhanDuinne? — found.
michelle
@? Martin:
Just because it hasn’t been successful doesn’t mean people have not been trying.
I agree generally with your point. On national security, like in Boston, people will blame/question the Feds about why they didn’t protect/didn’t stop it.
michelle
@Cacti:
Exactly
gogol's wife
@tybee:
Not exactly a whole thread, but it’ll have to do.
Redshirt
@Raven:
Right on. Me too, ever since I read “1984”.
Just read it again – it gets better with time. Ever more on point.
I am Smith in the far corner of the room, out of sight of the TV, scribbling in my journal – film reviews and other nerd stuff.
Spaghetti Lee
@michelle:
After the Boston bombings I told everyone who would listen that there’s no mechanism that will stop 100% of would-be criminals and terrorists, and at a certain point, do you really want to live with a microchip in your head and a GPS up your ass just to reduce the already incredibly-small odds of dying that way? I didn’t get actively hostile responses, which I guess is good.
Bob In Portland
Then there’s this:
http://spitfirelist.com/news/planet-of-the-apps-on-the-subject-of-those-shocking-disclosures-about-nsagchq-electronic-surveillance-y-a-w-n/
If you don’t like the US government spying on you, how about the Germans?
Ted & Hellen
@gogol’s wife:
You poor, abused, sad thing. Think your president’s performance has anything to do with the change of mood around here from full out insane Bot to Bot with second thoughts?
Ted & Hellen
@Thomas F:
You sir, are a shameless RACCCCISSSST.
toschek
@? Martin:
Ted & Hellen
@Cacti:
Well, it would have worked better for your persecuted, everyone is a racist schtick if the black man in the white house hadn’t proved to be inadequate, as we’re now seeing once again. Inadequate to the task of serving as a progressive president, that is. He’s MORE than adequate at serving the plutocracy and security state.
Cacti
@Ted & Hellen:
Shouldn’t you be patrolling the streets, looking for dangerous negro bucks armed with skittles?
Frank Shannon
I haven’t written anything in a while, but I feel like I have to say something about the recent PRISM/NSA stories.
META: I think this is an improvement over the previous 3 bullshit Obama scandals. Even if its not really a scandal or even news really, it is still a story that deserves some attention.
I can’t remember all the back story that I’m aware of but I do remember a bit. I first became aware of the general shape of the thing somewhere around 2005 I think. There was a POOR MAN post about data that also talked about people in the Bush administration threatening to resign over the, then without any legal cover, program and people trying to get Ashcroft to sign off on it in his sickbed.
In 2007 there was the washington post story about how the NSA had installed splitters in a trunk line (fiber optic) for sweeping up internet communications.
Which lead to my insight that maybe the NSA doesn’t have a “back door” they just get copies of the latest proprietary software from facebook et al so that all that traffic they are sweeping up (ie all of it) makes more sense.
Richard Miller
@Keith G:
You said, in response to Obama welcoming this debate, “Come on Mr President, I did not vote for you twice so that you could turn into just another wanker politician. The only reason this debate is in front of us is that someone squealed on two operations that you very much showed no inclination to talk about . Please try to avoid sounding like an Orwellian twit.”
How do you know it wasn’t Obama who leaked this precisely to trigger this debate?
With Republicans automatically blocking anything he wanted to do, just saying he wanted to roll back the surveillance state would just have triggered a load of “Democrats are soft on terror” slurs from the right, and would have achieved nothing.
However, we now have right and left combining in saying the surveillance has gone too far. Yes, that is the same right that said anyone who opposed Bush having these exact same powers was a terrorist-loving leftie. And there is now a real chance that something may change.
Obama’s smart. He is focused on achieving what he can of what he wants. And he does not have to stand for election again, so he can afford to trade his personal popularity for achievements. I could quite believe this was a deliberate tactic on his part.
MomSense
@Redshirt:
My son recently read it for the first time. Actually it was so good that we took turns reading it aloud. Of course he is a bit of a smart ass so when he first picked up the book he wanted to read the last page first. He was really glad he didn’t.
El Caganer
@Mandalay: Well, yeah, but it’s totes cool on the West Bank, isn’t it? Fuck Weiner/Wiener.