(Mike Luckovich via GoComics.com)
Gail Collins on “The Other Side of the [Security] Story“:
… Today, let’s try putting a face on it in the form of Brandon Mayfield.
A Kansas native, Mayfield went to college and law school, served in the Army, married, had three children and moved to Portland, Ore., to practice law.
His story begins with — yes! — an enormous federal database, in this case the one that collected fingerprints of Americans who served in the military.
In 2004, after terrorists bombed commuter trains in Madrid, Spanish officials found a suspicious fingerprint on a plastic bag at the scene. The F.B.I. ran it through its files and decided, erroneously, that it matched Mayfield’s. Further investigation revealed that Mayfield had married an Egyptian immigrant and converted to Islam — information the authorities apparently found far more compelling than the fact that he had never been to Spain.
Peculiar things then began to happen in the Mayfield house. His wife, Mona, returned home to find unlocked doors mysteriously bolted. Their daughter, Sharia, then 12, noticed that someone had been fooling around with her computer… Later, the family would learn that agents had broken into their home and Mayfield’s law office repeatedly, taking DNA swabs from the bathroom, nail clippings and cigarette butts, along with images of all the computer hard drives…
The snoopers had warrants from the court set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA courts are supposed to keep investigators within the law while they’re secretly searching for terrorists. We have been hearing a lot about this recently, since the Obama administration keeps pointing out that the N.S.A.’s phone records project had the blessing of FISA judges. Last year, the feds made 1,856 requests to FISA judges and got 1,856 thumbs-up.
So there we are: Search of huge database produces a (wrong) name. Investigators get permission to search an American family’s house without their knowledge, from a secret court that does not seem to be superhard to convince.
One day, F.B.I. agents walked into Mayfield’s office, handcuffed him and took him away…
However, leftwing conspiracy theorist Naomi Wolf thinks Edward Snowden and his girlfriend might be government plants in a false-flag operation, so at least the NSA’s defenders have a new target for their ragegasms.
c u n d gulag
I remember reading about Mayfield. OY!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Curious how this guy with an Egyptian wife got investigated – and Grover Norquist. with a Palestinian wife didn’t, no?
Mrs. Norquist is not Grover’s problem, like some of his “pals” on the Reich-wing say she is – turning him into a secret EBIL MOOOOOOZLUM sympathizer.
I feel sorry when, in the ocean, real sharks turn on one another – humans are killing too many of them, and there are less and less of them.
But I DO love it when there’s a Reich-wing feeding frenzy! FSM, that warms the very cockles of me ‘art – and my cockles ain’t been artfully warmed in a long, long, time (Yeah, I know – TMI :-)
Grover, himself, is one of the biggest problems this country has ever had.
I have nothing against Mrs. Norquist – except that she has horrible judgement when it comes to partners (I suspect she’s just the only “beard” who was actually willing to be seen with Ol’ Grove. I hope she’s well paid for such a horrible duty – not that that makes her a better person. It’s just if people sell themselves out, ya kinda hope they’re at least well compensated for the transaction).
Oh, folks, and please don’t confuse your Naomi’s – that shameless, self-promoting hack, Wolf, ain’t a pimple on Klein’s arse.
Linda Featheringill
Ah, security. Nice cartoon, by the way.
Actually, many oppressive regimes in the past have been honestly motivated by the desire to remove threats.
NotMax
From 2007:
From 2006 (emphasis added):
(N.B.: Citation comes from my own blog at the time, which has sat idle for a while now, hence its appearance may by now be a tad off in more modern browsers or operating systems.)
NotMax
Bad link in first blockquote in #3.
Here’s correct link.
Suffern ACE is a Basset Hound
Wolfe has never noticed before now that the press will focus on sexy things that don’t matter given any opportunity to do so? The pole dancing girlfriend isn’t releasing statements-she keeps granting interviews-because reporters keep asking questions. She’s too typical to be proof of the conspiracy.
Ramalama
Naomi Wolf seem to be doing the job of right wing nutters. I don’t think Snowden’s a plant. Not sure how he would get out of the pickle he’s in if he were just playing a role.
Has Wolf ever hung out with 20 somethings? They grew up with computers in their little baby mitts, coding when they were in 7th grade, watching media talk about media and how to do media. I think she’s still thinking of leotards my age and older.
Also? What conservative would use a high school drop out turned NSA operative as their character? What high up government trickster would? Just looking at the huge and rapid fallout over Snowden’s lack of credential, I’d say no one. Unless he’s the real deal.
I could be wrong. But if even it turns out that I am, I won’t suffer. Because I went to college and attend the right cocktail parties.
Comrade Jake
What happened to the Mayfield’s is pretty terrible. Are there a lot of other stories just like this?
Studly Pantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn
Wait. What. Really?
Another weekend night of insomnia, translated into, “Ain’t gonna get shit done.”
*sigh*
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
someone had the right idea, at least.
boss bitch
@Comrade Jake:
No and that’s why most Americans don’t oppose the NSA
Kay
I think we should look at the FISA court but this story doesn’t really support any specific weaknesses of the FISA court.
They based the warrant on a fingerprint search ( and, I’m assuming) an affadavit by law enforcement. That could happen in any court.
I think we need a comparison. How many warrants as a part of a whole submitted do non-FISA judges grant? County judges? I don’t know how many as part of a whole submitted the judge in this county grants.
El Cid
But who’s behind putting up Naomi Wolf to distract them, huh? It’s all… part… of the plan.
MomSense
Ok, I totally called the false flag thing last week–except I thought it was going to be Alex Jones. We are nearing some kind of event horizon where the wingnut extremes on both sides are about to collide like a political hadron.
El Tiburon
Yes, but the 12-year old girl, did she listen to Justin Bieber? The wife, did she drink too much wine? And Mayfield, don’t even get me started on his flaws.
cathyx
For those who have no problem with the intrusion into ones privacy, would you also have no problem if the NSA just knocked on your door and wanted to search inside your home? I mean, if it makes us all safer, would you be ok with that too? Would you be ok with getting your mail and having some letters already opened?
Kay
I just don’t think I would focus on the rubber stamp aspect of a court with this story.
Would an affadavit by law enforcement and a (bad) fingerprint match convince a different court or judge(s)?
Maybe!
My problem with it isn’t really the inadequacy of the judges on the court or law enforcement, that could happen in any court with any database, but the secrecy.
Baud
@cathyx:
Don’t expect an answer because that person doesn’t exist.
@Kay:
I agree. The FISA court is the weak link in all of this.
Anya
@Kay: If Congress was doing its job they could review the 1,856 FISA requests for violations and if the court is using proper restrain and judgement when it grants these requests.
My first thought was, 1,856 is not pretty hight for a country this size but the fact that they granting each and every request is troubling. I think more people’s lives are ruined or negatively affected by “stop and frisk” or driving while black than they’re subjected to FISA search.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I think you’re right: The issue in this particular case is the sloppy FBI work with the fingerprint rather than a rubber-stamped court ruling. As you noted, it doesn’t mean the FISA courts aren’t rubber-stampy; it’s just that this particular incident doesn’t necessarily illustrate that.
liberal
Frankly, anyone who doesn’t think that those numbers aren’t yelling “RUBBER STAMP!” has their head up their ass.
RepubAnon
@cathyx: I, too, don’t understand why people aren’t outraged about the NSA’s collection of all telecommunications data. Look at the NYPD “Stop & Frisk” program, where they stopped people on the streets and frisked them for little or no reason (except, apparently skin color). The dividing line seems to be that people notice it when they have to empty out their pockets for the police, while the NSA’s snooping is largely invisible.
cathyx
@Baud: There are plenty of people who comment here who support what Obama and the NSA are doing.
MomSense
@cathyx:
I am not flipping out about this AND I don’t like intrusion into my privacy. The biggest problem in all of this is that there is not the political will necessary to shift the balance between security and privacy more toward privacy. That the Guardian and Post messed this up so badly doesn’t help matters much either. If you want to make a case against invested programs like these you have to get it right. I have issues with Greenwald because I think he does more harm than good to important issues about which I care a great deal.
There were a lot of us who tried to organize in opposition to the Patriot Act, to the politicization of the Justice Dept., to the warrantless wiretapping of the Bush administration, to put more oversight and privacy protections in the re-authorization of FISA but in all of those cases we were in the overwhelming minority–as we still are today.
The question for people who really care about this is how do you build a committed movement of people to organize around privacy rights? Changing public opinion will take a long time if it is to be sufficient to achieve legislative action. As with so many issues, pointing at the President and getting angry with him for not doing the impossible is just a big excuse to avoid the responsibility we have to do the hard work necessary. It took a hundred years to get something even approaching universal health care passed into law. Every year the insurance industry grew stronger, more interwoven into our economy, and more powerful. The security state is comprised of many powerful interests so it will require a huge movement of people. How do you propose we build that movement?
Baud
@cathyx:
Yes, but that doesn’t mean those people don’t care about privacy at all.
cathyx
@Baud:it’s a sacrifice they are willing to make.
MomSense
@Kay:
The other problem with the framing of the “weakness” of the FISA court is that 1,856 requests and 1,856 approvals is a simplistic analysis. That number doesn’t inform us of which requests were changed by the Judges before granting approval. You could have had requests that asked for A,B,C,D, and E and the Court may have come back with yes to A, B, D in the request but insufficient cause for C and E. Judges make changes all the time. We don’t know and can’t really say how much push back there is from the Court.
Baud
@cathyx:
Most everyone is willing to make some trade off. People disagree on where the line should be.
Kay
@Anya:
I agree with you about stop and frisk but one doesn’t justify the other. If stop and frisk is a problem, and I think it is, but it’s a bigger problem, it’s a problem with what are called here “Terry stops” (named after a court case) then the FISA court could ALSO be a problem.
I just keep reading these stats and they don’t mean anything to me without context. “Law enforcement submitted false or erroneous info in an affadavit to the FISA court 75 times since 2003”
Is that a LOT for the FBI? They submit info to ordinary courts all the time. Is it wrong a lot? Is “75” bad facts ( or flat-out lies) even “a lot” for all those FISA affadavits they’re submitting? Compared to what? A regular federal court?
Baud
@MomSense:
I suspect I would find the court is too lax, but we also don’t know how we’ll done the warrant applications are.
cathyx
@Baud: That’s my point. If you’re willing to let them read your emails, listen to your phone calls,why stop there? Let them into your house to look around too. After all, it’s for our safety. And you have nothing to hide, right?
Baud
@cathyx:
Then you are just in a battle of slippery slopes, with the other side saying that privacy advocates don’t care about safety. Neither argument is very enlightening.
Kay
@MomSense:
They actually have a number on requests by that court to modify or narrow the search. I don’t know if it’s “high” or “low” though because I haven’t seen some other number.
It seems to me the problem is with the process, not the credulity of the judges, because they rotate federal judges on and off the court. Are judges less rigorous in nat sec cases? Maybe!
MomSense
@cathyx:
Do you really think they have enough resources to look around everyone’s house or read all of our emails and listen to our phone calls? This is where I think the argument goes off into paranoia and nonsense because what you are describing would take more humans than we have let alone analysts with the skills to make that possible. We don’t have enough analysts with the language skills to read the credible intelligence.
The whole point of the NSA super duper computers is that they can find patterns that allow them to take an overwhelming volume of data and isolate the leads worth pursuing. That the number of warrants is 1,856 is actually encouraging to me.
different-church-lady
Because, you know, nobody ever arrested the wrong guy before they had databases…
cathyx
@MomSense: Local police are willing to help, I’m sure.
different-church-lady
@cathyx:
Do they have a warrant for it?
boss bitch
@cathyx:
NO ONE wants or likes that. NO ONE. But many people prefer that to being killed or seriously injured in a terrorist attack.
I would think that people on the left would understand the average American more.
Baud
@Kay:
The FISA judges are appointed by the Chief Justice. I do wonder if that acts as a deterrent to giving too much scrutiny to applications.
the Conster
@cathyx:
They’re not listening to your phone calls and reading your emails without a warrant. Get your facts straight. If you want to assume every phone call and email is being actually read by someone then you’re not going to find anyone willing to agree to that, but then we’re talking X-Files.
MomSense
@Kay:
I do think we need more oversight–especially since the 90 day Congressional reviews of the FISA court are at the policy level (Obama admin asked for this) and not in the law itself. I would be won over to the howlers on this issue if they would organize around specific requests for oversight. I actually think this would be doable even with the current Congress. There are enough wackadoodles on the right thinking the NSA story is about seizing firearms to bring in the teapublicans in the House.
different-church-lady
@boss bitch:
Why? That would just inhibit the contempt.
different-church-lady
@cathyx: Care to actually cite a few?
cathyx
@different-church-lady: Do they have a warrant for reading my emails or listening to my phone calls?
Kay
@Baud:
Why though? Because Roberts picks rubber stamp judges? Were they rubber stamp judges before they got on that court? Or, do they go back to being rigorous judges when they rotate off?
I would listen to an argument that judges defer too much to law enforcement in nat sec cases; they might, they could be swayed by the amount of potential harm, etc. but if that’s true it also should be true across the board.
Emma
@cathyx: did they bring a warrant? sure.
BTW, two blocks from where a live the LOCAL COPS stormed a house. They had a warrant and everything. They also had the wrong house.
The problem is not the NSA by itself. The problem is the militarization of law enforcement everywhere in the country in the name of security.
different-church-lady
@MomSense:
They don’t want oversight — they want all surveillance to end. There’s no such thing as middle ground for howlers.
Baud
@cathyx:
I believe the rules for emails and phone calls are slightly different, but I think they need a warrant or subpoena to read and listen unless you are a foreign national in a foreign country. The one loophole I’ve heard of is that if you communicate with a foreign national in a foreign country, the content of your communication may be swept up in that surveillance.
MomSense
@cathyx:
Oh my goodness I don’t know where you live but in my town, towns all across my state and in most other towns and states we are dealing with massive budget cuts to local and state government. There aren’t enough local law enforcement to do all the things as it is!
And again I really think that the sort of fear mongering about this issue in your original comment just feeds into the fear and anxiety that makes people choose security over privacy. Fear does not cause people to make rational choices. It is also so far fetched that it alienates many of your potential allies and you will need allies to make progress. I think it would be far more effective to organize around oversight of existing programs and build from there. When both the left and right are pushing fear (even about different things) it just raises the fear volume and keeps us stuck.
geg6
@MomSense:
I want to marry you and have your babies for this comment.
Well, I would if you were a man.
cathyx
@the Conster: You think they start with warrants? That huge datamining has warrants for everyone they are collecting data from?
MomSense
@different-church-lady:
A girl can dream!
different-church-lady
@cathyx: They might. If they don’t, they don’t do it.
You appear, willfully or not, to still be under the impression that the calls themselves and the internet traffic is still being sucked up wholesale. This is because some fundamentally dishonest people wanted you to believe it. The claims are slowly being debunked. It’s your choice whether to hang on to the extreme manipulation, or come down to reality and have the debate based on what’s actually going on.
Because what’s actually going on is still quite worthy of having a debate over.
Baud
@Kay:
I don’t know how often FISA judges to get reappointed, but if a judge gets a reputation for asking tough questions during his or her tenure, than that could affect reappointment and thus the scrutiny given to applications. Also, I don’t know if the CJ interviews potential nominees and tries to screen out potentially outlier judges. Then there is the general reputational harm among fellow judges if a judge is seen as not cutting it on the FISA court.
These are subtle things, and in the end, may not have much impact. But it’s not as if the judges are assigned to the court randomly.
cathyx
@MomSense: Exactly fear is causing all of you to be willing to give up your privacy for protection.
I’ll bet that the NSA will be happy to give the local police money to search your house.
Kay
@Baud:
I can’t stand Roberts but I’m not willing to put “appoints judges based on their facility with a rubber stamp” on him without more.
different-church-lady
@cathyx:
Some people want you to be irrationally afraid of terrorists. Other people want you to be irrationally afraid of the government. It looks like you picked one instead of rejecting both.
I think we’re done here.
MomSense
@geg6:
Aww, I’d marry you right back if I were a man-or you were a man and I just stayed me. These things would be simpler if Obama got the super secret human cloning/organ harvesting operation up and running.
Emma
@cathyx: Never mind reality and facts. You’re just enjoying your paranoia.
Look. One last time. There are huge problems with the security state. Metadata mining isn’t it. As many people have desperately tried to tell you, there are things that need to be done, like tightening the FISA rules, more transparency in general, figuring out how/when to protect your privacy online both from the government and from corporations, and my own personal peeve, making law enforcement face real consequences when they screw up.
geg6
@cathyx:
See, now, this is when people like you lose all credibility. You are either willfully misunderstanding or misleading what is actually happening. They don’t need a warrant to monitor phone or email traffic. They only need a warrant when they want to read or listen to particular phone calls or emails and that warrant requires probable cause. You are conflating the data mining with actual monitoring of specific communications. If the data mining was such an outrage, then every advertiser on the internet would be guilty of the same thing. It’s a ridiculous argument and no one with any sense takes it seriously. Which is why Greenwald looks like such as ass right now.
Baud
@Kay:
I didn’t mean to go that far. I just meant that there are all sorts of subtle feedback mechanisms that may cause a judge on the FISA court to think twice before pushing too hard against an application, and maybe a different process would produce a more neutral result.
This is all theoretical, however, since I don’t know all that much about how the FISA process operates.
RaflW
Pro Tip: When everything can be explained with a false flag claim, then, well, false may be the only operable word.
More broadly, though, Gail is right on in noting that the FISA court is notoriously easy. Maybe this means that the NSA or the FBU has done it’s homework meticulously well and never had a warrant contain questionable grounds, but I find that hard to believe. I’m sure Mayfield does.
So, again, as from a thread a few days ago: open up the damn FISA court records!
Narcissus
The elephant in the room for all of this is that ten years on there is still no organized opposition to Patriot act.
geg6
@Baud:
Can’t remember where I read it, so I can’t link, but there was a story the other day about one of the judges who served on the FISA court recently and an analysis showed that he approved every warrant (but we don’t know how often he asked for changes before he approved). The guy is one of the most liberal of judges when it comes to civil liberties. I have a hard time believing that he put aside every scruple he has had and demonstrated over many years as a judge to play along with the EEEEEBIL!11! NSA.
LAC
@MomSense: thank you for this. I doubt that you will get any answers from cathyx – being in a snit because this issue hasn’t devolved into people running into the streets calling for the resignation of everyone in the government seems to it for now.
MomSense
@different-church-lady:
Some people want you to be irrationally afraid of terrorists. Other people want you to be irrationally afraid of the government. It looks like you picked one instead of rejecting both.
different-church-lady
@Narcissus:
Considering the number of people who this week have displayed that they can’t organize their ass and their elbow into separate containers, I don’t find that surprising.
Suffern ACE
@different-church-lady: the very broad interpretation of the fourth amendment is that no one should ever be subject to an investigation. Or only investigations of crimes that are taking place at high noon on a sunny day on a crowded street.
Cacti
Anne Laurie…our resident Glenn Beck.
different-church-lady
Charles Johnson makes a funny.
Baud
@geg6:
Interesting. I’m surprised they released info broken down by judges. I think some improvements in transparency might alleviate some of the concerns, which are more based on not knowing rather than anything else.
different-church-lady
@Suffern ACE: I’m find a very dismaying similarity of the left’s new-found comprehension of the 4th amendment to the right’s longstanding comprehension of the 2nd.
Kay
@Baud:
Right, is there somethibg about the FISA court that makes judges less rigorous?
Because we have federal judges and we have the FBI and they issue and ask for warrants all the time in ordinary courts, on all kinds of cases.
Cacti
@different-church-lady:
LGF was blocked from Twitter-following Greenwald.
Too many impertinent questions.
geg6
Meanwhile, having had my fill of the stupid on this subject of the data mining, this gave me a smile this morning:
http://media.talkingpointsmemo.com/slideshow/congressional-baseball-game
MomSense
@Baud:
Yeah I suspect that as well because in the absence of facts that is my personal bias. I also don’t think it is appropriate for the general public to view all the FISC documents. So the way we do a lot of things in our representative democracy is to have our elected representatives make these determinations on our behalf. So I would accept regular review by Congress and that could mean that it would be just select committees. That seems to me to be a plan that would protect privacy and security concerns.
I don’t remember the specifics of FISA anymore as I was learning about it in 2008 when it was reauthorized but my understanding is that the 90 day Congressional reviews are Obama administration policy level decisions and not in the Act itself. I haven’t had time to review this but if this is the case I think organizing around adding that piece of oversight would help. Electing a better Congress would be great too. If eyes from all three branches of government are reviewing these programs regularly, I would be satisfied.
Cacti
@geg6:
Wow, what a drubbing.
Was world’s greatest athlete Paul Ryan not playing for the GOPers?
Baud
@Kay:
The other thing I don’t know about FISA is whether the legal standard is the same. I don’t think it’s probable cause in all cases. That, of course, wouldn’t be the fault of the judges, but the statute.
Kropadope
@cathyx:
The warrants aren’t issued for collecting the data, but rather for using the data. The government isn’t allowed to analyze the content of any communications without a warrant. Now, you may not believe that they are adhering to that restriction, but the kind of broad-scale listening that many seem to think is going in is implausible.
different-church-lady
@Cacti: He blocked Cesca too. Nobody is allowed to question The Great Greenwald without suffering the consequences!
piratedan
@different-church-lady: their latest FP thread attempts to try and parse through what GG is saying now and what he was claiming 9 days ago. As was mentioned previously in this thread., there needs to be a discussion regarding the data gathering process, how do requests get made, under what guise or suspicion, who vettes the request and how. Since this can be done without your knowledge, if you discover it, what recourse do you have….How long do they keep the data…. all very valid questions (imho) yet the issue is polluted by that narcissistic douchecanoe in his attempt to establish that this is the worst privacy transgression evah and in doing so, has seemingly aided and abetted a Chinese spy because he played on GG’s own ideology.
jon
I think the way this NSA stuff IS WORKING rather than CAN WORK was demonstrated after the Boston bombings. Friends got taken in for questioning. Associates got visits from FBI agents (and one guy got killed.) Records were searched, names came up, connections were made quickly, the dragnet worked quickly, some murders were solved, and it all happened because the government already had the framework to fill in the blanks and check things out. That’s how it’s being used, and it may or may not have stopped future attacks but it certainly can be said to have made the investigation easier.
The question of innocent involvement is no different than it was before NSA, during NSA, or in some post-NSA future: the government will still have to prove something criminal happened. The Bill of Rights isn’t tossed away even if the 4th Amendment becomes a speedbump rather than a locked door for some types of information. Will mistakes be made? Will stolen identities become a bigger issue? Will criminals adjust? Yes to all three.
I don’t like huge databases of information, but I understand their utility. And when some kinds of things happen, I would rather that utility be there than not be there for the intended uses. I’d rather focus on What It’s For than Whether It Should Be, because that horse is out of the barn, hopped a few fences, and is eating in some other county.
Bill E Pilgrim
The fact that Johnson can’t tell the difference between what Greenwald is saying and what Glenn Beck is saying is not something I’d be proud of and broadcasting to the world, if I were him.
Have any of you actually read this, for example?
I’m not slamming the idea of being critical of Greenwald, everyone should be critical of whomever they want. It would be nice however if the criticism dealt with what he’s actually saying, i.e. refute the points in that piece by him, if you think you’re able to, rather than just slinging vapid insults.
different-church-lady
@piratedan: Shorter Greenwald: “Our PRISM claims weren’t wrong, because we never said they were facts.”
Dude’s just embarrassing now.
Oh, darnnit, now the whole thread is gonna be about GG. Hate when that happens…
Kay
@RaflW:
But you don’t need them to open the records for this question. If you’re going to do a numerical analysis of “warrants granted” w/out looking at the affadavits or comparing them to ordinary affadavits in federal courts, case by case, etc. then all you need is the other number.
It’s a great question. I just don’t think “1,546” ( or whatever) is the answer to THAT question.
Hawes
@Comrade Jake: Yes. These people are called minorities. And they are falsely investigated, arrested and prosecuted all the time.
JoyfulA
@MomSense: Yesterday, I wore my “Repeal the PATRIOT Act” T-shirt, which I got as a Christmas present some years back.
piratedan
@Bill E Pilgrim: Bill the comparison was large scale snark, at least that’s how I took it. Partly in response to Johnson’s repeated attempts to pin GG down and GG responding by turning him off. So Johnson went from pointed questioning to mocking, a path not unbeknownst to us all here, see BoBo, Moustache of Understanding, MacArglebargle, etc.
The Red Pen
The gaping holes in the case against Mayfield were proof of a global jihadist conspiracy.
Hawes
@geg6:
Yes, FISA courts approve every or almost every warrant that is presented before them.
So do most courts.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans are arrested and charged for things they did not do. One hopes the system works. I would argue it did in the Mayfield’s case. Certainly it works better than it does for many poor minorities in this country.
So what’s the tradeoff for the police powers we’ve given away? The lowest crime rate in my lifetime (and I ain’t that young).
We lock away innocent people all the time for non-national security reasons, buy wealthy white journalists are only upset now because they have skin in the game.
geg6
@Cacti:
I know! How inept are the manly men of the GOP anyway? Getting crushed by a team that had a girl on it (Rep. Chavez, who used the #IX on her uni to honor Title IX)? Seriously?
I viewed the whole slide show. My two favorite pics are the one where Rand Paul is getting thrown out at first. And the victory slide with the whole D team with the trophy and a widely grinning Nancy SMASH!.
Liberty60
@different-church-lady:
Yeah, same here.
Its dispiriting that even after such a revelation of fact, so many people want to turn the conversation away from the leaked facts, to an investigation of the leaker, as if that somehow refutes the facts.
Talking about Snowden, or Greenwald and their character isn’t a legitimate impeaching of a source- the documents produced aren’t allegations, based on credibility. What was leaked were documents, facts which are undisputed.
Going on an on about Greenwald’s personality is just a high-toned version of countertop inspection.
MomSense
@JoyfulA:
Yeah mine was so worn it went from gardening t shirt to painting t shirt and that is the last stop before destruction.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
The closest thing to a “false flag” theory I find plausible:
Everyone reacted to the AP phone records subpoena with a huge ‘meh’.
Media jumps all over a story from a supposed NSA whistleblower.
“See, they’re doing this to everyone! I bet they’ll care now!”
MomSense
@Liberty60:
So you were supportive of the Bush administration relying so heavily on the intelligence that Chalabi and “Curveball” provided?
The credibility of the source is critical in evaluating the intelligence.
Ok-the documents we have seen are different. The warrant for the phone records was specific and indisputable. The power point slides–not so much. They are power point slides for heaven sakes!
I think the Post and Guardian both screwed up by not having independent technical advisers evaluate the information. From the start of these stories, the techies have been providing some of the best analysis.
kc
Why rag on Wolf? Half the people on here were suspicious that Snowden was some kind of plant.
JGabriel
Gail Collins (via Anne Laurie @ Top):
Which is kind of ironic, since the judge who approved the warrant, Roger Vinson, is the same jackass who declared the entirety of the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional.
I honestly don’t know why President Obama’s Administration thinks its supporters would find Vinson’s blessing to be reassuring in any way whatsoever.
It both vexes and perplexes me, simultaneously.
kc
When it’s President Jeb Bush doing the surveillance on Anericans, I trust y’all will remember what you said here.
Sly
Naomi Wolf:
So, if I have this straight, the woman who wrote The Beauty Myth can’t understand why major news outlets have an unhealthy fixation on the pole-dancing girlfriend….
kc
@jon:
Wow.
different-church-lady
@piratedan: The real art was in the “what’s the essential difference” phrase, a play on one of GG favorite twitter ticks.
different-church-lady
@Liberty60: Oh, now that’s a hoot — GG gets his facts fundamentally wrong, people point that out, and it becomes, “TALK ABOUT THE FACTS, NOT GREENWALD!”
I mean, seriously, you’re just going to willfully ignore that what too many people think are the “facts” of this situation are merely what GG told them they were, and that interpretation was wrong?
JoyfulA
@MomSense: My T-shirt was too small and very tight when I received it from a close friend for decades and former boss I’ve never met in person. I’ve lost 30 pounds since I got it and now it almost fits—just in time for when it’s highly topical.
(I think it’s tailored for men: the shoulders droop beyond mine, and it’s never going to drape casually over my backside.)
kc
@Sly:
You have it wrong, she does understand it.
burnspbesq
@Baud:
If I were a sitting U.S. District Judge, I would avoid the FISA court like it was an STD. It’s massively disruptive and there’s no additional money in it. That’s why it’s mostly judges on senior status, who have reduced caseloads, who end up doing it. And these days, most senior judges are Reagan or Bush I appointees.
kc
@JGabriel:
Have you read the comments on this blog? Obama’s supporters will justify, rationalize, and defend anything he does.
lockout
At my place of employment, voice-recognition software now allows us to read, rather than to listen, to our voice mails. It is quite illustrating that this software regularly translates something like
“Hi Sally; it was nice meeting you today to talk about the project with Kamanski systems at campus today.”
To:
“Sally I bumped you today liking projection hot hot she all over campus.”
Now, these translations, among nice people, break the ice and lead to dating, marriage, and families. While hard to argue this aspect of voice-recognition software with the benefits to society and the individuals involved, this stuff in the greedy hands of Janet Napolitano is somewhat disturbing.
Kay
@Liberty60:
It could be, but if you are relying on Snowden’s account, then his credibility is ABSOLUTELY at issue.
You can’t have it both ways. You can’t rely on one word Snowden says and then say “but no questions on his credibility, let’s look at the documents!”
I didn’t bring Snowden in. Snowden did.
I think he had to, or the whole story woukd have been “who is the leaker!?” but now that’s he’s in you can’t just say “no questions!”
He’s the only witness, right?
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Liberty60: But do the documents released thus far genuinely support the claims GG and Snowden made? Because most people gave a collective shrug at the metadata database. It was the “OMG they can tap directly into GMail servers and read your emails! They’re recording every conversation you have on your phone!” nonsense that got everyone riled up.
burnspbesq
@kc:
As boogeymen go, that’s pretty unimpressive. If he’s the nominee in 2016, Gillibrand will get 360 electoral votes.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@different-church-lady: I really don’t get the whole “blocking” thing. WTF is that supposed to accomplish? Like the blocked party couldn’t just set up a search with his @twitter handle? It’s utterly pointless.
Kropadope
@kc:
There’s a difference between rationalizing and having trying to have a thorough discussion about the matter, considering the evidence and potential solutions. Problem is some people’s solution is to simply yell about the president, as he’s the most visible player, and ignore the actual issues involved. People often forget that Congress exists and has a roll in our government. Let’s put some pressure on them to change the law, get some proper oversight, make this right.
Fortunately, I think Obama would be a good partner for Congress in this debate and would be willing to find a way to protect our liberties without completely discarding security concerns.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS): The blocker won’t see the blockee’s comments and is exempt from having to respond to them. Not being a twitter fan, I’m not sure if it also has something to do with the blockee also being hidden from the blocker’s followers.
different-church-lady
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS): Since I don’t do the Twitter, I had the same thought until about 10 minutes ago.
But then when I was researching the “significant difference” phrase I saw the way Twitter works when you view it on the web: the original tweet is at the top, and all the replies to that tweet unfurl below it. By blocking Johnson, GG ensures that Johnson’s rebuttals do not appear directly in the Greenwaldsphere.
Amir Khalid
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Ah. I saw something similar in the film Eric The Viking. It was called The Blindfold of Invisibility.
Kay
@Liberty60: @Liberty60:
If he’s a “hero” then someone went beyond the documents, and it wasn’t me.
Once we’re in “hero” mode isn’t the next thing, “not a hero, but maybe a VILLAIN!”
Who brought in hero, and if hero is in play, why isn’t villain in play?
What was hero based on? Intent, character, credibility, his account of events and motive? Okay, but then are you really outraged that “villain” followed? Why?
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: @different-church-lady: Ah, ok. I use a third-party client, and I’ve never blocked anybody. So basically it’s a way to put your fingers in your ears and shout “Lalalalala I can’t hear you!” I could understand that if someone were being stalked, but GG is a public figure. He should wear big people’s pants on the Internet.
different-church-lady
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS):
Not quite: it’s a way of sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting, “Lalalalala none of my friends can hear you!”
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@different-church-ladyRight. So he’s keeping the criticism out of the stream of his followers. What a punk.
Chyron HR
@JGabriel:
Sounds like a True Progressive Greenwaldian Firepup to me. What’re you complaining about?
different-church-lady
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS): How dare you impugn his character like that! Why do you want to turn the conversation away from the facts he got wrong?
Davis X. Machina
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Have we decided what we’re supposed to make of Kurt Eichenwald’s two Vanity Fair pieces?
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Narcissus: None at all. Incredible, isn’t it?
Kropadope
@Forum Transmitted Disease:
It’s because a large segment of people who don’t like the Patriot Act can’t talk about it in a rational way for one reason or another. Some can’t stick to the facts or focus on what can be done to make a difference. They just want to scream about the president and, in some cases, how there should be no government.
piratedan
context is important here…..
GG says he a story that will blow the lid off of how we feel about the NSA and Obama Administration and he has a SOURCE that can prove it.
His story is that the NSA is gathering a lot more personal data than anyone ever suspected and they’re getting it directly from the business entities that hold that personal data with little to no oversight.
His SOURCE gives him a couple of powerpoint slides that give the outline on how all this is done….
problem is, both the government and the sources that GG named in his expose, all beg to differ in the details (like a group of good co-conspirators should, natch) but as it drags on, those details about the denials start shredding the shell of the story
Then his source leaves the country for the fucking PRC and starts giving interviews to the state controlled media outlets there….
so I’m still supposed to take what his SOURCE says as gospel when by his own actions he’s appeared to be spying for the main economic and intelligence rival that our country has.
I’d like to maintain a laser like focus on the allegations but this isn’t just a bleeping countertop investigation or some ACORN shit, this guy fled the country with sensitive intelligence data, leaving in his wake chaos. So this isn’t just some faux outrage perpetrated by the usual Rethug sources here. We’re not talking about Shirley Sherrod joining the New Black Panther Party or the IRS actually turning down tax classifications for the tea party. Why people continue to believe that this nimrod, the guy who is supposed to be the unimpeachable source demonstrating the misdeeds of the NSA and The Administration, who has fled the country; makes his story more convincing as opposed to less convincing is a leap of faith I’m not prepared to take. Still waiting for the smoking gun as to what the NSA is doing that is in violation of the Patriot Act.
Does that mean I like the Patriot Act, no, I don’t. If this leads to a discussion on how to amend, adjust, repeal it, GREAT! I’d love a better hammer that safeguards our personal privacy and still allows the NSA to do its job.
JoyfulA
@lockout: Comcast sends me emails for my landline phone messages now. The translation of voice into print is very good, except for the voice of a Southern in-law caller.
Privacy may lie in having an out-of-area accent.
different-church-lady
@piratedan:
Yeah, but someone made fun of his girlfriend, so SURVEILLANCE STATE!!!
NickT
I bet young Sharia wishes her parents had called her Susan. Imagine being denounced by the GOP for tyrannizing Michigan on a daily basis.
Suffern ACE
@JGabriel: well it’s not like Obama can opinion shop. He doesn’t appoint those judges.
Mandalay
@Liberty60:
Best comment I have seen this week.
Let’s focus on the real enemy: Greenwald! What the hell our government might be up to ….meh.
Kay
@piratedan:
I think Greenwald and Snowden are two different people and issues tgat keep getting conflated.
Maybe rely on the other reporter, the WaPo reporter and look at it from that angle?
Just look at it as “reporter and source”?
In that, can you question the source? Sure. To the extent that the reporter relied on the source’s credibility to characterize the piece OR the source.
piratedan
@different-church-lady: this would be easier to lend credence to if he came forward, here, turned in the thumb drive he downloaded the documents on to and showed how easy it is to abuse the system and then indicated how the NSA is breaking the law. That I would listen to, instead we have this dog and pony show where are will be revealed, trust us and come back next week when we reveal the Next document.
It’s not as if there aren’t good investigative journalists/publications out there, say Mother Jones or even Rolling Stone. This? This is looking like some agenda driven blogger got played by a guy who’s working both ends playing the same old fear card.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Davis X. Machina: I know what I make of them. They pretty much state the same things I’ve been saying from day one. I’m not paranoid enough to come up with what the howlers would make of them.
I did like this tidbit: “For those who love irony, one of the first phones found to have placed a call to a dirty number was located in the West Wing of the Bush White House; investigators determined it was a fluke, although it did raise questions about the integrity of such inquiries.”
different-church-lady
@Mandalay:
You’re right: let’s talk about what our government might be up to. Hey, did you hear that the government looks at all of our e-mail and listens to all our telephone calls?
different-church-lady
@piratedan:
I hear China’s got exclusive rights to that one.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@Mandalay:
Keep reducing that strawman!
Mandalay
@MomSense:
Nor does haste.
Incredible as it may seem with the congressional deadlock we have now, the Patriot Act passed in both the House and Senate within two days of being introduced.
Mandalay
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS):
It is hardly a strawman. Look at any thread here on the recent revelations. Character assassination outweighs discussion of the information that has been revealed.
Chyron HR
@Mandalay:
But the Obots who mindlessly lick shit from the anus of Dear Leader have it coming, so that’s alright.
Cassidy
My favorite part about this story is watching all these fine upstanding white people get so upset and scared of the police state. If they were black, they’d be used to it and have spent a couple generations telling their kids “the rules”. Fucking wankers.
piratedan
@Kay: be happy to Kay, you want to start where both sources, the WaPo and The Guardian starting walking back their stories as nothing else has manifested from the source other than his interview from China, or shall I? What has been revealed here so far?
The NSA makes requests through FISA to obtain data. Then FISA authorizes the data source to take the requests and filter their database for the requested items and the provider then returns the data via FTP to the NSA. The NSA isn’t searching the databases, the providers that hold that information are and they return the relevant data hits to a secure access file that the NSA downloads.
That’s what both the providers (the companies that host the data) and the Govermnent says what the process is. Greenwald and WaPo say that’s not true, there is no oversight and the government is tapping those data sources directly. What proof do we have of this, a powerpoint slide.
The source is the same for both stories, Snowden shopped his story to the WaPo before giving it The Guardian. He wanted certain assurances from the publications regarding his status as the source of the data, WaPo wouldn’t comply, The Guardian didn’t care and ran with it. The WaPo, not wanting to be scooped followed. As far as I understand, he’s the same source for both stories.
Could be that I am mistaken, but who is the WaPo citing as their source if it isn’t Snowden?
I could give a rats ass about GG, I’m perfectly willing to believe that a Government Agency is breaking a law or bending the rules, hell I grew up during Nixon so it’s not a stretch for me to believe that , I watched Ronnie shred the Constitution in his own way with Iran/Contra and saw Big Bill engage in his own personal subterfuge. What grates at me IS the source. He doesn’t have to be perfect, it would be nice that if he felt compelled to flee the country for his own safety that he wouldn’t chose the proxy of the PRC as that seems a mite suspicious to me.
Kay
I just think there’s something wrong with civil libertarians screaming “no questioning of Snowden!”
Why can’t we question what he said? He said it. He revealed his motive, methods, etc. If the thing speaks for itself why is he speaking for it?
Mandalay
@piratedan:
You are certainly not the only person making this argument, but I just don’t understand it. Are you saying that Snowden has more credibility if he gives his thumb drive to (say) Mother Jones in the US rather than the Guardian in Hong Kong? Why?
I certainly agree with this. The Guardian wants us to believe that their unreleased information is jaw dropping, yet they are choosing to release it a little at a time. It doesn’t add up (unless they are playing eleventy-dimensional chess, and trying to lure the government into making statements they will later regret).
gnomedad
@MomSense:
Could be, but something is wrong with 100% approval — either the standards are lax or the snoopers are. The turn-downers need some practice turning stuff down.
Cassidy
@Kay: Because it doesn’t fit the folk hero narrative. Apparently we have a hunch of closet Bonnie Tyler fans.
RaflW
@Kay:
Not just the phone records, but the transcripts of the court proceedings. And not just the FISA warrants for phone numbers, but all FISA court activity.
Sealing them for 10 years for Nat Sec, OK. Sealing them forevers so the spy apparatus can run basically unchecked – I mean, who really has confidence in an unaccountable court – is a major problem.
That a select Intelligence ctte of the Congress gets a look-see from time to time does not satisfy any reasonable level of transparency by our gov’t.
Mandalay
@Kay:
Who is actually saying that?
I think the cheap smearing of Snowden is pretty low (“high school dropout”, girlfriend is a “pole dancer”), but I have not seen anyone arguing that he can’t be questioned.
different-church-lady
@Mandalay:
Point of order: would it be the The Guardian or GG making those claims?
(Or does asking that make it all about personalities again?)
Davis X. Machina
@gnomedad: What’s the frequency with which a plain vanilla Federal grand jury refuses to hand down a true bill?
piratedan
@Mandalay: saying that if he is as GG claims, a person who wants to expose the injustices and abuses of the data gathering system why does he need to flee to China. That’s the behavior of a spy, not a whistleblowing patriot outraged at the excess of government overreach.
If this administration is doing evil bad things, I have little doubt that the Republicans would LOVE to interview him, repeatedly, daily, ad inifinitum until 2014 or 2016 if possible
Higgs Boson's Mate
I don’t want to know from the NSA how they do it. I pretty well know that from my years, pre-DNS and beyond, working with wide area networks. I already know why they say they do it. We all do. What I would dearly like to know is why the NSA does such a bad job of protecting the integrity of its methods and, by extension, the data it has collected.
People are people. As a people I’m at a loss to believe that no one in this apparatus hasn’t used some of the data that’s been collected for personal gain. The NSA seems to have the absolute power to collect data. I defer to Lord Acton for the outcome.
Kay
@piratedan: @piratedan:
No, that’s fine I’d just rather leave Greenwald out of it because then we’re into “hero/villain” terrority again.
Snowden isn’t “off limits” to me, because the whole hero thing is based on motive and character. You can’t proclaim him a hero and then say “no further questions! back to the documents the hero revealed!”
Whoa! Back up there! :)
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Cassidy: Fuckin’ a.
Um, Bonnie Tyler?
LAC
@kc: spoken like a true greenwaldian Where’s the “Dear Leader” sneer?
Liberty60
@Kay:
The overarching fact- that the NSA is conducting a massive dragnet of nearly every single phone call, email, text and blog is pretty much indisputable- The government announced their intention with the Total Information Awareness program, and I read about the Utah facility in Wired a few years ago, and even now, no one at the NSA is exactly arguing otherwise.
Even the disputed details- whether they are actually recording the content, or the metadata- is unknown, because it is draped in secrecy.
Which for me IS the central fact. There is so much that is hidden behind the veil that for all we know, Alex Jones or that guy who screams obscenities on the bus may be correct. We the citizens have no idea what our government is doing, and virtually no control over it.
Greenwald is a drama queen? Granted. Snowden is kind of a self-aggrandizing geek? Sure. Manning is a disturbed social misfit? Probably. Daniel Ellsberg was mentally disturbed too, which is why Nixon’s minions broke into his psychiatrists office to search for embarrassing dirt. Did that change your view of the Pentagon Papers?
ETA- Agreed, proclaiming anyone a “hero” is silliness, just the mirror image of the “traitor!” label, an attempt to make it a soap opera of characters.
different-church-lady
@Kay: The trick people are trying to play with that sort of thing is taking advantage of a perceived link between character and veracity.
“Heroes” don’t lie. Therefore if the person presenting the information is painted in a heroic light, the information being presented must be true.
“Villains” don’t tell the truth. Therefore if the person presenting the information is painted in a villainous light, the information being presented must be false.
This, of course, is ass backwards: one needs to evaluate the veracity objectively. Then, once one has determined that, one can make a moral judgement on the person presenting the info, of one wishes.
The problem here, however, is that none of us have independent, objective ways of evaluating the veracity of the information. And we probably won’t any time soon. So people turn to the next tool in the kit: a sense of trust. It’s the wrong tool for the job, but it’s the only one in the bag. Thus, it is the one people will be using for the foreseeable future.
Cassidy
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: “I need a hero,…” You don’t know the song?
Emma
@JGabriel: So we can’t talk about Greenwald or Snowden’s character but you are free to attack the FISA judge because you don’t like his rulings?
Kay
@Mandalay:
Sure they are. Look, “why did he go to China?” is a legit question because HE TOLD US why he went to China.
Obviously, he thinks why he went to China is relevant.
I am, actually, a high school drop out, so that COULD be a smear, but if his claim is he’s an expert in something or other education is a fair question.
I’m touchy about the “high school drop.out” attack, most of us drop outs are, but if I claim some special skill you are ALLOWED to ask where I got it. I can’t just scream “stop smearing high school drop.outs!”
LAC
@Mandalay: can you see your house from the cross you are on?
Suffern ACE
@piratedan: because the lawbreaking that is being exposed is overseas and not in the US. He’s not actually blowing the whistle here (although the Bloomberg article makes me uncomfortable about the way the nsa may be exchanging its intelligence with corporations for their data), the NSA is probably breaking the laws of many other countries. China is as good as any other place for him to be.
Mandalay
@piratedan:
He would quickly be dead meat if he had he stayed here. I also wondered why he chose Hong Kong, but others here have persuaded me that his options are pretty limited.
This patriot vs. spy stuff is irrelevant. I suspect that he assumed that if he stayed he would spend most/all of the rest of his life behind bars.
No politician would have got anywhere near Snowden if he had stayed and been captured.
piratedan
@Kay: well he said why he went to China, or specifically Hong Kong. Does that mean that I believe that it’s a bastion of free speech and the appropriate political environment he claims it to be? Or do I factor that a proxy state of the PRC is as likely to be a libertarian haven for the rights of personal privacy as Finland is to being a hotbed of naked waterskiing enthusiasts.
different-church-lady
@Liberty60:
It is?
Man, if the NSA is mining blogs, that’s really over the line. Only the general public should be allowed to see what’s on a blog.
You’re drawing the conclusion he was “mentally disturbed” from the fact that he was seeing a shrink?
Emma
@RaflW: This I can definitely get behind. After a number of years there’s no earthly reason why we keep that stuff secret except that secrecy is the default of the security state.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Liberty60:
It is? I have yet to find that in what’s been released by Snowden.
Admittedly, I just skimmed the Verizon court order. Did I miss something in there?
Mandalay
@Kay:
Again, who specifically is arguing that Snowden and his motives can’t be questioned? Republicans? Those on the left? Bloggers? Media figures?
I just have not seen that anywhere.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Cassidy: Yeah, I just don’t associate it with her for some reason. I was struggling to find a connection to Total Eclipse of the Heart.
mk3872
So if you want to make analyzing metadata and collecting records of suspects illegal, then don’t complain when people die due to attacks.
Emma
I just love all the people here who defend Snowden’s decision to go to Hong Kong as “if he stayed here he would be dead meat.” You know when he will be dead meat or the equivalent? When the Chinese finish debriefing him.
He’s put himself in the hands of a government that sees nothing in keeping large swathes of their population in slave camps to produce goods for the Western market; shoots “traitors” and makes their families pay for the bullets; perform forced abortions on women; is admittedly conducting a version of electronic warfare against businesses and governments in the United States; and is making territorial claims to places that don’t belong to it.
Good luck, buddy.
piratedan
@Mandalay: c’mon now… if he had stayed here, he would be in jail but the press would be going APESHIT and this would be front page everywhere. If there has been real criminal activity here, as has been alleged ,after you’ve seen the restraint that Faux has exhibited on any of these other faux scandals from stopping them from demanding or making this the focal point of all things? These guys have never stopped trying to hang anything on this administration and if they don’t have anything, they just make shit up. Can you imagine them getting something juicy like this, regarding national security, regarding the big ebil government is coming to get you and no one, I mean no one beats a dead horse like Fox. They’d be on the rooftops proclaiming that he has to be protected under the whistleblower laws.
RandomMonster
so at least the NSA’s defenders have a new target for their ragegasms
Anne, I always respect your writing and am usually on your side on just about any issue, but I’m not sure I know how to take that line. Am I an “NSA defender” looking for a “ragegasm” if I’m just skeptical of how absolutely “certain” many people are that they’re being subjected to illegal surveillance, even though it’s quite clear that we need a better description of the program and process (which, yes, we should all be demanding)? Maybe I’m misreading what you’re saying in that last paragraph.
In any case, I seriously recommend anyone reading this Vanity Fair article. Everybody’s ready to be glib, but this shit’s complicated:
(Not sure I know how to successfully share a link here. The article is by Kurt Eichenwald in Vanity Fair, and the article is titled “PRISM Isn’t Data Mining and Other Falsehoods in the NSA ‘Scandal'”.)
LAC
@Mandalay: “dead meat” ? How about the reality that he would be behind bars and he is too special for that, apparently. Spare us the Tom Clancy bullshit .
Kay
@piratedan:
I don’t know why he went to China. I can ask though, because HE introduced why he went to China.
I thought we were relying on documents, Edward. It’s just crazy to me that only positive assertions of motive and intent and skills are allowed in.
I was curious about how he got a job that pays 200k without a degree or degrees. Why would that be off-limits to people who are screaming about transparency? He’s claiming to represent some broader PUBLIC interest. The public he represents can’t ask about him? Wow. Talk about your lack of checks and balances.
gogol's wife
When are these endless going-around-in-circles discussions going to end? I pray for some kind, any kind, of news that will make this blog interesting again. I have been seeing exactly the same arguments being made back and forth for — how long is it now? A week? Two weeks? I’ve lost track.
Suffern ACE
@Emma: it is highly unlikely that the Chinese are going to execute and enslave Snowden. What-when no one is looking? This isn’t Pakistan.
gogol's wife
@Emma:
I appreciate your persistence — I’ve seen you fighting this good fight for a long time now. But reality has not penetrated and probably will not.
gogol's wife
@Suffern ACE:
HaHaHaHa
No, China is not Pakistan. It’s much worse.
Emma
@Suffern ACE: It isn’t? Shall we look at the Chinese record on human rights? Or their complete contempt for public opinion?
No, I don’t think they will kill him or enslave him. I think they will use him for as long as he is useful to them and then he will be on his own, with a target on his back.
piratedan
@Kay: well his employer has already walked back his salary claims. They stated that he was hired on a 122k a year salary. That’s Honolulu wages, so that’s got an internal cost of living adjustment. But as has been stated before, just because he’s not been truthful about a couple of things or has done suspicious stuff is no reason to believe that he wasn’t telling the truth otherwise. It’s just that if you’re wanting to be believed about the information that you’re exposing, why do shit(i.e. lie about your salary) like this?
Cacti
@piratedan:
Everything about Snowden’s behavior to date seems a lot more consistent with “Intelligence asset of the PRC” than “concerned whistleblowing patriot”. Enlisting Glenn Greenwald by appealing to his political hobby horses + his towering sense of self-regard is also spy craft 101.
Even the liberal Anne Laurie must be getting worried about Snowden as a spy, now that she’s peddling teabagger-esque false flag conspiracy rubbish.
FlipYrWhig
@Emma: it also seems like if you believe the worst about Obama and targeted assassinations and such, the last place you’d want to take refuge is overseas, which is where the government-sponsored killing in the name of security actually happened.
Elie
@cathyx:
Would you be ok with NO assessments of risk or vulnerabilities? Are you saying we shouldn’t be doing ANY surveillance of our citizens or that you would just like the criteria and thresholds for this to be changed/made more clear? I think we have competing concerns and both are important — our citizens need some sense and insurance around their privacy, but we also have safety and security to consider. We need to address both.
Emma
@FlipYrWhig: The sad part of this? He’s not Ellsberg. Hell, he might not even be Philby. But he has derailed the discussion so far we might never get it back.
1. What does privacy means in the linked world and how do we protect it?
2. How do we introduce a greater amount of transparency into the workings of the security state?
3. How do we get Congress to do its flippin’ job?
FlipYrWhig
@Cacti: She isn’t peddling it herself, she’s saying that mindless NSA-loving Obots will use it to dismiss and discredit all the noble principled critics of Obama’s dystopian AmeriKKKan panopticon.
Kay
@Mandalay
Elie
@Emma:
Amen…
Suffern ACE
@FlipYrWhig: and if Obama sends drones to Hong Kong or Beijing or Moscow, don’t you think that would be insane?
Mandalay
@Kay:
You keep saying this. Again, who is claiming that the public can’t ask about Snowden? I have not seen anyone argue that Snowden can’t be challenged.
Cacti
@FlipYrWhig:
Natch.
Emma
@FlipYrWhig: Jesus Christ! Why the hell would he send drones when all they have to do is hand a satchel of money to someone and say “get it done”? People in this thread swing from Cold War paranoia to thinking everyone in the upper echelons of the CIA are morons.
Snarla
It’s not that Snowden is a high school dropout, it’s that he’s a high school dropout who lied on his resume, lied to Greenwald about his salary, his career history, his army experience, how he obtained the documents, what his actual capabilities were from his desktop, etc.
piratedan
@Mandalay: maybe the fact that he’s in freaking Hong Kong kinda precludes us being able to ask him these questions. The challenges are out there, they’ve been asked, what we’ve received in return is “All will be revealed at a later date”
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@piratedan:
What’s more, some of his claims sound like typical script kiddie chest beating. I’m going to be skeptical when anyone says “I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal e-mail.”
I don’t care if he cheated on his girlfriend. I do care if he’s living in an imaginary world with regards to his IT job with Booz.
Kay
@Mandalay:
Well, you did. High school drop out came from a perfectly ordinary inquiry into education, the kind media do for anyone in the news.
It’s a fact, not a smear. Is it relevant? Sure, because he made extraordinary claims about access and skill.
Corner Stone
@different-church-lady:
Let’s look at this for a second. DNI Clapper, by all accounts, has lied in open testimony to Congress about this topic. NSA head Gen Alexander has said he will release details about events these programs thwarted. At least two Senators have come out and said they find no consistency with the claim that the named events were stopped due to these programs. Rep Loretta Sanchez (protip: don’t mistakenly look her up as “Lorena” if you’re on a work computer), has said this is the “tip of the iceberg” and “I think it’s just broader than most people even realize, and I think that’s, in one way, what astounded most of us, too,” Sanchez said of the briefing.
So, as for claims of debunking, I am sceptical of the people who are claiming they definitively know the limits of these programs. Just as I am what the real story behind what is being leaked actually will turn out to be.
I don’t think, IMO, I am at all comfortable saying anything at all has been proven in this matter.
Rex Everything
If everything they did was technically legal, which it probably was, then clearly there’s no story here whatsoever & I can’t imagine why Gail Collins is writing about it.
The Friendly Libertarian
So Snowden is turning several laptops full of NSA data over to Chinese officials. I love it. The NSA stormtroopers must be running around in panic right about now.
And I also love he exposed Federal hypcorisy by proving that they’ve been hacking China.
Baud
If the NSA is so powerful, why can’t it put up a new thread?
Corner Stone
I am also quite sceptical of all the people here saying they would have had no issue with him doing this if only he had surrendered to the kind mercies of the US authorities. That, IMO, is laughable on its face.
The US, and particularly this admin, does not treat leakers and/or whistleblowers very kindly. Which is understandable, even though I wish they held a higher standard on this.
I believe the people harping on him “running to the freakin PRC” would have no difficulty finding some other aspect to slag him down for.
different-church-lady
I’m down with your general point, but I’m not understanding your connection between the dispute over whether the programs thwarted anything and the claims that all data is being vacuumed.
Liberty60
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Look up the Wired article about the NSA Utah facility;
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/
In the process—and for the first time since Watergate and the other scandals of the Nixon administration—the NSA has turned its surveillance apparatus on the US and its citizens. It has established listening posts throughout the nation to collect and sift through billions of email messages and phone calls, whether they originate within the country or overseas. It has created a supercomputer of almost unimaginable speed to look for patterns and unscramble codes. Finally, the agency has begun building a place to store all the trillions of words and thoughts and whispers captured in its electronic net.
This was published in March of last year, and has nothing to do with Greenwald, Snowden, or pole dancers.
Check out this article from Democracy Now! with the key source for the Wired article, William Binney, who discusses the ThinThreads program, the Stellar Wind program, and Trailblazer program, all of which were various software projects deisgned to intercept, decrypt, and read every single email or electronic correspondence in America.
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/20/exclusive_national_security_agency_whistleblower_william
Has a human with NSA actually read your private email, or listened to your phone call with your mother? Doubtful. Could they if they chose? Absolutely. Without a court order or any sort of oversight?
Who the fuck knows? And THAT is what is outrageous.
Cassidy
@The Friendly Libertarian: NSA Stormtroopers? You don’t know much about the NSA do you?
Emma
@The Friendly Libertarian: Everyone knows the US is hacking China. Everyone knows China hacks the US. Hell, the US and GB hack each other. It’s the game on espionage taken to the web.
Until now I thought libertarians were just self-centered jerks. I didn’t realize they were also idiots.
Mandalay
@Kay:
That is false. This is what I said when attempting to get you to tell us who is making the claim:
Everyone should be free to question Snowden’s motives and I have never said otherwise.
So again, for the fourth time, WHO exactly is claiming that Snowden’s character and motives can’t be questioned? It really looks like you are pushing a strawman.
different-church-lady
Fuck, looks like another monotonous afternoon of talking about autonomous city-states has arrived…
The Friendly Libertarian
@Emma:
Yes but they’ve been running around accusing China of hacking as if they’re totally innocent.
This exposes their hypocrisy on the world stage. China must be feeling very, very good right now that it has this card to play.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Someone has been watching too many episodes of Revolution.
Corner Stone
@different-church-lady: Before anyone says it, no, The Republic of Texas will not ride again.
Sorry all.
Kropadope
@Emma:
Most Libertarian theory is based on a functioning lack of knowledge of what governments do or are doing.
piratedan
@Corner Stone: well considering that he’s lied about his salary and his work experience and capabilities, you’d be right. Would I be a bit more forgiving if he had left for Iceland, Costa Rica or The Maldives, most likely. It’s not just ONE thing CS, it’s the type of things he’s lying about. Sometimes appearances do matter.
cleek
@Mandalay:
seriously?
on almost every thread here on this topic, someone chimes in to say we should not be paying any attention to Snowden himself, and should instead focus on “the real issue”.
Emma
@The Friendly Libertarian: Do me a favor: go to a public library. Do some reading on the history of espionage. Then follow up with the Great Game. If anything sticks — which I doubt — get back into the conversation.
Corner Stone
@different-church-lady: Those claims will be/are being used as buttresses for the larger debate. We will see them repeated endlessly here, I guarantee that. The fact that they should not be accepted at face value, just as people confidently telling us the limits of these programs should not be used as honest brokers of “debunking”. As it is clear, at least to me, that even those briefed on the program don’t seem to be able to grasp the enormity of whatever it is they are or aren’t doing.
Cacti
@Emma:
At first I thought our new troll was DougJ. I’m beginning to think it’s a PRC internet stooge, as it only appears on these threads, never has anything to say on “libertarian” issues as it were, and is always happy for the PRC.
Emma
@Kropadope: I should know better by now, right?
different-church-lady
@Emma:
Or don’t. Let’s not forget that’s an option as well.
FlipYrWhig
@Liberty60: By law, the NSA human being has to have an order from the FISA Court, no? Sure, you could say that the NSA scoffs at puny laws and does whatever the hell it wants, but under that kind of argument, you might as well say that the fact the cops are not at your door now is only evidence that the cops may soon be at your door, because the government’s jackbooted thugs act arbitrarily and capriciously and there’s nothing we can do about it. And if that’s true, then there’s no stopping NSA regardless, and no use complaining, because making something illegal doesn’t make it cease, so we’re fucked and have been fucked since the emergence of modern governments.
different-church-lady
@Cacti: Lack of subtle command over the English Language is further support of your theory.
Emma
@different-church-lady: Well, yeah. Best case scenario.
The Friendly Libertarian
@Cacti:
LOL yes, anybody that doubts anything our lying Federal Government ever says is a “Chinese stooge”. Hilarious.
Corner Stone
@piratedan:
I honestly don’t know what he made. But based on personal experience there is salary and then there’s compensation. And honestly I have not parsed his statement to see if he says he earned $200K or had a job that paid $200K. And I’m really not interested in finely parsing the amount of money he made. I personally think $122K is a damn good salary for a 29 year old, but eh.
As for his capabilities, people up the food chain have commented he is a man of extraordinary facility and very good at his job. I have no way of authenticating those claims either, so…
Cacti
@The Friendly Libertarian:
So, does this pay better than assembling Nikes?
FlipYrWhig
@Emma: in case it wasn’t clear, I was trying to snark at the notion that Snowden would be assassinated by drone (a possibility I think Ron Paul raised), not to offer intelligent speculation about its likelihood.
Emma
@FlipYrWhig: oops. I think on this case my snark meter is broken. My apologies.
FlipYrWhig
@Emma: Nah, just bad writing on my part.
Corner Stone
@cleek: I find him an interesting character, but not really as relevant as others seem to. I kind of wish he had stayed hidden but then the MSM would be doing nothing but “who’s the leaker?!” stories and everyone here would do nothing but trash GG. Kind of like what they are doing now but they take the time to demand Snowden not be where he is, and other personal shots.
So it’s kind of a nice back and forth.
different-church-lady
@Cacti:
Yes, but the compensation is all in WoW gold.
Elie
@Corner Stone:
Yesterday on another thread you were arguing and somewhat pleased that the the Snowden leak had actually done “some damage” or why would so many government security heads be freaking out.
To my mind, there is a fine distinction between having the information just inform us on the scope of surveillance (though that alone can be pretty damaging by itself), than having leaked information that is actually and directly damaging. Leaks of course, can do both.
What I am asking you and other pro-leak enthusiasts is do you have any concerns about real damage from either way… do you accept that rather than being happy that information is damaging — some err — humility — about what that means (or can mean if your family member is outed in a hostile land somewhere). Are you vain enough to think those losses don’t matter —
I would feel a lot more comfortable with your advocacy (strange way to put it but nonetheless true), for leakers, if you evidenced any sense of corresponding awareness of balancing important and sometimes competing goals.
Poopyman
@Emma: I’m getting the impression he’s not American, nor in America. If he is, his ignorance and stupidity are truly astounding.
ETA – I see Cacti got there first.
Emma
@Corner Stone: IIRC he said he made $200k. Anecdote is not data but I have yet to meet someone who says that and adds “in salary and bennies.” Your mileage might vary.
Which is really not the point. He has made a series of questionable statements. And he has IMO, tried to play the “leave me alone or I’ll release classified human intel data” card. That puts him right past whistleblower status.
Poopyman
@FlipYrWhig: USSID 18. Also, everyone seems to forget that it was the FBI that made the FISA request, using the NSA as tech support.
Mandalay
@cleek:
That is hardly the issue. This is what Kay claimed in post 141:
I have not seen anyone make this absurd argument here or anywhere else, so I asked her to be specific on who is advancing it. She has chosen not to clarify her claim so I view it as a strawman.
Cacti
@Poopyman:
You mean you think that things like:
This exposes their hypocrisy on the world stage. China must be feeling very, very good right now that it has this card to play
Are awfully strange for a “libertarian” to say?
different-church-lady
@Corner Stone: As discussed above, doesn’t matter to the facts, only matters to the narrative. And the narrative doesn’t matter that much, but there’s a void of established facts that it’s filling.
It’s possible he’s a mixed-up narcissist and the NSA is trawling everyone’s non-patentable DNA right now. All I know is if I’m going to light my hair on fire, it better be over something that’s been vetted a bit more.
? Martin
@The Friendly Libertarian:
You know, its one thing to want transparency. But what you’re cheering for isn’t transparency. The Chinese are not going to publish this information in the NYT. If anything they’re going to use it in a way that doesn’t benefit us, and the US Government will respond by clamping everything down even worse.
You only love it because it hurts the US.
piratedan
@Corner Stone: well when he was presented to us as the source by those previously mentioned publications, they included his statements regarding his salary, his work experience and his own claims of access to data and what it entailed. This was supposed to allow us to verify that this source wasn’t just some guy helping GG fulfill his manifest agenda against big government. Turns out that those statements aren’t true, based on what his former employer said previous employers have said. A certain sense of self aggrandizement is apparently in play, unless all of those employers are looking to discredit their association with him (a possibility).
It doesn’t mean that he couldn’t have good to great tech chops…. but if it’s true that he’s been self inflating his own importance which could be checked easily (and he should know this living in today’s surveillance state) it’s not exactly a mark in his column.
Poopyman
@Cacti: Yep.
different-church-lady
@Poopyman: WHY WON’T PEOPLE TALK ABOUT THE REAL ISSUE? WHY DO YOU HAVE TO CONCENTRATE ON PERSONALITES?!? WE NEED TO FOCUS ON THE FACT THAT THIS PERSON IS INSANE, NOT ON HIS CHARACTER!
Elie
@The Friendly Libertarian:
WHY are you happy that our interests or our country are damaged? Why? What is to celebrate?Why should anyone want a person to take a position of trust with a security agency and out his country – releasing damaging information because??? I can grok that there may be too many secrets, too much unnecessary surveillance, too many irresponsible contractors — but to chortle with glee?
Grow up
Keith G
@Kay:
Snowden broke the law by releasing secret information – information that many have found troubling. This information might be:
1. Highly accurate or highly inaccurate.
2. Somewhat accurate and somewhat inaccurate.
The level of truth in his presentations is not affected by his travel plan anymore than it would be affected by the number of goats he has had carnal relations with. Snowden has done his job. It is now up to us and our leaders to have the super fucking important discussion that we needed to have for at least a decade about what we expect for our civil liberties in this new era.
I doubt it will happen since I have seen little evidence that this President wants it to happen while he is in office. But Gandolf bless Snowden anyway, since what little view we are getting into this came at the cost of whatever life and freedom he used to experience. And this is true no matter where his temporary residence is – before he is arrested, and he will be arrested.
The Friendly Libertarian
@Elie:
This isn’t “our” country.
It’s the country of the Ruling Class, by of and for them. Democracy died here a long time ago. It is an Inverted Totalitarian scam.
different-church-lady
@Elie:
Because it gets on people’s nerves. Duh.
Kay
@Mandalay:
I don’t think reciting his education in the way every media outlet from People magazine to the New York Times does is “cheap smearing”.
You’re making some distinction between “cheap smearing” and allowable questions. I didn’t draw the lines, you did. If I WERE drawing lines, I’d disallow GF but ALLOW education, verification of the facts he made in his statement, motive for going to China, relative expertise in the skills he claims, and basic credibility (does he lie? how often?).
What else are people questioning? What besides the GF is a “cheap smear”? I don’t even think the GF is a “smear”, I just think she’s a distraction. She doesn’t matter in this.
I got my list from him. He brought ALL that in. I know why, too. Because he was presenting himself as a representative of some larger public interest, so motive matters. I agree! Fine. Great. Then motive matters the other way too.
He had an opportunity to say “I think the documents speak for themselves” but he didn’t do that.
Cacti
@Poopyman:
It seems to have gone temporarily silent. Maybe it took a break to bone up on some Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard.
Elie
@? Martin:
You got that right… pretty clear that not only his guy, but a number of others hero worshiping the destruction of the Great Satan —
The Friendly Libertarian
This country long ago ceased to represent the Revolutionary ideals of our Founders and has a ruling class that prostituted them for cheap financial gain and absolute power.
NickT
@Suffern ACE:
You can hardly execute and enslave someone. We haven’t quite reached peak zombie tech yet.
FWIW, I think it’s perfectly possible that Snowden knows rather less than he thought he did, got some things wrong in his revelations with Greenwald and is now trying to save his own hide by alternating between offering material to the Chinese and posing as a guardian of America’s freedom. Greenwald has very quietly shifted the tenor of his own assertions, although he refuses to admit it, which suggests that he knows that he got some things wrong and is being typically mule-headed to cover up his blunders. This isn’t a matter of black and white but, dare we say it, fifty shades of grey. Given the claims that Greenwald and Snowden have made (clearly wrongly in some areas e.g PRISM) it is legitimate to consider the character and history of those making the assertions in question, although their personal failings don’t devalue any information they have that is of value and significance. What we don’t have here is much that’s qualitatively new – at this point. Maybe Greenwald and Snowden have something more to offer, but at this point they’ve basically told us stuff that we should already have known.
Cacti
@The Friendly Libertarian:
Well, speaking for yourself, that’s probably the most accurate thing you’ve ever posted here.
Emma
@The Friendly Libertarian: Another reading assignment: The Federalist Papers. Plus the Notes on the Constitutional Convention. We’ll wait.
piratedan
@The Friendly Libertarian: well get thee hither to the barricades! Wolverines!
NickT
@The Friendly Libertarian:
So how much did it cost you for a night of passion with Thomas Jefferson? Was it full service? Did he say he so horny he love you long time?
Poopyman
@different-church-lady: Why did you do that when I had my mouth full?
Cacti
@The Friendly Libertarian:
Hmmm…Revolutionary ideals.
Now what country likes to go on about revolutionary this, revolutionary that, and counterrevolutionary activities (i.e. anything done by domestic political dissidents)?
Could it be China?
Corner Stone
@piratedan: As I said, I’m not really interested in parsing his comments about money. I actually have a salary of X but earn quite a bit more due to bonii in one form or another. And I’m reserving judgment on anything released by Booz at this point. I have no sense they would diminish his salary so maybe he did blow it up somewhat.
But I find it not very useful to evaluate. If they had come out and said he was employed in the office services dept that would rank higher in importance, but that’s just IMO.
Suffern ACE
@? Martin: he imagines that there is some thing called the federal government that will be hurt. He also imagines that it will collapse somehow, or that if other great powers arise to check our own, that that will make us free, that those powers wouldn’t possibly be just like the federal government. he’s relying on the rise of benevolent china to rid him of California.
Elie
@different-church-lady:
I think celebrating possibly getting people killed does a little more than get on people’s nerves.., but I get your point.
Corner Stone
@Elie:
Unsurprisingly this bears no relation to the reality of any comment I have made. You have either willfully misrepresented my argument or lack the faculty to determine what my argument was.
NickT
@Corner Stone:
You made a comment related to reality?
piratedan
@Corner Stone: that’s fine CS and I don’t discount the possibility that there may be some actual thuthiness here about nefarious data gatherings via by procurement or in implementation. I just have my own reservations about the sailor who’s leaving the whorehouse pulling his pants up by his waistband and telling me that something unethical is going on inside.
different-church-lady
@The Friendly Libertarian:
Tell us more about this yoga position.
The Friendly Libertarian
@Suffern ACE:
I fully expect the United States to collapse in my lifetime.
Mandalay
@Kay:
Well I have asked you four times to back up this statement in post 141:
I have asked you to be specific about the source of that claim, and you have repeatedly chosen not to clarify it. It is hard not to conclude that you just made it up.
Kay
@Keith G:
He brought in China. Remember? He said he fled to HK because of their commitment to free speech and his opportunity for a fair hearing. Okay. There’s a rebuttal to that. That’s not a “smear”. You’re offended by his “this is why I went to HK” and then, “is that REALLY why he went to HK”?
Now it’s off the table? Who took it off? Does he set the terms of this debate? China is in, China is out, depending on whether it puts Snowden in the best possible light? Wow. That’s a lot of power for a single individual. If he wants to talk about free speech and a chance for a fair hearing, that’s fine, but he can’t then complain when people ask questions.
You should be presenting this argument to Snowden, not me. He went to motive and intent and broad “benefit of the public.” I didn’t.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Keith G:
No, but what he’s said about his reasons for choosing Hong Kong peg my bullshit meter.
Either he’s lying about why he chose Hong Kong, in which case I can come up with a few scenarios to explain it, or he’s telling the truth, in which case I have to conclude he’s off in some imaginary world. Neither make me want to take the rest of his quotes seriously.
Emma
@The Friendly Libertarian: Jack, are you trolling the mortals again?
Cacti
@The Friendly Libertarian:
Also too, in what way were the ideals of the founders consistent with modern libertarian principles of individualism, considering they condoned forced labor and human slavery?
Kropadope
@The Friendly Libertarian:
Dude, I read that “inverted totalitarianism” article you, er, frequently link to. I must say, it has a lot in common with my own theories of how the U.S. is being taken over, but I refer to it as “communism by proxy”. Inverted totalitarianism seems to be another term for allowing our corporate class to supplant our government. What is libertarianism if not the end game in that? We aren’t gonna let you, corporate goons, enslave us, we want true freedom.
? Martin
@The Friendly Libertarian: Given the outcome you’re cheering for, you mind speeding it up and killing yourself. I’d like to get this over with.
different-church-lady
@? Martin: Suicide is nothing to joke about. Please continue.
The Friendly Libertarian
@Kropadope:
I am for ending Corporate Personhood.
So you agree the US is no different from the Soviet Union really?
NickT
@The Friendly Libertarian:
They’ll never kill the United States to make you Galactic Emperor Xenu.
Kay
@Mandalay:
Because you’re deciding the terms of the debate. What’s allowable and what’s a smear. I just gave you an example of you doing that. High school drop out. Disalllowed. Smear.
I disagree. I think his education is IN. Since there is no way to talk about his training or education without mentioning that he dropped out of high school, and since that would be reported on if this were any other individual in the news. The way to limit debate fairly “to the documents” is to stick to the documents, for good or ill. He didn’t do that. He went beyond the documents, which is why there are such specific questions as to his claims. I think that’s fair.
Cacti
@The Friendly Libertarian:
For make the glorious people’s revolution!
piratedan
@The Friendly Libertarian: No I emphatically state that Count Chocula is a much better cereal than Fuity Pebbles, or do you consider Libertarianism to be both a fruit topping and a floor wax?
Kropadope
@The Friendly Libertarian:
I think your trying to make it the Soviet Union with Exxon Mobil as Stalin. End corporate personhood all you want, if you get rid of the government, all the same entities that have too much power over the government will just replace it.
Corner Stone
@Emma:
Could you please link to a statement where he said that? Otherwise I am disputing he has done that. From all the statements I have read he has indicated he had the access to know that kind of info, not that he had collected it and/or was waiting to use it. His other clear statements that, IIRC, if he had wanted to he could have taken it all down. I take that as a general warning that some shit needs to get right in the system, not a warning that if someone comes at him they will pay.
I have yet to see, anywhere, that he has info to sell to China or wants to sell info to foreign govts. If there is a link to those statements I would appreciate seeing them.
? Martin
@The Friendly Libertarian:
How does this, in any conceivable way, advance that goal.
You’re just rooting for injuries here. Even if the likely outcome makes the thing your upset about worse, you’re going to cheer it on so you can stand victorious simply on the basis that we get embarrassed by the Chinese (libertarian champions that they are).
Cacti
@piratedan:
If you had asked it “Who is John Galt?” it would probably think it was a legit question and start googling.
different-church-lady
@The Friendly Libertarian:
I am too. That doesn’t mean you’re not still a fuckin’ loon.
? Martin
@Kay: Actually, what makes it fair is that if this guy had a PhD or was recognized in academic circles as an expert, that would be used to validate his claims. If academic bona-fides are in as a measure of credibility, then that needs to cut both ways. Mandalay wants to have his cake and eat it too.
Keith G
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: @Kay:
I am surprised how both of you just are not getting the nub of this.
Either this government has abused its ability to access and collect our personal information or it has not.
Either this government is over-using its ability to hide its action under a cloak of secrecy (thus avoiding the citizens’ ability to petition for redress) or it has not.
The Snowden affair gives us (what appears to be) a once in a generation chance to examine these democracy-shaking topics and you are worried about what color his underwear is.
Snowdon is now inconsequential except for those who want to derail the very consequential discussions that we need to have.
Mandalay
@Kay: OK. So it is very clear that you lied about this claim in post 141:
Nobody is making that argument. You just made it up.
NickT
@Keith G:
That’s an impressive amount of fact-free waffle and contrived antitheses. Are you sure you aren’t David Brooks with a false beard?
LAC
@NickT: speaking of fact free waffling,,,
http://bobcesca.thedailybanter.com/blog-archives/2013/06/now-greenwald-denies-direct-access-reporting.html
NickT
@? Martin:
You don’t often get a chance to see a crucified man eating cake. We should document this for posterity.
Cacti
@Keith G:
Actually, you’re creating false dilemma and begging the question fallacies, by creating an either/or problem, based on undefined terms like “abused” and “over-using”.
NickT
@LAC:
Ah, but we can’t allow anyone to question The Great and Powerful Glenn Greenwald because …because.. because the people who have been defending him so shrilly on here might realize that they got this one wrong.
Which would be quite embarrassing.
Kay
@? Martin:
I agree. They’re called “credentials” for a reason. Could he have gained his claimed expertise elsewhere? Absolutely. He will be asked where he got it. It’s just an ordinary question.
Actually, we had some smearing of TSA agents based on having a GED, during the “don’t touch my junk” freak out. Now THAT was unfair, a smear, because they aren’t claiming anything beyond job training. I thought that was offensive, because it felt, to me, like a class marker. “They’re not good enough to search ME!”
BUT, I am sensitive to it, so maybe I over-reacted. My feelings were hurt :)
piratedan
@Keith G: and yes, we’re still awaiting something from this source that does show that laws were broken or circumvented. From what I have seen, we have a powerpoint slide and allegations and the two publications that he brought the data to, indicate that they can’t/won’t publish due to national security concerns. Now we have had past reporting on this issue that brings into question what federal officials have said. we have Mr. Clapper lying to members of Congress, and he states as such indicating that the provisions of the law itself, do not allow him to be truthful about their capabilities in that forum i.e. a congressional inquiry that is open to the press. The only guy I can apparently take on his word on all of this is Al Franken, who stated that yes, there’s a whole lotta spying going on, but that this isn’t about US Citizens and their personal privacy
Emma
@Corner Stone: I didn’t say “sell”. And I did say IMO. But he has repeatedly made statements about all the information he has and how he wants the Chinese to know the truth (interview with a pro-PRC paper):
“People who think I made a mistake in picking HK as a location misunderstand my intentions. I am not here to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality,” Snowden told the Post earlier today.
“My intention is to ask the courts and people of Hong Kong to decide my fate. I have been given no reason to doubt your system.’’http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1259335/exclusive-whistle-blower-edward-snowden-talks-south-china-morning
The Global Times said in the editorial, which ran in the paper’s Chinese- and English-language editions, that Snowden could offer intelligence that would help China update its understanding of cyberspace and improve its position in negotiations with Washington.
“Snowden took the initiative to expose the U.S. government’s attacks on Hong Kong and the mainland’s Internet networks. This concerns China’s national interest,” the commentary said. “Maybe he has more evidence. The Chinese government should let him speak out and according to whether the information is public, use it as evidence to negotiate with the United States openly or in private.” http://www.windsorstar.com/news/Partybacked+newspaper+suggests+China+more+details+from+Snowden/8523591/story.html
Either he’s playing chicken with the Chinese and the Americans or he is the stupidest man in the world. Or both.
Mandalay
@Keith G:
All bets are off. That is a great example of the false dichotomy fallacy.
Cacti
@Mandalay:
It also begs the question of what “abused” means and who decides.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Keith G: And I’m not surprised that you’re completely missing the problem with Snowden’s credibility.
This is not an opportunity to force discussions of the issue.
Having the claims come from someone not credible is an opportunity to shove the sane people with legitimate worries off into moonbat land along with him.
Snowden is not irrelevent. Snowden is becoming the weapon to bash the privacy issue into hiding. With every new credibility leak he spouts, he becomes more and more that weapon.
Beware the black helicopters.
Mandalay
@piratedan:
Indeed. If nothing else, Snowden has led to Clapper getting busted, and possibly losing his job.
I cannot imagine why Clapper chose to give such a foolish response in the first place.
Suffern ACE
@? Martin: because we’re an inverted Soviet Union. Now, the parts that are inverted may may not be destabilizing. Having bankers at the top of the political ecomomy might be. But “just like the Soviet Union except those ways where it is upside down” with ten years to go.
Emma
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: yes!!!!
LAC
@NickT: so true… Another interesting piece from The Nation- greenwald is an ass to all, apparently.
http://www.thenation.com/blog/174816/response-glenn-greenwald#ixzz2WEBPNvK7
? Martin
@Keith G: And I don’t think you understand how much the support for Snowden, by glossing over the problems with his story, actually work to undermine what it is you seek. GG turned the ‘they’re looking at our email!’ story up to 11 claiming that that the NSA has direct access to everything in Google, Apple, Facebook, etc. Snowden obviously led GG to that conclusion, as the slides so far revealed actually don’t support that particular conclusion. GG may have read into them what he wanted, but Gellman did the same thing. Which leads me to think that Snowden has this deck, but doesn’t actually understand entirely what it says. And so he’s leading these reporters (and anyone inclined to take him at face value) to blow this up into something that at the end of the day the Government and the companies involved will just say ‘Wrong. This is all it is.’ and take all the wind out of the effort. Nobody at that point will care if what is left is a problem or not, because everyone will be so relieved that it’s not the stazi, that they’ll just gloss over whether this program is useful or not.
This started out with NSA having live access to everyones Facebook data and now it looks like something in the ballpark of 20,000 subpoenas being complied with. Is anyone going to care about the latter after the claxons were sounded over the former? They should, but they won’t. Crying wolf has consequences.
Keith G
@NickT: What’s wrong with it? I am open to enlightened correction.
NickT
@LAC:
You know, at least we can now have an overdue national conversation on the topic of Greenwald’s assholierthanthouitude. For that, Edward Snowden deserves our thanks.
Poopyman
Thread needs moar kitteh!
//JeffreyW
piratedan
@LAC: and now we’ve entered the Princess Bride phase…. you keep using that word (direct access), but I don’t think it means what you think it means.
FlipYrWhig
@Cacti: there’s also a difference between “There’s proof: they’re secretly doing surveillance on everyone!” and “They could be secretly doing surveillance on anyone, maybe even you, and if it was you, you wouldn’t know!” and “With the capabilities they have, they _could_ be secretly doing surveillance on everyone!”
NickT
@Keith G:
It says nothing. It’s just a collection of either/or statements unsupported by facts. You might just as well have informed us that either Barack Obama throttles fluffy kittens or Barack Obama does not throttle fluffy kittens. Either is is sunny or is it raining. Either it is a Mac or it is a PC etc etc etc.
? Martin
@Cacti:
Congress and the courts decide. That’s inarguable except to people who believe that our form of government is invalid. If they support this (and I’ve yet to see anything to suggest this is illegal – even pre-Patriot Act) then it’s settled.
Now, we might think that Congress and the courts are unreliable, but the authority to decide these issues is with Congress, as the authority to decide who represents us is with the voters.
FlipYrWhig
@Mandalay: I think Clapper would have made a statement like “It depends on what the meaning of ‘collect’ is” if that wouldn’t have been treated like a joke. If he knew what was good for him, he should have either been more, or less, responsive.
Corner Stone
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
So, for the USG, the best thing that could have happened was Snowden leaking this info?
Elie
@Corner Stone:
I tried. Nevermind. Check your comments yesterday when you stated that there was evidence that damage had been done or else Clapper, or other government/security agencies wouldnt be complaining. Its ok…
NickT
@? Martin:
It’s also very hard to believe that a company like Google, which lives by its ability to handle data in a reliable and confidential way, would be so utterly inefficient and careless of its own future as to allow the Feds direct access to everything either knowingly or by some sort of colossal security failure – which was the whole point of Greenwald’s direct access claim. Once that claim collapses, as it has done, all you’ve really got is the fact that we could have had this conversation about the security state any time in the last decade – and chose not to bother as a society.
Keith G
@piratedan: So…Ron Wyden doesn’t count?
@Several Above: Secrecy is no issue then? There is nothing to discuss? Our government is clear thinking and has this handled.
Good to know.
LAC
@The Friendly Libertarian: well then there is no point in moving out of your parents basement
NickT
@Keith G:
What new information do you think there is to discuss after Greenwald/Snowden that we couldn’t have discussed 5 years ago? Now that the direct access claim has fallen apart, I am not seeing anything that we didn’t know five years ago, if we chose to be reasonably informed.
You can certainly ask why, as a society, we didn’t choose to have that conversation, but that’s a very different matter.
FlipYrWhig
@NickT: Come to think of it, those Bing commercials that go negative on Google make a similar move. The smirky, superior woman says something like that Google “reads” or “goes through” your Gmail to serve up their ads. IMHO there’s a difference between an algorithm based on automated pattern-matching and eavesdropping/snooping/spying. The latter is much more invasive. The former isn’t outstanding either, but the latter is worse.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Keith G: There won’t be anything to discuss by the time this is over, no. Anyone bringing it up will be laughed at, just like the birthers, just like the FEMA camps guys, just like Giorgio Tsoukalos.
If it had been someone believable bringing it forward, without all the cries of wolf, then maybe we would have been ready for the discussion. But this business is moving into conspiracy theory land.
Kay
@Keith G:
It is, though, level of truth matters, because it’s used to buttress his claims. I think the court doc he revealed is much more persuasive and cut and dried than the slides, for example.
But when the private companies pushed back against the claims made after the slides came out, the response was “well, of course they’ll cover their ass!”
That’s credibility and motive being used to discredit critics of the claims that were made around the slides. Again, it’s fine, that’s the back and forth, “they have a REASON to say that!” but WE ARE going to credibility and motive.
LAC
@piratedan: or in the greenwald world during his time at Salon. com ..UPDATE!
piratedan
@Keith G: I’ll stick with Franken, tyvm
Keith G
@NickT:
1. So you are convinced that the government has not exceeded its authority?
2. You are sure that no secret executive action has been purposefully abusive of privacy rights?
3. You are comfortable with the status quo being the template for the next several presidents to cite as their justifications?
4. You like the ease at which governmental action is able to be declared secret and thus removed from the review of its citizens?
NickT
@FlipYrWhig:
Absolutely. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the outcomes of this is a big push for real alternatives to Google/Facebook etc based outside the USA. If that happens, I’d consider it a genuine gain. I’ve been a little surprised that the libertarians among us didn’t spend more time trying to achieve something along those lines.
NickT
@Keith G:
Still no facts, Keith. Try these little tedious rhetorical games on someone who might fall for your schtick.
Corner Stone
@? Martin:
That’s a nice round number. Do we have a sense of how many individuals are covered under those 20,000?
FlipYrWhig
@Keith G: My brother, more of a civil libertarian than I am, argued that collecting information on that scale, even if no sentient being ever looked at it or ran a precise search of it, was tantamount to gathering evidence without probable cause with an eye towards using it at some unspecified “later.” I saw his point. I’m not sure I agreed, but I saw his point.
Mandalay
@FlipYrWhig:
Couldn’t he legitimately have been non-responsive, and said that the question was inappropriate in a public forum? Sure a few people might have dumped on him for ducking the question, but that would have been better than getting caught in a lie.
Even if he hangs on to his job, Clapper has now branded himself as “the national security guy who lied to Congress”. Not a good spot to be in.
FlipYrWhig
@Corner Stone: Depending on the definition of “facility,” which may include a network switch (and thus all traffic crossing through it), it could be that millions of people were affected, just because some message of theirs got routed through that switch. Which isn’t the same thing as saying that millions of people were being snooped: some, virtually all, of them were little fish immediately thrown out of the net. But for some people that’s a thin line, and for others it’s a thick one.
FlipYrWhig
@Mandalay: That’s what I meant. He could have said something like “I’m confident we follow the law in these cases.” What he offered up was a bad and seemingly willfully misleading answer.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Keith G: Try this:
? Martin
@Corner Stone: No, for the interest of transparency, Snowden isn’t making things better. He would have been better off taking this to Udall and having sympathetic members of Congress investigate this.
Or he could have made the same determination that GG and Gellman did, and determined that some of the information he had was too damaging to be exposed, only sent along the bits that would trigger the investigation by Congress, and kept the rest secret. He’s put himself in a position of either deliberately trying to hurt they US (by Greenwald’s standards) or being used by another government like China to do that very thing. Neither one helps the cause of transparency.
The issue here is that we must recognize that there are some things that the government must keep secret. Even if we individually disagree with that, there’s no fucking way that Congress is going to throw the doors open because as a nation, we do not disagree.
So the cause of transparency is only furthered if you can identify the bits that the public would reasonably oppose, but not the ones that the public would support. That’s not easy to do in bulk, and based on what GG and Gellman have stated, Snowden really missed the mark by providing information that would be truly damaging. And now there are concerns that he’ll offer that info to the Chinese. The only outcome of this is that the people that believe that info should remain secret (almost everyone) are going to by sympathetic to the Government’s position of what should be kept secret, and the Govt will double down on the secrecy. Had he kept the information modest in impact, he probably could have won public support. He hasn’t. He’s only won over the libertarian/geek/anarchist crowd, and that’s not the group you need to change the government. What Snowden has going in his favor is that there are a few members of Congress that feel they were cut out of all of this. Well, the solution is easy – they’ll all be briefed and read in, and they’ll drop their objections. And will any of this be more transparent? No. Will the government be more open in the future? Hell no. The outcome will be worse as a result.
It’s not better for the government because I think there’s a lot of people in government that indeed recognize they’ve created something that they cannot maintain. But this doesn’t empower those people to make productive changes. It’ll only serve to further bureaucratize the whole thing, which will cause it to calcify and become even harder to changes. I’ve seen that very thing happen too often.
Keith G
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Good
Here is the thing…..For me this is not a popularity contest in a middle school lunchroom. I want us to have a government constantly under the watchful evaluation of an energized citizenry. Sometimes good people are called crazy. Sometimes crazy people are correct in spite of themselves. Though I am an old fashioned “big government” liberal, I want that government to eat, sleep and drink with the Bill of Right (both written and expanded) always front and center because all of those who govern are mortal and can go astray.
So if you are right and…
I will be happy. The government will have passed another check up.
NickT
@FlipYrWhig:
I think your brother is mistaken for two reasons:
1) We aren’t talking about collecting information targeted at making a specific case against predetermined individuals – what’s happening here is pattern recognition. It possible suspects pop up on screen during the process, sure, they get investigated further, but there’s no reason to think that they are automatically going to end up in court. This is essentially old-fashioned intelligence work, updated for a modern and faster system of communication.
2) Pattern recognition like this is so widely deployed commercially that categorizing it as hostile/intrusive would require a major reshaping of the way we currently operate large-scale businesses with a significant online component. I personally could live without Amazon’s bungling attempts to connect my tastes and sell me books concerning Nietzsche’s views on lesbian penguins, but that’s just me.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Keith G: You’ll be happy when privacy advocates are in the same pigeonhole as birthers? “Ah, don’t worry about them, next thing you know they’ll be on the street corner in sandwich boards saying ‘repent!'”
If we toss out the spy theories, Snowden is at best naive and at worst a loon. Do you really want to be pegged as a loon right along with him?
Keith G
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: By the way, this posts implies that I care a wit about GG et al. Which means we are back to the middle school lunchroom.
Either we should be taking an aggressive look at our government’s action and evfaluate if we are comfortable or we are satisfied and can go back to “politics as usual.”
? Martin
@FlipYrWhig:
Ah, but what’s the scale? The government almost certainly isn’t spying on me or you or anyone on this board. Google is definitely doing the former on everyone and then selling that aggregated information to someone else.
The scale clearly matters. Everyone has known that the government can subpoena that information. We’ve all known that the spying happens, the only question was the scale, so the scale is the only thing to take outrage over.
Personally, I’m fine with the spying provided the courts are overseeing the operation and the process is being audited for abuse. I’m less fine with Google because what are their checks and balances? Google doesn’t make money selling phones or computers. Almost every dollar of their revenue comes from selling that harvested information. They have enormous internal incentives to abuse that, and no outside audit, or review of process, or anything. And I know CS will call me an ass-kisser to authority for having this position, but I have more faith in my Senators (well, one more than the other) and other elected officials than I do in Google’s Board of Directors.
FlipYrWhig
@NickT: His take was that it was, or could be, a system that generated “suspicious people” by treating everyone as suspicious and then sifting out particularly promising targets, which is kind of like the preemptive policing of the “pre-cogs” in Minority Report. And I think to a large degree that’s true. But from my standpoint, as long as that didn’t become a way to harass activists or petty criminals or something, I don’t think I mind, because to me it’s more like an expanded version of knocking on neighbors’ doors next to the crime scene, not mass arrests. YMMV.
different-church-lady
@LAC: Why should the basement live under the tyranny of the upper floors?
Keith G
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: If it makes you a happy, sure since such labels seem to be important.
I want decision makers in our government to continually be accountable whether it be GW Bush’s team or the current crop. Sometimes accountability, like democracy itself, is a messy “bidness.” I can live with that.
Edit: And I will be willing to wait to see how much truth there is in Snowden’s tale before assigning a level of ‘loon’acy.
different-church-lady
@Corner Stone:
Perhaps you’d prefer 20,000+?
EVERYBODITY BILLION!
Liberty60
There is no false dichotomy.
The government has aggressively sought to collect and record every scrap of personal communications we make.
Are we OK with that as citizens, or not?
If we are OK with it, just say so, clearly and openly.
If not, lets discuss what we do about it.
Suffern ACE
@FlipYrWhig: I suppose they could send me a little notice whenever they picked up one of my e-mails. Maybe something like “We’re sorry to inconvenience you, but we have your e-mails. It’s not you we’re after. It’s your neighbor, John Doe. If we find out anyting, we’ll let you know.” That”d settle me down right away.
? Martin
@Keith G:
But you shouldn’t be. The real scandal here isn’t in what the government is collecting, but the increasingly large army of people they rely for secret programs. Snowden’s information isn’t the scandal, Snowden is. And I think people are failing to recognize that in the discussion of ‘high-school dropout’.
Secrets that a million DHS and State Department employees and low-level military personnel (PFC Manning) must have access to will not remain secret. The whole apparatus would be vastly better off by declassifying half or more of it, making it available to the public (embarrassments that it may contain) and then revoking the clearance of half of those employees. It would make the truly secret stuff much more secure. For the sake of ‘concerning’ intel, we’re risking truly secretive stuff. When you’re giving access to 23 year old dropouts and privates, you’re inviting failure. You’ve basically admitted that you’ve classified so much useless shit that every employee must be read in for anything to function. That’s the scandal. That’s what must change. The government should have failed this check-up badly, but not enough of the journalists can resist the sensational brass ring of ‘ZOMG OBAMA IS READING YOUR FACEBOOK PAGE’ to make the real case here. Same goes for the so-called libertarians that are more interested in seeing the US get kicked in the junk than actually seeing the system change.
NickT
@FlipYrWhig:
I don’t think the conceptual apparatus behind it is new in any way. The difference is the speed, efficiency and relative completeness of the system for doing it. Back in the day agents cross-referenced paper files, tapes of conversations and so forth that were probably much more targeted against specific individuals. The current system is just the modern version of an old story. What I haven’t seen so far is any evidence that the current system is being used, or can be used, to blackmail/coerce people – as the old one certainly was.
FlipYrWhig
@? Martin: I would focus instead on the fact that when “Google” does that, it doesn’t mean that the Google Stasi read through your personal stuff and laugh at all the humiliating parts, it means that Google’s coders have set up a way to process and extract information from strings of text, processes that don’t really know the difference between a guitarist’s G-string and a stripper’s. I don’t get the same shudder of Being Watched from being subjected to search optimization and all that. Certainly not compared to having a bug in the kitchen light fixture and a guy in an unmarked van making notes across the street.
NickT
@different-church-lady:
Why must the string section endure the oppression of the tubas and trombones?
different-church-lady
@Liberty60:
You mean that postcard I sent grandma last week is… UNDER SUSPICION?!?
Look, you keep making that assertion. What do you have to back it up?
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Keith G: And yet you say you’ll be happy when this mess Greenwald and Snowden have made completely shuts down discussion of privacy issues and makes further review/oversight impossible.
Because that’s what I’m talking about. Privacy advocates joining the ancient aliens guy on the meme parade.
Which leads me inescapably to one of two conclusions. Either you’re desperately trying to prolong this conversation because it’s the only conversation you ever get, in which case you need to get out more. Or your reading comprehension is in such a sad state that there’s little point in engaging with you.
Either way, I’m done.
Feel free to have the last word. Because you know what makes me happy? It’s not labels. It’s pie.
different-church-lady
@FlipYrWhig: When the Google does it, it’s not illegal.
NickT
@different-church-lady:
He’s got a handful of paranoia and a handful of nothing. They look strangely alike, for some reason.
piratedan
@different-church-lady: because Profit!
? Martin
@Corner Stone:
Uh, yes. 20,000:
So, Facebook is seeing an average of two users per subpoena. Google’s data, though not presented the same way is similar. And in Facebook’s data this isn’t just FISA requests but also national security letters and subpoenas from other agencies, states, and municipalities. I would expect that state and local are a non-insignificant number of those subpoenas. I think it’s safe to say a number of accounts of young residents of Steubenville Ohio are in that pile, for example.
FlipYrWhig
@NickT: I think the difference is that there’s a prior phase where some subset of “everyone” gets a preliminary processing, and then what gets sifted out from that heap gets cross-checked and such in a way that is more like a modernized version of old-timey police and bureaucratic tools like Manila folders and binders full of Polaroids. A lot of the critics are aggrieved by that prior phase. To oversimplify, if you have a hair trigger about privacy, it’s a bit like the TSA coming to your house to frisk everyone who might go to the airport, to make a shortlist of people to get an even fuller search once they’re at the airport.
NickT
@? Martin:
Not to mention the requests sent in by Bill Belichick re: defense issues.
different-church-lady
http://i47.tinypic.com/144bfbt.jpg
Keith G
@FlipYrWhig: There is nothing in our history that assures me that such collections of info will not be used for bad purposes by a group in power and/or individuals with access.
And if its a more safety trade off….
I am 100000 time more likely to be killed by a drunk or texting driver than by a terrorist. With in a year, we could make such fatalities almost go away with technology we now have (okay, maybe 3-5 years). It would be invasive but if one is not behaving dangerously, one would not have a problem.
Should we go full Monty and make everybody actually a lot safer?
different-church-lady
@NickT: Don’t look now, but they’re even collecting data on him! IS THERE NO END TO THIS DATA MINING?!?
different-church-lady
@? Martin:
Knowing the way Facebook is, that’s probably works out to about 57 individuals.
NickT
@FlipYrWhig:
You see, I’d say that what we have is just a more comprehensive version of the old system, where there probably were files on most people scattered across a variety of government agencies – files on social security recipients, veterans, government administrators, military personnel, passport holders, persons with criminal records and so on and so forth. What’s new is the way they’ve been brought together and combined with an updated and more effective search system. I can see why people feel uncomfortable – but I think part of that is that they’ve never asked themselves how well documented their existence was before.
? Martin
@FlipYrWhig: No, I’m more worried that Google is aggregating this data on me and will package it up and sell it in distilled form, or fail to keep it secure. And since anything I send through their wires or do on their platform is being aggregated, that’s quite a lot.
Google’s motivations do not at all align with mine, and I get no vote on how they operate. Other company’s motivations do align with mine. I trust services that I pay up-front for, because their revenue depends on my trust, not on what they reveal about me to someone else.
Liberty60
@different-church-lady:
I already provided backup, but here it is again-
The Wired article of last year about the Utah facility, the Democracy Now! interview with William Binney about the Trailbalzer programs, etc.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/20/exclusive_national_security_agency_whistleblower_william
Are you contradicting these sources with a different assertion?
NickT
@different-church-lady:
Of whom six are Ted & Hellen under false names, another 3 are “Oscar the Grouch” and two are pets who just happen to be called Bin and Laden.
different-church-lady
@Keith G:
OK, but can you put a figure on how much more likely it is than an actual person at the FBI looking at your e-mail?
different-church-lady
@NickT:
That’d be a hella great name for a Janus cat.
different-church-lady
@Liberty60: So, two news reports.
I suppose I could show you two other news reports to the contrary, but what would be the point?
NickT
@? Martin:
This is what I think the conversation ought to be about – who controls/owns your data. Sadly, it’s evident that most people don’t understand these issues in any meaningful way, which is why the conversation hasn’t happened and won’t happen, not helped by the fact that Greenwald and Snowden have gone down the anti-government paranoia rabbit-hole and dragged our buffoonish media with them.
different-church-lady
@FlipYrWhig:
Except they have to do it blindfolded.
Keith G
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: So you ask questions that are answered sincerely and politely and you threaten pie. That is significant. Interesting
I do not buy into your end-of-the-world premise. If this whole recent affair is revealed to be a cluster-fuck (a story not yet concluded), it seems to me that reasonable citizens will move on.
At the point when either leaders or other citizens accumulate important ideas to further the discussion, they will be heard. That is the way it is in all things.
Liberty60
@different-church-lady:
I would love to see two news reports to the contrary!
What would they assert?
That the facility is Utah doesn’t exist? Or that it collects data, but not anything more than before 9-11? Or that it collects some phone calls, but not that many, and anyway it is under the trusted watchful eye of civil libertarians?
What is it that YOU actually think is going on?
NickT
@Liberty60:
I think you’re spouting random paranoia without facts. What else are we supposed to conclude from your posts?
Keith G
@different-church-lady: I do not know. Do you?
According to Nathan Wessler of the ACLU
All I have been saying is that this is a topic that deserves further exploration.
Elie
@? Martin:
Excellent comment — and your previous one as well.
Sly
@kc:
Given that her answer is “Snowden’s girlfriend being a pole-dancer is evidence that she’s a plant in a false-flag operation to distract us from the REAL surveillance state,” I am compelled to disagree with this assessment.
This is Alex Jones territory, but at least Jones has some theatrics to monetize.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@FlipYrWhig:
The shudder I get from search optimization is that I find so-called “optimized” results to be vastly less useful.
And now the new Windows 8.1 is going to do a Bing search every time you try to search for a local file. I’m already looking for third party search programs.
Mandalay
@Keith G:
Your thought process (but not your actual views obviously) reminds me of dubya’s infamous: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists”.
You keep presenting “either-or” binary choices for very complex issues with multiple options and nuance. I don’t think the issues are anywhere near as clear-cut and straightforward as you keep portraying them.
NickT
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Damn, that’s going to be annoying. This is another fine mess Ballmer’s gotten us into!
Liberty60
@NickT:
Of the articles I linked, which facts contained in them do you think are false?
different-church-lady
@Liberty60: Here’s one: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/
See, now that I’ve taken a more careful look at that Wired article, it would seem it doesn’t say exactly what you’ve been asserting:
The Wired article says:
Somewhat different, no?
different-church-lady
@Keith G: Nope. Just making an observation about your observation.
Kay
And this cowardly nonsense from past members of Congress doesn’t help:
Sensenbrenner got the headline he wanted, but it should have been “I oppose whatever was said in those meetings about my law that I didn’t bother to attend”
NickT
@Liberty60:
Which facts do you think contained in them are significant? How do they match up with the various claims Greenwald and Snowden have made?
Make an argument, for FSM’s sake, rather than just ranting about how scary it is in the dark out there in the woods.
Keith G
@Mandalay: Well, I guess it’s likely that the largest portion of “we” have little in the way of a thoughtful opinion on this. Yet democracies do need some form of binary decision making, “I am more comfortable with Obama.” or “I am more comfortable with Romney.” or people of the same sex should be allowed to marry or they should not.
All I was suggesting is that broadly one can be comfortable with our government’s behaviors in this issue or not. Furthermore, instead of trying to shut down discussion, I was trying to extend it by noting that the bottom line was not about personality (we go on and on about the people) but about the behavior of government.
It’s been messy but ultimately good thus far, as more citizens are talking about this topic than at anytime that I can recall.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@NickT: Windows 8.1 video tour puts a friendly face on the Start screen
It occurs to me that this may be their idea of a solution for the many people who can’t find their apps with Search because they can’t remember the name.
different-church-lady
Actually, I am going to suggest that everyone give that Wired article that Liberty60 keeps citing a good thorough read. For, while it doesn’t say exactly what Liberty60 purports, it does give a fair number of details (and assertions) into the topic at hand, some of which will be comforting and some of which will be disconcerting.
The angle I’m finding is that there appear to be two different strategies at war: those who advocate targeted surveillance, and others who want to scoop up a huge amount of stuff and look at it later (if ever). The latter seems to be a workaround for warrants: “Yeah, we’re gonna grab a lot of stuff, but we’re not going to actually look at it until you tell us its okay.” There are also assertions in the article that some of the surveillance is illegal, and others that it had been illegal, but has now been reigned in.
It’s well written, and eye opening. But it is not a confirmation of the data paranoid’s worst fears.
Corner Stone
@? Martin: That’s for the last six months of 2012.
And as you correctly note, that’s just what FB has released so far.
NickT
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
I am starting to have flashbacks to that infuriating paperclip critter they once inflicted upon their customers. If anything deserved rendition, that did.
NickT
@different-church-lady:
It’s a very good article – and it also tells us that we knew this stuff before Snowden and Greenwald made a botch of their case. We didn’t bother to have a national conversation when Wired did its work – and I very much doubt we are going to have one now.
different-church-lady
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Because lord knows when I’m searching for something on my own computer, I want to have to sift through a listing of everything on the internet as well, and vice versa.
different-church-lady
@NickT: We don’t have national conversations anymore. We have national screech-fests.
NickT
@different-church-lady:
Microsoft’s new PRISM app will soon take care of any worries you may have on that score…
different-church-lady
@NickT: If Microsoft were writing PRISM, I’d say we’d all have nothing to worry about.
Hell, half of those petrabytes in Utah are probably just to hold the latest version of Microsoft Office.
Mandalay
@Keith G:
Gotcha, and I am with you all the way on that.
NickT
@different-church-lady:
I suspect that Microsoft PRISM’s operational efficiency would be measured in terrorflops.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@different-church-lady: Oh, but it won’t be a listing. Search will now be a multimedia experience!
As near as I can tell, this means that snapshots of pages will be pulled in and displayed in a side-scrolling collage. It’s no accident that the example they showed was for a search for Marilyn Monroe.
I’m quite sure that the real purpose is to inflate Bing’s hit numbers. I just don’t want to have to deal with it.
NickT
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Bing-0!
(Sorry, today is bad pun day here in the underground lair).
? Martin
@Corner Stone: And FB says they got permission to reveal the count of all such requests, so I take that to be a complete list. Google appears to want the ability to reveal the information in more detail – by requesting agency, or something similar, and so hasn’t yet revealed everything. But they do note requests vs accounts and for what they’ve revealed seems to be running a similar 1:2 ratio.
So long as the detail doesn’t dip into small data set territory (no counts smaller than say 100) where it might reveal individuals, I think Google’s request is reasonable. Google can always say ‘x requests from all other agencies’ and be okay there.
Liberty60
@NickT:
I am making an argument- the argument being that the NSA surveillance program is too broad, without sufficient safeguards.
What’s your argument?
NickT
@Liberty60:
That’s not an argument. It’s an assertion which you haven’t backed with evidence.
Want to try this argument-building thing again and see if you can get the concept at the third attempt?
JGabriel
@Emma:
I honestly don’t give a shit about Greenwald’s or Snowden’s character in this situation since, as repeatedly noted above by others, the documents speak for themselves. But I never said anyone couldn’t talk about it. It’s a free country, talk to your heart’s content while the NSA archives it all.
As for Vinson, mocking conservative jackasses is one of my raisons d’etre. Note how I used French there, cause French makes conservatives wacky too.
Although I suppose one could say that it’s probably just genetics that makes conservatives wacky, but, hey … c’est la vie.
different-church-lady
@JGabriel:
Apparently they don’t, as different people drew very different conclusions from them, and certain people felt the need to tell us a lot of things about them that turned out to not be true.
Corner Stone
@Liberty60:
It would be obvious to most sentient people that the simple fact Snowden has possession of *any* classified NSA material proves the argument there are not sufficient safeguards built into the system.
But I’m sure that somehow doesn’t fit the bipolar narrative some continue to try and argue.
Well, not really argue. More like gurgle.
Corner Stone
@different-church-lady:
Certain other people in positions of immense power and authority have felt the need to lie to us.
different-church-lady
@Corner Stone: And the way to deal with that? COUNTER-LIES!
Corner Stone
@different-church-lady: My contention is we’re going to find out a different outcome when this all comes through. Lots of people here won’t want to hear it. But we’ll see.
At this point it appears DNI Clapper is clearly a liar. I guess we’ll see about the rest.