All your data naughty bits get dumped into the big computer to be diced and sliced into the #12 bin that nobody looks at.

Why are hundreds of millions of dollars being spent to collect petabytes of data that nobody uses for anything?
Either you are wrong or my government is the stupidest, most wasteful pile of idiots ever collected into a pile.

...tough call, isn't it?

 

Why are hundreds of millions of dollars being spent to collect petabytes of data that nobody uses for anything?
Either you are wrong or my government is the stupidest, most wasteful pile of idiots ever collected into a pile.

...tough call, isn't it?

You're wrong on both counts. Easy call.

Intelligence is the art of reconstruction of events from collected data (real-time or archived) not prediction like Minority Report. It's impossible to know what you need in advance so the 'holy grail' is to collect everything (The Global Vacuum Cleaner) just in case you might need it. Your #12 bin is just a database hash and it very unlikely there is an assigned ID to that hash unless you've done something very naughty.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/02/nsa-portrait-total-surveillance

https://www.wired.com/2006/04/wiretap-whistle-blowers-account/?tw=wn_index_1

 

There's a saying I like:
Locks are only there to keep honest men honest.

If a burglar wants into your house, they will get in. You put a good lock on the door and good security system, maybe they skip your house because it isn't easy. Or maybe they're very skilled at what they do, and they get in anyway. But the lock helps.

Same for your identity and online privacy. The more steps you take to protect yourself, the better. But nothing is 100% effective. One of the steps I take is to turn off geotagging on my pictures. I don't need anybody to know exactly where I was when I took a picture, especially if it was in my home or at work. It's something I recommend everybody do. I was pretty upset to find that it had been re-enabled without my consent when I deliberately turned it off.

I still have not resolved whether it was in fact turned back on with the Latest android update or through a series of unlikely pocket button punching. I haven't come across any other complaints about it, which initially seemed to indicate that it was just me, but after this thread I question how many people actually know what geotagging is, and have deliberately disabled it.

 

the 'holy grail' is to collect everything

The holy grail is hubris on high, the tyranny of the powerful over the weak, and has zero restraints on its availability to abuse the innocent. Please tell the Global Vacuum Cleaner that I revoke any consent it might think I have given and to please vomit up the data on hundreds of millions of good, honest citizens. That includes the geo-tags on strantors' photos.

http://www.rutherford.org/publicati...reinstates_lawsuit_challenging_constitutional

 

The holy grail is hubris on high, the tyranny of the powerful over the weak, and has zero restraints on its availability to abuse the innocent. Please tell the Global Vacuum Cleaner that I revoke any consent it might think I have given and to please vomit up the data on hundreds of millions of good, honest citizens. That includes the geo-tags on strantors' photos.

http://www.rutherford.org/publicati...reinstates_lawsuit_challenging_constitutional

I don't think it's right either for it to handled so loosely (wide unmasking of identities and distribution of raw intelligence) during the last administration but it exists because that's the only logical way reconstruct digital events from random actors. The three guys in the UK that are now dead in a terror attack can't provide information on possible other attackers but their archived data bucket bits could be matched to them specifically and might after the fact stop more attacks, if we get very lucky. This is possible even if we had no idea before this happened they were 'bad guys' and could be tracked by warrants using specific identifiers.

 

I don't think it's right either for it to handled so loosely (wide unmasking of identities and distribution of raw intelligence) during the last administration but it exists because that's the only logical way reconstruct digital events from random actors. The three guys in the UK that are now dead in a terror attack can't provide information on possible other attackers but their archived data bucket bits could be matched to them specifically and might after the fact stop more attacks, if we get very lucky. This is possible even if we had no idea before this happened they were 'bad guys' and could be tracked by warrants using specific identifiers.

I understand the "necessary evil" argument and from time to time I might even be inclined to agree with it to some extent, but I always find myself coming back to what Ben Franklin said: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Now the liberty I "gave up" wasn't voluntary. It was taken from me without consent; I never got to vote on it. It might be easier for me to stomach if I could see daily proof that it was in fact securing my safety. There may actually be daily evidence of thwarted attempts on my life, but the media fails to report it because it isn't sensational; for that I hold the media accountable. But nonetheless, I the citizen indefensible against silent government surveillance, see no evidence that the liberty taken from me is being put to good use to ensure my safety. From my point of view I have been stripped of any expectation of privacy, and that's where it ends.

 

I understand the "necessary evil" argument and from time to time I might even be inclined to agree with it to some extent, but I always find myself coming back to what Ben Franklin said: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Now the liberty I "gave up" wasn't voluntary. It was taken from me without consent; I never got to vote on it. It might be easier for me to stomach if I could see daily proof that it was in fact securing my safety. There may actually be daily evidence of thwarted attempts on my life, but the media fails to report it because it isn't sensational; for that I hold the media accountable. But nonetheless, I the citizen indefensible against silent government surveillance, see no evidence that the liberty taken from me is being put to good use to ensure my safety. From my point of view I have been stripped of any expectation of privacy, and that's where it ends.

My advice to anyone that wishes to reduce surveillance is to use encryption on all of your communications. To expect total privacy today in a world of data switch networking is not realistic.

 

My advice to anyone that wishes to reduce surveillance is to use encryption on all of your communications. To expect total privacy today in a world of data switch networking is not realistic.

Right, Another lock on the door.

I agree the expectation of privacy in digital communications is unreasonable. I said that more or less in post #23, that was my point. But when I was making that point, I was making it from the perspective of protecting against identity theft and crazy online stalkers finding out where you live. Not against hiding yourself from big brother. That's a whole nother topic we just got into and I don't even think encryption helps in that area (are you implying that it does?).

 

My advice to anyone that wishes to reduce surveillance is to use encryption on all of your communications.

And my advice is to re-instate the U.S. Constitution.

 

And my advice is to re-instate the U.S. Constitution.

I'm all for that, but I don't think it will solve this issue. Anyone can observe you as much as they want or can, including the government, unless they exceed certain boundaries that have been established by precedent. Looking through your walls with IR is over the line (I think?) but looking through your windows from the street is not. Tapping your landline phone was judged to be over the line. Watching your internet traffic? That's closer to listening in on the street, because you have little expectation of privacy.

The big problem is a government deciding where to draw the lines in secret and without our consent. Who do they think they are? (Rhetorical question)

 

And my advice is to re-instate the U.S. Constitution.

Intelligence agencies do things that by their very nature are extra-constitutional for foreign affair and many times flat-out illegal but I agree that on the strictly domestic front we need to be strictly constitutional and agree the current system needs to be changed before we officially lose the right to share pictures with friends in private. The problem is that www means World Wide Web so your bits that originate in Florida might actually be routed to many countries instead of strictly domestically and many bits that originate overseas are routed here.



Thomas Jefferson

 

This isn't as narrow as the WWW. Remember the "Privacy Lost" Thread where I listed at least 10 ways our government spies on us. Uidokenykme nd Ealq
Excuse me...Encrypting my web traffic and personal communication is a tiny and impractical part of the solution, as you can see from the encrypted bit on line 2. I can't have useful communication on this site by encrypting. I am reminded that a dentist in Florida was convicted of having a plan to neutralize a Mosque in case of terrorist attack. Merely having a plan was a crime. Our government has plans for everything you can think of and thousands of things you haven't thought of, and they don't think doing exactly the crime they put the dentist in jail for is a crime...for them. I think it is. A government where any butt-hurt cop or politician can vanish anybody they want just by looking up their bits and contriving a paranoid scenario is as Orwellian as it gets. That is not the government I consented to.

 

OK, but if you talk about killing people, actually stockpile automatic weapons, have explosives and associate with people ready to attack that's more than just a plan you talked about on the internet.

Doc #1: http://forward.com/news/7543/mystery-shrouds-florida-doc-who-plotted-mosque-bom/

Most attempts to explain Shapiro’s crime have focused on his troubled interior life. That’s also the key to understanding Goldstein, says his attorney, Myles Malman.

The way Malman sees it, Goldstein’s motivation wasn’t as much religion or politics as it was madness, the product of a variety of maladies — “obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder and depression,” for which Goldstein was taking a “cocktail” of psychiatric drugs — that led him to collect his arsenal of explosives. There is, Malman says, no question that Goldstein planned to destroy the mosque and community center — the “physical building,” as Malman puts it. But Malman said he is convinced that the rest of the plan, the detailed plot to gun down or knife victims as they ran for their lives, was all a fantasy. “He never actually planned to do that,” Malman insists.
...
Goldstein’s scheme was discovered on Aug. 22, 2002, when, according to the federal complaint in the case, police were summoned to the Goldstein home on a report of domestic violence. When authorities arrived, they found Kristi Goldstein outside. She claimed her husband had threatened to kill her and that he had a cache of weapons and explosives. It took local police and federal authorities more than a half-hour to persuade Goldstein to leave the house. What they found inside after obtaining permission to search the place, in addition to the bombs, was automatic weapons, hand grenades, armor-piercing rockets, a 50-caliber sniper rifle, 25,000 rounds of ammunition and homemade napalm.

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/LK/20030502/news/605209014/SH/

TAMPA -- A dentist who admitted being an accomplice in a plot to bomb a Pinellas County Islamic center last year was sentenced to almost 31/2 years in prison Thursday.

Michael Hardee, 50, pleaded guilty last fall to agreeing to drive friend Robert Goldstein to the Islamic Society of Pinellas County, where the Seminole podiatrist planned to plant homemade bombs and blow up buildings in retaliation for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

U.S. District Judge Elizabeth A. Kovachevich sentenced Hardee to 41 months, calling him a “disgrace” to his education and the advantages he had in life.

Federal sentencing guidelines had called for more than five years, but prosecutors asked for Hardee to be given a break because his help was crucial in building cases against Goldstein and his estranged wife, Kristi Goldstein.

“Words cannot express the remorse that I felt over this situation and that I continue to feel,” the balding, bespectacled Hardee told the judge.

He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to blow up the buildings, conspiracy to violate civil rights, and illegal possession of a short-barreled rifle and silencer.

 

View attachment 128216

Thomas Jefferson

Wouldn't it be a good idea to send a copy of this to your supreme leader?

@strantor, I apologize in advance if this went too far. But the constant "buzz" coming from these guy's(nsa et al) is giving party over patriotism a new meaning.

 

OK, but if you talk about killing people, actually stockpile automatic weapons, have explosives and associate with people ready to attack that's more than just a plan you talked about on the internet.

Did you just claim our government doesn't do exactly what the dentist did, every day?

Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence."
—Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961).

 

Did you just claim our government doesn't do exactly what the dentist did, every day?

Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence."
—Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961).

Sure, our government does exactly what the dentist did and worse every day like killing babies in their cribs when we drop bombs on terrorist in places like Yemen. I'm all for law and order by the rule of law but I'm with Thomas Jefferson, 'F' the law if it means my children might die because we can't kill a known terrorist. Only the paranoid black helicopter bunch see them doing the same types of killings domestically as a secret double hand-shake secret goal to destroy peaceful citizens in this country.

 

Sure, our government does exactly what the dentist did and worse every day like killing babies in their cribs when we drop bombs on terrorist in places like Yemen. I'm all for law and order by the rule of law but I'm with Thomas Jefferson, 'F' the law if it means my children might die because we can't kill a known terrorist. Only the paranoid black helicopter bunch see them doing the same types of killings domestically as a secret double hand-shake secret goal to destroy peaceful citizens in this country.

Same view here.

To me the rights of anyone who has proven they are or could be a threat come in way way below the rights of everyone else who has not. To me anyone who is known or has very strong suspicions associated with them to be an extremist or outright terrorist, or killer should have no public rights and be under 100% suspension 100% of the time no matter who or what they are doing anywhere so it shouldn't take them actually killing one or many innocents before something is done when those who can do something already have strong reasons to be suspicious to begin with.

Same with the idiots who choose to dress and act the parts of that type of people in general even if they are not a hard threat of any kind. If someone wants to dress and act the part of someone who who people need to be suspicious of that deserves no rights then by all means give them the same treatment.

 

I'm all for law and order by the rule of law but I'm with Thomas Jefferson, 'F' the law if it means my children might die because we can't kill a known terrorist.

Spy on all the real targets you want to. Spying on the innocent hundreds of millions is what I call lots of things, from wasteful to unconstitutional.

 

Same view here.

To me the rights of anyone who has proven they are or could be a threat come in way way below the rights of everyone else who has not.

A threat? A threat to whom? You probably infer a threat to the American people, but I'm sure the government, given authority to accost a "threat" would assert a threat as anything that threatens the US Government. A threat to the US government is not the same thing as a threat to the American people. In fact, the American people should be considered a threat to the US government, should it step out of line. I don't think the American people can or should trust the US government to guard them/us against threats that might very well include the US government.

So our liberties should be curtailed on suspicion alone?

To me anyone who is known or has very strong suspicions associated with them to be an extremist or outright terrorist, [...] should have no public rights and be under 100% suspension 100% of the time no matter who or what they are doing anywhere [...]

Extremist groups like the Sons of Liberty?
Terrorists like Samuel Adams?

In your well meaning attempt to make us all a little safer, you would sell our souls the devil. You would give the government the power to decide who might be bad, and who might be a roadblock to tyranny, label them one in the same, and lock them up together - neither actually guilty of anything, just who have the potential to be so. If that's the country you want to live in, ask North Korea how well it works.

 

To me the rights of anyone who has proven they are or could be a threat come in way way below the rights of everyone else who has not.

According to our government, EVERYONE could be a "threat", therefore, spy on EVERYONE. That includes you, tcm.
The fact that you are an able bodied American with the courage of your convictions means your convictions COULD change. Therefore, you are a "threat". Please report to get your geo-tag inserted under your skin like a good little sheep.