The NSA watches you poop.

Araysar_sl said:

The conversation is about surveillance in America, morons. Not abroad.

I understand why you keep want to derail it there (it absolves you from having to defend constitutional violations at home) but it doesnt change the fact that PRISM is a huge violation of civil rights.

Click to expand...

Again, every document released relates to surveillance of foreigners. When he finally releases one of the documents he keeps talking about that shows more, we'll see I guess.

Quineloe_sl said:

So it's so secret that lying to congress about it is A-ok?

Click to expand...

Probably not. Of course, Congress shouldn't be asking about classified information in a public forum, but this is the American Congress we're talking about here, they're fucking morons. When that happens, I really don't know what is acceptable to do. He probably should have just deferred.

Quineloe_sl said:

So it's so secret that lying to congress about it is A-ok?


What nonsense are you putting into google and how are the results relevant here?

Click to expand...

You brought up France's outrage, which I find totally amusing, since if all of the major internet companies were French they'd be doing the exact same thing. I was googling over their hacking activities and depending on which flavor of the question you ask Germany is higher up than they are. Which might explain the recent news releases regarding how much is being done there.

Malakriss_sl said:

You brought up France's outrage, which I find totally amusing, since if all of the major internet companies were French they'd be doing the exact same thing. I was googling over their hacking activities and depending on which flavor of the question you ask Germany is higher up than they are. Which might explain the recent news releases regarding how much is being done there.

Click to expand...

Again, what are you talking about? Are you talking about government hacking or private citizens? because the morons here who do the "Government hacking" are utter shit at what they do and their products are ridiculed by our netizens rights group.

Also, where do you take the knowledge that everyone would do what the NSA does? Even if they did, we hate our governments almost as much as we hate yours for what they are trying to do. But as far as I know, the whole extend of what the German police abused so far was checking which mobile phones were signed into which area at the time of a crime happening.

Exactly, ideals are bullshit.

Nah, not really. Ideals are just a bunch of bullshit people use to make themselves feel morally superior to others. These days, anyway.

chaos_sl said:

It is in secret because we don't want ya'll motherfuckers knowing how or why we collect intelligence. Is that even a serious question?

Click to expand...

It's not clear to me how knowing that the NSA collects metadata of calls and fully records some calls is a threat to national security. It's well known that intelligence services monitor financial transactions to certain Middle Eastern charities and that they monitor message boards affiliated with terrorist groups. That doesn't eliminate said charities as means of funding terrorism, nor does it stop terrorists from using the web. If it did, then the best strategy would be to exaggerate your intelligence gather capabilities, not hide them. ("Oh yeah, we can monitor all posts on private message boards. Better stop using them as effective tools!")

I can see why the "how" would be secret. But nobody's asking for the NSA to release all its tools and make them open source. The "how" also isn't relevant for the public discourse. We don't need to know that Mr. X at the embassy in Tajikistan really isn't doing IT support but taps into some fiber cable that transmits sensitive information.

The "what" and "why," however, is very much relevant in a democracy. There should be a public discourse as to whether a country's intelligence service should be allowed to monitor calls of private citizens in allied foreign countries, or (more relevantly) whether they should be allowed to record data on calls within and in-and-out-of the US. The same goes for accessing email accounts without civilian warrants -- none of the bullshit FISA court that apparently can't find a way to reject a request. A legal apparatus without representation for a defendant isn't a court. Even if you had some permanent lawyers from the ACLU who, sworn to secrecy, would defend the interests of whoever is about to be wiretapped... it'd already be a step up without compromising anything.

The problem with secrecy is that it's extremely convenient for government, because it can hide all its fuck ups. If you recall the wikileaks cables, there is so much mundane shit that somehow got classified as top secret. Secrecy just prevents accountability, and public officials need to be accountable for our system of government to work.

I hope they do catch him and he really does have a dead man switch. Let's see all this shit instead of hearing him or the reporter talk about it.

Click to expand...

I do hope he has more information to release. But from what I understand, he gave it all to newspapers that decide what to release and when. This seems more responsible than the leaking of the cables on wikileaks, and I hope it'll be able to sustain momentum.

That sounds like a bunch of bullshit, to me.

chaos_sl said:

Probably not. Of course, Congress shouldn't be asking about classified information in a public forum, but this is the American Congress we're talking about here, they're fucking morons. When that happens, I really don't know what is acceptable to do. He probably should have just deferred.

Click to expand...

I think his answer was fine. Of course he's not going to admit to this in public and whoever asked the question is a moron. But if that information was also withheld in private meetings, which seems to have been the case, then that's a much more serious issue. You can't withhold this information from a committee that, by all accounts, should be the highest authority on the matter.

From what I understand, only one of the FISA judges was informed of PRISM. So not only can you not trust the intelligence oversight committee, but also not the secret court? Come on... it allows for absolutely ridiculous judge shopping: if one judge declines, they're sworn to secrecy and can't discuss it with any of the other judges on the court -- so you just go and ask the next one. Chances are pretty good that you can get one of the 11 judges to sign off on just about anything.

Soriak_sl said:

I think his answer was fine. Of course he's not going to admit to this in public and whoever asked the question is a moron. But if that information was also withheld in private meetings, which seems to have been the case, then that's a much more serious issue. You can't withhold this information from a committee that, by all accounts, should be the highest authority on the matter.

From what I understand, only one of the FISA judges was informed of PRISM. So not only can you not trust the intelligence oversight committee, but also not the secret court? Come on... it allows for absolutely ridiculous judge shopping: if one judge declines, they're sworn to secrecy and can't discuss it with any of the other judges on the court -- so you just go and ask the next one. Chances are pretty good that you can get one of the 11 judges to sign off on just about anything.

Click to expand...

I agree that about the private meetings, but I doubt that is what happened. I doubt we'll ever really know.

I'm not really keeping up on what people are saying, I prefer to focus on what can be confirmed. Unless someone has confirmed that via documentation or something about the judges, I wasn't aware.

fanaskin_sl said:

you're not really paid to think

Click to expand...

I really am, bro. You're just stringing a bunch of feel-good platitudes together and calling it philosophy. It's lazy and honestly pretty insulting.