The NSA watches you poop.

Famm

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Bro, he escaped into fantasy because that is a place "the man" couldn't control! He is the quizak haderack!
Yeah, it was never really hard to get that the dude was trapped in a Gregor Samsa-eqsue bureaucratic nightmare and his Walter Mitty-esque daydreams were the only thing keeping him going. It was like Kafka blended with Orwell and a hint of Don Quixote. But yeah, I guess Gilliam should have used a narrator to explain every little aspect of the film instead of his artsy fartsy music score and imagery.

Referring back to the guy trying to fill up his preferred patient punch card. I would never willingly go in for 100% optional surgery. With the number of potential complications that can arise just from anesthesia, not to mention other operating room hijinks (like operating on the opposite limb, and potential for infection), any surgery I go in for better be absolutely necessary. Luckily I haven't had to go under the knife for anything so far, and hopefully I can keep it that way.

I am all for early screening and trying to catch issues before they become major problems. Going in to get "tuned up" just for the hell of it though, that is ridiculous and dangerous.

An absolute ton of issues people experience can be prevented through cleaning up what they eat and just staying active. Much of the time doctors and patients just look to treat symptoms and not address underlying causes. It's like promoting a healthy lifestyle falls mostly outside of modern medicine and is left to gurus and life coaches.
I think most doctors actually know this and would like more people to practice it. But no one wants their doctor to tell them they are fat and unhealthy and they can't eat fast food. So the doctor just mentions shit like that in passing and goes ahead with the drugs and surgeries. They probably realize most are too stupid to ever take hold of some willpower and interrupt their habits to lose weight and exercise.


As for the NSA and the top secret FISA court, it's disappointing and expected. It seems that the world is getting homogenized in terms of personal liberties, government dictation and corporate corruption. In the next few decades the policies and practices of most major nations will probably be indistinguishable from each other. Also with the population explosion we are going to see in the next 30 years (world population will almost double) dealing with individuals is going to become even more costly and time consuming. I see the "need" for drastic techniques to find and neutralize potential threats within the populace.
So basically governments are going the same way MMO's have ended up.
 

iannis

Musty Nester
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The rest of the movie was excellent, so we can forgive one small vanity that went too far. It may even serve to make the movie better in a way. There's a hitch in the counterpoint in the opening to the second movement of Symphony of Psalms. It only happens once and it passes very quickly but it's there. It's in the score. It's a transcription error and it sounds like a transcription error. It's not like Stravinsky didn't know it was there. He apparently decided to leave it. That's fucking wonderful, it's like a coffee stain.

But Gilliam's went too long. It became a burp rather than a hiccup. He learned from that mistake and shortened those moments in his subsequent films.

Oh Lisa, just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand.
 

Pancreas

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Best part of Brazil by far was De Niro's commando plumber. It was like a mash up of Mario and Snake Pliskin.
 

chaos

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The rest of the movie was excellent, so we can forgive one small vanity that went too far. It may even serve to make the movie better in a way. There's a hitch in the counterpoint in the opening to the second movement of Symphony of Psalms. It only happens once and it passes very quickly but it's there. It's in the score. It's a transcription error and it sounds like a transcription error. It's not like Stravinsky didn't know it was there. He apparently decided to leave it. That's fucking wonderful, it's like a coffee stain.

But Gilliam's went too long. It became a burp rather than a hiccup. He learned from that mistake and shortened those moments in his subsequent films.

Oh Lisa, just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand.
I liked it because of the ambiguous ending. It was the first movie I had ever seen like that, where I had trouble figuring out what happened. Upon rewatching I could see all the context clues were there, you just had to put it together, or really just care enough about understanding it to put it all together. It was exciting. It was the same kind of thing that drew me to David Lynch's movies, there was more there than just the surface.
 

Beef Supreme_sl

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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/te...web.html?_r=1&

"Skype, the Internet-based calling service, began its own secret program, Project Chess, to explore the legal and technical issues in making Skype calls readily available to intelligence agencies and law enforcement officials, according to people briefed on the program who asked not to be named to avoid trouble with the intelligence agencies.

Project Chess, which has never been previously disclosed, was small, limited to fewer than a dozen people inside Skype, and was developed as the company had sometimes contentious talks with the government over legal issues, said one of the people briefed on the project. The project began about five years ago, before most of the company was sold by its parent, eBay, to outside investors in 2009. Microsoft acquired Skype in an $8.5 billion deal that was completed in October 2011."
 

Beef Supreme_sl

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6ACOOLm.jpg
 

General Antony

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I don't understand why a single one of these fucking companies would want to help these fucking snake government agencies. If all of them just stood up and said no, what the fuck is the government going to do - take over several entire industries? The corporations could rise up and strike these mother fuckers down in a single blow.

They only have power because people believe that power resides there.
 

Palum

what Suineg set it to
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I don't understand why a single one of these fucking companies would want to help these fucking snake government agencies. If all of them just stood up and said no, what the fuck is the government going to do - take over several entire industries? The corporations could rise up and strike these mother fuckers down in a single blow.

They only have power because people believe that power resides there.
Yea because you can just... well actually you can't really do much about FISC orders. I mean, even if they are blatantly unconstitutional, everything is closed doors. Can't lobby, leverage PR, call your buddy at the state department, anything.

Who the fuck knows, any company could have fought FISC orders and you'd never know. Their issuance is still classified.
 

General Antony

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Their issuance is still classified.
You still are playing their little game.

If you're not going to comply with the order for data why would you comply with the gag order as well? These fuckers have absolutely no leverage if everyone says no all at the same time.
 

BoldW

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That hearing was total PR show.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/20/fisa-court-nsa-without-warrant


"In the absence of specific information regarding whether a target is a United States person," it states "a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States or whose location is not known will be presumed to be a non-United States person unless such person can be positively identified as a United States person."
If it later appears that a target is in fact located in the US,analysts are permitted to look at the content of messages, orlisten to phone calls, to establish if this is indeed the case.
Snowden was right and those bastards in DC are a bunch of liars - The analysts get to decide, and there's no real oversight.

A transcript of a 2008 briefing on FAA from the NSA's general counsel sets out how much discretion NSA analysts possess when it comes to the specifics of targeting, and making decisions on who they believe is a non-US person. Referring to a situation where there has been a suggestion a target is within the US.
"Once again, the standard here is a reasonable belief that your target is outside the United States. What does that mean when you get information that might lead you to believe the contrary? It means you can't ignore it. You can't turn a blind eye to somebody saying: 'Hey, I think so and so is in the United States.' You can't ignore that. Does it mean you have to completely turn off collection the minute you hear that? No, it means you have to do some sort of investigation: 'Is that guy right? Is my target here?" he says.
The NSA is empowered to retain data for up to five years and the policy states "communications which may be retained include electronic communications acquired because of limitations on the NSA's ability to filter communications".
Even if upon examination a communication is found to be domestic - entirely within the US - the NSA can appeal to its director to keep what it has found if it contains "significant foreign intelligence information", "evidence of a crime", "technical data base information" (such as encrypted communications), or "information pertaining to a threat of serious harm to life or property".
It's really strange that for the most part the mainstream media (and Congress) seems to have stopped reporting/caring on the NSA snooping, and most of the stories are form the Guardian or independent news sources/bloggers. Google News doesn't have Snowden or NSA on their left bar anymore either.
 

chaos

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I find it amusing that you think the world should come to a halt over this shit. The first paragraph you linked there, those are standard intelligence oversight rules that have been in place since forever. That has nothing to do with the NSA. Damn bro, you'll eat anything this guy says I guess.
 

BoldW

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I find it amusing that you think the world should come to a halt over this shit. The first paragraph you linked there, those are standard intelligence oversight rules that have been in place since forever. That has nothing to do with the NSA. Damn bro, you'll eat anything this guy says I guess.
I find it amusing that you're all GS Gung-Ho and think it's OK for your government to store your confidential and private information.

I don't think the world should come to a halt over it. I think people should be a hell of a lot more concerned about it than they seem to be, though, and push for actual protection of our constitutional rights, and hey, a little bit of actual transparency would be cool too. I know you think the government should operate behind an iron curtain, but damn.

And I had no idea that having contracted analysts listen in on US phone calls was SOP. Sounds like you've been eating the government sandwich quite a bit there.
 

chaos

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Don't put words in my mouth, faggot. Just because you didn't understand, and still don't, how the government works doesn't mean I think anything is ok.

Analysts collect intelligence through various means. Analysts are not allowed to collect on US persons unless they meet a strict set of guidelines. If analysts are collecting and the question comes up, they are allowed to collect and analyze to determine if the criteria are met. If not, they keep the collected shit on file and have to file some kind of special report. If it does, then collect away bros. This is how it has always worked. This is like intel 101, Woodhouse. If you're going to get your panties in a twist at every piece of bullshit that Snowden says ("encryption works", LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL), at least take the time to learn what the fuck you are talking about.
 

fanaskin

Well known agitator
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Are you making a distinction between targeted surveillance and blanket recording? because you dance between some concepts and it changes the context of what you are saying.

In a blanket recording environment encryption should provide an obstacle to surveillance because it requires more effort to get at the information. If you are individually targeted encryption probably won't do a thing for you, because if they REALLY wanted to they probably could decrypt practically anything , for example.

As an aside a large portion about the overall surveillance state picture is the role computers play in this, there is only so much a person can do and people are harder to control. So let's say you wanted a Stazi state based on spying like what happened in east Germany. It required a large amount of manpower to make that surveillance state happen. The effort(in manpower) it took to make that surveillance state was noticeable. The government having to rely on so many people has some effect of limiting the ability to do such things secretly without people eventually finding out what was going on, or to do

With computers however they can perform the tasks of many men with 0 consciousness about what they are doing, taking more men out of the loop is part of what is going on. This also applies to the drone issue as well, in peoples minds there is a disconnect when a machine performs an action(like recording 1 million phone calls at once, or bombing a terrorist in another country that we aren't even at war with (yemen:emoji_nose: vs a human being doing the same exact action.
 

BoldW

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Don't put words in my mouth, faggot.
Resorting to homophobic slurs. Nice. Can your security clearance get revoked for that?

I think you should be consulting the NSA chief, because you obviously knew how things worked when he flat out, in front of congress, said "no" when asked if the NSA listens or records Americans' phone conversations. Simple question, simple answer. I might not know the inner working of the NSA like you do (obviously you can't talk about it), but I was going off what the NSA chief said.

HE FUCKING LIED, IDIOT. IF you had been there to consult him, you would have saved him from perjuring himself.
 

chaos

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Are you making a distinction between targeted surveillance and blanket recording? because you dance between some concepts and it changes the context of what you are saying.

In a blanket recording environment encryption should provide an obstacle to surveillance because it requires more effort to get at the information. If you are individually targeted encryption probably won't do a thing for you, because if they REALLY wanted to they probably could decrypt practically anything , for example.
I'm just quoting something he said in his Q&A. You have these people who take every word out of his mouth as gospel, even when it displays a fundamental misunderstanding of how our government functions or when it belies the reality of his position as a low level analyst at the NSA. Then he says things that are just so far stupid... I mean come on.