Innocent Or Not, the NSA Is Watching You 410
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Wired: "Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world's communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails — parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital 'pocket litter.' It is, in some measure, the realization of the 'total information awareness' program created during the first term of the Bush administration — an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans' privacy."
End the USA (Score:5, Insightful)
It's time for the revolution. Kill the pigs in charge.
Re:End the USA (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, you're so getting on the NSA's list for that.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure you get on their list simply by posting in a subversive thread like this.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sure you get on their list simply by posting in a subversive thread like this.
Yeah. I didn't bother posting anonymously, because I doubt it makes a difference at this point.
Helping the NSA transcend to abundance thinking (Score:3, Interesting)
"Yeah. I didn't bother posting anonymously, because I doubt it makes a difference at this point."
We don't have much time before the internet could just be used as a tool for a widespread crackdown. As Bucky Fuller said, whether it will be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race to the very end.
As I suggest here, the most viable strategy at this point is probably just communicating in the clear about making this a better world for everyone with an intent to help these various agencies eavesdropp
Re: (Score:3)
To start with the bottom line: the very computers that make the new NSA facilities possible mean that the NSA's formal purpose is essentially soon to be at an end. Nothing you or I say here will reverse that trend. The only issue is how soon the NSA as a whole recognizes that fact, and then how people there choose to deal with that reality.
Overall, you make some great points about social dynamics and changing the system vs. changing your place in the system. That is all very insightful. It is also true that
Oh, you're so getting on the NSA's lRe:End the USA (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow. That was my first thought too. I tell my son all the time that this is not the country I was born into. I was a child in the 1940s. We did have the most free country in the world then. Then again 100% of the problems of the United States and the world can be summed up in four words. The root cause of ALL the world's problems is... Too Damned Many People!
scp /dev/random questions@nsa.gov.org (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, lets fill their data center up.
If everyone uses their free allocated bandwidth to send 1000000000000 billion random bytes to the ISP, or ;yourself;, then they have to log those contents.
So...
Send 1 byte per TCP packet, 1 per 48 bytes.
Send it to .... out your adsl to the NSA gateway.
So even if your ISP sees you sent 100MEG, its 4800MEG wasted space on NSA.
And if its 100% pure random, ie /dev/random and xor it with some other random data, just mix 10 algos together.
Now X that by 100 m screen savers, and watch their datacenter go empty, or they have to filter out pure random crap.
We must look the evil monster in the eye, and say, Fuck you mother fucker, you might have the dollars and cia behind you, but we have 100x more humans that can go crazy wild on you.
There IS NO ENEMY, other than the govt itself.
Re: (Score:3)
While a valid plan, it would fail to be as effective as intended and require more than a simple "cat /dev/random | " type shell script.
Firstly: The kinds of systems they use would be easily able to distinguish between 'garbage' and 'lint' by session analysis. Lint is trivial stuff created by everyday session connections with a start and an end. A constant stream of random data even if encapsulated properly into packets would be about as hard to pick out as a continuous ping. You would either need a network
Re:End the USA (Score:4, Insightful)
THOUGHTCRIME.
It's real.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:End the USA (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:End the USA (Score:5, Informative)
Then again... "intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world's communications" is ok just as long as it does not affect US citizens?
The real problem with this line of reasoning (which is very common in the USA - rights are only for citizens) is that it opens you up to easy abuses. The NSA spies on British citizens, GCHQ spies on US citizens, and both can say 'we don't spy on our own people!'. Of course, they share data when something interesting crops up...
Re:End the USA (Score:5, Informative)
european and eastern governments are no better than the US.
Some European and Eastern governments are no better than the US.
Most European and some Eastern governments are better than the US, whatever measurements you use to define "better" (there exist a lot of international human-rights/life-quality/press-freedom/democracy/crime/health/IQ et c. indices and the same countries usually top most of them, US is usually placed somewhere in the middle (if it is not an index constructed with the sole purpose to show how "good" US is, it is easy to identify those, they have to change their methods of measurement every other year)). Almost all countries around the world behave better towards people living in other countries (even China (the atrocities committed in Tibet is nothing compared to what US troupes does abroad, and China only occupy one region outside China, it doesn't invade a lot of new regions every year like USA (and Tibet was not a very nice place to live for most inhabitants even before the Chinese occupation))), the exceptions being perhaps Israel and Russia.
If you look at Northern Europe (sans Great Britain, i.e. Scandinavia, Netherlands, Germany et c., even France if you fancy), all countries there are much "better" then US, both to live in and in their relations towards other countries. [Except, perhaps, if you consider owning and carrying weapons designed to kill people a basic human right. But both Sweden and Finland have more privately owned fire arms per capita then US, except they are made for hunting animals and are not very good for killing or maiming people, hunting being the most popular hobby in most regions of those countries]
The countries in Northern Europe practise the 20th century kind of democracy, and they are a lot "better" then the 18th century kind of democracies, the model of democracy practised in USA. They may be surpassed by some new 21th century democracy model (there are a lot of experiments in government models going on today in societies in South Americas, the Baltics and the Middle East, perhaps they lead to even better modes of Democracy), but for now, they are as good as it gets.
Myself, I live in Sweden, one of those countries that usually are ranked among the best in different human life quality indexes. I'm highly critical towards the Swedish government and society, and very active in actions trying to make Sweden a better place to live. If you heard or read my criticism of the Swedish society, you could get the impression that it is hell on earth. Except it is not, my criticism i aimed at making Sweden better, I'm very well aware that compared to most countries around the world (including USA) it is almost a paradise. Heck, I couldn't even do most of the things (methods of protests et c.) I have the right to do Sweden in most countries outside Northern Europe, including USA.
Has nothing to do with "hate" or "like" (Score:4, Informative)
Surveillance of non-US Persons has never required a warrant, and never will. It has nothing to do with whether it's a group someone "hates" or "likes".
An intelligence service cannot be effective if its sources, methods, capabilities, and techniques are known to the adversary. Intelligence processes must be kept secret, even in an open society. This has been true for the history of our nation.
NSA is authorized to monitor foreign communications WITHIN THE US, and must be able to identify, discern, and target such communications within the sea of digital communications.
NSA lacks the authority to monitor American citizens without an individualized warrant. And the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 actually is more strict with respect to US Persons than previous law: a warrant is required to monitor the communications of a US Person anywhere on the globe. But what the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 also does is allow NSA to target and monitor FOREIGN communications within the US, without a warrant.
I know some people might be stunned to learn this, but the primary mission of the foreign intelligence agencies is FOREIGN intelligence. But what about "warrantless wiretapping", you ask?
In the immediate wake of 9/11, the administration claimed the the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) allowed them to target American citizens identified as having contact with the enemy and/or were active combatants. The current Attorney General also argues that the President has this intrinsic authority under Article II of the Constitution. This was the same justification used in the targeted killing of Anwar al-Awlaki.
Other examples are things like journalists embedded with military units having the communications allegedly monitored, which would happen under the guise of the Joint COMSEC Monitoring Activity. And then we have the court cases — all of which involved people or groups who were thought to be linked to terror groups, not just ordinary, everyday citizens.
Even the most egregious examples of "warrantless wiretapping" (as alleged in the leaks to the press, or documented in various court proceedings) in the wake of 9/11 targeted very specific people — and were justified by the Justice Department, secretly reported to Congress, and reauthorized every 45 days. And that program had long ended by the time the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 fixed the dismal state of foreign intelligence collection.
This excerpt (An 'Intel Gap': What We're Missing, Newsweek, Aug 6, 2007) sums up the issue:
Re:Has nothing to do with "hate" or "like" (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, you've got that soothing tone down! "Nothing Is Wrong Here, Move Along." Are you a cop? Did you learn it from your chosen news outlets (Newsweek, Forbes)?
Dispassionate mention of "Targeted Killing" check.
Specious distinction between "ordinary, everyday citizens" and people "linked to terror groups" check.
The "Intel Gap" (don't forget the Mineshaft Gap!)
And lastly: "America's Enemies".
I don't know where to even begin. CIA + War on Drugs + FBI maybe??
Organizations like the NSA (because it isn't unique, after all) amass information secretly, which gives them tremendous power. Power they *will* use, not just to inform on those dusky foreigners you're so worried about, but on "ordinary, everyday citizens", members of government, anybody they feel like. This notion of an innocent, transparent government ceaselessly working to guarantee it's citizens' safety doesn't exist in this world, in the US or anywhere else.
Re:Has nothing to do with "hate" or "like" (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow...thinly veiled ad hominem, attacking the messenger, fallacious descriptions — everything but addressing the actual content of my comments. Bravo!
Do you realize that foreign intelligence actually has a purpose, and that the US does have actual adversaries, not just of our own creation, and that there are governments which seek to project ideals and principles counter to ours?
Just because abuse exists — and history tells us it does — doesn't mean ALL activities are exclusively abuse. Indeed, our extremely free flow of information and lack of censorship reveals actual wrongdoing, or what people may perceive to be as "wrongdoing", far more easily than at any time in history. This creates an echo chamber where people believe things are worse than ever.
What's actually true is that we learn more, in more detail, and more quickly about the workings of our government than at any time in the history of our nation, or indeed, human history. Meanwhile, China is arresting people for "spreading rumors", locking down comments on state-controlled social media, forcing real-name registration on the internet, compelling lawyers to swear oath to the Communist Party, and similar.
Speaking of China...they're on pace to exceed US military spending in real dollars by 2025. I'm sure that is all for "peaceful regional defense".
You know, if the US didn't exist after, say, World War II, what do you think the world would look like? A happy, peaceful place? What about Western Europe? Would we even have the precious Internet that is part of the echo chamber where like-minded individuals convince themselves that the US is the source of everything wrong in the world, while in other places, people are, you know, actually oppressed?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What concerns me is the slow decline of freedoms and people's acceptance of them if they happen slow enough.
"if that woeful day ever comes (and I will certainly not go down without a fight!)"
the aftermath of such a day, no matter the outcome, would mean a different country.
I like the country we have, the freedoms we have and i loathe the fact that an act of terror has had its desired effect in changing the policies and thoughts of its people to such a degree that the thought of losing our rights... is accep
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Jersey Shore is a fucking cartoon.
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Surveillance of non-US Persons has never required a warrant, and never will. It has nothing to do with whether it's a group someone "hates" or "likes".
Everyone spies on each other, but not their own, but don't they all share intelligence information? No laws broken.
Re:Has nothing to do with "hate" or "like" (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, the US cannot use allies' intelligence capabilities as a vehicle to sidestep its own laws and directives prohibiting surveillance of US Persons without a warrant. I know some people believe that this is what is happening, but that is neither the purpose nor intent of intelligence sharing between the US and its allies.
Already addressed in my comment (Score:3)
"Other examples are things like journalists embedded with military units having the communications allegedly monitored, which would happen under the guise of the Joint COMSEC Monitoring Activity."
Re:End the USA (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately they rarely do use it for such mundane things as catching murderers and child molesters. Sure - they'll catch a few to show how benign such a system is. But then they'll start using it on ordinary citizens who might for example want to make some political changes that they don't like. Or they'll sell the information to private companies who use it to gain an advantage over their competitors. The possibilities are endless.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:End the USA (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, an example of that is the recent (by recent, sometime in the last couple years) conviction of a defense lawyer for "structuring." http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/local&id=7056927 [go.com]
For anyone unfamiliar with the term, it's the depositing of money into an account in such a way as to avoid triggering mandatory transaction reporting for banks. It's intended as a tack-on charge for money laundering when another crime has been committed. In this case, the lawyer did nothing wrong other than "structure" his deposits. The money was earned legally and all taxes had been paid on it. He even got to keep the money after being convicted, because it was earned legally and taxes had been paid on it. He committed no crime, but because his deposits were designed to not trigger mandatory reporting requirements from the bank, he now has a criminal record.
Re:End the USA (Score:5, Interesting)
No question about it.
Of-course this 'article' is also a piece of propaganda designed for intimidation.
In the former USSR the people just assumed that KGB had nearly infinite powers, this way people lived in fear and were easily turned into 'seksots' - secret collaborator or secret agent.
It was done consciously this way, to ensure everybody is constantly assuming that everybody else is a 'seksot' and to make sure people don't trust each other and behave according to what is expected from them. Of-course there were real atrocities committed, and that helped plenty to create the atmosphere of fear.
I don't have reasons to doubt that NSA is working on projects like this, of-course I assume that the totality of the information that is released is bullshit, but there is something there that is real. Of-course they want every word that anybody ever recorded and transmitted to anybody - this is power of-course.
The only correct solution to this is to stop government from doing this any further and to take apart what they have done already, for this everybody who is in power right now must be removed from it (including the SCOTUS, it's crap) and new people must be put there who must be forced to obey the Constitution.
You must understand that once you allow the government to go beyond any of the authorised powers (Article 1, Section 8), you will have nothing protecting you at all from crap like this, but also from much worse.
NDAA with indefinite detentions, extra-judicial killings, destruction of all rights, property rights, business rights, complete control of what you do.
Income taxes are nothing compared to all the other stuff they do, at least for income taxes they amended the Constitution.
When did they amend the Constitution to build this NSA data centre to spy on all people, completely destroying presumption of innocence, abolishing the idea of the illegality of search without warrant, murdering people based on what POTUS wants?
Is the 2nd amendment going to be the last line of defence from total tyranny? I don't know, it may be not enough.
Re:End the USA (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not really. What the US government does have is lots of clever propagandists to tell you that voting will never change anything. And if a slight change happens, there'll be merry hell to play with your brain to explain to you why it must be reversed.
See minor party George Galloway's recent by-election win in England. Even though he's an angry white Scotsman who beat an Asian Muslim candidate, the press was at pains to claim that Galloway was only elected because the constituency was full of Muslims without
So you would rather privatize it? (Score:3)
So what is the alternative? A privatized system will only increase the ruthless efficiency by which others can mine your life for personal gain, with no "checks and balances" at all.
Just why do you think "privatization" is always the preferred answer given by the GOP establishment. They want not only to govern you. They want to own you as well.
Just be thankful that democrats are so disorganized. In MIchigan the GOP now rules by fiat and where they have dispensed even with the charade of counting votes.
You are not innocent (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You are not innocent (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You are not innocent (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You are not innocent (Score:5, Insightful)
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> "If elections could change your life, they would be illegal."
I believed sayings like that until the Pirate Party started winning seats in Sweden and Germany and started making _real changes_. It must have gone the same way back in the 80s when the Greens formed and started entering parliaments, they also brought real changes.
Today I think that another saying is more appropriate with respect to changes and political parties:
"If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got."
Innocent? (Score:5, Informative)
Nobody's innocent anymore. There is too much information flowing about - we're all guilty of something. Even if you don't quite no what it is - it's not important. You're just guilty of something so it's important that somebody keep tags on you.
Just in case.
Re:Innocent? (Score:5, Funny)
It is know, not "no". Send him to the gallows!
Re:Innocent? (Score:5, Funny)
It's my keyboards fault! I sear it is! My 'k' and 'w' keys ere stolen.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Oops. My apostrophe doesnt seem to be orking either.
Re:Innocent? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
In secular governments, where you can't use the concept of sin / haraam to control people, the only alternative is to make everyone a criminal. You may not feel guilty and afraid of the divine punishment, but you will be afraid of your child downloading an mp3 and your family being financially screwed for the rest of your life.
Re:Innocent? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody's innocent anymore. There is too much information flowing about - we're all guilty of something. Even if you don't quite no what it is - it's not important. You're just guilty of something so it's important that somebody keep tags on you. Just in case.
That's more right than you think. One author claims that the average citizen commits three felonies a day without knowing it (due to the byzantine legal code which can be interpreted any number of ways): Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent [amazon.com]. It's an interesting read if you're into that sort of thing.
While it's probably true that the majority of such cases weren't intentional on the part of those who originally drafted the laws (maybe I'm being naive there), it's certainly true to say that as a rule it's more beneficial for those who value power *not* to have the average citizen be 100% perfect and law-abiding, as knowledge of lawbreaking gives them a legitimised form of pressure and control over them that they can exert if need be.
Clearly, they won't punish the majority of such infractions- and really don't care about them in themselves- but the potential to be able to do so is the main thing.
This alone is one (but not the only) reason that those who say that "those who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear" (i.e. "law abiding citizens") as justification for government surveillance and intrusion are either exceptionally stupid or exceptionally disingenuous.
Life in any country where every transgression of the law was punished would be absolutely impossible and break down quickly. Of course, that would be assuming "good faith" use of the information that let us know this- as I said above, in practice, it would be more beneficial to those in power to simply accumulate knowledge of such offenses and use it against those it deemed most problematic.
Re:Innocent? (Score:4, Informative)
One reviewer wrote,
"With such a provocative title, I expected a thorough list of ways that ordinary citizens can be unwittingly trapped by federal law. Maybe a handful of frightening anecdotes, maybe some telling historical analysis.
Instead, after two lengthy introductions, I find a dense chapter defending ... a Florida politician accused of corruption. And a Massachusetts governor. And a Massachusetts House speaker. When I got to the chapter defending Michael Milken I started skimming instead of reading."
Re:Innocent? (Score:5, Insightful)
At least a member of your family is probably guilty of:
- downloading something
- using prohibited agricultural products
- and if less than 21 and living in the US, using other also prohibited agricultural liquids.
And that's just for starters...
And the real "looser" in this equation, is that disconnect between law and ethics...
how can a parent educate their children when many laws prohibits actions that are hard to describe as unethical, and
many unethical actions are totally legal.
And if you have enough power, you can make illegal actions legal in your special case...
The right wing is pushing the morals out of the window... (and I'm not speaking of the operating system....)
Re:Innocent? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Innocent? (Score:5, Interesting)
This seems like a no brainer on the surface; if water falls on you land it belongs to you. These laws were written before people used personal large scale rain collection. Take a look a little deeper and see what the laws are there to prevent. It is about water rights. In areas where water is precious, like Arizona, water is allocated to different people in different quantities. What would happen if everyone who owned land in a catch basin collected all the water that would normally flow into the local rivers? The rivers would dry up which would mean that fish, land animals, farms and people downriver would get no water. That is the main reason rainwater collection is illegal in several states. Rainwater is a resource to be shared and not hoarded. Some of these laws are being changed to allow small scale (rain barrel size) collection but it takes time to catch up.
Re: (Score:3)
That argument is a little like saying that if you build a dam all people downstream of the dam completely run out of water.
Sure if as you assume the water supply is infinite, but in the real world it isn't and often it stops all together. Irrigation dams are the primary reason why many of the world's major rivers are sucked so dry they no longer reach the sea. People don't just leave the water in the dam and go water skiing, they use if for agriculture, etc. Having said that, I don't agree that rain tanks/barrels cause (or cure) the same problems as dams.
Re: (Score:3)
Take a look at this [wordpress.com]. There may be a war over water rights on one of the largest rivers in the world.
Conflict (Score:3)
There are at least two sets of people in the world;
1. The "keep your hands off" people who want minimal regulations and want to rely on their own intelligence for survival.
2. The "you didn't tell me" people who will blame government for not properly regulating industry and all owing bad thing to happen. They are the one that say things like "It didn't say I couldn't use that cancer causing agricultural product so the company is a fault and I will sue the company and the regulators".
You seem to miss the big
Re:Innocent? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Give me six lines written by the most honest man, and I will find something there to hang him."
The idea's not new. It's just that the period of social democracy in Europe and liberal democracy in America has come to an end, and the West is creeping back to an imperialist Britain of the nineteenth century with some more equal than others under the law. Once we've crept back another 200 years, of course, the very technology we created to liberate ourselves will be used to stop us before we think of setting a foot wrong.
And we'll applaud, just as we'll always applaud our destruction. Some of us will applaud it because we have stuck a "free market" label on it and have faith that it'll all work out; others will applaud it because we have stuck a "communist" label on it and feel assured that nothing can go wrong; so it is for "Jesus", "Mohammed" and every religion in between. Just occasionally, someone will stand up and ask what effect something has on the people living right now - but those people are dismissed by rulers who no longer have to live in the real world, cheerled by those useful idiots who aspire to leave it too.
Re: (Score:3)
Good grief, that's not what the quote means. Richelieu had a team of expert forgers - the six lines were a handwriting sample, that would be used to produce a false confession (generally of dealings with the devil).
Re:Innocent? (Score:4, Informative)
"Give me six lines written by the most honorable of men, and I will find an excuse in them to hang him."
Cardinal Richelieu
That is Because (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
So the only remedy will be overload ? (Score:4, Interesting)
The increase of backup capacity, and computing capacity makes the dream or nightmare of searching through the internet a reality.
Anybody being connected to anybody in a rather short chain of relations it's obvious that we are all at some level "persons of interest".
If you are a "bad guy" you are obviously "fair game", if you know the bad guy, you are reasonably suspect, if you know somebody who knows the bad guy, you might be needed to understand if you are not part of the support group of the bad guy.
Two level more of indirection and the whole humanity is in the dragnet.
No unfortunately there is not one unique "bad guy", so the probability of being more than N+2..N+3 of any bad guy is really low, even if you are a retired nun. (actually, in practice not such a good example).
So anybody can with some justification be "looked at", so it seems that the only way to alleviate the issue is to over broadcast everything, and hoping that the weighting algorithm finds you booring...
Guess it's too boring for me, I'll have to fish for friends in high places, ... so it's back to the "old regime" (as in before Louis Capet got his headache cured, actually not really fair for the guy, and the change where far from smooth, ... but somehow the end of privileges seemed a good idea, and now seems an idea whose time is past ....)
Sic transit gloria mundi...
Re: (Score:3)
I see this increase in serverspace as a challenge for spammers to up their output.
Maybe we should all help them out a bit with some random noise?
This 'outcry' you speak of... (Score:2, Insightful)
What became of it? I mean, did it have any effect? Where is it now? Did anybody lose their job over this? Any elected officials lose their seats? So far the only ones that did were voted out. Bunch of hogwash! Most of the voters want this, and more.
In Soviet Amerika the fascist is YOU!
Not so deep in the desert (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
you sure that's where they are keeping 'the data' ?
??
Re:Not so deep in the desert (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not so deep in the desert (Score:4, Insightful)
you're not getting what I'm saying, are you?
there's no one here would could talk about it, with any direct knowledge AND be authorized to accurately tell what is going on and where.
what did you see? a building being made. and you jump to conclusions based on what? disinformation that comes from those that want to keep us all in the dark?
for all we know, this has been built and working and is in some other remote location and has been for 5 years now. for all we know!
why is this hard for you to understand?
you see some building built, the MEDIA report what they are told and you believe what they say? about such matters, especially?
today, I assume 100% of the info we get is 'managed'. I don't trust a thing that comes from 'established' sources. why should I?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not so deep in the desert (Score:5, Insightful)
Further the Wired account includes illustrations from the Army Corps of Engineers giving the layout (some buildings identified, others not) and it matches every other source of info.
You are taking your paranoia too far. Yes this is a massive NSA Data (and who knows what else) center. It will very likely infringe upon at least a few citizens civil liberties. But there is no question that it is what it is, and that is where it is being built. Something this scale couldn't be easily hidden anyway. It's power requirements are too big to hide in the desert. They had to build a power substation off the main high tension lines just for this facility.
On another note, why did it take this long to hit
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Perchance is there a volcano spewing lava with a big round eye at the top anywhere in the vicinity?
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Maybe they were using 'Utah' and 'the desert' synonymously.
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Location of the Utah Data Center (Score:5, Informative)
Unlimited back ups (Score:5, Funny)
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Oh that's goooood.... (Score:2)
I fell so nice and fuzzy-warm and, and, yes LOVED to be so secure from the ravages of the those others that wish to do us harm.
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Conflicted (Score:2, Insightful)
Many of the same people who are most angered and most vocally oppose such blatant 1984 style mass surveillance are the same ones that consistently vote and rally for more and bigger government, and support the politicians who favor a bigger/more-powerful government.
Yet, they don't see a conflict. They don't seem to understand that when you make a government large and powerful enough to provide all these social programs, entitlements, and levels of regulation, this is what happens. Politicians, being the typ
Re:Conflicted (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, because unchecked corporate rule would never oppress the citizenry. Stop conflating social programs with police states, it just shows your political naivete.
Re:Conflicted (Score:4, Insightful)
binary-thinking, much?
you CAN have both, in the right ways and when designed not to walk all over our assumed basic human rights.
"its A or B. choose!"
idiots...
life is rarely so binary. life is FULL of grey levels.
Re:Conflicted (Score:4, Informative)
A number of northern European countries -- Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland -- provide state health care and pensions, but also respect individual liberties to an extent sometimes even beyond in the United States.
Denmark is #3 in the World Audit Civil Liberties rankings.
Finland is #1
Sweden is #2
Norway is #5
The United States is #15.
See here [worldaudit.org].
These are the classic "Third Way" democracies -- and they outnumber the Stalinist states (USSR, North Korea, Cuba) that are always put up as straw men. In short: Your argument sounds compelling, but, like Aristotle's reasonable-sounding assertion that heaver objects accelerate faster in freefall, it is not supported by empiricism.
Re: (Score:3)
I'd say large corporations do a lot more destruction of individual freedoms than the government does. Corporations have no checks & balances other than the mythological "invisible hand" bullshit.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Conflicted (Score:5, Insightful)
From the summary:
Your "small-government" Republicans are just as much on board with this as the "big-government" Democrats.
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Small government republicans are a myth.
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Your "small-government" Republicans are just as much on board with this as the "big-government" Democrats.
"My" Republicans!?!?
Are you freaking kidding me!?!?
I hated Bush's and the Republican's freedom-killing actions just as much as I hate those carried out by those with a "D" after their names.
Mainstream political parties are meaningless. It's the actions taken, not the party. I think they all should all be taken out and hung from the nearest tree.
Wake up! Stop buying into their political distractions.
Strat
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So who exactly are the small government types? We have big government with social programs and a lot of corporate welfare, or few social programs, lots of corporate welfare and no taxes for the rich. Bringing up the rear, we have the practically no government party with no social programs, free reign to the corporatations and few taxes.
There doesn't seem to be a small but existent government party.
As for potential choices, you left out the entire quadrant of the graph where we have a social safety net but n
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I keep hearing about all of this, but I mostly see it actually perpetrated by private insurance. The next most common place it comes up is Republicans who mostly resent the existence of any sort of social program and want to turn them punitive to whatever extent they can. Of course, they are also the party most likely to tell you what sexual orientation is permitted and when.
We have had "death panels" for years, elected by nobody and answerable only to shareholders. All the interfering in your lifestyle cra
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You'll note that this is an NSA(formed during WWII, post Pearl Harbor) facility being b
Re:Conflicted (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe it is already finished now....... (Score:3, Interesting)
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it appears (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:3)
Budget approval ? (Score:3)
In these days of austerity - who approved the budget for this and prioritised it over building something more useful like a hospital ? Or is that classified information ?
Anyway: now that they have it - I propose that we give them something to put in it, how about we start mailing each other 1MB chunks from /dev/random as attachments named things like HowToMakeABomb and pgp encrypted ?
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For questioning your masters - you are hereby sentenced to ... to ... live in this HELL your masters have made of your country.
Disturbing. (Score:3, Insightful)
I've come across a frighteningly high number of individuals who have a "nothing to hide nothing to fear" mindset. They support things like the Patriot Act without even thinking about.
Very, very disturbing. I really hope they're the minority.
Like the ancient Soviet Union (Score:5, Insightful)
Been to Chantilly VA recently? (Score:3)
The NRO (National Reconnaissance Office) an agency so far in the black the government did not admit it or any of its massive budget so much as existed until 1995 or so, has a massive campus on the main drag in Chantilly, VA and right there on the main gate and over the front door are big signs that say National Reconnaissance Office). Of course the forest of dish antennas on the roof should tell you something, but the fact is that the government really doesn't have play these black box spy games anymore. Because there's little anyone or any government can do about it, whatever it is. Often things are secret because they need to be secret. But often they're secret because that's just what the government does - labels things secret.
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Heh. I commuted to work for a couple months with a guy who works in the NRO office down by the Navy Yard in DC.
What they do is well known now. They oversee and manage our spy satellite program and are part of the Dept. of Defense -- like the NSA.
Watching me? (Score:4, Funny)
OK, NSA. Which finger am I holding up?
Datacenter in the Desert? (Score:3)
Why build a datacenter in a desert? (I know, pork...) the cooling bills will be much higher than if they built it in, say, Detroit, or some other northern city...
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How many military bases are there in Detroit? This one is being built on a National Guard base very near several major thru-ways for the Internet (Both Salt Lake and Provo have multiple, very wide, very fast feeds to plenty of spots all over the country). And yeah it's "desert" but it's only really hot during the height of summer. The other three seasons it's much more mild weather-wise.
Re:Datacenter in the Desert? (Score:4, Informative)
Dang it! (Score:3)
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Your statement is true only if you exchange keys offline. Does anyone still do that? For key exchange we mostly use public key cryptography, which is vulnerable to several different sorts of attacks (e.g. Shor's Alg. on a QC, non-random seeding, version-specific implementation flaws). If the key exchange is insecure, it matters not how many bits are in the key. The article's discussion of cryptography was partly true and partly disinformation being fed to the reporters.
Re: Big Business (Score:3)
Given that is is widely reported that US prisoners make 21% of all office furniture and 36% of all domestic appliance at labour rates between $0.5 and $1.25 per hour, I'd say that big business had a vested interest in getting people locked up. I'd also say that's an "event of injustice" which is widespread against the populace, given the American propensity for jailing such a large proportion of its citizens. I see no sign of the American people taking action, except to elect the politicians who promise to