Attempted Breach of NSA HQ Checkpoint; One Shot Dead 308
seven of five writes One man is dead and another severely injured after a shootout at one of the main gates of the National Security Agency located at Fort Meade, Maryland. Two men dressed as women attempted to 'penetrate' the entry point with their vehicle when a shootout occurred, officials said. The FBI said they do not believe the incident is related to terrorism.
Why is penetration in quotes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Being dressed as women has nothing to do with putting 'penetration' in quotes, unless there is some sort of joke I'm missing. Why is it in quotes?
maybe because it's a quote (Score:3)
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What's the point of quoting a single word? Is their word choice relevant?
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That really doesn't mean it needs quoted.
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That really doesn't mean it needs quoted.
To be, or not to be. That is the ques... no, it's not even a question in this case.
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"To be or not to be", or, in it's C style syntax: "2b || !2b", is not a question at all. It is a tautology. It is true regardless of what semantic value you assign to 2b.
Shachar
P.s.
Yes, I know, C identifiers cannot begin with a digit.
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I gather you've never read the source material?
That particular soliloquy was Hamlet's musings on suicide as a solution to his problems....
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Possibly because it's the operative word of a quote.
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That's why you always go with pocket sand.
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Well, thanks to the omnipresent (and privacy-invading) video-taping, we know, he really did rough-up the clerk [youtube.com]. Without the video, who could've guessed the gentle momma boy could've hurt a fly on his way out of a convenience store with stolen goods?..
Yes, someone in this thread is attempting to rewrite history... I guess, I'm a KKK too now...
Ballsy, but stupid ... (Score:5, Insightful)
So in some abstract sense I can see why the NSA could be considered a valid target in some contexts.
But, honestly, trying to gate crash an Army base and then getting into a shooting match with the guards ... well, that's a special kind of stupid.
Re:Ballsy, but stupid ... (Score:5, Informative)
Having visited the NSA facility myself many years ago, it is incredibly stupid. The military guards at the NSA are extremely alert, extremely competent, and very well armed. They will not hesitate to point a gun in your direction, or open fire if you fail to immediately comply with their orders.
They are not your typical security guards or your typical police. They are a level above that, and you do not want to mess with them.
Re:Ballsy, but stupid ... (Score:5, Insightful)
There comes a point where what you are doing is telegraphing that you are no ordinary citizen doing ordinary things.
Approaching that gate with the big barricade, armed guards, and the huge sign which says "this isn't your usual place, and it isn't under the usual rules ... keep the hell out", and then deciding you're ramming it anyway? Well, as I said, that's a special kind of stupid.
It isn't like these guys went trigger happy and went after someone who was doing nothing at all. Trying to drive through a military check point on a military base sends a specific enough signal that I think to expect to NOT get shot in that context makes you an idiot.
Ramming gates on a military base isn't something you can reasonably expect to fall under the domain of things you can do without Really Fucking Bad Consequences.
I'm among the first to complain about government over-reach. But fucking with armed military personnel under strict orders to keep everybody out? Definitely not that.
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They were trying to get out, not in, according to the apparently very lightly read article...
Re:Ballsy, but stupid ... (Score:4, Insightful)
While it may have been true that they were overall trying to get off the base, their attempt at entry to the NSA area is what got them shot at. It was "NSA police on the scene fired on the vehicle when it accelerated toward a police car,", i.e., using their vehicle as a weapon, that got them shot.
People who get lost trying to leave a military base (dressed in drag for some reason, it seems) should not ignore security when they approach a gate that has armed guards. That is, as another poster puts it, monumental stupid. And people who are just "lost" won't try to ram a police car just for fun.
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Indeed lube always helps with penetration.
Re:Ballsy, but stupid ... (Score:5, Insightful)
While true that apparently the gate crashers didn't shoot anybody
1) This wasn't the NSA, directly. It was the US Army guards from what I can tell.
2) If you try to crash a gate guarded by any Army, I think you should reasonably conclude you might get shot
I dislike the NSA as much as any nerd, but by the time you're talking about the people who guard military bases and other secure compounds you kind of need to understand these guys are deployed under a set of orders which says "we'll be polite as long as that is possible, and then we'll be significantly less so".
Maybe you think the armed guards on a military base should say please and thank you and be friendly, but there's usually big giant signs that say "do not taunt the lions, they will bite".
It's hard not to see getting shot as a completely logical outcome of what happened.
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Magnificent comment. Would that I could mod you up past +5.
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Cue the obvious conspiracy theory.
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"Speaking as someone who wants to see the NSA dismantled, I hope these shooters died painfully if they were doing it as a political statement."
Yea and since both statements are pretty much crazy we can now dismiss you.
To hope for someone to die painfully in this case is unethical at best. These people had to be stopped. The best result would have been for no one to be injured but to seek others to die painfully is nothing but revenge and in this case unwarranted.
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Re:Ballsy, but stupid ... (Score:4, Informative)
Reminds me of the time in the mid-70's when we were going from Boulder to Arvada via the road south to Golden and mistakenly turned at the entrance to Rocky Flats (where the "triggers" for nukes were made). We pulled up to the security shack and the guard politely told us that we needed to back up, turn around, go back to the highway and take the next turn. We asked if we could pull forward a few feet and make a u-turn around the guard shack and he said that if we moved forward, he'd have to shoot us. We kindly thanked him for his assistance, backed up, turned around and got the hell out of there.
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Except for the guards at Area 51 - the outer perimeter guards there get so many UFO conspiracy theorists trying to breach the defences, they are very reluctant to use lethal force. No point killing UFO nuts, they aren't harming anyone. It's something of a badge of honor for a UFO nut to be able to claim they've actually stood upon the soil of Area 51 - for the few seconds it takes for the guards to catch up.
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Re:Ballsy, but stupid ... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's an Army base with 95 units from all branches of the military and over 10,000 active military personnel. That the NSA also happens to have its HQ there really doesn't matter when it comes to determining the appropriate response. If you decide to literally crash the gates at an active and in-use military base, most would find "Open fire!" to be a perfectly reasonable response. People don't ram military gates so that they can carry on a civil discourse with the folks behind them.
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Re:Ballsy, but stupid ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The car could have been easily stopped by ramming it off the road, and people tackled and arrested.
This isn't Hollywood. That's a course of action that has pretty good odds of resulting in the people attempting to do the arrest injured or killed.
You'll rue to day in America when you allow any idiot with a badge shoot anyone for any reason
This isn't "any reason." This is attempting to ram the gate at a secure checkpoint, where the use of deadly force is expected.
I'm not willing to risk the lives of law enforcement or soldiers in order to try to spare people who are apparently too stupid to live.
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I absolutely agree with the latter half of your post, that these guys got what they deserved for trying to ram a military checkpoint, but I disagree that non-lethal options couldn't have worked.
I say this because I live in the UK, where non-lethal is the only option available to most our law enforcement officers, and they stop aggressive drivers regularly without harm. Even where armed police are involved they typically shoot the vehicle unless there's evidence one of the people in the car physically has ho
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What I'm saying is that death penalty should happen as a last resort, not a first line of defense. The car could have been easily stopped by ramming it off the road, and people tackled and arrested
The first line of defense is the stop sign. The second line of defense is the guards yelling "Stop!" The third line of defense is a gate. The fourth line of defense, in this case, was a pair of parked police cars that the SUV (reportedly) rammed through.
Guards discharging their weapons was decidedly not the "first line of defense." I'm not sure what else could reasonably have been done in short enough time, to stop a vehicle with demonstrated willingness to perpetrate violence, but ramming through the p
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Life imitates art (Score:5, Funny)
Pretty sure this is just "The Americans" fan fiction...
You would think (Score:5, Funny)
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But they couldn't act on it in advance or they'd risk revealing just how much they know. /paranoia
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Clearly they were not targeting drag queen forums. This oversight will be addressed.
stupid (Score:2)
Re:stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, I'm a pretty heavy user of tinfoil with an inherent distrust of government.
But even I don't need to look at this as an abuse of power by the government.
The rights of US military personnel to shoot your stupid self for trying to ram through a gated checkpoint with big giant signs saying "we can and will stop you, by force if necessary" has been established for an incredibly long time.
Most of the last century, I should think. Probably MUCH longer.
Sorry, but this falls entirely in the domain of "if you didn't see this one coming you're an idiot".
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Power mongers will use any opportunity.
A sign of progress? (Score:2)
"The FBI said they do not believe the incident is related to terrorism."
WOW! Seriously. This is great news. I just figured EVERYTHING was ALWAYS called "terrorism" now. Is someone finally figuring out that if everything is terrorism, then nothing is terrorism? Do we no longer need to invoke the boogeyman every time something bad happens? Oh happy day.
Re:A sign of progress? (Score:4, Insightful)
I just figured EVERYTHING was ALWAYS called "terrorism" now
No one at Lufthansa or the German government have called the Lufthansa mass murder `terrorism.' The '09 Ft. Hood shootings are still officially classified as `workplace violence' despite all evidence to the contrary, and Nidal Hasan was not charged or convicted has a terrorist. Obama has never gone further than the generalization that "anytime bombs are used ... it's terror" regarding the Boston marathon bombings, and Tsarnaev isn't charged under any terror statutes.
Is someone finally figuring out that if everything is terrorism, then nothing is terrorism?
They've figured it out just fine, as the specific cases I cite prove. The authorities are clearly being conservative with the use of the term `terror' and erroring on the side of `not terror' in their prosecution of violent acts. The problem isn't our authorities labeling `everything' terrorism. The problem is the fictional world filled with hysterical terror-mongers you've nurtured inside your head. It's not real. There is something wrong in there.
should have dressed as laser techs (Score:2)
Not related to terrorism (Score:2)
The FBI said they do not believe the incident is related to terrorism.
In other words, it's only terrorism when it suits our political agenda to call it that.
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The FBI said they do not believe the incident is related to terrorism.
In other words, it's only terrorism when it suits our political agenda to call it that.
I'd more expect it to be an instance of espionage, not terrorism. Why do you expect every attempt to breach a government facility to be called terrorism?
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Generally, terrorism is targeted at civilians or civilian infrastructure. An attack on uniformed soldiers at a government/military installation is not terrorism.
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Pretty sure the people on American Airlines flight 77 were civilians.
And I'm pretty sure the US Army guards in front of the NSA building are uniformed military.
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Or it just means that they're white.
Most acts of terrorism perpetrated in the US are by white, native born US citizens. It's just not politically expedient to call abortion clinic bombers, church/mosque/synagogue burners, or treehuggers that sabotage logging operations 'terrorists'
Terrorist is, in the public eye, means foreign brown person that practices some pagan religion (Yes, I'm aware the irony of that in light of what religions are an arent considered Abrahamic.)
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After along weekend on the town. (Score:2)
Um, Yeah... (Score:4, Interesting)
Exiting (Score:5, Interesting)
According to a CNN article, they were leaving the secure area, not entering. A quote from an official said they failed to follow proper safe EXITING procedures. Another major news site said that a gun and cocaine were found in the vehicle. It's a large complex and a lot of people live in it. Sounds like drugs were being ferried in or out, and it didn't have anything to do with the NSA or secrets.
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It has certainly been reported as happening multiple times, and, given the known corruption of the police, is quite believable.
OTOH, these weren't police. This was a military base. I've never heard it claimed in that situation (though I'm rather sure it has happened). In most circumstances the guards are quite civil, even when you don't know the procedures. But they are armed and under orders to use such force as is necessary...including lethal force.
It's my expectation that, if the full story ever beco
Cross Dressers Attack NSA? (Score:3)
And another thing, with all the target practice; NSA missed? Or was the other cross dresser that stunning?
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So you mean World of Warcraft?
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Why is this here?
Because the NSA, with all its massive data collection, retention, and analysis, did not see this coming.
Re:News for nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
They tried to breach one of the most secure locations in the world by crashing an SUV into the gates. If they even had a "plan" going in, I'd imagine it was made with crayons and construction paper. Maybe a couple toilet paper tubes and some elmer's glue if they decided to get extra fancy.
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Why is this here?
Because the NSA, with all its massive data collection, retention, and analysis, did not see this coming.
Obviously they didn't plan this over the phone, or via email, or in front of their TV that sends their voices to the 'cloud', or any of the other myriad of ways the NSA should have seen them and caught their plan.
Or quite possibly the NSA had the needle of necessary information buried in a gigantic hay stack of useless dreck. In this case, if you know absolutely everything then you effectively know nothing.
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Stop watching TV.
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But why didn't the FBI's country-wide license plate trackers not catch them?
Hint: not everything you see on NCIS or CSI:Wherever actually works like it dos on TV.
Or is that only to trace their movements after they do something bad?
It can definitely help to be able follow the trail after someone does something especially awful - sometimes bad guys actually have accomplices.
But more to the point in this case: reports are that the vehicle they used was stolen, along with its license plates.
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But why didn't the FBI's country-wide license plate trackers not catch them? Or is that only to trace their movements after they do something bad?
The historical database of license plate sightings is a terrific source of circumstantial evidence against people suspected of wrongdoing.
eg: your wife turns up dead. You renewed her life insurance policy a month ago. Three weeks ago, your car made several visits to "the bad part of town," possibly while you were at a murder-for-hire meeting. Nevermind that your insurance policy renews every February, and that a water main break diverted your commute.
Many things look suspicious once suspicion is upon yo
Re: News for nerds (Score:3)
Conversely it might exhonerate you entirely because once its established you were driving you have an alibi for your movements the entire way.
Re:News for nerds (Score:5, Funny)
FTA
" An NSA police officer shot one of the people dead dead and seriously injured the second."
Apparently the culprit was shot double-dead /.
Nerds love zombie stories, hence it is on
Re:News for nerds (Score:4, Funny)
Has Barbara Hudson posted today?
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subtle, but funny. for the lack of mod points.. =/
Re:I hope it was an NSA Agent (Score:4, Insightful)
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No its pretty easy, they were in disguise trying to pass a bad guys checkpoint....
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Funnily enough, you didn't read the title of the post you replied to.
Re:I hope it was an NSA Agent (Score:5, Insightful)
By "agent", perhaps you're thinking of the CIA. The NSA doesn't have agents, only analysts and various other white-collar workers. Their charter is to gather and analyze information for other branches of government (such as the CIA), not to act on it themselves.
That said, as I understand the news, the death was actually of one of the attackers. In any event, this gives me an opportunity to climb on my soapbox about something that's been bothering me a lot lately.
[begin soapbox]
Why do we celebrate the deaths of "innocents" so frequently lately? An NSA employee could be a manager, an analyst, a security guard, a janitor, or many other types of employee. Do each and every one of those human beings deserve to die because of actions you disagree with that were taken by the organization as a whole?
Coincidentally, I read today about some grisly testimony from the Boston Marathon bombing of innocents who lost their lives or were seriously wounded. This mentality of "any person who belongs to a group I don't like deserves to die" may seem appealing at first, but it becomes less so when you realize that you probably also fit into some group that someone else disagree with.
Or, to paraphrase John Kennedy, "Ich bin ein infidel".
[end soapbox]
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Because everyone is the good guy in their own eyes. Even the worst oppressive dictators don't view themselves as oppressive dictators - they are just trying to do the best for their people, and if the people don't see it that way then they need to be controlled for their long-term benefit. Also because even the most corrupt organisation is composed largely of people just doing their job - they don't particually want to work for the evil empire, but they have bills to pay just like everyone else.
Re:I hope it was an NSA Agent (Score:4, Insightful)
Because everyone is the good guy in their own eyes. Even the worst oppressive dictators don't view themselves as oppressive dictators - they are just trying to do the best for their people,
If you think that Saddam or Bennito or Idi or Fidel thought they were doing the best for their people, you are sadly mistaken. They knew what they were doing, and they knew who the intended beneficiaries were.
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If you think that Saddam or Bennito or Idi or Fidel thought they were doing the best for their people, you are sadly mistaken.
They just had a narrower definition of "their people" than you seem to be using.
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It's the dead level of dead, obviously.
It lies between "pretty dead" and "extra dead".
Re:Only mostly dead? (Score:5, Funny)
So the scale goes:
Mostly dead- Slightly alive.
Pretty dead- Don't expect them at poker night next friday.
Dead dead- Attempted to invade the NSA.
All dead- Go through their pockets and look for loose change.
Extra dead- Now that's just excessive. I mean really, what possessed you to just keep going like that?
Un dead- Well congratulations. You killed it so hard it went far past Dead on the Life-Death scale and looped around to the other side.
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It's "living dead" not "un dead" - the zombie lobby will be up in arms at that non-PC language.
Actually maybe that's what the article is claiming. The living dead zombies were attacking the NSA but they are now dead dead since luckily an agent on duty new to aim for the head.
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Its like done and "done done". We may want to adjust our definition of "done" and "dead" in our next retrospective.
I'm not dead yet (Score:2)
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Well, there's "almost dead", which Miracle Max [youtube.com] can still cure, as opposed to "all dead" when all that's left is search their pockets for loose change.
Then there is "mostly dead" which you can have all day and still foil the plan of your adversaries [youtube.com].
It seems to me that the poor saps who tried to invade the NSA went from "mostly dead" to "almost dead" to "all dead" in very short succession. Thus they are a special class of "dead dead".
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Double-plus dead, now another visit from Minitrue for you.
next week on CSI: cyber ! (Score:5, Interesting)
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No. Terrorism is a word to referencing 1st graders eating their poptart in the shape of a gun.
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Now i'm not saying that it is, perhaps it was just a drunken rage or some other non politically motivated random act, the base had over 29,000 people on the inside of the wall. It could have been simply a case of adultery involving a person inside the perimeter. Naturally because of the target we all go to political motivation as the driving factor but until we learn more we can assume any infinite number of factors inspired the event.
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Because they hadn't been grooming the suspects and didn't help them obtain driver's licenses; which means these people were at least competent enough to acquire a car and fuel on their own.... so its unlikely to be terrorism in the sense we have become accustomed to in the past decade or so.
Re: Not terrorism ? (Score:2)
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The intelligence agencies in particular, are pretty good about insisting that attacking soldiers/"combatants" is not terrorism. The NSA probably insisted that the FBI say it wasn't terrorism.
Note, the reason the Intelligence agencies are good about not falsely claiming terrorism is that they themselves routinely kill people for political reasons and they don't want other people to call them terrorists. After all, you don't wan
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Also, it's harder to call something "terrorism" when the targets are heavily armed, more than capable of defending themselves, and are unlikely to be "terrorized" by the attack.
Re:Not terrorism ? (Score:4, Insightful)
No kidding ... attempting to force your way into something guarded by armed military personnel and then discovering they're not afraid of you isn't terrorism.
It's a frickin' Darwin award.
I consider that only one of them is dead to be either extraordinary luck, or surprising restraint on behalf of the soldiers.
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Among other things, it means the bombing of the navy ship USS Cole is not a terrorist attack.
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They are saying its not terrorism because if this was terrorism, they should have know in advance of this given that's what they exist for.
Can't let people know they never succeed at their primary objective. Or do anything but support illegal parallel construction.
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Perpetrators did not have muslim-y names.
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>The FBI said they do not believe the incident is related to terrorism.
How can they know this so quickly ? I thought terrorist was a label for persons using violence for political motives.
Who said they were using violence? Trespassing doesn't imply violence. And they were the ones who got shot. They themselves didn't shoot anyone.
They could just have been a couple of well known protesters with no history of violence, but with an history of trying to do publicity stunts for their cause.
If anyone should know, it's the NSA. For about an hour, I bet every NSA analyst dropped what they were doing to investigate and go through the life records of these two individuals.
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There is no they in the sense of a bureaucratic determination. There was just some reporter asking questions of people who may or may not know what really happened.
Re:interesting that so many AC call NSA the... (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't take a foreign government funding a team of trolls to fill a small page with angry comments about the NSA
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Because exercising freedom of speech makes one an Enemy Of The State, right?
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Foreign governments?
Surely you must have noticed all the bad press the NSA has gotten lately with the Snowden leaks.
Even the most patriotic American might be disturbed upon learning that a trusted government agency has been illegally spying on American citizens for years.
Frankly I'm surprised that you seem to be standing up for the NSA. That takes some guts.
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I choose to worry about things that are more likely, like identify theft.
So putting back doors in encryption software is OK when done for national security purposes. But bad when hackers exploit these same engineered weaknesses to steal your personal information. Leave your front door unlocked so the police may more easily conduct searches. Never mind that the incidence of burglers cleaning your house out will be orders of magnitude more common. And don't forget that Snowden was an anomoly only in that he forwarded data he absconded with to the press. The NSA/FBI/CIA is full of
Han shot first. (Score:2)
The men who allegedly attempted to trespass on government property did not shoot back.
Well, duh, Crash the gates of a capital district military base and you won't live long enough to get a chance to shoot back.