Obama Changed Rules Regarding Raw Intelligence, Allowing NSA To Share Raw Data With US's Other 16 Intelligence Agencies (schneier.com) 205
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Schneier on Security: President Obama has changed the rules regarding raw intelligence, allowing the NSA to share raw data with the U.S.'s other 16 intelligence agencies. The new rules significantly relax longstanding limits on what the N.S.A. may do with the information gathered by its most powerful surveillance operations, which are largely unregulated by American wiretapping laws. These include collecting satellite transmissions, phone calls and emails that cross network switches abroad, and messages between people abroad that cross domestic network switches. The change means that far more officials will be searching through raw data. Essentially, the government is reducing the risk that the N.S.A. will fail to recognize that a piece of information would be valuable to another agency, but increasing the risk that officials will see private information about innocent people. Here are the new procedures. This rule change has been in the works for a while. Here are two blog posts from April discussing the then-proposed changes.
Thanks, Obama! (Score:1)
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Ever hear of the Strategy of Tension? Operation Gladio? Do you really think this will decrease terror attacks? Has tearing the bill of rights to shreds been decreasing the number of terror attacks so far?
Re:Thanks, Obama! (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the more salient point is whether or not terror attacks represent any significant risk at all. Now I'll admit when someone Jihadi drives a truck into a crowd of people, that certainly creates some casualties, and by consequence creates a significant amount of fear. But what are the real odds of any resident of a Western country dying in a terrorist attack. In reality, the odds are infinitesimal. Now dying from a heart attack or stroke, or hell, even choking or highway fatalities, those represent massive killers, with huge numbers of casualties with huge costs for society. And yet, here we are, with our stupid Savannah ape brains, unable to discern a meaningful and present threat to our person from a threat that's unlikely to harm you or anyone you know even to the second or third degree ever.
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And yet, here we are, with our stupid Savannah ape brains, unable to discern a meaningful and present threat to our person from a threat that's unlikely to harm you or anyone you know even to the second or third degree ever.
It's not just people from Georgia, it's all over the south.
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I think the more salient point is whether or not terror attacks represent any significant risk at all. Now I'll admit when someone Jihadi drives a truck into a crowd of people, that certainly creates some casualties, and by consequence creates a significant amount of fear. But what are the real odds of any resident of a Western country dying in a terrorist attack. In reality, the odds are infinitesimal. Now dying from a heart attack or stroke, or hell, even choking or highway fatalities, those represent massive killers, with huge numbers of casualties with huge costs for society. And yet, here we are, with our stupid Savannah ape brains, unable to discern a meaningful and present threat to our person from a threat that's unlikely to harm you or anyone you know even to the second or third degree ever.
I honestly think it takes a Savannah ape brain to be concerned with death by natural causes when you already know that if nothing else kills you, then that will 100% of the time.
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And, if I may, I'd like to add tyrannical (especially communist or socialist) regimes to your list of massive killers.
And I hope we all remember the remedy for tyranny and the relative risk of a mass shooting vs. industrialized murder by regime next time a mass shooting occurs and everyone shouts for more gun control (pure virtue signalling).
Some math to back up my reasoning:
Cho killed 33.
Hitler killed 12 million in his death camps (6 million jews + about 6 million others).
At
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I think the more salient point is whether or not terror attacks represent any significant risk at all. Now I'll admit when someone Jihadi drives a truck into a crowd of people, that certainly creates some casualties, and by consequence creates a significant amount of fear. But what are the real odds of any resident of a Western country dying in a terrorist attack. In reality, the odds are infinitesimal. Now dying from a heart attack or stroke, or hell, even choking or highway fatalities, those represent massive killers, with huge numbers of casualties with huge costs for society. And yet, here we are, with our stupid Savannah ape brains, unable to discern a meaningful and present threat to our person from a threat that's unlikely to harm you or anyone you know even to the second or third degree ever.
The fact that surveillance is taking place is itself a deterrent. So, NSA or FBI or agencies know, frequently from emams, which teenagers are susceptible and let the agencies know. No, ISIS is attacking it's own religion, but is effective for kids who grow up religious, wanting sex, wanting passion. You can't have it until after marriage, ergo, it's off to ISIS we go.
Re:Thanks, Obama! (Score:5, Insightful)
Why must something be done?
We have limited financial resources, if spending those same resources on a different problem will save more lives, doesn't it make sense to put the money where it will do the most good? Fighting terrorism costs a fortune, and has a track record of being extremely ineffectual. There are many more places where many more lives could be saved for a fraction of the cost, and all without giving up all our civil liberties in the process.
Re:Thanks, Obama! (Score:4, Funny)
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Then spend the money countering child abuse, researching childhood illnesses, attacking child poverty, heck do something extremely radical like providing health care to children!
Re:Thanks, Obama! (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly, I'm amazed we've survived this long without more rights trampled.
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It started in 2007, when junior Senator Obama voted to give retroactive immunity to the telecoms caught illegally handing over the data on Americans. Interestingly, this was one of the few times the joker didn't vote "present."
It went downhill from there: legalized data "collection" on all Americans, torture handovers, Arab Spring/ISIS financing, coverups (see Assange/Manning/Snowden persecution), etc.
His latest: expanded NSA power to hand over warantless data on Americans to other agencies.
This week the de
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Obama is the one who started targeting specific American citizens for drone strikes because they were maybe related to a terrorist. Trial? What's that.
And he helped increase all this spying which, as you might remember, is now going into Trump's hands.
Finally, he decides to sabotage Israel on his way out and does his best to start a war with Russia, because apparently it'd be a bad thing if we work with them to crush Isis? Frankly, I don't know what he was thinking with this and it's the most disappointe
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You're not free if someone is making you do things against your will.
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That's the simplest scenario - which do you advocate? If it's A, then what happens if you do have insurance? If it's B, who pays if you are not insured and have no means to pay?
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Do you honestly think that option A happened ever before the ACA? Emergency room care has for quite a while been guaranteed to all that come. The ACA didn't change care, it just forced people to have insurance instead of relying on the handouts of hospitals. Were you ever even in an ER before the ACA? They were always packed with people who were not emergencies because so many used them as their regular doctor due to being too poor. If the government wanted to correct the issue, why not go single payer
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For example, maybe the hospital saves my life and then, when they find out who I am they bill me.
Maybe the hospital saves my life, then, when they find out that I have no money, they put a lien on my assets or they can garnish my wages until the debt is repaid.
There are other possibilities here besides forcing me to buy insurance against my will.
And before you straw man me, I'll point out that my argument isn't that I think insurance is always bad and never wise. I'm simply insisting on conse
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Um, that's called "Life in society" dude.
Was that your reaction when women, blacks, and gays sought civil rights? "That's just the way things are; so just suck it up."
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Being against Obama continuing the Patriot Act does not imply someone was for it under Bush. I spoke out against it here then, but supported Bush for the most part. Just because you are blindly partisan does not mean that everyone else is.
Re:Thanks, Obama! (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. Treating terrorism like some great geopolitical threat is like a doctor saying he has to amputate your arm because you have a paper cut on your finger. I'm not saying we don't take measures to keep ourselves safe, but the insanity that terrorism creates among politicians and the general populace is completely out of proportion to the threat that it actually represents. Like the War on Drugs, the War on Terror seems to be more about creating the illusion of government action and keeping law enforcement agencies' budgets big and fat. You'd probably save more lives in a year doubling the number of speed traps on your average freeway than in all the anti-terror measures that have been put in place.
Treat terrorists like what they are, criminals. You don't have a fucking War on the Mafia, you have the FBI and other international, federal and state law enforcement agencies actively working to break them up. To my mind, the worst thing that the West has ever done is overestimate the threat of terrorism. It's given the terrorists what they want, an air of menace that far outstrips the actual threat. I wonder if there would even be an ISIS if the West hadn't spent so much energy making terrorism seem like the greatest threat against mankind.
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Treat terrorists like what they are, criminals.
If only our political leaders had had the courage to do that after the major attacks of recent years.
Statement from the President/Prime Minister: "This was a horrible crime, and our thoughts are with the victims and their families and friends today. We are confident that the police will find the perpetrators and they will be brought before the courts to face the consequence for what they have done. In addition, the security services will investigate whether lessons can be learned to reduce the risk of simil
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the insanity that terrorism creates among politicians and the general populace is completely out of proportion to the threat that it actually represents.
Don't you worry about that, citizen. You just keep on voting big brother into office so he can keep you safe.
Re:Thanks, Obama! (Score:5, Interesting)
You are orders of a magnitude more likely to die from heart disease than from a terror attack. If you're talking about threats to society, then I'd argue your bigger threat is your nearest McDonalds or Burger King. For fucks sake, the sugar industry probably kills or harms more people in a month with its now-revealed war on dietary science than all the terror attacks in the US, Canada and Western Europe in the last half century. If you want to find evil villains, I'd argue you'll find more in a half mile stretch of Wall Street than in half the hell holes of the world.
You've proven my point very well, when you define things by grades of evil, rather than by actual statistical likelihood, you end up believing there are child molesters in every alley and every shopping mall is about to explode in a hail of nail bombs. Meanwhile, companies are adding vast amounts of sugar to many foods we buy, leading to obesity and diabetes rates that will harm and even kill millions of people.
Re:Thanks, Obama! (Score:5, Interesting)
Saying and doing nothing about evil because it's significantly minor is not an answer. The amount of black and Jewish people killed by the KKK was statistically insignificant - maybe 5-6000 over 80 years. And yet the violence, the existence of "strange fruit" matters. And it matters more than highway deaths.
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I'm going to come out and say it. I am not concerned about Muslim terrorists. That's not to say that I or someone close to me being killed or injured by one. But then again, there's nothing to say that I don't walk out my front door tomorrow and get struck by a bus or tomorrow at lunch choking on a chicken wing, or that as we speak a tumor is growing in my prostrate. There are a near infinite number of ways to die, and I'll be blunt, a terrorist attack is very very very very very very very very very very lo
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I'm going to come out and say it. I am not concerned about Muslim terrorists.
Lots of people say and feel like this, and yet, tourism at the Louvre was still down 15% in 2016. It defies reason to complain about wasteful spending with arguments like these because threats are out there and threats can appear in the future. Government is our major way of handling this, an organization created by us for collective defense. I feel like there are lots of people who fundamentally misunderstand some aspect of society to think that this, or things like controlling our borders, are some crazy
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Even if that someone has almost no chance at all of effecting anything beyond the tiniest percentage of the population? So you think vast amounts of money should be redirected from where they actually could save lives in an attempt to simply make people feel better? I'd wager the money would be better spent sending every citizen of voting age to a beginner's statistics and risk assessment course.
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Right now, a whole hell of a lot of money is being spent without making a difference. Better than eight years ago, but still not where it needs to be.
I'll
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I think you need to spend exactly as much as it takes for them to know that as a nation you're ready for them (and that you are not afraid, which overspending would indicate, apart from being wasteful). Again psychology matters. If your were fighting bad weather, earthquakes of epidemic you could go by pure statistics. But with people as your enemy, your level of preparedness helps deter them or invite them to harm you more.
That approach is deeply ingrained in our psyche, and probably for a reason. Going ag
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Lots of people say and feel like this, and yet, tourism at the Louvre was still down 15% in 2016
Sounds like a godsend to me. It is great that the Louvre gets a lot of visitors but the times I was there it was always packed around the popular stuff so you couldn't get close to have a good look.
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These things you're listing are all vastly more under your control
vastly more under your control
Your local government influences road and building safety, you can take steps not to be caught in a precarious place during a thunderstorm, you can take good care of your body and build up solid preventative health habits...........
I don't understand the point of your post. Do you disbelieve in shelter or something? All of these things you have some semblance of influence over, unlike foreign persons, such as terrorists, who are not beholden to the laws of your country. The control you exert over this is y
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I agree, because I'm the opposite - I'd feel wariness over a potential attack but it wouldn't stop me.
I didn't even go inside the Louvre when I was in Paris. Those pictures that come out every once in a while showing how small the Mona Lisa is compared to the gaggle of tourists all gawking at it are pretty funny. I'd love to go there during off-hours or something when you could take your time and appreciate it all rather than be bumping into people constantly
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For fucks sake, the corn industry probably kills or harms more people in a month with its now-revealed war on dietary science than all the terror attacks in the US, Canada and Western Europe in the last half century.
I can't speak for Canada and Europe, but this is caused by the corn industry in the US. Sugar has tariffs in the US to make it more expensive than corn syrup to support the corn industry, so everything uses corn syrup as a sweetener. Corn syrup has a higher percentage by volume of fructose than actual sugar, and fructose is turned into fat automatically in the body. This is part of the problem, but even sugar isn't very good for you in large quantities, but it is at least marginally better than corn syru
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The Nazis didn't come out of nowhere. Their anti Semitism was merely a more extreme form if anti Jewish sentiment to be found from Ireland to the Urals. They were also a home grown menace, not alien invaders into Germany. As to invading neighbors, Germany had been plotting that while Hitler was working as a government mole in the nascent National Socialist movement.
Islamic terrorism does not represent an existential threat to the West
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No matter how you try to form your argument, Islamic extremism does not represent an existential threat in the West.
Yes, psychology matters (Score:2)
Psychology matters.
So our governments and media should stop doing the terrorists' job for them by hyping the threat out of all proportion and trying to keep their populations in a perpetual state of irrational fear.
Some people will still be excessively concerned about something awful happening, whether it's a terrorist with a gun or being hit by a stray asteroid. At some point, that paranoia becomes a significant mental health problem, and the best thing you can do for people in that position is recognise it as such and provi
Re: Thanks, Obama! (Score:2)
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And you'd be right to do so, as are we to see their acts of terror as evil.
Re:Thanks, Obama! (Score:4, Insightful)
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True. But still something must be done.
You just contradicted yourself.
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But still something must be done.
Why?
The problem with that question is it leads politicians to the following:
1) Something must be done!
2) This is something! *
3) Let's do it!
* Where "something" usually has the (intended) consequences of spending more taxpayer money to increase some politician's or bureaucrats fiefdom, and the (unintended) consequences to the cure being far worse than the disease.
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There are plenty of street preachers who proclaim they want sharia law.
There are videos with 1000s (not hundreds) in attendance who want Sharia law.
The time to stand up for progressive values is now. The time to say this is a multicultural society is now.
In Brooklyn, on Atlantic Ave and Court Street, there are at least two Yemini restaurants who actively discourage women from entering.
Ther
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Our brains, like probably all brains, are wired to recognize immediate threat. On that score we are very good at assessing risk; a dark alley may hold unspoken menace, an angry man in a crowd represents an obvious threat, and so forth. Where our wiring falls short is less immediate threats. That's how the media and politicians, either intentionally or inadvertently, can trick our brains into very piss poor risk assessment, and why the solution to bad risk assessment is an actual understanding of threat.
Want
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It is the potential threat of massive destruction in a highly populated area that makes it important we are vigilent against terrorism.
And the only people that can meaningfully make that kind of a threat are major military powers. The best ISIS and al Qaeda can do with their resources is kill a few dozens or hundred at a time.
I'm not arguing that terrorism isn't a threat, but it does not represent an existential threat.
Re:Thanks, Obama! (Score:5, Insightful)
Has tearing the bill of rights to shreds been decreasing the number of terror attacks so far?
The data is too sparse to reach a conclusion. The number of attacks was near zero both before and after 9/11, and the operations you mentioned were not the only variable. We have better security, more public awareness, etc. Either way, terrorism isn't a significant risk, and our government should be diverting resources to finding solutions to far bigger risks, like obesity and dementia.
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our government should be diverting resources to finding solutions to far bigger risks, like obesity
Problem is the "solutions" they'll come up with to fixing that will also take away my rights.....like my right to eat a Big Mac*, or not having to go for a jog today.
What, you don't think that'll happen? Then how is it that we're having this conversation?
*with moderation
Most open and transparent president ever... (Score:5, Insightful)
Most open and transparent president ever, just with your data, not his.
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Encryption (Score:3, Informative)
This answer to this is social (Score:2)
not technical. Both wars are probably already lost.
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There are encryption algorithms not susceptible to quantum computing methods.
Of course, the fun thing about encrypting everything is that they have to decrypt orders of magnitude more stuff than they do now, and most of it turns out to be useless crap like funny cat videos or instance messages saying "wassup, bro?" or the equivalent.
It's like using a shredder. Sure, the pieces can be reassembled like a jigsaw (as the Iranians who took over the US Embassy during the Carter administration proved), but if yo
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Do you actually believe the NSA's quantum computer won't break the encryption you use ?
How charmingly naive.
If government is hoarding code breaking class of quantum computers unknown to or inaccessible to the rest of world/industry then cracking encryption is the least of your problems. Any such exclusive technological edge would be massively dangerous/disruptive.
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Yes, but unless the existence of quantum computers is proven they will not be used much because they have disadvantages over existing algorithms, like huge keysizes.
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Good night, and good luck (Score:4, Insightful)
Convenient, they don't even need to go to the trouble of parallel construction anymore! And the old argument of "don't be so paranoid, the NSA doesn't care about you" goes right out the door. Now your local Sheriff gets to find out when you text your buddy about smoking a bowl, and unlike the NSA, he does care and might have decide to pay you a visit.
As if it wasn't time to encrypt every communication already, it's definitely time to start now.
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Now your local Sheriff gets to find out when you text your buddy about smoking a bowl, and unlike the NSA, he does care and might have decide to pay you a visit.
A bowl of what? Cheerios? You mean pot? If my local Sheriff wants a hit, I'll tell him to go buy his own. No, he can't have any of mine.
Very Good (Score:2, Insightful)
This will continue to push people toward using technologies that protect their privacy and are not vulnerable to this kind of surveillance. If people want privacy, then they must demand it, and utilise software that ensures it. No one should have any expectation of privacy making e.g. an unencrypted call over the public phone network. It's just crazy anyone would ever think that was private in the first place. At least this will help in capturing the more inept criminals and terrorists.
Re:Very Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Phone conversations USED to be private and the authorities couldn't listen in, of course that was when people still thought the constitution meant something, so it's no surprise nobody still believes in such quaint ideas.
Enjoy your encryption while it lasts, I figure we only have a few years left before anyone using encryption that isn't intentionally backdoored will be labelled a criminal and arrested.
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Phone conversations USED to be private
Phone conversations used to be analogue and unencrypted. Phone conversations used to require someone to manually patch through cables and them not listening in was somewhat based on trust. Phone conversations used to be shared between multiple houses so you could hear what your neighbours were chatting about.
Privacy came a long time after phone conversations did.
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The most wrong thing to do is accept the loss of human rights to serve the insane psychopathic greed of corporations. Privacy is a right and people should have the expectation that their right to their privacy will be respected by law. It is the duty of citizens to ensure their rights are protected including their right to privacy. There is no doubt that criminal penalties need to be applied to privacy invasive and abuse corporations.
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The other fun part of this will be that people without the skill of the NSA will be looking at raw data.
Given so many agencies, contractors and staff report to the executive branch they will find the party political results required.
No need to set up an Office of Special Plans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Just feed raw NSA data to all the agencies and find the one that reports back with best party political result.
What the NSA might give "moderate confi
NOT FAIR! (Score:5, Funny)
Nowadays, you can't even have a couple of Romanian prostitutes piss on you in a Moscow hotel without people finding out and pretending it's a big deal. Sad!
Cleaning fee? (Score:2)
Did he get charged an extra cleaning fee?
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I want to apologize to all the Trump supporters for that. I'm just mad because unlike the President-Elect, I'm so poor I can only afford to pee on myself.
Re:NOT FAIR! (Score:5, Funny)
What's he difference between a lentil and a chickpea?
Trump won't pay $1000 to have a lentil on his face.
I'd carry on, but that'd be taking the piss.
But you're still reading, so I guess urine for the long haul.
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Hillary and the dems fit.
Ah yes. I expect after 4 (or 8!) years of Trump and the Republicans, you'll still be blaming the Democrats. It seems like personal responsibility is the antithesis of a quite large segment of the voting population.
Anyway, say what you will, but it's not a Democrat governed state (NC) which has been declared no longer a democracy by the Independent Electoral Commisson. I'll bet that's the 'Dem's fault too, right?
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it would be really nice if you could put a link to what it is your talking about.
http://www.independent.co.uk/n... [independent.co.uk]
Had brain fart and referred to IEC not EIP.
Hillary is probably as corrupt of a politician as we've ever had to try to run for Pres.
The Republicans have been gunning for her for decades and have yet to make a single thing stick. There's hardly another politician who has had such intense scrutiny. And yet, still nothing. Mr Trump on the other hand isn't even trying to hide his corruption, but fo
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That's an odd report for so many reasons.
Not really.
NC really brought themselves into the future, done by the Republicans
That's irrelevant to to whether or not they're engaging in the most shocking display of gerrymandering ever seen in the US. The fact that you bring up irrelevances like that smacks of making excuses. In the fact the rest of your post is a list of things you think the Democrats have done worse elsewhere.
It's very telling that instead of owning that the people you seem to approve of have d
The meme is the message (Score:5, Interesting)
That's especially funny.
Because I believe I explained how this kind of nonsense works in my comment [slashdot.org] from just under a week ago, quoted in relevant part:
People who watch the "news" are like 50 shades behind everything going on. You guys have no idea how hilarious this is while waiting for you to catch up. But the real joke here is that there are people who actually think that CNN & BuzzFeed's "raw intelligence" of Trump pissing on Obama's bed is real. Corroborating evidence? We have a video of someone who gave Trump a golden shower in 2011 [youtube.com]! (quasi-SFW, despite what you might think)
Just don't read this guy's [twitter.com] explanation of how it was sourced from nonsense they fabricated based on this old TIL on Reddit [reddit.com] (amazing how history repeats itself...). But yes, someone can then feel free to link me to BuzzFeed & others "debunking" that one on the basis that the 4chan post laughing about their first victim is newer than the document they wrote during the primaries.
And then we can laugh at how they don't totally "debunk" the dossier based on the fact that they can't corroborate anything worth a damn in it, save maybe that it was created by someone doing an opposition report on Trump who got paid more the longer it was. That way we can all ignore all the more mundane items in the report that were proven to be nonsense. Anyhow, there are far more interesting things to research while everyone else is still wading through the "leaks" and yellow journalism. Feel free to keep wading through the stream, hoping to uncover nuggets of truth. I don't know about you, but after that sort of filth, I need a shower.
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just don't read this guy's [twitter.com] explanation of how it was sourced from nonsense they fabricated based on this old TIL on Reddit [reddit.com] (amazing how history repeats itself...).
You've just linked to some dude's twitter account and a reddit post about Sukarno as evidence of how "fake" this news is, while ranting about how everyone in the world is a stupid sheep listening to "fake news" (except you, of course). Buddy, the only hilarious joke here
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The fact that they've laundered a bad opposition report that has people on the wrong side of the planet in a country they've never visited into "British intelligence" pretty well sums up the modern media and their complete lack of credibility.
But you do have one thing right: I don't listen to the news at all. I pull the actual verifiable facts (if any) out of the news and do my own research.
That can be done really quickly with some sites. You end up with a short list looking like: anonymous sources, ano
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It's at least less dark than all the rumors about cocaine catered kiddie fucking parties.
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Afraid not. My posts don't have enough typos and I've only been involved in the firing of maybe two people. Besides "Donald Trump [slashdot.org]" has had an account here for a while now.
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Somebody's #madonline.
But actually, he's not mad, he's laughing. You can tell because he typed "Haha".
Just suck it up and take the L on this one, buttercup. You're president is a piss-soaked yam who brings a stack of folders with blank sheets of paper in them to a press conference.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-... [thehill.com]
You'll want to scroll down to the photo showing that none of the stacks of folders containing these "important documen
Papergate intensifies! A4, 8.5x11, or LEGAL? (Score:2)
Project much? I'm literally laughing out loud. The only ones who got peed on were CNN & BuzzFeed at that press conference.
I mean, seriously, blank paper? That's your retort? Sorry, I forgot that it was wrong sized blank paper. I can't believe they didn't impeach him for that! Yes, let's now debate the virtues of 8 1/2 x 11 vs. A4 vs. legal. We can then proceed to read Trump's next Twitter typo to the entire world, as if to sum up to the world the bad joke the media has become.
What's this now abou
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College freshmen don't know the gold key from the red key on a Vax.
Look Who the FISA Court Protected (Score:4, Insightful)
So, remember how the FISA court is essentially a rubberstamp for surveillance warrants?
As in they have only refused 0.03% of warrant requests? [motherjones.com]
Well, guess what warrant the FISA court did refuse?
The Guardian has learned that the FBI applied for a warrant from the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court over the summer in order to monitor four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials. The Fisa court turned down the application asking FBI counter-intelligence investigators to narrow its focus. According to one report, the FBI was finally granted a warrant in October, but that has not been confirmed, and it is not clear whether any warrant led to a full investigation.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/10/fbi-chief-given-dossier-by-john-mccain-alleging-secret-trump-russia-contacts [theguardian.com]
WTF?
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Maybe. Two administrations were perfectly fine with them having that power, though.
Fortunate he does this just while moving out (Score:2, Insightful)
This sounds like a time bomb. With more people on the case it is increasingly difficult to vet them all making a fiasco like Snowden ever more likely.
Legacy (Score:2)
Obama just announced his legacy. Just in time for a trump presidency too!
NSA probably isn't very happy about that (Score:3)
From a purely practical perspective (Score:2)
Personally I think they should be disbanded and replaced with real military instead of the current kids that never grew up playing at being James Bond.
Real military folks have rules of engagement instead of the totally amoral spook shit we've seen a lot of lately.
Who else read this as... (Score:2)
Who else read this as... "Obama OK's 16 more agencies to engage in domestic spying, in addition to the NSA, which already engaged in the practice"?
Re: (Score:3)
LOL!
"Obama Promises, Including Whistleblower Protections, Disappear From Website"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... [huffingtonpost.com]
So president Obama ... (Score:2)
... rigged the election.
President Obama has changed the rules regarding raw intelligence ...
Obama now supports whistleblowing! (Score:5, Insightful)
He just needed to get out of office.
Obama made the most pro-transparency move of his office time. By greatly increasing access to secret information, the odds of us knowing the lies and crimes of the future administration are also increased. Let's hope for new troves.
Re:Partisan Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
The Republicans won't make noise about this because they want it just as much as the Democrats.
You seem to think there's an actual difference between the 2 parties on issues like this, there isn't. Both parties want a full on police state, politics is all about control, nobody in politics wants less control, they all want more.
Re:Partisan Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
Why wasn't Obama impeached for spying on Americans?
Why wasn't Bush impeached for spying on Americans?
Why won't Trump be impeached for spying on Americans?
Re:Partisan Nonsense (Score:5, Funny)
Will we be allowed to suggest it for the first orange president?
Re: (Score:3)
That's where end to end encryption is invented for. Apple, Google, etc. can not read the data themselves.
Re: (Score:2)
A lot of US brands face the NSL issues to help the US gov.
The UK has its own laws about what the UK gov and its security services can see and be given by any UK brand.
Now that Australia, NZ, Canada, the UK, US agencies are all getting same raw NSA product, thats a lot of staff who have to be totally trusted all the time.
Thats a lot of party political staff, contractor think tank connected staff, random contractors rushed into a role with som
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Quite the opposite.. he's trying to ensure that fascism DOESN'T come to America. ... by making it a surveillance state that would make the Geheime Staatspolizei (gestapo) or the later Stazi green with envy.
A surveillance state which, BTW, the next president will inherit in a week.
Re: (Score:2)
...US agencies have failed to identify terrorists because big data obstructed a proper investigation.
Sorry, wrong.
US intel agencies both intentionally and knowingly ignore terrorist intel they have and intentionally and knowingly have not and are not truly trying to utilize or effectively collect and analyze data/intel for use against foreign terror threats. Terrorist attacks give them the perfect scare tactic to convince people to allow them more power and control. The entire manner, types, technologies, architectures, and methods used are only truly suited best for only one thing: domestic data collecti