Verizon under FISA order to turn over all phone records for all customers to government

[leon grayboat]

The next time people are watching a marathon or parade or at a sporting event and get blown up or have their limbs blasted off, tell me how antithetical it is to do things to keep citizens alive and safe.

Next time someone goes on a shooting spree, we should ban all guns.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Robin,

The next time people are watching a marathon or parade or at a sporting event and get blown up or have their limbs blasted off, tell me how antithetical it is to do things to keep citizens alive and safe.

Yes, obviously, these programs that pre-date the Boston bombings were very effective.

[Opisthokont]

Seconding Shryke and Lev.

Classification of intelligence gathering methods is an obvious necessity of their operation. The question is how these activities should be monitored and agencies held accountable, not whether they should be secret.

The methods maybe, but not the scale and scope. If the public doesn't even know to what degree their communication is monitored, how are they ever supposed to react to it in an election?

[Serious Callers Only]

It's too late. Learn to love Big Brother, you'll need it (also, if you don't get hired to that position for no apparent reason, now you can make a game of it)

[peterbound]

It was too late years ago.

If you guys think this is anything new, you've got another thing coming. This isn't an administration specific program, I hate to break it to you, but this shit has been around for years. Decades even. There were laws in place that helped protect US citizens, and host nations, but when the Patriot Act hit, that shit went away.

It was a fucking free for all in terms of collection and analysis post 9/11. The shit had happened before, but that really kicked it into over drive.

Saying that, I've got no beef with it. I really don't. I'm not sure what the huge hubbub is about, I love my freedom as much as the next guy, but realize to live in the society that we do (safe, relatively free, prospering), I have to expect some sort of oversight/government paranoia. For most people, I'd be more worried about the shit the put into a public setting rather than a private one. People have become fairly adept at fucking themselves both in terms of jobs and criminal activity-wise through social media.

ETA: Now, the IRS targeting programs? That I'd be worried about.

[Robin Of House Hill]

Way before the United States government hoovers up every bit on every single one of its citizens, it should stop granting bogus asylum permits to people from hostile regions, secure the border and deport those who are here illegally. If the country is still at risk, then the government can amend the Constitution if necessary.

I agree that the first line of defense is to keep those likely to cause harm, out of the country. But the monitoring of public networks isn't a constitutional issue..

Next time someone goes on a shooting spree, we should ban all guns.

So, you are all for illegal search and seizure, then?

Robin,

Yes, obviously, these programs that pre-date the Boston bombings were very effective.

Ser Scot,

We may never know. Intelligence agencies aren't prone to doing press releases saying, "we stopped x from doing y". The essence of good intelligence work is when no one knows what happened.

[Horza]

The methods maybe, but not the scale and scope. If the public doesn't even know to what degree their communication is monitored, how are they ever supposed to react to it in an election?

We've seen it in this thread. Everyone assumes that the scope was wide, and scale follows from that. This has lead to a lot of shrugging, as implicitly people believe that this is fine because they haven't done anything wrong.

[Inigima]

Robin,

Yes, obviously, these programs that pre-date the Boston bombings were very effective.

That's a bit unfair, isn't it? Maybe there were lots of other attempts at violence that the program thwarted.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Horza,

We've seen it in this thread. Everyone assumes that the scope was wide, and scale follows from that. This has lead to a lot of shrugging, as implicitly people believe that this is fine because they haven't done anything wrong.

So, by that logic, if I'm not engaged in criminal activity why would I object to a search of my car or my home?

Inigima,

Yes, my comment was unfair.

[Inigima]

Horza agrees with you, Scot.

[Horza]

Horza,

So, by that logic, if I'm not engaged in criminal activity why would I object to a search of my car or my home?

Wasn't endorsing the logic, but I'll wager you've seen and heard plenty of that reasoning the last couple of days.

That's a bit unfair, isn't it? Maybe there were lots of other attempts at violence that the program thwarted.

Doubt stuff like Boston is thwartable, least of all at a price people would accept.

This is the other problem with the unparalleled expansion of the surveillance state: easier to collect the stuff than to analyse, much less to predict.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Horza,

Sorry :blush:

[Merentha]

Doubt stuff like Boston is thwartable, least of all at a price people would accept.

This is the other problem with the unparalleled expansion of the surveillance state: easier to collect the stuff than to analyse, much less to predict.

And so instead, we get a system totally ineffective at actually protecting us that nevertheless manages to intrude on our privacy.

[Serious Callers Only]

Don't worry, with the FBI encouraging persons of middle-east extraction into terror 'plots' i'm sure that there are quite a bit of prevention going on!

[Shryke]

This is the other problem with the unparalleled expansion of the surveillance state: easier to collect the stuff than to analyse, much less to predict.

Which kinda makes you wonder what the hell they are doing or can do with the information.

[peterbound]

And so instead, we get a system totally ineffective at actually protecting us that nevertheless manages to intrude on our privacy.

How can you safely say it's ineffective? Are you privy data detailing the amount of attacks/plots thwarted?

[Fez]

Which kinda makes you wonder what the hell they are doing

Subsidizing contractors that will hire them after they leave government service.

The security state is more a self-funded pension program than anything uber-sinister.

[peterbound]

Subsidizing contractors that will hire them after they leave government service.

The security state is more a self-funded pension program than anything uber-sinister.

Ha, I think that's the most on target statement about the military industrial complex that's been spouted in a while. You see this shit all the time.

[Inigima]

Slate out today with one of their trademark sideways takes: The NSA had bad enough judgment to hire the leaker for high-level IT work with an extremely poor resume and give him unfettered access to all of their crap. And we're supposed to trust them?

The Atlantic with different perspectives, via James Fallows and Conor Friedersdorf. Fallows: If we agree that everyone pretty much figured this was happening, what is this "great damage" the leaker has done by revealing something already known? Friedersdorf: Even if you trust the NSA and the rest of our government not to abuse this data, is it really that bright an idea to have it, when both foreign nations (e.g., China) and independent actors have demonstrated that we aren't very good at securing our systems?

For my part, I wonder how some of you, who feel that the government is corrupt and inept at everything else, have carved out a mental exception for the NSA. Particularly as the NSA has straight-up lied to Congress on this very subject.

[Prosesskrift]

I feel more uncomfortable with a foreign power actively surveilling those of us who have no say in how that country is run.

Which, incidentally, is exactly what's happening here.