House to Vote on De-Funding the NSA

[dcarrigg]

Re: House to Vote on De-Funding the NSA

I don't care if it's a private company spying on me or a public agency. I don't care if it's pinkerton putting me in cuffs or the police. I don't care if it's the British Crown that tried to genocide my ancestors or the East India Company. What's the difference?

The public/private distinction is largely a myth perpetrated to make one side think government is evil and the other side think corporations are evil.

The truth is simply that evil is evil.

And collecting and keeping all this data forever is like leaving standing water in your yard during bug season. If the mosquitos don't breed in it, the mayflies will.

[c1ue]

Re: House to Vote on De-Funding the NSA

I almost can't believe that I'm typing this sentence: Michelle Bachmann makes an excellent point here. People are all up in arms about the NSA, but these same people are more than happy to divulge their information to and place their absolute trust in numerous corporations. Do they read the so-called privacy policy statements?

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/0...ent-94674.html

Bachmann made the case that the program doesn’t violate Fourth Amendment rights because the businesses own the records being obtained, not the individuals.
“There is no expectation of privacy,” Bachmann said. “Individuals do not own the records.”

Bachmann is a moron.

These companies don't keep the metadata sought after by the NSA because it is very expensive and pointless to do so...unless they get paid for it.

The NSA Utah center under construction, for example, is estimated to cost $1.5 billion. Why would a profit seeking company store vast amounts of data if said data has zero economic purpose?

Thus only if these companies are getting paid in some way - either via internal dynamics like better customer retention, sales, etc or actually selling access - would they pay to store vast amounts of customer data, or if there were a legal requirement.

The NSA paying Verizon to gather and store the data for eventual transmittal - that might follow the letter of the law, but once again is an obvious violation of any number of things.

What makes you think any country will be any better? America doesn't have a monopoly on this stuff. It will be the same all over, perhaps worse.

Most countries don't have the means. Many countries don't have the motive.

America has means, motive, and opportunity, and has been caught doing it.

[shiny!]

Re: House to Vote on De-Funding the NSA

Juju, if that's your real belief then why are you even here? To bring everyone down to your level of depression? Shall we all sit together in the dark and cry "woe is me" until the end of the world? Would that make you feel better?

People who attempt to make others as miserable as they are just because they're suffering... the word for that is "toxic". I think your nihilistic posts are cries for help. Or attention. So here it is:

Please get help. You need it.

Until then, I need to put you back on my Ignore list. I sincerely hope you feel better soon.

[BadJuju]

Re: House to Vote on De-Funding the NSA

No need to sugarcoat things. This isn't going to end well. And it certainly won't end well for older people who will probably die in droves from starvation or lack of medication or are murdered for what they have because others are struggling to survive as well.

[Adeptus]

Re: House to Vote on De-Funding the NSA

It probably wouldn't matter where you went. Still, I would go to Canada if I could.

Coming to Canada isn't going to help you that much. Most of the major redundant backbone links of our big Telco's (Telus, Shaw, Rogers, Bell, etc) all pass through the States where they are ripe for NSA data collection. Further, CSEC our equivalent of the NSA, though *much* smaller, is suspected to be in bed with the NSA for data sharing, collection etc.
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013.../csec-j22.html

We're all American's now :-(

[BadJuju]

Re: House to Vote on De-Funding the NSA

I'd just like to live in Canada. Seems like a nice country. Good cities, good terrain, and good climate.

[charliebrown]

Re: House to Vote on De-Funding the NSA

+1 Although amazon can track my purchase habits etc and keep it forever, they can't fine me or imprison me. If I don't like the way I am treated, I can close my account. With .gov I would have to ex-patriate myself to stop doing business with them.

I have read some of my privacy documents and they are several pages of legalese. I'm not a lawyer, but I know how lawyers think. Even if the document says "white" is "white" in the legal system it will be argued that in this instance "white" is black. Then you will have to hire a legal person and have a court hearing etc. etc. If you're the 99% you will never be able to afford the time and effort.

I keep a very low profile on the web, except here :-), I do not have a face book account, linked-in, etc.
When possible I use pseudonyms and distort personal information enough to make it hard to data mine
my information. So I'm not "giving it away" as they say.

Establishing and on-line presence will grow more important as time goes on. Some of my oldy friends still have nothing to do with the web, e-comerce etc. They live simple lives, With a family, job and life in an urban setting
it is very hard to do. I choose the e-life style because it saves me time and money.

[c1ue]

Re: House to Vote on De-Funding the NSA

Establishing and on-line presence will grow more important as time goes on. Some of my oldy friends still have nothing to do with the web, e-comerce etc. They live simple lives, With a family, job and life in an urban setting

Unless your friends don't use the telephone - both fixed and mobile, nor use a bank account, nor pay social security taxes or property taxes, nor vote, nor work, nor use credit cards, nor have kids that go to public school, the extent of data that can be gathered for surveillance purposes is still quite large.

You can test this yourself by typing their names into Veromi.net

Veromi as far as I can tell only makes use of property and some federal data. Collate this with phone records like the 'metadata' the NSA gathers, not much left behind.