Topic: PRISM - Who else is disgusted by this? - page 15. (Read 41124 times)

They are completely separate and bloated pieces of the government who probably don't interact much with each other. I highly doubt the IRS has any kind of access to PRISM information

Did it.

This may need its own topic


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nvXn2w_FvY

The people that helped found this country were not stupid they knew exactly what would happen

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
—U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864
(letter to Col. William F. Elkins)

That's a good idea.  Do it!

+1

In this context the right to privacy.  I think the Patriot Act in general affected our Fourth Amendment rights.

I think B. Franklin meant that liberty is needed no matter the situation.

Define "essential".

It blows my mind people are seriously ignorant enough to not give a shit.

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin

Even if you are "innocent" , innocent is defined by the very people who have granted themselves this power.  They can move that line wherever they want as there is zero oversight.  Like Snowden says, they've recorded everything about your life, anytime they want they can go back and use the simplest of things against you and no one is there to stop them.  Bitcoin for example......  

Also, the Director of National Intelligence LIED under oath to CONGRESS.  Don't people normally go to jail for that?

It seems the general debate about prism is already being pushed under the rug.  Its difficult already to find the story on major news networks.  If anyone still cares sign some petitions!

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-edward-snowden/Dp03vGYD

SO...they know exactly what you bought with Bitcoins last week...

No, wait...they don't....

As for that "excellent process to index and categorize"?

You are kidding, right? 

For three years the IRS persecuted me with threat letters saying that I had two kids, not three, and so I was not allowed the third deduction for a dependent.  No number of letters to them made any difference, the threats kept coming.  "Notices of intent to seize", etc.

Man, they sure had some excellent processes to index and categorize, didn't they?

Every bureaucratic system regresses to the mean of simple, plain stupidity.

More than 99% of internet users are noobs or people like you saying "I got nothing to hide so I dont care".
The result: the 1% (probably more like 0.01%) that are very careful with their privacy and encryption is a so small population that they easier can be monitored manually.
Even if they are careful most of times its enough to make mistake a few times and you get identified.
Maybe I sound too paranoid, but you got to think just like your opponent to win the game of privacy.

I agree, the size of this project is on a never before seen level. You have literally close to 0% privacy doing anything digitally unless you are really taking measures to avoid being watched. I don't believe I am doing anything wrong, so I don't try to hide anything. That's beside the point though. Just because you aren't doing anything wrong to tickle the government's balls and catch their attention, doesn't make this widespread of a privacy violation right.

And of course, I understand the amount of data they are collecting could be in the exabyte range which is ridiculously vast. You could argue "even if they can see all that you do, what are the chances they will find your stuff". Well, you don't build something that large without an excellent process to index and categorize the information you are collecting in a thousand different ways/views.

I think most people probably suspected something along these lines.  Still its not everyday something this large is leaked.

I'm glad the first stages are underway but there is 100's of times this information about to come out.  Wait until people find out things like they were given cancer because it was profitable!

It seems I'm one of the few that realizes PRISM, in all its shapes and forms, is nothing new..and as a result, I'm not shocked by it in the least.

"Modern" spying..whether on domestic or foreign persons..has been around for a number of decades (perhaps much longer), though obviously not on this scale. As technology got more advanced, it became easier and easier for "acronym agencies" to collect and analyze data. It was only a matter of time before something of this magnitude was uncovered.

“There is a massive apparatus within the United States government that with complete secrecy has been building this enormous structure that has only one goal, and that is to destroy privacy and anonymity, not just in the United States but around the world,” said Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian reporter speaking on CNN. “That is not hyperbole. That is their objective.”

Absolutely terrifying.  I know this does not solely stem from the Obama Administration, but it is disheartening to see Obama defends PRISM when the overlying slogan of his campaign was governmental transparency....

According to John Oliver on the Daily Show the system that assesses the target's level of "foreignness" is accurate up to 51%.  Thats a 49% margin of error.  A flip of the coin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PCEnkynRuI

There are two NSA monitoring programs reported on.  One collects metadata on phone calls in the US, and the other one, called PRISM, gives access to email and other data at companies like Google.  Initially this sounds bad, but these programs appear to be legal.  The phone-monitoring program cannot listen in on your call without a warrant, but they can see who you called and when.  This program has been reported on for a long time, and collecting this metadata has been legal since 1979.  The other program, PRISM, does not target US citizens, who are protected by the constitution from unreasonable searches.  PRISM collects data of "non-US persons", particularly those in Iran and Pakistan.  These programs have congressional and judicial oversight.  

The uproar seems to be about the possibility that this monitoring program could be turned on US citizens, whether the NSA should be able to collect metadata, and whether the agency is filtering out US data appropriately since Snowden's leak shows that about 3% of the data collected is from the US.  Leaking secret documents about perfectly legal government programs overseen by elected congressmen makes Edward Snowden a traitor, unless we find his claim that the NSA is lying is correct.  There will certainly be an inquiry to find out the truth.

I think the whole argument is stupid.  Everyone knows that information you put online is not private.  Making sure the NSA can't legally access it doesn't fix anything.  There are still any number of corporations, foreign governments, and individual attackers with access who don't care about your privacy.  People who are actually concerned about their privacy encrypt their data.  Which is no one.  Privacy is over because no one cares.

I wrote a blog post about it.  Let me know what you think!
http://sethotterstad.quora.com/Edward-Snowden-is-a-Traitor-but-a-marginal-one

We must assume that governments everywhere are spying on us as much as they can afford. The only real solution is awareness of the spying and encryption to protect the communication. The easiest solution is communicating offline as much as possible, or using PGP and bitmessage online.

https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/timeline
1791-2013
they did skip the Alien and Sedition Acts and  Andrew Jackson's tyranny

if you think G Bush or B Obama started this garbage, read up on it man