Welcome, fellow terrorists. What mayhem are we going to stir up today?
Sometimes it feels like the NSA is run by an AI, with the only instruction being âhigher securityâ. Everything else, be it privacy, respect for humanity, oversight, everything, are merely obstacles to be overcome in the search of maximizing security.
The reason we have humans running things is because theyâre at least supposed to be evaluating the trade-offs between the goal and the cost to humanity.
Someone who truly believes that even one life lost to terrorists is too much to pay for humans freedom and privacy should be kept well away from any power.
While itâs nice to know that at least someone is paying attention to me, I canât help but feel that the non-exclusive treatment, being lumped in with so many others, is something of a backhanded compliment.
Itâs worse, the prime directive isnât âmore securityâ, itâs âmore surveillanceâ.
With their ravenous desire to know everything about everyone the NSA is actually burying the people responsible for finding real threats to security in trivial bullshit.
I think we all kind of figured as much. Good morning NSA.
Since you follow me everywhere, perhaps you should involve yourselves in the blatant corruption going on at the lower levels of government. Yeah, I know you know what Iâm talking about. Start being useful.
I wonder how many of the No Secrets Allowed people end up reading and agreeing. It leads me to think that some of those people are doing their own looking around at things are now thinking about their own actions as part of the machine.
An additional thought ... this is an opportunity to spread the anti-surveillance message. Including info about how NSA people can protect themselves when blowing the whistle.
I am also wondering just how deeply the NSA intrudes. What is the likelihood of our individual systems being targeted with spyruses, etc (spyrus, a virus especially coded to provide government surveillance from within a person's digital device - differentiated from spyware in that it is used exclusively by government agencies)I suspect thatâs true, but (1) you can spend the rest of oneâs life arguing counterfactuals and persuade almost nobody and (2) to argue that its ineffective implies that you accept the basic premise that such measures would be acceptable if they actually save lives.
Far better to go after the basic premise.
HA. Jokes on them, Iâm not a US citizen, and theyâve considered us fair game since the 70s.
The obvious question for Congress to ask â if it hasnât already been asked and answered â is how many targets do you have?
If they say 10,000, then we are reassured. If they hem and haw and eventually admit the number is 10,000,000, then we have a small problem⌠Of course they will just lie under oath if they are asked in public in one of those rare situations in which they actually have to answer, but even so the actual number of targets is the operative consideration in evaluating the extent of their depredations.
Now the NSA is going to go in extra deep on you because youâre a foreigner who reads Boing Boing.
For all they know, you probably have an explosive ukulele with plastic explosive bananas embedded inside of it as we speak.
I read BoingBoing, have looked up Tor, am using a VPN as standard and am not a US citizen. Oh, and I was made a contributor to a pro Snowden page on Facebook. Guess that makes me an obvious terrorist. Should I start wearing a burqa?
Should I start wearing a burqa?
No, just lay on the floor with your arms spread out at your sides and the authorities will be there in a few minutes.
Cory sezâŚ
If thatâs true, itâs big news, as Snowden was the first person to ever leak docs from the NSA. The existence of a potential second source means that Snowden may have inspired some of his former colleagues to take a long, hard look at the agencyâs cavalier attitude to the law and decency.
Welp, I guess I should say hi to the feds who are have been following me. Hope you like being bored!
âWell, we were trying to keep the theme of the next issue of Make:Magazine a secret, but you just went and blew it. Thanks a whole bunch, @Cowicide!â
~Make Team
Hope you like being bored!
That sounds suspicious.
The headline is a bit misleading, is it not? Surely the people searching for online articles about Tails or Tor make up only a relatively small subset of BoingBoing readers.
Shocked? This is precisely what I expected and is precisely what has worried me about commenting on sites discussing it.
Kind of begs the question: since TOR was a freaking US Naval project, does that mean the entire Navy is under deep-packet surveillance?
For some reason I find the Kafka-esque overtones of such a fantasy strangely comfortingâŚ
With all due respect, how did you reach this conclusion?
If the google-translated version is accurate, I donât see anything about BoingBoing, or similar sites. Maybe I missed the connection, but it reads like they are targeting people who search for Tor, Tails, etc. Not people who read sites that mention Tor, Tails, etc. I think thatâs a pretty large distinction.
P.S. props to Jorpho who just ninjaâd me.
