NSA - Snowden issue, simplified

[chud]

I was going to post this in the NSA / Prism Whisteblower thread but I felt it deserved its own thread.

Comedian and talk show host John Oliver recently interviewed Edward Snowden and did something that needed to be done: he brought humor and simplicity to a technical issue that most people are ignoring because Snowden is a tech geek and doesn't explain things in simple terms.
I think this is why people like me, who work in I.T., are so shocked by the extent of the surveillance going on, while those around us seem to shrug and view it as no big deal.

For example, when people on the street are initially interviewed in this segment they express little to no interest in the topic of surveillance, but when it is later put to them in terms of "should your private pics be fair game", then people show more concern and talk about how the program should be stopped.

This video gets better the further in you go, with the last 10 - 15 minutes being the part where Snowden is guided by Oliver into explaining everything in terms of sexting, and people on the street suddenly start having strong opinions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M

[Interloper]

Oliver is typically brilliant; besides driving home the point that surveillance affects everyone, I had to wonder whether the vast majority of viewers were also concerned that Snowden misses Hot Pockets...

[lazyboxer]

"PRISM is how they pull your junk out of Google..."

THAT might finally wake up the Merkun peepul!

[vadaga]

on a similar note I just read:

http://wemeantwell.com/blog/2015/04/09/ ... efore-911/

While the Snowden-NSA revelations continue to shock Americans on a daily basis, and illustrate how intrusive the government is in our lives, and how casually it violates our Fourth Amendment right against unwarranted searches, it just got worse.

It turns out the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) was spying on Americans, gathering metadata on our phone calls, almost a decade before 9/11, and right up to 2013. With help from the U.S. military.

(more article after the link)

[chud]

Some encouraging news...

Federal Court rules NSA bulk data collection was never authorized by Congress:
http://www.wired.com/2015/05/breaking-news-federal-court-rules-nsa-bulk-data-collection-illegal/

[chud]

Obama wants Patriot Act renewed:
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20150526/us--obama-nsa-surveillance-93f69ee917.html

[yeniseri]

There were caveats within the Patriot Act that the US Congress refused to act on and pretended later they knew nothing about!
Any escalation of surveillance activity should have been brought to the attention of their respective bodies but no one said a thing. Then all of a sudden, you have private equity groups in consort with national intelligence and you have Edward Snowdon. So that creation brought forth a hero for democracy.

[kenneth fish]

Here is something that does not get discussed - most of the current drivers licences can be tracked remotely - and are being tracked by state and local police. In this manner police can monitor peoples movements.

[chud]

http://theantimedia.org/obama-rejects-petition-to-pardon-whistleblower-edward-snowden/

[chud]

Obama expands power of NSA in final days:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/us/politics/nsa-gets-more-latitude-to-share-intercepted-communications.html?_r=0

[Bill]

Ken

The RFID chip in a license or credit card is easily disabled. You can see the slight depression on the card where the chip is located. Once found you can hit it a few times using a screwdriver and a hammer to destroy it.

[yeniseri]

The Merkun people are extremely naive about government! The people can only rule if they take part in the process but the many do not.
At any given time, only 1/2 of Merkuns vote and that is a big bums up when it may only be 1/3 and less so nothing has really changed except more people being manipulated by those who clainm they will change stuff from the top down.