That’s Why I Don’t Watch TV
I was attempting to figure out what was going on in France and was reminded why the American media is worthless as a source of information.
The people that the US media uses to “analyze” security issues are political crackpots. Having been in the military or in the intel community doesn’t make their political posturing any less absurd. To posit that the US is in danger because the concepts of ‘innocent until proven guilty’, habeas corpus, and the Bill of Rights are preventing security forces from working effectively to protect the homeland, is to advocate the policies of the KGB and/or the Gestapo.
Other analysts are claiming that Edward Snowden is to blame for disclosing that the government was violating the law and the Constitution, forcing security agencies to comply.
These people don’t seem to understand that real terrorists already assume that governments are violating their own laws and wiretapping everyone, so they don’t use telecommunications.
Since it’s the weekend, watch this cat treat commercial: “Say sorry for the holidays”
10 comments
I don’t need or want protection. Protection is another excuse for extending the tools for oppression.
I regard Edward Snowden as a hero and those who say otherwise are the very people yearning to extend these tools of opression.
Kitty treats, eh?
♪ It’s shad, show shad, ♪
♪ It’s a shad shad situation, ♪
<grin_duck_run />
More seriously, regarding Shirt’s comment (hear, hear!), participants in the grand experiment of representative democracy must understand and accept that it is a dangerous experiment in an imperfect lab, which inevitably means that sometimes stuff blows up (especially when there are ideological nut-jobs in close proximity). We are promised our freedom, and the danger is the price we must willingly pay for it. Do I look forward to being blown up by a nut-case? no, not in the least. But if I start avoiding everyday activities just because stepping out the door is dangerous, I might as well hang it up sooner rather than later. Eff that sh!t.
Snowden revealed things that the American body politic had every right and need to know. If some of those things were classified, they damned well should not have been. Daniel Ellsberg comes to mind when I watch what Snowden has gone through to do what had to be done. Now that is an example of paying the price!
The Boston Bombing occurred on April 15, 2013, and Edward Snowden started the ball rolling more than a month later. The massive violations of personal privacy were in full force, but no one noticed the Tsarnaev brothers. After the fact when investigators knew what to look for, there was massive amounts of information ‘discovered’. All of the violations of privacy did not protect the more than 250 casualties including three deaths.
Before someone asks me to give up liberties, they had better have some proof that they can do something useful with the increased power. The fact that it is now being reported that perpetrators were communicating with Sony Playstations would tend to make me believe that the authorities had the data, but they didn’t know what it meant until after the attack and the identification of those involved.
Nice, Sylvester imitation, Steve, but one shouldn’t make light of such a salmon moment,
I’ve long felt that it’s not the Government that wants all this info but the contractors who manage it. I strongly suspect all that metadata is a marketeer’s dream. And don’t forget, the CIA, a customenr of the metadata, is mostly composeed of Virginian old money. It’s one of the reasons I want the CIA relocated to the Oklahome Panhandle.
Just curious about something. I noticed that “Anonymous” was throwing around some threats today. Wonder if there’s enough teeth in their cyber threats to make a difference, i.e., are they as good as they think they are?
They should all be sited on the Kansas-Nebraska border, the center of the lower 48, so they aren’t near the center of power. The facilities will be cheaper to build and maintain, and the costs can be recovered with the sale of the over-priced properties they currently occupy.
Everyone of these contractors can wipe out their competitors and sell data on the open markert. The Fortune 500 should be opposing these intrusions with every lobbyist they own, because all of their internal records are now for sale.
You don’t have to be good to annoy the hell out of people who depend on the ‘Net, you just need a little knowledge and a lot of dedication. Most of the people and organizations that have been hacked were not doing what they should have done to protect themselves, and suffered from the weaknesses introduced by the government.
Anonymous isn’t a consistent group of people. Any operation will made up of those interested that the particular target.
“Anonymous” is a bunch of cyber-geeks in momma’s basement, more or less. Their ability to wreck real-world havoc depends upon how much ISIS relies on the Internet. They can likely shut down ISIS recruitment web sites for a while, but probably not anything else, because ISIS primarily relies on AK-47’s and RPG-7’s for their effectiveness, not electrons.
Going after social media sites is script kiddie stuff. The ISIS web stuff is marketing, not production. It is only important to those concerned with “the purity of the Internet”. If they want to annoy ISIS, I don’t care.