[Pops]

Anyone else reading this?

It's about Snowden and breaking the story by Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who done it.

It is hard on US MSM as being in the pocket of TPTB, in fact it's pretty hard on politicians for having no balls to stand up to the police state either.

Life in the age of Jack Bauer.

[Pops]

http://glenngreenwald.net/

[Strummer]

Some of the details were interesting, but there's too much filler concerning some specific leaks, which would be better suited for an article instead of the book. The most important takeaway for me was the pretty hard criticism of The Guardian, which kind of confirmed my feelings about the newspaper.

[Timo]

I know pointing fingers at this point is meaningless, but the entire NSA operation was built out of our collective fears after 9-11 by the previous administration. Once this office was established, and with the technologies it developed, it's become too big to fail, meaning that not one single being on this planet can stop it. The rationales used to justify its powers were abused and grossly inflated. Once set in motion, it has become a beast. Big Brother on steroids! If i suddenly ceased my digital existence, i would be deemed a threat. Intuitively, Snowden didn't reveal anything that most people didn't already take for granted as evident. What he did, though, was to detail the avenues through which the NSA can, and does, collect information. Pretty damned frightening!

(Can the NSA smell my aftershave through the internet? Am i even wearing any aftershave?)

[Pops]

I kinda dug the guy's awed reaction to the whole thing and his involvment.

Surveillance really is a runaway train and no one gives a rip. The only one that might have stopped it was Obama but he chickened out. I think he was just as skeered as W when confronted by the possibility that he'd be hung with the albatross of another attack if he stood up.

I think the worst thing is the continuation of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld privatization. I think the number is 70% of NSA budget goes to "Private Contractors."

Here is where you plug in your favorite Corporate Dystopian Movie Plot ... except the gov wasn't overthrown, it relinquished control voluntarily in return for a good consultant gig after retirement.

[Plantagenet]

I know pointing fingers at this point is meaningless, but the entire NSA operation was built out of our collective fears after 9-11 by the previous administration.

If you're going to point fingers, at least get your facts right and point your fingers in the correct direction. Its naive to ascribe the NSA spying solely to the previous administration. For instance, the huge central NSA data facility was built by this adminstration, not the previous one.

the Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center built by the Obama administration

The Obama administration has been at least as active as the prior administration in terms of NSA intelligence data gathering, and by some accounts the Obama administration is more aggressive about prosecuting leakers and the press who try to reveal to the public the activities of the NSA.

Greenwald's and Snowden's story---the subject of this thread, is about the NSA activities of THIS administration, not the prior one.

[jjhman]

Yes, Plant, we know. Even the fall of the Roman Empire was Obama's fault.

[Plantagenet]

...the fall of the Roman Empire was Obama's fault.

Wow...you sure don't know much about history

[ROCKMAN]

But then there's the question of how well they can analyze all that data. Makes me think back to 35 years ago when I had a preliminary interview with a CIA rep in Georgetown. With 5 years experience (barely useful in the oil patch) I would have been the most senior geologist in the unit with petroleum experience. I passed because I still needed to work with folks that knew what they are doing so I could learn to be useful mammal.

It also makes me think of a young drill hand I met long ago bragging about how many tens of thousands of music files he had saved. I asked how he expected to listen to them all and he didn't care: he just liked collecting data even if he didn't make practical use of it. Makes me think what we've all heard: the NSA has collected so much data they've going beyond their ability to analyze it effectively. IOW it might be useful to track terrorists after the fact more so then to prevent an attack.

[Pops]

I think they figured if they could collect everything they'd eventually find a way to use it. Foreign Policy quoted someone as saying Keith Alexander's view as:
"Let's not worry about the law. Collect it all."


*Bush appointment as NSA chief in 2005 kept by Obama until this year

[Plantagenet]

One of my biggest laughs at Obama's antics came when reporters questioned Obama after the Snowden revelations how all his spying on Americans squared with his campaign promises to run a "transparent" administration.

Obama replied that the secret NSA spying on Americans actually was consistent with being transparent because in a secret case before a secret court the secret court had issued a secret ruling that secretly said Obama's NSA spying on Americans was OK.

[dashster]

The biggest sign of how impotent the America media is would be the 2003 Iraq invasion. It was a war crime to invade. They had not attacked us, nor did they even pose a threat to this country. But that isn't the real problem.

The Bush Regime sent Powell to the UN and he gave a presentation with satellite pictures that claimed to show sites that had WMDs. He was lying in the presentation and no one called him on it. The UN Inspectors were in Iraq at the time and finding nothing. No one called the entire Bush Regime on the lies. How can they be sure Iraq has WMDs and they can't point the UN Inspectors to a single site - in hundreds of tries?

And no one called them on the fact that whether Iraq has WMDs or not is not a US matter. It is a UN matter since it was a UN Resolution that they get rid of them.

[concoer]

Link to copyrighted book removed by Pops

That was the good old days.
See Steve Rambam (a "Private Eye") take on the subject.
Basically, NSA isn't even in the same class as Google, Twitter, Amazon, etc..
HOPE X: You've Lost Privacy, Now They're Taking Anonymity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNZrq2iK87k

[Pops]

Thanks for posting concoer but I don't think that it is OK to rip other people off for their work so I removed your link to the book.

[Pops]

The most important takeaway for me was the pretty hard criticism of The Guardian, which kind of confirmed my feelings about the newspaper.

That's interesting, I kinda got the opposite. Aside from turning over the files they had to the NYTimes when confronted by British intelligence, I thought the Guardian got the story out relatively fast.

Greenwald had lots bad to say about the Times (NY & LA) and the Washington Post specifically and highly paid corporate "journalists" who regularly clatch with the same pols they are ostensibly keeping on the straight and narrow.

Especially considering Briton has no equal to our 1st Amendment, which specifically protects freedom of the press - pretty ironic, that.