Just How Clsoe to the Abyss are We Today?

[Rlh04d]

That is the best you got Mr. NSA janitor boy? And then you screw it up....<ROFL>

God you're pathetic.

[Rlh04d]

C'mon, Sub, get with the program! We need to trust the government, afterall, if somebody was told to illegally snoop, they would refuse. It has all been laid out in front of us by a person in military intelligence. We need to blindly trust them, they're just like pizza delivery boys. Trustworthy.

A less biased individual might say that, if the intelligence community wanted to violate American rights, they wouldn't collect data to leave a paper trail.

An actual, honest take on the number of problems would be concerned with the number of times American information was viewed, rather than the broad definition being used there. Or would look at it in terms of the percentage of total searches that were run, so that it was put in context. But we all know there isn't any interest in honest discussion here.

THIS IS PURE BS AND YOU KNOW IT. THAT IS WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE. BUT IT WASN'T. HAD IT BEEN ACCOMPLISHED, THE TWO COMMITTEES WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN SO UPSET.

Good point! Politicians never lie.

But you're the experts here, not me.

[SB Shock]

But you're the experts here, not me.

The thing is you are not the expert. Because if you were an expert then it would mean you have access to classified information. If you have access to classified information then you would have a security clearance. And if you had a security clearance you would recall from your yearly refresher training where they emphasize you should not to be talking about your job involving classified information on social media, online forums and social networking sites. Just hinting that you have access to secret information can compromise or make you a target.

So if you are an "expert" - then you need to need to self report yourself to you Security Manager.

[MoValley John]

The thing is you are not the expert. Because if you were an expert then it would mean you have access to classified information. If you have access to classified information then you would have a security clearance. And if you had a security clearance you would recall from your yearly refresher training where they emphasize you should not to be talking about your job involving classified information on social media, online forums and social networking sites. Just hinting that you have access to secret information can compromise or make you a target.

So if you are an "expert" - then you need to need to self report yourself to you Security Manager.

That was my exact thought, but I didn't want to call that out. Discussing his work and expertise can also cause him to slip up and accidentally reveal classified information without even knowing he did it. But what do I know, I never had a security clearance. Well I had a security clearance 30 years ago, but back then, social media was Dixie Cups and string. We were just told not to discuss our work with anyone, not even family members.

[Rlh04d]

That was my exact thought, but I didn't want to call that out.

I haven't discussed anything that isn't on my resume, which I have cleared every two months. Do a quick search for "Top Secret Security Clearance" on LinkedIn -- it's actually an active skill on their site and makes it quite easy to search on.

I appreciate your tongue-in-cheek concern, though. It's unnecessary.

It's pretty amazing to me how many petty, personal attacks are going on here because I have a different opinion than you. But please, attack my intelligence again and call me a janitor, because I don't fall in lockstep with the group-think you guys have going. I'm sure SubGod will hit the Like button.

[MoValley John]

I haven't discussed anything that isn't on my resume, which I have cleared every two months. Do a quick search for "Top Secret Security Clearance" on LinkedIn -- it's actually an active skill on their site and makes it quite easy to search on.

I appreciate your tongue-in-cheek concern, though. It's unnecessary.

It's pretty amazing to me how many petty, personal attacks are going on here because I have a different opinion than you. But please, attack my intelligence again and call me a janitor, because I don't fall in lockstep with the group-think you guys have going. I'm sure SubGod will hit the Like button.

It is not in you discussing the fact that you have a clearance, it is discussing that you work in intelligence that is a red flag. Being in intelligence you know how easy it is for you to be identified without even the owners of the board knowing. Intelligence workers would generally leave this thread alone. You jumped in head first. Once again, that is the red flag.

[MoValley John]

On a different tangent, I find it more than ironic that since the 60's, we as a country have done a 180. The liberals, who shouted "Don't trust anyone over 30" now tell us to blindly trust the government. Funny stuff.

[wu_shizzle]

How close are we to the abyss?

It's about 550 miles to Carbondale.

[RoyalShock]

Back to this check-and-balances thing . . . has any of this been in front of the Supreme Court? If not, that process hasn't been completed yet. The problem is, until someone who can claim they've been harmed (and how do you do that when all the survellance is secret?) is willing to fight all the way to the SCOTUS, it will continue until we get enough people in Congress to fix the problem through legislation. Unfortunately, unless we elect a president who leans libertarian, the executive branch isn't going to curtail any of it. I guess a citizen uprising could force a change in policy, but Americans have forgotten that "the tree of liberty must refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants".

[SubGod22]

Back to this check-and-balances thing . . . has any of this been in front of the Supreme Court? If not, that process hasn't been completed yet. The problem is, until someone who can claim they've been harmed (and how do you do that when all the survellance is secret?) is willing to fight all the way to the SCOTUS, it will continue until we get enough people in Congress to fix the problem through legislation. Unfortunately, unless we elect a president who leans libertarian, the executive branch isn't going to curtail any of it. I guess a citizen uprising could force a change in policy, but Americans have forgotten that "the tree of liberty must refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants".

I was just reading a piece that was talking about the end of your post. Time for a New American Revolution? Polls show that the people aren't happy with DC. How that will be handled is the question.

[SubGod22]

And to build off my last post, here's a bit more on the topic of government gone too far. America's Tyranny Threshold

[SubGod22]

The Electronic Privacy Information Center has filed a petition to the Supreme Court in response the massive collection of third party data.

The brief first argues that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act does not authorize a sweeping warrant for all communications data. The law requires such a warrant to show relevance to an existing investigation, which is impossible when the data is gathered in support of future, entirely speculative investigations. Not only the text of the statute, but Congress’s intent and the structure of the statute support this interpretation. If the Court finds that the statute allows this sweeping a warrant, then it must consider the flat Fourth Amendment bar against general warrants, as well as the unreasonableness of collecting all information about Americans’ phone calls for speculative future investigations.

The brief urges the Court to reconsider Smith v. Maryland and the “third-party doctrine,” which purports to deny Fourth Amendment protection for information people have shared with others. In Smith, police officers learned that a suspected burglar was calling the house of the woman he had stolen from. They asked the telephone company to install a pen register on the burglar’s phone, which the phone company did voluntarily. The Court found that this was reasonable and did not require a warrant. It does not follow from the result in Smith that mass surveillance of all Americans’ phone calls is similarly reasonable. With this data, the government can draw inferences about the intimate relations, family life, legal counsel, business negotiations, and medical treatments of wholly innocent individuals. The Court should either distinguish or reverse Smith and reject or reconsider the third-party doctrine, as Justice Sotomayor suggested in the 2011 Jones decision.

[jocoshock]

I have made a point of staying off the political forum, and will continue to do so except for this one point.

All of you concerned about the government intruding on your privacy need to understand that you are 100 times more vulnerable to the intrusions of the free market, social media, corporate America, than you are from the NSA.

The ability of individuals or companies to trash your reputation, ruin your credit rating and use personal information, either real or made up against you is a far greater threat with a far greater likelihood of occurring.

I interviewed with a company several years ago (2006-2007) that had developed a black box designed to monitor email traffic looking for the use of key phrases or file attachments (pictures) that could measure the amount of skin tones. If you violated a security policy on that box, a trojan would be downloaded into the system that would track every movement on the offending system. The bios of the offending computer would also be modified with code that could track said hardware to the ends of the earth.

I was being interviewed because the individual who I would replace was going to focus all of their attention on selling the device to the government. In other words, their commercial business was way out ahead of their government business...

You have far more legal protection as a private citizen then you do as an employee of a corporation. You may forfeit those rights each time you click the Agree button on a web site's End User License Agreement, but you have them if you choose to keep them. I share the concern over the government intrusions, but why is there not a similar outrage toward the private sector?

[SubGod22]

Because with the private sector you agree to it. The gov't just goes and does it. I'm normally pretty cautious about sites that I agree to anything and I'll typically scroll through the agreement and look for certain issues that I may be curious about. But as you said, we have the option to agree to their terms or not. DC doesn't give us a choice.

As far as your other example, your employer typically lays out the rules and you know they have the ability to monitor your computers as they are company property. I'll admit that with my current employer, I shouldn't be on this site or some others based on the rules laid out, but I've also had conversations with the IT department and they know how slow the location is that I work at is at times and don't care much about what I do within reason. Certain things are blocked. I also know that they have access to any and all emails. I know one location that went through email communications between employees and found our how unhappy so many were. Some were let go, some left on their own. But information was shared between different locations and they didn't hide the fact.

[MoValley John]

I have made a point of staying off the political forum, and will continue to do so except for this one point.

All of you concerned about the government intruding on your privacy need to understand that you are 100 times more vulnerable to the intrusions of the free market, social media, corporate America, than you are from the NSA.

The ability of individuals or companies to trash your reputation, ruin your credit rating and use personal information, either real or made up against you is a far greater threat with a far greater likelihood of occurring.

I interviewed with a company several years ago (2006-2007) that had developed a black box designed to monitor email traffic looking for the use of key phrases or file attachments (pictures) that could measure the amount of skin tones. If you violated a security policy on that box, a trojan would be downloaded into the system that would track every movement on the offending system. The bios of the offending computer would also be modified with code that could track said hardware to the ends of the earth.

I was being interviewed because the individual who I would replace was going to focus all of their attention on selling the device to the government. In other words, their commercial business was way out ahead of their government business...

You have far more legal protection as a private citizen then you do as an employee of a corporation. You may forfeit those rights each time you click the Agree button on a web site's End User License Agreement, but you have them if you choose to keep them. I share the concern over the government intrusions, but why is there not a similar outrage toward the private sector?

I think we all get it. I'm not trying to be rude, but what is your point? Is your point that it's okay for the government to intrude because the private sector intrudes? Is your point that the government buys software from private businesses? What?