The crimes have been committed at the IRS, using data demanded by the government for the purpose of tax status evaluation. These are the real cases, involving real and substantial harms — harms which may go so far as to have materially affected the last national election outcome — an actual coup d’Etat, of sorts. The alarms about the NSA are thus far, while reasonable as to potentials (in light of the coup aforementioned), empty as to actual cases. And in this respect serve a function to distract.
The underlying Constitutional violations at the IRS are both plain on the face of the story, and obscured in another respect in the positive law violations of the principles of the Founding by means of establishing the “tax status” in the first instance, I think. Which is why 1) there should be an intense investigation to bring every violation of right at the IRS to light, 2) prosecutions of every member of the class of violators, no matter how high the station of the violator who may be uncovered by the investigation, even into the Oval office, and 3) abolition of the IRS and the unjust tax-code in toto, to be replaced by a simpler, more just, broader tax assessment which does not establish division among the people but establishes unity for the purposes of funding the government — since the government belongs to everyone and serves everyone. Everyone should be seen from the government point of view as due respect and equal treatment, not to be “pigeon holed” into various unnatural classes and arbitrary distinctions — least of all classified by regard to their opinions.
Beck says that within the next 24 hours — if the whistleblower(s) muster the courage to do so — another epic scandal is going to emerge that will take the whole system down: Dems, Establicans, the whole nine yards.
And it’s about a whole new area of corruption, different from the recently exposed ones. It will divide the nation as never before.
Of course, Beck is always a drama queen, and much of what he says is “epic” fizzles out and dies. But he’s on the east coast these past few days, and yesterday he met with about 30 congresscritters, and he said most of them had their jaws set and were bracing for battle.
Anyway, you heard it here first, and if nothing happens, you didn’t hear it at all.
But tommorow’s only Thursday. Doesn’t the world ending news always come out on Friday evening because, that way, it won’t be seen and the world won’t end after all?
IN RE APPLICATION OF THE
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
FOR AN ORDER REQUIRING THE
PRODUCTION OF TANGIBLE THINGS
FROM VERIZON BUSINESS NETWORK SERVICES,
INC. ON BEHALF OF MCI COMMUNICATION
SERVICES, INC. D/B/A VERIZON
BUSINESS SERVICES.
This Court having found that the Application of the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) for an Order requiring the production of tangible things from
Verizon Business Network Services, Inc. on behalf of MCI Communication Services Inc., d/b/a Verizon Business Services (individually and collectively “Verizon”) satisfies the requirements of 50 U.S.C. § 1861,
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that, the Custodian of Records shall produce to the
National Security Agency (NSA) upon service of this Order, and continue production on an ongoing daily basis thereafter for the duration of this Order, unless otherwise ordered by the Court, an electronic copy of the following tangible things:
all call detail records or “telephony metadata” created by Verizon for communications
(i) between the United States and abroad; or
(ii) wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls.
This Order does not require Verizon to produce telephony metadata for communications wholly originating and terminating in foreign countries.
Telephony metadata includes comprehensive communications routing information,. including but not limited to session identifying information (e.g., originating and terminating telephone number, International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) number, International Mobile station Equipment Identity (IMEI) number, etc.), trunk identifier, telephone calling card numbers, and time and duration of call.
Telephony metadata does not include the substantive content of any communication, as defined by 18 U.S.C. § 2510(8), or the name, address, or financial information of a subscriber or customer.
So the FBI applies for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order to have Verizon turn over all meta-data for all calls made in which at least one end is, or both ends are, in the US to the NSA not the FBI. This being order #80 of 2013. This is “Ragtime P” which is getting records, all meta-data records, from 50 or so companies. Each order is for 90 days so 4 orders per year per company.
These records would show who calls who and if the IRS is asking, out of the blue, “What is your relationship with “X”” when you haven’t given them the name “X” then the question would be where did they get the name? One answer would be from the FBI/NSA meta-data database. Which has had a huge increase in the data grabbed since 2010 which is the same time period when the targeting of political organizations was ramping up.
Now the data collection could and probably is for the purpose of stopping foreign espionage and terror attacks, however once collected it can be used for other purposes if access to it is given out to those who would use it to target the political enemies of the President.
Just who can access this, and other similar secret databases is a question that needs an answer. That a 29 year old contract employee, one who had worked for the contractor for only a short time and didn’t seem to have been vetted very well, was accessing all of this gives pause.
Snowden looks like Jay Carney to me.
I saw Romney on Cavuto last week. Boy Howdy, he looked real happy this stinkin’ bucket of pigmess didnt land on his head. I’m happy for him.
“. . . said he was “neither a traitor nor hero. I’m an American.”
Which, being an American isn’t exactly like being 175 lbs in the statement “. . . neither a traitor nor a hero. I’m 175 lbs.”, since being an American is a criterion of being a traitor, whereas a hero can come from practically anywhere. But why all the self-referential crap? He says he’s in Hong Kong to “reveal criminality”, so why hasn’t he done that yet, instead constantly talking about himself, about how he fears for his life, about his pay scale, about his girlfriend, about his blah blah blah? The fuck? He tells us he’s not the story as he makes himself the story.
That’s because he’s everyone’s great good friend who ensures. So it must be about him. He ensures for everyone he doesn’t do harms by revealing what ought not be revealed. In perfect accord with the oath he took not to reveal what he was privileged to access. And steal. To reveal.
But why all the self-referential crap? He says he’s in Hong Kong to “reveal criminality”, so why hasn’t he done that yet, instead constantly talking about himself, about how he fears for his life, about his pay scale, about his girlfriend, about his blah blah blah? The fuck? He tells us he’s not the story as he makes himself the story.
I’m inclined to note that what’s being asked and what’s being printed are the choice of the reporter. The story is what the reporter makes it.
Di, does Beck give any helpful hints as to the nature of the scandal de jour?
Alas, no. It’s not his story to tell, and at least one of the whistleblowers (not a callow youth) is genuinely afraid for his life, so he doesn’t want the affected parties to start looking for people to finish.
That a 29 year old contract employee, one who had worked for the contractor for only a short time and didn’t seem to have been vetted very well, was accessing all of this gives pause.
Didn’t he say he was a sysadmin?
Those guys are up to their elbows in the guts of any system. Wouldn’t be hard to tap into a secured VLAN and grab something before anyone else knew about it.
It’s hard to say whether Snowden picks the questions or not. Apparently he and Greenwald have been working together since last Feb., and heck, Snowden only went to work at Booz Allen sometime in Feb. Before he contacted Greenwald? After? Can’t say myself. But Snowden probably could.
As to Carney, besides not being privy to his more private moments with his friends in the press, we’ve many an instance akin to the planted question of Lois Lerner and Co. to regard, and on which to wonder.
He was as sysadmin. The newsies are acting like the guy dropped out of high school (the horror!) and did nothing between then and the time he was hired by Booz Allen. Of course he’s going to have unlimited access since it’s next to impossible to sift access for admin at the job he was doing.
I read a lot of spy novels and I was wondering if I’d over-thought it that Snowdon has some sort of fail-safe for himself to keep hired gums from 86-ing him. Say, if he doesn’t access his XYZ account at ABD!@# at least every 24 hours it will do a document dump or something like that.
The criminality of which Snowden remotely speaks and pending Beck breaking better be that the NgoogleSfacebookA/IRS progressive-techgeek-spy-bully conglomerate used some sort of homebrewed vote eraser software vs. Romney during the last election called “stufnet” or I am just not interested being as I am burnt out from all the transparency this admin…exudes. That and the fact that nobody therein is currently doing jail time for Fast&Furious.
Biden got away from his keepers long enough to shoot of his mouth that the SCOTUS was wrong and Gore actually won the 2000 election. I’m waiting to hear he’s had a terrible fall at the house later this year or next.
Leigh, it is the first line of your job description to criticize and condemn SCOTUS, police departments, patriots, gun and bible clingers when you work for Team 44. “Fall” hell, he will likely get promoted….
While we’re waiting for Beck’s predicted bombshell: a reminder that when discussing PRISM, and the administration saying it is necessary in order to catch “terrorists,” they’re probably not talking about jihadis:
“The scenario had been carefully planned: A terrorist group prepared to hurt vast numbers of people around Boston would leave backpacks filled with explosives at Faneuil Hall, the Seaport District, and in other towns, spreading waves of panic and fear. Detectives would have to catch the culprits.
Months of painstaking planning had gone into the exercise, dubbed “Operation Urban Shield,” meant to train dozens of detectives in the Greater Boston area to work together to thwart a terrorist threat. The hypothetical terrorist group was even given a name: Free America Citizens, a home-grown cadre of militiamen…”
Erst, I’d be open to this just being an excessive political correctness if this admin hadn’t also used other agencies (IRS, EPA, OSHA, etc.) to harass Tea Party types, had the Pentagon update its training materials to list Evangelicals, Christians, etc. as potential terrorists, published a DHS study a few years back identifying right-wing militias as the greatest threat to security, and used every opportunity to deprive us of our 2nd Amendment rights. They’ve been very clear about who they think the enemy is, and it ain’t jihadis.
Those guys are up to their elbows in the guts of any system. Wouldn’t be hard to tap into a secured VLAN and grab something before anyone else knew about it.
Which smells of poor (actually, lazy) system design from the start. Why wasn’t the internal databases and communications data encrypted, with crypto operations performed in tamper-resistant hardware?
And while we’re on IT pet peeves, why hasn’t there been more of a focus on dual or “‘m’ of ‘n'” control, where sensitive operations require the simultaneous authorization of multiple persons (i.e. similar to the dual-key system used in missile silos)? That would do a lot for stopping lone miscreants…
I don’t know what the security measures might have/not been, but I do know that in gubmint systems, there’s a ton of regs but the deployment isn’t stellar. Too many cooks in the broth or maybe they haven’t got around to it because they don’t HAVE to.
I’ve been reading pw on my IPad lately and it is now showing up as if it were a mobile device – a list of headlines that you have to finger to read. Kind of like….well, I’ll not finish that in the interest of decorum. I can’t log in to comment on that platform though.
AMD might be falling behind on PCs but they dominate the next-gen game platforms, and everyone know technology exists to feed the demand for games and pron.
ecurmudgeon, you’ve obviously worked in the computer field..it’s what I do for a living these days.
Anyway, as to security, how many times have you seen the people in charge tell the people that build and run the systems that security takes second place to convenience?
Couple the arrogance of a government appointee with overseeing secure systems and there’s bound to be security holes.
The processor wars were great and AMD had Intel on the ropes, but, in the end, Intel managed to pull it out. (by the way, Intel’s fab plant in AZ is incredible. I got a tour of the computer testing portion during a job interview. Talk about computer geek heaven. Imagine a 4th floor the size of a football field, 20′ ceilings, shelves packed with every type of computer hardware imaginable. And my job was going to be breaking stuff, then figuring out how to fix it.)
– Just offhand, watching the Cspan broadcast of the “Cybersecurity and Government Surveillance” hearing, the opening statement by the chairwoman sets the tone. They need to spy on us to protect us. Its the only way.
Difi is falling asleep listening to Alexander. Its so heart warming to know these peeps are right on the job, protecting the Americam prople and their interests at all times.
Anyway, as to security, how many times have you seen the people in charge tell the people that build and run the systems that security takes second place to convenience?
It’s not so much about “taking second place to convenience”, as it is that most security systems are a complex, cumbersome pain in the ass to set up and use. And that’s assuming that it works to begin with.
In my day job, I swear about half of my time is spent arguing with vendors as to whether or not they’ve even tried to use their own product in a production environment.
On my tablet I can set Firefox to request the desktop versions of websites by default — but Safari on my iPhone can only serve up PW’s mobile version, which when I try to login to comment gives me a 403 error.
So I’m no longer able to participate here if I’m using my phone, at least until I switch to Android and can use Firefox.
Anyway, you say “pain in the ass to set up and use” and I say “tomato.” If the people in charge cannot be bothered with security, because, well, it’s beneath them, then there is no security.
Then there are companies that do hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business, but aren’t willing to spend $10,000 to make sure their data is adequately backed up and secure.
Ugh. “No border is ever going to be sealed,” McCain said on the Senate floor on Wednesday afternoon. McCain was arguing that Cornyn’s push to have an additional 6,500 Border Patrol agents on the border would not solve the problem of illegal immigration.
In my day job, I swear about half of my time is spent arguing with vendors as to whether or not they’ve even tried to use their own product in a production environment.
Also known as “What the hell was Microsoft thinking when it “designed” the UI/workflow for VPNs and certificates.
SBP, I forgot about the tablet and smart phone market.
I’m a technology luddite. PC’s, servers, switches, routers, etc., is where I work and tend to focus.
Btw, I’ve discovered where I work has decided they want to be able to spy on the tech workstations. And it’s possible for the higher ups to do so very unobtrusively.
So, I’m setting up a Debian system with the server and desktop tools I need and adding it to the domain. Bwaaahahahaha
It’s not so much about “taking second place to convenience”, as it is that most security systems are a complex, cumbersome pain in the ass to set up and use.
Ahh, so you’ve attempted to configure a web server running selinux as well…
I once set up SCO OpenServer 5 running both Apache and Netscape Fasttrack web servers. On top of that, I also installed the Front Page server extensions.
Just to see if I could.
Yeah, at one point in my life, I had way too much time on my hands.
A government that refuses to seal its borders, but demands to save every frickin’ communication of its citizens is not interested in national security.
– Looks like when its all over the new major influx of potential terrorists, along with many millions of job seekers for non-existant jobs, won’t have anything to worry about from surveillance as long as they don’t join any Riech-wing groups.
– The perfect fuckup storm by your caring government.
BBH, have you noticed that when all the crimes that are blamed on right-wingers turn out to have been committed by Muslims, suddenly no gives a fuck about them anymore?
Please don’t believe the hype on the new consoles. They must be shooting for some other kind of market, because for gaming, the preliminary stats don’t look good.
To be fair to AMD, the A4-5000 is a nice chip for its intended market – mobile devices at the cheaper end of the market. It’s got miles more horsepower than existing Atom chips (though Atom is due a major overhaul to its cores very soon).
But as a gaming CPU? Let me give you some numbers. In raw processing terms, these four Jaguar cores have slightly less than a quarter the grunt of a Core i5-3570K. It’s the same story on a core-by-core basis. Less than one quarter of the performance.
Really, this is no surprise. The Jaguar core is a dual-issue item running at roughly half the speed of Intel’s quad-issue desktop cores. It’s a competitor for Intel’s Atom core, not the full-fat Core, er, core. It was always going to be this way.
By this guy’s analysis an average current gaming rig will be more than adequate to do anything these consoles will be capable of.
AMD and Intel both have processors that make much more sense to have been used instead of the AMD processor that was used for both systems (basically a beefy mobile processor). Sony and Microsoft must have been shooting for something that ran cooler (quieter: fewer fans), and with less power consumption, but they are really going to pay a price for the lack of performance they will have.
Is this multiple choice or a comprehensive list? Because Joran van der Sloot probably deserves (dis)honorable mention for the sheer coverage bonanza he apparently precipitated.
I bought one of those new cans to rescue my wife who had run out of gas (based on my apparently poor advice that she would make it to the gas station with no problem). I managed to quickly find a gas station that also had a can to sell, and within 30 minutes of her initial call, I had her motoring up the road to a gas station.
The can sucked (literally as it turns out). I noticed the lack of an air hole early on, and the auto closing mechanism jammed when I removed the spout from wife’s car’s fuel port to try to determine why the remaining 1/3 of a gallon wasn’t pouring into the tank. The can’s sides were pulled in slightly from vacuum, and it only got worse that winter when temperature and pressure changes half-collapsed the can. I would have just thrown the thing away, but it has 1/3 of a gallon of gas still stuck in it, and I don’t know where a waste facility that would actually take it might be.
America has become that 3rd world communist country we all used to make fun of for having crappy centralized planning and demoralized workers.
A government that refuses to seal its borders, but demands to save every frickin’ communication of its citizens is not interested in national security
To add to RI Red, pointing out that hoovering up every communication we can lay hands on won’t stop all terrorist attacks would just be taken as proof! that we need to redouble our efforts to keep the homeland secure.
(Our government, not this thread, which as always, forced me to learn or consider a bunch of things I hadn’t known.)
They say you get the government you deserve, but what’d we do to get this? The amount of executive and bureaucratic lying going on is like nothing I’ve ever seen.
tomatopundit: Seems to me that functional plastic gas can spouts are a prime candidate for 3D printing. But they’d be undetectable and illegal, and the Dept of Defense would claim they’re a class 1 munition…
rasqual:You know what this world needs? A cartoonist who can do with government what Dilbert did with business. It’d be a lot more fertile ground for daily strips, that’s for sure.
SW, Roddy, I think things started going downhill when history and math stopped being taught in a meaningful fashion.
For instance, simple stuff, like, oh, say, the idea that “3% inflation is essentially meaningless.” Except that math tells us you lose roughly 50% of your purchasing power in 25 years.
Then there is history. History repeats itself over and over, yet everyone seems to be taught “things will be different this time.”
Probably about as many as you’d violate by taking a drill to a “low flow shower head”.
Heh. At least now I know I’m not the only one! (First did that trick some 15 years ago in a motel box, with a small nail, because no water pressure. Now I always carry a Dremel!)
I wonder how many federal laws you’d be violating by making your own vent holes and removing the auto closing mechanism.
We’ve had those ventless, auto-shutoff “leak-proof, fume-proof” plastic cans in CA for years (thanks, AQMD!). Remove the spout altogether and use a funnel.
Probably about as many as you’d violate by taking a drill to a “low flow shower head”.
We’ve also had those stupid things here in CA for years. Because manufacturers didn’t want to make separate unique products for the CA market, nearly all “low-flow” shower heads are standard types with plastic or rubber “flow restrictors” in them. Disassemble the shower head, remove the fucking restrictor, reassemble, and you now have a usable shower head.
You know what this world needs? A cartoonist who can do with government what Dilbert did with business. It’d be a lot more fertile ground for daily strips, that’s for sure.
FATAL FLAW ALERT
Only someone who’d worked in gubmint long enough to skewer it properly could do that, but nobody with cartooning and humor talent could last that long in the gubmint without (a) losing their immortal soul or (b) running away, screaming.
They say you get the government you deserve, but what’d we do to get this?
They nudged us here with incrementalism: every step they took was too small a hill to die on. Resistance was met with jeering and name-calling. “What, are you a bigot? Small-minded? Against progress? Hater of the poor?”
I’ve been working for the gubmit since 1979, Di, and I believe my soul is as intact as a fallen man’s could be. The way I have avoided running away while screaming is by drinking heavily [per Sen. Blutarsky’s advice].
I wish I could draw because I’d be tempted to take up your challenge.
Only someone who’d worked in gubmint long enough to skewer it properly could do that, but nobody with cartooning and humor talent could last that long in the gubmint without (a) losing their immortal soul or (b) running away, screaming.
If someone did pull it off, their cartoons would be blamed for a terrorist attack and we’d never hear from them again.
Bob Belvedere says June 13, 2013 at 9:49 am
I wish I could draw because I’d be tempted to take up your challenge.
You don’t have to be a great artiste. The skill can be learned, and would take a lot less time than someone who can draw trying to get your level of day to day experience with government.
Getaway day! Can Hammels keep it down and interrupt the homerfest the Angels are expecting? We anxiously grind our teeth in anticipation.
Ow, jaws sore now.
Much grass, bh.
The crimes have been committed at the IRS, using data demanded by the government for the purpose of tax status evaluation. These are the real cases, involving real and substantial harms — harms which may go so far as to have materially affected the last national election outcome — an actual coup d’Etat, of sorts. The alarms about the NSA are thus far, while reasonable as to potentials (in light of the coup aforementioned), empty as to actual cases. And in this respect serve a function to distract.
The underlying Constitutional violations at the IRS are both plain on the face of the story, and obscured in another respect in the positive law violations of the principles of the Founding by means of establishing the “tax status” in the first instance, I think. Which is why 1) there should be an intense investigation to bring every violation of right at the IRS to light, 2) prosecutions of every member of the class of violators, no matter how high the station of the violator who may be uncovered by the investigation, even into the Oval office, and 3) abolition of the IRS and the unjust tax-code in toto, to be replaced by a simpler, more just, broader tax assessment which does not establish division among the people but establishes unity for the purposes of funding the government — since the government belongs to everyone and serves everyone. Everyone should be seen from the government point of view as due respect and equal treatment, not to be “pigeon holed” into various unnatural classes and arbitrary distinctions — least of all classified by regard to their opinions.
if i look it up they’ll know i know Mr. serr8d
startingpage.com
Beck says that within the next 24 hours — if the whistleblower(s) muster the courage to do so — another epic scandal is going to emerge that will take the whole system down: Dems, Establicans, the whole nine yards.
And it’s about a whole new area of corruption, different from the recently exposed ones. It will divide the nation as never before.
Of course, Beck is always a drama queen, and much of what he says is “epic” fizzles out and dies. But he’s on the east coast these past few days, and yesterday he met with about 30 congresscritters, and he said most of them had their jaws set and were bracing for battle.
Anyway, you heard it here first, and if nothing happens, you didn’t hear it at all.
But tommorow’s only Thursday. Doesn’t the world ending news always come out on Friday evening because, that way, it won’t be seen and the world won’t end after all?
Open thread. Thread implies a needle. Needle is Arya Stark’s blade. The Starks’ family words are “Winter is coming.” So, you’re saying to dress warm?
– “Well I guess so Captain, but really we’ve got to nuke it from orbit…..it’s the only way to be sure.”
– Oh, and: America, fuck yeah!
Di, does Beck give any helpful hints as to the nature of the scandal de jour?
From the Verizon FISA Section 215 order.
So the FBI applies for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order to have Verizon turn over all meta-data for all calls made in which at least one end is, or both ends are, in the US to the NSA not the FBI. This being order #80 of 2013. This is “Ragtime P” which is getting records, all meta-data records, from 50 or so companies. Each order is for 90 days so 4 orders per year per company.
These records would show who calls who and if the IRS is asking, out of the blue, “What is your relationship with “X”” when you haven’t given them the name “X” then the question would be where did they get the name? One answer would be from the FBI/NSA meta-data database. Which has had a huge increase in the data grabbed since 2010 which is the same time period when the targeting of political organizations was ramping up.
Now the data collection could and probably is for the purpose of stopping foreign espionage and terror attacks, however once collected it can be used for other purposes if access to it is given out to those who would use it to target the political enemies of the President.
Just who can access this, and other similar secret databases is a question that needs an answer. That a 29 year old contract employee, one who had worked for the contractor for only a short time and didn’t seem to have been vetted very well, was accessing all of this gives pause.
Pitches off the plate. Just don’t swing.
Snowden looks like Jay Carney to me.
I saw Romney on Cavuto last week. Boy Howdy, he looked real happy this stinkin’ bucket of pigmess didnt land on his head. I’m happy for him.
Snowden looks like Jay Carney to me.
Funny thing, to me too. They do similar creepy things with their mouths as they form words.
Why do we need another thread in this echo chamber? Everyone thinks the same, so all we’re doing is affirming each other.
/sarcasm
For those with defective Intel using computers I would venture. ;-)
Yeah. What cranky said.
Intel? Blasphemy in this house, sir.
They do similar creepy things with their mouths as they form words.
What, Snowden lies for a living too?
Oh, it’s on now!
“. . . said he was “neither a traitor nor hero. I’m an American.”
Which, being an American isn’t exactly like being 175 lbs in the statement “. . . neither a traitor nor a hero. I’m 175 lbs.”, since being an American is a criterion of being a traitor, whereas a hero can come from practically anywhere. But why all the self-referential crap? He says he’s in Hong Kong to “reveal criminality”, so why hasn’t he done that yet, instead constantly talking about himself, about how he fears for his life, about his pay scale, about his girlfriend, about his blah blah blah? The fuck? He tells us he’s not the story as he makes himself the story.
I used to build AMD machines, but AMD fell behind technology-wise. Intel knows what they’re doing, and keep doing it.
Snowden is apparently an attention whore. This is all about him.
This is all about him.
That’s because he’s everyone’s great good friend who ensures. So it must be about him. He ensures for everyone he doesn’t do harms by revealing what ought not be revealed. In perfect accord with the oath he took not to reveal what he was privileged to access. And steal. To reveal.
I’m inclined to note that what’s being asked and what’s being printed are the choice of the reporter. The story is what the reporter makes it.
Kinda like Jay Carney then. Again.
What did Snowden do that would be considered traitorous?
Basically he confirmed what most of us suspected anyway.
That Facebook is spyware.
Di, does Beck give any helpful hints as to the nature of the scandal de jour?
Alas, no. It’s not his story to tell, and at least one of the whistleblowers (not a callow youth) is genuinely afraid for his life, so he doesn’t want the affected parties to start looking for people to finish.
So to speak.
No, Carney is on camera. He doesn’t pick the questions, but all of his answers get out.
Snowden is what people who don’t want to talk about the Fourth Amendment want to talk about. Thus, all the questions are about him.
Facebook is spyware.
I KNEW that thing was full of spiders! Glad I never joined.
Eh, I knew FB was spying but I use it to spy on my children.
That a 29 year old contract employee, one who had worked for the contractor for only a short time and didn’t seem to have been vetted very well, was accessing all of this gives pause.
Didn’t he say he was a sysadmin?
Those guys are up to their elbows in the guts of any system. Wouldn’t be hard to tap into a secured VLAN and grab something before anyone else knew about it.
It’s hard to say whether Snowden picks the questions or not. Apparently he and Greenwald have been working together since last Feb., and heck, Snowden only went to work at Booz Allen sometime in Feb. Before he contacted Greenwald? After? Can’t say myself. But Snowden probably could.
As to Carney, besides not being privy to his more private moments with his friends in the press, we’ve many an instance akin to the planted question of Lois Lerner and Co. to regard, and on which to wonder.
He was as sysadmin. The newsies are acting like the guy dropped out of high school (the horror!) and did nothing between then and the time he was hired by Booz Allen. Of course he’s going to have unlimited access since it’s next to impossible to sift access for admin at the job he was doing.
I read a lot of spy novels and I was wondering if I’d over-thought it that Snowdon has some sort of fail-safe for himself to keep hired gums from 86-ing him. Say, if he doesn’t access his XYZ account at ABD!@# at least every 24 hours it will do a document dump or something like that.
*guns* not gums.
A Hot-Air commenter (no, really!) explains what can be done with metadata and how “privacy” as we understand it is already gone.
I submit it was gone long ago.
The criminality of which Snowden remotely speaks and pending Beck breaking better be that the NgoogleSfacebookA/IRS progressive-techgeek-spy-bully conglomerate used some sort of homebrewed vote eraser software vs. Romney during the last election called “stufnet” or I am just not interested being as I am burnt out from all the transparency this admin…exudes. That and the fact that nobody therein is currently doing jail time for Fast&Furious.
Priva-C is still undergoing clinical trials and earliest reports give no cause for optimism.
Maybe Beck has a smoking gun about Ben Ghazi?
Jay Carney, Axlerude, Elijah Cummings and David Ploufee are hired gums.
Finding Paul Revere via metadata.
Just so, Dave.
Biden got away from his keepers long enough to shoot of his mouth that the SCOTUS was wrong and Gore actually won the 2000 election. I’m waiting to hear he’s had a terrible fall at the house later this year or next.
I wish Buck Showalter could always find his ass with his own two hands, but some days, he just can’t.
Today is George H.W. Bush’s 89th birthday. Happy birthday 41!
Leigh, it is the first line of your job description to criticize and condemn SCOTUS, police departments, patriots, gun and bible clingers when you work for Team 44. “Fall” hell, he will likely get promoted….
I was hoping there were some patriots on his security team. All those car accidents can’t be mere coincidence.
While we’re waiting for Beck’s predicted bombshell: a reminder that when discussing PRISM, and the administration saying it is necessary in order to catch “terrorists,” they’re probably not talking about jihadis:
“The scenario had been carefully planned: A terrorist group prepared to hurt vast numbers of people around Boston would leave backpacks filled with explosives at Faneuil Hall, the Seaport District, and in other towns, spreading waves of panic and fear. Detectives would have to catch the culprits.
Months of painstaking planning had gone into the exercise, dubbed “Operation Urban Shield,” meant to train dozens of detectives in the Greater Boston area to work together to thwart a terrorist threat. The hypothetical terrorist group was even given a name: Free America Citizens, a home-grown cadre of militiamen…”
http://tinyurl.com/n5nl4vl
The usual political correctness run amok, or conditioning the future Waffen S. S. to play their assigned role?
I believe it was in a German zeitung today or yesterday that there was mention of America’s Stasi.
Here’s Yahoos version.
LET THE MAN EAT HIS WAFFLE!
Erst, I’d be open to this just being an excessive political correctness if this admin hadn’t also used other agencies (IRS, EPA, OSHA, etc.) to harass Tea Party types, had the Pentagon update its training materials to list Evangelicals, Christians, etc. as potential terrorists, published a DHS study a few years back identifying right-wing militias as the greatest threat to security, and used every opportunity to deprive us of our 2nd Amendment rights. They’ve been very clear about who they think the enemy is, and it ain’t jihadis.
Trouble with this massive data gathering: that genie don’t go back into the bottle short of an EMP.
I miss the DEC Alpha myself.
Although:
(Cue ominous music…)
ominous music
lighthearted music
There will be growth in the spring!
Which smells of poor (actually, lazy) system design from the start. Why wasn’t the internal databases and communications data encrypted, with crypto operations performed in tamper-resistant hardware?
And while we’re on IT pet peeves, why hasn’t there been more of a focus on dual or “‘m’ of ‘n'” control, where sensitive operations require the simultaneous authorization of multiple persons (i.e. similar to the dual-key system used in missile silos)? That would do a lot for stopping lone miscreants…
I don’t know what the security measures might have/not been, but I do know that in gubmint systems, there’s a ton of regs but the deployment isn’t stellar. Too many cooks in the broth or maybe they haven’t got around to it because they don’t HAVE to.
OR.
Snowden got his stuff from someone deeper inside.
There’s still time to learn.
Maybe this answers something about Snowden’s access.
h/t Sissy Willis
I’ve been reading pw on my IPad lately and it is now showing up as if it were a mobile device – a list of headlines that you have to finger to read. Kind of like….well, I’ll not finish that in the interest of decorum. I can’t log in to comment on that platform though.
AMD might be falling behind on PCs but they dominate the next-gen game platforms, and everyone know technology exists to feed the demand for games and pron.
Perfect: fake Glenn Greenwald Twitter account falsely announces Snowdon’s death.
Alas, @ggreenwild has been deactivated.
That’s right, mv. “Intel on the inside. Idiot on the outside.” AMD is the way to go or so say my gamer kids.
That’s Strauss’s crazy book, sdferr.
LET THE MAN EAT HIS WAFFLE!
(Cue Springtime for Hitler and Germany)
ecurmudgeon, you’ve obviously worked in the computer field..it’s what I do for a living these days.
Anyway, as to security, how many times have you seen the people in charge tell the people that build and run the systems that security takes second place to convenience?
Couple the arrogance of a government appointee with overseeing secure systems and there’s bound to be security holes.
The processor wars were great and AMD had Intel on the ropes, but, in the end, Intel managed to pull it out. (by the way, Intel’s fab plant in AZ is incredible. I got a tour of the computer testing portion during a job interview. Talk about computer geek heaven. Imagine a 4th floor the size of a football field, 20′ ceilings, shelves packed with every type of computer hardware imaginable. And my job was going to be breaking stuff, then figuring out how to fix it.)
I don’t speak or do tech. I’m just being a trouble-maker.
In other WH personnel moves, Michele’s mom will become Surgeon General. She is really good at getting splinters out.
BO the presidential dog will be taking over the Fish and Wildlife Service. His comment? Ruff. Which was news to BHO.
Sasha is going to take Holder’s job and Malia to Sec Def. A step up in both cases.
Little Boy George Stephanopolous will resume his previous position as Presidential Lickespittle Wait that’s current.
Plouffe & Axelrod will share a new czar position, Minister of Whatever-Hell-We-Say-You-Write, replacing Carney
And then Valerie Jarrett is going to take over all the rest of the Cabinet posts.
Formally
motion, if I’m not mistaken, AMD dominates the video processor market. Obviously, one needs sharp clear video rendering for pron and games.
– Ok, now Snowden is getting into the “confirming what anyone in the biz already knew” stuff. If this is Glenns big bombshell it just layed an egg.
– Also here, but not here, or here.
– Just offhand, watching the Cspan broadcast of the “Cybersecurity and Government Surveillance” hearing, the opening statement by the chairwoman sets the tone. They need to spy on us to protect us. Its the only way.
Difi is falling asleep listening to Alexander. Its so heart warming to know these peeps are right on the job, protecting the Americam prople and their interests at all times.
It’s not so much about “taking second place to convenience”, as it is that most security systems are a complex, cumbersome pain in the ass to set up and use. And that’s assuming that it works to begin with.
In my day job, I swear about half of my time is spent arguing with vendors as to whether or not they’ve even tried to use their own product in a production environment.
OVERLOAD THE NSA WITH NONSENSE!
Oh wait, that’s what that vorpal guy is for.
On my tablet I can set Firefox to request the desktop versions of websites by default — but Safari on my iPhone can only serve up PW’s mobile version, which when I try to login to comment gives me a 403 error.
So I’m no longer able to participate here if I’m using my phone, at least until I switch to Android and can use Firefox.
ecurmudgeon…God, don’t get me started on vendors.
Anyway, you say “pain in the ass to set up and use” and I say “tomato.” If the people in charge cannot be bothered with security, because, well, it’s beneath them, then there is no security.
Then there are companies that do hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business, but aren’t willing to spend $10,000 to make sure their data is adequately backed up and secure.
Black Bear Spotted In Aspinwall
rascally rabbit
Is More Global Warming Hiding in the Oceans?
bears are serious
Barbara Mikulski halts NSA hearing to answer a Twitter critic (video)
Ugh.
“No border is ever going to be sealed,” McCain said on the Senate floor on Wednesday afternoon. McCain was arguing that Cornyn’s push to have an additional 6,500 Border Patrol agents on the border would not solve the problem of illegal immigration.
“No border is ever going to be sealed,” McCain said on the Senate floor on Wednesday afternoon.
“No Senator is ever going to make it out of Washington D.C. alive”, said an anonymous wag.
In my day job, I swear about half of my time is spent arguing with vendors as to whether or not they’ve even tried to use their own product in a production environment.
Also known as “What the hell was Microsoft thinking when it “designed” the UI/workflow for VPNs and certificates.
?”
??!!” works too
I assume McCain is talking about the old “perfect is the enemy of the good” again. Of course you cannot stop it, but you can slow it down a lot.
ask east germany circa 1960 – 1989
east germany was trying stop the folks of east germany from leaving
So now is it OK to mock Obama and his policies?
Operation: Everyone Talk Like a Terrorist.
http://tinyurl.com/q2dpkoz
??!!” works too
I’m out of exclamation points and I only had one question mark left.
the dingy harry
Grassley: Reid Wants 60 Vote Threshold for Amendments
“The processor wars were great and AMD had Intel on the ropes, but, in the end, Intel managed to pull it out.”
Samsung and other ARM vendors are shipping way more units than either Intel or AMD these days, though. Classic technology disruption.
OT: That new thingie where it inserts “see more at Protein Wisdom blah-de-blah” when you copy and paste something to quote is annoying as hell.
if you’re a listener to beck, as i am, you would have stocked up;)
SBP, I forgot about the tablet and smart phone market.
I’m a technology luddite. PC’s, servers, switches, routers, etc., is where I work and tend to focus.
Btw, I’ve discovered where I work has decided they want to be able to spy on the tech workstations. And it’s possible for the higher ups to do so very unobtrusively.
So, I’m setting up a Debian system with the server and desktop tools I need and adding it to the domain. Bwaaahahahaha
Thanks, bh.
if you’re a listener to beck, as i am, you would have stocked up;)
I’m writing user documentation for software: exclamation and question marks get used up like water in a marathon.
Doy.
It’s not so much about “taking second place to convenience”, as it is that most security systems are a complex, cumbersome pain in the ass to set up and use.
Ahh, so you’ve attempted to configure a web server running selinux as well…
My email signature now reads, “The preceding message is none of the government’s business.”
Also, does NSA have a Twitter account? If so, block ’em.
I once set up SCO OpenServer 5 running both Apache and Netscape Fasttrack web servers. On top of that, I also installed the Front Page server extensions.
Just to see if I could.
Yeah, at one point in my life, I had way too much time on my hands.
“You wanted East Germany on the Potomac? Might as well have all of the trappings, boys.”
– No, what I wanted was Ghost town on the Potomac.
i wanted detroit on the potomac
– There’s a lot of evidence you got your wish nr.
A government that refuses to seal its borders, but demands to save every frickin’ communication of its citizens is not interested in national security.
– Mikulski looks like she’s about 3 breaths away from a massive embolism.
– Looks like when its all over the new major influx of potential terrorists, along with many millions of job seekers for non-existant jobs, won’t have anything to worry about from surveillance as long as they don’t join any Riech-wing groups.
– The perfect fuckup storm by your caring government.
Obama has some thing like 20 fund raisers in the next two weeks.
I guess he doesn’t feel the need to jump into the presidentin’.
BBH, have you noticed that when all the crimes that are blamed on right-wingers turn out to have been committed by Muslims, suddenly no gives a fuck about them anymore?
Re: Processors
Please don’t believe the hype on the new consoles. They must be shooting for some other kind of market, because for gaming, the preliminary stats don’t look good.
By this guy’s analysis an average current gaming rig will be more than adequate to do anything these consoles will be capable of.
AMD and Intel both have processors that make much more sense to have been used instead of the AMD processor that was used for both systems (basically a beefy mobile processor). Sony and Microsoft must have been shooting for something that ran cooler (quieter: fewer fans), and with less power consumption, but they are really going to pay a price for the lack of performance they will have.
i ask for a ” hi i’m jeff g.” open thread.
Nope. This isn’t someone who’s out already. There’s supposedly at least one document involved that upon exposition will cause cataclysmic change.
DC could use a bit of cataclysm. And a couple billion tons of salt.
And did we tell you the name of the game, boy?
We call it Riding the Gravy Train.
Pablo, is Beck saying who the person is?
From 2002 until the present, what’s caused the most scaryscaryscary deaths in the U.S.?
Jihadis or school shooters
Just sayin’
Pablo, is Beck saying who the person is?
Totally not. He won’t out someone until they want outing.
retirement is the baracky gov’t gig
CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell retiring
Jihadis or school shooters
Is this multiple choice or a comprehensive list? Because Joran van der Sloot probably deserves (dis)honorable mention for the sheer coverage bonanza he apparently precipitated.
big gov’t cont.
Why Some Products Suck
(Left eyelid starts twitching uncontrollably…)
With all the things (Unicorn) Prince and the Revolution have been saying that we have to take with a grain of salt, we should be about there.
big gov’t cont
LOIS LERNER Threatened GOP Candidate, Took Him to Court and Harassed His Elderly Mother
newrouter says June 12, 2013 at 8:53 pm
big gov’t cont.
Why Some Products Suck
Nice… mandating no air hole on a gas can.
I bought one of those new cans to rescue my wife who had run out of gas (based on my apparently poor advice that she would make it to the gas station with no problem). I managed to quickly find a gas station that also had a can to sell, and within 30 minutes of her initial call, I had her motoring up the road to a gas station.
The can sucked (literally as it turns out). I noticed the lack of an air hole early on, and the auto closing mechanism jammed when I removed the spout from wife’s car’s fuel port to try to determine why the remaining 1/3 of a gallon wasn’t pouring into the tank. The can’s sides were pulled in slightly from vacuum, and it only got worse that winter when temperature and pressure changes half-collapsed the can. I would have just thrown the thing away, but it has 1/3 of a gallon of gas still stuck in it, and I don’t know where a waste facility that would actually take it might be.
America has become that 3rd world communist country we all used to make fun of for having crappy centralized planning and demoralized workers.
Are there any hearings tomorrow?
IRS officials try to tame conference spending scandal
OMG!ROTFL
On Twitter, Ace told someone he’d just written a script called WEEBLES.
Then everyone joined in with their treatments, including Burge and Gutfeld. Ace’s timeline has the tweets in the right order. Mine has the best ones.
you all say hi nsa? (you owe me”?”)
To add to RI Red, pointing out that hoovering up every communication we can lay hands on won’t stop all terrorist attacks would just be taken as proof! that we need to redouble our efforts to keep the homeland secure.
Well, no wonder MSDNC thinks George Wallace was a Republican. Nobody dropped the N-bomb like good ol’ George.
What a total freakshow.
(Our government, not this thread, which as always, forced me to learn or consider a bunch of things I hadn’t known.)
They say you get the government you deserve, but what’d we do to get this? The amount of executive and bureaucratic lying going on is like nothing I’ve ever seen.
Intellectual, moral and civic complacency, coupled with cultural decadence?
Or maybe we just got too democratic.
You’d have to consult Aristotle, or maybe Tocqueville.
They say you get the government you deserve, but what’d we do to get this?
Roddy, from the New Deal to Obamacare, who voted these guys in? We did. We’ve been voting ourselves free shit. We deserve it.
“The can sucked (literally as it turns out). I noticed the lack of an air hole early on, and the auto closing mechanism jammed”
I wonder how many federal laws you’d be violating by making your own vent holes and removing the auto closing mechanism.
Probably about as many as you’d violate by taking a drill to a “low flow shower head”.
Not that I know anyone who would do such things.
More about the gas can stuff here:
This lunacy came from Bush’s EPA.
A couple of clever comments worthy of mention:
SW, Roddy, I think things started going downhill when history and math stopped being taught in a meaningful fashion.
For instance, simple stuff, like, oh, say, the idea that “3% inflation is essentially meaningless.” Except that math tells us you lose roughly 50% of your purchasing power in 25 years.
Then there is history. History repeats itself over and over, yet everyone seems to be taught “things will be different this time.”
Heh. At least now I know I’m not the only one! (First did that trick some 15 years ago in a motel box, with a small nail, because no water pressure. Now I always carry a Dremel!)
– Hearings today will be closed session…..What?….Well because shut up.
NSA leaker Ed Snowden’s life on Ars Technica
Thanks, newrouter, for that link to the post on gas cans and, indirectly, shower heads.
I’ll be looking at mine when I get home later.
SBP,
We’ve had those ventless, auto-shutoff “leak-proof, fume-proof” plastic cans in CA for years (thanks, AQMD!). Remove the spout altogether and use a funnel.
We’ve also had those stupid things here in CA for years. Because manufacturers didn’t want to make separate unique products for the CA market, nearly all “low-flow” shower heads are standard types with plastic or rubber “flow restrictors” in them. Disassemble the shower head, remove the fucking restrictor, reassemble, and you now have a usable shower head.
You know what this world needs? A cartoonist who can do with government what Dilbert did with business. It’d be a lot more fertile ground for daily strips, that’s for sure.
FATAL FLAW ALERT
Only someone who’d worked in gubmint long enough to skewer it properly could do that, but nobody with cartooning and humor talent could last that long in the gubmint without (a) losing their immortal soul or (b) running away, screaming.
They say you get the government you deserve, but what’d we do to get this?
They nudged us here with incrementalism: every step they took was too small a hill to die on. Resistance was met with jeering and name-calling. “What, are you a bigot? Small-minded? Against progress? Hater of the poor?”
We folded every time because it wasn’t worth it.
And now it’s metastasized.
I’ve been working for the gubmit since 1979, Di, and I believe my soul is as intact as a fallen man’s could be. The way I have avoided running away while screaming is by drinking heavily [per Sen. Blutarsky’s advice].
I wish I could draw because I’d be tempted to take up your challenge.
And what’s your spill rate there? Gaia wept.
what’d we do to get this?
Shelby Steele explains it pretty well.
If someone did pull it off, their cartoons would be blamed for a terrorist attack and we’d never hear from them again.
Bob Belvedere says June 13, 2013 at 9:49 am
I wish I could draw because I’d be tempted to take up your challenge.
You don’t have to be a great artiste. The skill can be learned, and would take a lot less time than someone who can draw trying to get your level of day to day experience with government.
Good point, Mondamay, and I understand there are some apps out there that make drawing simple stuff easier.
Hmmm.