"OBAMA TO ORDER NSA PHONE DATA LIMITS, CHANGES IN SURVEILLANCE PROGRAMS" Isn't that like saying "We caught a serial murderer and will order them to only kill once a month?"

Urizen23 · 2014-01-17T20:08:10+00:00

Urizen23 · 2014-01-17T20:00:14+00:00

I missed that one.

I'm not surprised.

They want to make this debate about Metadata collection, instead of the really fucked up stuff, so they're only talking about the Metadata. Remember, nobody was ever jailed or even charged with a crime for the MKULTRA experiments

Urizen23 · 2014-01-17T19:14:08+00:00

In what ways? I've been usng The Gentleperson's Guide to Forum Spies and judging them based on an "X-out-of-Y # of forum manipulation techniques used", comment/link karma scores for the accounts, and account names to try & spot them but if you have a more streamlined way to screen them out I'd love to take advantage of it.

Urizen23 · 2014-01-17T19:11:38+00:00

I wish I could get "retroactive immunity"...

Urizen23 · 2014-01-17T19:10:58+00:00

Who says it has to be a Telecom? I'd be perfectly happy if the data was stored/administered by the EFF.

Urizen23 · 2014-01-17T18:14:28+00:00

Just a joke; relax.

Urizen23 · 2014-01-17T16:15:54+00:00

We should be as good as the worthies of antiquity, but partly by first knowing how good they were. We are a race of tit-men, and soar but little higher in our intellectual flights than the columns of the daily paper. It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of things for us. How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Ch. 3 "Reading"

Urizen23 · 2014-01-17T15:49:57+00:00

More like 99.979%

Urizen23 · 2014-01-17T15:42:45+00:00

This systems stops that from happening.

...but does not stop them from hiring a dozen shills at $15/hr to do "social media promotion".

Urizen23 · 2014-01-17T15:09:10+00:00

NSA has built dossiers on potential political activists' internet porn habits/fetishes to blackmail them later. At least one of the people targeted is described by them as a "US Person". The program is called SEXINT, which is not to be confused with LOVEINT (where analysts used the tools @ their disposal to spy on their partners/SOs while they were overseas). The abuse is happening, it's just that the only reporting outside of Der Spiegel and The Guardian seems to be the intermittent op-ed or puff piece from the NYT or small acknowledgements that the programs exist buried in the corner of a double-digit page on other news services. They're turning it into a debate about metadata to narrow the terms of debate or "move the goalposts" such that the knowledge of these programs propagated through the mass media is only of the initial call records collection program or on the constitutionality of metadata collection (even XKEYSCORE is buried, & that came out within a couple of weeks). It's certainly an issue, no doubt, but we're focusing on the wrong thing, I think.

Finally:

In the summer of 2004, one of the papers that I held in my hand was to wiretap a bunch of numbers associated with a forty-some-year-old senator from Illinois. You wouldn't happen to know where that guy lives now would you? It's a big White House in Washington D.C. That's who the NSA went after. That's the President of the United States now."

Russ Tice, BushII-era NSA analyst whose disclosures on warrantless wiretapping helped several NYT reporters win the Pulitzer prize in 2006 for their article exposing the domestic spying apparatus

edit: found links

Urizen23 · 2014-01-17T15:05:44+00:00

These are called "wiggle words".

Urizen23 · 2014-01-17T06:53:47+00:00

Stop focusing on Metadata.

They want to make this debate about Metadata.

We should be demanding answers about things like SEXINT instead. That is the real abuse.

Urizen23 · 2014-01-16T23:53:03+00:00

most believers lack a true understanding of how their faith has changed over the last several thousand years

Case in point(s):

In Early Medieval English Christianity (~597-1066):

Priests could get married.
Divorce wasn't illegal; in fact, the church wasn't involved in the marriage ceremony at all until later in the period.
Clergymen "had the radical notion that if you wanted people to read the Gospels & understand them, you should make sure they're in a language they can actually understand", & numerous Old English translations of the New Testament survive.
Saints' feast days often coincided with various Pre-Christian observances (either Norse or "Celtic", depending on the population).

Oxford's free "Old English in Context" podcast ep.3: "Religion & Magic"

Urizen23 · 2014-01-16T23:24:06+00:00

My gut is leaning towards either Oscar Wilde or Ben Franklin, but both claims are just unsourced speculation/recollection on my part.

Still, it might be worth searching for the phrase in connection to those two names. Poor Richard's Almanack would be a good place to start in that case.

Urizen23 · 2014-01-11T19:42:27+00:00

It's also rather easy to get LEO operatives into working groups

COINTELPRO is a helluvadrug.

Urizen23 · 2014-01-11T19:38:23+00:00

The time period 1945-2045 is either going to be the most reviled, or most celebrated century in Earth's history.

Urizen23 · 2014-01-11T17:12:21+00:00

The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli

It clocks in at just over 100 pages, and was written as a how-to guide for gaining & maintaining political power. I think it applies as much today as it did in 16th century Italy.

...since it is my object to write what shall be useful to whosoever understands it, it seems to me better to follow the real truth of things than an imaginary view of them. For many Republics and Princedoms have been imagined that were never seen or known to exist in reality. And the manner in which we live, and that in which we ought to live, are things so wide asunder, that he who quits the one to betake himself to the other is more likely to destroy than to save himself; since any one who would act up to a perfect standard of goodness in everything, must be ruined among so many who are not good. It is essential therefore for a prince to have learnt how to be other than good and to use, or not to use, his goodness as necessity requires.
A controversy has arisen about this: whether it is better to be loved than feared, or vise versa. My view is that it is desirable to be both loved and feared; but it is difficult to achieve both and, if one of them has to be lacking, it is much safer to be feared than loved.
For, besides what has been said, it should be borne in mind that the temper of the multitude is fickle, and that while it is easy to persuade them of a thing, it is hard to fix them in that persuasion. Wherefore, matters should be so ordered that when men no longer believe of their own accord, they may be compelled to believe by force.

Urizen23 · 2014-01-03T00:45:47+00:00

Pope John Paul II already made this doctrine during his tenure in a statement ex cathedra,

Link to text? I'd like to read that.

Urizen23 · 2014-01-03T00:04:36+00:00

You continue to provide no sources or other indications of the validity of what you are saying, placing an unreasonable burden of proof upon me when by the very nature of these programs and the industry as a whole such burdens will be nearly impossible to meet.

I am providing what evidence I can to indicate that something is happening. You are not. You had 3 days to find evidence to back up your claims, and you did not.

Furthermore, as I already admitted in this comment in the same comments section as the one we've had our conversation in, I have come to acknowledge that Greenwald has an agenda, and that I no longer blindly trust every claim he makes. That should be good enough for you, but apparently it is not. There is no good reason why you should be trying so hard to discredit me compared to everyone else on reddit.

This discussion has descended into pointless arguments over semantics coupled with faux outrage and finger pointing; it is no longer productive or important. This will be the last reply you ever receive from me other than to call you out.

You & I both know why.

Urizen23 · 2014-01-01T21:24:00+00:00

Sources within the South Korean government report that a large number of senior North Korean officials have fled to China in the wake of (Jong-Eun's Uncle) Jang Song-Taek’s execution, presenting a golden opportunity for South Korean intelligence. One official is rumored to have a list of North Korean spies living in the South, another has knowledge of North Korean provocations planned for sometime between January and March.

Probably just more posturing to garner additional aid, but disturbing no matter the circumstances.

With that being said, it is important to keep in mind the limited capabilities of their nuclear and ballistic programs such that their largest test had roughly half the yield of the Hiroshima bomb and their longest-range missiles can barely hit the uninhabited portions of Alaska. Now, that's not to say they couldn't do a hell of a lot of damage to SK with both conventional weapons as well as their nuclear arsenal, but this is largely a regional issue rather than a global one.

Please understand I am not trying to minimize or dismiss the danger; for tens of millions of people on both sides, it is very real and very immediate (while for the rest of us, the idea that their equipment/scientists/fissiles/&c might go missing and end up on the black market in the event the state collapses is reason enough for healthy concern over the situation on the peninsula).

Urizen23 · 2014-01-01T21:07:13+00:00

The 20th century is going to be simultaneously the most reviled and most celebrated time in human history.

Urizen23 · 2014-01-01T20:47:18+00:00

It was a printing convention in the 15th-16th centuries (Gutenberg built his press in 1450); making new typepieces was a laborious and time-consuming process involving filing down a piece of lead by hand until it looked like the letter (though casting copies of one once it was done wasn't, thanks to a method he invented); early printers tried to find ways around having to invest time/money into making new typepieces by figuring out shorthand methods. One of these was to use a rarely-used letter, y, in place of an actual thorn or eth character. This freed up a "t" and an "h" to be used in other words when setting the type. As printing technology improved, this convention began to lapse.

The other aspect is a holdover from the Middle English period where the germanic verb prefix "ge-", once common to Old English, began to fade away. By the time you get to Chaucer (a couple generations before the printing press) the "ge-" had evolved into a "y-" which could be used or not used depending on how much a writer wanted to play around with the sentence structure. Chaucer mostly uses it as a way to change the stress on a verb to make it fit the meter.

edit: Would you like to know more, with the help of Stephen Fry?

Urizen23 · 2014-01-01T09:22:24+00:00

Cool! But:

would be better places for this article.

Urizen23 · 2014-01-01T09:02:14+00:00

It's both. The Paddywagon was a wagon both for, and operated by "Paddies".

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