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Data intelligence complex is the real story
- Sven7 13y agoPatroits don't work cheap.
- ivanca 13y agoMaybe call it "nationalism" to avoid implanted emotional implications of the word.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Sven7 13y agoMaybe I'll just wait a day or two for someone at the Pentagon to leak guidelines on how to provide constructive criticism of their budget. Meanwhile enjoy this quote from Nicholas Negroponte - "Nationalism is the biggest disease on the planet. Nations have the wrong granularity. They’re too small to be global and too big to be local, and all they can think about is competing."
- pfortuny 13y agoThis is exactly what terrorists want: the impact of a terrorist act is, in the end, measured in money much more than in lives. They are not going to kill that many people in the end, what they want is to make people afraid and pervert all the freedom in a country. Because what they hate is our freedom, do not forget it. EDIT: BTW, being wrong (if I am) is a cause for downvotes? Grow up, you people.
- manuelflara 13y agoEven though you have a point in that all this massive expense (and more) is a win for terrorists, I don't think they "hate our freedom". If anything, they hate those that cause them pain (like every other human being). The US have playing chess with the rest of the world for decades and they're starting to pay the price. This is not a war that terrorists started because they hated anyone's freedom (why don't they target Canada, then?), but the absolutely only resource they have against a superpower that's trying to crush them (putting dictators in other countries, etc).
- e40 13y agowhy don't they target Canada They do[1], but I agree, not as often. I've felt for decades that we need to stop meddling in other country's affairs. Remember, we've been a target for decades, too. Hijackings and the first WTC bombing. [1] http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/22/world/americas/canada-terror-plot-thwarted http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/22/world/americas/canada-terror-p...
- cjdavis 13y agoI was with you right up to your last sentence. 'Our freedoms,' that's the number one cause of terrorism?
- pfortuny 13y agoYes: the freedom to say "I shall not comply with your exigencies just because you are powerful". This is what they hate. Because it prevents the fulfilment of their 'dreams'. I live in Spain. I know something about terror, man. And what ETA despises is FREE people in the Basque Country, willing to say to them: get your shit out of my hands and my house. Terrorist are cheap people, in that sense. B-series villains, really. They just hate people not complying with their wishes: i.e. 'free' people. This is what each dictator hates most. And they are dictators: "I know what is right and shall put all means into play in order to obtain it".
- jmduke 13y agoThe terrorists do not want to see the U.S. turn into a police state. The terrorists do not hate our freedoms. The terrorists -- and specifically I'm talking about al-Qaeda and related groups -- want "atrocities against Muslims" to end, they want support for Israel to end, they want U.S. presence in the Middle East to end.[1] Terror sects aren't B-movie villains. [1]: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/military/july-dec96/fatwa_1996.html http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/military/july-dec96/fatw...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Ygg2 13y agoTerrorist just want to commit their atrocities in peace, without anyone bothering them.
- pfortuny 13y agoI probably explained myself badly. What they want is to terrorize. Their success is measured in money. Any economist will just point out that money is how most things are measured as regards human relations in a normal society.
- danielharan 13y agoNo, their success is measured in how well they achieve their goals such as ridding an invader from land they consider sacred. You know why they're pissed off, right? Knowing our enemy is rather essential if we want to stop this war one day.
- newnewnew 13y agoIt's a little more complicated than that, as one of those "atrocities against Muslims" is the existence of Israel. Even if the US ended support for Israel, it's likely that Muslims would still bear animus towards the West due to Israel's pro-Western worldview. Now, maybe if we started bombing Israel to demonstrate our sincerity...
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- yoster 13y agoWe should use that money to drop bombs via drones 24/7. Eradicate them out of existence.
- hga 13y agoErrrm, and what, exactly, tells us who to "drop bombs" on?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Achshar 13y agoIs the site behind paywall? I don't want to register just to read one article.
- chm 13y agowww.bugmenot.com
- hga 13y agoLast time I checked it's a staged paywall. You get X articles for free without any action, X+Y articles if you register, there may be another "free" stage, and of course you can start paying and that may have more than one level. They compete with The Wall Street Journal, which is famously about the only paper that made a success of on-line subscriptions a long time ago.
- dm2 13y agoI closed the popup and the article still didn't appear, so I closed the tab and found something else to read.
- carbocation 13y agoFT apparently requires you to register to see your 8 free articles every 30 days. So you have to do something, not just nothing. Any other sources on this story? The fact that the US spends $80 billion (overall?) on signals intelligence would not be particularly surprising.
- hga 13y agoI guess they've changed their policy and I didn't notice because I registered a long time ago. Not a good idea, there should be no friction until you've tasted a bit of the fruit they're offering. Then again, such mechanisms tend to make it too easy to entirely circumvent the subscription system.
- corresation 13y agoIt is and shouldn't be on HN. There is a recurring argument that these sorts of paywalls are okay for submissions because you can run various circumvention techniques that remove them. Aside from the serious legal grey area there (it may fall under the realm of "hacking"), it is in effect stealing for those of us who abide by intellectual property rights. Sites that implement paywalls understand that they eschew social news sites as a consequence. Abide by that understanding.
- jrokisky 13y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA
- elorant 13y agoWell if you look it the other way, that's a good market to build a start-up for.
- hga 13y agoThis article by Walter Russell Mead says a massive intelligence effort is an necessary corollary of Obama's position that the Global War on Terror is over, that we can return to a 9/10 mindset: http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/06/06/public-peace-secret-war-the-snooping-scandals-and-the-presidents-war-strategy/ http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2013/06/06/public...: Key bits: "From the day he took office, President Obama has sought to defuse the war and decrease public concern about it.... "It is in many ways an excellent strategy, but it has one serious flaw: it leaves the President terribly vulnerable if a significant terror strike should succeed.... [ Details the intelligence effort required. ] "More than that, he has to be able to act. If terror is to be nipped in the bud, drones must fire down from the skies. If the al-Qaeda leadership is to remain stunned, scattered and incapable of large scale actions against the United States, houses in Waziristan must mysteriously blow up. American citizens making war against their homeland must die, even if that means they don’t get to hear their Miranda rights first. "President Obama’s core war strategy depends on massive intelligence capabilities that were undreamed of twenty years ago. It depends on the substitution of drones for troops. PRISM and similar programs aren’t a ghastly misstep or an avoidable accident. They are the essence of Obama’s grand strategy: public peace and secret war. To cool down the public face of the war, he must intensify the secret struggle."
- Herring 13y agoYeah, and before that was communists. I wonder what's next.
- newnewnew 13y agoI'm curious what you believe about the Boston bombing and 9/11. Do you think the threat of Islamic terrorism is fabricated? I'm also curious what you think about American communism. American communists were instrumental in getting the Soviet Union the Bomb, thereby bring the world to the brink of destruction. They also leaked information from the top levels of government during WWII, helping to deliver millions to the rule of Soviet tyranny. The domestic communist threat was very real. Sorry to quote myself, but: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5843702 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5843702
- ovoxo 13y agoThe individual in me says "Wow, that's a lot of spying". Yet, the larger, money-hungry side of me says "what service/product could I develop to get a chunk of that $80 billion".
- film42 13y agoYou have to admit, the US is doing a pretty good job with that $80 billion/yr. I mean, what's the alternative? Spend $0 on secret data intelligence gathering? Of course not! I for one am happy to know that there are people on my side, looking for people who are not. Furthermore, I can't seem to understand why people are so up-in-arms over US data gathering. I for one, have nothing to hide. Every crime I've committed online is so small, the NSA simply doesn't care. Obama said in his latest press conference, "We collect the meta data, not the data. We can see who is calling who, and if we need to listen to that call, we need to go before a judge." I, a person of the people, am fine with the government spending this kind of money on secret data intelligence, because it keeps me safer. Period.
- suredo 13y agowhile the education budget is less then 70 billions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Ed...
- newnewnew 13y agoThat's just at the federal level. Total is about $800 billion[1]. The US is regularly on top of the OECD for spending per student in school. The idea that it doesn't spend much on education is one of those bad memes that never goes away. [1] http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_education_spending_20.html http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_education_spending_20...
- omarali 13y agoThe article is free if you click on it from google's search results. Here is a link: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=data%20intelligence%20complex%20is%20the%20real%20story&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CC4QqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2Fa1dd626c-cf80-11e2-be7b-00144feab7de.html&ei=W12zUa29O8jnqAH7u4DwDA&usg=AFQjCNH7qCOhtl9YgRoHYyW206cuJ-4Vag&bvm=bv.47534661,d.aWM http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=data%20intelligence%2...
- gasull 13y agoWilliam Binney talks about the military-industrial complex in this video from the last HOPE conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqN59beaFMI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqN59beaFMI