5 ms·

I'm a single dad working full time. Time is hard to come by, I'll post the damn link when I have time to find it.

DonHopkins 12y ago
You said people were misinformed, then you changed the topic to Snowden's personality and high school record. Just what misinformation are you referring to, and can you provide some non-anecdotal evidence to correct the misinformation? Are you saying that it's Snowden's personality and high school record that people are misinformed about, or the NSA? Who was misinformed and who was spreading misinformation when Clapper directly lied under oath when he was testifying in front of congress? How about focusing attention on the content of the leaks, and the misinformation the NSA itself is spreading, instead of Snowden's personality? I'm more interested to know how your DoD friends think about what was leaked, and what Clapper lied about, than who leaked it.
- irishcoffee 12y ago
  I said "dates back to high school." The 'dates back to' phrase, in general English, is a phrase that serves to establish the start of a time-lined pattern of behavior. I don't think you're doing it intentionally, and I may have poorly phrased my quick response, but I feel like you took my response quite a bit out of context. Everyone was trying to figure themselves out back in high school. I'm not judging that at all. I can't speak to Clapper, only he can. I don't think its a far stretch of the imagination to say that there are far, far bigger things at play than his testimony. Have you ever visited the NSA museum? It's open to the public. The US actually intercepted the message the night before the Pearl Harbor attack happened, but didn't have the resources to decode it in time. (https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/museum/virtual_tour/museum_tour_text.shtml https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/museum/virtua... ctrl+f 'harbor' should be the 3rd/last result). The point being, perhaps there are bigger things at play. I can't speak for my 'DoD friends' as you ask, mostly because they don't talk about the specifics of their work. I asked a buddy once if they monitor US citizens. He said something to the effect of: "we don't need to monitor people, they monitor themselves via facebook, twitter, and instagram. How hard do you think it is to find publicly available information?" After I was 'enlightened' to that, it made sense. People literally put what they cooked for dinner on the internet. Finding out information about someone is not hard, because the information is volunteered. No laws are broken, no rights are violated. If you care about your privacy, get off social media. Also, as much as this may annoy you, NSA (as is my understanding) doesn't care about domestic information at all. That is the jurisdiction of the FBI. This is one of the things my friends find so amusing, people seem to not understand this. That being said, if a packet goes from DC to GA to CN to CA tp US, the foreign hop means: its not domestic traffic. As we have very recently seen, CN has very little issue mucking with traffic that crosses their direct sphere of influence. Perhaps its much harder to tell what kind of foreign traffic should be inspected, and maybe the initial location of origin was spoofed, and its not that easy to figure all this stuff out. Perhaps the smartest people employed by the DoD aren't any smarter than the people that frequent this site, and there are insanely large-scale peoples to be solved, and their fucking hard to solve? I don't think you're going to like anything I've just said, but just think about it. Do you really believe that the DoD cares about people that are not a direct threat to national security? Do you really think the DoD has the resources to actually monitor, in real time, the general US population? Perhaps, unless you get a satellite phone call from Pakistan, you're not even interesting enough to get your area code noticed? The government can hardly pass a damn budget. They're not that organized. How many people lie on their tax returns every year and get away with it? If the government can't effectively audit the almighty dollar, do you really think they're Big Brother? Edit: I can't edit my parent response, this is the best I can do. I am looking for a specific article that detailed Snowden from highschool up to his current life. I really will try my best to find this article, and will update as soon as I can find it. My 1 y/o daughter just went to bed, and I will quickly be following suit. I would honesly be willing to do some sort of silly HN-style AMA if people are interested. I'm not some internet troll. I went to Chesapeake High school, which is in the same athletic district as Arundel High school, Where Snowden went. I have no desire or reason to grandstand about anything.
  - Karunamon 12y ago
    >I said "dates back to high school." The 'dates back to' phrase, in general English, is a phrase that serves to establish the start of a time-lined pattern of behavior. Again, this does nothing to establish why his behavior in high school is even remotely relevant to his behavior today - and even if it is, so what? He exposed the illegal behavior of the NSA because he's an attention whore? And that somehow invalidates the illegal-ness of what the NSA is doing? The man could be a fucking sociopathic pedophile serial killer and it wouldn't matter. His personality has nothing to do with the content of the leaks. Repeat this sentence until it sinks in, please! Why are you so hell-bent on ad-homming Snowden? >Finding out information about someone is not hard, because the information is volunteered. And those that are a little bit more careful? What about those edge cases? You know, and I know, and your bosses know, that it's not the people documenting their lives on Facebook that drives the NSA to backdoor encryption algorithms. >NSA (as is my understanding) doesn't care about domestic information at all. The content of the Snowden leaks proves this to be a a damn lie. Your understanding cannot compete with documents straight from the horse's mouth. Hell, you could be the director of the entire fucking department and it wouldn't matter - the facts disprove this narrative. >Perhaps the smartest people employed by the DoD aren't any smarter than the people that frequent this site, and there are insanely large-scale peoples to be solved, and their fucking hard to solve? The smartest people employed by the three letter agencies are beholden to the US constitution, something they apparently need reminded of. If you're sucking up info from US citizens, that is not a "oops, let's get an intern to fix this broken footer" like it was a bug on some random rails site, that is a "you just broke the fucking supreme law of the land, please report to the DoJ for your inquiry" >Do you really believe that the DoD cares about people that are not a direct threat to national security? Everyone is a "threat to national security" until proven otherwise. Again, we have the authoritative leaks to go on, which rank about a million times higher than any apologia you can possibly offer. And if they're not a threat to national security, then why are they in those databases? Search, seizure, and all that... >Perhaps, unless you get a satellite phone call from Pakistan, you're not even interesting enough to get your area code noticed? And yet, my shit is in their database. Why is that? What gives them the right? >The government can hardly pass a damn budget. They're not that organized. Because, yknow, the people responsible for passing a damn budget are the same ones that are responsible for orchestrating the SIGINT programs. Cmon, you know better than that. "The Government" is not a singular entity. This disorganized entity can apparently architect and effectively run programs such as PRISM, DISHFIRE, XKEYSCORE, and that operation that intercepts general purpose hardware to install backdoors who's name I can't remember right now. Being a mess of bureaucracy and graft has never stopped any government, anywhere, from perpetrating massive crimes against its people. With that in mind, this is absolutely not a defense, nor even a mitigation, of the crimes committed. I apologize if these posts come off as overly hostile, but you are making fallacious arguments, and you are handwaving inconvenient facts. It would be better for all concerned if you'd stop doing that.

You said people were misinformed, then you changed the topic to Snowden's personality and high school record. Just what misinformation are you referring to, and can you provide some non-anecdotal evidence to correct the misinformation? Are you saying that it's Snowden's personality and high school record that people are misinformed about, or the NSA? Who was misinformed and who was spreading misinformation when Clapper directly lied under oath when he was testifying in front of congress? How about focusing attention on the content of the leaks, and the misinformation the NSA itself is spreading, instead of Snowden's personality? I'm more interested to know how your DoD friends think about what was leaked, and what Clapper lied about, than who leaked it.

irishcoffee 12y ago
I said "dates back to high school." The 'dates back to' phrase, in general English, is a phrase that serves to establish the start of a time-lined pattern of behavior. I don't think you're doing it intentionally, and I may have poorly phrased my quick response, but I feel like you took my response quite a bit out of context. Everyone was trying to figure themselves out back in high school. I'm not judging that at all. I can't speak to Clapper, only he can. I don't think its a far stretch of the imagination to say that there are far, far bigger things at play than his testimony. Have you ever visited the NSA museum? It's open to the public. The US actually intercepted the message the night before the Pearl Harbor attack happened, but didn't have the resources to decode it in time. (https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/museum/virtual_tour/museum_tour_text.shtml https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic_heritage/museum/virtua... ctrl+f 'harbor' should be the 3rd/last result). The point being, perhaps there are bigger things at play. I can't speak for my 'DoD friends' as you ask, mostly because they don't talk about the specifics of their work. I asked a buddy once if they monitor US citizens. He said something to the effect of: "we don't need to monitor people, they monitor themselves via facebook, twitter, and instagram. How hard do you think it is to find publicly available information?" After I was 'enlightened' to that, it made sense. People literally put what they cooked for dinner on the internet. Finding out information about someone is not hard, because the information is volunteered. No laws are broken, no rights are violated. If you care about your privacy, get off social media. Also, as much as this may annoy you, NSA (as is my understanding) doesn't care about domestic information at all. That is the jurisdiction of the FBI. This is one of the things my friends find so amusing, people seem to not understand this. That being said, if a packet goes from DC to GA to CN to CA tp US, the foreign hop means: its not domestic traffic. As we have very recently seen, CN has very little issue mucking with traffic that crosses their direct sphere of influence. Perhaps its much harder to tell what kind of foreign traffic should be inspected, and maybe the initial location of origin was spoofed, and its not that easy to figure all this stuff out. Perhaps the smartest people employed by the DoD aren't any smarter than the people that frequent this site, and there are insanely large-scale peoples to be solved, and their fucking hard to solve? I don't think you're going to like anything I've just said, but just think about it. Do you really believe that the DoD cares about people that are not a direct threat to national security? Do you really think the DoD has the resources to actually monitor, in real time, the general US population? Perhaps, unless you get a satellite phone call from Pakistan, you're not even interesting enough to get your area code noticed? The government can hardly pass a damn budget. They're not that organized. How many people lie on their tax returns every year and get away with it? If the government can't effectively audit the almighty dollar, do you really think they're Big Brother? Edit: I can't edit my parent response, this is the best I can do. I am looking for a specific article that detailed Snowden from highschool up to his current life. I really will try my best to find this article, and will update as soon as I can find it. My 1 y/o daughter just went to bed, and I will quickly be following suit. I would honesly be willing to do some sort of silly HN-style AMA if people are interested. I'm not some internet troll. I went to Chesapeake High school, which is in the same athletic district as Arundel High school, Where Snowden went. I have no desire or reason to grandstand about anything.
- Karunamon 12y ago
  >I said "dates back to high school." The 'dates back to' phrase, in general English, is a phrase that serves to establish the start of a time-lined pattern of behavior. Again, this does nothing to establish why his behavior in high school is even remotely relevant to his behavior today - and even if it is, so what? He exposed the illegal behavior of the NSA because he's an attention whore? And that somehow invalidates the illegal-ness of what the NSA is doing? The man could be a fucking sociopathic pedophile serial killer and it wouldn't matter. His personality has nothing to do with the content of the leaks. Repeat this sentence until it sinks in, please! Why are you so hell-bent on ad-homming Snowden? >Finding out information about someone is not hard, because the information is volunteered. And those that are a little bit more careful? What about those edge cases? You know, and I know, and your bosses know, that it's not the people documenting their lives on Facebook that drives the NSA to backdoor encryption algorithms. >NSA (as is my understanding) doesn't care about domestic information at all. The content of the Snowden leaks proves this to be a a damn lie. Your understanding cannot compete with documents straight from the horse's mouth. Hell, you could be the director of the entire fucking department and it wouldn't matter - the facts disprove this narrative. >Perhaps the smartest people employed by the DoD aren't any smarter than the people that frequent this site, and there are insanely large-scale peoples to be solved, and their fucking hard to solve? The smartest people employed by the three letter agencies are beholden to the US constitution, something they apparently need reminded of. If you're sucking up info from US citizens, that is not a "oops, let's get an intern to fix this broken footer" like it was a bug on some random rails site, that is a "you just broke the fucking supreme law of the land, please report to the DoJ for your inquiry" >Do you really believe that the DoD cares about people that are not a direct threat to national security? Everyone is a "threat to national security" until proven otherwise. Again, we have the authoritative leaks to go on, which rank about a million times higher than any apologia you can possibly offer. And if they're not a threat to national security, then why are they in those databases? Search, seizure, and all that... >Perhaps, unless you get a satellite phone call from Pakistan, you're not even interesting enough to get your area code noticed? And yet, my shit is in their database. Why is that? What gives them the right? >The government can hardly pass a damn budget. They're not that organized. Because, yknow, the people responsible for passing a damn budget are the same ones that are responsible for orchestrating the SIGINT programs. Cmon, you know better than that. "The Government" is not a singular entity. This disorganized entity can apparently architect and effectively run programs such as PRISM, DISHFIRE, XKEYSCORE, and that operation that intercepts general purpose hardware to install backdoors who's name I can't remember right now. Being a mess of bureaucracy and graft has never stopped any government, anywhere, from perpetrating massive crimes against its people. With that in mind, this is absolutely not a defense, nor even a mitigation, of the crimes committed. I apologize if these posts come off as overly hostile, but you are making fallacious arguments, and you are handwaving inconvenient facts. It would be better for all concerned if you'd stop doing that.