Now that you know the NSA spies on americans, will that change your posting habits?

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seansean said:
Ease up, pilot, if if the question were that ridiculous, there wouldn't be so many posts in response...and if you actually believe the NSA limited themselves the way you describe, then you have a lot more faith in them than I do.
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Why the focus on NSA? Any law enforcement agency in the US with a computer and internet access has the authority to surf the web and check out who posts what where. The issue with the NSA (and this issue was known long before the New York Times broke the story and before Bush ever entered office) has absolutely no application to people posting on a public website.
 
It wouldnt surprise one bit if they are using software to monitor words/word order/sentance structure right this very moment.

By typing "George W Bush President hate terrorism bomb nuke nuclear device bio biological nerve gas air plane american airlines anthrax kill evil hajj shi'ite muslim islam allah isreal palsetine iraq iran leader cell destroy plans secrecy hell virgins heaven sacrifice suicide explosive semtex C4 plastic-explosive wheels office tower luggage suitcase purse shoe hat bravery honor"

Theres plenty more keywords out there.

I also suspect that if someone sent a message contained 3 or more of those words in a 200 word range and that person was on the "Watch-List" it would case the CIA/FBI/SS to perk up their ears a little.

Although one does have to remember the billions of phonecalls/faxes/emails/text mesages/BB postst that happen daily.

Get enough computers, get em fast enough....heck, the fastes computer is something like 10 terraflops, right?

Im gonna make an ASS-umation (Something my old teacher always use to say)
Anyways...
(http://plc.fis.utoronto.ca/courses/3777a/Session 8.htm was used here)
Ok, 10 teraflops a second, is, i think (assumation part) 10,000 gigabytes a second.
10,000 gigabytes a seocnd is 10,000,000 megabytes a second.
10,000,000 megabytes a second is 10,000,000,000 kilabytes a second.
10,000,000,000 kilabytes a second is 10,000,000,000,000 bytes a second

There are 8 bits in a byte, and each bit counts as one charcter (1,0) "A byte is capable of holding one character."

So 10,000,000,000,000 multiplied by 8= 80,000,000,000,000 characters a second. And thats one supercomputer.

80 trillion characters a second. One supercomputer.
Lets say they have just 10 supercomputers.....
800,000,000,000,000

800 trillion characters a second....

Im beggining to belive its entirely possible that, with enough computers, ever single 1 and 0 could be monitered....
 
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ya know what i think is funny........

If the government does have specific words or phrases that trigger a computer at Ft. Meade to go "ding!!, you have mail" to the poor agents who are in charge of sorting through all the data that is minded. Can you imagine the nightmare that the news story has caused?

Talk about a flood! Every forum post and news story and e-mail and any other electronic media is bound to have an example similar to the above listing every guessed "hot word" that could be on the list!

I have a freind that has been up for some heavy duty security clearance through his job. Very heavy duty, he's got a TS SCI and this one is taking years longer than the TS to get. We have fun every once in a while throwing "hot words" into our phone conversations because we assume that we are being monitored.


Hmmm.....maybe that's why it is taking so long :evil:
 
blackguns said:
ya know what i think is funny........

If the government does have specific words or phrases that trigger a computer at Ft. Meade to go "ding!!, you have mail" to the poor agents who are in charge of sorting through all the data that is minded. Can you imagine the nightmare that the news story has caused?

Talk about a flood! Every forum post and news story and e-mail and any other electronic media is bound to have an example similar to the above listing every guessed "hot word" that could be on the list!

I have a freind that has been up for some heavy duty security clearance through his job. Very heavy duty, he's got a TS SCI and this one is taking years longer than the TS to get. We have fun every once in a while throwing "hot words" into our phone conversations because we assume that we are being monitored.


Hmmm.....maybe that's why it is taking so long :evil:
Click to expand...

*Giggle*
 
I started doing that when I heard about Echelon. During a previous administration, I would routinely discuss the terrorist bombing of a high school in Clinton, TN. I figured that those code words were enough to get me in a few files I otherwise wouldn't have made it in. ;)
 
How many of us have had a visit from a G man or seen ANY other negative result of this kind of monitoring?

The idea and principal of it is repugnant, I am not arguing that. But I would have bet good money that 9/11 wouldn't be the last attack on US soil.......and maybe it won't be but I am happy with the results of the last 4 years at least in that regard.

The war is a war.....there has never been a good war, there never will be.

What part does the RESULTS play in all of this. Is a temporary change in our freedoms worth the result. No Terrorist attacks?

I think most of us would shout NO from the roof tops......then again our nation is young. And most of us were not in the WTC or Pentagon, but a lot of us have been on planes. What would the people of Israel say? They are much a much younger county and yet have seen so much more terrorism. How about England and the IRA? How many bombs does it take to change your tolerance to loss of freedoms?


Maybe the lesson of Israel and Britain is that no amount of bombing should change the value of freedom. Does the American society have the testicular fortitude to stand behind that statement?

I really don't have answers. But I was a political science minor in college and to me the question is fascinating.

Trying to answer it is even more so.
 
Maybe the lesson of Israel and Britain is that no amount of bombing should change the value of freedom.
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The people of Great Britain have already willingly ceded over their civil liberties to their government. Cameras on every streetcorner; an unarmed citizenry; legislation to outlaw the sale of knives to those under age 18 -- the litany could go on and on ... As far as Israel goes -- I'd bet the amount of domestic spying carried out on Israeli citizens (given the sheer numbers of Arab folk in residence on Israeli soil) by the government there is far greater than we could imagine ...
 
One more thing to add.

I asked if we have the B@lls to stand behind a "freedom at all cost" policy. I asked that because it is the natural opposite of the current policy.

There is evidence that this type of monitoring has stopped terrorist plots. It actually has likely (no one can ever know for sure) prevented the dealth of some ones friends and families. It has prevented the need for heroes like the ones on Flight 93 to give their lives for others. It has done good things.

I haven't seen evidence that it has been used to prevent loss of political power or support other less noble ends.

The whole idea does fly in the face of the spirit that the USA was started on, and therefore should be tighly controlled and always limited in scope and time frame. But it has not been ENTIRELY negative.

I'm trying to THINK, something a very memoriable teacher told me was the most important thing I could learn how to do.

Again no answers......just more questions.....
 
How many of us have had a visit from a G man or seen ANY other negative result of this kind of monitoring?
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When the canary in the mineshaft stops breathing, only a fool keeps going because he hasn't personally keeled over yet.

Or to put it more prosaically: that any American citizen's rights can be trampled upon by the American government, means that every American's rights are at risk.

(See my sig line for yet another way to say the same thing...)
What part does the RESULTS play in all of this. Is a temporary change in our freedoms worth the result. No Terrorist attacks?
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There's a premise here I am not willing to accept on faith. You obviously believe that these rights violations are all temporary measures.

Perhaps they are -- but what guarantees that? "The natural course of things is for the government to gain ground, and liberty to yield," wrote Thomas Jefferson. Obviously he was born in a different era than our own, but I see no reason to believe that he was wrong.

Given the horrendous consequences of getting it wrong, I am as unwilling to accept the erasure of my human rights by the government as I would be to hand my firearm over and meekly surrender to a thug who promises not to harm me if I only allow him to tie me up naked. Perhaps being tied up and helpless is a temporary measure, and perhaps he won't harm me if I submit -- but should I take that risk? I don't think so.
I think most of us would shout NO from the roof tops......then again our nation is young. And most of us were not in the WTC or Pentagon, but a lot of us have been on planes. What would the people of Israel say? They are much a much younger county and yet have seen so much more terrorism. How about England and the IRA? How many bombs does it take to change your tolerance to loss of freedoms?
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These questions are nothing new; they have been with us from the very founding of our country.

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?

My answer is the same as that of the man who first asked and answered that profoundly important question.

pax

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression. -– Thomas Paine
 
Pax is 100% correct here.
You obviously believe that these rights violations are all temporary measures.
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The nature of government is to never give up any authority it has acquired. So fight it now, or live with it for the rest of your lives ...
 
How many of us have had a visit from a G man or seen ANY other negative result of this kind of monitoring?
Click to expand...
Not exact, but similar vein. Back in the late 90s, I started getting calls to my home phone from some hotels on East Colfax in Denver (not a good place, the term "Tenderloin" comes to mind). I was always at work when the calls came in, and since I knew nobody in that part of town, I thought nothing of it. A few months laters, I got a call from the office of Denver's Fire Marshall. Seems there'd been a fire in one of the rooms of those low rent hotels, and the call records showed calls to MY number :what: from the room that had burned. Mr. Marshall was very assertive in our conversation, asking just who I may know that would be calling me, what connections did I have to East Colfax, that sort of thing. Since I had no idea why somebody would be calling me, I was stumped, and the best thing I could offer was that it was a wrong number. Yes, several times, but still nobody I know.

It was a few weeks later that I got a call from a former associate from school, who round about asked about how to obtain certain chemicals, since I had worked in Biotech at the time. It was then that I made the connection 'tween a fire in a low rent hotel, East Colfax, and the fact that my former associates in school had developed a strong liking to certain stimulants about the time I'd dropped him in the mid 80s due to his choice of posion and lifestyle.

I think I dodged a bullet on that one.
 
I'm not disagreeing with you guys at all. Just helping seed the discussion.

I will say that the short history of our nation shows that the powers of government do ebb and flow, honestly and ironically they ebb and flow based on the will of the people. As they should.

Typically during times of perceived conflict or threat the power of government expands, sometimes rapidly depending on the public tolerance for loss of freedom and the publics fear of the threat.

Governmental powers then contract when the people are no longer scared and the loss of freedom appears to loose justification. The Patriot act is a fine example, it was tolerated when most of us deemed that the temporary loss of freedom was worth it......now.....more than 4 years on with no new attacks in our back yards....not so much.

I have faith in the process and the people. The fear I have is the loss of a dissenting voice. That's exactly what happens when we all have a common fear.....the "conscience" of government goes away. When the politicos begin manipulating the balance, that makes me nervous.

I say we must stay vigilant and informed and voice our opinoins whatever they are, we all form the balanace that keeps the system in check over the long haul.
 
A very good friend of mine was railroaded.

That is, railroaded himself into military prison.
Google up 'Ryan Anderson'.
I was one of his shooting buddies back at Washington State University, and we both attended the WSU Anime Club.
He was caught by .gov investigators making posts on a supposed Al Quaeda website, saying stuff like 'I want to join you' and giving (perfectly worthless, apparently) tips on where US armored vehicles are vulnerable. He was convicted of several counts of 'attempting to aid and give information to an enemy' by a military jury.
He is currently incarcerated, life with eligibility for parole, probably for at least a decade more, or until we clean up house in the middle east and Al Quaeda is defunct as an organization.

Incidentally, the Wikipedia article is not only incomplete, it is factually wrong on many counts. The most obvious one being Ryan's birth date, listed as 1989. Ryan is several years older than me, and I was born in 1979.

I was not close to the case, so I am not privy to any particulars. However, having known Ryan for a few years, I am not convinced that he deserved the severe sentance he received. Ryan suffers from a number of psychological problems that would normally mitigate incarceration. I would posit that he should have been screened out from military service to begin with, but that's neither here nor there.
(I don't dispute his guilt, that is established. However, my opinion is that he should have been dishonorably discharged, placed on probation, and given compulsory treatment.)
Additionally, the last direct communication I had with Ryan was an e-mail talking about himself and his tank crew naming their ride, as well as all the good stuff that was going on in his life, along with some trepidation- his unit was being sent to Iraq shortly. It was a dreadfully normal e-mail, down to his worrying about his wife while he was away.
That e-mail was sent a few months before his units' departure, and I attempted to get ahold of him to find out where I could send care packages, though he never answered further e-mails from me.

The next I heard about Ryan was on the evening television news broadcast.
I went to the small length of calling a Seattle news/talk station during broadcast to express my opinion on the matter- in effect, I did not believe the charges had merit, and the Ryan I knew would have done no such thing.

Anyway, everything has come and past since then. I really need to dig out his prison address and start sending him correspondance, I owe him that at least for teaching me how to shoot.

I KNOW that the day Ryan started posting on that website, some alphabet agency pulled up files on all of his known associates, which would have included myself and several others, for additional investigation. It is only a small leap of logic to conclude that I'm still on a watchlist, if a low priority one, to this day, and that all communication that can be linked to me is tapped or data-mined extensively.
Does it piss me off? Yeah, a little bit. There's nothing I can do about it, and I just have to hope that I'm not higher priority than I thought- i.e., on the 'terrorist watch list', and that my liberties might be in jeopardy.
However, I'm not going to let it control my life. I have plans to participate in an English teaching program in Asia, for example, and continue to buy arms and ammunition as part of my shooting hobby. I suppose I will find out pretty quickly if I'm on a 'no overseas travel' list when the time comes, though.

So, from someone that has VERY good justification for assuming that he's being watched- don't worry, live your lives without fear, and don't go on 'Al Quaeda' websites, because the .gov -will- come for you. ;)
 
blackguns said:
I asked if we have the B@lls to stand behind a “freedom at all cost” policy. I asked that because it is the natural opposite of the current policy.

There is evidence that this type of monitoring has stopped terrorist plots.…
Click to expand...

I would rather have every day be September 11th than see a single Constitutional right violated, but then I also maintain that the violation of our rights was what allowed the atrocities on September 11th to succeed in the first place.

~G. Fink
 
blackguns said:
Governmental powers then contract when the people are no longer scared and the loss of freedom appears to loose justification. The Patriot act is a fine example, it was tolerated when most of us deemed that the temporary loss of freedom was worth it......now.....more than 4 years on with no new attacks in our back yards....not so much.

I have faith in the process and the people. The fear I have is the loss of a dissenting voice. That's exactly what happens when we all have a common fear.....the "conscience" of government goes away. When the politicos begin manipulating the balance, that makes me nervous.
Click to expand...

Blackguns,
Thanks for a thoughtful post. With a PolySci degree in my pocket, I'm the same way - this is fascinating as a purely intellectual exercise.

I agree with you that in times of crisis, the people tend to hand the government more power. Wars are the best example of this. But as for the government ceding the power when the threat fades... What if the threat by its nature isn't likely to fade? How long have we been fighting the War on Drugs? The War on Poverty? I look at the War on Terror, and it occurs to me that it could possibly never end. Terrorist groups, motives, and ideologies might ebb and flow, but ask a Brit, or an Israeli, or an Indian how long they've been dealing with threats from very small numbers of violence-minded individuals. Our government could label Branch Davidian types as terrorist groups, or the KKK, or some extremist environmentalists, or anti-RioWall Mexican immigrants. It won't necessarily go away, there will never be a declaration of victory, and the rights we cede aren't likely to be seen again.
 
Nope...

Heck, I report myself to Homeland Security as a suspicious person at least once a month. I just crave the attention or something... :evil:

Nio
 
In No Way will it changei my posting habits.
and for 2 main reasons.

1. It's to late anyway.
2. I dont care what they think of me.
 
Sort of a then vs. now: While I don't recall any specifics, I've read that various constitutional rights were violated during WW II. After the war ended, the behavior ceased due to a lack of perceived need.

To me, the change is that in today's style of evermore-intrusive government, the perceived need will remain unending. There seems to be an unending effort to make everybody fit into a round hole; sharp edges are abhorrent to government bureaucracies. The accomplishment of this smoothing requires information about everybody's behavior, lifestyle, income, spending patterns, and dangfino what else. Just look at the modern Census Long Form, for starters. I see it as all part and parcel of the smoothing effort, including such things as Echelon, Carnivore, and intrusion into your banking usage...

Art
 
I guess my point is that as much as we feel that the government is "doing this to us" they really do respond to public pressure.

Do you think the Dems are playing the spying thing up because they feel it is wrong? No. They are whooping it up because they are seeking political advantage before the next congressional election cycle.

You will see Democrats take seats from Republicans if this keeps up. Why? Because we the people are not happy about the state of affairs.

The only thing politicians can be counted on to do is to seek power or seek to preserve power. That's fine, they are extremely predictable. It is our JOB and DUTY to take power from respresentatives that do not share the views of the people.


If the public outcry was horrible and loud the domestic spying thing would be outlawed, rapidly. Right now the spin teams on both sides are trying to find the pulse of the people.

Do we (the Dems) seem unpatriotic? Is that "feeling" passed, is the public now more concerned about civil liberties than security? How much can we push before it backfires?

The repubs are thinking how bad did this hurt us, do we come clean or cover up? Do we attack the dems or defend our position, after all...no new attacks...what is the public feeling....

The point is, in the end we hold the power, not on a daily basis but overall we say "yes you can continue in this position that we have given you" or we the people say "no, you cannot be trusted with our interests and you are being replaced by someone of our choosing".

We are seldom happy about the nitty gritty,(not that civil liberties are nitty gritty) 260 million of us are bound to not agree. But the system works and represents the majority as it is designed to do.
 
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