US Spies Have "Security Agreements" With Foreign Telecoms 181
McGruber writes "The Washington Post is reporting the existence of 'Team Telecom', lawyers from the FBI and the departments of Defense, Justice and Homeland Security, who ensure that Global Crossing and other foreign-owned telecoms, quickly and confidentially fulfill the USA's surveillance requests. Team Telecom leverages the authority of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to approve cable licenses. The security agreement for Global Crossing, whose fiber-optic network connected 27 nations and four continents, required the company to have a 'Network Operations Center' on U.S. soil that could be visited by government officials with 30 minutes of warning. Surveillance requests, meanwhile, had to be handled by U.S. citizens screened by the government and sworn to secrecy — in many cases prohibiting information from being shared even with the company's executives and directors. A spokesman for Level 3 Communications declined to comment for the Washington Post's article."
Re:Actually Protest This Shit (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Someone define corrupition? (Score:0, Informative)
If a Republican sends questionable [wikipedia.org] texts to young people, despite no laws being broken it is corruption.
If a Democrat in the White house spies on 300 million Americans, arms Mexican drug cartels, covers up arms running through Libya by letting the ambassador get killed so he won't whistle blow, targets US citizens with the IRS based on political views, and orders his people to lie to Congress every time they end up on capitol hill, it is not corruption.
So simple answer... everything the GOP does is corruption, nothing the DNC does can be considered corruption by any definition.
Re:Actually Protest This Shit (Score:2, Informative)
If by "incumbent" you just mean the guy in the chair, then you're not doing anyone any favors. The "incumbent" is and has been the Democrat/Republican machine.
This appears close to the description (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yep (Score:5, Informative)
With all this surveillance, it's a wonder there are any large crime rings at all. Yet the rings still seem to thrive.
Large criminal organizations use the same tactics as large legal organizations, i.e. they bribe the relevant people and insert collaborators for leniency and favorable treatment.
Re:Yep (Score:4, Informative)
The role of a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_center [wikipedia.org] has changed that dynamic bringing the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. military and others together under one roof.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/06/opinion/the-cia-and-the-nypd.html?_r=0 [nytimes.com]
Dont worry embedded CIA with local police was only "irregular personnel practices" more a “perception” issue.
Re:Yep (Score:5, Informative)
Let me show you how broken your thinking is. Here is what you quoted as this thing that requires the Governments to spy everyone. which resulted in 71,803 people killed, wounded, or kidnapped in 2007.
According to this [who.int], let us compare to alcohol which is perfectly legal to people of age, and does not require intrusive spying on everyone by Governments. These stats are 2004 so it would be safe to assume that increased population increases these numbers, while "terrorism" is fluctuates massively. For example, in your link the amount of people impacted has gone down annually (which is often due to how they fudge numbers to make things look really really bad). I"m not even touching illegal narcotics which would beat the pants off of these numbers.
Cirrhosis: 372,995 deaths.
Traffic accidents: 268,246
You can read the report yourself, but the point is that the net alcohol related deaths were 2,249,852. So over 30 times the deaths occurred, and it does not mean that we should be spying on everyone.
Real numbers, you have a .00003 percent chance of being killed by a drunk, compared to a .000001 percent chance of being impacted by a terrorist (death, kidnapping, wounding). Pay attention to that, it's dead vs. impacted.
Do you see how broken your logic is, to deem it's okay to spy on people based on some raw numbers? Save the straw man or red herring about how safe the spying keeps us, it's bullshit. Boston is proof that the massive spying on you and I does not make a difference. Save your next fallacy about inept or incompetent people managing the data, it does not change because that is not the point of their spying.
Reality check! More people in the US have been killed annually by appliances falling on them than by terrorists! Here [allgov.com] is a fun link for you.
Pay attention and read some history. In every case where people have allowed Governments to abuse their rights and privacy in order to protect them, it has turned out very very badly for that society. Every time, not most of the time. This is why Jefferson stated "Those willing to trade liberty for temporary security deserve neither liberty or security." You should know better, but you are brain washed into believing that it can't happen to you.
Either that, or you are paid to spread propaganda like you just did.