WikiLeaks: NSA Recording All Telephone Calls In Afghanistan 241
On Monday, The Intercept reported that the NSA is recording the content of every cell phone call in the Bahamas. At the time of publication, The Intercept said there was another country in which the NSA was doing this, but declined to name it because of "specific, credible concerns that doing so could lead to increased violence." Now, reader Advocatus Diaboli points out that WikiLeaks has spilled the beans: the country being fully monitored by the NSA is Afghanistan. Julian Assange wrote,
"Such censorship strips a nation of its right to self-determination on a matter which affects its whole population. An ongoing crime of mass espionage is being committed against the victim state and its population. By denying an entire population the knowledge of its own victimization, this act of censorship denies each individual in that country the opportunity to seek an effective remedy, whether in international courts, or elsewhere. Pre-notification to the perpetrating authorities also permits the erasure of evidence which could be used in a successful criminal prosecution, civil claim, or other investigations. ... We do not believe it is the place of media to 'aid and abet' a state in escaping detection and prosecution for a serious crime against a population. Consequently WikiLeaks cannot be complicit in the censorship of victim state X. The country in question is Afghanistan."
This, I am unsurprised about (Score:5, Interesting)
After all, we were at war there. I am wondering as we get to what is being promised as the biggest story of the Snowden documents, what the final scoop will be.
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Regardless of what the content of that document will be, by the time it's all said and done, the sum total will probably be something like, "99% of the entire human race is a slave species."
Re:This, I am unsurprised about (Score:5, Insightful)
After all, we were at war there.
No we're not. No war was ever declared and the majority of our troops have left. At best our troops are in an advisory role now. We're training and supporting the afghan military. Once again we invade a country under the pretense of protecting the innocent citizens of that country... but what we really end up doing is victimizing those very citizens. I wont even bother with "if it's legal"... our government clearly doesn't care... but it's immoral, unjust and completely ineffectual. Despite having every phone in the country tapped it took us how long to catch Bin Laden?
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To be fair, the Taleban are quite a worthwile enemy. These people stone comic writers to death and attack young school girls with acid.
The real scandal is right now going on in Egypt, though, where the US and to a lesser extent also Europe chose to deliberately ignore democracy, are actively supporting a "new" (=old) military dictatorship and take away from the people the fruits of their revolution. As usual, the result will be the exact opposite of what the US and Europe were hoping for, namely more radica
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Greenwald has been dropping hints in interviews that it's specific groups of Americans being targeted, for non-obvious (i.e."terror") reasons. I'm guessing it will also describe some of the uglier uses of NSA info by say the DEA and FBI, like illegal wiretaps and backfeeding cases against criminal but non-terrorist Americans to agents.
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Maybe the UK should record every telephone call in the US, because were were at war there once.
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Since the NSA isn't allowed to do that, chances are the UK (GCHQ) DOES do it, and then shares the take with the NSA.
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Wouldn't surprise me at all
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Good (Score:2)
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
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Unreliable source (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but there is just no source that is possibly less reliable than this. The asshole has no credibility.
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If the NSA is willing to collect the phones calls, emails, and web browsing history of every American (as Snowden proved), you think they would hesitate for even a micro-second to do the same for some Muslim foreign country where we're at war??
What color is the sky in your world?
Ha, "self-determination" my ass (Score:5, Interesting)
The only democracy that the U.S. ever intended to bring to Afghanistan and Iraq was of the "You can choose pro-U.S. candidate number 1, or pro-U.S. candidate number 2" variety.
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Jamming a constitution down the throats of Japan and Germany worked pretty well. We should do more of that, not less, and certainly disallow building religion into a constitution. Proof? We didn't do that and see the results.
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it does not matter if we disallow relgion in a written document.
in the USA of jesusland, we don't have a form religion here but in all practical aspects, we ARE a religiously-goverened country. most of the contentious laws in the last 20 yrs were ALL based on someone's view of religion and how it should be forced down everyone else's throat.
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Japan and Germany turned out "pretty well" because of the Japanese and the Germans, not because of foreigners.
Re:Ha, "self-determination" my ass (Score:5, Interesting)
That's the problem with real democracy. The U.S. has always sold democracy as some cure-all that will somehow turn every backwards country into the U.S. in the 1950's. But *real* democracy doesn't do anything of the sort. And lots of electorates, left to their own devices, will immediately vote in some popular dictator or religious zealot. So to stop this, the U.S. has resorted to advancing a kind of pretend democracy--the kind of "democracy" where the U.S. picks all the candidates and the people choose which carbon copy to vote for. Sadly, the U.S. political system itself has become a similar dog-and-pony show.
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Sadly, the U.S. political system itself has become a similar dog-and-pony show.
C'mon, the US Government isn't controlled by the intelligence apparatus - if that were so you'd see them assigning a CIA operative to be a vice-President and then he'd become President and spawn a legacy of foreign intervention with other CIA associates and progeny as subsequent Presidents. They'd even sign off on giving the intelligence apparatus dominion of the whole country - preposterous!
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One of the first things they actually did was pass a law narrowing the definition of rape to not include within a marriage: If a man in Afganistan wants sex and his wife says no, he has every legal right to rape her. She legally cannot say no, as in their culture sex-on-demand is a wife's duty and a husband's right.
Re:Ha, "self-determination" my ass (OT) (Score:2)
That interpretation of a wife's duty is not terribly uncommon. Some even argue that I Corinthians 7:5 is a biblical mandate to both the husband and wife to never deny their partner sex. If that's the case, the most chaste wives are also the most sinful. Ahhh the irony.
Of course on the opposite side of the spectrum are those wackos that think all sex is rape, and that all porn stars are being taken advantage of.
ALL telephones in Afghanistan ? (Score:4, Funny)
All 15 of them? Wow!
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While phone proliferation in Afghanistan might be lower than in the US, it's higher than several of its neighbors. In addition to land lines, that 16% of Afghans own a cell phone is rather impressive, given how their infrastructure has been bombed, over and over again, for decades.
The same cannot be said for USA - USA and France are the only Western countries that has fewer active cell phones than people.
And the geographical coverage is still far less than 50%, even when only considering the contiguous 48!
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false for both, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_mobile_phones_in_use
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>Russia can call the US a third world country when it comes to mobile phone penetration - with good reason.
Seriously? You expect me to believe that all the vast unlit Siberian, etc. wastes have cell coverage?
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Why do you want to compare the US to third world countries? Compared to other Western countries, the US is really really at the bottom, with the second lowest rate of cell phone adaption, and the lowest rate of geographical coverage, and the highest prices.
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All 15 of them? Wow!
So where did you learn to count in base 1 million?
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So there are 1,000,005 phones there?
No shit, this is the JOB of the NSA (Score:5, Insightful)
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Isn't this supposed to be the job of the CIA?
I thought the NSA were only supposed to operate locally
Re:No shit, this is the JOB of the NSA (Score:4, Informative)
I thought the NSA were only supposed to operate locally
Not sure if this is tongue in cheek or not, but I'll answer it. The NSA is specifically barred from domestic spying. They and the CIA are supposed to be focused on foreign intelligence. The agency that would operate locally is the FBI.
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thanks for the info
it wasn't tongue in cheek it was just something I remember off sneakers
I just got it the wrong way round
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
setec astronomy
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Those stateside operation limits were removed as part of the patriot act and the removal IIRC was made permanent during the bush admin. Though I can't recall if it was both the NSA or CIA or only the NSA.
The patriot act was one scary jumble of stuff that these agencies had wanted for a very long time. It shouldn't surprise you that those limits were waved when it was passed.
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So from the other side, if an Afghani intelligence agency was recording every call in America, that's OK too because it's their job?
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Under Afghani law, probably.
Granted, Afghan law has perhaps recently had a lot of outside fingers in it, so that might actually be illegal.
I don't doubt that it's legal for the NSA to be doing this under American law, seeing how foreign signals interception is largely their main function. With American troops in a foreign country with a history of militant extremist activity, i
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So from the other side, if an Afghani intelligence agency was recording every call in America, that's OK too because it's their job?
I fairly certain I recall Obama stating in the past that he would consider it an act of war if any country did that sort of thing to the US. (Unless of course it is one of the five eyes countries, who share what they record in the US back to the NSA to create a nice little bypass of the rule which does not allow the NSA to spy domestically).
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"It isn't illegal by the laws of my country" is not a particularly helpful answer when dealing with international relations.
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I'd like to point out that:
1) It's perfectly legal for the NSA to spy on Britons, which it is documented as doing
2) It's perfectly legal for the NSA to give that information to GCHQ, which it is documented as doing
3) It's perfectly legal for GCHQ to spy on Americans, which it is documented as doing
4) It's perfectly legal for GCHQ to give that information to the NSA.
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Actually it depends who they're spying on. Both countries are signatories to and have ratified the covenants stemming from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the UK the European Declaration of Human Rights also. This means both nations are bound by law to respect article 12, specifically:
"No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against su
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Oh, it's hella illegal on a human rights basis, but most of the signatories of those conventions take enormous liberties in their interpretation of what's permitted where it applies to their own people, much less another nation's.
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It's perfectly legal ...
No, none of that is legal - it's specifically barred by the US Constitution which authorized the current government (as Amended by the 4th Amendment).
You may imagine that the US Constitution says, " ... of US Citizens ... " but it doesn't because that would never have occurred to those trying to establish a Natural Rights Republic.
Re:No shit, this is the JOB of the NSA (Score:5, Interesting)
What the NSA is doing to foreigners IS harming Americans. It's destroying our reputation, destroying our business contracts, and alienating the entire world. How would you feel if China or Russia developed some new technology that allowed them to listen to all of your phone calls and then they went about doing just that?
Just because something doesn't implicitly violate the constitution doesn't mean it's right and just. How many foreigners are you willing to sacrifice for your own safety? How many dictators are we going to install? People are we going to torture? Freedoms are we going to crush? The whole of the nightmare in the middle east right now is the fault of the united states. Every dictator in recent memory was a product of the CIA/NSA's attempts to secure the low price of oil. All the misery you see there now was to make it cheaper for you to get to work in the morning, not to protect you from "terrorists". We're murdering hundreds of thousands of people, men, women and children, all in some insane game of simcity, trying to fix the mess we created. At some point we need to just back away and let these people live their lives. WE are the problem. Not them. If some of their crazies manage to knock down a few of our buildings well... we deserve it.
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>all in some insane game of simcity, trying to fix the mess we created.
You had e up until that point. But what on earth makes you think we're trying to fix the mess? We're still over there to secure low oil prices, our old puppet dictators just got to uppity so we replaced them. And since we had to do it in a big public frontal assault we've got to install a mock-"democracy" to save face - plenty of your citizens can remain willfully ignorant to the cloak-and-dagger coup that displaced the pre-existin
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How would you feel if China or Russia developed some new technology that allowed them to listen to all of your phone calls and then they went about doing just that?
If it would get my country to stop monitoring me, meh; I'd take the trade-off. The heck is Russia or China going to care about my life?
Not so. (Score:2)
The British Mandate and the Balfour Declaration [wikipedia.org] had far more influence upon the nationalities, peoples, and borders of the Middle East than did any influence of the United States.
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The British Mandate and the Balfour Declaration [wikipedia.org] had far more influence upon the nationalities, peoples, and borders of the Middle East than did any influence of the United States.
Yes, they're mad about Israel. I think we're all quite aware of that. I'm not even talking that far back. I'm talking about what we did in Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Afghanistan in the 70s and 80s. The very governments we fight to day were installed by us, or a result of our policies.
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The whole of the nightmare in the middle east right now is the fault of the united states.
The USA inherited a dysfunctional situation in the Middle East.
The British and French were happy to leave the problem to someone else, as their empires were waning.
But the main reason the Middle East is so ungovernable is a direct results of the British and French drawing arbitrary lines on a map and declaring "these are the borders of the countries."
This article is relatively short and explains what happened 100 years ago and the consequences since:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-25299553 [bbc.co.uk]
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Inherited? Are we the babysitters of the world now? Why did anyone have to inherit anything? It's none of our business. If we want to be responsible for the peoples of the middle east, we need to invade and annex them. If they're not part of the united states then we need to leave them alone. Simple as that. We can't unilaterally determine that we're in charge of how their government operates while at the same time deny them the constitutional freedoms we long ago decided the governed deserve! If they have
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*For the inevitable " good luck with your guns vs the military might " post that always seems to show up, I'll simply point out the last several conflicts the US has been involved with were against a much weaker military opponent who used basic guns and IED's. No tanks. No ships or aircraft to speak of. We haven't " won " any of those conflicts in recent history unless you believe the propaganda. Just food for thought before you post it.
To be fair, the US hasn't gone "all in" on any of those, either. An attempt to overthrow the US government by force might provoke a harsher response.
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Re:No shit, this is the JOB of the NSA (Score:5, Interesting)
Snowden and everybody but wikileaks saw fit to redact this for security reasons. This news isn't SNOWDEN betraying jack shit.
Well, Snowden betrayed it to Wikileaks.
On balance, I think the benefit of Snowden's actions far outweigh any damage done. Given that it likely wasn't practical for him to vet all the information, and that there was an overwhelming need to disclose the NSA's betrayal of its own people, I think he did the right thing and still consider him a hero. Nevertheless, I do agree that some of the NSA's foreign activities are legitimate and didn't need to be disclosed.
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The National Security Agency (Score:2, Insightful)
Most of us can live with the fact that our security and secret agencies sustain our way of life, maintain our security and liberties, preserve our freedoms and protect our and values by denying others (often in far flung lands) of the same as long as we are not forced to confront the morality of that reality or explain to those whose rights, freedoms and liberties the preservation of our own tramples upon why they are not worthy of the very values, liberties and freedoms that we are willing to go to such le
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Here is a reality check for all of us: our freedom, liberties and way of life often come at at the cost of denying someone else of their freedom, liberty and sometimes their life.
So what you are saying is that it is Our Way of Life that is evil?
so what? (Score:2)
We were at war with Afghanistan, and it used to be run by a totalitarian regime. Monitoring their phones for a decade or two as part of attempting to transition them to democracy doesn't seem unreasonable. We did the same in Germany after WWII, and also limited German democracy in some ways.
Technical details? (Score:2)
Just curiosity... The bandwidth required to do this should be enormous, how did they implement it? Are the trunk switches compromised and they locally record every conversation, and later send it to the USA? Did they install dedicated fibers to do this? TFA lacks any details.
Thanks.
These aren't shocking revelations (Score:2)
Can we stop the bullshit and quit pretending like releasing this information isdangerous?
The delay is what's dangerous. The longer the information is kept under wraps and the less willing they are to take the hard shots, the more FUCKED UP BULLSHIT will be perpetrated by these government organizations.
Proof (Score:2)
Giga-Duh. (Score:2)
What the hell else are they supposed to do with acres and acres of servers?
Re:Giga-Duh. (Score:5, Funny)
Fix the deficit by mining bitcoins?
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Take a picture so now we don't have to imagine what a Beowulf cluster of x looks like any more?
Re:Well duh! (Score:4, Informative)
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Not as long as you might think. The technology needed for this level of data collection is only a few decades old at best. 20-30 years ago even tracing a call in an industrialized nation could be a laborious task and collection like this was just undoable.
And in another 40-50 years, if the Taliban can be kept at bay, Afghanistan might even be able to move up to the status of "industrialized nation".
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Re:Well duh! (Score:5, Informative)
There seems to always be the obligatory "didn't we all know this already" comment in these NSA discussions. Every time it can be found. I'm tired of it.
No, we didn't know. Beginning with the revelations by Edward Snowden, people's eyes have constantly opened more and more to the things that are happening behind the scenes. Some of it is crazy Orwellian crap that many of us couldn't make up in their wildest dreams.
Re:Well duh! (Score:5, Insightful)
20 years from now, when the bigots finally get a real right-wing guy in power, they'll look back at all this data and say "Ok, fella's; Find me everyone who ever talked to a brown guy and revoke their passport."
Re:Well duh! (Score:5, Insightful)
The wing-wing in the US is fairly good at not being overtly racist. They'e be more likely to target their efforts religiously: Trawl the archives to make a list of everyone who ever insulted God and get them on an employment blacklist. Much as happened during the red scare, when suspected communists faced similar semi-official sanctions, but made possible on a much larger scale by automation.
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That isn't the problem. Joe Everyman expected them to be doing this, but don't know why it's A Bad Thing. All they see is "It's to stop the terr'rists / perverts / commies!" and don't see how it can be abused, not by those in power now, but those in the future.
20 years from now, when the bigots finally get a real right-wing guy in power, they'll look back at all this data and say "Ok, fella's; Find me everyone who ever talked to a brown guy and revoke their passport."
Why is it a bad thing that an organization tasked as the primary conductor of electronic surveillance of other nations is conducting electronic surveillance of other countries? And why is it a surprise? You are right: everyone expected them to do this, and they should. It's their job. If you read their charter, [cryptome.org] this is plainly clear in the first page. And that goes back to 1952, over 60 years ago.
Don't get me wrong, I think the NSA has gone too far with regard to American citizens. But spying on other
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So here's the deal with that - If the recording serves a security purpose, how did the Indian consulate get attacked while we were watching?
Why didn't we intervene? And why haven't we produced recordings of the coordinators?
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They probably wouldn't be produced publicly, but the real security that comes from this will be the NSAs ability to terrorize people with their capabilities.
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Oh noes, a murder is murdering people, which is what murderers do!!! How terrible that a murderer murdered someone!!!
You know, just because it's 'expected', that doesn't make it okay. Spying on innocent people is wrong regardless of what the NSA's job is or what country those people live in. The NSA should be focusing on actual enemies, and not sapping up data en masse merely because some people could be enemies. And no, "Other countries do it too!" is no excuse, and has never been an excuse.
Anyone who says
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And perhaps if actually listening to the conversations helps to not detain innocent people because one can actually know what they're talking about, as opposed to the metadata approach where anyone talking to someone associated with opponents is grabbed, then it might not be a bad thing,
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Everywhere is a "Theatre of war" these days, between the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, etc., etc., etc.
However, while the "war" in Afghanistan is long over, enough people are still running around killing other people, it's hardly surprising that all 5 Afghan telephone circuits would be tapped. With, I have no doubt, complicit approval of the Afghan government.
Officially, the Afghan government would have to protest this gross invasion of their national sovreignity as a matter of face, irrespective of the
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Unless you also don't want to call Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, and Yugoslavia wars too.
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When you listen to what people say and then fire a rocket at their car based on that, it is censorship.
Just to play devils' advocate: if you heard people's last minute plans to mount a suicide attack at a market or checkpoint, and you only have a short time to lob a spitfire at them to prevent that, is that censorship?
I mean, I get the general gist of what you mean, but you need to be more articulate and precise, and provide a much better context to your argument.
Re:Surprised Assange has no idea what censorship i (Score:4, Interesting)
I was just pointing out that we as Americans like to consider ourselves morally superior to our counterparts, but in reality we engage in a lot of the same practices.
Sometimes it is cheaper to blow up a school than send in people to determine if there are terrorists there.
Sometimes it is cheaper to have the CIA poison someone who has a different opinion than it is to debate them.
Sometimes it is cheaper to have a motorcyclist throw explosives on the outside of a nuclear scientist's car than it is to try to get the country to stop its program.
Sometimes it is cheaper to execute a cleric rather than have trials to determine guilt.
We are not much different than the people that attack us based on our ideas, we just have a lot more money than they do. It is too easy to dehumanize others and not care about collateral damage when we fight our wars.
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I believe that's a general human trait, and not specifically American.
Re:Surprised Assange has no idea what censorship i (Score:5, Insightful)
When you listen to them talking politics, and then bomb the wedding down the street instead... that's US Intelligence.
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When you listen to them planning to kill you, and you fire a rocket at their car, it is war.
And I guess they're planning to "kill you" (whoever it might be) because...
"they hate you for your freedoms"
Right?
Re:Surprised Assange has no idea what censorship i (Score:5, Insightful)
The "censorship" in question is the decision not to publish the name of the nation in question:
"By denying an entire population the knowledge of its own victimization, this act of censorship denies each individual in that country the opportunity to seek an effective remedy, whether in international courts, or elsewhere."
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Like most activists, the jump to assumptions, impose their version of their world view, and not try to take a look at the other angle, or try to understand why.
Usually your political opponent is not waking up in the morning going, what Evil can I do today, like in a TV Cartoon. In real life your opponent weighs the seriousness problems differently then you do, and feels particular trade-offs are more acceptable then you do.
The NSA mission is to use intelligence to find threats to the United States Interests
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The NSA mission is to use intelligence to find threats to the United States Interests. They see the threat of not getting intelligence more dangerous then the privacy of others. If they were pro-privacy organization then they wouldn't be able to function, as their jobs is to get secrets. Now if you see this, you realize that other then vilifying the NSA, you need to take a step back and work with their bosses to come up new regulations to prevent them from going too far.
Not only do we need to come up with new regulations, we need a way to hold the NSA to those limits, a system of checks and balances if you will.
No, I do not consider the FISA courts to be an adequate system of checks and balances on the NSA. Imagine a baseball game where one of the team's managers was allowed to pull the umpire into their dugout to dispute a call in secret, and when that happened the call invariably went their way, but the other team was not allowed to do the same or even listen in on the d
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Sounds like you just logically disproved the existence of "self censorship". Or maybe you don't consider it to be a kind of censorship, despite its suggestive name...
Not really. Versus "soft censorship" (Score:2)
Sounds like you just logically disproved the existence of "self censorship".
> Censorship is when the authority prevents someone from saying something
I don't think so.
Government censorship = government is the authority preventing it.
Network censorship = the TV network is the authority preventing it from going on-air.
Self censorship = your own higher principles or prudence is the authority preventing you from saying something.
> Or maybe you don't consider it to be a kind of censorship, despite its sugge
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Leave me out of this! They are nothing like me.
you have mildy inconvenienced me, prepare to die! (Score:2)
"Microsoft Tech Support" scams
If they could just drop a few hellfire missiles on those goddamn Pakled [memory-alpha.org] feebs, I'd be willing to give them a little bit more slack on the leash.
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Yes, because clearly the best way to win over the population there that doesn't support terrorism is to subject them to things we would ourselves find objectionable.
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You seem to be under the illusion that the US and the other "5 Eyes" countries were not collecting metadata and recording conversations pre-2001. This is an inaccurate belief on your part.
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"most probable cause of why we have not seen more 9/11's in the last 10 years."
Doubtful at best, and the chance of an actual 9/11 style attack (with planes) will never again occur. Heck, it didn't even work by the four plane that same morning.
However, I do agree that the monitoring they are doing is exactly what we set them up to do in the first place. Nobody ever wants to be spied on, but everybody wants to spy. When the magical pixie horse utopia arrives and there are no wars or conflicts and everybody lo
Re:Is the other the US (Score:5, Funny)
Probably not. The NSA is not allowed to spy on Americans.