The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents.
Most of the infractions involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by statute and executive order.
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Important warning of Government spin on this: while there are indeed honest mistakes made among these, plenty of intentional illegal violations were made and hushed up from the supervision of the Congress (though as those people are – NSA really haven’t had any need to hide it from them). That is clear from the released data.
Still, the one and only solution for this is small, weak, limited Government. The one and only way to get that is to vote based primarily on that issue and check reality vs. candidate promo lies. Only small,weak and limited Government does not have neither incentive, power or funds to proceed on such illegal path. Small, weak and limited Government can’t provide you with goodies. If candidate promises goodies (including Social Security, Medicare, Nationalized Healthcare,…) without severe limits – he ain’t for small, weak, limited Government and his actions will certainly fortify existing Constitutional violations of all kinds. So, choice is clear – goodies and enslavement or freedom without goodies. No middle ground is possible. No negotiation is possible (you can’t get some “important” goodies or “safety” without paving the way for Fascist totalitarians).
x2
Never happen. We’ve reached the tipping point.
There are too many people getting too much free stuff for any future election to go anybody who promises to take the free stuff away.
+1
As usual, you 3 are wrong. Only a STRONG/BIG/ROBUST/FUNDED/DEDICATED government can prevent gubment excesses. And what does that take? Good laws passed by Congress that is not in the pocket of big business getting away with it by brainless zombie partisans blaming the other party for the violations taking place.
VOTE ALL INCUMBENTS OUT OF OFFICE.
((Yes, I note how simple truths seem to be self evident no matter how much new tags are desired. When they are “all corrupt” you get rid of them all.))
Stop your partisan stupidity.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
New guards. Fresh people and constant personnel transfer reduced the kind of fraud that arises out of propinquity and favors owed.
A good free robust press helps a lot too–as in reverse the corporate conglomeration. We missed that with our printed press. Early web came pre packaged as monopolized. Watch for inroads on the social media.
*fresh people*
Yes. I recommend chopping them all up in a Cuisinart food processor and separating out the bullshit with a cold water extraction (CWE).
I grew up with Kitchenaide but have been selective Cuisinart as the upper middle class selection I can afford.
For this particular application, wouldn’t a cement mixer be the right size?
It would have to be a very high rpm mixer– hard to balance and stay in compliance with noise ordinances. Otherwise, the smarter ones would just run around the perhipery like a hamster wheel and skip over the blades. You’ve got to soften them up with a lye solution, wrap in saran, refrigerate, and apply portions as can be handled. It helps if you hold them in a pit and say ‘it puts the lotion on it’s skin’ every 4 hours or so.
I’d rather focus on making empanadas. The right size for my Cuisinart stand mixer. I get a charge everytime I use it.
Thats a good tool.
Yes, but the true test of any tool is finding uses for which it was not otherwise intended.
*propinquity* WTF? O.k. Your word-a-day calander’s got some skills.
If you can’t find a loyal employee, then just make one.
http://imdb.com/title/tt0303361/
I’d rather make this one. 🙂
Nice! But, will she blend?
What an idiot!
Only a STRONG/BIG/ROBUST/FUNDED/DEDICATED government can prevent gubment excesses.
Just like a liberal. Pour more gasoline on the fire.
BTW, you spelt government wrong.
By definition, a weak entity/government/person cannot do much including its job/assigned duties/highest aspirations.
Just look.
When will you realize that your call to stop partisan stupidity and vote all incumbents out of office needs to be written in the constitution.
No more parties.
No more elections.
I find it interesting that over many years, the Gov has been cutting back from many services in this country.
BUT NOT, from certain areas, like military spending, and TOP wages for our representatives..
MOSt of the services cut deal with CORP regulations/monitoring. As the USDA can only inspect about 8% of facilities that handle/make our foods..
This hasnt happened over the last couple years, its taken about 20 years of Government CUTS…
The PROBLEM,
tends to be WHO PAYS for the services.The people Screamed that taxes were TO MUCH…so they CUT our services.
Raising taxes on CORPS only fores THEM to raise prices, so that YOU STILL PAY THE TAX..
NOW if you make a Specific tax on Wages of the UPPER wage earners… The top 10%..you WONT get enough money. and they would get pissed if you took 1/2 their wage.
Corps and GOV. wont cut things THEY WANT.. Its strange. That they COULD cut across the board, 10% of wages, TOP to bottom, and save many business and gov services. but that isnt what they WANT to do. they cut WHOLE services at a time..which is STUPID.
Look around dude. YOU and everyone in your suburban little cages are making too damned much money NOW!
Just look at what drive and what you’re blogging with if you need any PROOF!
It isn’t just the 10%-ers!!! Sure, some of them like Madoff, Naccio, and company are absolute criminals who pervert our very government with bribery and blackmail. But it’s hardly any reason to blame anyone else who might be smarter, more frugal, or doesn’t mind working! IOW, don’t blame your problems on other people who might happen to be able to hold on to their money.
So maybe now would be a good time to remind you of another famous saying: A FOOL AND HIS MONEY ARE SOON PARTED! And given the current administration and exactly what gave it power, is there really any doubt?
Go ahead. “Hope” in one hand and then spit in the other. See which one gets filled the fastest.
Obviously you are clueless when it comes to what is going on with military spending. Mil spending is about the only place that is getting cuts, real cuts. It is the only part of government that Democraps believe cuts should be made.
You know, because we don’t need military to protect us since the world loves us and everything is bunnies and butterflies.
Military Porn = Hard Core Deficit Spending
((when an entirely different “tool” is needed.))
Figures.
Mr. Diesel, I know bobbo is a nut case whose weltanschauung thankfully isn’t based on reality, and we all know that he thinks nothing is wrong with child porn, but don’t you think it is sort of like stalking or over the top in some way to routinely point it out in your name?
Â
I don’t agree, as I wouldn’t have been aware of it without the nickname.
This government believes laws are for other, lesser, people.
The difference between illogical beliefs and rock solid facts is why we have lawyers.
So I’ll ask it again: Since when has the LAW ever stopped a LAWYER?!
To everyone who has posted so far, great job staying on topic.
Princess has crabs. Just sayin’
SCORN FOR THE NSA
adapted from Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA”
Worn down in a Fed man’s town
The first boot I had was when Apple hit the ground
You end up like a log that’s been scanned too much
Till you spend half your life just covering up, now
Scorn for the NSA, I have
Scorn for the NSA, I have
Scorn for the NSA
Scorn for the NSA, now
Got in a little homepage jam
And they put a smartphone in my hands
Sent me off to a foreign URL, to go and spill to the yellow man
Scorn for the NSA, I have
Scorn for the NSA, I have
Scorn for the NSA, I have
Scorn for the NSA
Come back alone from the spoofery
Lying man said “Son if it was up to me”
Went down to see my D.C. man,
He said “Son don’t you understand now”
I want another crypto man , to scan the China throng
They’re still there, data’s all gone
We all had data, vids and songs,
I lost gigs of pictures in the clouds, uhh
Down in the shadow of the penitentiary
Out by the wreckage of our democracy
I’m ten minutes from burnin’ the download
Nowhere to run, ain’t got nowhere to go
Scorn for the NSA, I have
Scorn for the NSA, now
Scorn for the NSA, I’m a long gone leaker in the U.S.S.R, now
Scorn for the NSA
Scorn for the NSA
Scorn for the NSA, I’m a cool rockin’ leaker, I’m a U.S.S.R, now
+1
It’s really pretty catchy and growing on me. Good on you, sir!
Since when has the LAW ever stopped a LAWYER? …Or for that matter, a CRIMINAL?!
Are you starting to understand what CONGRESS and all their “programs” are about yet?
Consider this: If just the interest on the national debt (which Congress keeps increasing) were equally divided up among all Americans, we’d all individually – every man, woman, and child – be paying in excess of $30K each YEAR! And that’s BEFORE Obama-care kicks in. And still! we haven’t actually done anything about paying down (off) that debt!!!
So naturally, our leaders and other loud fools with any sort of audience want us to focus on those easier subjects such as our broken (N)azi (S)pinoff (A)gency. I mean, was anyone really all that surprised here?
I wonder what it will take before you all realize you can’t fix the problem and those that could have no incentive to do so. So keep feeding your delusions by voting. ..
I read the report. It appears the violations are but a tiny fraction of the data trawling the NSA does but this part is speculation based on what was reported. In addition, the violations are overwhelmingly clerical errors.
So, I feel this report ranks low on the ‘outrage du jour scale’ and far below the Rick Perry investigation for abuse of office
“overwhelmingly clerical errors”
Fine, then the clerk and his/her superior should be fired for the transgression. The clerk for violating the law and the supervisor for not supervising/instructing properly.
Sure, it’s harsh. It’s the loss of jobs, but if it was a private citizen violating the law, they’d face criminal action. One thing’s for sure; it would only happen once before everyone up the line paid a lot more attention to detail.
I suppose someone who broke the law, even unintentionally should be held accountable. Personally, I don’t see anything more than 3 months unpaid suspension or something like that.
What do you think the penalty for Rick Perry should be for deliberately violating the law and using the Governors Office as a means to threaten?
I’d explode his eyeball out of his skull with a hot soldering iron whilst calling it ‘stearile and humane’ because it’s, by definition, hot.
Wow. That was beyond what I had in mind
sooo.. we just jettison these people into the general population? put them in jail?
seems a little risky to me
They are liars. So, naturally, you are conditioned to listen to them.
“”Either way, even with those caveats in the first paragraph, in the second paragraph Alexander makes claims without such caveats. There he argues that “no one at NSA had ever gone outside the boundaries of what we’ve been given. That’s a fact.” Actually, that’s a lie. As the report showed quite clearly, there are thousands of incidents in which they went outside the boundaries. That they were “accidental” or “incidental” doesn’t change that fact.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20130816/10360724207/just-weeks-ago-keith-alexander-said-review-nsa-found-not-single-violation-reality-thousands-violations.shtml
You are naturally conditioned to call them liars.
The boy learns.
Dallas the trusting, bowing at the feet of Obomba and now the NSA, CIA etc etc.
jpfitz the fearful, scurrying like a roach when the light comes on, yet bowing at the feat of corporate masters and eating their food crumbs.
sallaD, you know nothing of me. I do know of your cowardice to speak the truth. You are a silly man who turns on his Country. A real traitor, one who keeps the fire that Bush and Obomba has lit under the constitution burning at every decision made by the two worst presidents so far in American history.
Umm. The boundaries might be +- infinity. Then he did not lie. I’m most dreadfully embarrassed.
Rather than bitch about what is never going to happen, (we’re never putting that privacy toothpaste back in that ol’ constitutional tube,) how about we grab a brush instead.
Its our (meta)data that we paid for, so why can’t we have it?
I don’t really care what the gummint does with it, but as long as we have to give it up, how about if we get a shot at coming up with what we would like to do with it.
The last few times something like that happened we got the internet, the world wide web, caused the creation of some major disruptors, like Google, like Microsoft, like … you get my drift.
Put it out on the internet, for free.
We paid for it, its ours!!!!!
Good idea. Maybe we could even subjectively edit our own as well as others’ entries so that, over time, a ‘consensus’ of truth over dildhe or dildn’t he five or thirty nine times congeal.
Tim nobody should be allowed to edit.
Otherwise some religious nuts out there would try to repeal the law of gravity because it wasn’t mentioned in <insert name of book>. (Neither is the pseudo-number zero.)
The NSA should become known as the National Statistics Agency, gather all of the government’s statistical data and put it out for all to see and use…
We could call it something trendy like ‘The Lamb’s Book of Life’ …
How about the privacy violations in ObamaCare?
No double dipping. Trying to lump this weak outrage with another weak outrage to make a bigger outrage is not allowed.
“Its author is director of oversight and compliance for the NSA’s Signals Intelligence Directorate, but the scope of the report is narrower.”
http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/national/nsa-report-on-privacy-violations-in-the-first-quarter-of-2012/395/
The NSA reporting on itself internally sounds fishy to me. This whole debacle sounds like a distraction for the media. The real scope of the NSA’s snooping must be gigantic compared to the supposed mistakes made. I call the whole admission shenanigans.
Ya think?
“”Incidents are counted only if they took place within “NSA-Washington,” a term encompassing the Ft. Meade headquarters and nearby facilities.
That’s like saying Walmart and Sam’s only sell cheap, plastic crap in Newport, Arkansas.
I love the number of mistakes also, 2776. Yea, I’m reaching but still. 1776.
Since we’re talking NSA then it’s probably hexadecimal, at that.
So, either 10102 or unicode character ‘Dingbat Negative Circled Digit One’ , which is categorized as “other number” in the Unicode 6.0 character table.
http://marathon-studios.com/unicode/U2776/Dingbat_Negative_Circled_Digit_One
The circled 1 seems appropriate.
Well, given that they can’t even get an area code right (Washington’s code 202 for Egypt’s code 20). I’m thinking that 2776 errors might have been a clerical error that may have been… maybe… 27760?
Maybe this is Like ObamaCare–the gubment requiring everyone buy insurance so that it is affordable for everyone?
Here NSA (the attached tanget) is maybe demanding a business “stay open” so that they can collect its servers email traffic?
I think the meta data collection is highly debateable to either position but that it can’t avoid not being abused in an illegal way (already 1000’s of such cases being reported on) …. BUT this fanciful position seems illegal and nonsense from the get go. Where is my country headed?===>Towards a National Security State of course.
Crumbling like a house of cards.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20130816/14533924213/feds-threaten-to-arrest-lavabit-founder-shutting-down-his-service.shtml
I feel it is to crush dissent. Somebody said ‘no’ — suffice it to say the word which must not be uttered at them.
These pricks don’t care about crime, not any crime; They are the worst of the criminals and only care about control.
They’ve always been lying shit hiding behind pretense and formality and that anyone who dares point it out is mearly paranoid.
But now they are de-cloaking. The makeup is melting off the hag and the soft-spoken reassurances finally correctly translated as cackling threat.
They are doing this because they believe the deal is finally sealed. The Beast is unleashed and it will thrash and crush and destroy and ultimately ingest even it’s own. But, I feel, not before this republic shuts up into itself like ten million North Koreas crammed onto a 3.5 inch floppy. Most don’t yet realize that we have been long trapped on the fuck-all side of the event horizon and that future-so-bright is but the singularity at the heart of this twisted darkness and, yes, it is going to hurt.
I am so tempted just to respond: Blivet.
But my admiration of the apt illusion demands that I say more. Who am I to resist the call to metaphorical evisceration?
So many apt pithy allusions capturing the essence of the complaint/fear/reality/future?
I smile recognizing that “so far” we have presented ourselves opposing one another on most issues, yet we find common ground on the depth of our “concern?” Don’t know what the exact right word might be. Just glad to have the exchange.
You do draw flies to my nom de flame though. How can you be so adept at the words, and so dismal with the ideas???
I laugh.
Your flowers are covering the decomposing Republic which was once a shining beacon to the world. I’m in the same camp as Tim, maybe it’s just my personality. The system is upside down. Wars in far off lands for the rich to become wealthy. Obomba care run by the IRS and the insurance companies. Drones overhead spying on Americans swimming in their pools. The death of a free Republic is ugly and smells badly.
It’s fitting that this should be next to the Capitol Building at this time —
“”It’s just got everything for a good mystery. It’s cryptic. It’s exotic. The timing is off. It’s inconsistent. It’s inconsiderate. It’s got all those great things. It’s from far away, and it smells bad, and people get interested
http://nbcwashington.com/news/local/Giant-Corpse-Flower-Blooms-at-US-Botanic-Gardenl-216410921.html
Keep flies off of your burgers and bobbo with these Monsanto petunias — Now with never-before-recognized nutraceuticals.
Yes, nom de flame is a take off on nom de flume or pen name when an author assumes anonymity when writing for a public that may not accept the same words should the true author be known. More subtle than publishing as anonymous.
A while back, this forum had trouble with people posting using other peoples names and the ed’s put a stop to that. Thats when I started using different names to indicate my general or initial take on a subject but I didn’t want to mislead anyone as to who was posting so I always start with bobbo. Small case with purpose.
Many think its insightful to call me a troll: someone who enjoys starting flame wars.
….. and nom de flame was born.
Incidentally, I am discombobulated to figure out ‘nom de flame’.
Of course, a quick query turns up ‘nom de plume’ — name of the pen. I guess, plume is plumage or a feather as writing instrument.
I’m just not picking up the word play to replace flame with plume — the flame is usually under a (chemical) plume that must be tracked as a threat to populations? The flame is the writing instrument such as a candle on cave walls or the Finger of God on stone??
People with my unique biometric identifiers want to know.
Not knowing how focused your quick check might be, I duplicate:
bobbo, we think with words, and flower with movie references says:
8/20/2013 at 2:49 pm
Yes, nom de flame is a take off on nom de flume or pen name when an author assumes anonymity when writing for a public that may not accept the same words should the true author be known. More subtle than publishing as anonymous.
A while back, this forum had trouble with people posting using other peoples names and the ed’s put a stop to that. Thats when I started using different names to indicate my general or initial take on a subject but I didn’t want to mislead anyone as to who was posting so I always start with bobbo. Small case with purpose.
Many think its insightful to call me a troll: someone who enjoys starting flame wars.
….. and nom de flame was born.
Nifty, bobbo; That works for me, thx.
> Like ObamaCare–the gubment requiring everyone buy insurance so that it is affordable for everyone?
Government has no authority to require that people buy insurance. Besides that, ObamaCare makes insurance more expensive, then taxes people who don’t buy it, who are now making less money because their employer found it cheaper to switch them to part-time or fire them entirely.
Suck it up NFS–so does reality.
Only idiots and to the degree they differ Religious Fundies continue to argue after the Supremes have sung. Takes 50 years for them to reconsider.
Supremes said that government has no authority. The only reason the law was upheld was because of the conclusion that the law isn’t coercive enough to make people buy health insurance.
Maybe we’ll have the youngsters burning their SS cards, sorta like the draft cards being burned during the revolution of the sixties. Below are the penalties for not shilling to the insurance moguls.
http://medicarenewsgroup.com/news/medicare-faqs/individual-faq?faqId=f14fda30-17c6-4176-9a40-626edb45d10b
Workers at Comcast, Google, Yahoo, etc can look at your e-mail. Here we find out that the NSA was able to identify unwarranted snooping. Does Comcast? Google? Yahoo?
We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.
Abraham Lincoln
I’m not getting the feeling that Lincoln was ever the one to blush at his frat parties where they rolled the Constitution up, colored it with wax, and fucked it like a chicken but that may be just because I’m from the south.
To protect our privacy, we need Fricosu keys. This is a separate decryption key that would be integrated into full disk encryption, TrueCrypt, iPhones/Androids, etc.
What happens is that when you are under duress in Colorado, at the border, or Heathrow, you enter your Fricosu key. Your device instantly, silently, and permanently forgets the real decryption key. Bingo! Now you’ll have to brute force it. (Or as xkcd says, drug him and hit him with this $5 wrench until he tells you the password.)
Lazy Man Technology has allowed our enemies to surround us.
I’m still willing to give the correct answer to any level of EMS.
But my computer and the internet should know nothing about me unless i “make it so”
I delight in, cause I discovered exactly what I was having a look for. You’ve ended my four day lengthy hunt! God Bless you man. Have a great day. Bye
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