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Worth Reading: Trevor Pott's editorial on NSA PRISM and its real ramifications
wraith808:
Holy crap man ... Now that's a bad day!
-Stoic Joker (June 13, 2013, 06:57 PM)
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Even worse... it gets to 4:30 and only because the guy knows me was I seen. That IRS office is *way* understaffed. And they're having a furlough on which day there is *no* staff.
But as you mention it was only after suffering through the entire protracted spiel that this little detail was "clarified". None of the official 6 O'clock news (hand feedings...) ever mentioned the existence of anything other than the ~mostly harmless~ metadata.
-Stoic Joker (June 13, 2013, 06:57 PM)
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I really think that by hiding what they were really doing they shot themselves in the foot in the end. That's what the problem with the whole thing is- if we can't trust them to tell us the truth without hours of questioning, how can we trust them not to look at the data that they've collected?
barney:
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
-Stoic Joker (June 13, 2013, 06:27 PM)
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I don't trust that quote. I've known of several instances where an absolutely corrupted person never even approached absolute power. While the statement is true, it is an Aristotlean statement - it needs a qualifier or three (3) :-\.
wraith808:
I think it is only a truism, i.e. if you get absolute power, you will eventually be absolutely corrupt. Not that you can't become absolutely corrupt without absolute power. See: politician.
barney:
I think it is only a truism, i.e. if you get absolute power, you will eventually be absolutely corrupt. Not that you can't become absolutely corrupt without absolute power. See: politician.
-wraith808 (June 13, 2013, 11:26 PM)
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Even truisms need qualifiers. And politicians ... yechh :P.
Stoic Joker:
While the statement is true, it is an Aristotlean statement-barney (June 13, 2013, 10:56 PM)
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Wasn't really going into it that deep. I was actually just thinking of a Clint Eastwood movie.
@wraith808 - Yes, that's where I was headed. Unfettered access begs for misuse. Is starts with just an innocent little peek, and then goes completely off the rails as exceptions become easier to concoct.
(as an example of how far things can get pushed) A recent radio news story stated that there was a county that was going to start fining people $250 for smoking (cigarettes - which are "legal") in their own car...if their children were present. Now ones car, being an extension of their home...is supposed to afford some semblance of privacy. But now that smoking has become so incredibly demonized in society - Smokers are the only minority that it is Politically Correct to discriminate against.. - The sanctity of ones own home (by way of its legally defined extension to ones car) is being brought under fire.
I can't help but think that this is a test bed for something much larger and more insidious.
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