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PEOPLE in our GOVERNMENT are the problem.-40hz (July 20, 2013, 09:21 AM)
I'm not so sure about that. I'm more inclined to say that government is the problem. It's just a silly bunch of "good intentions" that are paving the road to Hell. Does it matter whether you start with the psychotic, priviledged political class there, or is it too long to wait 6 months for the naive newbie to start down his own path to the dark side?-Renegade (July 20, 2013, 10:40 AM)
I think he was saying it's the actual politicians that are the problem. The "government" is nothing but a group of people running the show. That group of people have turned out to be the elite "in crowd". They are mostly people that have been groomed for their positions all their lives, like the Bush's, like father, like son....-Tinman57 (July 20, 2013, 08:31 PM)
The "government" is nothing but a group of people running the show.-Tinman57 (July 20, 2013, 08:31 PM)
I guess I disagree with Renegade regarding "nobody cares about features" -- I'd rather see a feature list than a hand-wavey description of how a program is going to solve my problems.-mouser (July 20, 2013, 01:25 PM)
How can we tell that mouser programs? 
^From 7,000 feet it certainly wouldn't be out of the question with this administration.
But seeing battalions of uninvited guests show up wouldn't be very likely. The US doesn't really have the troops to spare right now. Hence the big interest in drones...-40hz (July 20, 2013, 10:34 AM)
Technology is not the problem. Laws are not the problem. PEOPLE in our GOVERNMENT are the problem.-40hz (July 20, 2013, 09:21 AM)
Technology is not the problem.-40hz (July 20, 2013, 09:21 AM)
Laws are not the problem.-40hz (July 20, 2013, 09:21 AM)
PEOPLE in our GOVERNMENT are the problem.-40hz (July 20, 2013, 09:21 AM)
Still...can you believe Panama did that? What a surprise!-40hz (July 20, 2013, 09:54 AM)
Nice analogy provided by Stilgherrian over at ZDnet. (Full article here)-40hz (July 13, 2013, 06:56 AM)
I turned out to have US colleagues, looking for ways to migrate to Europe .......... to get away from the US way of life, to bring their kids in safety.
...I did have US colleagues, who were looking for ways to migrate to Europe ..........-MohKraats (July 20, 2013, 07:01 AM)
Nowadays I look westwards in fear.
Scared by a police-statewhere there is no freedom no more,
where human-rights have no value.
A state that is to scary to live in.-MohKraats (July 20, 2013, 07:01 AM)
Had a bit too much to drink to do any serious math there, but when I saw "NPR", my BULLSHIT alert went off. Dunno. But citing the NPR immediately puts a sour piece of cat turd in my mouth.-Renegade (July 19, 2013, 11:57 AM)
The NPR part was in the question, not the answer (other than a very tangential article about what the NSA has disclosed, which is nothing)
If you read the answer itself, it has some very interesting plausibles and implausibles, with very realistic caveats about not knowing the exact capabilities but extrapolating from consumer available technologies. But the other article gives quite spurious information (not that I necessarily say its false, just unsubstantiated) about the amount of data and definitely non-substantiated claims of their ability to process that amount of data.-wraith808 (July 19, 2013, 02:11 PM)
anything experimental would be a) ridiculously expensive b) had to made completely in US c) by government agencies. Unless you're thinking some alien technology from Rosewell...
And British
And Brazilians
And Germans-app103 (July 19, 2013, 03:02 PM)
Super_Simple_resized_Monopoly-old-game_800x799.jpg (122.63 kB. 800x799 - viewed 963 times.)Oh... and it's bad, don't get me wrong. I just have a thing for numbers and accuracy.
http://skeptics.stac...ve-zettabytes-of-dat
And the quality of the data is no where near the same as the Stasi, along with the endemic system of informants and fear used to get the data on a personal level. And the sample size. It's bad... but I hate making the same mistake in the other direction...-wraith808 (July 19, 2013, 11:24 AM)
hehehe~! ...but my major point from that was the fact that he said that 'America doesn't have a functioning democracy'. Pretty strong words... but I guess only to me.-wraith808 (July 19, 2013, 11:16 AM)
He's bang on the money there. But he sure as f*&k didn't help the situation with #2. His #2 really is a #2. So where the hated Stasi surveillance was a building in area, the NSA surveillance today is an entire continent.
As a final note, the word Stasi was a contraction of the East German surveillance agency’s full name, Ministerium für Staatssicherheit. It translates to National Security Agency.
How about Twitter spying on people? I've set up a Twitter account with my Hotmail account years ago, but I do not use it. Twitter have kept sending me emails about feeds they thought I might be interested in, which were usually related topically to a handful of feeds I'd subscribed to, all of which are based on my academic interests (and are not from my local area).
However, today there was a new twist: Twitter sent me an email saying I might be interested in the feeds of my local council. How on earth did they figure out where I live? I barely log on to Twitter (maybe 3-4 times a year to do a search), and I only do it on my PC. Is that based on my IP address or they're doing something different?-dr_andus (July 19, 2013, 06:44 AM)
