Prism and Verizon surveillance discussion thread

[Junkenstein]

Related:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23328520

Details of the official justification for the US National Security Agency's wide-ranging Prism surveillance programme look set to be revealed.

Yahoo has won a legal fight that will see papers from a key 2008 court case declassified and published.

The 2008 case is widely seen as pivotal in letting the NSA establish Prism and start gathering data on web use.

The US government has been given until 29 July to say how long it will need to prepare the documents for publication.

Translation - The shredder has not stopped and we need more black marker pens NOW.

This should give a good insight regardless of how little is actually revealed.

Also, Kudos to yahoo here for this unusual display of balls. Not often that happens.

[Doktor Howl]

Temper tantrums ITT

http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/17/19510080-graham-us-should-consider-olympic-boycott-over-possible-snowden-asylum?lite

[Cain]

Oh no, the US really means business now.  An Olympic boycott.  However will Russia be able to consider offering Snowden asylum now?

[Doktor Howl]

Oh no, the US really means business now.  An Olympic boycott.  However will Russia be able to consider offering Snowden asylum now?

Putin is probably laughing himself sick.

[Junkenstein]

Oh no, the US really means business now.  An Olympic boycott.  However will Russia be able to consider offering Snowden asylum now?

Putin is probably laughing himself sick.

I'm surprised there's not been a Putin Photo Op yet. Seriously.

[Cain]

Yesterday, during the House Judiciary Committee, this revelation was made:

NSA Director John Inglis revealed that the FISA Court permits the government to do three jumps from an initial number tied to a phone number reasonably believed to be tied to terrorism.

And look at this

http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/03/six-degrees-of-separation-is-now-three/

[Doktor Howl]

Yesterday, during the House Judiciary Committee, this revelation was made:

NSA Director John Inglis revealed that the FISA Court permits the government to do three jumps from an initial number tied to a phone number reasonably believed to be tied to terrorism.

And look at this

http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/03/six-degrees-of-separation-is-now-three/

Okay, we're all terrorists.

[Junkenstein]

Yesterday, during the House Judiciary Committee, this revelation was made:

NSA Director John Inglis revealed that the FISA Court permits the government to do three jumps from an initial number tied to a phone number reasonably believed to be tied to terrorism.

And look at this

http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/03/six-degrees-of-separation-is-now-three/

Okay, we're all terrorists.

Not quite yet. Once you can get to 2 degrees, then we're all totally fucked as everyone is an unwitting accomplice to everything that anyone you know does.

According to Jeff Rodrigues, a social networking specialist that carried out the study, 97 percent of the participants said they felt more connected to people today than they ever have in the past and for older respondents, email and mobile phones were the key factors in reducing the degrees of separation. But for those in the younger generation, Facebook was the main factor. Text messaging was also mentioned as an important component in reducing degrees of separation.

That 97% seems really high. I would have thought that more than that would feel "Less connected" due to the virtual nature. Then you see that the study was done by 02 so it probably focused heavily on phones and texts and less so other areas.

[Doktor Howl]

Yesterday, during the House Judiciary Committee, this revelation was made:

NSA Director John Inglis revealed that the FISA Court permits the government to do three jumps from an initial number tied to a phone number reasonably believed to be tied to terrorism.

And look at this

http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/03/six-degrees-of-separation-is-now-three/

Okay, we're all terrorists.

Not quite yet. Once you can get to 2 degrees, then we're all totally fucked as everyone is an unwitting accomplice to everything that anyone you know does.

According to Jeff Rodrigues, a social networking specialist that carried out the study, 97 percent of the participants said they felt more connected to people today than they ever have in the past and for older respondents, email and mobile phones were the key factors in reducing the degrees of separation. But for those in the younger generation, Facebook was the main factor. Text messaging was also mentioned as an important component in reducing degrees of separation.

That 97% seems really high. I would have thought that more than that would feel "Less connected" due to the virtual nature. Then you see that the study was done by 02 so it probably focused heavily on phones and texts and less so other areas.

Don't know.  My daughter hangs out with her friends IRL in the daytime, and then in the evening, she goes online with all of them, and friends of friends, and so on, and they watch bad movies together on their computers, and laugh their arses off over the channel they're using.

She's never alone. 

I wish that had been available when I was a kid.

[Junkenstein]

Fair point. I know few children so I can't really comment.

It will be fun to watch this "more social" shift in society though. It may even have an unexpected consequence of increased empathy because it's easier to get at the actual idiots. I hope.

[Junkenstein]

Some HA HA:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23373178

Huawei has denied claims made by a former US Central ­Intelligence Agency (CIA) chief, Michael Hayden, that it has spied for the Chinese government.

Mr Hayden was quoted by the Australian Financial Review as saying that it was his "professional judgment" that the firm supplied intelligence to ­China.

However, Huawei said the claims were "unsubstantiated" and "defamatory".

In other news, US officials quoted as saying "Don't look at that, look at this"

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Yesterday, during the House Judiciary Committee, this revelation was made:

NSA Director John Inglis revealed that the FISA Court permits the government to do three jumps from an initial number tied to a phone number reasonably believed to be tied to terrorism.

And look at this

http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/03/six-degrees-of-separation-is-now-three/

Okay, we're all terrorists.

Not quite yet. Once you can get to 2 degrees, then we're all totally fucked as everyone is an unwitting accomplice to everything that anyone you know does.

According to Jeff Rodrigues, a social networking specialist that carried out the study, 97 percent of the participants said they felt more connected to people today than they ever have in the past and for older respondents, email and mobile phones were the key factors in reducing the degrees of separation. But for those in the younger generation, Facebook was the main factor. Text messaging was also mentioned as an important component in reducing degrees of separation.

That 97% seems really high. I would have thought that more than that would feel "Less connected" due to the virtual nature. Then you see that the study was done by 02 so it probably focused heavily on phones and texts and less so other areas.

Older adults, as technology immigrants, often make the error of not recognizing "virtual" communication as, well, communication. What's really interesting about that is that we tend to view things like letters, which are far less immediately connected than text messaging or IM, as "real" communication. So, essentially, we are imposing false assumptions that come from not having been raised with texting as part of our communication frame of reference.

Observation: Teenagers used the phone for socializing and staying connected when we were kids. Now, kids use the voice phone as a highly utilitarian tool for urgent, brief communication. For prolonged social interactions, they prefer IM, text, or Skype.

Caccioppo, in his studies on loneliness, has found that contrary to many doomsayers' predictions about social media, people generally use it as a tool to help them feel less isolated and to maintain, and make, social connections IRL. There is a natural evolution in online groups, from chatting to online friendship to phone calls to in-person friendship. The degrees of intimacy closely mimic the process of developing social bonds in a workplace, or a social club, or anywhere else people normally meet.

In other words, probably unsurprisingly, people are still people and we are social creatures who love being around other people. Even introverts love and need to be around other people. The monstrous things done in the 40's and 50's to try to break that natural human urge, in the era when the machine reigned supreme and it was believed that the way to godhood was through suppressing every human urge and becoming as much like unfeeling robots as possible, could not erase the humanity from our genes and a couple of generations later, although still scarred and neurotic from a bygone era when mothers were told not to hold their babies and to feed them manufactured ichor from a bottle, our children are using the descendants of that early machine technology to return inexorably to the feeling of connectedness and tribe that our species requires to be mentally and emotionally healthy.

It's not good for the machine lords, who want us to be isolated, empty consumers seeking to fill our emotional voids with stuff, but it's good for people.

[Junkenstein]

That's a good chunk to re-consider between this and Dok's other thread. Appreciate the help on this kind of stuff.

Observation: Teenagers used the phone for socializing and staying connected when we were kids. Now, kids use the voice phone as a highly utilitarian tool for urgent, brief communication. For prolonged social interactions, they prefer IM, text, or Skype.

This kind of makes sense when I think about it. Previous generations teenagers had the "get off the phone" argument, the fight between the phone or the internet which limited or slowed communications between peers at what I'd guess to be a fairly delicate time of forming social skills and bonds. 

There may be something of a gender angle to that too, as the advent of the internet enabled (Can't figure how to put this, not secret, silent maybe?) in that you did not have to broadcast who you're communicating with or what about. Which probably ties into the earlier moral panics around chatrooms/IM. 

This:

our children are using the descendants of that early machine technology to return inexorably to the feeling of connectedness and tribe that our species requires to be mentally and emotionally healthy

Seems important. Fringe interests are no longer quite as out there. You may be the only kid in town that likes X, but there's probably a kid in town Y that likes X too. He's probably an asshole, but at least he likes X.

[LMNO]

Nigel, that was beautifully written.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Nigel, that was beautifully written.

Thank you!