I can SEE YOU....

[LMNO]

Well, crap.

The Wall Street Journal reported today that the little-known National Counterterrorism Center, based in an unmarked building in McLean, Va., has been granted sweeping new authority to store and monitor massive datasets about innocent Americans.

The snooping effort, which officials say is subject to "rigorous oversight," is reminiscent of the so-called Total Information Awareness initiative, dreamt up in the aftermath of 9/11 by the Pentagon's research unit DARPA... they were accumulating masses of data about "suspicious" activity that was not of any use. The intelligence being swept up, the investigators found, was "oftentimes shoddy, rarely timely, sometimes endangering citizens' civil liberties and Privacy Act protections."

Such sweeping surveillance efforts pose difficulties for the authorities because they can end up drowning in data, attempting to find a needle in a haystack, in the process deeming innocent people suspicious. As the Journal's Julia Angwin notes, the risk is that "innocent behavior gets misunderstood—say, a man buying chemicals (for a child's science fair) and a timer (for the sprinkler) sets off false alarms."

[deadfong]

They're actively piling up haystacks in which they believe there will be needles.  And of course the pattern-matching software will conveniently manufacture needles to be found by the pattern-matching software...

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

That is SO massively fucked up.

Also, could it be any more insane that our country is putting massive expenditures and effort into something that kills fewer people each year in the US than, say, falling down stairs or accidental poisoning or medical malpractice or not vaccinating your child?

There are more deaths annually caused by tooth decay than from terrorism... wouldn't all this money be better spent on universal dental care, if the goal is to save lives?

Let's not even begin to talk about the lives that could be saved if we fed the hungry, housed the homeless, and provided healthcare to the public.

But this isn't about saving lives, it's about CONTROL. They're just as happy seeing us starve to death and die of preventable illness, as long as they can keep us cowed and obedient in the name of "terror".

The US government is the terrorist.

[Cain]

You didn't have an expectation of privacy before this, anyway.

L'affaire du P4 should have taught everyone that.  Your email inbox can be subpoena'd with little to no oversight - it's called the Patriot Act.  The FBI are spying on Quakers and Rotary Club members.  "Papers and effects" don't apply digitally.  A good half of the intelligence community is outsourced to private corporations, who are not subject to the same restrictions and laws governments are anyway.

The only privacy you have is the privacy you make for yourself.  And sure, using PGP will put you more squarely in the sights of certain agencies.  But it's better than having all your dirty laundry aired because you were stupid enough to save it on a Gmail server.

[Cain]

It's also worth noting that since before 2008, the FBI could:

* listening in and recording all conversations en-mass;
* collecting and recording mobile phone data use en-mass;
* obtaining the data they accessed from their mobile phone (Internet access, e-mail, web);
* trending their calling patterns and other call behavior;
* identifying inbound and outbound callers;
* tracking all in and outbound calls;
* tracing the user's physical location

with it's already existing arrangements with communications firms. 

And if the NSA suspects a terrorist is within a specific geographic location, it has carte blanche to monitor and store all communications in that area.  Said area could easily be a city as large as Detroit, which was the example given by an NSA whistleblower when describing the program.

[P3nT4gR4m]

But this isn't about saving lives, it's about CONTROL. They're just as happy seeing us starve to death and die of preventable illness, as long as they can keep us cowed and obedient in the name of "terror".

The US government is the terrorist.

THIS! Especially the bold bit. Can't remember if it was here or somewhere else someone posted the dictionary definition of

Something like "The use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims"

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I TOLD YOU GUYS TIA WOULD BE BACK!

My prophet margin shows no sign of shrinking.

[P3nT4gR4m]

TGRR: Hung like an oracle