Letters to the Editor
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Anyone surprised?
GPU, Gestapo, NKWD,Stasi, NSA, all the same. Hello guys, I dont like you but I dont care. Your boss is the worst president the US ever had, a real moron. Now go and tell him.
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Buggin the White House
I am wondering if the powers that be are buggin the Presidents private line in an attempt to blackmail him into starting long term wars with adjectives in the title.
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"possibly" illegal?
I wish Salon and other news outlets would quit saying that if the goverment is spying on private citizens without warrants that it is "possibly" illegal. It is totally and obviously illegal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now, if something else is going on in the secret room in Bridgeton then it's a different kettle of fish. Yet, I will repeat, it is totally and obviously illegal if the government is spying on the private communications of US citizens without a warrant. Period. Everyone, but journalists in particular should quit pussyfooting around this stark reality.
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Ain't exactly clear what's happening here...
Like the stories about the secret room in the San Francisco office, something other than eavesdropping is going on here. As Dave Farber, at Carnegie Mellon said, "If I own the routers, I can put code in there to have them monitor for certain data." And anyone with the right passwords can control any of the routers on the Internet from his bedroom in the suburbs. The same is no doubt true for digital telephone communications, also. So what is the purpose of top secret, bulletproof rooms if not for eavesdropping? If all the incoming and outgoing lines pass through these little rooms, wouldn't it be possible for someone in those little, bulletproof rooms to shut off those lines? Just a thot...
db
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Oh No! It's the Evil NSA! Run!
Jesus, guys! Ever since the days of "The Black Chamber" (the NSA's original, private sector name from waaaay back in the day) they've operated outside the law. OK, I suspect I can safely surmise we all detest the sitting President. The guy, however retarded, brilliant, evil or otherwise screwed up (or maybe it's all of the above) did not invent, create, nor even really empower the NSA to do anything, and trust me on this, he is every bit as much, and probably a lot more, at risk of being caught with his hand in his pants than any of us (and has anyone as yet? I don't recall hearing about it). Wouldn't it be interesting to learn some day that the NSA was the only intelligence agency working FOR US interests that actually did something good? You are discussing, with zero information, one of the most massive secret societies on the face of the earth, and all you can think of is to cue up the "Twilight Zone" theme and start flogging the Bush some more? Sure, it sucks that we now actually know we're being eavesdropped upon, but so far I think the NSA is a lot more interested in Big Ugly Plots against US than anything remotely ABOUT us. Then again, what do I know? Yeah...what? Sorry, I can't talk about it. HAAHAHAHAHaahhaaaa!!!
But just in case, Bush sucks! Got that? OK, good. Testing, testing....
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Minor point - credit card information
I think the statement in the final paragraph about mining credit card information is a bit misleading.
Most credit card transactions nowadays are encrypted. Assuming the encryption holds, even someone sniffing both sides of the transaction would not be able to see the credit card information.
Same for any transaction taking place using an asymmetrical key (or keys obtained via key exchange using an asymmetrical key). You would have to have direct access to both machines involved to get at the private key(s).
The rest of the article sounds to me quite credible: all outward signs point to an administration which has no qualms about using whatever cruel vicious, or immoral means are available for gaining power (e.g. sleazy attack campaigns, torture camps, outright lies to the public). So it should be no big surprise that they're directed by the same twisted set of values in the technical realm.
I gotta laugh when I think of the multiple ironies...
The neocons don't want to listen to what anyone else has to say, unless it's by clandestine (probably illegal) means.
And, with all these megatons of information at their disposal, they still can't tell us who leaked Valerie Plame's identity, nor why they attacked Iraq in retaliation for 9/11 when the hijackers were mostly Saudi, nor why they twiddled their thumbs while New Orleans drowned...
Hey -- could it be that INFORMATION is different from INTELLIGENCE???
A band of extremist lunatic fanatics has locked themselves in the cockpit, and set our country on course for a suicide mission.
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Inference, Innuendo, and Insinuation
It must be the heat, and my mind ain't working right. But from where I sit it appears now that most of the facts about how this country got into its current wretched state of affairs are out there, in abundance. Tonight Frontline, for instance, outlined the chain of events prompted by Dick "The Dark Side" Cheney. You watch and almost weep. Not at the facts necessarily but at the fact this story keeps being shown again and again. It's similar in nature to the criminal in "Clockwork Orange" with his eyes held open while watching violence until it sickens him.
You're checking out truthout, Sidney Blumenthal, Juan Cole, Washington Monthly, and other blogs. You're following everything Wilson and Plame say. And Colin Powell. And Murtha. But, nonetheless, the tragedy stays stuck in act 2. You're so desperate, you're hoping a crisply edited montage on The Daily Show will do it. Or a segment on Lou Dobbs. Yeah, maybe that's it -- it'll be immigration that topples those guys. But no. Weeks give way to months.
If you're like me, so disgusted at nearly everything political on both sides of the aisle (Hillary Clinton? You gotta be kidding?), you're waiting to see some sign of a total administration collapse, or an unmentionable event happen to certain leaders, or Fitzgerald to indict an upper tier operative -- Something, Anything, that will move this tragedy into a closing act. You're wondering, How much longer can the American people, the media, leaders in and out of office pass through their everyday existence and not do something to change this big mess.
And then you stumble across, Is the NSA Spying on U.S. Internet Traffic? Wow, you say to yourself, maybe, just maybe, the American people -- that alert breed of concerned citizens who cherish their freedoms -- will seize on this issue. This will be the history maker. The Regime changer. The Decider's undoing. And then as you read two anonymous sources so fearful of their careers that they say virtually nothing that will identify them or anything they've ever encountered beyond a vague sense of illicit activity, you realize, nope, this isn't that decisive moment you've been waiting for.
Is it perhaps because the writer of the story is too afraid of revealing info that could lead to horrible penalties, torture or, worse, a bad desk job in DC? Who really knows? We've sort of entered that Kafka Zone where the imaginable seems real and the real is routinely ignored. In fact, in the Big Picture, the culprits have been named. Sourced. Quoted. And revealed. There are abundant memos, neocon documents, tangible cover-ups, testimony by decorated generals, falsified data, not to mention the failed war on terror, and the grandiose debacle in Iraq. But apparently, that's not enough. Nope.
People continuously cite fascists, who're supposedly everywhere. Religious fascists. Right and left wing fascists. It's become the term du jour. Then there are the nut left, environmental wackos, apathetic centrists, gay rights activists, evangelical nazis, totalitarian Muslims, and, other assorted characters who are also, supposedly, ruining America. Is it possible the NSA is making sense of who the enemies might actually be? If they're operating with the same level of proficiency shown by Homeland Security, or Medicare, or the INS, then, no doubt, they're having as many problems identifying them as is the rest of America.
Maybe there are too many culprits. How about narrowing the investigation down to that rather small circle of neocons and administration officials who're systematically ruining this once great country? How about working this like they do in the private sector and going after the people at the top and clearing house? Then we'll have more time to go after all those other fascists. Is that impossible?