Letters to the Editor
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@ Casual Observer
Frontline on Domestic Spying
A good program, but I don't think the show will scare many americans. Americans have chosen to be afraid of the wrong things.
My comments on seeing the show:
Yes, the massive snooping is worrisome. Loads of the Narus biggies seem to be ex-NSA or from associated places. But the practicalities of the Internet/telecom volume are that you will have a hard time grabbing all the traffic, and you'd be snowed if you could. NSA used to have the hottest machines on (or in their case, off) the market (first Crays, etc.), but they've been falling behind on the technology end, for many reasons. Nowadays, they buy commercial more and more, amd they need an order of magnitude more power to do surveillance of a given bandwidth. Google may very well have them out-MIPSed right now.
Not to mention, IP with its decentralised backbones provides too many alternative paths for them to grab everything (which is why the gummint got the CALEA law to insist that ISPs have to provide the capability themselves. But I know just how hard it is even for the ISPs just to pick the spots to put in targeted taps to intercept a specific target.
But that doesn't prevent them from vicarious snooping in hopes of catching one in ten (or one in a hundred) of the baddie's communications. The problem is that there's a lot of bad that can come from such snoops, and not much hope of it's being actually useful for anything, given the lack of anything near comprehensive coverage along with the lack of ability to analyse the data. They're snooping your shopping lists in hopes of finding a needle in one of the haystacks in the field, well knowing it could be in any of the others if it even exists (al Qaeda has gone a bit "low-tech" lately, from what I've read).
The CALEA act is being faulted by some, I think unfairly. The CALEA act requires the ability to snoop a specific target, and pass on that information only. And the control of the CALEA wiretaps is within the telcos and IPSs, not in the hands of the gummint (unlike in some countries, I might add). The gummint needs paperwork or authorisation to get the taps in place, and as long as the paperwork is done (and probable cause is shown to a responsible third party), shouldn't be any issue with doing such taps (not to mention, the same facilities are useful for emergency location, such as when someone is missing or their car goes off the road; emergency locations seem to be around hald of all requests for LI services near as I can tell).
What AT&T did in Ess Eff was not CALEA compliance. Most CALEA equipment I know of doesn't even have the ability for gregarious snooping (and why put such in when the law doesn't require it?; it costs money).
More later, I guess.... it's late, and the NSA is homing in on my DCHP lease as we speak.
Cheers,
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@ kovie
arne
Trolling for trolls, eh? ;-)
Uhhh, he's already here (as "Jake007"). Just want people to know that dialogue is impossible and courtesy (of any kind) misplaced.
Cheers,
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arne
I was just teasing, of course. ;-) Not that you were intentionally looking for him on other blogs, but the fact that you found him on one was something that I found kind of funny. Think of him as the dolphin you caught while trolling for tuna. Or, perhaps more appropriately, the sea worm you caught while trolling for signs of intelligent life forms.
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You have to wonder
This is a truly remarkable story, so much so that even the Washington Post's editors find it disturbing. The wonder to me is that GWB ever truly believed that he and his appointees could behave this way as a matter of routine, yet somehow prevent it from becoming common knowledge at some point.
The evidence -- indisputable, I think -- is that they tried, and now, to virtually no one's surprise except their own, they've failed. Many here think that Plan B will be to strong-arm and stonewall every critic, every investigator, until the next election.
Maybe so, but I doubt that under the circumstances, such a plan is any more likely to be successful than GWB's peculiar form of omerta has been. Will the Republican Party choose to throw kindling on its own funeral pyre, once it becomes clear that the price of colluding in GWB's intransigence is likely to require it? Very unlikely, I think. It's too soon for firm predictions, but there may yet come a time when the party will deputize someone to lay a (symbolic) revolver on the President's desk, just as it did in 1974.
I wonder who they'll choose. (I can't imagine, at this point, that they'll have any volunteers.)
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Hay, Garrison Keillor!
I'd rather listen to Mr. Ed the lovable talking horse mare. She's still as interesting as she use to me, imho.
She informed me on a old dead thread that: A.G. Gonzo was yanked too early into this howling world with a "pair" of stubby crooked thigh TONGS. With no eyes and a snarling tongue, I've LOST any iota of a semblance of respect. Was it stubby legs Albert who forgot (retard!? it's not nice to yell "retard" under oath, or at a W.H. crusty-brown press brief. my apology)...NO can recall, senorita, or did some people get hit too hard when they left the warm womb?Did some politico's get a bad-doc who smack bear naked beer butt too cruelly at birth? Is it some sociological revenge issue?
Was it 71- Times Albert FOGOT under oath? In the old days if someone called you a lifer, there was a public duel. Gads, how many gentlemanly letters do I need to write the other Ashcroft who never writes me back before I begin a silly sounding arsehorse'a'Hollering?
You blind, dumb, blind, or can USA's citizen just assume you got your Head squeezed with TONGS at birth, or worster (1st letter on page one. yes) worster...huh- Pap's gonads got all tied and got wrapped 'round the DoJ's steering wheel? Mother me.
I best get. I'll be labeled a nappy head liberal terrier puppy dag lover? How much is the pooch-dog in the 5th Ave window? down from the White House? A catch phrase- Protecting WHO, and Yuck! It's all they spit-- spit-balls. Well, how about TRY to apply a little honesty or run a country well? NOT, like a pillaging Empire?
So, we can blow up the Middle East, make angry "terrorist" worldwide wish revenge for &-Generations..all shucks, in Arabic, dats a bunch of liars___! Send more troops and Apache wool to fly overhead all day in them safe neighborhoods...huh?
Waltz with Matilda at Walter Read? Sip melted yellow sewer snow? Pathological USA's debacle..Press- Hint! We exacerbated yet at the public masturbation jake-Circle? Jerk- off-Politico! Get. Swim like sperm in a rice paddy. Sit in a Mexican cow pie. Freedom? How NOW brown-cow, be remembering while we care about survival and homeland security. Remember your birthright or did AG's sell a bowl of hominy...huh? chew hominy 52 bites before you swallow.
Before I forget`~` In your DoJ's office, laying around somewhere, there is a one-inch thick brief I handed to the former Pa's governor, Ashcroft's Homeland Security Secretary to give to Mr Shutoff..the White House's Professional Criminal Investigator...duh? I mailed you info too from legal offices. Oh, let's consider a career/life as a wreckage and embolden 'enemies' in America before it, damn Domino's fall here, and your crony-pals might be forced to remember that shit happens if it's tossed at a windy fan (right, w.t)...
...Stop building such a big-bad cowboy-palace embassy. No allow several millions bare-foot peasant's to die again, defending a Motherland... Let's No approve a 60,000 brave heroes to be lowered into graves...huh? You Milhose Dubai loco..huh? Mushroom brain dead...huh? You need a pair of shiny anklet bracelets.
Remember: GIGI- garbage in, garbage out. Beekeepers thief's. MY Foot! You Lie! What a bunch of cockamamie schemes. Write a 22,000 page small print tax-code-book so the foreclosed bank-pals can sleep with a good book to read under a Iraqi blown up bridge.? Get street smart or you forgot that too? Get a honest job. Well, hear the drafty canary sing?
I best stop. Rudyard Kipling- "If any questions why we died/ Tell them, because our fathers (politicians) lied."