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  1. #1
    Senior Member Senior Member Fisherking's Avatar
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    Default House votes to continue NSA spying on citizens

    In a 205-217 vote, lawmakers rejected an effort to restrict the National Security Agency's (NSA) ability to collect electronic information.

    The NSA's chief had lobbied strongly against the proposed measure.

    The vote saw an unusual coalition of conservatives and liberal Democrats join forces against the programme.

    Obama spoke out to kill the amendment. Meantime you here about royal baby and other pap.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23445231

    Who voted how: http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/24/a-l...op-nsa-spying/

    Skipping the vote was as bad as voting against it! 12 of those.
    Last edited by Fisherking; 07-25-2013 at 07:07.


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  2. #2

    Default Re: House votes to continue NSA spying on citizens

    I think this is good news actually. The story has not gotten much traction lately due to garbage like the royal baby. If libertarian and liberal organizations banded together to push for this again and brought it back to the spotlight, there is a good chance it can get passed. It's rare for a bill of this nature to pass the first time around.


  3. #3
    Senior Member Senior Member Fisherking's Avatar
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    Default Re: House votes to continue NSA spying on citizens

    The amendment didn’t stop the NSA collecting any data, they just had to show cause before it could be asked for and targeted individuals.

    So it was not exactly crippling the war on terror.

    Those voting against or skipping the vote don’t give a damn about the laws or rights of individuals.


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  4. #4

    Default Re: House votes to continue NSA spying on citizens

    Quote Originally Posted by Fisherking View Post
    The amendment didn’t stop the NSA collecting any data, they just had to show cause before it could be asked for and targeted individuals.

    So it was not exactly crippling the war on terror.

    Those voting against or skipping the vote don’t give a damn about the laws or rights of individuals.
    It just means they fell in line this time. As I said FIsherking ,these type of laws don't usually pass on the first try. There has been no big push from the public towards this bill, and yet it still almost passed. If a coalition can be made fast and lobby hard, it can be done. Calling the nays a bunch of names and calling it a dead bill/amendment only serves to hurt us.


  5. #5
    Senior Member Senior Member Fisherking's Avatar
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    Default Re: House votes to continue NSA spying on citizens

    I provided a link to the vote for a reason. You can at least see how your rep voted. Pressuring them to change their minds, or just reinforce their positions is your right.

    I have seen some people spin this as a party issue blaming Republicans.

    Obama wanted it to fail and said so. You can see that the party leadership of both parties was on the side to defeat the amendment. People making it partisan just are not looking.

    The Parties are not your friends, no matter which side you have chosen.


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  6. #6
    Senior Member Senior Member Fisherking's Avatar
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    Default Re: House votes to continue NSA spying on citizens

    Mine, a Democrat voted No, just like the Administration and the party asked him to.

    Gutless Weasel! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Kilmer

    At least he’s not a lawyer.


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  7. #7
    Nobody expects the Senior Member Lemur's Avatar
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    Default Re: House votes to continue NSA spying on citizens

    Quote Originally Posted by Fisherking View Post
    You can at least see how your rep voted. Pressuring them to change their minds, or just reinforce their positions is your right.
    My rep (Paul Ryan, R) voted against it, no surprise there. I've contacted him many times, I suppose I will again. Not like he listens, however. His district (and mine) is safely gerrymandered, and he's something of an authoritarian.

    Congress, eh? Whatcha gonna do?

    A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal polls finds that in addition to setting new milestones for futility, Congress is also more hated than it's ever been. A full 83 percent of respondents say they disapprove of the job Congress is doing, the highest number for that question since the poll began tracking the number.


  8. #8

    Default Re: House votes to continue NSA spying on citizens

    Oooh. I am such an idiot. The Kohl's card might have been like a credit card. When they say "Do you want to get our card and save 15%?" How am I supposed to know its more than just a data gathering discount card?


  9. #9
    Member Member Tuuvi's Avatar
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    Default Re: House votes to continue NSA spying on citizens

    A Kohl's card is a credit card. I work at JC Penney and we have to try to get people to sign up for store credit cards as well.

    I always get nervous when I ask someone if they would like to open a JC Penney card and they say "yes" without even blinking, especially when they don't speak English well. I worry that they don't realize they're signing up for a credit card.

    I hate pushing those things so bad.

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  10. #10
    Senior Member Senior Member Fisherking's Avatar
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    Default Re: House votes to continue NSA spying on citizens

    Making You 'Comfortable' with Spying Is Obama's Big NSA Fix
    Posted By Shane Harris Friday, August 9, 2013 - 5:26 PM

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

    Barack Obama held a press conference on Friday afternoon, supposedly to announce reforms of the NSA's far-flung surveillance programs. In reality, the White House briefing was the start of a marketing campaign for the spy programs that have turned so controversial in recent months. And the president's message really boiled down to this: It's more important to persuade people surveillance is useful and legal than to make structural changes to the programs.
    "The question is, how do I make the American people more comfortable?" Obama said.
    Not that Obama's unwilling to make any changes to America's surveillance driftnets -- and he detailed a few of them -- but his overriding concern was that people didn't believe him when he said there was nothing to fear.
    In an awkward analogy, the president said that if he'd told his wife Michelle that he had washed the dishes after dinner, she might not believe him. So he might have to take her into the kitchen and show her the evidence.
    The tour of the NSA's kitchen appeared today in the form of two "white papers," one produced by the Justice Department, another by the NSA, that offered a robust defense of the legal basis for the programs, and their value, but offered practically no new details to the administration's already public defense. If the president meant to offer more proof that the programs really are fine, it was not to be found in the information his administration released today.
    What structural alterations the president said he is willing to make to the surveillance regime mostly took the form of initial sketches and broad commitments to balance "security and liberty." In perhaps his biggest concession, Obama said he was willing to consider changing procedures in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which authorizes NSA surveillance, so that an opposing position to the government's could be heard in certain circumstances. Without committing to any specifics, he also said he'd work with Congress to "pursue appropriate reforms" to the bulk phone records program. And Obama announced he'd convene an independent review board on the state of national security technology and its role in modern society. (It might take the form of this one, which was convened a decade ago.)

    But these changes, while not merely cosmetic, have already been proposed by members of Congress and outside experts. The president offered no proposals to fundamentally change the surveillance programs, because as far as he's concerned, they don't need to be changed.
    Now if he could just make everyone see that.
    Friday was a start. In his most extensive remarks to date about the controversy over surveillance programs that has dogged his administration, President Obama sought to assuage his critics, and the public at large, that there is nothing to fear from the National Security Agency. And he should know, because he's the president.

    "If you start seeing a bunch of headlines saying 'U.S, Big Brother looking down on you,'" Obama said at an afternoon White House press conference, "understandably people would be concerned. I would be too if I wasn't inside the government."
    The crux of the president's message rested on his fundamental and considered belief that the NSA's global surveillance programs, including those that collect the phone records of millions of Americans, are both legal and tightly regulated. The president, who as a candidate railed against the intelligence excesses of the NSA under George W. Bush, said today that he'd been skeptical of those programs, and that once in office, having had the chance to review them, found that they were essential.
    "The two programs at issue offer valuable intelligence that helps us protect the American people and they're worth preserving," Obama said, referring to the bulk collection of phone records and electronic surveillance of foreigners overseas, which frequently sweeps in the communications of American citizens.
    Obama resisted any suggestion that the leaks by former NSA-contractor Ed Snowden had caused him to rethink his position. Indeed, he said he'd initiated a review of intelligence programs before Snowden began providing details about them to the press two months ago. As a result, Obama said he decided to "tighten some bolts" by adding additional layers of oversight of secretive intelligence gathering.
    And it was those steps, he said, as well as the constitutional system of checks and balances that has kept the NSA from violating Americans' privacy, overstepping legal bounds, or reverting to the kinds of domestic spying that were a hallmark of darker days, when the intelligence community routinely spied on some Americans to monitor their political activities. The programs are useful, legal, and working just fine, he insisted.
    But, Obama allowed, not everyone in the country is so confident.

    "It's not enough for me as the President to have confidence in these programs. The American people have to have confidence in them as well."


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  11. #11

    Default Re: House votes to continue NSA spying on citizens

    Just a couple thousand errors: human fallibility and all that

    http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americ...553987562.html
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  12. #12
    Needs more flowers Moderator drone's Avatar
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    Default Re: House votes to continue NSA spying on citizens

    Quadrupled the oversight budget, doubled the number of violations and "mistakes". I'd bring up Hanlon's razor, but I'm starting to think both malice and stupidity are in full effect.
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    The Black Senior Member Papewaio's Avatar
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    Default Re: House votes to continue NSA spying on citizens

    Quote Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube View Post
    Screw the NSA, I'm worried about when the global network of robot doom wakes up.
    What better way to accidentally create a singularity then creating a nerve center with massive computational power that can track what all the cells are upto.
    Our genes maybe in the basement but it does not stop us chosing our point of view from the top.
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  14. #14
    Senior Member Senior Member Fisherking's Avatar
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    Default Re: House votes to continue NSA spying on citizens

    More on that latest leak, Much, much bigger than anyone thought.

    http://www.livescience.com/39477-mos...-nsa-leak.html


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    Iron Fist Senior Member Husar's Avatar
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    Default Re: House votes to continue NSA spying on citizens

    Yeah, and what's also funny, Ghostery (a browser add-in) shows me 38 tracking sites and cookies when I open your link.

    Also cute girls and their aunts make a lot of money by working part-time on the internet.

    As for the NSA, they have to save us from evil people I guess, sometimes a man gotta do what a man gotta do.


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  16. #16
    Senior Member Senior Member Fisherking's Avatar
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    Default Re: House votes to continue NSA spying on citizens

    The danger in the encryption debacle is largely to businesses and corporations. The have been known to steal from one and give to another, usually steal from the small or foreign and give to some favored firm. German high-tech and French defense industries seem to be favorite targets. But they have robed a few US companies too to give to their preferred corporations.

    Nothing at all to worry about, unless you work for a firm that needs to be internationally competitive or where foreign sales at home could ruin your edge.

    I suppose everything will be safe again once someone reinvents the pc with all different components and develops an operating system with encryption for it, provided they are not compromised along the way.


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  17. #17
    Senior Member Senior Member Fisherking's Avatar
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    Default Re: House votes to continue NSA spying on citizens

    It just gets deeper:

    White House had NSA Limits Reversed

    Sep 10, 2013
    UPI

    http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2013/...9311378710000/


    Good thing Syria came along to take most of this out of the news, huh?


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  18. #18
    The Black Senior Member Papewaio's Avatar
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    Default Re: House votes to continue NSA spying on citizens

    Quote Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube View Post
    Who is playing the role of Praetorian guard?
    The voters. And just like early Romans they can be distracted by bread and circuses, and just like Praetorians they will be bought off in the modern sense with tax cuts, pork barrel projects or more important dilemmas to engage with.

    My prediction is that a standard issue Republican & Democrat mix Congress and President will get elected in the next twelve years and by then an entire generation will be born to this. The terms of terrorism will extend, the thresholds lowered, Warrantless data collection will extend to cover the war on drugs, violent crimes and then to civil court cases.

    I see the latest iPhone takes your fingerprint. Apparently only stored locally on your phone, I wonder how true that statement is given the geolocation bug was used by agencies to track individuals. So now you are tagged and verified every step of the day. Really like Apple products. Next purchase is probably going to be non US. Made in the US means backdoor to all TLAs and as a foreigner all my most intimate communications are allowed to be viewed because I'm automatically a suspect. Don't worry, it seems the locals will be treated the same soon.

    Might as well send postcards from the edge as at least you know anyone can read these.
    Our genes maybe in the basement but it does not stop us chosing our point of view from the top.
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  19. #19
    The Black Senior Member Papewaio's Avatar
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    Default Re: House votes to continue NSA spying on citizens

    Praetorians were bought off. They were the red handed chess pieces not the masters.

    So I would say the special interest groups. So follow the cash and it wouldn't surprise me it is a Venn diagram of military industrial with a mix of information tech including telcos. Who site in the nexus of all these interests? NSA so they are a key asset to anyone who wants the power of knowledge.

    We are essentially screwed because at the moment the powers that be are in a relatively benevolent phase. However martial law has creeped up with the broader definitions of terrorism and the legalized abilities of the various government organizations. All it would take is a real war or a truly terrible terrorist attack and it would be game over.
    Our genes maybe in the basement but it does not stop us chosing our point of view from the top.
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  20. #20
    Iron Fist Senior Member Husar's Avatar
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    Default Re: House votes to continue NSA spying on citizens

    Quote Originally Posted by Papewaio View Post
    Next purchase is probably going to be non US.
    What kind of computing device has no connection to the US? And even if you find some cellphone that does not have Google, MS or Apple Software on it, how likely is it that your provider will not supply all your communications to the NSA? There doesn't even appear to be a proper encryption unless someone has thought up the whole thing themselves and was not influenced by encryption techniques that were influenced by the NSA.

    I saw the TV series "Person of Interest" on TV today and while I used to think it's a funny fictional series, it seems almost like a documentary now. They even had the NSA give a company all kinds of personal information they collected from private citizens.


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  21. #21
    The Black Senior Member Papewaio's Avatar
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    Default Re: House votes to continue NSA spying on citizens

    I can only vote on US policy by spending money.

    So yes it will probably be a google android OS on Chinese hardware which my five eyes cooperating Telco will upload willingly to the NSA.

    Hopefully Steam will more fully embrace Linux flavours... I could always potentially run games in a virtualized environment on a Linux base.

    So right now there isn't alternatives. Nokia is owned by MS. RIM is Canadian so therefore part of the five eyes too.

    That leaves Samsung... Which is part of an even more corporate government embedded scenario. HTC which is nice and all.

    So yes as far as mobile devices are concerned we are screwed.
    Our genes maybe in the basement but it does not stop us chosing our point of view from the top.
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  22. #22
    The very model of a modern Moderator Xiahou's Avatar
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    Default Re: House votes to continue NSA spying on citizens

    From Wired:
    How the US Almost Killed the Internet

    This article leaves me disgusted. The NSA is acting as the most insidious criminal organization you can imagine- with the important distinction of having full government backing.
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  23. #23
    Iron Fist Senior Member Husar's Avatar
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    Default Re: House votes to continue NSA spying on citizens

    Quote Originally Posted by Xiahou View Post
    From Wired:
    How the US Almost Killed the Internet

    This article leaves me disgusted. The NSA is acting as the most insidious criminal organization you can imagine- with the important distinction of having full government backing.
    How naive, all Intelligence Agencies are doing this all the time and they have to to keep you secure. How can you say this is wrong when they all do it and they all cooperate and share data and none of them spy on their own citizens?


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  24. #24

    Default Re: House votes to continue NSA spying on citizens

    Quote Originally Posted by Xiahou View Post
    From Wired:
    How the US Almost Killed the Internet

    This article leaves me disgusted. The NSA is acting as the most insidious criminal organization you can imagine- with the important distinction of having full government backing.
    That article? Why not try the Spiegel one which this talk is based on:
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