Spintested

NSA Whistleblowers: Spying Operation Has Been In Place For Years, Involves All Major U.S. Phone Companies

Friday, June 7, 2013

I think that the fact that the Patriot Act was written BEFORE 9 11 invites reasonable suspicion and questions. Questions, which, those in the know refuse to respond to. We get talking-points' patronizing answers, more appropriate to a Chauvinistic time. We're told it's all about terrorism, when the truth is that relatively little, if any of it, has been used to prevent terrorist acts. From Harper's Index:

Number of delayed-notice search warrants granted by federal judges last year under the Patriot Act: 1,150

Number that were related to drug offenses and terrorism, respectively: 844, 6

Number of times between January and June that Google turned over user information to government investigators: 4,287
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Phone Records Program Declassified After Outcry

I think you're so stuck in "Democrats versus Republicans" that you've lost any reason you may have had. When "we brought it up under Bush, we got the big UnAmerican smackdown by the media and the right wing extremists(gop)", you shrug and turn a blind eye, "Big deal", out of spite?

FWIW, there is significantly more that is "new" to what Obama's done, expanding on Bush's abuses. But you appear mired in the tribal warfare that these party politicians want from us. To distract that they're really not each other's enemies, but working together in concert, like two divisions within a corporation competing with each other, i.e., sales versus marketing.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/Marcospinelli/phone-records-declassified_n_3402001_259399210.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/Marcospinelli/phone-records-declassified_n_3402001_259399352.html
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Phone Records Program Declassified After Outcry

As technology advances, the distinction between data and metadata can be hard to distinguish. If a Website’s content is data, is the Website’s address metadata? The government has argued it is.
But like the list of books we check out of a library, the sites we “visit” online are really a list of things we’ve read. Not only do URLs often contain content – such as search terms embedded within them – but the very fact that we’ve visited a page with a URL such as “www.webmd.com/depression” can be every bit as revealing as the content of an email message.

For this reason, law enforcement and intelligence agencies have long appreciated the value of metadata, and the outdated view that metadata surveillance is far less invasive than eavesdropping has allowed those agencies to use powerful surveillance tools with relatively little judicial oversight.
They can do this because, decades ago, long before the Internet altered

all aspects of modern communication, the Supreme Court ruled that when we voluntarily divulge personal information to any third party, we waive our privacy rights and lose all Fourth Amendment protection over that information.

That decision would make sense if it was about, for example, why we can’t reasonably expect something to remain private when we loudly boast about it in a bar. But the court extended that logic to phone calls. The argument was that since we “share” the phone numbers we dial with the phone company – which needs that information to connect the call – we can’t claim any constitutional protection when the government asks for that data.

After the Supreme Court took this wrong turn in the 1970s, Congress compounded in the 1980s by codifying a lesser standard of protection for metadata. But neither the court nor Congress could have foreseen that NSA supercomputers would one day be able to mine that metadata to construct comprehensive pictures of our lives.

So we shouldn’t be comforted when government officials reassure us that they’re not listening to our communications – they’re merely harvesting and mining our metadata. In a digital world, metadata can be used to construct nuanced portraits of our social relationships and interactions.

It’s long past time for Congress to update our surveillance and privacy laws to ensure that before the government can go digging through our digital lives, it needs to demonstrate to a judge that it has good reason to believe we’ve done something wrong.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Phone Records Program Declassified After Outcry

Any suggestion that Americans have nothing to worry about from this dragnet collection of communications metadata is wrong. Even without intercepting the content of communications, the government can use metadata to learn our most intimate secrets – anything from whether we have a drinking problem to whether we’re gay or straight. The suggestion that metadata is “no big deal” – a view that, regrettably, is still reflected in the law – is entirely out of step with the reality of modern communications.

Let's talk about metadata. Simply, if the “data” of a communication is the content of an email or phone call, this is data about the data – the identities of the sender and recipient, and the time, date, duration and location of a communication. This information can be extraordinarily sensitive. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology study a few years back found that reviewing people’s social networking contacts alone was sufficient to determine their sexual orientation. Consider, metadata from email communications was sufficient to identify the mistress of then-CIA Director David Petraeus and then drive him out of office.

The “who,” “when” and “how frequently” of communications are often more revealing than what is said or written. Calls between a reporter and a government whistleblower, for example, may reveal a relationship that can be incriminating all on its own.

Repeated calls to Alcoholics Anonymous, hotlines for gay teens, abortion clinics or a gambling bookie may tell you all you need to know about a person’s problems. If a politician were revealed to have repeatedly called a phone sex hotline after 2:00 a.m., no one would need to know what was said on the call before drawing conclusions. In addition sophisticated data-mining technologies have compounded the privacy implications by allowing the government to analyze terabytes of metadata and reveal far more details about a person’s life than ever before.

KEEP READING
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

NSA Whistleblowers: Spying Operation Has Been In Place For Years, Involves All Major U.S. Phone Companies

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Biased? WTF are you talking about?

The root cause of our problems is that monied interests have taken control of our government. Corporations. Our elected representatives work on behalf of those who have purchased them, and not us, the People.

Unless that changes, unless the money is taken out of elections, unless corporations are no longer "persons" in the law, unless politicians are prevented from switchbacking between government jobs and corporate lobbying jobs, NOTHING is going to change. Not for the better, at least.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Marijuana Chain Planned By Jamen Shively; Investment Will Total $100 Million Over 3 Years

Friday, May 31, 2013

I, too, have known people who used marijuana on a near constant basis and there are a few truths I've learned over the years about substance users.

We are each different, some of us using food as drugs, alcohol as drugs, golf (or any sport or exercise) as a drug, s.e.x as a drug, etc. When it comes right down to it, we're each just a bag of chemicals, configured in different ways, but each of our own collection or combination of chemicals makes us feel a particular way. Most of us don't feel at our optimum without some substance, and each affects our productivity to some degree or other.

People do drugs for one reason and one reason alone: Their waking state doesn't feel good. I know someone who takes 2 Aleve every 12 hours, not for any high or sense of intoxication, but because he says it gives him "a general sense of well-being". Who knows the long term effects of Aleve on the body? That's the real issue, and for that we need to look to a whole variety of why that is and what can be done about it. The long term effects of such seemingly benign substances as Sweet & Low may cause health problems that will cost us in ways that a "low productivity employee" would. In America, we drive ourselves mercilessly, not taking vacations. Our employers have made taking time off a battle, trying to make us believe that our lives are our work. It's not. A "low productivity employee" just may be self-medicating to get what every other employee in civilized western nations get (a vacation) to keep himself at a job below his skill level. The way our economy is going, employees are becoming obsolete. What jobs there will be will be low paying and require few skills.

When it comes to work productivity, marijuana affects people differently. Currently I can name about a dozen people who would fit your "constant" definition, and a more brilliant and productive group I've never known. From lawyers to EMTs to wildly successful entrepreneurs and even a private airline pilot.

I should tell you that I don't smoke marijuana, but I did back in the 60s, and I'm not one of those whom I put in that category. I wouldn't smoke marijuana on the job because I do value my work performance and me, it impairs. But I don't need a law or drug testing to prevent me from doing it. If murder wasn't against the law would you commit it? I suspect that you, too, don't need a law to prevent you from drinking alcohol.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost