PRISM - Who else is disgusted by this?

[Nik1ab]

I am just surprised how easy it is for them to get away with this.  Half the public even defends the NSA.... because of course, the smartest, largest terror operations use a facebook/skype/gmail/mainstream solution, gotta update your status before blowing up a building.....

Its really sad to see about 90 percent of the population truly do not give a shit. 

Yeah, true story. I mean this is the greatest spy attac in history but it seems that nobody gives a shit about it! I mean how can you just ignore something?

[Spendulus]

I am just surprised how easy it is for them to get away with this.  Half the public even defends the NSA.... because of course, the smartest, largest terror operations use a facebook/skype/gmail/mainstream solution, gotta update your status before blowing up a building.....

Its really sad to see about 90 percent of the population truly do not give a shit. 

Yeah, true story. I mean this is the greatest spy attac in history but it seems that nobody gives a shit about it! I mean how can you just ignore something?

A large part of the answer has to do with how the media has presented or ignored it.

[bernard75]

A large part of the answer has to do with how the media has presented or ignored it.

Yeah, also i find the amount of "good news" about other liberal topics astonishing.

[RoadToHell]

A large part of the answer has to do with how the media has presented or ignored it.

The U.S. national media (TV networks, NYTimes, etc.) have pretty much focused on the plight of Snowden and ignored their duty to follow up on Snowden's allegations.  They report what Snowden has said, but have done little investigative journalism of their own to invalidate, confirm, or expand on Snowden's words.  The few stories that have come out since (google, facebook, etc. helping NSA) were dumped in their laps.  I think they would liked to have buried the whole affair but couldn't because it was getting so much attention from non-U.S. media.  They are so used to "reporting" to sway public perception and opinion against this type of thing.  Now they have a situation where public opinion is already firmly outraged about it, but they don't want to fan the flames because it looks really bad for Obama and they have so much invested in him.

[Seth Otterstad]

I'm surprised there aren't more US citizens on the streets. Even to someone who condones surveillance, the fact that the US government is hunting and criminalizing Snowden shows clearly where it stands.

Really, I thought Americans were civilized. This is not a behavior I would expect from them.

The correct response of the US population would be to march on their government and get out a formal apology to both Americans and unnecessarily targeted people abroad. Snowden should be officially honored for speaking the truth, in the peoples' interest, against massive coercion attempts.

2/3 of Americans think Snowden should be prosecuted.

[Spendulus]

A large part of the answer has to do with how the media has presented or ignored it.

The U.S. national media (TV networks, NYTimes, etc.) have pretty much focused on the plight of Snowden and ignored their duty to follow up on Snowden's allegations.  They report what Snowden has said, but have done little investigative journalism of their own to invalidate, confirm, or expand on Snowden's words.  The few stories that have come out since (google, facebook, etc. helping NSA) were dumped in their laps.  I think they would liked to have buried the whole affair but couldn't because it was getting so much attention from non-U.S. media.  They are so used to "reporting" to sway public perception and opinion against this type of thing.  Now they have a situation where public opinion is already firmly outraged about it, but they don't want to fan the flames because it looks really bad for Obama and they have so much invested in him.

Sometimes I wonder how much of this sort of developing process is the result of the following type of emerging reality:

A)  NSA/CIA Guy:  "I want to have a cool nice job in an air conditioned building staring at a computer screen.  My gosh - WAY BELOW ME to be out on the streets in a hostile country, in a disguise, handing money over for dirty work, late at night."

B)  REPORTER:  "I want to scrape stories from the Internet, from Twitter and stuff like that.  The AP and Reuters and head office sends most of the stuff to me anyway.  It's an easy, fun life.  What?  Me go out and dig stories up?  Talk to people?  Research?  Hey, no way...that's like hard, man."


C)  ....

You get the idea.  I don't have to continue with University Prof, Average Consumer, etc.

[zedicus]

NSA Recruiters vs students  (Audio Only)


Students 1  /  NSA 0

https://soundcloud.com/madiha-1/students-question-the-nsa-at

[craslovell]

I'm surprised there aren't more US citizens on the streets. Even to someone who condones surveillance, the fact that the US government is hunting and criminalizing Snowden shows clearly where it stands.

Really, I thought Americans were civilized. This is not a behavior I would expect from them.

The correct response of the US population would be to march on their government and get out a formal apology to both Americans and unnecessarily targeted people abroad. Snowden should be officially honored for speaking the truth, in the peoples' interest, against massive coercion attempts.

Many people are upset, but the question right now is what would it take for change? I think most people aren't ready to risk their normal lives and march against the government. Who knows what negative punishment could come from something like that.

I believe it will take a certain breaking point for that to happen, and as bad as everything is now, that still might be far away.

[craslovell]

After all the things in history government has done, i am not in any way surprised by this. The only thing that's keeping our heads over the water is the fact that the government can't keep up with technology innovation.

If they can't keep up, they will just take what they need from the true innovators.

[craslovell]

I am just surprised how easy it is for them to get away with this.  Half the public even defends the NSA.... because of course, the smartest, largest terror operations use a facebook/skype/gmail/mainstream solution, gotta update your status before blowing up a building.....

Its really sad to see about 90 percent of the population truly do not give a shit. 

Yeah, true story. I mean this is the greatest spy attac in history but it seems that nobody gives a shit about it! I mean how can you just ignore something?

A large part of the answer has to do with how the media has presented or ignored it.

The US government has a deathgrip on all the major news networks, It's difficult to get good information out to the uninformed masses via press.

Good reporting by the Guardian in the UK. I applaud them for not giving one shit about the US governments desires.

[craslovell]

I'm surprised there aren't more US citizens on the streets. Even to someone who condones surveillance, the fact that the US government is hunting and criminalizing Snowden shows clearly where it stands.

Really, I thought Americans were civilized. This is not a behavior I would expect from them.

The correct response of the US population would be to march on their government and get out a formal apology to both Americans and unnecessarily targeted people abroad. Snowden should be officially honored for speaking the truth, in the peoples' interest, against massive coercion attempts.

2/3 of Americans think Snowden should be prosecuted.

Where does that poll data come from? Now THAT is sad

[bernard75]

Im astonished its that low, afterall he betrayed his country and is working with communists and aliens.

[Kinetic915]

"Because frankly, if people are making judgments just based on these slides that have been leaked, they’re not getting the complete story.”
-Barack Obama on PRISM

You really cleared that up for us Mr. President.  Thanks.

[Kinetic915]

Im astonished its that low, afterall he betrayed his country and is working with communists and aliens.

I agree he shouldnt have started sharing secrets to China etc.  That was idiotic, and prosecutable.  

But then again, the US should not be prosecuting him because he sacrificed the rest of his ENTIRE life, so you and the rest of the American people could see an injustice.

[Kinetic915]

NSA Recruiters vs students  (Audio Only)


Students 1  /  NSA 0

https://soundcloud.com/madiha-1/students-question-the-nsa-at

This is awesome and hilarious.  Wow what horseshit.  I can't believe the people working for the NSA dilute themselves enough to believe what theyre saying...... yikes.

[gollum]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/06/08/what_about_a_us_tech_boycott/

Yes, everyone should boycott american IT companies such as Facebook, Google, Apple, DropBox, Skype, Microsoft, Dell, HP..
The only thing preventing the majority of people to not boycott them are ignorance and laziness to learn other products or operating systems (linux)

Good luck finding an ISP or telco operating in the US that won't give up your data when asked. Using linux won't stop that.

You must assume that your ISP is spying on you so you should encrypt communication that needs secrecy. Windows and OSX has backdoors for NSA as you know so using linux will give you some more security.

[zedicus]

NSA Recruiters vs students  (Audio Only)


Students 1  /  NSA 0

https://soundcloud.com/madiha-1/students-question-the-nsa-at

This is awesome and hilarious.  Wow what horseshit.  I can't believe the people working for the NSA dilute themselves enough to believe what theyre saying...... yikes.

Yeah i found it pretty awesome myself!!!

[craslovell]

I'm glad this thread has gotten a good bit of attention here 

[tvbcof]

NSA Recruiters vs students  (Audio Only)

Students 1  /  NSA 0

https://soundcloud.com/madiha-1/students-question-the-nsa-at

Awesome!  I was pretty much at the point of believing that my fellow Americans are to fucking stupid to deserve anything but a totalitarian police state, and a fair number of them would probably feel most comfortable in that setting anyway.  These students give me some hope.

Like I've said before (and before Snowden) the only silver lining on this amazing surveillance framework is that it will be sweeping up evidence of people who actually HAVE things worth hiding, and a lot of them are currently in the seats of power.  So this trove of data is the best hope to see them swinging from meat-hooks (figuratively) at some point in the future.  But only if we can get people like these students in the drivers seat.  And I expect that THAT is exactly why it is so important to Obama, Cheney, etc, that the police state framework they are building works effectively.

---

Here's a prediction.  I predict that 'because Snowden spilled the beans', 'terrorists have changed their ways' and it is necessary to eliminate from the network crypto which is not back-door'd for the safety of Americans.  (If/when this happens it will change aspects of how/if Bitcoin operates significantly BTW.)  My extra level of paranoia and reason to be extra careful about accepting as fact certain things around the Snowden affair probably stems from a several years old story involving security contractors and Greenwald by name.  e.g.:

  http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110209/22340513034/leaked-hbgary-documents-show-plan-to-spread-wikileaks-propaganda-bofa-attack-glenn-greenwald.shtml

It is interesting to note that where initially a majority supported Snowden's whistle-blowing, that has shifted after the mainstream media has had a chance to chew on the general public a bit.  The fat middle is now accepting that the surveillance is necessary to fight terrorism and Snowden should not have given away 'our' secrets.  So they will also probably accept that steps to keep terrorists from making and end-run around the system are also necessary.  Only about 5% of people are aware of what cryptography actually is anyway, and only about 15% even have the native intellect to do so if they tried.  My estimates.

[gollum]

The fat middle is now accepting that the surveillance is necessary to fight terrorism and Snowden should not have given away 'our' secrets.  So they will also probably accept that steps to keep terrorists from making and end-run around the system are also necessary.  Only about 5% of people are aware of what cryptography actually is anyway, and only about 15% even have the native intellect to do so if they tried.  My estimates.

My opinion:
The fear of T is most probably only a false fear to maximize control over the society through surveillance.

But even If the threat of T is real, the threatened state must solve the cause of T instead of fighting it. The only solution to conflicts are understanding and patience, not fear and war. But peace is less profitable than war and fear, so the latter solution wins.