A top intelligence official says it is time people in the United States changed their definition of privacy.
Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, a deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguards people's private communications and financial information.
"Authorized privacy": Now there's a concept.
Well, why the hell not. They've already redefined "shall not be infringed."
I'm tempted to quote Orwell's Party slogans, but in truth, these control everything freaks remind me more of the opening to "The Outer Limits."
They're not even attempting to mask it any more. Yeah, I want to give up my guns to these people...and everybody noticed who nominated him, right?
[Via Jeffrey H]
Well, they've changed the definition of "patriot", "infringed", "terrorist", "militia", "liberty", and whatever else suits their needs. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.
ReplyDeleteYup, I'm hot for the idea of giving up my guns to a government that spends in excess of 500 billion a year on defense, 100 billion on the CIA, FBI, NSA, etc. and couldn't outwit nineteen punks armed with boxcutters, in broad daylight, in front of thousands of witnesses.
ReplyDelete"The central witness in a California lawsuit against AT&T says the government is vacuuming up billions of e-mails and phone calls as they pass through an AT&T switching station in San Francisco.
ReplyDeleteMark Klein, a retired AT&T technician, helped connect a device in 2003 that he says diverted and copied onto a government supercomputer every call, e-mail, and Internet site access on AT&T lines."
Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not after me.
One word: encryption...
ReplyDeleteAnon. You may not have noticed but government is demanding all the encryption keys from the designers.
ReplyDeleteWell that's just Perfect! For years I have used AT&T as my internet provider. The chair is against the wall.
ReplyDeletestraightarrow: An encryption key is something you generate on your own computer and store there, not something the designers put in the software. And for the truly paranoid (like me), there are programs whose source code is open. That way, it's much harder (impossible?) to put NSA backdoors in the programs.
ReplyDeleteI think SA is right about the gov't requiring the encryption algorithm from all manufacturers of encryption software. There was an uproar when PGP encrypt. software came out because the gov't supposedly couldn't crack it and they were demanding the algorithm (AlGore-rithm?) to break the code. The gov't is also supposed to have a program called Echelon which records every communication worldwide that trips certain words. For some reason I want to think 'Bubba the Love Sponge' was one of the phrases/words in the trip. But that may be urban legend.
ReplyDeleteJust in case anybody cares.
ReplyDeletehttp://hiwaay.net/~pspoole/echelon.html
samenokami: The algorithms in encryption software are (usually) already well-known. But security doesn't come from hiding the algorithms, it comes from hiding your (private) key.
ReplyDeleteIt's like this: I know how locks work. But without your key, can I enter your house? It would be very difficult.