I’m kind of disgusted with the overall apathy to the fact that we now know the government has direct access to our e-mail, Internet history, credit card purchases, phone records – basically everything we do and everywhere we are on and off line. I know we all suspected this was the case, but I’m pretty disappointed by the lack of outrage on the part of most people (and the media, who get their panties in a bunch when they’re the ones targeted, but don’t seem to care all that much that the rest of us are having our fourth amendment rights violated). You’ve heard stories of how hard it can be to straighten out an error on your credit report – imagine how hard it’ll be to refute an erroneous claim in your NSA file when you’ll never be allowed to see the file in the first place. Your first inkling that something is amiss will come when you’re suddenly on the no-fly list, or maybe when they’re hauling you off to Guantanamo (oh, that’s right, I forgot, Obama’s gonna close that, so maybe it’ll be when you’re renditioned to Yemen or maybe just wake up dead some day). But, hey, maybe I just worry too much.
Like most people, I get a lot of bogus calls on my cellphone, and I’m getting kind of tired by the them. There’s no way to black a number on my iPhone, as far as I can tell, so I figured I’d do the next best thing and add these pesky callers to an “ignore” contact and then set the vibrate to “none” and add a silent ringtone. Much to my dismay, adding a ringtone to a frickin’ iPhone seems to require having iTunes installed on your computer. If you download a utility called iTools, you don’t actually have to do a sync, but you still need iTunes. Since I hate iTunes and have no use for it, I found this to be rather annoying. Yet another reason I wish I could have gotten a ‘droid phone from work. But beggars can’t be choosers, I guess.
If only I could just remember to whatever Apple and the NSA tell me to do without questioning it, I’d be much better off.
Kind of a cool, damp, foggy, and rather dismal start to the weekend here today. I’m hoping things will brighten up a bit so I can get some things done. Or maybe I’ll just sit inside and read, instead.
Very heavy rain last night. But today is cool and sunny.
You’re right about the apathy toward the government spying, although Maddow and Hayes have been pretty upset. Fox is still on Benghazi and the IRS, perhaps because this began under W. The Teapartiers are upset because they think everything is a scheme to get their “God given” guns. I guess the most private communication route is the post office which may be why the Repubs are so excited about doing away with it.
Oh I jolly well have my dander up over, what I deem, clear violations of our 4th Amendment rights. That’s why I voted for Obama. So now freaking what? I call my denial in chiefs Senators? I’m thinking we all ought to take up morse code and short-wave. Then Bill Mahr last night said he’s scared so he condones it. WTF??
Meanwhile, we’ve been enjoying the deadCenter film festival.
Is it OK to be disappointed with Obama now?
:billcat:
Bravo to Edward Snowden. He’s got a helluva lot more guts than I do.
He’s definitely shaken up the snow globe, even bringing up the private contractor issues. It will be interesting what kinds of hits will be raining down on his head.
I feel really sorry for Mr. Snowden.
About the Show
Anchored by Jake Tapper, The Lead airs at 4 p.m. ET on CNN.
On the Next Episode of The Lead
Former attorney general Micheal Mukasey, and author Marc Maron.
Guessing Maron will get bumped by Turkey.
Because it is a Democratic government doing the surveilling, I have hope that at least they are not looking for lefties. Non the less, I think the whole thing sucks. And, I think it is useless. That much data is too much data to really make sense of. I keep thinking about the Boston Bomb jerks. Even with a warning from Russia and even though they were searching the internet for jihadis and bomb making instructions, they were not picked up. If the purpose is to make us safer it seems to be failing. I am sure we could find better uses for the enormous resources that are being wasted on this.
My guess is they’re trying different algorithms to try and flag potential “threats” that a human will then have to analyze to see if there’s anything there. My guess is at least for now it will do little more than generate a lot of noise. It has the potential for flagging an innocent person as a bad guy, I would think, and them putting them on a list that nobody knows how or why they’re on it (or, in the case of the poor schmuck who’s being targeted, even that they are on a list – they’ll just wonder why they keep getting “randomly” picked for a full body scan at the airport).
However, I’m sure it’s absolutely fantastic if they already know who they want to spy on. Then they can go in and retroactively get every phone call, e-mail, text message, blog comment, purchase – every electronic “move” you’ve made since they started collecting info.
And whatever they can’t do today, their abilities will only get better as we throw hundreds of billions of dollars at buying them all the best toys available.