[Pops]

I can't remember where we were talking about privacy, policing, IT, et. cetera but this really needs it's own thread anyway.

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks:

"In the last ten years, something else has happened. We now see mass surveillance, where computer systems of an entire country are infected by surveillance programs, where the entire phone calls of a nation can be and are recorded by a company.

"Previously, we had all thought, why would the government be interested in me, my brother? My business is not interesting; I am not a criminal. Now these companies sell to state intelligence agencies the ability to spy on the entire population at once and keep that information permanently. In five or six years' time, if your brother or someone becomes of interest to that company or the government, they can go back in time and look to see what you said or what you emailed."

Red the rest of this article, it isn't too long:
http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/20 ... explained/

& some video...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... lex-spying

[Newfie]

You would think we could get the Tea Party & OWS folks to agree to limit government involvement in such activities.

[Pretorian]

well it would be ridiculous to suggest that if possibility like this exists, it isn't used. If private companies like Google or facebook dig everything they can from you , what do you expect from your owners.

[EnergyUnlimited]

Sometimes collapse can be viewed as solution...

[Novus]

Quit your job and stop feeding the machine is the only way to win. Big Brother will fall under his own rot if we let it.

[MD]

Nothing much can be done about it now. Don't be an idiot, don't break any laws, and hope the fickle finger of analytic software doesn't falsely accuse you of something.

In the mean time enjoy the ride, or you could hunker down like John Malkovich's character in RED (great movie, btw).

[dolanbaker]

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/ne ... -joke.html
TWO pals were barred from entering the US after innocent tweets joking about "destroying America" were picked up by the country's anti-terror cops.
US special agents monitoring Twitter spotted Leigh Van Bryan's messages weeks before he left for a holiday in Los Angeles with pal Emily Bunting.

This is seriously over the top!
How long will it before we hear that "Americans admit to becoming paranoid about being paranoid!"

[AgentR11]

Quit your job and stop feeding the machine is the only way to win. Big Brother will fall under his own rot if we let it.

But Big Brother keeps sending me TBone's and beer; so its not to my advantage to have Big Bro fall.

Still, everyone should understand that everything you do on the net is public; unless you lock it down yourself with hard encryption using a key that has never been transmitted over the net. (OpenSSL is a beautiful thing btw, if you know what you're doing.)

I've stressed this to my kid since the first time she ever touched a keyboard; everything you type is public, every bit as equivalent as walking downtown to the zoo and yelling it out loud in front of TV cameras.

[SeaGypsy]

Does anyone know if the case to force Skype to release encryption codes was won? I believe such was instigated last year as the NSAs try to stitch up holes in their spyweb.

A friend of mine told me he can show me in a minute how to communicate without 'sending' any information. Took me to an internet cafe, switched off the camera, logged on anonymously, started a bogus email account, wrote something and saved it to drafts. Very tricky indeed , considering if the intended recipient has the name and password for the account they can reopen in drafts anywhere in the world. This is why currently the NSAs are trying to get laws to force an ID system connecting the meat sack to it's use of the web.

(I would consider merging the threads Pops/ the other is Death of the Internet as we know it/ a misnomer considering pursuit of a libel case does not warrant the title. I find it interesting that so much effort went into finding these criminal entrepreneurs and arresting them in New Zealand, considering the amount of industrial hardware espionage that has gone on the last 15 years in China without being pursued/ probably in the TRILLIONS of $.)

[Shaved Monkey]

This was attached to the article of the Uk guy who was kicked out:

The words deemed as being sensitive by the DHS include:
Illegal immigrant
Outbreak
Drill
Strain
Virus
Recovery
Deaths
Collapse
Human to animal
Trojan

More here

[SeaGypsy]

Unfortunately other idiots have been let into the country so many times this is kind of silly. But on the other hand, what an absolute moron.

[Cog]

This was attached to the article of the Uk guy who was kicked out:
The words deemed as being sensitive by the DHS include:
Recovery
Collapse

They must be having a blast reading the Here Comes The Double Dip thread.

[dolanbaker]

Unfortunately other idiots have been let into the country so many times this is kind of silly. But on the other hand, what an absolute moron.

Maybe so, but they were after all only personal tweets, no worse than a drunken conversation that one could easily overhear in a pub. Would be a bit different is there was some "meat" on the idle chat!

[SeaGypsy]

I'm glad to see that DHS takes improper use of the English Language as a matter of national security. Modern English in England is becoming a dangerously subversive code, when combined with textspeak and the many international slang additions, it's time these young whipper snappers were pulled into line. 12 hours with a bunch of mexicans in a box should teach this kid the value of proper use of the language

Edit to add: many countries reserve the right to blood test for drugs and charge an attempted entrant with being under the influence. Since something like marijuana can be detected months after consumption, anyone who imbibes in illegal substances should always mind their manners when dealing with foreign authorities. The internet is an international platform, national police have their own juristictional perogative. Which effectively means 'don't say anything on here you wouldn't say in an airport'.

[SeaGypsy]

Another aspect is the pecking order for information gleaned. For instance, The CIA and it's various specialist branches are the central controllers of the worldwide surveillance networks. They directly share information with certain 'partners' hosting the central processors, of which I believe there are about 3 fully active with another 4 in questionable operation, covering about 80% of internet traffic already. Interestingly the folks in charge don't pass on the same level of infraction to lesser partners. In SE Asia for example, seriously wanted criminals maintain facebook pages with piccies of them with their grandkids.

[Loki]

The words deemed as being sensitive by the DHS include:

Great, now you got the DHS snooping PO.com. Thanks a lot dude

I'm less concerned about Big Government than I am about Big Business. Google in particular. I've been using Gmail and Google as my main search engine for years, and iGoogle is my homepage, I think they know more about me than my own mother. I should be more careful, Google has already proven themselves thoroughly untrustworthy. "Don't be evil" my ass.

No way in hell would I ever do Facebook. Don't see the point of Twitter. Probably shouldn't post on forums, either, but I can't help myself.

[SeaGypsy]

They say about 1% are sociopathic. About 1% of that is full blown psychopathic. About 99% of psychopaths are effectively dormant.
Finding the 1 in a million must be a hell of a job. When it's nearly 2 billion on facebook, there's 2000 Hitlers (sorry to bring IT up) on there!
I'm pretty sure you ain't one of them Loki!

[Novus]

The words deemed as being sensitive by the DHS include:

Great, now you got the DHS snooping PO.com. Thanks a lot dude
No way in hell would I ever do Facebook. Don't see the point of Twitter. Probably shouldn't post on forums, either, but I can't help myself.

I switched over to Startpage instead of Google just the other day. If you don't want big business knowing all about you then you should do the same. Set Startpage.com as your homepage and search engine of choice and you won't have to won't have to worry about Google the spies any more.

[Shaved Monkey]

Now the DHS knows the jig is up everyone with something to hide is on Start page

[Roy]

techworld

FBI developing social networking spy app; Application would crawl Twitter and Facebook By Antony Savvas | Computerworld UK, 27 January 2012

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is planning to develop an application that can track the public's postings to Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, in order to aid how it predicts and reacts to criminal behaviour, including public disorder and terrorism.

An FBI request for information document has been published, asking potential contractors to contact the bureau by February 10. The FBI wants respondents to the document to outline how they would build such a system and how much it would potentially cost.

The bureau said the system it wants must be able to automatically search "publicly available" material from Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites for keywords of interest. FBI agents would be alerted if the searches come up with evidence of "breaking events, incidents, and emerging threats".

Agents would have the ability to display any information on a map, and they could then add other layers of information, including past incidents and locations of important buildings like embassies and military installations.

The document notes that agents need to "locate bad actors and analyse their movements, vulnerabilities, limitations, and possible adverse actions".

The East German Stasi would have absolutely loved Facebook. The world's largest data mining operation. Think how many man-hours of surveillance would have been saved had they possessed a tool like this. (See: The Lives of Others http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405094/)

Note about that movie:

All the listening/recording props used in the film are actual Stasi equipment on loan from museums and collectors. The props master had himself spent two years in a Stasi prison and insisted upon absolute authenticity down to the machine used at the end of the film to steam-open up to 600 letters per hour.

850 million users, 75% of them outside the USA. Membership growing at 25% per year. Doubling every 3 years. Just toured a FB data center. Was told they had added 9000 new servers LAST WEEK. It was the largest building I've ever been inside other than the N.O. Superdome. And FB is currently adding two more buildings just like it to that site.

I consider FB and Twit to be time sinks. Between work, family, and learning 'old ways', gardening, chickens, wood heat, car maintenance, house maintenance, and everything else I do, there is not much time for it.