How's that working out for ya?

[trog.livejournal.com]

“I truly believe that the day I’m inaugurated not only does the country look at itself differently, but the world looks at America differently. If I’m reaching out to the Muslim world, they understand that I’ve lived in a Muslim country and I may be a Christian but I also can understand their point of view.…The world will have confidence that I am listening to them, and that our future and our security is tied up with our ability to work with other countries in the world. That will ultimately make us safer.” (Sen. Barack Obama, New Hampshire Public Radio , 11/21/07)

The bolded part turned out to mean something other than what I thought it was going to mean.



“And we will restore our moral standing in the world. We will once again lead the world not just militarily, but diplomatically, economically.” (Sen. Barack Obama, Remarks At A Campaign Event, Charleston, SC, 1/10/08)



“I would like to think that with my election and the — the early decisions that we’ve made, that you’re starting to see some restoration of America’s standing in the world. And although as you know, I always mistrust polls, international polls seem to indicate that you’re seeing people more hopeful about America’s leadership.” (President Barack Obama, Press Conference At G-20 Summit, London, UK, 4/2/09)

“On the international stage we’ve been able to manage the end of one war and the beginning of a transition of another. We have been on the right side of democracy. We’ve strengthened our alliances, restored respect for the United States around the world.” (President Barack Obama, Remarks At A Campaign Event, New York, NY, 1/19/12)

Comments

[goumindong.livejournal.com]

Pretty good actually. Once you get into what was actually leaked and not what people want to have been leaked, its all pretty mundane

[trog.livejournal.com]

You have got to be on Feinstein's staff.

[goumindong.livejournal.com]

Well i gotta say, for an internet stalker, you are bad at it

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Spying on the heads of state of allies is bad, it doesn't matter if you found nothing out.

[goumindong.livejournal.com]

I am sorry are you saying that you think that States should not engage in spying on other States? Are you that naive?

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

I think tapping the phones of heads of state of your allies steps over a line, yes. I'm not naive, I'm not *surprised* it's happened, just like I'm not surprised that the US engages in torture. I'm just saying that these are the kinds of the things to keep in mind when the US tells other countries how to run their shit. The US gave itself the bullshit moniker of "leader of the free world"; things like this prove that they are neither leaders, nor free.

The USA is a rogue state with no moral authority that maintains it's place in the world through force and violence. Everyone else in the world already knows this, it's time US citizens started realising that they're not #1 and that they need to stop telling everyone else how to live and start fixing their own backyard.

[goumindong.livejournal.com]

I don't think you actually know what went on when you say stuff like this. Spying on nations is not like torture

[red-pill.livejournal.com]

i dont think the comprassion was "spying is like torture". i think it was "it shouldnt happen but im not surpised, like torture shouldnt but im not suprised". it was a comprassion of reaction and a black/white should/shouldnt thing, not a nuensed line of morality (which there is, but isnt the point here)

also, this wasnt just spying, but spying on allies

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Yep.

[goumindong.livejournal.com]

O.K. i can understand the comparison now. I don't agree because i don't think that you shouldn't be surprised about torture and i also don't agree that spying is something we should not be doing.

What is wrong with spying on allies from a national point of view?

[red-pill.livejournal.com]

a noteinal sence of trust i should think. im personaly not too aggrived (if merkle isnt using a scrambler phone, somethings gone wrong) but i can understand why people are unhappy about it. plus, it proberbly dosent make for good natoing, and nato is major and important, and full of allies pledged to the death to defend eachother, who sat on the brink together for 45 years. so, yea.

but whilst i can see that, im a little meh (becous srsly, scramble that shit)

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Imagine the shitstorm if the Germans had tapped the whitehouse.

[goumindong.livejournal.com]

I would be 100% absolutely shocked if the Germans did not have a mission to spy on the rest of the nations at the summit that we spied on.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

[trog.livejournal.com]

Ha!

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Well, you have to admit that we are not nearly as disturbed as we would be if this were Dubya Bush. Obama has a gentle touch and makes you feel special.

[goumindong.livejournal.com]

Dubya did it without warrants[I.E. he went around the FISC because it was too burdensome]. As hard as it is to accept that the FISA court is more or less the best you can do under the circumstances it really is. Its why the Church Commission suggested its creation and its why Senator Church voted for it (and FISA has become more strict not less since then)

The only things that have changed is that now we have the internet (and more powerful mathematical tools to track terrorist networks). But either we accept that we will do signals intelligence over the internet, and we accept that warrants can subpoena emails(just as they can read regular mail), or we create a space for which there is absolute freedom to partake in activities which society would rather not happen effectively legalizing those activities.

I am not comfortable creating that space.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

But this is also probably somewhat easier to take as Americans. I think of the current international scandal in which our allies are a bit perturbed over U. S. spying of their e-lives. Is this something that only the Americans can do? I know other countries can engage in cyberattacks with viruses, but is this e-spying something that only Americans can do this pervasively? And isn't it only a matter of time before this surveillance is thoroughly abused in, yes, an Orwellian way?

[goumindong.livejournal.com]

Well no, its not something only Americans can do, however we are uniquely protected in the United States by a Constitution and set of laws which prohibit behavior which would be otherwise permitted [For instance, for all the yelling that Merkel has done Germany has always maintained weaker privacy laws than the United States with regards to this kind of information]

Really though the idea that some sort of Orwellian system would come out of this is pretty ridiculous. Its born of some strange idea that the government cares about you when indeed it does not and if it did, then the tools being discussed here are so mundane as to not be worrisome.

That is, if the government is really "out to get you" they aren't going to snoop onto your internet use (Well, i mean they will but that would be the least of your worries). If you're a public figure, such that the government might actually want to investigate you

1) They can probably get a warrant because its very hard to know which domestic groups present a danger to the U.S. and which do not until you investigate them and similarly for political agitators. No one complains that we investigate White Supremacists and the Militia movement but you don't know if someone is Greenpeace of if they're ELF(and moreover if ELF is willing to kill) before you actually do the due diligence. Note that before the Church Commission the general constitutional view was that the govt did not need warrants in order to perform national security searches.

2) Even if the searching wasn't explicitly legal due to the afore mentioned warrants the government isn't just going to look at your email. Its going to comb. The Church Commission was not created because the CIA and FBI was reading Dr King's email, but because it was going through his trash, reading his physical mail, tapping his phones etc etc all without a warrant[and therefor without oversight]. The idea that we can prevent the government from being nefarious by removing its abilities to read email [I.E. serve warrants for email] is ridiculous because for those people whom the government decides to spy on they're not going to stop at your email. To prevent the Orwellian state you would have to prevent all wiretaps, remove the government of blunt objects, guns, weapons of any kind, letter openers (for which they can read your mail with) etc etc.

I mean. The government has guns. If it wants, it can shoot you and/or lock you up forever. There is functionally nothing anyone can do to stop it if the entire apparatus of State decides it is so [that would include enough people to prevent Congressional reprisal in "the apparatus of State"]. Except of course the laws which regulate the use of force by the government, the same laws which we have crafted to regulate the use of searches by the government, pursuant to 4th amendment standards, which are, when you actually talk about the laws and what the disclosures have actually disclosed, pretty reasonable.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

Really though the idea that some sort of Orwellian system would come out of this is pretty ridiculous. Its born of some strange idea that the government cares about you when indeed it does not and if it did, then the tools being discussed here are so mundane as to not be worrisome.

I don’t feel personally threatened, and I take your point that there are enough tools in meatspace for a government to do shadowy stuff. However, considering how much of our lives is now online, I think their e-surveillance is a tool that greatly enhances their meatspace operations. As an example, I think of a Texas story in which our Democrats in the state legislature were trying to avoid a vote and giving the Republicans a quorum, so that they left the state, and how the Republicans actually tapped the resources of the Department of Homeland Security to track them down. Twenty years ago, I wouldn’t have been too worried about this country traipsing down this dark path of Big Brothership, but today we see a major Party who honestly feel that the Democrats are traitorous to the American way, with many not believing that Obama is a real American. When such a Party has control of this apparatus, it seems to me they may enjoy a fuller lock on power.

Nevertheless, I am not even bothering to advocate that the government relinquish this surveillance. I cannot imagine it not being done one way or another, and as you point out, it can do a lot of good when used properly: there’s a lot of bad stuff going on, and it needs to be curbed somehow. I just don’t see how a people can avoid taking a wrong turn, finding ourselves under a more totalitarian rule.

As for the technology question, I thought the Americans had a privileged control of the Internet, so that all e-traffic effectively flows through our hands, and that this is why we are able to do this kind of total e-surveillance. If Putin or the Chinese can do this, I should think we would be hearing a lot more discussion on it. Now, I am familiar with fairly recent stories, say, about how the Chinese were tapping into our e-mails, but I thought this was through the less efficient means of viruses and malware, rather than the way we can do it, by tapping into the source of communications.

[goumindong.livejournal.com]

Well the current federal legislature has laws in place that says that Senators and Representatives can be arrested and forcibly detained within the capital if they attempt to leave when there is a legislative emergency.

While i don't like that it was Republican's in Texas doing this to dems its not in any way an abridgement of rights or anything really scarey.

Basically the problems are the Republican's not out ability to open mail. Because that is really what the programs we're talking about amount to. And while i don't want anyone reading my mail, i still recognize that its a power the government has to have

Re: privileged access. Kindof, but not really. We have a majority of the hubs at the moment because we're the biggest and the richest. But Europe isn't far behind. As net access expands every nation will be able to do this(domestically), and the amount of foreign access we have direct control of will shrink because there will be fewer connections which need to go through U.S. owned hubs

That being said it would be good to disavow the notion that "tapping the source of the communications" is the most efficient. Its not, its terribly inefficient. The reason we do it is because it allows types of analysis which would otherwise be impossible(like identifying which IP's accessing a terrorist website* for instance) not because it lets us spy on individuals. It doesn't really let you spy on individuals any better than you already always could.

If you're afraid of the Republican's declaring democrats traitors they're going to have to get the politicians first and its going to be really obvious if they do it.

Now if you're looking to do this type of thing domestically every nation pretty much already can. China has a nation wide firewall which can flat out prevent access to websites which it deems threatening. I.E. if you want to do something Orwellian its much easier to just prevent access to the offending material.

*which we probably can't do since the leak because almost assuredly the people we are interested in have switched to TOR routers (which despite what you may have heard has not been broken)

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

Read The Watchers. This program is beyond the touch of the president, part of the military industrial complex that will continue to grow no matter who might be in office.

Even if Obama wanted it curbed, curbing it would be third rail dangerous. Don't believe me? Look what happened when Nixon asked the CIA for details on its ops. A few months later, Watergate.

[pacotelic.livejournal.com]

Yep, he pretty much sucks.