summon the NSA

A new tool called "Summon the NSA" pretty much guarantees you will draw the attention of the agency. According to the site, pushing the big red button will instruct your browser to search known watch terms for the NSA.

http://summonthensa.com/

 

Well Kyoji u can't be that affirmative. They had no reason to declare the U.S a territory of the "war on terror", extend drone strikes on U.S Soil and give the agencies the authorization to lock in any US citizen witout trial... just for "suspicion". Not to mention the DHS order of so many bullets, the coffins ordered by the CDC and the FEMA camps...

The question is not the "why" they are doing what they are doing right now, it's that they are doing it illegaly. There are laws in the country, with judges to apply them. There is no reason in the world to hijack those rules. Every country is hunting terrorists, most of them with much more success than the U.S and they don't need to do things outside the law to do so. Just take Israel, Germany or even France for that matter.

But the real problem is that once u have the whole framework to spy on everything people say (PRISM) to spy on everything people look at on the internet (Xkeyscore) and probably whatever peeps say in their own home (yay @ Xbox 1), what prevents u to derail it to your own needs ? It's not like it wasn't done in the past (Communist hunting, act againt black panthers and the like)... They could decide to track down homosexuals, political dissidents, people who don't pay their bills, hot girls, gingers... It's like having a perfect weapon but swearing u'll never use it for your own needs. It takes a lot of willpower.

If you consider that the last wars (Libya and Irak) were now being waged solely to protect the petrodollar (Hussein wanted to trade his oil in Euro and Khadafi wanted to create the "african gold" for trading commodity, both dictators being in place for over 30 years without problem) and not for freedom / terrorism hunt or anything like that, it's understandable that some families get pissed if their son / daughter get killed for economic interests and that people get tired of paying huge amount of money every year just for weapons that serve no ideal other than the fed's. The wall street events kinda awoke the government on how quickly the situation could get "out of control", hence the quick increase on surveillance and means of action...

It's not so easy as black and white, the important is to gather information, facts and make your own idea. An all powerful dictature is not necessarly a bad thing (life in Singapore is awesome, i lived there over a year and eveyrone's happy), as long as it's done the right way and with the right reasons. Other people would fight against it with all their energy. It's just a matter of keeping an open mind.

 

....Really? REALLY? The NSA monitors most of the internet traffic (75%), acts behinds close doors, enables gag orders on technology companies, and your data can be accessed easily by employees who work there. It is like saying the right to bear arms is a security measure when most people with firearms use them to shoot themselves or others for trivial cases(overwhelmingly themselves). The idea that you need to police every single citizen automatically on the internet is not only negative to society due to the chilling effect but allows for the abuse of such laws in the example of this case.

I could go on forever about the ridiculousness of thinking that we are any better off than countries like Russia or China (I live in Canada) but XoO really isn't a place to discuss politics or law. Are sites like the above a good idea? Not particularly. The best action if you care about the state of things is contacting your politic representative and safeguarding your data.

tl:dr; We're all fucked in general.

Edit:

This statement is excellent.

 

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. Ben Franklin


I believe his words are just as relevant today

 

I like politics, probably a little too much.
As much as this pains me to say it I'm going to have to side with Kyoji in so far as:

"If you look for trouble don't be surprised when you find it"
"If you try to pet the feral dog dog be surprised when you get bitten"
"If you intentionally try to get the attention of the government don't be offended when you do"

I do NOT agree with the NSA monitoring every word on the Internet. I do NOT agree with any restriction of my rights (most specifically the right to free speech and the right to bear arms) I do NOT agree with large government and the increasing role they want to take in my life and the lives of my countrymen.

With all of that said I'm also not going to be a idiot and bring unwanted attention to myself. How will I ever be part of any solution if I continue to stick my hand in the bears mouth? What good would "Extra" scrutiny be to me? (I'm already on every damn watch list there is due to my work). Thumbing your nose at the government is not the way to solve anything. They have lots of people and lots of money (American tax payer money!) They will find a way to get you and do it all "legal" like so you can't do anything about it.

I say work within the system. Pages like Popvox.com and Truethevote.org are great places to make your voice heard. I've got more responses (legitimate responses not canned letters from my reps) from using those sites than I ever have from raving on a blog or pushing any button that draws negative attention to myself.

Just my 2 cents... for what it's worth. . . 2cents.

 

so at the risk of stepping on a few toes....I'm a straight shooter...let them spy all they want on me, all they are going to get is a long history of meatspi.....i mean...uh superhotchicksandbeer.com....yea that.....

serious note though....if this is what it take so that my family isn't decimated by some over zealous brainwashed guy drinking some serious usa haterade...then i'm all for it.

 

Couldn't be better said. I think the founding fathers would be quite worried about the state of the world these days... It's far from their original vision.

That apart, i agree that those websites are quite a bad idea, unless everyone on the planet use it at the same time. That would be quite a sight... I'd have to see how IBM can cope with that big of a data.

 

At the end of the day, the more we change to combat terrorism, the greater the victory the terrorists have. They're at war with our society, changing our society is what they want to do. You can't have freedom if you're not willing to accept people will die because of it.

Security and freedom are opposites. The NSA data would be too easily abused. What little safety is bought with it is not worth what's risked by it.

On September 12th, 2001, America woke up, flew the flag, and did the same thing they did the morning before. THAT is the correct response to terrorism. Not a police state.

 

Yeah. This shit went on long before there were any laws to support it. That's why I laugh my ass off every time I see one of these talking heads on the news using legality and oversight as a basis for a defense of such programs, as though legality and oversight has always been there and has always been universally applied to these and other programs.

I also laugh my ass off at the talking heads pointing to the limitations of the programs that have been publicly revealed as though those limitations apply to all such programs. They don't. There are dozens upon dozens of programs that are similar to those that have been revealed, but which have either managed to remain secret thus far or are kept far more secretive. Unless the bureaucratic hacks totally dropped the ball, I'd imagine things were compartmentalized enough that Snow White wasn't able to get his hands on slices and crumbs of every program in the Spookosphere.