Snowdon is a dummy

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Did you understand the connection between mass spying and democracy, or is that still mysterious to you?

There really is none.

Quote:

Quote:

Did you understand the connection between mass spying and democracy, or is that still mysterious to you?

There really is none.

LOL... Are you afraid they will jail you if you answer honestly or something?

So far...one incident. And yet you make an assertion that "history shows us."

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So far...one incident. And yet you make an assertion that "history shows us."

Plenty and I mean plenty of other examples if not normally on the scale of the Titanic sinking.

From groups such as on the Titanic to individuals such as the man Lenny Skutnik who jumped into an ice full Potomac River to help save a woman life after an airliner crash.

How many examples would you care for?

Enough to make your comment: "If history is a guide a lot more men and women will act with honor in lifeboats situations then otherwise" seem reasonable.

Still getting help with your posts, I see. Either that...or the charade is being dropped.

Which is it?

Under increasing pressure at home and abroad, the White House has been driven to the conclusion that changes must be made, according to the New York Times and other media outlets. But, in a television interview, Obama was not prepared to say exactly what would be done differently
"First of all, you don't target your allies," Rudy deLeon from the Center for American Progress based in Washington told DW. In this day and age of digital technology, the controls have to be improved and privacy better protected.

"There need to be some constraints on what [the NSA] can do, and they need to work out the details particularly with our allies," says security expert and former Reagan administration adviser Larry Korb. Like the CIA, the NSA should also be required to inform the President and the Senate in advance of any operations. Just because the NSA can listen in to Merkel's mobile phone, does not mean they should: "The technology has outpaced the policy and we do need to have some rules of the road about how far you can go and what we and our allies should be telling each other."

Korb suggests that Europe and Germany should serve as a model for congress's legislation. Europeans have more experience with privacy protection due to their history.
According to deLeon, Congress should play a much greater role as "watchdog" and thus restore the balance between the constitutional bodies.

Three European Parliament delegations are currently in Washington, and they are enjoying an unusual amount of political and media attention.

The widespread surveillance of Spanish citizens by the US National Security Agency, which caused outrage when it was reported this week, was the product of a collaboration with Spain's intelligence services, according to one Spanish newspaper.

In the latest revelations to emerge from the documents leaked by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden, Spanish agents not only knew about the work of the NSA but also facilitated it, El Mundo reports.
[...]
The reports come a day after the director of the NSA, General Keith B Alexander, testified before the US house intelligence committee that suggestions the agency monitored millions of calls in Spain, France and Italy were "completely false" and that this data had been at least partially collected by the intelligence services of those countries and then passed on to the NSA.

On Monday, El Mundo reported that the NSA had intercepted 60.5m phone calls in Spain over one month alone.

Alexander said foreign intelligence services collected phone records in war zones and other areas outside their borders and passed these on to the NSA. He said this arrangement had been misunderstood by French and Spanish newspapers, which reportedthat the NSA was spying in their countries.

But this explanation has not allayed European or domestic US concerns about the exact nature of NSA surveillance in allied countries.

The suggestion that the Spanish intelligence agency was working with the NSA will confirm the suspicions of many in Spain who believe that the government has not only failed to protect its own citizens' privacy, but was actively supportive of US surveillance inside the country.
[...]
The latest document, published by El Mundo on Wednesday, shows the NSA to be watchful of any information gathered by countries outside the top tier of allies, which together with the US are known as the "five eyes".

According to the Spanish newspaper's report, the NSA says any co-operation with countries outside this group is to be carefully evaluated, and they should be reliable allies, capable of protecting any classified information from the US itself.

For US, 'the age of easy hypocrisy is over'

For this Faustian passion has altered the Face of the Earth.

And these machines become in their forms less and ever less human, more ascetic, mystic, esoteric. They weave the earth over with an infinite web of subtle forces, currents and tensions. Their bodies become ever more and more immaterial, ever less noisy. The wheels, rollers, and levers are vocal no more. All that matters withdraws itself into the interior. Man has felt the machine to be devilish, and rightly. It signifies in the eyes of the believer the deposition of God. It delivers sacred Causality over to man and by him, with a sort of foreseeing omniscience is set in motion, silent and irresistible.

I don't think the flow of revelations would stop after his death. Rather, the pace of them would increase.

[...]The Panorama news magazine says US secret services monitored the phone calls of Pope Benedict XVI, as well as those of his successor Francis I. NSA staff listened in on cardinals before the conclave to elect the Pope in March this year, it says.

In a press release ahead of the magazine’s publication today, Panorama said: “It is feared that the great American ear continued to tap prelates’ conversations up to the eve of the conclave on March 12 2013.” It added that Archbishop Bergoglio, as he was called before he became Pope in March, “had been a person of interest to the American secret services since 2005, according to WikiLeaks”. His election came after Benedict XVI resigned on 28 February.

Panorama said the recorded Vatican conversations were among the 46 million phone calls followed by the NSA in Italy from 10 December 2012 to 8 January 2013.

The phone calls were apparently catalogued by the NSA in four categories – leadership intentions, threats to the financial system, foreign policy objectives and human rights.

The director of the National Security Agency conceded on Wednesday that it may need to scale back some of its surveillance operations on foreign leaders, in the wake of an international outcry.

Launching a public defence of the NSA for the second time in as many days, Alexander acknowledged that limiting the programme may be necessary in order to maintain diplomatic relations. “I think in some cases the partnerships are more important," he told an audience in Washington.
[...]
Partnerships between Washington and several European nations, particularly Germany, have come under extreme strain since chancellor Angela Merkel confronted the US about the NSA intercepting her phone calls.

The White House, evidently chastened by the fallout in recent days, has begun suggesting that some restrictions on foreign-focused surveillance are forthcoming – something that US legislators have balked at, despite months of wide-ranging leaks from Snowden.
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