Snowdon is a dummy

The problem now is that any reductions in the scope and efficiency of the data collection can be blamed for the next terrorist incident.

Quote:

The problem now is that any reductions in the scope and efficiency of the data collection can be blamed for the next terrorist incident.

The problem is that most attacks in the first world are now one or at most a very few working together so there is little or no command and control messages to intercept.

What little command and control is being done is by human messengers.

NSA have little chance of dealing with most of the attacks we had seen lately.

The system being set up is not design to deal with terrorists threats but to allow those in power to do bulk spying.

Hopefully the Franks of the world that can not understand that the terrorist threats are an excused to set up such a super Hoover spying system are not in overwhelming numbers.

e boogy man is under your bed, so make sure to check there each night.

The problem now is that any reductions in the scope and efficiency of the data collection can be blamed for the next terrorist incident.

Quote:

e boogy man is under your bed, so make sure to check there each night.

Strange as to me you are the one in fear of an all powerful boogy man that only can be deal with by tearing up the constitution and turning the nation into a computer version of 1984 or a super East German police state.

Make sure no one "tearing up the Constitution" under your bed while checking there, Bill.

Will the hackneyed clichés never cease?

Will the hackneyed clichés never cease?

But fancy Apisa asking such a question!!!

Bill wrote recently about blowing off the NSA, and I almost cheered, only to realise that this would lead to many deaths... Sad

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/10/14/activist_group_restore_the_fourth_utah_adopts_highway_to_nsa_data_center.html


How to Annoy the NSA: Adopt the Highway to Its "Secret" Data Center

By Will Oremus
Adopt a Highway - Redwood Road, Utah
An anti-NSA group has found a clever way to protest the agency's "secret" Utah spy center.


Out in the Utah desert, the National Security Agency has been building what’s been billed as the country’s biggest spy center: a massive data-collection facility designed to intercept and analyze electronic communications from around the world. But the shadowy, $1.7-billion facility may turn out to be a little less shadowy than the agency had hoped.

As Forbes’ Kashmir Hill and others have reported, the NSA has been vigilant about keeping the public away from the data center. When Hill stopped by unannounced in March and snapped some photos, she was detained and interrogated for an hour before eventually agreeing to delete two of the pictures. But a plucky band of activists has found a clever loophole.


According to the Salt Lake Tribune, an anti-NSA group has “adopted” the two-mile section of highway that runs past the "secret" facility. And don’t think they did it just because they want to keep the road litter-free. The group, called Restore the Fourth-Utah—as in, restore the Fourth Amendment, the one that protects citizens against unreasonable search and seizure—told the Tribune its members plan to carry picket signs while they pick up the trash. They’ll also get an official “Adopt-a-Highway” sign bearing the group’s name along each side of the freeway.

A spokesman told the Tribune that the Utah Department of Transportation had approved the project and would soon finalize the paperwork. He didn’t know if the DOT had checked with the NSA first. “As long as [Restore The Fourth-Utah is] following safety protocol," Gleason said, "we’re happy there are people applying to keep litter off the roads out there."

The NSA’s testy response: “Highway adoptions are not a part of NSA’s federal mission."

This is not the first setback for the data center. According to the Wall Street Journal, a series of electrical surges has damaged hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment and delayed the facility’s opening by a year. Utah also surprised the agency with a proposed energy-rate hike in May, which could cost the power-hungry facility some $2.4 million per year.

Kind of similar to the people of Paris tearing down the Bastille brick by brick and then selling the bricks.

The many hundreds of thousands of direct or indirect employees of NSA could find more useful work to do.

The many hundreds of thousands of direct or indirect employees of NSA could find more useful work to do.

Documents leaked by the US National Security Agency whistleblower Edward [...]Snowden show that GCHQ is, together with the US and other key partners, operating a network of electronic spy posts from diplomatic buildings around the world, which intercept data in host nations.

An American intercept “nest” on top of its embassy in Berlin – less than 150 metres from Britain’s own diplomatic mission – is believed to have been shut down last week as the US scrambled to limit the damage from revelations that it listened to mobile phone calls made by Chancellor Angela Merkel.

But the NSA documents, in conjunction with aerial photographs and information about past spying activities in Germany, suggest that Britain is operating its own covert listening station within a stone’s throw of the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, and Ms Merkel’s offices in the Chancellery, using hi-tech equipment housed on the embassy roof.
[...]
Infrared images taken by a German television station, ARD, appear to show that the US embassy spying facility, housed in an anonymous rooftop building, has now been shut down after an incendiary clash in which Mrs Merkel told President Barack Obama it was “just not done” for friendly nations to spy on each other.
[...]
Aerial photographs of the British embassy in Berlin show a potential eavesdropping base enclosed inside a white, cylindrical tent-like structure which cannot be easily seen from the streets. The structure has been in place since the embassy, which was built following the reunification of Germany, opened in 2000.

The structure bears a striking resemblance to spying equipment used in GCHQ’s Cold War listening post in West Berlin at the now-abandoned Teufelsberg or “Devil’s Mountain” site, which was used to intercept East German and Soviet communications.
... ... ...

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2013/11/01/sauk-rapids-graphic-artist-challenges-national-security-agency/

SAUK RAPIDS, Minn. (WCCO) – It was Edward Snowden’s revelations of domestic spying by the National Security Agency that hatched the idea — graphic artist Dan McCall would take the NSA’s emblem and create a new look with a funny twist.

“When I got finished I thought, this is pretty good – I thought it was fun,” McCall said.

Soon, he was having T-shirts emblazoned with the NSA logo accompanied by the slogan, “peeping while you’re sleeping.” Under the parodied emblem was the statement, “the only part of government that actually listens.”

What McCall meant as pure parody, apparently wasn’t very funny to bureaucrats at the NSA.

(credit: CBS)
(credit: CBS)
While he calls it parody they call a violation of the spy agency’s intellectual property.

“Because when you’re pointing straight at an organization or making fun at it, turning it on itself, that is classic parody,” he said.

The agency ordered him to cease and desist and forced his T-shirts off the market. But on Tuesday, the father of three young boys drew a line in the sand.

With the assistance of the Washington D.C.-based consumer advocacy group, Public Citizen, he’s suing the spy agency for violating his First Amendment rights.

McCall said he doesn’t want his kids to grow up in a country where you can’t humor your own government.

McCall said it’s important “that we clarify whether or not these types of laws are consistent with the rights as Americans under the First Amendment.”

[...]The potentially toxic allegation that Britain has a listening station in the capital of a close European Union ally will test relations between London and Berlin only days after the row between Germany and the US about its own clandestine activities. Jan Albrecht, an MEP for Germany’s Green Party and a leading campaigner on privacy and data protection, told The Independent: “If GCHQ runs a listening post on the top of the UK’s Berlin embassy, it is clearly targeting politicians and journalists. Do these people pose a threat?

“The EU has asked David Cameron’s Government to explain the activities of GCHQ in Europe but it has declined to do so, saying it does not comment on activities in the interest of national security. This is hardly in the spirit of European co-operation. We are not enemies.”

Asked to respond to the concerns last night, Mr Cameron’s official spokesman said: “We don’t comment on intelligence questions.” [...]