Snowdon is a dummy

I have a low opinion of your country ... and I have no idea at all how you got this impression.

I have a low opinion about your country's leaders ... well, about some.

I'm against stoning homosexuals, if it's written in the bible or not.

I've a low opinion about most tea party ideas.

I don't agree with much what is said by Republicans and less with others.
If that in American English is called "low opinion", I have to accept this.

Oliver5, I think that the ignore function is a good fit for Frank and I am going to be using it.

No one should leaved this thread let alone this website due to him.

And why not? He never says anything much, and never listens to contrary opinions

And why not? He never says anything much, and never listens to contrary opinions, so what's the point talking to Frank? He's for amusement only.

Quote:

And why not? He never says anything much, and never listens to contrary opinions

Yes, he take up far more time then he is worth and he never does support his positions with logic or facts.

AT&T backs Microsoft's dispute over warrant for emails held abroad
John Ribeiro
@Johnribeiro Jun 13, 2014 12:10 AMe-mailprint
AT&T is backing Microsoft in its challenge of a U.S. search warrant for private email communications located in a facility in Dublin, Ireland.

The telecommunications company on Thursday filed in a New York court asking permission to submit an amicus curiae brief in support of Microsoft. Described as a “friend of the court,” an amicus curiae is not directly involved in a litigation but believes it may be impacted or has views on the matter before the court.

Verizon Communications also filed this week in opposition of the warrant in a dispute that is regarded as having far-reaching implications on the ability of U.S. tech companies to win the trust of customers abroad for their services including cloud computing.

Microsoft has objected to the warrant issued by a magistrate judge under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, as it purports to authorize the U.S. government to search Microsoft’s facilities worldwide.

In April, U.S. Magistrate Judge James C. Francis IV refused to amend the warrant, holding that if territorial restrictions on conventional warrants were applied to warrants issued under section 2703 (a) of the Stored Communications Act (SCA), a statute that covers required disclosure of wire or electronic communications in electronic storage, law enforcement efforts would be seriously affected.

The companies have expressed concern that the U.S. government’s demands for data held abroad could alienate overseas customers from placing their data with U.S. providers, particularly after the disclosures of surveillance abroad by the U.S. National Security Agency.

“Foreign customers will respond by moving their business to foreign companies without a presence in the United States,” Verizon said in its filing.

A decision like the one by the magistrate judge could feed into concerns of customers abroad as it would appear that under SCA, U.S.-based providers alone may be compelled to give U.S. authorities access to information held anywhere in the world, without considering foreign law or whether the customer-provider relationship has any substantial nexus to the U.S., AT&T wrote in its proposed amicus brief in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

AT&T said it works with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty process, when it receives requests for information stored in the U.S. from law enforcement agencies abroad, to ensure that any resulting data transfer occurs pursuant to a warrant or other form of process specified by the SCA, and is otherwise consistent with U.S. law. MLAT governs exchange of information between countries for law enforcement purposes.

“This practice rests on an understanding that when it comes to data storage and privacy protections, location matters,” AT&T wrote in the filing, while stating that the SCA does not authorize U.S. courts to issue warrants requiring providers to disclose information stored in a foreign country without a substantial nexus to the U.S.

By the magistrate’s approach, the law of the foreign place where the data is stored is irrelevant to whether the provider must disclose information to U.S. authorities, according to the filing. “If courts in this country adopt that approach, it seems safe to predict that foreign officials will likewise seek to forgo the MLAT process and demand that U.S. providers allow access to U.S.- based servers when presented with orders that satisfy foreign law,” it added.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/columnists/hugo-rifkind/9229991/dont-blame-the-guardian-if-criminals-are-getting-better-at-hiding-online-blame-itunes-and-netflix/

Don’t blame the Guardian if criminals are getting better at hiding online. Blame iTunes and Netflix


I wouldn’t wish to deny that all drug dealers and crime lords read the Guardian. Indeed, check the circulation figures, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that only drug dealers and crime lords read the Guardian. So, when I read last week about the trouble that GCHQ is now having tracking online criminality, and the way that GCHQ considers recent revelations about state surveillance via the Guardian to be the cause, I did not for a moment think that GCHQ was entirely wrong.

I genuinely wonder, though, if the rogue National Security Agency IT boffin Edward Snowden, whom we hear so much about, has damaged national security as much as Apple has. Or Netflix or BT or TalkTalk, or the entirety of the global industries of music, television and film.

No, I’m wholly serious. On our screens and smartphones, something quite alarming is happening. Probably it would have eventually happened anyway, but it’s not this fast. And everything anybody does to slow it down makes it happen all the faster.

It clicked for me a month ago, when a bunch of newspapers (including my own) reported a massive surge in encrypted internet traffic. To explain — and forgive me if no explanation is necessary — encrypted traffic is traffic disguised or hidden, or behaving in some way as though it doesn’t want anybody to be noticing it. This surge was small in the US, but far larger in Europe and South America. According to most reports, this was all about a heightened desire for online privacy in the face of a sudden realisation that online privacy was quite hard to have.


‘Gosh,’ I thought to myself. And then I went home, fired up Netflix, and made it think I was in America so that I could catch up on Mad Men. And then I thought, ‘Hang on.’

For copyright reasons, Netflix America gives you different shows from Netflix UK. Apple’s film and music store, iTunes, does the same, to the extent that I once had to tell my wife’s iPad we were in America so I could re-download a copy of Finding Nemo we’d bought while over there on holiday. For this reason, all over the world, digitally, people are pretending to be in America when they aren’t. Others pretend to be in the UK so they can watch the BBC’s iPlayer. It’s not hard to do this. Once you know what to do, setting up a web proxy — effectively re-routing your data so that it doesn’t go where your internet provider intends it to — is the work of a moment.

Possibly your home internet provider blocks porn. David Cameron, remember, wants ISPs to block it by default, unless you ask for it. If you don’t fancy asking for it, though, it’s the work of a moment to pretend you’re accessing it from, say, Idaho instead. Lots of ISPs, similarly, block access to piracy sites, or torrent sites which they assume to be piracy sites. Likewise.

The thing is that three years ago, hardly anybody knew how to do this stuff. Now lots of people do. And it is not fierce state oppression that has taught them; not the Great Firewall of China, nor, probably, the fear that a man in Cheltenham is keeping a file. It is silly, prosaic stuff; wanting to watch the TV you’ve paid for while abroad, wanting to hear a song today rather than tomorrow, wanting a wank. And in wanting these things, and in a spirit of mild annoyance at a host of clodhopping measures imposed by people who don’t really understand what they are doing, we find ourselves learning the tricks and techniques that terrorists, criminals and child pornographers need to survive.

Do you see what I’m driving at here? In seeking to impose law, we are actively making the internet more lawless. We are making it far harder, rather than easier, to police. With bitcoin, piracy, pornography and all the rest of it, I have long believed that the electronic world is heading towards an event horizon, after which states will effectively lose the power to prevent almost anything. I knew it would happen, but I didn’t think it would happen so soon. Two years ago, some dumb kid in Bradford probably wouldn’t have known how to hide his footprints before downloading a bomb manual, because it was a niche skill. Now it’s commonplace, because you need to do the same thing to beat off a day early to Game of Thrones. Whoops.

oralloy wrote:

What Snowden provided the terrorists with was ... the knowledge of the specific tactics that the NSA was using to listen, allowing the terrorists to thwart those specific tactics.

Bullshit as the tactic released deal with how they was doing worthless massive spying and have little or nothing about target spying on them.

oralloy wrote:

The American people also knew beforehand that the NSA listened to everything.

Wrong as we did not know that NSA was breaking it own charter and the constitution to do bulk spying on US citizens before Snowden reveal that little secret.

oralloy wrote:

At any rate, this huge setback we've just experienced in the War on Terror justifies Snowden getting the death penalty when he's convicted.

Snowden should get a medal as he warn us all of a danger to our freedoms and way of life greater by far then all the terrorists in the middle east as in an out of control intelligence community that is using the constitution as toilet paper.

oralloy wrote:

abolish freedom and democracy,

The people in control of the US government at the moment is trying to do that by shitting on the very Constitution that they took an oath to defend.

By the way Oralloy how long do you think this nation can be free if the intelligence services have the means to blackmail a large percents of our total elected office holders?

Hoover with far less information in his secret file cabinets then are currently on the hard drives of the NSA got Congressmen and Presidents to bow to his wishes in fear of what he might release concerning them.

Obama before he took office was all for reining in the intelligence services but now he is one of their biggest supporters.

Is this an independent change of heart or did he get a visit similar to the visit that Hoover pay on Robert Kennedy the then US Attorney General where he expressed concerns about some of President Kennedy choices of mistresses and the need to keep them secret.

So with such an out of control intelligence service how can we know who is pulling the strings?

Not a good picture as far as America being a free nation in the future now is it?

Oh, and how is that going to work Frank with a government full of people with no respect for the constitution in power and an out of control intelligence service with the ability to blackmail most of our leadership at their whim?

A government already claiming extra legal powers such as the power to place citizens on a do not fly list without any right to even find out the reasons for being on such a list.

Frank Apisa wrote:

You being a Frenchy should have some greater regard for us, since we were part of the powers that help free your country some 70
years ago.

Well, and since you gave us democracy back: Oliver and I should shut our mouths and thankfully bow our heads while kneeling down in deepest humbleness.

What is the basis for claiming that this power is "extra legal"?

http://www.usconstitution.net/constnot.html

As the Supreme Court notes in Saenz v Roe, 98-97 (1999), the Constitution does not contain the word "travel" in any context, let alone an explicit right to travel (except for members of Congress, who are guaranteed the right to travel to and from Congress). The presumed right to travel, however, is firmly established in U.S. law and precedent. In U.S. v Guest, 383 U.S. 745 (1966), the Court noted, "It is a right that has been firmly established and repeatedly recognized." In fact, in Shapiro v Thompson, 394 U.S. 618 (1969), Justice Stewart noted in a concurring opinion that "it is a right broadly assertable against private interference as well as governmental action. Like the right of association, ... it is a virtually unconditional personal right, guaranteed by the Constitution to us all." It is interesting to note that the Articles of Confederation had an explicit right to travel; it is now thought that the right is so fundamental that the Framers may have thought it unnecessary to include it in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.
Thanks to Marko Liias for the idea. Thanks to W.H. van Atteveldt for the note about Congressional travel.

I'm grateful to the Frisians that Saint Ludger Christianised my ancestors - otherwise I still would fear figures like Wotan and Odin,

for period from 1939 onwards, I'm grateful for all nations who helped to destroy the Nazi-regime.

Unfortunately, all this gratitude doesn't include biting on my lips when I have a different opinion to those whom I'm acknowledge my gratitude.
This seems to be a bad character trait. But together with the original sin to born as a German, I can live with it.

why if this is upheld would any foreign person placed any information in the hands of an American firm?

http://www.aclu-or.org/blog/constitution-applies-when-government-bans-americans-skies

THE CONSTITUTION APPLIES WHEN THE GOVERNMENT BANS AMERICANS FROM THE SKIES
By Nusrat Choudury, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project & Hina Shamsi, Director, ACLU National Security Project

The government does not have the unchecked authority to place individuals on a secret blacklist without providing them any meaningful opportunity to object, the ACLU argued in a brief filed last Friday with the federal district court in Oregon.
We made the filing in Latif v. Holder, our lawsuit asserting that the government violated the Fifth Amendment due process rights of 13 Americans, including four military veterans, by placing them on the No Fly List and refusing to give them any after-the-fact explanation or a hearing at which they can clear their names.

Our brief highlighted the utter irrationality of the government's No Fly List procedures. The plaintiffs in Latif all flew for years without any problems. But more than two years ago, they were suddenly branded as suspected terrorists based on secret evidence, publicly denied boarding on flights, and told by U.S. and airline officials that they were banned from flying, perhaps forever. Each of them asked the government to remove them from the No Fly List through the only "redress" mechanism available—the Department of Homeland Security Traveler Redress Inquiry Program. But the government has refused to provide any explanation or basis for their inclusion in the list. Our clients have been stuck in limbo ever since.

We submitted evidence to the court showing that the No Fly List burdens our clients' constitutionally protected liberties, with devastating consequences for their personal and professional lives. It deprives them of the ability to fly—an essential means of travel in modern life. It also stigmatizes them as suspected terrorists, although they have never been charged with any crime, let alone convicted of one.

Our brief argued that the Constitution's core promise of procedural due process requires the government to provide at least some explanation and some hearing where Americans can defend themselves after it deprives them of their liberties. The government's categorical refusal to provide either is unconstitutional. We explained:

Defendants' refusal to provide the bare rudiments of due process stems from their embrace of an explicit policy—known as the "Glomar" policy—of refusing to confirm or deny any information concerning a person's status on the No Fly List. The Glomar policy and Defendants' inadequate process cannot be reconciled with governing due process doctrine. Courts routinely require notice and some form of hearing for much less severe deprivations of liberty than Plaintiffs have suffered. Thus, the government cannot suspend a student from school for ten days, or recover excess Social Security payments, or terminate state assistance for utility bills without some kind of notice and hearing.

In its own brief to the court defending its "redress" program, the government's arguments boiled down to two sweeping—and extraordinary—claims. First, according to the government, the Constitution has nothing to say about the adequacy and fairness of the procedures the government provides Americans to challenge their inclusion on the No Fly List because "alternatives" to flying are available. We countered that argument in a separate brief (also filed on Friday) showing that the government relied on the wrong law, and by providing evidence confirming what is obvious: the No Fly List so severely restricts Americans' ability to travel that it triggers due process rights. Not only does the list ban Americans from the skies, it even bars them from travel on boats. As a result, two of our clients have been effectively banned from traveling from the United States to be with their families in Ireland and Yemen.

The government's second sweeping claim is that even confirming or denying No Fly List-status (much less actually providing notice of the reasons and basis for inclusion in the list) will cause a parade of national security horribles, including the disclosure of sensitive or classified information. Our brief, however, showed that this argument is based on a fiction: all of our clients already know they are on the No Fly list; they were each prevented from flying and explicitly told that they are on the list. We also pointed out that the mere possibility that sensitive national security information might be involved is no reason to categorically foreclose the hearings that due process requires.

Americans have a right to know what kind of "evidence" or innuendo is sufficient to land them on the No Fly List, and to have a hearing where they can defend themselves. Without this bare minimum, there is no meaningful check to correct the government's mistakes or ensure that it uses the blacklisting power it claims fairly and appropriately. We are asking the court, therefore, to vindicate a basic yet fundamentally important proposition: a government black list that denies Americans the ability to fly without giving them an explanation or fair chance to clear their names violates the Constitution.

Because they realize that complying with a court-ordered search warrant is an entirely reasonable thing to do.