Snowdon is a dummy

Against sending American boys to support the expansist policies of Israel, England, and all the European powers who are too cheap to fund their own military.

Were not talking about you or me. We were talking about Rosa and Snowdon. I dident claim you were risking your life, where did that come from.

Your post should have gone to Izzy. I still think that if one wants a hero Rosa is the one. At that time in that place they were killing blacks for much less. She was risking her life, he is not.

Snooping Fears: German Firms Race to Shield Secrets

Edward Snowden's revelations about data surveillance have left German firms feeling acutely vulnerable to industrial espionage. In the medium-sized business sector, which contains a host of world leaders in high-tech fields, the race is on to shield vital know-how.

Markus Stäudinger is a cautious person -- especially when he's sitting in front of his computer. He's an IT security expert at Gustav Eirich, a southern German engineering company that makes industrial mixing equipment, and he has been encrypting his emails for years. "While I was typing I always had in the back of my mind that it could still be deciphered," says Stäudinger, 48. He has tried to entrench that mindset in his company.

Stäudinger has spent years trying to enhance the security of Eirich's data and communications. He kept telling colleagues to be careful when dealing with sensitive information. He installed extra security features on notebooks and smartphones before they were taken off company premises. Some of the firm's 750 employees probably shook their heads at all this paranoia. But now, after the NSA revelations of whistleblower Edward Snowden, they all know that Stäudinger was right. "We were always aware that the intelligence services and business work closely together in the US," said the IT expert. "When we heard about what's been going on, it didn't hit us completely out of the blue."

Other companies were taken by surprise, though. Be it Prism, Tempora or XKeyscore, reports about mass electronic surveillance and tapped Internet hubs and trans-Atlantic data lines have alarmed German companies. Many firms are now worried that the intelligence services aren't just trying to pinpoint terrorists but to get at German industrial secrets as well. They fear that their know-how lead over US, British and French competitors could be at risk. And they've suddenly realized that they've got to do something to protect themselves against the organized theft of data. ... ... ...

Hmmm. What were they doing asking him in public about a top secret program?

What expansionist policies of the British Government

I'd say British troops were more engaged in supporting American Imperialism than the other way round.

[... ... ...]
While the US witnesses bipartisanship by Democrats left of their party's mainstream and Republicans right of theirs, Germany's coalition has splintered after reports that officials collaborated with American intelligence. Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich, of the Christian Social Union, Bavarian partners to Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, faces allegations from Free Democrat (FDP) coalition allies that his office violated civil liberties in what has become known in Germany as the "Spähaffäre," or spy affair. The opposition Social Democrats and Greens have joined with the FDP in summoning chancellery head Ronald Pofalla to the Bundestag on Thursday to go into detail on the collaboration.

"Mr. Pofalla shall provide clear information as to whether there was a collaboration between the German and American services on a technical level," FDP Deputy Hartfrid Wolff told the broadcaster MDR on Tuesday. "We want to know if this was targeted collaboration, an attempt to deceive or complete ignorance."

For their part, members of the administration are rallying together.
"I have never been of the opinion that worldwide communication was not monitored," Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble, a Christian Democrat, told the Schwarzwälder Bote newspaper. He added that he was "convinced that we in Germany have a large part of our security thanks to cooperation with friendly intelligence services."

After all they got us into two world wars. Remember 1 and 2nd world wars.

I enjoy swapping Ideas with people

but refuse to engage people who demand that I believe as they do no matter the subject.

Obama administration alarmed by vote on 'Amash amendment' aimed at blocking blanket surveillance of phone records

The Obama administration has forcefully urged the defeat of a legislative measure to curb its wide-ranging collection of Americans' phone records, setting up a showdown with the House of Representatives over domestic surveillance.

A statement from the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, late on Tuesday evening capped an extraordinary day of near-revolt on Capitol Hill concerning the secret National Security Agency surveillance programes revealed by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden and published by the Guardian and Washington Post.

The White House urged House members to vote against a measure from Representative Justin Amash, a Michigan Republican, that would stop the NSA siphoning up the telephone records of millions of Americans without suspicion of a crime.
[...]
Earlier on Tuesday, one of the leading legislative critics of the NSA's bulk surveillance on Americans' phone records, Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, attacked both the surveillance and what he described as a "culture of misinformation" by administration and intelligence officials about it.
[...]
Wyden noted during his speech at the administration-aligned thinktank that he thought the administration had agreed with him when it first came to office about the problems of maintaining widespread secrecy over surveillance.

"In the summer of 2009 I received a written commitment from the justice department and the office of the director of national intelligence that a process would be created to start redacting and declassifying Fisa court opinions so that the American people could have some idea of what the government believes the law allows it to do," Wyden said. "In the last four years exactly zero opinions have been released."

The White House is urging Congress to reject an attempt to stop the National Security Agency (NSA) collecting Americans' phone records.

With a key vote coming up, President Barack Obama's spokesman said curbs on the NSA would "hastily dismantle" a vital counter-terrorism tool.

NSA chief Gen Keith Alexander spent Tuesday lobbying Congressmen to vote against the proposed measure.

Critics say NSA phone data collection is an unwarranted invasion of privacy.

The details of the programme were made public by Edward Snowden, who had worked for the NSA and is now a fugitive, awaiting a decision on his asylum application in Moscow.

House of Representatives Republican Congressman Justin Amash has tabled an amendment to a defence spending bill, which would block funding for the NSA's programme to collect details of every call made by or to a US phone.

Mr Amash said: "My amendment blocks funding of NSA's collection of personal data if that data does not pertain to a person under investigation."

A vote on the amendment will take place on Wednesday.

House Democrats John Conyers and Jared Polis supported the move, which they said "makes sure that innocent Americans' information isn't needlessly swept up into a government database".

However, the White House said the measure would deprive the intelligence agencies of a key tool in preventing terror attacks.

"This blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open or deliberative process," said spokesman Jay Carney.

"We urge the House to reject the Amash amendment, and instead move forward with an approach that appropriately takes into account the need for a reasoned review of what tools can best secure the nation."

Party split

NSA head Gen Alexander held separate, closed-door sessions with Republicans and Democrats on the eve of the vote in an attempt to persuade them to vote against.

Afterwards he told CNN: "What you can see is that everybody wants to ensure we protect civil liberties and privacy and defend this country.

"We have that responsibility, and the issue is, how do we do that? How do we take care of our people and protect our civil liberties and privacy? This is a tough issue."

The issue has split the main parties, with Democrats and Republicans lining up on both sides of the debate.

Meanwhile it is thought possible that Russia will announce whether Edward Snowden has been successful in his application for temporary asylum in the country.

He has been in limbo in a Moscow airport for weeks, but his lawyer Anatoly Kucherena says Wednesday is the deadline for the Federal Migration Service to rule on his request.

A number of Latin American states say they are willing to offer the former intelligence systems analyst asylum, but he says he first needs Russian asylum in order to be able to travel, since the US has cancelled his passport.

The US has charged Mr Snowden with leaking classified information.

Mr Putin has refused to hand him to US authorities, but says he can only stay in Russia if he stops leaking secrets about US surveillance schemes.