NSA revelations of privacy breaches 'tip of the iceberg' according to Senators
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
And you can bet that if they admitted to those, the real violations are orders of magnitude worse.
Nothing coming out from either the White House or NSA or other secret agencies will be taken seriously anymore. Whatever they release and say, at least in the next year or so related to the spying, is just going to be regarded as more PR and lies. They have completely lost any credibility.
Now the bad part -- this doesn't seem to bother them. That bill to defund the NSA was close but not close enough to scare them. Now, what could happen as a nasty side effect is they notice our apathy it will just embolden them.
Anyone notice any promises of them shutting down their operation? Nope. Neither have I. But one can bet they will ramp them up.
This is like the tiny criminal that when he finds out everyone knows about his crimes but nothing really comes out of it either through apathy or fear, they just ramp up the intensity.
"We record %2 percent of traffic and there wasn't that much outrage, why don't we just record 20%".
NSA analyst makes a "typo" and finds information on John Doe that, say, IRS wants. He then "mistakenly overshares" this information. Once it is detected, NSA instructs IRS to immediately forget the information, which they happily agree to do, though miraculously it turns out they've got exactly the same information by other, confidential, channel. Thus, no abuse of NSA facility ever happened, and IRS can continue with the investigation using this information - and no warrants or probably causes ever required.
I hope everyone involved in this around the world realise they will go down in the history as the bad guys.
NSA is not collecting the email and telephone traffic of all Americans
Even if this was an issue - There is no point in living an oppressed life.
Maybe it's time we start making sacrifices now so the future will be better and we don't leave our kids in an even bigger mess.
Keep in mind, we've already shown that we're OK with messing up the planet for future generations: We haven't taken any serious measures against
- climate change,
- overpopulation (this is 1 "meta" problem which reinforces most others),
- wealth inequality (poverty is now "the new normal"),
- pollution,
- etc.
We have actually: People the world over are having far far fewer children. Almost all developed countries have < replacement rate population growth, and many developing countries are below that level as well
Turns out when given the option, women don't want 203948 kids.
It does. Please name the last time the US government assassinated a federal-level elected official. (And "Kennedy" doesn't count as an answer).
However if I were to look for a list of candidates, including the possibility that 9/11 was a red flag operation (again, I don't generally suspect that it was, but stranger things have been proposed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods), that would be a good list to start with.
In established cases (though not "killed by the government"), the most recent assassination of a sitting Federal official was John Roll, a district judge in Arizona (killed in the Gabrielle Giffords assassination attempt) in 2011.
The most recently assassinated national legislator (sitting member of Congress) was Allard K. Lowenstein, a liberal Democrat representing Nassau County, New York (Long Island).
Prior to that, Leo Ryan (Jonestown), Robert Kennedy (assassinated while running for the Democratic Presidential ticket), JFK, and Huey Long, in 1935.
By my count: 19 Democratic officeholders and 8 Republicans have been assassinated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assassinated_American_...
Actually, I was a bit surprised that there were as few assassinations as there have been (what with some 500+ high national political figures at any one time). The Democrat/Republican balance is also interesting.
"Accidents do happen [but] plane crashes can be awfully convenient," doesn't leave me any room to debate this topic with you.
Believe it or not, I can accept issues as unresolved, though with shadings of possibility or probability one way or the other. When I say "I'm not convinced one way or the other", I mean just that. I've also not really put much time into looking at any of these incidents.
I do leave the possibility open in the case of Wellstone and Carnahan. The circumstances of Litton's death (how often to airplane crankshafts break spontaneously?) are interesting. Ryan and Jonestown: pretty clearly a cult.
There's also the case that there can be actions involving some elements of a government in opposition to others. As Kenneth Arrow observed, firms aren't single points, they're structures with internal complexity. As are governments. Operation Northwoods and The Business Plot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot) are both indications that plots have been hatched in the US. It can happen here, and very nearly has.
The circumstances surrounding both the Wellstone and Carnahan deaths were extremely politically charged. In Wellstone's case, former vice president Walter Mondale stood in as a candidate 11 days prior to the election. In Carnahan's, his name remained on the ballot and his wife served. There's relatively little dispute over the official investigation of the Wellstone incident, and some history of concerns with the principle pilot. As you may recall, Carnahan's opponent was John Ashcroft who went on to serve at Attorney General in the 2nd Bush Administration. In both cases (as now), control of the Senate was in play.
Then again, maybe he keeps sticking his neck out because he has the least to hide.
The only new thing here is that 2 senators seem to have the balls to talk about it.
Besides that, nobody should trust Congress to resolve the real issues. Of course they'll try to sell this illusion to us, but the minds are already too corrupted.