eightyone

Why are these companies only publishing requests from the last six months? That seems like a rather short time span.

You have to scroll to the top of the page to see the full conversation. The tweet posted is Glenn Greenwald replying to a Twitter user who sent a tweet at him.

This is how the conversation went down:

Glenn Greenwald: "Ellsberg: "There has not been in US history a more important leak than Snowden's –and that definitely includes Pentagon Papers 40 years ago""

Twitter User: "@ggreenwald Sorry, a year from now we'll be snoozing about this. Not against you, just tired of your self-promotion."

Glenn Greenwald: "@TerenceBegleyNJ You have no idea what is coming; and I'm promoting the leaks, not myself"

It's not a teaser. It's a refutation to someone else's comment which said, "Sorry, a year from now we'll be snoozing about this. Not against you, just tired of your self-promotion."

I think there is more to PRISM than we know right now. You should read Glenn Greenwald's latest article if you haven't' already. [1]

In my opinion, he makes a lot of good points in it.

"If, as NSA (and Silicon Valley) defenders claim, Prism is nothing more than a harmless little drop-box mechanism for delivering to the government what these companies were already providing, why would Yahoo possibly be in court so vigorously resisting it and arguing that it violates their users' Fourth Amendment rights? Similarly, how could it possibly be said - as US government officials have - that Prism has been instrumental in stopping terrorist plots if it did not enhance the NSA's collection capabilities? The denials from the internet companies make little sense when compared to what we know about the program. At the very least, there is ample reason to demand more disclosure and transparency about exactly what this is and what data-access arrangements they have agreed to."

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/14/nsa-part...

(From the first tweet at the top of the original link.)

"Ellsberg: "There has not been in US history a more important leak than Snowden's –and that definitely includes Pentagon Papers 40 years ago""

Ellsberg sounds very definitive on the importance of the Snowden's information. I wonder if Greenwald has shown him information that the general public hasn't seen yet.

You should check out the link I posted above. Under the FairTax the highest and lowest brackets will see their share of taxes go down. Everyone who makes between $15,000 and $200,000 will see their share of taxes go up.

The FairTax also shifts more of the tax burden on to the middle-class. No thanks.

"With the prebate program in effect, those earning less than $15,000 per year would see their share of the federal tax burden drop from -0.7 percent to -6.3 percent. Of course, if the poorest Americans are paying less under the FairTax plan, then someone else pays more. As it turns out, according to the Treasury Department, “someone else” is everybody earning between $15,000 and $200,000 per year. The chart below compares the share of the federal tax burden for different income groups under the current system and under the FairTax. Those in the highest and the lowest brackets will see their share decrease, while everyone else will see their share of taxes increase."

http://www.factcheck.org/taxes/unspinning_the_fairtax.html

I read a lot of news and I didn't even know about Top Secret America before reading this comment. Thank you.

Exactly. Look at what happened to Obama. He had his press conference last Friday and told everyone that "No one is listening to your phone calls.". Then we found out yesterday that he was pretty much lying right to us.

Greenwald has said on Twitter he has thousands of documents. I really don't think it's about Guardian page views, but more of doing proper research and, well, journalism. You just don't dump a bunch of documents out there willy nilly.

Greenwald is getting a lot of hate mail via Twitter. I don't blame him for the teasers who are usually aimed at people who are doubting him. If he dumped all the data at once, the story would blow over way faster. It's also been helpful that other people have came semi forward, such as the Democratic congresswoman from California who basically pleaded for someone to leak for information because it's that bad. This strategy also makes it easier to catch the U.S. government and company telling lies and contradictions. Also, it's way harder to run damage control when you don't know what information the other side has.

Check out the book Python for Kids: A Playful Introduction to Programming. It covers how to make a couple different 2D games.

http://www.amazon.com/Python-Kids-Playful-Introduction-Progr...

"and the Guardian walked the claim back"

No they didn't.

"The Guardian has not revised any of our articles and, to my knowledge, has no intention to do so. That's because we did not claim that the NSA document alleging direct collection from the servers was true; we reported - accurately - that the NSA document claims that the program allows direct collection from the companies' servers. Before publishing, we went to the internet companies named in the documents and asked about these claims. When they denied it, we purposely presented the story as one of a major discrepancy between what the NSA document claims and what the internet companies claim, as the headline itself makes indisputably clear:"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/14/nsa-part...

This is a really good move. I've ran into several websites that check against the most popular temporary email services and the domain names that they use.

"the total number of user-data requests Facebook received from any and all government entities in the U.S."

It's common for 3 letter agencies to set up a corporation to handle their dirty work. I wonder if a front organization would be considered a government entity?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_organization#Intelligence...

Why are they only offering figures for the last 6 months?

I'm not sure exactly what the parent comment is referring to, but here's one instance.

tptacek: "Someone on Twitter (sorry) said that Google and Facebook "looked like angels" compared to Verizon. That sounds about right to me, too."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5876734

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin

In this hearing there has been so much smearing in reguards to Snowden's educational background. There are plenty of smart people who didn't graduate from high school.

I love how Gen. Alexander and friends are like, "We're so vulnerable!", and see no problem with storing mass amounts of information that is begging to be hacked.

Haven't you got the memo yet? According to the media we can't trust Snowden because he didn't graduate high school.

Maybe PRISM is just the front-end to the government service. After all, we know they are running multiple services. Greenwald is really sticking to his guns on direct access, and from what he's told us he has a lot more information.

No, the corners aren't quarter circles. Here's a good explanation: http://dribbble.com/shots/1110779-iOS-7-Icon-Rounded-Corner-...

Also, the incremental release strategy makes it easier to catch the government and companies involved telling lies and contradictions. Never show all your cards at once.

I never realized we were at war with Yemen.

I wonder why Greenwald and the Guardian haven't released more information yet. Maybe they are waiting for all the tech news to die down? Are there any other major things happening this week?

You might be interested in this: http://blog.bittorrent.com/2013/05/23/how-i-created-my-own-p...

I found these tweets a couple days ago from Glenn Greenwald. Click to see the full context, of course.

"The highly detailed NSA technical materials on how they eavesdrop, that I have & am not publishing." [1]

"You won't - it contains very specific technical NSA means for collection - we'd probably be prosecuted if we did." [2]

"There are all sorts of secrets I have I'm not publishing - it's public interest v. harm analysis at the heart of journalism." [3]

[1] https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/343470800784982016

[2] https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/343454484917280770

[3] https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/343453682387542016

It doesn't seem like $20-million would even cover the cost of what the government is claiming PRISM actually is, so I think you're right.

I don't know any teenager that uses Photo Stream. They are using Instagram so they can share among all their friends and family who have varying devices. They are using Instagram so they can compare who has the most likes, who takes the best photos, and who ate the best food. Photo Stream isn't even meant to replace social networking sites like Instagram.