Schneier on Security: Today I Briefed Congress on the NSA:
This was one of the more surreal articles I’ve read lately. Several members of Congress, frustrated by their inability to get information on what the NSA is doing, asked Bruce Schneier to give them a presentation to explain what the leaked Snowden documents reveal about the agency’s activities.
Reposted from http://ift.tt/1gxzFlm.
Obama’s Changes to Government Surveillance:
President Obama announced that he would place new limits on intelligence agenciesâ bulk collection of phone call records. But he rejected some other recommendations to rein in surveillance made by a panel of outside advisers.
This NYT infographic gives a nice rundown on what Obama did and didn’t say in his speech today on reining in the excesses of the NSA.
Informative and depressing. Now how much would you pay?
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Courtesy my friend Jason, who’s both one of the most paranoid and one of the most technically astute people I know. Take from that what you will.
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/60943467670.
From reddit user 161719, commenting on user legalbeagle05’s changemyview post, “I believe the government should be allowed to view my e-mails, tap my phone calls, and view my web history for national security concerns”:
You want to know why revolutions happen? Because little by little by little things get worse and worse. But this thing that is happening now is big. This is the key ingredient. This allows them to know everything they need to know to accomplish the above. The fact that they are doing it is proof that they are the sort of people who might use it in the way I described. In the country I live in, they also claimed it was for the safety of the people. Same in Soviet Russia. Same in East Germany. In fact, that is always the excuse that is used to surveil everyone. But it has never ONCE proven to be the reality.
Maybe Obama won’t do it. Maybe the next guy won’t, or the one after him. Maybe this story isn’t about you. Maybe it happens 10 or 20 years from now, when a big war is happening, or after another big attack. Maybe it’s about your daughter or your son. We just don’t know yet. But what we do know is that right now, in this moment we have a choice. Are we okay with this, or not? Do we want this power to exist, or not?
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/52574701317.
