Personally, I'm sick and tired of "OMG! SHARIA LAW!" being used as the excuse to spy on all of us. The same demagoguery was used by the Nazis (using Jewish law) as the basis for their depredations.
> "Why do so many countries want to attack us?" the person asked.
> The general replied that America stands in the way of them reaching their objective, which is to force everybody to comply with sharia law.
> "They want to attack us because we're bombing them!" shouted another person, to much chuckling from the audience.
And General Alexander should get a costume that doesn't make him look like one of the Love Boat crew.
I doubt most "terrorists" even care about sharia law. A crew of terrorists is basically a crew of thugs and gangsters who want money and power. The so-called sharia ideology is just propaganda to get new recruits. Good example was Abu Zarqawi the Jordanian gangster who went to Iraq to fight for AQIM. He lived like Tony Montana and certainly didn't give a shit about sharia law. He was only interested in making cash G money and running the streets with his coke and guns in Baghdad.
Another example is Boko Haram in Nigeria, who's leader dressed up like Tupac in some photos and cruised around in a Mercedes while denouncing the west. He recruited through prison breaks releasing drug dealers and other gangsters in exchange for membership.
And General Alexander should get a costume that doesn't make him look like one of the Love Boat crew.
Cheap ad hominems only detract from the actual arguments to be made. Ad hominems that focus on an individual's clothing are especially weak, given the average attire of a programmer.
Alexander could have worn business or business casual attire to this event, but he chose wear official military garb to a non-military event in order to cloak his arguments with official authority.
As I've argued elsewhere, the amount of political authority "Emperor Alexander" has managed to accumulate, and the unquestioning treatment he has received in congress and elsewhere, are signs of weakening in the republican system.
I don't think it was to cloak his arguments with official authority. I think what he was trying to do is use the blackhat conference as an open forum between the technology experts/hackers and the government. He had to have balls to wear that uniform in front of thousands of outraged people. I may not agree with what the NSA is doing, but you have to respect the man for talking at that conference especially in that uniform.
> America stands in the way of them reaching their objective, which is to force everybody to comply with sharia law.
That just can't be.
Coming from a supposedly educated man who was also granted enormous power is immensely frightening. It's just not possible, circumstances like these will ultimately lead to the destruction of the country.
My jaw dropped when I read that line. I thought that line was just used by the crazy nutballs on Fox news. I honestly had no idea that was a literal justification used by people in power. Crazy.
I hate it when i find myself agreeing with a reductio ad hitlerum, esp when its in response to an argument based on the same kind of fallacy, but i do.
This was heavily discussed yesterday [1], where tptacek had a great comment [2], which is well worth a read. Anyone interested in watching the talk can head over to Youtube [3].
Scary the naivete of a U.S. general who would make such a comment about shari'a. If he really believes such nonsense our defense strategy against Al-Qaeda will be similarly uninformed. The scary thing is that these beliefs are probably widely held amongst high-level U.S. military leaders. If you were to ask them what shari'a law is, they wouldn't have the slightest idea.
We have to stop pretending like there is literally zero difference between passive data collection and actively spying on someone.
We also have to stop pretending like being investigated is the same as being found guilty.
All this "read the Constitution" talk begs the initial question - what kind of risk are we okay with accepting when we ask for our privacy? Or to flip the question around, what are we getting in return for giving up our privacy, and is it worth it?
Frankly, we don't know right now, because no one's telling us (and being honest about it). I just want more information and less PR spin...
Why not? One makes no effort to identify each individual unless probable cause presents itself, and the other is when probable cause already exists and a warrant is granted.
It's watching a place vs. watching a person. How is that not "different"?
It's not watching a place, it's watching a platform/utility with fine-grained categorization and structure of information.
I'd compare it to holding the ebola plague in a research facility without publicly providing the safety measures that we put in place to protect the virus from getting out. Do you know how many scientists would be up in arms?
The only difference here is that we are dealing with computers which are usually publicly connected no matter what..and if the government has this information, who says hackers aren't going to be able to steal parts of the DB or query it? The very act of having this info, categorized, is just ghastly..and Orwellian.
Lots of stuff wrong with what you've written, and I don't have time to address everything, but I'll give you a short list:
* You're begging the question by asserting it's the Ebola virus. The question is whether or not it's dangerous and by calling it a deadly virus you're asserting it is as a given. Logical fallacy.
* I'd like to know where you got the information that the collected surveillance data is fully processed, even being used in its entirety, or that it's "fine grained". If you have information that hasn't yet been released, I recommend you be careful. See what happened to Snowden?
* What do you mean "computers which are usually publicly connected no matter what"? Are you saying that when a computer is connected to a router, the data it transmits is public information?
* What would hackers do with my location data, exactly? The fundamental problem that privacy solves is that the government would use your private data to cause you legal trouble. Hackers have no such luxury, and while they could steal your money or identity, that's a constant risk for the government, anyway. We already trust the US government with tons of our personal information, and yes, it could get hacked. It does get hacked, and yet somehow we're still here.
* 1984 is fiction. It does not, in any way, shape, or form have any influence or predictive powers on the future outcome of events. It's a good story, but it's as useful as Harry Potter is at telling us how our society is going to transform.
* I made an analogy, of course it isn't a virus - it's information that would have the possibility to wreak havoc if in the wrong hands.
* Nothing has happened to Snowden yet other than being made an enemy of the state. The fact that he is alive is somewhat of a testament to how much he hasn't released.
* Nothing of the sort, don't twist my words. Computers are notoriously hard to localize when connected to any network at all, local included. The CIA hacked the firmware of Iranian centrifuges through a massive widespread worm on _all_ computers that were later connected to the nuclear facilities network. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet)
* Your location data is a tiny bit of the information that is stored. Phone records, internet usage by downloads and web sites visited, text messages, etc.. are all being logged by the NSA.
* It's a work of excessive circumstance, it serves to show an extreme -- give you what would result once steps cross bounds, and don't recede.
My problem isn't necessarily with what's happening, it's the secretiveness surrounding it, and the "trust us" attitude that pervades the organization. That is not acceptable. As someone shouted, "how are we supposed to trust you if we don't even know what you're doing?"
This is hilarious! The Constitution? Paper constitutions aren't worth the paper they are printed on. They are an Americanism. Before the American paper Constitution, constitutions were exactly what the word signified - the structure of a ruling system. And a Constitution always becomes a small-c constitution even apart from the amendment process. Notice the actual result of the New Deal legislation. The rise the administrative state. Agencies that make, execute and judge on rules. Legislative bills that are shells for bureaucrats to fill (Dodd-Frank, PPACA, etc). NONE of these things are authorized by the "Constitution."
Please note that I haven't opined on whether I think this development is positive or negative. I do think that is a secondary matter to the importance that smart people such as the HN audience _understand_ the real structure (small-c constitution) of America is only tenuously related to the big-C Constitution.
If hackers aren't receptive to an argument that the description of a system is not necessarily how the system functions, there's no way we're not absolutely fucked.
The government and the NSA are still run by Americans. Which means that those Americans are still at fault for breaking the constitution and feeling above the law.
There are many Americans that are still selling their souls to the NSA in order to provide for their families. More programmers are replacing Snowden and more are still being hired. Why? Because government is buying away our freedoms through greedy Americans and corporations. If you want to cut down the NSA spying, the recipe is very simple: stop taking the money and talent from the government.
If your employer is constantly submitting RFPs to the government, quit.
If you get excited that your company has any "big contracts" with the government, quit.
Take away the talent and end the greed for the easy government money. The choice is, as it always has been, our choice.
I may not agree with the guy but I am impressed by him. He had the balls to go on stage in front of a crowd of people who could be aggressive, and presented his case. Not sure how well it was, since I wasn't there. However, that takes courage.
> "Why do so many countries want to attack us?" the person asked.
> The general replied that America stands in the way of them reaching their objective, which is to force everybody to comply with sharia law.
> "They want to attack us because we're bombing them!" shouted another person, to much chuckling from the audience.
And General Alexander should get a costume that doesn't make him look like one of the Love Boat crew.