
White House unable to confirm if Congress briefed on NSA spy program - Suraj-Sun
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/white-house-congress-nsa-xkeyscore
======
revelation
I always love those recordings. Few people are able to keep up the bullshit
and cognitive dissonance required to maintain the current governments position
in an even remotely logical and consistent way when faced with on demand
questions, so they quickly revert to reiterating canned answers or even just
missing the whole question as their brain responds to the information overload
with a simple backtracking to what they know best (which, it turns out, is the
canned answers, not actual knowledge of the program asked about).

The considerable stress this causes then further produces nonsense side
statements, like "informing people about false claims isn't necessarily what
we do".

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spikels
Snowden/Greenwald are doing a great job keeping this issue alive. Much like if
you tell a lie enough times people believe it: if you tell the truth enough
times people remember it.

Everyone who cares about this issue should do what they can to make sure as
many people as possible understand what is going one. Just keep bringing it up
like this reporter did today. Otherwise it will just slip into the background
and we will be stuck with it for a very long time.

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MattyRad
It's disheartening that politicians can barely confirm whether they even know
what is going on (i.e. what they vote for on our behalf), let alone the have
the capacity to grasp the scale of the surveillance and its (eventual) misuse.
It takes at least a modest understanding of math and computers to understand
the gravity of such a dragnet, which is very discouraging to me. And when
white house reps defend themselves with gems like, _" informing people about
false claims isn't necessarily what we do,"_ is even less reassuring.

On that note, an interesting article on acm.org was recently posted about
about how politics, and not encryption, is the only way to make it change. I
think the reason why a lot of us invest so heavily in encryption solutions is
because the above makes us so incredibly cynical that politics will achieve
anything.

~~~
Wingman4l7
> I think the reason why a lot of us invest so heavily in encryption solutions
> is because the above makes us so incredibly cynical that politics will
> achieve anything.

That approach is very dangerous. Basically, if we don't push for political
change and just resort to highly technical fixes, then that leaves 95% of the
rest of the population out in the cold -- and if [most] everyone else isn't
using crypto, how are we supposed to communicate with them?

I credit Cory Doctorow with an excellent explanation of this, which he coins
"nerd determinism" in his piece "The problem with nerd politics":
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/may/14/problem-
ner...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/may/14/problem-nerd-
politics) _(a direct link to the podcast of said column, for those on the
go:[http://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_229/Cory_D...](http://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_229/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_229_The_problem_with_nerd_politics.mp3)
)_

~~~
MattyRad
Yes, I agree. I wasn't saying that we should pursue nerd determinism, only
that cynicism with such a political system makes some us more inclined to find
non-political solutions. But the unfortunate reality is that it is not enough,
and we need to get involved in politics, however painful that may be.

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D9u
One hand doesn't know what the other is doing and our President has the gall
to espouse "accountability?"

This is typical bluster and buck-passing, and I am disgusted!

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Vivtek
Drip, drip, drip...

~~~
spikels
It's not true, it's not true, it's not true, it's old news

~~~
Vivtek
Old news in a new context is tantamount to fresh.

