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BoneKracker
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 Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 12:28 am Post subject: Will Obama Preside Over the Coming of Big Brother? |
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While this sounds political, it's an article in CSO, a cyber-security industry journal. This is timely in that the CIPSA legislation, against which there was great public backlash, is back on the House floor to be voted on again this Friday. It has supposedly been revised, but the revisions are nothing but lip service (for example, saying that the Government will only be allowed to use the Uber-Meta-Database-of-Everything for certain Official Purposes).
| Quote: | Will Obama preside over the coming of Big Brother?
Privacy advocates and civil libertarians say among the president's broken promises is a failure to restrain the NSA's growing domestic surveillance
If President Barack Obama is going to win a second term, he may have to do it without the support of privacy and civil liberties organizations, including those in information and personal security.
Increasingly the president, who was expected to fulfill the dreams of civil libertarians by creating a more open, transparent and less-intrusive government, is instead being viewed as a nightmare.
Many of the complaints are focused on broken promises regarding the aftermath of 9/11: The president pledged to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and it remains open. He attacked the Patriot Act as a candidate, but it also remains. And according to his critics, while he slammed President Bush's tactics in the "war on terror," he has now embraced and expanded most of them, including the killing of U.S. citizens abroad who are deemed to be terrorists.
But for cyber-privacy advocates, the major concern is that they believe the Big-Brother and "thought police" nightmare of George Orwell's "1984" could be a reality by 2013, when the National Security Agency's new data center is due to open at the Utah National Guard's Camp Williams, south of Salt Lake City in Bluffdale.
Some in the infosec and privacy community say it is not so much about who is president as it is about the reach, power and inertia of the intelligence establishment. Whatever, the reason, the coming Utah Data Center is expected to give a whole new meaning to the concept of Big Data.
NSA, which already has vast powers to sift and analyze digital communications by people with the bland job description of "traffic analyst," is expanding those powers to the point where, according to James Bamford, writing last month in Wired magazine, it will be able to intercept, store and analyze, "all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails-- parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital 'pocket litter.'"
The center will also be dedicated to breaking codes, since "much of the data that the center will handle -- financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications -- will be heavily encrypted," Bamford writes.
The publicly stated goal of the center is to protect the nation from cyber attack. But privacy advocates fear that the data collection power could extend far beyond spying on the nation's enemies.
They point to the fact that at the groundbreaking of the center in January 2011, nobody from the Department of Homeland Security (the agency whose mission is to guard civilian networks from cyber attacks) spoke. Instead, it was CIA veteran Glenn A. Gaffney. They point to reports that the NSA is increasingly relying on private firms to mine data, because they don't need a search warrant. Only government searches and seizures are limited by the Constitution.
Bamford reported that William Binney, 68, a former NSA crypto-mathematician, told him that once data is collected and stored, everything a person does, including "financial transactions or travel or anything" can be charted on a graph. Bamford said Binney told him, while holding his thumb and forefinger close together, "We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state." |
| Quote: | Privacy advocates see the pending Cyber Intelligence Sharing Protection Act (CISPA) in Congress as enabling Big-Brother-style domestic surveillance, and wonder why Obama is not doing more to lobby his fellow Democrats in Congress to oppose it.
Sharon Bradford Franklin, writing in US News on April 18, said that, "Although we appreciate the Intelligence Committee's efforts to improve the bill and willingness to engage in a dialogue with privacy advocates, the changes in its most current draft do not come close to addressing the civil liberties threats posed by the bill, and some of the proposals would actually make CISPA worse." |
http://www.csoonline.com/article/704951/will-obama-preside-over-the-coming-of-big-brother-?page=1
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pjp
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 12:33 am Post subject: |
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lol @ coming
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 12:45 am Post subject: |
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Liberal media. The editor probably changed the title from "Obama is Big Fucking Brother!!!" 
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pjp
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 12:57 am Post subject: |
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I'm not sure when it happened, but we only really started to worry with the last POTUS. By then it was too late.
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 1:10 am Post subject: |
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| pjp wrote: | | I'm not sure when it happened, but we only really started to worry with the last POTUS. By then it was too late. |
This has exploded exponentially since then. They were doing targeted data collection and the general public was going into labor about it. Now, this administration is asking permission to collect EVERYTHING on EVERYBODY, and only a handful of privacy activists are making noise.
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pitcrawler
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 3:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Yeah I know. Remember the Patriot Act? |
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b0nafide
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 5:40 pm Post subject: |
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How is this datacenter going to prevent people from exchanging flash drives in the middle of the forest?
Well, let's see, first we listen to all the phone calls with key words like "forest".
Then we burn down all the forests and make flash drives illegal? That should do it... 
I wonder how the datacenter's sarcasm detector works...
I think "I'll meet you in the forest with the flash drive" should be the new "goodbye" as far as cell phone conversations go, these days. |
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 8:58 pm Post subject: |
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| pitcrawler wrote: | | Yeah I know. Remember the Patriot Act? |
The Patriot Act expired as planned. Oh, wait... instead, Obama made it permanent, built BigBrotherNet, and started assassinating people willy-nilly.
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pjp
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| Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2012 10:55 pm Post subject: |
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Expired? When?
Reauthorizations.
It was extended in '04, '05 & '06. Obama extended from '10 - '11. Congress extended until the end of '11. And last year, Obama signed another extension for 4 years. And every reference to expiration is in the form of "was set to expire" (or similar).
Both parties of congress own this one. Arguing over nuances of its abuse seems rather pointless, except to emphasize said abuse.
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 12:41 am Post subject: |
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I was being sarcastic. The hint is where I said, "Oh, wait...". 
My point is that it was thought to be a temporary necessity, so its re-authorization ten years after the fact is a bigger issue than its re-authorization four years after the fact. More notably, the proponent of the Brobdingnagian expansion of surveillance to a scale that would have seemed ridiculous in 2004, has been the Executive Branch under Obama. Congressmen aren't coming up with these ideas.
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Muso
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 1:22 am Post subject: |
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According to VP Lunch Bucket Joe, Obama is the "Big" Brother.
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pjp
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 1:45 am Post subject: |
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| BoneKracker wrote: | I was being sarcastic. The hint is where I said, "Oh, wait...". :?
My point is that it was thought to be a temporary necessity, so its re-authorization ten years after the fact is a bigger issue than its re-authorization four years after the fact. More notably, the proponent of the Brobdingnagian expansion of surveillance to a scale that would have seemed ridiculous in 2004, has been the Executive Branch under Obama. Congressmen aren't coming up with these ideas. |
Sorry, missed that. I thought you meant it expired but Obama replaced it with something.
IMO that it was reauthorized 4yrs later was a sign it wasn't going away for a very, very long time. Obama has just taken to the next level what Bush first decided was necessary. Except for the both of them being inexcusable (Bush now in hindsight, given Obama), the noteworthy point regarding Obama was his campaigning about how evil Bush was for doing it.
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 2:41 am Post subject: |
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| pjp wrote: | | BoneKracker wrote: | I was being sarcastic. The hint is where I said, "Oh, wait...".
My point is that it was thought to be a temporary necessity, so its re-authorization ten years after the fact is a bigger issue than its re-authorization four years after the fact. More notably, the proponent of the Brobdingnagian expansion of surveillance to a scale that would have seemed ridiculous in 2004, has been the Executive Branch under Obama. Congressmen aren't coming up with these ideas. |
Sorry, missed that. I thought you meant it expired but Obama replaced it with something.
IMO that it was reauthorized 4yrs later was a sign it wasn't going away for a very, very long time. Obama has just taken to the next level what Bush first decided was necessary. Except for the both of them being inexcusable (Bush now in hindsight, given Obama), the noteworthy point regarding Obama was his campaigning about how evil Bush was for doing it. |
Politics aside, the facts are that eight years ago we had some spooks tapping phone conversations and an ad-hoc program by which AT&T routed selected communications through the NSA for monitoring. Now, we are on the verge of having a mind-boggling mostrosity of a data center capable of decyrpting and algorithmically processing and storing virtually all of our communications, transactions, movements, etc. That is a quantum leap in authoritarianism making our civil rights like Frodo's testicles in the clutches of a twitchy Balrog. It's all been done behind closed doors, and with little oversight -- none of the "new era of transparency" Obama promised. We are indeed moving rapidly in the direction of the reality Orwell portrayed.
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pjp
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 2:56 am Post subject: |
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No meaningful argument with that.
But I believe Obama is just a cog in the big machine. It started long ago, he's just the next one to keep it turning. Don't miss the forest for the trees, that sort of thing.
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 3:32 am Post subject: |
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| pjp wrote: | No meaningful argument with that.
But I believe Obama is just a cog in the big machine. It started long ago, he's just the next one to keep it turning. Don't miss the forest for the trees, that sort of thing. |
I agree. It's just fun rubbing the noses of the people who were screaming about "Bush id de Devil! Bush Hilter!". Where are they all now?
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pjp
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 4:03 am Post subject: |
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Absolutely. It's sad, really. Because you'd hope they complained about it under Bush because it actually concerned them, not just because it was a Republican. Sadly that seems to be the only concern. And if Romney makes Obama look like a Freedom Fighter, they'll really be livid.
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pitcrawler
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 3:19 pm Post subject: |
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| BoneKracker wrote: | | pjp wrote: | No meaningful argument with that.
But I believe Obama is just a cog in the big machine. It started long ago, he's just the next one to keep it turning. Don't miss the forest for the trees, that sort of thing. |
I agree. It's just fun rubbing the noses of the people who were screaming about "Bush id de Devil! Bush Hilter!". Where are they all now? |
Still here: "Bush is teh Patriot Act evil mastermind!1"
But yes, Obama is just another cog in the wheel. However, it doesn't absolve Bush of any of his immense suckishness. |
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 10:07 pm Post subject: |
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| pitcrawler wrote: | | BoneKracker wrote: | | pjp wrote: | No meaningful argument with that.
But I believe Obama is just a cog in the big machine. It started long ago, he's just the next one to keep it turning. Don't miss the forest for the trees, that sort of thing. |
I agree. It's just fun rubbing the noses of the people who were screaming about "Bush id de Devil! Bush Hilter!". Where are they all now? |
Still here: "Bush is teh Patriot Act evil mastermind!1"
But yes, Obama is just another cog in the wheel. However, it doesn't absolve Bush of any of his immense suckishness. |
No, it does not. But, people are in denial of the fact that Obama has gone an order of magnitude farther, taking it to a whole new level where the Government has a mammoth database containing virtually all of everybody's private information and has effectively no constraints how to plunder and mine it, where they have phenomenal infrastructure capable of eavesdropping on almost everything and analyzing it in real time to heuristically identify "suspicious" communication, where they are building monster data centers with computers of unheard-of power that can rapidly decrypt almost anything in common use, and where the President has suspended habeas corpus and due process for American citizens and is ordering their indefinite detention or assassination -- and most people are just saying, "Meh".
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pjp
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| Posted: Fri Apr 27, 2012 10:55 pm Post subject: |
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| pitcrawler wrote: | | Still here: "Bush is teh Patriot Act evil mastermind!1" |
Congress passed it unanimously, so he wasn't the mastermind, just the first to wield it.
Bush's was Agent Orange vs. Obama's Little Boy and Fat Man.
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2012 12:46 am Post subject: |
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| pjp wrote: | | pitcrawler wrote: | | Still here: "Bush is teh Patriot Act evil mastermind!1" |
Congress passed it unanimously, so he wasn't the mastermind, just the first to wield it.
Bush's was Agent Orange vs. Obama's Little Boy and Fat Man. |
But ssshhh, don't tell anybody, because we don't want to admit we took the "Liber" out of "Liberal" a long time ago.
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pjp
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| Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2012 2:50 am Post subject: |
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Al Gore
Al Sharpton
Al Franken
Al Qaida
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BoneKracker
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| Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2012 3:01 am Post subject: |
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