Privacy, Government, Surveillance, and You.

Well, an even cheaper approach would be Federally mandated standards that all State ID's have to conform to, so that they could be accepted nationwide. That would amount to a de facto national ID system, managed by the individual states. Getting them all to agree to a common set of standards would be no minor issue, though.

That's probably the best solution, certain the least big brotherish.

"Federal officials threatened to fine Yahoo $250, 000 per day if it did not hand over information about its users to the government, according to unclassified court documents released on Thursday."

So they basically had no choice. They were essentially told, "Give us the data or we will destroy you." Got it.

Yahoo is the last big one of the small companies that shall be crushed.

The latest.

Do they have the right under existing law to make such a demand of Yahoo!?

@Speedy: Your link doesnt seem to have anything to do with Yahoo. Instead it describes an NSA project called "Treasuremap"; which itself is very interesting:

"Treasure Map is a vast NSA campaign to map the global internet. The program doesn’t just seek to chart data flows in large traffic channels, such as telecommunications cables. Rather, it seeks to identify and locate every single device that is connected to the internet somewhere in the world—every smartphone, tablet, and computer—”anywhere, all the time,” according to NSA documents."

Yeah, I should've been more specific. It's definitely on the wider topic, though.

Even if they don't have the rights, I don't think the NSA thinks the law applies to themselves.

edited 14th Sep '14 6:55:03 PM by speedyboris

The FBI's facial recognition system is live. Great, so innocent civilians will be lumped in with criminals in this mug shot database. Lovely.

It's the Daily Mail, so I'd take that with a grain of salt.

However, if it's true, it's gonna be very, very troublesome.

Here's a CNN article

Well, then, all I can say is: I'm glad I don't live in the UK or the US. Because that shit would make me feel paranoid.

Now, what are the odds of the NSA checking out my posts here?

edited 17th Sep '14 1:25:38 PM by Quag15

Sort of a tangent, but: Joseph Gordon-Levitt wants to play Edward Snowden in upcoming Oliver Stone-directed film. I'd go see it.

@Quag: The NSA doesnt have to come here, specifically, to pick up on your postings. Their goal is to archive all internet traffic around the world and subject it to keyword searches.

I know. It was a bit of a joke.

Oh god, not that shit. As much as the PRISM can of worms had to be revealed, what Snowden did later made me label him an idiot if not an outright bastard.

Look, I get that there are no good guys in politics, but running away to a country that blatantly ignores civil liberties, harasses if not outright murders journalists unwilling to spread the official propaganda and oppresses people for pretty damn much anything? That's a very special kind of Moral Myopia.

Oliver Stone is also quite tinfoil-y.

I'm not too keen on drama-biographies regardless of the circumstances. We really shouldn't be blurring the line between fiction and reality on controversial figures, much less ones whose controversy isn't even about themselves.

edited 22nd Sep '14 4:16:33 PM by Pykrete

@Not So Badass: That very well might all be true, it doesnt change the validity of what he revealed, though...

Eh, I'm more than willing to write off Snowden as a traitor. Even if just for his defection to Russia if nothing else.

edited 22nd Sep '14 4:21:15 PM by LeGarcon

The hilariously anti-climactic post-PRISM nature of his revelations didn't endear him or his handlers me either, what with Greenwald going "all the SUPER AWESOME STUFF is totes coming next week guyz" and most of it being fairly vanilla. Ooh, the NSA fucked up Syria's internet access. The poor diddumses.

edited 22nd Sep '14 4:23:05 PM by Achaemenid

You and me both. Assange at least had the decency to run to Sweden, and then hide in the consulate of some third-rate banana republic.

Snowden himself, of course, isnt the point. The information he revealed is, and I'm still grateful for that.

You see, I don't really see how people can call him a traitor for not wanting to face a secret trail for blowing the whistle on the US government's illegal mass surveillance. I'll still be grateful to him if he had gone and taken salvation in the 7th layer of the inferno afterwrds.

Not that he would of have a snowden's chance in hell

edited 24th Sep '14 7:54:19 AM by joeyjojo

However anyone feels individually about Snowden, be it that he is a hero, a traitor, or somewhere in between, the problem here is that he has become a symbolic figure and a distraction from the issues that he uncovered. How we treat whistleblowers is important, but even more important is the revelations about the NSA that he provided.