Happy Face

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPd4EZKMggU

..but trust them.

I am stunned. The man that leaked all this information is Ed Snowden. He has given a full interview here.... http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance Bradley manning faces the death penalty for his leaks. The courage of this bloke is incredible. Gave me shivers reading his story.

Following on from the very carefully worded denials of top bosses at Facebook and Google..... http://www.washingto...87_story_1.html Again, I recommend the whole article, which details government (NSA) equipment installed at the premises of the companies, which don't allow the companies themselves access to the queries being made on their data by intelligence officers. Incredible stuff. Most often used for e-mails, but it handles chat, video, images, documents and other files as well. No denials from government at all. They have confirmed this happens and the only regret being expressed by Clapper, Obama et al is that we know about it now.

I've not done much. It doesn't need a revolution though. It just needs an adversarial press to shine a light on wrong doing. Rather than the corporate owned stenographers printing the official line only. We've all suspected this has been going on for years. Senators like Wyden have been telling anyone who will listen that the patriot act is being implemented in far broader ways than anyone was being told, but the main news agencies have largely ignored that. The story has only been broken by an independent journalist....like wikileaks broke the last story as big as this. I have donated to both Greenwald (who relies on reader donations) and wikileaks. I recommend everyone else do the same... http://m.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/04/reader-funded-journalism http://shop.wikileaks.org/donate

Gotcha. I can see the bone of contention like. I don't like that it's going this way with music too. I buy an album. I pay once and it's mine forever. I can listen anytime anywhere. I pay for a month of spotify and I own nothing. Next month I have to pay again to listen to what I paid for last month... and that's never ending. You aren't building a music library of your own you're constantly borrowing. I understand that they aren't necessarily doing the spotify model with games yet. But it's not inconceivable that people want to save some money and they cancel the broadband thinking they can make do with access from work.... they should still be able to play games they have paid for.

Still don't understand. Can I unplug my new Xbox for a week and not lose out?

Adam Hart Davis took the picture used in the prism logo. http://gawker.com/a-british-television-host-took-the-photo-used-in-the-ns-512093707

That's a depressing read. Think I'm too old for this shit now. I've played red dead redemption 3 or 4 times in 2013 and that's the sum total of my gaming. The idea of logging on my console every 24 hours or being punished is barely comprehensible. I feel like my nanna trying to work out how video plus is supposed to work.

We might as well not jail murderers then eh. Someone else will just do murders. Jesus wept. The apathy towards government criminality, and the criminalization of whistleblowing shouldn't still surprise me. But its one thing to be jaded about it, its another thing altogether to ask for it to be swept under the carpet.

Someone else. Nixon was forced to resign having ordered the theft of confidential information on one US citizen. Obama is overseing private information being collected from millions of innocent civilians. The replacement should then be in fear of the law, not beyond it.

Germany still the most surveiled country in Europe? The old fears die hard apparently. Stay frosty Parky

Another Day, another huge scoop. "Boundless Informant" is the tool they use to collate the data mined globally. 97 BILLION pieces of intelligence gathered globally in March 2013. The US is monitored more than Russia... Intelligence official lied to congress (a crime) when the said they could not get figures on how much surveilance was underway in the US. Read the full story... http://www.guardian....obal-datamining

There's no evidence to say they do that as yet like. I just see it as the logical way it would be used by a tricky dicky type if they are allowed to profile as they seem to be.

See my long post earlier. I am not worried about my individual details bring observed. Its an impossibility to observe everyone with human eyes anyway. The concern to me is about population profiling and the subversion of democracy. Closing my gmail account would do nothing about that. Its the behavior of government that needs changing. Not the behavior of citizens.

Only time I've honestly noticed it is when I try to watch Kermode uncut in feedly or flipboard. But then I just watch it on youtube instead.

I did not inhale, I did not have sexual relations with that woman, they did not have direct access to our servers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2013/jun/07/thomas-ince-england-under-21-blackpool

David Simon (Wire creator) makes a much more cogent argument than Toonpack against exactly what these leaks reveal. I disagree, and assume it was written prior to the web revelations as it focuses only on the phone details...but a good read nevertheless. Much more compelling than the depressing anti-Greenwald bile currently spreading around Twitter. http://davidsimon.com/we-are-shocked-shocked/

The latest leak to me is the least suprising. The best thing about it is that it's released just as Obama flies to China to complain about their cyber attacks. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/06/president-obama-to-press-chinese-president-on-cybersecurity/

Changed the title because the leaks keep on coming.... http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2013/jun/07/obama-cyber-directive-full-text

We have an unprecedented level of secret state surveillance. Cold war quotes have nothing to say about the increasing level of government snooping in a 20 year old technology and the data mining that's been going on for only 6 years. I am not naive. No-one on the planet is entirely free. We are all governed to some degree by laws, rules, taboos and convention. The number of citizens surveilled has risen exponentially though, and the oversight on that surveillance has reduced inversely in proportion to it. The interpretation of the laws we abide by are kept from us more than ever. Shrugging your shoulders and claiming indifference as the net is cast ever wider is fine. It offers nothing to the debate though does it, neither support or opposition. I thought generation X, too cool for school, indifference went out of fashion in the 90s.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jun/07/uk-gathering-secret-intelligence-nsa-prism How the PRISM program works in the UK

The fact is that any terrorist, whistleblower or journalist worth their salt is already using these sorts of methods to ensure they are working in secret... http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/the-grid/after-doj-probe-high-level-encryption-online-anonymizers-become No-one is planning the next 9/11 on Facebook. The military rationale is absurd and those making the claim with straight faces should be hounded out of office.

...it does open the gates for legal action though. Previously all attempts to sue the government for abuses of surveillance power were rejected by the courts because the program was so secret that no-one knew if their data was being collected or not. Now that it has been proven that basically EVERYONE is under surveillance, those claims will be flying back in...probably in a joint effort under the auspices of the ACLU.