northwest

Are you smoking again?

Signal jammers would be a problem as well.

I love the idea of having my own surveillance drone.

That's the point. Everybody loves to do surveillance but nobody wants to be the potential target. See the issue here?

What I'm saying is: Should society decide to want to abandon privacy, then it must be in a symmetric and very controlled manner. Everybody must then have the same degree of transparency over anybody else. Asymmetric transparency relationships are not ethic and very unhealthy for the stability of society, mid- long-term at least.

Unlimited range is the thing that makes this important (sexy for the average consumer).

On the receiving end, it means you will never be able to know who's watching you.

Your only defense against unwanted surveillance (by whomever) would then be to shoot the drone down.

(EDIT: So if the team is smart, it will sell to both sides and launch a kickstarter for a drone-detection-and-defense system.)

RetroShare seems to be what you're looking for: http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/

It's the encrypted, decentralized/p2p, open-source communication suite (it also allows you to stay anonymous). You get:

- VoIP

- Chat (incl. group chat)

- Messaging

- Filesharing

- Forums, Channels

This kind of solution is called "darknet": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darknet_(file_sharing)

Exactly, see the "Five Eyes": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement

why me? Was it something I said on Twitter or Facebook? Did I just look at him the wrong way without realising?

Yeah, don't think too far - it's probably your skin color that makes you a terrrist.

The UK should be kicked out of the EU. Until they learn how to behave.

Effing cheap intimidation pricks. One day it will come back to haunt them.

Well 9/11 would have seemed a perfect fantasy on 9/10/2001.

Not at all. This scenario was well documented by the responsible government agencies before it happened.

So, by government logic, we'd have to start a War on Government Employee-ism...

EDIT: Seriously, just this 1 thought would warrant HUGE articles in papers like the New York Times. Obviously, this will never happen.

But one should not. "Terrorism", for the tiny, tiny little bit that happens in our country, was not here before.

Let's just switch to a sane foreign policy and be done with "terrorism". At least mid- and long-term, that's the only thing that will stop the recruiting of new "terrorists".

Always keep in mind that the government's cheapest manipulation strategy is fear (it always works):

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/07/constitutional-expert...

And for some more numbers that we should talk to our family and friends about:

You are 1048 times more likely to die from a car accident than from a terrorist attack

taken from: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/06/fear-of-terror-makes-...

Conclusion: Terrorism is actually not a problem, but they want us to believe that.

Or you just book a round trip with a few hours inside the US and you're good to go for the next 12 months in your home country.

This way you can opt for the wait-and-see approach regarding the evolution of the surveillance state trend and its ramifications.

That works, thanks!

The lesson IMO is to rebuild the whole political system, on a foundation made of sane rules. (And that should obviously include all government agencies, especially those which have been corrupting democracy for a few decades now.)

EDIT: Don't forget that one of the earlier whistle blowers said (a few months back) that Obama had been put under surveillance by the NSA as well [0], which means

a) you should expect him to have been vetted by the powers in place before being admitted as a presidential candidate by that 1 of the 2 parties available,

b) "they" have stuff on him and can handle him like a puppet that he seems to have become.

Ergo, it's not about which puppet you elect, it's about the system.

[0] http://www.peterbcollins.com/2013/06/19/boiling-frogs-blockb...

Also, let's keep in mind that Obama has lied to the public when he said that there was no abuse by the NSA.

(Not that we can expect different behavior from any of the future Presidents, nor from the recent ones.)

The thing is, the owners of the private prisons want to get richer and invest serious money so their cells are kept as full as possible:

http://www.republicreport.org/2012/marijuana-lobby-illegal/

See "2.) Private Prisons Corporations"

Lobbying is legalized corruption, in most cases.

It's obvious that we need to get rid of it if we want to fix the country.

EDIT 4: Even having set about:config -> browser.cache.disk.enable -> false, I have to close/open the browser twice in order for the cache (and tracking) to disappear.

Expect around a 1% chance of winning.

Same here. This is definitely not ok.

EDIT 1: I also checked "Clear history when Firefox closes" and included "Cache" in the definition of "history". And the tracking is still happening. So either the site uses another tracking method in addition to the etag method or there is a big f#ck-up in FF.

EDIT 2: The tracking even continues when I check "Always use private browsing mode" and then close the browser and open it again.

EDIT 3: Even a complete removal and a clean install of FF (without any add-ons which may interfere) lets the tacking happen, for both the case of "EDIT 1" and "EDIT 2".

So this pretty certainly seems to be a bug.

“Most certainly our nation’s security will be enhanced.”

Because we're all so close to dying from terrorism:

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/08/president-obama-the-o...

I'm positive it will stay alive on these (b/c peers can stay anonymous): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darknet_%28file_sharing%29

"Were we to provide positive or negative responses to requests such as yours, our adversaries' compilation of the information provided would reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security."

You just can't be more full of sh#t.

I fear for Wyden's safety.

Even if this was an issue - There is no point in living an oppressed life.

Maybe it's time we start making sacrifices now so the future will be better and we don't leave our kids in an even bigger mess.

Keep in mind, we've already shown that we're OK with messing up the planet for future generations: We haven't taken any serious measures against

- climate change,

- overpopulation (this is 1 "meta" problem which reinforces most others),

- wealth inequality (poverty is now "the new normal"),

- pollution,

- etc.

Anybody with an IQ over 80 who's read the recent news about the mass surveillance in place had to reasonably assume that these privacy breaches are just 'the tip of the iceberg'.

The only new thing here is that 2 senators seem to have the balls to talk about it.

Besides that, nobody should trust Congress to resolve the real issues. Of course they'll try to sell this illusion to us, but the minds are already too corrupted.

Not sure if they already allow having your own domain, but the rest is covered: https://mykolab.com/ based in non-EU country Switzerland. Of course it's not free, but keep in mind: if it's free, you are probably the product being sold.

If you need to use your own domain, set up your own server or VPS and install https://kolab.org/ (it's all listed on https://prism-break.org/)

First of all, high school and college education is supposed to be covered by tax money. It is in the country's general interest.

But no, your tax money goes to more important issues, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...

Having some kind of clearance also means: power over other people.

Having power over other people can corrupt any human being and s/he may start to actually like it.

Anything short of a very clear revolution (regarding the NSA and the political system in general) won't solve the real basic issues.

I just hope it will be a rational and calm revolution, not a bloody one.