Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Another Thought Experiment:
Even if the NSA Stopped Spying On Americans....

... they'd still get all of the same data. The NSA would just get it from the other members of the "Five Eyes", a cabal of English-speaking spy agencies.

So the Yanks would spy on the Brits, the Poms would spy on the Canucks, the Canadians would spy on the Americans, the Aussies would spy on the Kiwis, who would in turn, spy on the Ozzies and everybody would share everything, like a giant Playschool of Spooks.

As for the rest of us, we're fighting to keep some remaining tatters of our privacy, but we're kind of like one of those Japanese soldiers who were hiding in the Phillipine jungles- this fight is long over and we've lost. The spooks have been wiretapping all of us for well over a decade and, unless we're all going to march on Ft. Meade, hang Emperor Alexander and burn the place to ashes*, I don't know of fuck-all that can be done to thwart it. As I've written before, no matter who we elect to clean this up, they'll fall in love with the power at their command.

And even if we were to change the law and get the NSA out of the business of running the total information network, we have no guarantees that they'd pay attention.

So while we can keep on trying to regain our privacy and 4th Amendment rights, it's kind of like standing at Masada and watching the 10th Roman Legion building the siege ramp.
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* I am not advocating or proposing either action.  This is only a thought experiment.

9 comments:

  1. Well, kind of like standing at Masada and watching the 10th Roman Legion building the siege ramp. Except for the mass suicide part. I hope!

    - BT

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  2. Which brings to mind a scene from near the end of Monty Python's The Life of Brian, but I think that's quite not the levity we were looking for, so ... :).

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  3. Except for the mass suicide part. I hope!

    Maybe more like the Alamo, then?

    a scene from near the end of Monty Python's The Life of Brian

    You mean this?

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  4. The Alamo presumes we all die too. I *hope* it doesn't come down to that...

    Regarding The Life of Brian, I meant this scene. Which, mentioned on the same page as Masada, sort of, uhm... is not too tasteful? Heh.

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  5. You may be interested to know that Google Chrome has just this morning (Wed July 17) started blocking the EB Misfit blog with the following message:

    Danger: Malware Ahead!

    Google Chrome has blocked access to this page on eb-misfit.blogspot.com.
    Content from www.balloon-juice.com, a known malware distributor, has been inserted into this web page. Visiting this page now is very likely to infect your computer with malware.

    Just FYI: Mozilla Firefox does not give this warning for this page. "Babies In Open", "Kill This Character", "JAEBM-2", and "Two in the Heart" do not appear to be affected in Chrome, but this page continues to be affected. Inquiring minds want to know...

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  6. The problem was that she linked to a photo of Tunch at Balloon Juice, and unfortunately Balloon Juice got hacked. The solution, sad to say, is to un-link the photo of Tunch and ask Google to re-scan her blog :(.

    What kind of SOB would hack the blog of a guy grieving for his cat is a topic I'll leave for a day when my blood isn't boiling so badly...

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  7. The kind of SOB who would do that should only die soon, painfully and often.

    I replaced the linked photo of Tunch with one I had downloaded when I wrote the post. So it should all be good.

    (Now, how do I get them to rescan my blog...)

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  8. It appears to have resolved itself, either because BJ got itself rescanned or because Blogger (owned by Google) automagically rescanned you when you saved the page. Phew, that red Malware screen definitely is scary!

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  9. It would be a bit harder for foreign intelligence services to spy on Americans than the other way round. Quite a bit of the world's land lines go through the US. I'm sure the NSA taps them all.

    That doesn't invalidate the point that all those services can still trade data with each other. Any communications Americans had with Europe, Australia, or certain parts of Asia would be recorded regardless.

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