For even after Snowden's leaks, the idiots in the spy agencies can't keep their electronic yaps shut.
General Keith Alexander, the then director of the NSA, was briefed that the Guardian was prepared to make a largely symbolic act of destroying documents from Edward Snowden last July, new documents reveal.I am going to restate my guidance on listening to what the spooks say in public: Every word should be taken as a lie, including the words "and" and "the". If Clapper were to tell you that the Sun was to rise in the east tomorrow, you would be well advised to stock up on flashlight batteries.
The revelation that Alexander and Obama's director of national intelligence, James Clapper, were advised on the Guardian's destruction of several hard disks and laptops contrasts markedly with public White House statements that distanced the US from the decision.
It's getting hard to keep the outrage going. The revelations of how those fuckers are watching us all just keep piling up. We learned last week that if you even look up information about the Tor browser, the NSA will watch you because they think you're a potential terrorist. Go take pictures of a train or a dam and the FBI may keep a file on you for thirty years.
At this point, one would have to presume that the NSA is indeed keeping phone data, including content, on everyone in the country.
Here's a "what if" idea: Many of us have free long distance. So say that two people are going to leave their homes for awhile. Person A calls person B on their landline, person B answers. Then one of them puts the handset next to a radio tuned into a news/talk radio station and they both leave and go about their business. If enough people were to do this, the NSA's servers would be filled with millions of hours of NPR/Limbaugh/Beck or whoever your local blabbermouth is.
The problem is...wasting so many hours with random radio babble would justify (in somebody's mind) opening a dozen of the mega data storage centers, a new "bureau of sifting through recorded data", and thousands of employees in said new "bureau of checking on what is being recorded to see if it actually is worth keeping forever."
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