On Thu, 1 Aug 2013, bryanm@acsalaska.net wrote:
> AT&T gives the NSA direct, total access to the massive amounts of
> data flowing through their system. No warrants, no suspicion, and
> how exactly do you opt out?
>
> https://www.eff.org/nsa/hepting
>
> By all means, let's not give Google a pass, but neither does AT&T
> deserve one.
I think I've said repeatedly that all commercial & government entities need
to be watched. The difference, though, is that many people here voluntarily
share much more private information in Google services. Information that
AT&T isn't going to have access to typically. More so, in that both Google
and Facebook have been building meta-networks of relationships for users
through things like facial recognition in uploaded photos and so on.
Whatever AT&T may be doing for the government, because of SSL and other
technologies they can only gleam a fraction of what you serve up on a silver
platter to Google. That's a fact.
I support the EFF, financially and otherwise, and hope they help keep
everyone accountable. But the reality is that the NSA &
government-authorized carrier snooping is a problem that's much more easily
counterable and subvertable than what we voluntarily place into Google and
social networks.
> Not true. Congress and Bush decided to give AT&T immunity from both
> criminal prosecution and civil lawsuits related to their illegal
> rerouting of customer's conversations. See above link. If you doubt
> that what AT&T is doing is illegal, ask yourself why they would need
> immunity.
>
> Imagine if an apartment complex had cameras in every unit, with the
> feeds routed directly to the government so they could watch just in
> case some tenant is planning a terrorist attack. Then you'd have an
> idea of where AT&T's morality stands.
No, it is true. The EFF has multiple cases going on to pry more information
out of the government to expose the amount of survelliance we're on. Bush's
preemptive actions only covered specific actions during a specific period of
time. Let's hope they succeed on some of them.
Beyond all that, though, I would merely point out more lack of paranoia on
most of the membership of this list. We have government sanctioned crap
like this going because we, the voting populace, refuse to take
responsibility and hold the liars and weasels we place into positions of
power to account.
What the government does is partly *our* fault. But what Google does to you
is mostly *your* fault.
In the end you have to be able to judge the severity of the threats, and
which ones are most manageable. It helps that bureaucracies are inherently
incompetent and inefficient.
--Arthur Corliss
Live Free or Die
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Received on Thu Aug 1 12:49:03 2013
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Thu Aug 01 2013 - 12:49:03 AKDT