In the first place we have granted to God, and by this our present charter confirmed for us and our heirs forever that the English Church shall be free, and shall have her rights entire, and her liberties inviolate; and we will that it be thus observed; which is apparent from this that the freedom of elections, which is reckoned most important and very essential to the English Church, we, of our pure and unconstrained will, did grant, and did by our charter confirm and did obtain the ratification of the same from our lord, Pope Innocent III, before the quarrel arose between us and our barons: and this we will observe, and our will is that it be observed in good faith by our heirs forever. ++We have also granted to all freemen of our kingdom, for us and our heirs forever, all the underwritten liberties, to be had and held by them and their heirs, of us and our heirs forever.++
> If you're going to say your data not safe in Google's hands, then your data just isn't safe on the internet which I think is a needlessly extreme position to take.
Google isn't the internet.
Dump gmail, FB and other spy holes. Use public key crypto. Take your own network back.
So basically communicating online only with people that will use pubkey-crypto? I think that's a needless extreme. Also, what happens when everyone does that and the government makes crypto illegal? You're back to the original problem, the abusive government. That being said, I did just suggest encryption in an earlier post today... but that was before I started getting the feeling this problem goes deeper into the government than just a small gov-agency & some cellphone companies.
The problem with PGP is that friction is in every message you send. For every email you have to make the decision about encrypting the message and entering your passphrase. It's a hassle.
The reason I recommend Bitmessage is because after overcoming the friction of installing it, it's frictionless. You don't have to remember passphrases or anything. It also has advantages over PGP-encrypted email like deniability, built-in spam minimization, broadcast messages (like Twitter), chan boards, etc.
The phrase "direct access" was used in the original Guardian article that made the accusation and was a core part of the accusation, hence it's not surprising it's been used in the denial.
The WSJ article was about NSA requesting CDRs from Verizon. This is not the same as having unrestricted access to private user data as the presentation titled PRISM claims.
The strange thing is that just having a presentation is usually not enough for the HN crowd. If it would have been, I would never have to execute on any of my ideas beyond the presentation stage. Personally, I really don't think some making a presentation is really evidence of anything.
I'm really not sure why HNers reacted differently in this instance though.
Sorry, kind of have to throw "benefit of the doubt" out the window when dealing with "massive state-wide surveillance programs that have no transparent oversight."
> Since the program is secret, it’s hard to say for sure. But the NSA is probably using a software technique called data mining to look for patterns that could be a sign of terrorist activity.
Mr. Lee is assuming a whole lot. I don't trust journalism that tries to steer me into thinking the government is just watching out for us, especially when they've just been caught spying on us.
I don't think it's a stretch to assert that the intelligence apparatus generally seeks to combat America's enemies and protect her populace. It's doubtful that this type of surveillance was conceived assome sort of systematic attempt to suppress and harm the American people. It's just plain old spying. I wouldn't question their motives, only their appalling and draconian means.
