7 ms·

Obama's NSA 'reforms' are little more than a PR attempt to mollify the public

puppetmaster3 13y ago
President OblaBla did a bla bla. That is all the data that you need.
lukejduncan 13y ago
If nothing else comes of this PR stunt I hope it's more energy thrown into the EFF February 11th Campaign. "February 11th: The Day We Fight Back Against NSA Surveillance" https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/01/february-11th-day-we-fight-back-against-nsa-surveillance https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/01/february-11th-day-we-f...
gaius 13y ago
The man who promised to closed Guantanamo Bay... And didn't. They say a country gets the government it deserves, and America deserves Sarah Palin in 2016.
- smoyer 13y ago
  I don't think we got the person we elected in 2008 and 2012 ... what makes you think that Palin would be worse? Have you noticed that after all the "Tea Partyism" during the last election, the Republican party seems to have congealed back into its original form? I really don't see how we elect change without a third party - yet I think the way elections are run (especially financially) virtually guarantees we'll never get that third party. The only possible solution is to pray for grid-lock. Yes ... I really am THAT cynical. But I'm older than most of this crowd and my idealism is spent.
  - r0s 13y ago
    I vote for those trying to change the system to give third parties access to it.
    - smoyer 13y ago
      Yeah ... we're up to about 8% or so right?
      - r0s 13y ago
        Hopefully enough to get more access and funding, but the real goal is more public visibility.
  - notdonspaulding 13y ago
    It's interesting to me that this is exactly the person that the Republicans didn't want to see elected in 2008 (In 2012 I think they wanted him to win, because Romney never had a chance). That so many young people who idealistically embraced him can't stand him now doesn't mean he changed, just that they woke up to who he really was all along. Seriously, no surprises here. If you believed the impossible promises he made on the 2008 campaign trail, I'm sorry, but you were warned. (Incidentally I intend to pay a lot of attention to the negative reporting done on candidates I support in the future, because it represents a worst-case scenario if the pundits actually turn out to be right)
    - smoyer 13y ago
      I agree completely ... and I never said I voted for him but rather that the "corporate we" elected him. On the other hand, I AM a bit surprised that so few of his 2008 promises were even attempted, and that more people didn't revolt over his lack of commitment in 2012. People may not have recognized the impossible promises, but they would have expected an attempt at enacting those policies.
- forgotAgain 13y ago
  As someone who voted for Obama twice (once for change and once against Romney) I will be voting from now on for anyone and everyone who would be new to DC. At this point that's the best hope for change that I can see.
  - ScottWhigham 13y ago
    But Obama was "new to DC" - I don't get your logic here.
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      > But Obama was "new to DC" When he was elected to the Senate, he was new to DC. When he was elected to the Presidency as a sitting US Senator, not so much.
      - ScottWhigham 13y ago
        It's a tough thing. If you vote for someone with no ties to Washington, you are "voting for someone with no experience." If you vote for someone entrenched in DC, you are "voting for a career politician." It's a lose/lose proposition haha
        dragonwriter 13y ago
        Its a lose/lose proposition if you adopt both of these two criteria as absolute criteria: 1) You should not vote for someone with no experience in the the federal government, and 2) You should not vote for someone with experience in the federal government. Of course, these are individually ridiculous criteria in electing a President, and even more ridiculous in combination. Selecting a President requires more than verifying the presence or absence of a "past experience in federal government" line on a resume.
    - notdonspaulding 13y ago
      Obama came from Chicago politics. He was "new to DC" like John Carmack is "new to Occulus Rift". He might be working with a different crew now, but he's bringing a lot of "experience" to bear.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > The man who promised to closed Guantanamo Bay... And didn't. Yeah, I mean its not like Congress passed a law specifically prohibiting the actions the President proposed in order to close the detention facility at Guatanamo Bay. [1] [1] They didn't pass a law, but several, on different occasions.
  - r0s 13y ago
    There's a million ways he could fight that, loudly and publicly. But why would he, when an army of apologists will rationalize and defend any failure.
  - jjoonathan 13y ago
    You mean they passed a law specifically blocking the actions the President took: he gave the executive order to close Guantanamo 2 days after the inauguration. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ClosureOfGuantanamoDetentionFacilities http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ClosureOfGuantana... Sure, he could find a way to push it through, but given the Republicans' historical success at demanding the world from a Democrat with a mandate (e.g. cutting capital gains tax by a third in exchange for childrens' health care), I'm sure their asking price was high.
    - spikels 13y ago
      C'mon it is not the Republicans. At the time that executive order was issued Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. There is no bad team and good team (i.e. your team) but a rotten sport. Your thinking has fallen victim to their divide and conquer strategy.
      - d23 13y ago
        And I think your thinking has fallen victim to a false equivalency.
      - jjoonathan 13y ago
        My point was not that Dems as a party were blameless, only that Obama could plausibly lie anywhere on the fault spectrum for this issue. You're correct to observe that the real fault lies with the political system that encourages the use of bargaining chips, but the people blaming Obama were the only ones saying otherwise. I used CHIP as an example of congress opposing a mandate in order to win concessions. The CHIP issue almost certainly had roughly similar party lines, but given a few hours I'm sure I could dig up 10 examples of party X opposing party Y's mandate to extract concessions regardless of whether X==Y or X!=Y, if that would make you happy.
DanielBMarkham 13y ago
I don't want to do the usual ranting thing, mostly because of how pathetically sad it all is. I will say as a disinterested observer (I do not support either major political party in the U.S.) I'm curious to see if any candidates will run on an anti-surveillance state message in the upcoming presidential elections. We could end up with the same assholes who support all this nonsense going back out and making a bunch more speeches about how bad it all is -- just so they can get elected and continue things as before. People say cynical voters are a problem, but you watch enough of how politics actually works (and has worked over the centuries) and if you don't become refreshingly cynical you're an empty-headed fool and more of a danger to yourself and others than anything else. ADD: Ok. Maybe a little ranting.
- _greim_ 13y ago
  > I'm curious to see if any candidates will run on an anti-surveillance state message in the upcoming presidential elections. The danger of this (from a politician's POV) is that it paints a giant target on your head, to the extent that the public is spooked about bad guys. Especially if something bad happens while you're in power, and the public rises up demanding the ability to catch all the bad guys whatever it takes. If we could learn to not freak out every time J Random Lunatic does a public bad thing, then we wouldn't be handing pro-surveillance politicians the tools to so easily defeat their opponents. Basically this isn't just politicians being evil, it's the symptom of widespread irrationalism.
  - DanielBMarkham 13y ago
    You point out the excellent reasons for politicians not taking any action -- who wants to be the guy that changed the rules so the next 9-11 could happen? But my point is more along the lines of happy-talk: red meat to throw at some energetic segment of the population to get them to donate and come out and vote. We see this same pattern on many issues, take for instance welfare for Republicans. They'll talk up their objections, including making all sorts of nuanced arguments, but at the end of the day nobody is going to vote to throw grandma off a cliff. I'd be ten bucks we same some of this same crap with security. Somebody will make impassioned, reasoned speeches -- probably explaining things just as you have done, and making a case for something that sounds great but is more of a marketing blurb than anything else. Maybe it'll be "peace through reasonable security" or something. (Be assured that it will be heavily poll-tested.) But in the end, it'll just be more whitewashing. My curiosity is just how banal and pandering the politicians will get. From a rhetorical and philosophical viewpoint alone, it's always interesting to watch these verbal and policy gymnastics. What'll be the catchphrase? Will the tech community come out and support a politician even when it's blatantly obvious he or she is just beating a pinata and isn't serious about real change? I suspect so.
streetnigga 13y ago
Any comments submitted here may be stored in for-profit corporate databases ran by the likes of Booz Allen Hamilton. Your comments are not data, they are meta-content. No data is collected to be stored in this database, any incidental data that does get stored in the database will be carefully minimized so a worker has to press a key to expose the information. This data will be pitched to the likes of US Chamber of Commerce[1] via firms like Hunton & Williams[2] as to be used to attack/stifle/undermine political dissidents, journalists like Glenn Greenwald[3], and _THEIR FAMILIES_[4][5]. These comments may be used against you by any nation-state that pays, or entity that leaks information from the database. All of this foretold in the details (meta-content) of the 2011 anonymous leaks. [1] http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/02/10/143419/lobbyists-chamberleaks/ http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/02/10/143419/lobbyists... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/us/politics/12hackers.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/us/politics/12hackers.html... [3] http://www.salon.com/2011/02/15/palantir/ http://www.salon.com/2011/02/15/palantir/ [4] http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/02/10/143428/chamberleaks-target-families/ http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/02/10/143428/chamberle... [5] http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Aaron-Barr5.jpg http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Aaron-Ba... edit: Oh eat me anonymous down-voter. Anyone that wishes to learn more about the for-profit interests often created by the NSA or their past employees can read Telecomix's BlueCabinet[1] or Barrett Brown's Project PM[2]. Free Barrett Brown. [1] https://bluecabinet.info/wiki/Blue_cabinet https://bluecabinet.info/wiki/Blue_cabinet [2] http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Main_Page http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Main_Page
- tzs 13y ago
  > Any comments submitted here may be stored in for-profit corporate databases ran by the likes of Booz Allen Hamilton ... > These comments may be used against you by any nation-state that pays, or entity that leaks information from the database Uhm...HN comments are by design available to anyone in the world who wants to read them. What is the point of leaking something that is freely available from the original source?
  - streetnigga 13y ago
    Same reason many corporations make a pretty penny off easily accessible public data? Slick presentation, rich tools to use the data with, and integration into existing work-flow? The comment was more a gesture at how all this public/semi-public/private/extremely private data can end up being used. Or indeed how it has been used or pitched to be used. When you have NSA affiliates like Palantir mucking about with firms like Hunton & Williams. Teaming up to do attack work on generally anyone who opposes the persons who make up the facade that is US Chamber of Commerce, you have a shipwreck in progress. How much you are targeted by these entities is a matter of how much of a nail you are to their hammer.
spikels 13y ago
Obama admits this is "to restore public confidence" not to fix a broken system. He doesn't even think there is an actual problem. This is all about PR and very little, if anything, about reform. Our power-mad leaders never give up any of their power without a long protracted fight. We have to continue to keep the pressure on until this is actually fixed.

President OblaBla did a bla bla. That is all the data that you need.

If nothing else comes of this PR stunt I hope it's more energy thrown into the EFF February 11th Campaign. "February 11th: The Day We Fight Back Against NSA Surveillance" https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/01/february-11th-day-we-fight-back-against-nsa-surveillance https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/01/february-11th-day-we-f...

gaius 13y ago

The man who promised to closed Guantanamo Bay... And didn't. They say a country gets the government it deserves, and America deserves Sarah Palin in 2016.

smoyer 13y ago
I don't think we got the person we elected in 2008 and 2012 ... what makes you think that Palin would be worse? Have you noticed that after all the "Tea Partyism" during the last election, the Republican party seems to have congealed back into its original form? I really don't see how we elect change without a third party - yet I think the way elections are run (especially financially) virtually guarantees we'll never get that third party. The only possible solution is to pray for grid-lock. Yes ... I really am THAT cynical. But I'm older than most of this crowd and my idealism is spent.
- r0s 13y ago
  I vote for those trying to change the system to give third parties access to it.
  - smoyer 13y ago
    Yeah ... we're up to about 8% or so right?
    - r0s 13y ago
      Hopefully enough to get more access and funding, but the real goal is more public visibility.
- notdonspaulding 13y ago
  It's interesting to me that this is exactly the person that the Republicans didn't want to see elected in 2008 (In 2012 I think they wanted him to win, because Romney never had a chance). That so many young people who idealistically embraced him can't stand him now doesn't mean he changed, just that they woke up to who he really was all along. Seriously, no surprises here. If you believed the impossible promises he made on the 2008 campaign trail, I'm sorry, but you were warned. (Incidentally I intend to pay a lot of attention to the negative reporting done on candidates I support in the future, because it represents a worst-case scenario if the pundits actually turn out to be right)
  - smoyer 13y ago
    I agree completely ... and I never said I voted for him but rather that the "corporate we" elected him. On the other hand, I AM a bit surprised that so few of his 2008 promises were even attempted, and that more people didn't revolt over his lack of commitment in 2012. People may not have recognized the impossible promises, but they would have expected an attempt at enacting those policies.
forgotAgain 13y ago
As someone who voted for Obama twice (once for change and once against Romney) I will be voting from now on for anyone and everyone who would be new to DC. At this point that's the best hope for change that I can see.
- ScottWhigham 13y ago
  But Obama was "new to DC" - I don't get your logic here.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > But Obama was "new to DC" When he was elected to the Senate, he was new to DC. When he was elected to the Presidency as a sitting US Senator, not so much.
    - ScottWhigham 13y ago
      It's a tough thing. If you vote for someone with no ties to Washington, you are "voting for someone with no experience." If you vote for someone entrenched in DC, you are "voting for a career politician." It's a lose/lose proposition haha
      - dragonwriter 13y ago
        Its a lose/lose proposition if you adopt both of these two criteria as absolute criteria: 1) You should not vote for someone with no experience in the the federal government, and 2) You should not vote for someone with experience in the federal government. Of course, these are individually ridiculous criteria in electing a President, and even more ridiculous in combination. Selecting a President requires more than verifying the presence or absence of a "past experience in federal government" line on a resume.
  - notdonspaulding 13y ago
    Obama came from Chicago politics. He was "new to DC" like John Carmack is "new to Occulus Rift". He might be working with a different crew now, but he's bringing a lot of "experience" to bear.
dragonwriter 13y ago
> The man who promised to closed Guantanamo Bay... And didn't. Yeah, I mean its not like Congress passed a law specifically prohibiting the actions the President proposed in order to close the detention facility at Guatanamo Bay. [1] [1] They didn't pass a law, but several, on different occasions.
- r0s 13y ago
  There's a million ways he could fight that, loudly and publicly. But why would he, when an army of apologists will rationalize and defend any failure.
- jjoonathan 13y ago
  You mean they passed a law specifically blocking the actions the President took: he gave the executive order to close Guantanamo 2 days after the inauguration. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ClosureOfGuantanamoDetentionFacilities http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ClosureOfGuantana... Sure, he could find a way to push it through, but given the Republicans' historical success at demanding the world from a Democrat with a mandate (e.g. cutting capital gains tax by a third in exchange for childrens' health care), I'm sure their asking price was high.
  - spikels 13y ago
    C'mon it is not the Republicans. At the time that executive order was issued Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. There is no bad team and good team (i.e. your team) but a rotten sport. Your thinking has fallen victim to their divide and conquer strategy.
    - d23 13y ago
      And I think your thinking has fallen victim to a false equivalency.
    - jjoonathan 13y ago
      My point was not that Dems as a party were blameless, only that Obama could plausibly lie anywhere on the fault spectrum for this issue. You're correct to observe that the real fault lies with the political system that encourages the use of bargaining chips, but the people blaming Obama were the only ones saying otherwise. I used CHIP as an example of congress opposing a mandate in order to win concessions. The CHIP issue almost certainly had roughly similar party lines, but given a few hours I'm sure I could dig up 10 examples of party X opposing party Y's mandate to extract concessions regardless of whether X==Y or X!=Y, if that would make you happy.

DanielBMarkham 13y ago

I don't want to do the usual ranting thing, mostly because of how pathetically sad it all is. I will say as a disinterested observer (I do not support either major political party in the U.S.) I'm curious to see if any candidates will run on an anti-surveillance state message in the upcoming presidential elections. We could end up with the same assholes who support all this nonsense going back out and making a bunch more speeches about how bad it all is -- just so they can get elected and continue things as before. People say cynical voters are a problem, but you watch enough of how politics actually works (and has worked over the centuries) and if you don't become refreshingly cynical you're an empty-headed fool and more of a danger to yourself and others than anything else. ADD: Ok. Maybe a little ranting.

_greim_ 13y ago
> I'm curious to see if any candidates will run on an anti-surveillance state message in the upcoming presidential elections. The danger of this (from a politician's POV) is that it paints a giant target on your head, to the extent that the public is spooked about bad guys. Especially if something bad happens while you're in power, and the public rises up demanding the ability to catch all the bad guys whatever it takes. If we could learn to not freak out every time J Random Lunatic does a public bad thing, then we wouldn't be handing pro-surveillance politicians the tools to so easily defeat their opponents. Basically this isn't just politicians being evil, it's the symptom of widespread irrationalism.
- DanielBMarkham 13y ago
  You point out the excellent reasons for politicians not taking any action -- who wants to be the guy that changed the rules so the next 9-11 could happen? But my point is more along the lines of happy-talk: red meat to throw at some energetic segment of the population to get them to donate and come out and vote. We see this same pattern on many issues, take for instance welfare for Republicans. They'll talk up their objections, including making all sorts of nuanced arguments, but at the end of the day nobody is going to vote to throw grandma off a cliff. I'd be ten bucks we same some of this same crap with security. Somebody will make impassioned, reasoned speeches -- probably explaining things just as you have done, and making a case for something that sounds great but is more of a marketing blurb than anything else. Maybe it'll be "peace through reasonable security" or something. (Be assured that it will be heavily poll-tested.) But in the end, it'll just be more whitewashing. My curiosity is just how banal and pandering the politicians will get. From a rhetorical and philosophical viewpoint alone, it's always interesting to watch these verbal and policy gymnastics. What'll be the catchphrase? Will the tech community come out and support a politician even when it's blatantly obvious he or she is just beating a pinata and isn't serious about real change? I suspect so.

streetnigga 13y ago

Any comments submitted here may be stored in for-profit corporate databases ran by the likes of Booz Allen Hamilton. Your comments are not data, they are meta-content. No data is collected to be stored in this database, any incidental data that does get stored in the database will be carefully minimized so a worker has to press a key to expose the information. This data will be pitched to the likes of US Chamber of Commerce[1] via firms like Hunton & Williams[2] as to be used to attack/stifle/undermine political dissidents, journalists like Glenn Greenwald[3], and _THEIR FAMILIES_[4][5]. These comments may be used against you by any nation-state that pays, or entity that leaks information from the database. All of this foretold in the details (meta-content) of the 2011 anonymous leaks. [1] http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/02/10/143419/lobbyists-chamberleaks/ http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/02/10/143419/lobbyists... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/us/politics/12hackers.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/us/politics/12hackers.html... [3] http://www.salon.com/2011/02/15/palantir/ http://www.salon.com/2011/02/15/palantir/ [4] http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/02/10/143428/chamberleaks-target-families/ http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/02/10/143428/chamberle... [5] http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Aaron-Barr5.jpg http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Aaron-Ba... edit: Oh eat me anonymous down-voter. Anyone that wishes to learn more about the for-profit interests often created by the NSA or their past employees can read Telecomix's BlueCabinet[1] or Barrett Brown's Project PM[2]. Free Barrett Brown. [1] https://bluecabinet.info/wiki/Blue_cabinet https://bluecabinet.info/wiki/Blue_cabinet [2] http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Main_Page http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Main_Page

tzs 13y ago
> Any comments submitted here may be stored in for-profit corporate databases ran by the likes of Booz Allen Hamilton ... > These comments may be used against you by any nation-state that pays, or entity that leaks information from the database Uhm...HN comments are by design available to anyone in the world who wants to read them. What is the point of leaking something that is freely available from the original source?
- streetnigga 13y ago
  Same reason many corporations make a pretty penny off easily accessible public data? Slick presentation, rich tools to use the data with, and integration into existing work-flow? The comment was more a gesture at how all this public/semi-public/private/extremely private data can end up being used. Or indeed how it has been used or pitched to be used. When you have NSA affiliates like Palantir mucking about with firms like Hunton & Williams. Teaming up to do attack work on generally anyone who opposes the persons who make up the facade that is US Chamber of Commerce, you have a shipwreck in progress. How much you are targeted by these entities is a matter of how much of a nail you are to their hammer.

spikels 13y ago

Obama admits this is "to restore public confidence" not to fix a broken system. He doesn't even think there is an actual problem. This is all about PR and very little, if anything, about reform. Our power-mad leaders never give up any of their power without a long protracted fight. We have to continue to keep the pressure on until this is actually fixed.