Posts by Psyx

Re: 48/ 66 hours - you lucky bastards,.....

"Here in the city of London, those of us in corporate IT tend to consider 46 hours a short week."

Now do it for next to no wages and see if you still feel smug and self righteous about it...

"Thank god for Edward Snowden or none of this would have come out."

Piffle.

It's now just sliced up for popular media consumption. There's a hero, there's a powerpoint presentation, there's media traction. It's not NEWS: It's been going on and people have known about it and been shouting blue murder about it for at least two decades, as a cursory search or two on Google will reveal; but the tale never gained media traction or reached general awareness.

Not that it changes anything still. The revelations have been deflected and in a month GCHQ, the NSA, DGSE et al will be breathing a sigh of relief at the public returning to its fascination will celeb gossip and the latest murder, and things will go on as before.

Re: If whats been done is true...

"There are no loopholes. The law is cut and dry."

There clearly are and it clearly isn't.

Let's go through it slowly:

"If you are modifying a public communications network (in this case the internet) with the intent of monitoring communications when not warranted against a specific person or business you are, in fact, committing a criminal offence. "

Only if it's YOUR people you are monitoring and the specifics depend on where you do it. Nations don't have rules as regards targeting people overseas for such measures or against wiretapping overseas communications networks. So they snoop.on other people from other nations. Then when a friendly nations says "Have you got any info on one of our citizens, old bean?" you can hand it over. The information is illegally gained and inadmissible as far as that other nation is concerned... IF they knew how it was obtained. BUT intelligence reports do NOT divulge the source, for very legitimate operational security reasons. You don't get a piece of paper saying "Bob is planning a terrorist attack because his friend Fred told us when we blackmailed him". Lacking any evidence that the information is gained illegally it is effectively a legitimate report that can then be used to gain specific warrants for further surveillance under court order in an above-board manner.

It's essentially 'laundering' surveillance information and giving plausible deniability. That's the entire point and it works perfectly. Plausible deniability is the absolute key in such matters:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plausible_deniability

We can't ask the NSA how they got their data because it's classified, so it doesn't matter if it came from wiretaps, legitimate means or from pulling out someone's toenails. We do they same for them in return.

Everyone can say it's legal and that they aren't illegally spying on their own people with a straight face.

Re: If whats been done is true...

Of COURSE it's legal.

That's the entire point of the project: To use legal loop-holes of international intelligence trading to sidestep local legislation against wiretapping et al.

It's not ethical, in precisely the same way that tax avoidance is merely unethical, rather than illegal.

Re: or

"just buy an actual camera for heaven's sake."

...and carry it everywhere, every day. Because that's what mobile phone cameras are: They aren't 'cameras that you might have when you want them', but a product that you constantly have on you.

You're kind of missing the point.

"I can see how a camera with this level of connectivity might be useful for a photo-journalist to get that snap of some wannabe WAG with her tits out straight back to the "news" desk, but can't see who else it would suit."

There are plenty of ways of doing that already, albeit requiring peripherals for the 'phone. This particular camera is more for the casual user who wants a good camera and connectivity than for a full-on pro.

"It would be lost on your average facebook snapper and I can't see a serious amateur photographer being interested. So it does beg the question quite why they've bothered."

How about your average flikr user, or user of one of the other photo-sharing websites that are so popular. That's more of the target audience, I feel.

As regards "why bother?", had you not noted that Samsung always have HUGE product ranges in order to cater for every niche and get a large overall market share.

For more casual users, you'll be happy to hear that there is a smaller compact version already on the market, with or without 3G.

Re: So much for respecting the religious beliefs of other people.

You were clearly downvoted by someone who knows sod-all about religion, but is happy to wade in on the topic. Which is a major part of the problem. Anyone who doesn't understand that all three religions are worshipping the same person really shouldn't really be expecting their opinions to be valid or worthy of any attention.

Re: So much for respecting the religious beliefs of other people.

"You don't believe in Allah, they don't believe in Jehova. Neither of your religions allow for a dualistic approach where you are both worshipping the same God. "

Firstly, Jewish, Muslim and Christian worshippers all worship the same God. That's pretty much World Religion 101. Odd how many people totally miss the point.

And they both allow a duallistic approach where OTHER PEROPLE can worship other Gods. It's just that members of those faiths only *themselves* only worship one God (which is the same one). There is no reason at all except for people being arseholes that the religions cannot co-exist with a degree of mutual respect.

As ever, the basic problem with the planet is arseholes.

Re: Er...

No, but it will inflate some teenage egos.

Re: Nothing to fear?

"So let me get this right."

Sure: If they want to go to court with it, they could do that. Or they could cut the paperwork and ask the NSA if the NSA have anything... which they will have via interception. Then the NSA hand it over and GCHQ will have harvested from a legitimate and legal source... but of course can't be told where it came from because sources are protected.

Everyone's ass is covered. And once there's enough data to consider prosecution, THEN they can go about getting UK governmental approval for the intercepts.

What's really worse: The fact that our governments happily hoover all of our electronic communication and neglect to mention it... or the fact that as far as they're concerned when it comes to light, it's all legal and above board?

Re: Quandry

"The left-leaning media is caught in something of a brain-fart over how to square this with their love of Obama."

Maybe they'll do it by correctly stating that it was Bush who made this kind of shit legal?

"So hang on, in the past week we've gone from Snowden being a crackpot conspiracy theorist to a 'minor' admin, to now actually admitting that yes, he was right and the NSA does have access to your Facebook and Google data. Funny how the narrative changes isn't it?"

It's hardly been a conspiracy for the last decade. There's bloody great listening stations scattered around which are a bit big to hide, and there have been about a dozen reveals of NSA activities in the last few years:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

Hell: What do you think they need to store a Yottabyte of data for:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center

Re: Must be on a web-facing machine

"You're all so misguided. Everyone knows that the US military run Windows for Warships, Windows for Warmongerers and Windows for the Terminally Incompetent. Equally everyone knows that Micro$not needs to update at least once a month, virus checkers every two minutes and flash twice a week 'to stay secure' so you *must* necessarily be connected to the internet to mitigate security threats from ... errr ... the internet ... Then, if you were no longer secure when sending the plans for the F18 by email, who knows what might happen ..."

I had to glace to the side to see if Eadon wrote that.

Re: Really?

"Admittedly I've been out of the defence business for 15 years, but back then we knew enough to have physically separate systems and networks for really sensitive stuff. "

This. I find it hard to believe that people are plugging this shit into the Web...

...Unless we're talking private contractors, in which case no piece of security stupidity is beyond belief.

Re: Here's an idea..

"I'm not sure if it's a form of imported 'western' capitalism"

Yes it is. As brought in by black ships and gunboat diplomacy. We forced capitalism on them, essentially.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Ships

Re: Note that difference *loan* (with interest) versus old car maker (2nd or 3rd) bailout.

"That's lefty speak that can be fairly translated as "any cause not associated with my economically illiterate, luddite and socialist beliefs".

No it's not.

Learn to recognise your own: He's moaning because it's not of direct benefit to HIM.

Re: Change of name required

"The danger of adding thoughts to leaked documents is that the writing style can be used to trace them. Whether that's a good or bad thing I'll leave up to your preference."

So?

Style analysis will point towards someone in Wikileaks adding the notes of rebuttal. How is that a shock... or danger?

And style analysis only goes so far and requires good context and sufficient text to allow natural patterns to emerge.