Sunday, August 25, 2013

#ROW80 SUNDAY CHECK IN – FUN WAYS TO CONFUSE OUR NEWLY-HATCHED POLICE STATE

I'm not even going to try and put lipstick on this pig; from Techdirt comes this article, “Creating Chilling Effects on Speech is aFeature, Not A Bug, Of the Surveillance State.” Regarding Free Speech and written by Mike Masnick. As a tech article, it starts out with the usual blah-blah, but this caught my eye, “implicit in our assumption is that these “costs” are things that are negatives of the program (kinda like a bug.) Others would point out that for those in power, that's not so much a cost as a benefit. It's not a bug, or an unintended consequence, but a “feature.” By the way, an update or a patch is also a bug, just not one that spies on you, in most cases. Or maybe it does.



Yeah, I get that, in 2 ways. Calling something by another name makes it something else. Not. A bug is a bug. But, hey, if it's Microsoft? Microsoft is nothing but a HUGE bug patch, along with JAVA, ORACLE and all the other half-assed software companies that are raking in big bucks for shitty software. I am not bitching; I have a cottage industry going in fixing crap you never got right in the first damn place!


"When email isn't enough for us to get our nosy little mitts on your information," would be 
truth in advertising.

The author then goes on to write about the “chilling” affect this has been on free speech, not just as a consequence, but as a motive. Even Peggy Noonan, describing a conversation with longtime civil liberties advocate Nat Hentoff, writes that “the inevitable end of surveillance is self-censorship.” Well, since I've been in a homeless shelter and mixed it up with different sorts, I tend to NOT self-censorship; a lifetime of it, pretty much fucked up my personal life. As long as I don't foment treason, I can say any damn well thing I want, under the 1st Amendment, and so can you, if you're a U. S. citizen.
Also, at TechDirt, the July 11th 2013 headline was regarding the “Latest Leak Shows Microsoft Handed the NSA and FBI Unencrypted Access to Outlook, SkyDrive and Skype. Even though I hardly think Microsoft has the warm fuzzies for the ABC agencies, we're talking about Microsoft. I truly believe they don't their ass from a hole in the ground. IBM worries me, as they made a deal with the Nazis in the early 40s that hardly anyone talks about. And yeah, I've worked for them both and know the chicanery they are capable of. Remember too, that I hunted down rogue servers at IBM, back when no one thought it was a big deal. This was in 1997. When I worked for Verizon, I didn't have that type of job, but we did have computers up on the towers on 9/11, and they were still transmitting signals for weeks, until their batteries finally died. Shivery stuff.

Anyway, if were being told it's not a “bug” but a “feature” how fucking stupid do the NSA, FBI think we are? Wait, don't answer that. We gave up it all up with a stroke of a signature in 2001, when Bush, Jr., signed the Patriot Act. Obama re-signed and expanded on some things the government can do, with no warrants, no knock, no nothing. President Obama is our first technically savvy president and understands the ramifications over time of what this all means. We put up with Joseph P. McCarthy's nonsense, list-waving, his 238 or 149 names, whatever, of known members of the American Communist Party. Until Joseph Welch chastised during the first of the televised Army-McCarthy hearings. Senator McCarthy and his lists and career went poof!

People who say, “I don't care who listens to me, I have nothing to hide,” are full of shit and let me tell you why. 99% of them have nothing the NSA, the FBI, or the CIA cares to hear, but that is not the point. We, as Citizens of the United States have and inalienable right to privacy. If an outside government agency wishes to breach that privacy, they MUST produce a warrant. It doesn't matter if it regards coming into your home, reading your mail, email, searching your car, requesting certain documents and wiretapping your phone. Interestingly enough, 5 amendments come into play here, the 1st, 3rd, 4th (especially for wire-tapping) 9th and the 14th amendments. I am not even going to get into Habeas corpus, which is sort of a “Get Out of Jail Free” card.



So, in actuality, these things trump stupidities like the Patriot Act, at least in my book, and here is where the fun comes in. Get yourself a batch of Facebook friends, preferably some from Russia, Kazakhstan, or Tajikistan and the Middle East. Chat back and forth and then exchange jokes and stuff. Misspell lots of your words and talk about your dogs, pets and hobbies. For instance, mention that great WIRE-HAIRED TERROR that your mom bought you. Swap recipes. The ones for bombe glaceé, or bombe Alaska might just perk up some ears.



That thing can won't be around long enough to explode. It looks delicious!

Talking in pig latin, or maybe esperanto is probably good. I don't think the NSA has any algorithms for that yet. Better yet, before posting on FB run your text through several translators. It works like that stupid game “Telegraph,” where a bunch of kids would sit in a circle and someone would pick a phrase and whisper it to his/her nieghbor. So, we have this sentence that I started out with in English and ran through several different languages before going back to English:

Kid 1: The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. – English
Kid 2: قفز الثعلب البني السريع فوق الكلب الكسول – Arabic
Kid 3: Le quick brown fox saute par dessus le chien paresseux – French
Kid 4: wyqfz ạltẖʿlb ạlbny ạlsryʿ fwq ạlklb ạlkswl – Georgian
Kid 5: wyqfz ALTHʿポンドạlbnyạlsryʿFWQạlklbạlksw – Chinese (simplified)
Kid 6: wyqfz ALTH ʿ பவுண்டுகள் ạlbnyạlsry ʿ FWQạlklbạlkswl – Tamil
Kid 7: wyqfz alth ʿ ポンド ạlbnyạlsry ʿ FWQạlklbạlkswl – Czech
Kid 8: wyqfz alth ʿポンドạlbnyạlsryʿFWQạlklbạlkswl – Norwegian
Kid 9” wyqfz alth ʿ ポンド ạlbnyạlsry ʿ FWQạlklbạlkswl – German
Kid 10: wyqfz alth ạlbnyạlsry ʿ ʿ ポンド FWQạlklbạlkswl – English

Fun!

This is very much like the crap that Bing comes up with. I like making up my own stories.

As always, my undying gratitude and love to Mr. Brockway at Cracked.com


And that is how you play “Telegraph.” This would be great and send the NSA haring off into all kinds of directions, and wondering what sort of nefarious things are going on. I plan on doing this, as I already know I'm on all sorts of lists, ala Joseph P. McCarthy dating back to my father's non-escapade, when 2 of his employees somehow managed to smuggle out 2 personnel carriers and then sold them to the Saudis, back when they weren't our friends. So, we got to put up with the FBI showing up at all kinds of hours, replete with sunglasses at night. My dad used to pick me up after school; it was my senior year, and then we'd spend hours aimlessly driving around, not even bothering trying to rid ourselves of the remoras in our wake. I joined the American Socialist party in the 80s. President Reagan was in office, so not looking very kindly upon anti-capitalists, I'm sure I went in the barrel for that.

Tampa has one of the largest presences outside of D. C. because of MacDill Airforce Base. That Base was the center for the prosecution and direction of the Iraq War in 2003. I guess this is Eric Holder; all FBI agents look alike to me.

Anyway, we have inalienable rights, per the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and those are being abrogated and this is a fearful thing because, when one right is stepped on, then 2 are stepped on. When we get to Writ of Habeas corpus, which I fear has already been violated, we're toast. We've lost and we have nothing to protect us then. No matter. I have no one, other than JC, and he understands this very clearly. He also knows that I will not let this happen, if at all humanly possible. We need to wake up, get over the bullshit. People breastfeeding in public, so what? People get outraged about stupid temporal things, but this is hard because it feels like an abstract idea. It isn't.



It's very real, and it's what I call a chromatic failure, because it's at every level of the government and then some. Corporations try to tell people how to vote. That is none of their goddamned business. In one of my Triberr groups, I heard about a Chief who won't share a poster's blog if they don't agree with the opinion. That's fucking censorship and wrong. In closing, we must look to ourselves and not just to what is going on outside. A free society means that all can air their opinions, peculiar or antithetical to ours they may be. That's what liberty is about.

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