and the really sad thing is... it's a more then half sure ( 50-50) bet that you're probably RIGHT hon...

Not to mention, not sure if you've heard, but they're apparently not even conducting background checks on the new 0bamacare employees, apparently they've already got felons and sex offenders.

Sounds like a good way to undermine the project... :/

Which, and I hope I'm wrong, might be the plan.

I wouldn't put it past the political powers of America at least... And that speaks for the amount of trust the outside citizenry has for them. :/
But I'll shut the trap now. Wouldn't want a CIA-team busting down my door after the NSA found my comments. <_<

The CIA wouldn't do that. That's the domain of the FBI.

Meh, only INSIDE the US. ;P

I'm curious to read more. Have a link?

Also, is this different than the airlines that have federal prisoners taking your reservation information?

A quick Google search revealed quite a few articles coming from Fox, Brietbart, and similar websites, but I did find an NPR article that acknowledges that this is an issue.

As for airlines, maybe they've changed their policy, but I don't recall having to give out a great deal of personal information last time I flew, like the sort of information the "navigators" may have access to. Or do you mean the TSA? Because the TSA isn't part of the airport, they're federal employees.

I read the article but there was nothng regarding criminals. There was discussion about private information and training to handle that sensitive information, and about Florida mandating fingerprinting and background checks.

When you last flew, did you purchase tickets over the phone? If so, did you give them your name, credit card number, address, etc.?

Nope, why would anyone do that? I always bought them online, and when possible, would use the self-service kiosk. The navigators will have access to more information than just your credit card numbers, though, they'll be able to view SSNs, tax returns, the sort of stuff you could use for outright identity theft, not just a fraudulent charge.

I'm not in favorite of it either. It violates are rights as Americans.

To bring the idea across, you should show some lady attempting to use her smartphone with a protruding eyeball looking back at her, and the voice on the other end saying "I'm not here. Go about your business, citizen."

We're from the Government. We're here to help......

And you're not allowed to ask how or why we help.

because you NEED their help. They know it, They SAID so.

I'd rather have the government helping me than the Koch Bros.

The Koch brothers still have to follow the law, at least.

Awww! That's sweet that you think so. You blue-eyed innocents make me mist over, you really do.

Maybe not as closely as the rest of us, but they at least don't have free reign to detain people; they can't bust down their doors, shoot the dog, and arrest the family inside that's done nothing wrong; they can't build a facility that monitors every bit of web traffic. Violating human rights on that sort of scale is the government's job, and they seem to be immune from the repercussions of doing so.

They don't follow the law, they BUY it. (Very inexpensive at the state level, too)

Which, when you've got a bunch of lawbreakers writing and upholding the laws to begin with, is possible.

The Koch Bros. are big supporters of the Tea Party, which is the faction that was responsible for the recent government shut down; it's unlikely that the recent antics were without their approval. Think of it as a shot across the bow of democracy.

At least the NSA spooks were shut down temporarily along with the rest of the US government :-P

Not true, unfortunately. They are considered essential services, so while my brother, who helps veterans get services they need gets furloughed, NSA continues to snoop.

Hehe, fun. I did one like this a while ago myself. http://www.furaffinity.net/view/11579646/

http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/.....taxpayer-money

Give the guy a star trek outfit and you'll be closer to the truth.
http://americablog.com/2013/09/nsa-.....ek-bridge.html

I do find this funny. But I almost feel like I'm the only one that knows that it's completely impossible for the government to moniter people 24/7 through all media. there just isn't enough man power compared to the population. just going through all of the conversations held on skype is too much. let alone all of the E-mails, video streamings, share sites, and even the postal service. all the government has the power to do is to look into the recorded data that each of the providers have saved. all IM and message providers record and save messages anyway. they always have. skype does it, yahoo does it, comcast does it too. so then when the government has a person of interest, they can then see into the person's past conversations and messages to help see if their suspissions of this person are true. otherwise, if you're just an everyday man/woman that doesn't plan on committing murder or some large scale crime, then they're not going to even care about reading your fanfiction you write on the internet.

The other thing is that this system is primarily used to stop large scale mass murders or terrorist acts. so while we complain now about our privacy being taken away, when the government uses it to stop a man or woman from killing thousands of people. then that's a whole different story.

Oddly enough, in English, the possessive form is spelled differently from the plural. So you can have Ladies' which is the possessive plural, or Lady's which is the possessive singular, but using the plural spelling for a singular possessive doesn't fly. And people say English is non-inflective.

I actually have some pity for the analysts who are tasked with collecting and filtering through the vast mountains of crap that go across communications channels. Imagine you have three hundred million Facebook friends, chosen at random. Given that 99.9% of Facebook is crap or trolling (Sturgeon's Law be damned), that's a lot of crap to dig through looking for anything meaningful. If it weren't for automated sifting, I can only imagine the suicide rate among analysts would be pretty high. We're NOT as interesting as we'd like to think. Or intelligent.

Still, I agree, if I'm going to look like an idiot, I'd prefer only those close to me who already know it were to witness it.

<.< just imagine someone printing hundereds of your art and posting it in lots of public restrooms lol xD

the scariest thing about the whole NSA scandal is, all the information they are using to "spy" on you has been completely available to anyone who knows how to get a hold of it for many many years

For some reason the second I saw this I thought 'R. Crumb'.

True. Unfortunately true.

Dont forget, you can buy rice grain size cameras over the counter. These are small enough to fit in those worm trails you see in the cieling tiles on hanging roofs. A modern cheap digital camera can easily track multiple faces at teh same time, with targeting boxes, triggered for a smile at least, other slightly more advanced coding can recognise different facial expressions for speech.

TO track everyone in the USA, just use a smartphone chip, like a Rasbery Pi, apiece. Thats 250 million times $35, which is less than $9 Billion. I beleive it was publiished a while ago that the NSA has a $12Bn a year budget? What the hell are they wasting it on when with childrens stuff they can track Everything Everyone does 24/7? Dont forget that payment is for buying th hardware, the network is a lot cheaper to handle.

Just remember that the ubiquity of cameras and the internet also make it easier for us to keep watch on the government.

I've seen some pretty shitty political cartoons in my time, in fact all of them are pretty shitty, but this one... Is straightforward and actually communicates the intended message without relying on party shorthand to be overly complicated.

Good work, I'm sure not a soul will actually appreciate it's directness and brevity.

For an added little bit of paranoia, if you keep your iPhone on 24/7 like most people do the gov.. and pretty much anyone who knows how to do it, knows where you are for that same amount of time. They can also turn on AND OFF your camera and mic anytime they want.

http://news.techeye.net/security/ap.....#ixzz2bIiBCEKq

Thanks Apple! :D

Have a NICE day. ;D

The link was truncated or otherwise mangled.

It has been possible to track cellphones for a long time, regardless of the manufacturer. When the cellphone broadcasts its signal, the relative strength is recorded by several towers and, through a process known as triangulation, the location of the phone can usually be guessed at with a fairly high degree of certainty. Law enforcement can subpoena the cellphone providers to get this information (or may simply buy it from them). It's possible that Apple makes this a little more convenient for law enforcement but, at most, it's an increase of convenience; other cellphones suffer from the same basic issue.

tl;dr: It's every cellphone, not just Apple's.

The biggest threat posed by these programs is the suppression of political discourse. These organizations see themselves as critical to the continued existence of a free America, which makes any critics an enemy of the people. This is the same logic that China's Communist party uses to crack down on critics: anyone speaking ill of the party is acting against the good of the people and is, therefore, an enemy of the state. There seems to be no internal recognition that these programs could possibly cause harm; felonious behaviour, such as lying to the Senate, is considered okay. (Sadly, the Senate seems to agree, as charges have not been filed.)

There is talk about "oversight" and "citizen advocates" in these systems. Effective oversight and countermeasures are not possible in secret because the overseers are selected for 2 traits: the ability to understand what is happening; trustability. The only way to understand what is going on is to have a lot of experience in the area. The only way to get that experience is to be trustworthy enough to be promoted to sensitive positions. The most likely way to do that is to be very in favour of the program. That is, the strongest advocates of the program are put in charge of making sure the monitoring doesn't go too far. The fox and the hen house, indeed.

The simple fact of it is that hiding the details of a broadly implemented program is not something that should be allowed. Yes, there is a need for secrecy around individual cases. However, the policy tools available to the security community must be public knowledge and must be explicitly authorized via legislation. If we, the people, can not even know, let alone decide, how we are being policed, then we are not a free people.