Snowden and the NSA

[colourwheel]

@Troaches

 

I was never trying to disputing the argument of cost post 911, it was in response to your claim when you stated this...

 

 

If you really think about it terrorism has caused very little damage to property, claimed very few lives, and disrupted very few businesses.

 

Terrorism has caused a lot of damage to property, claimed a lot of lives, and disrupted a lot businesses.

 

Your argument, despite the response that has arisen from the 911 attacks, terrorism being undermined because of the way history has handled it is besides the point.

 

Pre-911 still terrorism has caused a lot of damage to property, claimed a lot of lives, and disrupted a lot businesses...

 

Is the cost worth it, post-911? Honestly, no one will ever know until the NSA becomes completely transparent and declassifies everything once the "war on terror" is over, if ever.....

Edited June 26, 2013 by colourwheel

[TRoaches]

You are only quoting half of what I said:

 

 

 

If you really think about it terrorism has caused very little damage to property, claimed very few lives, and disrupted very few businesses. Government policies executed in the name of ANTI-terrorism, by comparison, have claimed millions of lives, caused many billions of dollars in property damage, and destroyed the economies of entire nations.

To say that something cause "a lot" of damage or loss of life is vague. A statistic is only large or small when viewed relative to another statistic. I used the phrase "by comparison" to demonstrate the relativity between the cost of terrorism and the cost of anti-terrorism.

[colourwheel]

 

To say that something cause "a lot" of damage or loss of life is vague. A statistic is only large or small when viewed relative to another statistic. I used the phrase "by comparison" to demonstrate the relativity between the cost of terrorism and the cost of anti-terrorism.

 

Do you know for fact how much the cost of anti-terrorism has saved nations post-911? no! because no one will ever know till the "war on terror" is over, if things are ever made public and declassified.... only history will tell.

 

Do I think the cost of anti-terrorism post 911 is exaggeratedly inflated? yes! but as of now no one really knows if it is all really worth it.

Edited June 26, 2013 by colourwheel

[TRoaches]

....till the "war on terror" is over...

By what possible scenario could such a thing ever be "over"? What are the victory conditions for a war declared against a broadly defined tactic?

[colourwheel]

 

.

...till the "war on terror" is over...

 

By what possible scenario could such a thing ever be "over"? What are the victory conditions for a war declared against a broadly defined tactic?

 

That's a good question.... And I do not have the answer for that.

[JimboUK]

He's still in Moscow according to the BBC and the Russians don't look like they're in any hurry to hand him over.

[sukeban]

@Vagrant

 

I see where you are coming from, but your stance requires a large degree of inherent trust in these government agencies--more trust, IMO, than they have earned. But I would agree that trust is entirely subjective, so I cannot do much more than simply disagree.

 

@terrorism

 

It's my opinion that Bin Laden roped us like a dope with 9/11 and calculating our response. The entire point of his mission was to goad the US into an overreaction (not to do raw damage), one that he could capitalize on in order to mint new recruits and secure widespread sympathy in the Middle East for his (at that time) relatively unpopular ideology. After our invasion of Afghanistan we started the ball rolling in that direction, but Iraq and our subsequent foreign policy misadventures were what was truly responsible for tripping public opinion in the favor of his Western Crusader narrative. In addition to all these new recruits, we decided to undermine our country even at home--repealing and restricting many of our civil liberties and trashing our economy with debt in order to pay for seemingly innumerable random interventions and wars of choice (all of which, again, feed into the Crusader narrative...). So, even though Bin Laden is now finally dead, his "vision" for destabilizing the United States has succeeded beyond, I am sure, even his wildest dreams. And the greatest irony of all is that Al-Qaeda did not do that damage to us--it was entirely self-inflicted.

 

Terrorism is simply not an existential threat to this country or to Europe. If we, as nations, take common-sense measures to tackle the largest threats (radiation detectors in major cities, keeping Israeli-style tabs on visitors from Somalia, etc.) that we face, we will have done our part toward eliminating most of terrorism's destructive power. But real talk, if we were truly interested in curbing terrorism, we would cease with our interventions in the Middle East and put an immediate halt to our drone campaigns. Slaying terrorists might be satisfying from a vengeance perspective, but in truth it is counterproductive to attempt to destroy a series of ideas using military force, as all that ends up accomplishing is reinforcing those very beliefs in the minds of its adherents and evangelizing others as to their validity. Instead, we should take away the foreign "Big Bad" and allow the shallow tenets of fundamentalism to founder on its own contradictions. And in the meantime, while we are waiting for this to happen, let us fortify our own borders and make sure that nobody from Waziristan gets in without some serious, serious scrutiny.

Edited June 26, 2013 by sukeban

[Vagrant0]

This simply cannot be true. Neither Google nor Facebook have the ability to access a comparable mass of communications. They are only able to archive what they process for their customers, or what they purchase from other companies. In contrast the NSA is able to access ALL domestic communications under the guise of national security. They also are able to operate with relatively little concern for budget, whereas Google and Facebook must weigh the benefits of data archiving with the overhead associated with maintaining the archive and keep their budget above water. The NSA does not require monetary profit to justify its existence.

 

Erm, pretty much everything currently on the internet has been recorded by a google bot at some point. No, it's probably not as large of a scope since it isn't monitoring phone calls (unless you maybe have a google phone), but e-mails certainly are not out of the picture. Similarly, many common websites have components related to either google or facebook that handle ad services, logins, or just site usage. Including this site.

[TRoaches]

Erm, pretty much everything currently on the internet has been recorded by a google bot at some point. No, it's probably not as large of a scope since it isn't monitoring phone calls (unless you maybe have a google phone), but e-mails certainly are not out of the picture.

 

The difference in scope is enormous. The NSA data collection likely includes everything that Google has, which means that the totality of Google's data is a fractional subset of the NSA's data. As you said, Google does not have access to phone calls, and they can only see a fraction of the email that is sent. The NSA and Google are incomparable, to a similar extent that my local grocery store's ability to mine data via their loyalty card is incomparable to Google's ability to mine data via their services. Also, the latest estimates that I could find are that Google only has about 10% of the internet indexed. Again, Google cannot just index everything without concern for cost. For a company like Google data is a resource that comes with an overhead cost, and the cost must be outweighed by a potential for profit. The electricity costs alone associated with the type of massive data centers that the intelligence agencies build are staggeringly high.

[MrProperX]

I really love to read an interessting conversation! (like this one)

However, I always have some objections to participate in difficulte discussion like this, due the fact that english is not my native language. I still hope I can keep step with you guys and that my grammar is not too bad or too weird.

 

Today, a famous (and serious) german newspaper "Der Spiegel" (translated into english: "The Mirror") posted a report about NSA papers classifying germany as "third class partner". Furthermore:

 

The impact of the Der Spiegel allegations may be felt more keenly in Germany than in Brussels. The magazine said Germany was the foremost target for the US surveillance programmes, categorising Washington's key European ally alongside China, Iraq or Saudi Arabia in the intensity of the electronic snooping. -- the guardian

This only had come to attention thanks to Snowden.

 

A the end of WWII almost every german man and woman grew tired of the intensive warfaring of the early past. Most of the survivors were very unhappy about the deeds of their early past and and the later denazification also played it's part. Bad feelings about war have remained in the minds of (most) people ever since. In fact many people, including the young germans, still feel a lot of guilt for the crimes of their fathers and grandfathers. Almost every german politican is afraid of beeing compared with Adolf Hitler* as most germans are afraid of beeing accused to be 'nazis'. As a result of being burdened with the stated history events, the broad german population is not willing to participate in a war. I think this caused a lot of unhappieness in the past among our the nato allies, especially US, france and england. However this is (in my opinion) mostly a result of the german occupation after WWII.

 

The united states are still felt by many germans to be partner of high importance, almost like a big brother (in the orginal sense :happy: ). I fear that after the recent events many germans feel differently about the united states, although beeing still one of the most important german allies. I think that, may be at least now, many people in germany are happy about what Snowden did.

 

I am very curious to hear the opinion of non-germans. Do you think that germany is a potential 'terrorism center'? What do you associate with germany, german politics and the EU? (I hope my questions are not to much OT, but it's still related to the topic. Feel free to be critic about my statements and the questions as well!)

 

~

* In fact that happened quite often in the recent past. Especially related to economic crisis in greece.

Edited July 1, 2013 by MrProperX