Confiscating the Phone Records of US Citizens

[heironymouspasparagus]

The bigger debate there is that by not labeling an obvious act of terror as such, the government gets out of paying the survivors and their families any combat benefits.  It was also an obvious  political move so that the administration could claim "no act of terror" on their watch.  It was a rather despicable political act in a long chain of despicable political acts by our attorney general.

Hassan himself said that he wanted to kill American military men and women so that they would not go to Afghanistan and kill his fellow Muslims.  It is an admitted act of terror, no matter how you wish to parse it.  

So then what was Robert Bales??  Chopped liver...?   (Yeah, to be totally gruesome, I bet there was some of that...)

If we are gonna call one thing what it is, then all things should be called what they are.

I wonder if Hassan himself had Robert Bales in mind??

[Gaspar]

So then what was Robert Bales??  Chopped liver...?   (Yeah, to be totally gruesome, I bet there was some of that...)

If we are gonna call one thing what it is, then all things should be called what they are.

I wonder if Hassan himself had Robert Bales in mind??

Don't really care what you call Bales.  He was a murderer who killed innocent people.  The difference is that the classification of Bales crimes (terror, murder, whatever) has no impact on his victims or their surviving families. Actually. . .that's not entirely true. . .the families of Bales victims were treated far better than the families of our own US service men gunned down by Hassan.  The US paid $860,000 to the victims' families in Bales case, allocated as $50,000 for each person killed and $10,000 for each person injured.  AE Holder blocked any additional pay to our own servicemen and their families by tinkering with the semantics.

It's "We're so sorry for your tragic loss at the hands of our rogue soldier, here's $50,000." V.S. "Maim, your son was a great soldier, too bad he died in an act of workplace violence.  Please accept this photocopied letter from the president."

[Conan71]

I'm not terribly excited about that either.

I want outrage over the Aflek/Batman casting, damn it!

[Townsend]

I want outrage over the Aflek/Batman casting, damn it!

[Townsend]

'I'd Tap That' And Other NSA Pick-Up Lines Are All The Rage

http://kwgs.com/post/id-tap-and-other-nsa-pick-lines-are-all-rage

News that National Security Agency spies sometimes abuse domestic intelligence gathering practices to monitor potential love interests has led to a sweeping, satirical response by The People of The Internet.

On Tumblr and Twitter, the #NSAPickupLines and #NSALovePoems hashtags have sparked all sorts of creativity from users poking fun at the potential intrusion of the NSA into our personal lives.

"Roses are red, violets are blue, your pin number is 6852," reads a popular "NSA love poem" spreading on the internet right now.

The parody @PRISM_NSA Twitter account, named after the electronic surveillance program leaked by Edward Snowden, has been pick-up line central for much of the weekend, so you can keep up with the tweets there. Some of our favorite spy-themed pick-up lines and love poems, below:

This was all inspired by the news reported on Friday by The Wall Street Journal that National Security Agency officers were spying on their exes or love interests, and enough of them were doing it that the practice got its own Orwellian label within the agency: "LOVEINT".

"NSA has zero tolerance for willful violations of the agency's authorities" and responds "as appropriate," the agency said in a statement.

[patric]

Mass surveillance; so easy a caveman can do it.

The government pays AT&T to place its employees in drug-fighting units around the country. Those employees sit alongside Drug Enforcement Administration agents and local detectives and supply them with the phone data from as far back as 1987.

"Hemisphere" covers every call that passes through an AT&T switch — not just those made by AT&T customers — and includes calls dating back 26 years, according to Hemisphere training slides bearing the logo of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Some four billion call records are added to the database every day.

The PowerPoint slides outline several "success stories" highlighting the program's achievements and showing that it is used in investigating a range of crimes, not just drug violations.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/02/us/drug-agents-use-vast-phone-trove-eclipsing-nsas.html?_r=0

[Townsend]

[Hoss]

The Motorola Atrix Android phone had this first.

Apple.  Not quite the innovator people think they are.

[Townsend]

Apple.  Not quite the innovator people think they are.

Better at announcing things though.

[Hoss]

Better at announcing things though.

True.  Still not impressed.

iPhone.  It's like 'smart phones for dummies'.   

[Conan71]

iPhone.  It's like 'smart phones for dummies'.   

That's obviously why I'm an iPhone fanboi

[Gaspar]

Well, so far iOS7 sucks on iPad.  Looks pretty, but much slower.  I figured there would be something new or groundbreaking, but lately it seems Apple is only focusing on aesthetics.  Glad I went with the HTC 1 for my pocket data appliance.

[Hoss]

Well, so far iOS7 sucks on iPad.  Looks pretty, but much slower.  I figured there would be something new or groundbreaking, but lately it seems Apple is only focusing on aesthetics.  Glad I went with the HTC 1 for my pocket data appliance.

I have one iDevice..iPhone 4S that work provides me.  I updated to 7 last night and was pleasantly surprised.  Some changes were made to the mail client (the ability to mass mark messages read without using some stupid workaround).

But my Galaxy Nexus is still far better.  And when Google/LG puts out the Nexus 5 next month or November, I'm buying it.  I love unlocked phones, and they make the price point easy to buy.  I haven't owned a contract phone in three years now.

[Conan71]

Well, so far iOS7 sucks on iPad.  Looks pretty, but much slower.  I figured there would be something new or groundbreaking, but lately it seems Apple is only focusing on aesthetics.  Glad I went with the HTC 1 for my pocket data appliance.

So far, I like IOS 7 on my 4S and it didn't do the predictable slow down of the apps in the phone like I experienced when they updated the IOS on the iPhone 3 about the time the iP 4 came out.  Our office manager said she was third in line at 3am at the AT & T store in Tulsa Hills and the line was wrapped around the building by the time she left shortly after 8am.  I'm in no real hurry to get my 5S other than MC wants my current phone so she can get out of the stone ages with communication and her four year old stone age phone is doing the death spiral.

She's the notoriously cheap one in our house. Not a bad thing!

[Red Arrow]

I'm in no real hurry to get my 5S other than MC wants my current phone so she can get out of the stone ages with communication and her four year old stone age phone is doing the death spiral.

She's the notoriously cheap one in our house. Not a bad thing!

Christmas isn't too far away.