sorry malice, but this post really made me laugh. Well done J.

Also, the only thing I use facebook for anymore is looking at crap my wife wants me to see. That and wishing Justin a happy birthday once a year. I may have to dump it.

did you have to both quote it and bottom page me too? god the humiliation I endure for RM's pleasure.

I wonder what comes up in the NSA databases when this is used in a query.

oh, it's far too late for that.

anyway, here's the article link again because, yeah.

http://www.vice.com/read/how-to-make-yo ... te-in-2014

Fails without this:

http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm

This is a bit scary

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/godandthem ... rotestors/

Kiev is exploding in protests as Ukraine’s president attempts to move the country away from EU membership and closer into the Russian orbit.
On Tuesday, anyone in the vicinity of the protests received the following message on their phones: “Dear subscriber, you are registered as a participant in a mass disturbance.”
Registered.
Got that?
We know who you are now and you can expect a visit.
I knew the tech existed, but the idea of it being deployed in such a blatantly totalitarian and oppressive way still shocks. Anyone with an active cellphone in that area is identified, complete with a list of contacts and just about everything else anyone needs to know. They don’t even need to be participating in the protest. Just nearby.
Okay, now imagine this going on here, with the full power of the NSA brought to bear on citizens, and you’ll understand why some of us are getting a little jumpy.
Protest leaders said the authorities seemed to be giving the more radical protesters free rein while going out of their way to frighten more moderate ones, particularly with the threatening text messages sent on Tuesday.
The phrasing of the message, about participating in a “mass disturbance,” echoed language in a new law making it a crime to participate in a protest deemed violent. The law took effect on Tuesday. And protesters were concerned that the government seemed to be using cutting-edge technology from the advertising industry to pinpoint people for political profiling.
Three cellphone companies in Ukraine — Kyivstar, MTS and Life — denied that they had provided the location data to the government or had sent the text messages, the newspaper Ukrainskaya Pravda reported. Kyivstar suggested that it was instead the work of a “pirate” cellphone tower set up in the area.
The messages appeared to have little effect. Three hours after they were sent, riot police officers pushed past barricades of burned buses at that site and were met by a crowd of protesters in ski masks and bicycle helmets, carrying sticks and ready to fight.
The police fired plastic bullets and threw stun grenades. They pressed as far as a cobblestone-throwing catapult built by protesters the day before and dismantled it before retreating.
In case you missed that, they’re building catapults in Kiev

This is...

http://www.nsa.gov/kids/home.shtml

Goes this NSA site for kids count as government charity or indifference?

Oh no, my snapchats and status updates.

Should I suppose those with minority political views have nothing to fear? Was Cointelpro an apporpriate government activity? Dirty hippies should know their place.

1.) No, they don't, but certain types of advocacy are likely to draw government attention. There's nothing wrong with that.
2.) I don't know if we can judge it overall, but in some instances it probably was and in others not so much.

Edward Snowden says NSA engages in industrial espionage
Ex-NSA contractor cites German engineering firm Siemens as one target

Thomson Reuters Posted: Jan 26, 2014 11:42 AM ET

The U.S. National Security Agency is involved in industrial espionage and will grab any intelligence it can get its hands on regardless of its value to national security, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden told a German TV network.

In text released ahead of a lengthy interview to be broadcast on Sunday, ARD TV quoted Snowden as saying the NSA does not limit its espionage to issues of national security and he cited German engineering firm, Siemens as one target.

"If there's information at Siemens that's beneficial to U.S. national interests — even if it doesn't have anything to do with national security — then they'll take that information nevertheless," Snowden said, according to ARD, which recorded the interview in Russia where he has claimed asylum.

Snowden also told the German public broadcasting network he no longer has possession of any documents or information on NSA activities and has turned everything he had over to select journalists.

He said he did not have any control over the publication of the information, ARD said.

Questions about U.S. government spying on civilians and foreign officials burst into the open last June when Snowden, leaked documents outlining the widespread collection of telephone records and email.

The revelations shocked Germany, a country especially sensitive after the abuses by the Gestapo during the Nazi reign and the Stasi in Communist East Germany during the Cold War.

Reports the NSA monitored Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone have added to the anger in Germany, which has been pushing for a 'no-spy' agreement with the United States, a country it considers to be among its closest allies.

NSA software could help hackers

Snowden's claim the NSA is engaged in industrial espionage follows a New York Times report earlier this month that the NSA put software in almost 100,000 computers around the world, allowing it to carry out surveillance on those devices and could provide a digital highway for cyberattacks.

The NSA planted most of the software after gaining access to computer networks, but has also used a secret technology that allows it entry even to computers not connected to the internet, the newspaper said, citing U.S. officials, computer experts and documents leaked by Snowden.

The newspaper said the technology had been in use since at least 2008 and relied on a covert channel of radio waves transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards secretly inserted in the computers.

Frequent targets of the program, code-named Quantum, included units of the Chinese military and industrial targets.

Snowden faces criminal charges after fleeing to Hong Kong and then Russia, where he was granted at least a year's asylum.

He was charged with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national security information and giving classified intelligence data to an unauthorized person.

We can't judge it overall? If you can provide something to indicate that they had tabs on the weather undergound or a simialry violent group, I might concede the point. It seems however, that just like back in the day they currently have trouble distinguishing the signal from the noise. In recent years the FBI has made a name for itself inventing terrorists by providing fake bombs to those sympathetic to Al Qaeda who otherwise wouldn't have the means.

If my personal risk of death by terrorism was substantially greater than death by police gunfire, then I might be more agreable to your worldview. As it stands now, those in the Whitehouse/Statehouse have far more power over my life than Al Qaeda acolytes.

when the NSA shares it's tech.
CSEC used airport Wi-Fi to track Canadian travellers: Edward Snowden documents
Electronic snooping was part of a trial run for U.S. NSA and other foreign services

By Greg? Weston, Glenn Greenwald, Ryan Gallager, CBC News Posted: Jan 30, 2014 8:59 PM ET| Last Updated: Jan 30, 2014 10:00 PM ET

A top secret document retrieved by U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden and obtained by CBC News shows that Canada's electronic spy agency used information from the free internet service at a major Canadian airport to track the wireless devices of thousands of ordinary airline passengers for days after they left the terminal.

After reviewing the document, one of Canada's foremost authorities on cyber-security says the clandestine operation by the Communications Security Establishment Canada ( CSEC) was almost certainly illegal.


Ronald Deibert told CBC News: "I can't see any circumstance in which this would not be unlawful, under current Canadian law, under our Charter, under CSEC's mandates."


The spy agency is supposed to be collecting primarily foreign intelligence by intercepting overseas phone and internet traffic, and is prohibited by law from targeting Canadians or anyone in Canada without a judicial warrant.

As CSEC chief John Forster recently stated: "I can tell you that we do not target Canadians at home or abroad in our foreign intelligence activities, nor do we target anyone in Canada.

"In fact, it's prohibited by law. Protecting the privacy of Canadians is our most important principle."


But security experts who have been apprised of the document point out the airline passengers in a Canadian airport were clearly in Canada.


CSEC said in a written statement to CBC News that it is "mandated to collect foreign signals intelligence to protect Canada and Canadians. And in order to fulfill that key foreign intelligence role for the country, CSEC is legally authorized to collect and analyze metadata."


Metadata reveals a trove of information including, for example, the location and telephone numbers of all calls a person makes and receives — but not the content of the call, which would legally be considered a private communication and cannot be intercepted without a warrant.


"No Canadian communications were (or are) targeted, collected or used," the agency says.

In the case of the airport tracking operation, the metadata apparently identified travelers' wireless devices, but not the content of calls made or emails sent from them.


Black Code


Diebert is author of the book Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace, which is about internet surveillance, and he heads the world-renowned Citizen Lab cyber research program at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs.


He says that whatever CSEC calls it, the tracking of those passengers was nothing less than an "indiscriminate collection and analysis of Canadians' communications data," and he could not imagine any circumstances that would have convinced a judge to authorize it.


A passenger checks his cellphone while boarding a flight in Boston in October. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration issued new guidelines under which passengers will be able to use electronic devices from the time they board to the time they leave the plane, which will also help electronic spies to keep tabs on them. (Associated Press)

The latest Snowden document indicates the spy service was provided with information captured from unsuspecting travellers' wireless devices by the airport's free Wi-Fi system over a two-week period.

Experts say that probably included many Canadians whose smartphone and laptop signals were intercepted without their knowledge as they passed through the terminal.

The document shows the federal intelligence agency was then able to track the travellers for a week or more as they — and their wireless devices — showed up in other Wi-Fi "hot spots" in cities across Canada and even at U.S. airports.

That included people visiting other airports, hotels, coffee shops and restaurants, libraries, ground transportation hubs, and any number of places among the literally thousands with public wireless internet access.

The document shows CSEC had so much data it could even track the travellers back in time through the days leading up to their arrival at the airport, these experts say.

While the documents make no mention of specific individuals, Deibert and other cyber experts say it would be simple for the spy agency to have put names to all the Canadians swept up in the operation.

All Canadians with a smartphone, tablet or laptop are "essentially carrying around digital dog tags as we go about our daily lives," Deibert says.

Anyone able to access the data that those devices leave behind on wireless hotspots, he says, can obtain "extraordinarily precise information about our movements and social relationships."

Trial run for NSA

The document indicates the passenger tracking operation was a trial run of a powerful new software program CSEC was developing with help from its U.S. counterpart, the National Security Agency.

In the document, CSEC called the new technologies "game-changing," and said they could be used for tracking "any target that makes occasional forays into other cities/regions."

Sources tell CBC News the technologies tested on Canadians in 2012 have since become fully operational.

CSEC claims "no Canadian or foreign travellers' movements were 'tracked,'" although it does not explain why it put the word "tracked" in quotation marks.

Deibert says metadata is "way more powerful that the content of communications. You can tell a lot more about people, their habits, their relationships, their friendships, even their political preferences, based on that type of metadata."

The document does not say exactly how the Canadian spy service managed to get its hands on two weeks' of travellers' wireless data from the airport Wi-Fi system, although there are indications it was provided voluntarily by a "special source."

The country's two largest airports — Toronto and Vancouver — both say they have never supplied CSEC or other Canadian intelligence agency with information on passengers' Wi-Fi use.

Alana Lawrence, a spokesperson for the Vancouver Airport Authority, says it operates the free Wi-Fi there, but does "not in any way store any personal data associated with it," and has never received a request from any Canadian intelligence agency for it.

A U.S.-based company, Boingo, is the largest independent supplier of Wi-Fi services at other Canadian airports, including Pearson International in Toronto.

Spokesperson Katie O'Neill tells CBC News: "To the best of our knowledge, [Boingo] has not provided any information about any of our users to the Canadian government, law enforcement or intelligence agencies."

It is also unclear from the document how CSEC managed to penetrate so many wireless systems to see who was using them — specifically, to know every time someone targeted at the airport showed up on one of those other Wi-Fi networks elsewhere.

Deibert and other experts say the federal intelligence agency must have gained direct access to at least some of the country's main telephone and internet pipelines, allowing the mass-surveillance of Canadian emails and phone calls.

'Blown away'

Ontario's privacy commissioner Ann Cavoukian says she is "blown away" by the revelations.


"It is really unbelievable that CSEC would engage in that kind of surveillance of Canadians. Of us.

"I mean that could have been me at the airport walking around… This resembles the activities of a totalitarian state, not a free and open society."

Experts say the document makes clear CSEC intended to share both the technologies and future information generated by it with Canada's official spying partners — the U.S., Britain, New Zealand and Australia, the so-called Five Eyes intelligence network.

Indeed, the spy agency boasts in its leaked document that, in an apparently separate pilot project, it obtained access to two communications systems with more than 300,000 users, and was then able to "sweep" an entire mid-sized Canadian city to pinpoint a specific imaginary target in a fictional kidnapping.

The document dated May 2012 is a 27-page power-point presentation by CSEC describing its airport tracking operation.

While the document was in the trove of secret NSA files retrieved by Snowden, it bears CSEC's logo and clearly originated with the Canadian spy service.

Wesley Wark, a renowned authority on international security and intelligence, agrees with Deibert.

"I cannot see any way in which it fits CSEC's legal mandate."

Wark says the document suggests CSEC was "trying to push the technological boundaries" in part to impress its other international counterparts in the Five-Eyes intelligence network.

"This document is kind of suffused with the language of technological gee-whiz."

Wark says if CSEC's use of "very powerful and intrusive technological tools" puts it outside its mandate and even the law, "then you are in a situation for democracy where you simply don't want to be."

Like Wark and other experts interviewed for this story, Deibert says there's no question Canada needs CSEC to be gathering foreign intelligence, "but they must do it within a framework of proper checks and balances so their formidable powers can never be abused. And that's the missing ingredient right now in Canada."

The only official oversight of CSEC's spying operations is a retired judge appointed by the prime minister, and reporting to the minister of defence who is also responsible for the intelligence agency.

"Here we clearly have an agency of the state collecting in an indiscriminate and bulk fashion all of Canadian communications and the oversight mechanism is flimsy at best," Deibert says.

"Those to me are circumstances ripe for potential abuse."

CSEC spends over $400 million a year, and employs about 2,000 people, almost half of whom are involved in intercepting phone conversations, and hacking into computer systems supposedly in other countries.

It has long been Canada's most secretive spy agency, responding to almost all questions about its operations with reassurances it is doing nothing wrong.

Privacy watchdog Cavoukian says there has to be "greater openness and transparency because without that there can be no accountability.

"This trust-me model that the government is advancing and CSEC is advancing – 'Oh just trust us, we're doing the right thing, don't worry' — yes, worry! We have very good reason to worry."

In the U.S., Snowden exposed massive metadata collection by the National Security Agency, which is said to have scooped up private phone and internet records of more than 100 million Americans.

A U.S. judge recently called the NSA's metadata collection an Orwellian surveillance program that is likely unconstitutional.

The public furor over NSA snooping prompted a White House review of the American spy agency's operations, and President Barack Obama recently vowed to clamp down on the collection and use of metadata.

Cavoukian says Canadians deserve nothing less.

"Look at the U.S. — they've been talking about these matters involving national security for months now very publicly because the public deserves answers.

"And that's what I would tell our government, our minister of national defence and our prime minister: We demand some answers to this."

Stip, do you ever draw a connection between your demands to continually "properly" fund the government, and what the government actually does with your money?

so here's what my gov is trying to push through

I saw that Assange is promising a new leak. That's all good and well, but Snowden seems to be the worst possible thing that could happen to Assange. Snowden is selective AND principled in his leaks. Moreover, at this point what can Assange offer us? If you aren't perterbed by the NSA, what are some alleged war crimes from 8 years ago going to do? He might as we throw in the towel and become an anchor for RT, as its pretty clear that he has one fixation.