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posted by cmn32480 on Sunday June 28 2015, @05:03AM   Printer-friendly
from the government-overreach-at-its-finest dept.

The National Security Agency, while primarily occupied by sweeping up billions of phone calls, emails, texts and social media messages each day, wants better visual information about the earth and its residents, too, Admiral Michael Rogers said Wednesday.

"Signals intelligence ... ain't enough, you guys," the NSA chief told a gathering of contractors in the geospatial intelligence business. "We gotta create a much broader picture."

We need "the ability to visualize," he explained, because "man is fundamentally a visual creature."

Rogers, who also heads the Pentagon's United States Cyber Command, spent much of his keynote speech at the GEOINT 2015 conference pitching the technology, intelligence and defense companies in the audience on the importance of working together. The conference's slogan — appropriate, given the government's ever-growing demands — is "open the aperture."

"It's all about partnerships," Rogers told the audience. "How can we harness the power of the commercial sector?"

In how many other ways could the Director of the NSA gain a new perspective on the world?


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2015, @05:29AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2015, @05:29AM (#202352)

    No, that can't be right. Continue violating civil rights throughout the entire world, until we find the Real Terrorists, because U.S. can't possibly be The Real Terrorists.

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2015, @05:44AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2015, @05:44AM (#202353)

    +1
    The land of the free and home of the brave is a construct that no only exists in fairy tales.

    Its more of a festering cesspool of evil and mammal blubber now

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2015, @05:50AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2015, @05:50AM (#202354)

      This is why kids have to recite the Pledge of Allegiance every day, at the start of school: indoctrination starts early.

      • (Score: 5, Informative) by Marand on Sunday June 28 2015, @07:12AM

        by Marand (1081) on Sunday June 28 2015, @07:12AM (#202364) Journal

        This is why kids have to recite the Pledge of Allegiance every day, at the start of school: indoctrination starts early.

        In my case, at least, all that ever did was make me hate hearing it, just like how when my elementary school turned Christmas songs into a forced exercise -- putting the lyrics up on a projector and making the entire class recite and memorise them -- it just made me dislike Christmas songs. When something as fun as Christmas can get soured by a school turning it into a chore, something as dull as the pledge of allegiance doesn't stand a chance.

        I definitely see the indoctrination angle, though. I remember, as a kid, feeling like I was being forced to make a commitment under duress; students couldn't opt out of reciting the pledge unless their parents could prove religions reasons against it. That meant refusing to recite it resulted in punishment, which made the whole thing much less patriotic in my mind. That isn't a complaint against the pledge itself, though; it's a criticism of how my school, at least, forced it on us. Maybe other schools handled it better, I don't know.

        • (Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday June 28 2015, @07:44AM

          by frojack (1554) on Sunday June 28 2015, @07:44AM (#202367) Journal

          Yeah, I always thought the pledge was pretty Soviet in nature.

          It never meant a thing to me, its just something you did without thinking about it. Obviously it bothered you more than me.
          The Flag and the National Anthem meant a great deal to my dad, who was Navy in WWII.

          But not so much me, even though I'm a pretty patriotic guy, some things just seem juvenile.

          --
          No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
        • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2015, @03:21PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2015, @03:21PM (#202433)

          Great that it didn't work on you. But what about everyone else? Do you recall if your classmates felt the same way or just kinda zoned out and went along...

        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2015, @05:02PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2015, @05:02PM (#202457)

          This is why kids have to recite the Pledge of Allegiance every day, at the start of school: indoctrination starts early.

          In my case, at least, all that ever did was make me hate hearing it

          That is because you have sufficient intelligence and strength of will to resist.

          When I was a kid, my next door neighbor would no longer hang out with me because he didn't think I had my hand firmly planted over my heart during the pledge one morning, and so disrespected the pledge, his god(s), and country. This was around 3rd grade, and we never hung out again up to when I moved in 9th grade.

          Some kids are more easily brain washed than others. I suspect you are also non-religious.

          At the California public school where I lived before this incident, I was forced to stand at the front of the class to be ridiculed because I refused to pray (2nd grade). The indoctrination / brainwashing / pressure to conform is as strong in our society as our society is sick.

          And, yes, "they" hate the US because it is an evil vile nation both to its own underclass, and to the rest of the world. And, the US has been trying since Reagan began "star wars", and Baby Bush said, he wanted "nukes he could use," to step up the aggression to nuclear annihilation of "its enemies". All presidents from Reagan through Obama, inclusive have pressed for funding for "missile defense". Nukes you can use means disabling the retaliatory strike-- this is what "missile defense" is all about. The world will be an uninhabitable burning cinder, if the US achieves this before its citizens wake up and revolt against their rulers, since the rich psychos who run the place wouldn't hesitate to nuke anybody who challenges their power, if they thought they would not, personally, suffer grave repercussions.

        • (Score: 4, Interesting) by dry on Sunday June 28 2015, @08:19PM

          by dry (223) on Sunday June 28 2015, @08:19PM (#202493) Journal

          When I was a kid in Vancouver, the odd other kid would spend a year or so south of the border and then return with horrifying stories about being forced to recite the pledge. The whole idea seemed something right out of the most authoritarian dictatorship and was one of the things that proved the lie about the land of the free.
          Of course the number of political refugees escaping America also helped to show the lie.
          For Americans, freedom seems to mean being able to choose between Coke and Pepsi and even the politics is the same.

          • (Score: 2) by Kell on Monday June 29 2015, @05:30AM

            by Kell (292) on Monday June 29 2015, @05:30AM (#202650)

            Counter point - I did the majority of my primary schooling in Ottawa, and we were forced to sing O Canada each day and recite a prayer. Right at the end of my time there, they switched from a recited prayer over the PA to a "quiet prayer time", in which we were told we had to be praying anyway. When I was in Australia, we also had ladies from the community come in for a religious education event (with cakes!), and it was much the same sort of thing, if perhaps not as obviously structured and mandatory. No matter where you go, the established order (religious, political, cultural) will try to assert itself and inculcate its perpetuation in the minds of children.

            --
            Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
            • (Score: 2) by dry on Monday June 29 2015, @07:08PM

              by dry (223) on Monday June 29 2015, @07:08PM (#202956) Journal

              Only ever sang O Canada at assemblies (along with God Save the Queen) but did have the daily prayer and bible reading. The thing was, as long as the students were quiet, they could ignore it and no one cared whereas down the States, you were likely to get all kinds of repercussions, from fellow students beating you up to detention. Also by about 1970 the Christian BS went away whereas down the States they still do it.