SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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?
Original Submission
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2015, @06:05PM
Every fucking one of you is the reason this is happening, the NSA is a construct of your xenophobia and apathy.
This fake internet outrage whenever its brought up by people contributing to the problem disgusts me. Every single one of you is the god damn cause of it.
I don't disagree with you, but I am curious what you suggest we do.
There is no political opposition with anything resembling influence. In California, the two wings (right-wing and far-right-wing) of the bought and payed for, pro-surveillance, pro-police state, corporate party passed a law that third parties and independents would not show up on the ballot. Voting Democrat or Republican will never change anything, and it isn't even possible to vote for anything else in California state races (maybe other states too). The far-right wing of the corporate party has engaged in a nation-wide campaign of disenfranchisement of the poor, so millions of poor people cannot vote or when they do, their votes are not counted. So, political change by itself is ruled out.
There is not critical mass for a revolution.
Small scale opposition just brings the hammer down on those individuals who act in any kind of opposition.
Every peace, civil rights, etc. organization in the US is infiltrated by government spys (Really. Sadly not tin foil hat stuff).
"Protests" in the form of non-confrontational marches and twitter campaigns are about as effective as wanking off.
Every time criminality at the top is exposed, it is swept under the rug, or made retroactively legal. While the smallest protest, can lead to life in prison under a terrorism enhancement-- e.g., a man burned two SUVs on a car lot. The charge for arson carried a maximum 2yr. sentence. But, because he said he was doing it to call attention to ecological issues, he was charged with terrorism. He was sentenced to life, and most of that (many years so far) has been spent in solitary.
The US has more people imprisoned than any other nation in the history of the planet (both in absolute numbers, and per-capita). The extent of our prison system makes the Soviet Gulag look insignificant. We have never hesitated to imprison political prisoners.
The US has a massive military machine that has on several occasions, over the last hundred and fifty years, been called out against the population when the rulers were afraid that critical mass was close to being achieved. Sadly, those military men have always been willing to commit the worst treachery and fire against their brothers because they are "following orders". And, no those NRA idiots are not even a tiny bit of friction to this, even if the NRA was about protecting citizens from government rather than protecting white racists from armed blacks their little guns are no match to the weaponry our military can bring to bear against Americans (yeah NRA has, historically, been pro gun control, as long as it disarms blacks and not whites-- really.).
Hell, our current president ordered the summary execution of an American citizen and his son because of the speech of the father. There were no repercussions to the president (of course, our rich parasite class is responsible for the murders of millions around the globe without any accountability it is not my intent to minimize this horror by pointing out the summary execution of American citizens)
So, what are your concrete suggestions?
Personally I think we are close to a guerrilla war being the only option, but I doubt there would be enough support today for even that to be viable/sustainable.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 28 2015, @07:00PM
Voters are getting what they want. Democracy at work.
Meanwhile the rest are getting what they want too. TPP, more spying on everyone, more monopolies.