The Intercept has published The Drone Papers, an 8-part series of reports on classified documents obtained from an anonymous whistleblower:
The Intercept has obtained a cache of secret documents detailing the inner workings of the U.S. military's assassination program in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia. The documents, provided by a whistleblower, offer an unprecedented glimpse into Obama's drone wars.
Part 1: The Assassination Complex
The Intercept has obtained a cache of secret slides that provides a window into the inner workings of the U.S. military's kill/capture operations at a key time in the evolution of the drone wars — between 2011 and 2013. The documents, which also outline the internal views of special operations forces on the shortcomings and flaws of the drone program, were provided by a source within the intelligence community who worked on the types of operations and programs described in the slides. The Intercept granted the source's request for anonymity because the materials are classified and because the U.S. government has engaged in aggressive prosecution of whistleblowers. The stories in this series will refer to the source as "the source."
The source said he decided to provide these documents to The Intercept because he believes the public has a right to understand the process by which people are placed on kill lists and ultimately assassinated on orders from the highest echelons of the U.S. government. "This outrageous explosion of watchlisting — of monitoring people and racking and stacking them on lists, assigning them numbers, assigning them 'baseball cards,' assigning them death sentences without notice, on a worldwide battlefield — it was, from the very first instance, wrong," the source said.
[...] "The military is easily capable of adapting to change, but they don't like to stop anything they feel is making their lives easier, or is to their benefit. And this certainly is, in their eyes, a very quick, clean way of doing things. It's a very slick, efficient way to conduct the war, without having to have the massive ground invasion mistakes of Iraq and Afghanistan," the source said. "But at this point, they have become so addicted to this machine, to this way of doing business, that it seems like it's going to become harder and harder to pull them away from it the longer they're allowed to continue operating in this way."
[More after the break.]
"Key revelations" include insight into the process that selects targets for assassination and places information about them on President Obama's desk for approval in a form referred to as "baseball cards". The President took an average of 58 days to sign off on each target, and U.S. forces had 60 days to carry out the strikes [THIS INFORMATION IS UNCLEAR, DID THEY GET TO RENEW THE 60 DAY PERIOD?]. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) operate parallel drone-based assassination programs and "the secret documents should be viewed in the context of an intense internal turf war over which entity should have supremacy in those operations".
The documents acknowledge that the U.S. military has become overly reliant on "poor/limited" signals intelligence to identify and locate targets. According to the source, unreliable metadata "selectors" resulted in civilian deaths:
"It requires an enormous amount of faith in the technology that you're using," the source said. "There's countless instances where I've come across intelligence that was faulty." This, he said, is a primary factor in the killing of civilians. "It's stunning the number of instances when selectors are misattributed to certain people. And it isn't until several months or years later that you all of a sudden realize that the entire time you thought you were going after this really hot target, you wind up realizing it was his mother's phone the whole time."
The documents undermine Obama Administration claims that civilian casualties are minimal. For example, during a five-month period of Operation Haymaker in northeastern Afghanistan, "nearly 90 percent of the people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets". Unidentified people killed in targeted strikes are designated EKIA, or "enemy killed in action", unless evidence later emerged that the individuals were not terrorists or "unlawful enemy combatants". Statistics related to the number of targets approved for assassination by President Obama only count targets approved under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), and not CIA operations.
"Finishing operations" faced a "tyranny of distance". The pace of strikes in Afghanistan in Iraq was much faster than those in Yemen and Somalia. 80% of operations were conducted within 150 km of an air base in Iraq, whereas the average distance was 450 km in Yemen and more than 1,000 km in Somalia.
The White House's standards say only targets posing a "continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons" may be assassinated. However, the documents only once explicitly mention a specific criterion: that a person "presents a threat to U.S. interest or personnel."
While many of the documents provided to The Intercept contain explicit internal recommendations for improving unconventional U.S. warfare, the source said that what's implicit is even more significant. The mentality reflected in the documents on the assassination programs is: "This process can work. We can work out the kinks. We can excuse the mistakes. And eventually we will get it down to the point where we don't have to continuously come back ... and explain why a bunch of innocent people got killed."
Part 2: A Visual Glossary
Part 3: The Kill Chain
Part 4: Find, Fix, Finish
Part 5: Manhunting in the Hindu Kush
Part 6: Firing Blind
Part 7: The Life and Death of Objective Peckham
Part 8: Target Africa
Glossary: The Alphabet of Assassination
Documents:
Small Footprint Operations 2/13
Small Footprint Operations 5/13
Operation Haymaker
Geolocation Watchlist
This story is reported on by RT, Vice, Wired, Foreign Policy, PBS NewsHour, The Hill, CommonDreams, Democracy Now!, etc.
[Update: changed layout so less of the story appears on the main page. -Ed.]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Saturday October 17 2015, @03:11PM
On thing mentioned in the TFA, is that it is against US law for Presidents to engage in "assassination", hence the term "targeted killing". It's part of the Executive ploy to use words arbitrarily -- like how "imminent" does not mean that something is likely to happen in the near future. The part I really don't comprehend, is if this program had been run by a GOP person, the protests on the streets and in the halls of DC from the DNC would have been loud and frequent. With Obama, it's total silence. Conclusion: Democrats, the more effective evil.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 17 2015, @03:25PM
The part I really don't comprehend, is if this program had been run by a GOP person, the protests on the streets and in the halls of DC from the DNC would have been loud and frequent. With Obama, it's total silence.
That's quite a leap you're making there, laddy...
Conclusion: Democrats, the more effective evil.
There, now... now, there... now... now there now. There still the government, we shall have non of this effectiveness you speak of!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Non Sequor on Saturday October 17 2015, @04:08PM
The part I really don't comprehend, is if this program had been run by a GOP person, the protests on the streets and in the halls of DC from the DNC would have been loud and frequent.
Both sides extend some trust to a co-aligned president and distrust a cross-aligned president.
The calculus in place here is that Democrats viewed Obama as dovish in 2008 and if he's shifted from that stance they would rather assume that the intelligence case is compelling and that drone strikes are less destructive than alternatives as opposed to criticizing a standing co-aligned president for changing positions. They come to the less disruptive resolution of their cognitive dissonance.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Saturday October 17 2015, @04:53PM
It was run for a while by George W Bush. And there were not a lot of loud protests in the halls of power or on the street. Conclusion: Both major parties are in complete agreement when it comes to the military to killing innocent people.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Informative) by hemocyanin on Saturday October 17 2015, @06:21PM
Marty Lederman: http://www.salon.com/2011/10/09/the_awlaki_memo_and_marty_lederman/ [salon.com]
During the Bush administration he wrote scathing articles about using secret legal memos to support due process free detention.
During the Obama administration, he helped author secret legal memos supporting due process free execution.
There was a lot of outrage in the DNC over Bush policies when Bush did them --nothing but support when Obama does them.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kurenai.tsubasa on Saturday October 17 2015, @06:59PM
Conclusion: Lederman is an idiot or is getting paid. Probably the latter.
If we're talking about the Ds, of course they're going to raise noise when it's an R that's doing it and then hush up when it's a D that's doing it.
The partisanism to one wing or another of the Owner Party gets tiring.
It's telling that when Bernie Sanders completely trounces a member of the Owner Party who offers nothing but rehearsed talking points in a debate, the member of the Owner Party is loudly declared the winner. Sanders may be running as a D as a matter of practicality, but he's very clearly not in the Owner Party. I wonder if as the Coronation proceeds, he'll jump ship to either L or G or just go back to independent.
(Circle of protection: Karma to burn.) Supporting the Owner Party has only one conclusion: Queen Chelsea Clinton, Regent of North America, Grand Duchess of Europe, Empress of Polynesia and Japan, and Countess of Oceania.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Saturday October 17 2015, @06:14PM
The part I really don't comprehend, is if this program had been run by a GOP person, the protests on the streets and in the halls of DC from the DNC would have been loud and frequent. With Obama, it's total silence. Conclusion: Democrats, the more effective evil.
this is NOT a partisan issue. apparently you are ignorant of the fact that the first drone strikes started back in 2001 [wikipedia.org] and started really ramping up in 2008. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Saturday October 17 2015, @06:28PM
How am I ignorant of that fact? It is well know that Obama has executed far more drone strikes, in far more countries, than Bush did. The fact that I think Obama is sack-o-shit for doing that, in no way makes me think Bush was not also a similar sack-o-shit. The policy, whether performed by someone from the GOP or the DNC is immoral, ineffective, and counterproductive. The issue as I see it however, is that the DNC only cares about which party is being immoral, and not whether the act itself is immoral. In other words, it's OK for their guy to be a murdering asshole because he's a Democrat. The clear evidence that this is fact, is total lack of bitching from Democrats about Obama exercising Bush policy.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Gravis on Saturday October 17 2015, @07:42PM
The issue as I see it however, is that the DNC only cares about which party is being immoral
really? and here i thought the issue was that our government is assassinating people via drone strikes. take your polarizing bullshit elsewhere because both parties are guilty.
(Score: 2, Troll) by hemocyanin on Sunday October 18 2015, @01:01AM
Are you illiterate? What do you think I said?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 17 2015, @03:46PM
With a military background, I'm not surprised by much of what I've read so far. But, civilians are going to be pretty damned shocked. Well - they'll be shocked if they even give a damn. Half the population of the US probably still can't locate Afghanistan, Pakistan, or even India on a map. Probably more than 20% can't even locate Asia on a map. Total apathy - so long as they can have shiny baubles, nothing else matters.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday October 17 2015, @07:02PM
It's not just military. It's any concentration of power and immunity from punishment. People are too busy being shocked about the police to bother being shocked about something they see as less likely to affect them. ... Well, I mean the ones who are shocked by abuse of power.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by TrumpetPower! on Saturday October 17 2015, @04:39PM
We like to talk a nice game about how we're bombing the fucking shit out of these places and raining death from the skies from flying robots in order to help the locals...but, well, this quote pretty much puts the lie to that:
Imagine that somebody finally did something about that drug house down the street -- the one with the loud parties that ran all hours of the night, the meth lab in the basement, the target of the occasional drive-by, the presumed source of the recent spate of burglaries. And imagine that it wasn't the neighborhood police, but some other country's military that finally did something...and the "did something" was to drop a blockbuster bomb on the lot next to the drug house, obliterating that lot, "merely" severely damaging the drug house, and killing scores of your neighbors including entire families. Would you sympathies now lie with this foreign military, or would you instead stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the survivors of the drug house to defend the neighborhood against the invaders?
If we really wanted to help these people, we'd drop full-size fully-stocked American-style home improvement stores (Home Depot, Lowe's, etc.) in every city, and give every man, woman, and child a $50,000 gift card to spend in the store however they like. How could the Taliban or DAESH or the other boogeyman of the week even pretend to compete with that? Not to mention, it'd be an hell of a lot cheaper for American taxpayers -- and hugely profitable to the companies!
That we're not doing something so obvious to actually help these people and build up their nations, and, instead, we're bombing the fucking shit out of them and wantonly and recklessly killing ten innocents for every suspected -- not confirmed by due process and trial and what-not, but merely suspected! -- bad guy...tells you that, no, what we're really interested in doing is bombing the fucking shit out of these places and slaughtering innocents en masse.
It's not rocket science. If you want to help people to build a better place, help them to build a better place. If you want to go all mediaeval on their asses, go all mediaeval on their asses. And it's not like it's easy to mistrake building stuff from blowing the fucking shit out of it. Most two-year-olds can tell the difference.
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 17 2015, @05:46PM
Let me borrow your one sentence - "f you want to help people to build a better place, help them to build a better place." No, the US never gave a small damn about helping people build a better place. And, I confess, I don't give a damn either. It's more than enough work for me to build a slightly better place, right here on my own property. It's tough work, and I really don't care to help someone around the world, whom I've never met.
But, on to the rant. We handled Afghanistan all wrong. That entire thing shouldn't have lasted more than 18 to 24 months. Let me borrow another part of your post - "If you want to go all mediaeval on their asses, go all mediaeval on their asses."
The Afghans refused to turn over some pretty bad characters to us. Instead, they chose to shelter those bad characters. We had a legitimate casus beli to go "all mediaeval on their asses". And, that's what we should have done.
No war. No need for a declaration of war. Send a punitive expedition force. Wreak havoc, take prisoners, kill bad guys, destroy infrastructure, wreak some more havoc, rinse and repeat for several months. Destroy their ability to wage war (what little ability they had) and shake their government to the ground.
Somewhere around 18 months, we should have taken all the prisoners we were after, killed most of the bad guys, so we should have bugged out. Just leave the peices lying wherever they fell, and get the hell out. None of this silly shit about "nation building". No puppet government. No bases left behind - we should have BUILT any damned bases. Little to no hardware left behind. Just get up and go. Leave a message for the survivors to find.
"It's been real, and it's been fun, but it ain't been real fun. Our Marines are appreciative of the training opportunities you have provided. If you don't want them to return, you will become better diplomats in the future. Peace be unto you."
Punitive expedition - no stupid assed war. And, we don't help them to rebuild. We don't offer economic rewards. Veni, vidi, vici - we came, we saw, we kicked ass - then we went home for a few cold brewskis and a piece of ass.
Our "victories" are more expensive than losing, because we don't have the balls to wage war properly.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Saturday October 17 2015, @06:38PM
Send a punitive expedition force. Wreak havoc, take prisoners, kill bad guys, destroy infrastructure, wreak some more havoc, rinse and repeat for several months. Destroy their ability to wage war (what little ability they had) and shake their government to the ground.
I've often thought the same, that the nation building is a total waste of effort in almost every backwater we've tried it.
Kick-Ass and go home after WWI is thought to have lead to WWII by most historians, as the self-rebuilt Germany coming out of WWI was single mindedly seeking revenge. If not Hitler, it would have been someone else.
AND...
Nation building in Germany, Japan, and South Korea is seen as shining successes.
If anything, we are burdened by history lessons misapplied to the current world.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday October 17 2015, @07:08PM
I must disagree with your assessment of "going home" after WW1. The allies, primarily France, had Germany over a barrel after WW1. And, France engaged in extended and prolonged copulation with Germany, while over that barrel.
Bear in mind that these were the depression years. Europe suffered through the depression, just as the US did. That depression was much worse in Germany, because France was so busy exploiting Germany. Germany was taking the biggest donkey dick in the world, deep and hard. And, THAT set the stage for WW2.
Had France gone home, things in Germany would have been quite different, and Hitler would likely never have achieved any power.
Always, it is important to understand the evils committed by both sides in a conflict. It is typical of Americans to see our allies as saints, and our enemies as demons. Unfortunately, life isn't that simple. I cannot, and I will not, justify Hitler, the Nazi party, or the genocide that Germany committed - but some of that crap is at least understandable in view of the rape that Germany was suffering after WW1.
I will also note the state of both Germany and Japan after WW2. Both were beaten to their knees, and were forced to surrender unconditionally. Basically, they submitted, or died - and each chose life over death. If we wish to rebuild a nation in our own image, we must first beat them down into a state of submission similar to that of Germany and Japan, at that time.
We don't have the stomach for that sort of work. We didn't really have the stomach for it in WW2, but the nation(s) had been brainwashed to believe that we faced an existential threat. It was "them or us", so we decided that it was going to be them. Today, we again face an existential threat, but that threat doesn't come from Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Yemen, or Somalia. The threat is ideological in nature, and it comes from the Koran. Tens of thousands of imams are constantly preaching to their congregations how evil the US/UK/West is.
And, sadly, our drone program only reinforces those imam's messages.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Saturday October 17 2015, @07:49PM
Attila the Runaway and frojack Tamerlane? Golden Rule, boys!
(Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Sunday October 18 2015, @11:25AM
*shhhh*
you'll interrupt the two-person circle jerk...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 17 2015, @09:23PM
Today, we again face an existential threat
And it's not scary terrorist bogeymen; it's our own government. Our own government is violating the highest law of the land and often gets applauded for it by a not-insignificant part of the country (authoritarians cheering on authoritarian traitors), making it far more of a threat than any terrorists could ever be.
(Score: 4, Informative) by isostatic on Saturday October 17 2015, @04:40PM
Begun, this drone war has
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 17 2015, @05:00PM
My take-away from this is that meta-data is important. Apparently you can be killed if meta-data is used to conflate you with somebody you know.
(Score: 1, Troll) by frojack on Saturday October 17 2015, @06:43PM
On the other hand, you hang with known terrorists, you tend to die with them, or instead of them.
Simply because the PRIME target bugged out 30 seconds before the Hellfire hit doesn't mean his former hosts were an innocent "wedding party".
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 17 2015, @07:13PM
If you're unfortunate enough to live in a country where there are known terrorists and the US is willing to bomb it, you become collateral damage and belligerent fools will stop at nothing to justify your death.
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Sunday October 18 2015, @01:15AM
On the other hand, you hang with known terrorists, you tend to die with them, or instead of them.
Opps, got the pizza guy. Oh well, he delivered to some terrorists-sympathizers. Probably was a terrorists too.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 18 2015, @01:48AM
On the other hand, you hang with known terrorists, you tend to die with them, or instead of them.
In the eyes of certain parts of the world, US citizens *elected* a known terrorist as their leader. Are all US citizens ready to become "collateral damage" when people from those parts of the world take revenge?
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 17 2015, @05:21PM
Why does this story get an unusually long summary on the front page? Is it takyon's favorite topic? Typically when stories have very long summaries, they are either edited down, or only part of the summary is on the front page. Why is this one different?
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Saturday October 17 2015, @05:47PM
I haven't checked if there's a missing “read more” or not on the front page but I'm sure that can be fixed if it was unintentional. Anyway I don't know anything about that.
But for the summary itself it's really hard to summarize “the story” because it's so verbose and spread over eight different articles by various authors saying similar but not necessarily identical things in addition to some (or all, not sure) of the documents provided by the source. Believe it or not takyon summarized part of/most of the first article and did cut it down a lot.
Takyon asked me (on SN IRC) if I could help but I had to chicken out (my brain was already fried and pretty much remains that way since I keep trying to filter and digest the articles); it is (at least to me, see by comment below) kind of a nightmare to read for various reasons. I get a headache trying to parse it all while filtering out the worst and trying to remain keen enough to notice when the Intercept does stuff like mixing percentages and small numbers like 5 or 25 people in their comparisons.
Maybe the submission in this case should be considered more as a summary of an introduction to the story/the leaked documents.
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 2) by Adamsjas on Saturday October 17 2015, @10:44PM
The summary could and should have ended after the first paragraph after Part 1. Maybe include links to the other 7 parts.
There simply isn't a reason to give it this much space, either above or below the fold. Especially when the source is The Intercept, where the characterization and wording often bears a heavy bias.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday October 17 2015, @06:29PM
The summary is scaled up to match the scale of the story. It's a big deal, very verbose, and they released it in 8-10 sections all on the same day.
In retrospect I should have started the extended copy after the first blockquote, but ehhh..
("Extended copy" is the text that appears on the story but not the front page)
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 17 2015, @09:01PM
I guess that's sort of my point, that it is important to you, so it is scaled up to some appropriate length. Were I to submit some story that was important to me, would I get the same consideration if you or others felt it wasn't that important?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 17 2015, @10:32PM
I'm saying i scaled it to match the gravity and scope of the source material. If you (anons) do a long submission, it will certainly be considered. I think we would prefer those to single URL and nothing else subs. Note that I'm not talking about a long single blockquote article grab. In this case I condensed a lot of information, and it is shorter than it would be if I hadn't rewritten it in my own words.
I do consider this important, and fresh leaks are big news that are received well here. Why would I submit something that I didnt feel was important?
You imply that I am getting special treatment. Why don't you submit something longform of similar quality? We welcome good submissions.
Btw, weekends typically allow for consideration for more niche/obscure topics anyway, since there are less submissions to soylent and less active news outlets.
(Score: 2) by Adamsjas on Saturday October 17 2015, @11:15PM
You mistake bulk for gravity.
And how come Takyon starts replying as anonymous? Outed yourself did you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 18 2015, @12:15AM
Posting from phone. I argue it has bulk and gravity
(Score: 2) by martyb on Sunday October 18 2015, @03:17AM
tl;dr: Seven paragraphs of the story have been moved off the main page and into the section that appears only when viewing the entire story.
Terminology: There are two 'sections' available to editors for placing a story's text: 'Intro copy' and 'Extended copy.' The 'Intro copy' appears in all renditions of the story — most notably on the main page of the site (https://soylentnews.org/). Both the 'Intro copy' and the 'Extended copy' are displayed when the link to the story is followed.
Change: The story had already been split into Intro/Extended copy sections — seven more paragraphs were moved from the 'Intro Copy' into the 'Extended copy'.
Result: When looking at the story on the main page, the amount of the story that is presented should be more in line with the other stories that have appeared on the site.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Yog-Yogguth on Saturday October 17 2015, @05:24PM
I just finished the fifth article (the man-hunting in Kush one), i.e. I still haven't managed to find the time to read all of it even though I started early (days ago) and it's not that much (unless the stuff I haven't read yet is huge, I don't know) and even though a lot of it is repetetive so far (but that makes it easier to miss stuff, I know to myself that ideally I ought to read it all again and start to take notes to piece together their articles into something more digestible). The subject & topics are annoying and depressive and I can only take so much of it in one go (i.e I suck).
It really doesn't help that the Intercept is preaching to the choir, not just any choir but a really tiny one with very specific and narrow ideological preferences or groupthink.
And when, as an example of that from the Kush article, they start to make anything-at-all out of almost-imaginary differences between two Salafists and about 30 or so other genuinely legitimate targets (Taleban, Al Qaeda, etc.) it becomes really hard to force oneself to read it. Sadly the Intercept manages to make "Why am I force-feeding myself bullshit?" a legitimate question :C
Don't get me wrong; there is important stuff in those articles that took work on the part of the Intercept, otherwise I simply wouldn't read any of it at all.
The problem with the Intercept doing these and other things like it is that (and I assume contrary to their intentions) one is practically forced to start to wonder about the other things they say. One starts to wonder how many of those EKIAs were perfectly valid targets since one simply doesn't know. Let's face it; the various commanders weren't all living in day-care centers.
Another example (also from the Kush article) is that they have to bring up the recent US bombing of a hospital which has fuck-all to do with drones. War-crime? Yes almost certainly. Drone-related? Nope, if anything it weakens the horror of drones since it illustrates how easy it is to do awful shit even without drones. However tempting it is to heap it on it's not a good idea to turn it all into one big mush, at least not when they're supposedly writing about the evil of drones.
Again it obfuscates and occludes :(
All this and more risks reducing most of the outrage over drone killings into a losing numbers game: one replicates exactly the same mistake as the “kill chain” (supposedly a chain of command but if so it's a god damn dysfunctional one) has made. One ends up in a position where everything (remote drones everywhere, total surveillance both electronic and visual, armed drones, targeted killings/assassination) starts to look like it would be just fine if the “Jackpot” to “killed” ratio reaches 1, but no that wouldn't be “just fine”. Maybe the Intercept gets into why it isn't fine later in what I haven't read but so far they've hardly mentioned it, they've mentioned some of it superficially is all. Maybe they take it for granted everyone will see it by themselves? I don't think people will.
The future? The future is exactly that 1 to 1 ratio (and then the resistance will be almost non-existing), they want continuous visual surveillance for that and they're going to get it and the ratio will tumble down towards 1, it's already technically feasible so it's not going to take all that long and the powers that be only have to play for time, a game they've long ago mastered.
I'm not a happy bunny, I realize again why I avoid the Intercept as much as possible (and I'll pull my punches at this point).
Anyway more to read, more to think about, more brainhurt.
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 2) by Username on Saturday October 17 2015, @08:50PM
Horrible idea to have an animated background and then alternate between black and white.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday October 18 2015, @05:11AM
The Intercept's new site design is streamlined (broken) in several ways. Too bad, because I still regularly read it.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]