“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what people think." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"In the ultimate test, Andrew Lincoln (who plays Rick Grimes) and prankster Nick Santonastasso team up to put Reedus in a "real" zombie attack. Born with Hanhart syndrome, which causes physical abnormalities including missing limbs, Santonastasso came to internet fame by pulling similar zombie attack pranks in his home state of New Jersey. Between his positive attitude and this Examiner story, which reported how Santonastasso wanted to star as a zombie on TWD and on the internet petition that campaigned for it, the show discovered the young fan, and then flew him to Japan andhad The Walking Dead's special make-up effects artist Greg Nicotero could zombify him appropriately, all so the show's cast and crew could see how Reedus would react when a zombie popped out from under a room service cart."
Mainstream media defined/headline is the opposite of facts presented in the very same article. - Obama calls for significant changes in collection of phone records of U.S. citizens - The Washington Post:
"Obama is retaining the vast majority of intelligence programs and capabilities that came to light over the past six months in a deluge of reports based on leaked documents. Even the most controversial capability — the government’s access to bulk telephone records, known as metadata — may well be preserved..."
"From the American Civil Liberties Union... ...the president should end – not mend – the government’s collection and retention of all law-abiding Americans’ data. When the government collects and stores every American’s phone call data, it is engaging in a textbook example of an ‘unreasonable search’ that violates the Constitution...
From the Electronic Frontier Foundation... ...Now it's up to the courts, Congress, and the public to ensure that real reform happens, including stopping all bulk surveillance--not just telephone records collection. Other necessary reforms include requiring prior judicial review of national security letters and ensuring the security and encryption of our digital tools, but the President's speech made no mention of these...
From the Center for Democracy and Technology... ...While we were pleased to see the President acknowledge that bulk collection by the NSA is untenable, we were disappointed in his failure to offer a clear path forward on these reforms. Storage of bulk records by companies or a third party would be merely a shuffling of the chairs, not a real reform. The only true solution to this issue is restoration of a system of particularized requests...
From the Internet Infrastructure Coalition... ...the President’s recommendations are still lacking when it comes to striking the appropriate balance between privacy and security. Without actions that include meaningful reforms to both bulk surveillance, and the indiscriminate use of National Security Letters, all together such a balance is unlikely to be achieved. As the Review Group noted in their report and again in Tuesday’s hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the bulk collection programs employed by the National Security Agency are neglecting civil liberties and undermining privacy."
- It can track the numbers of both parties on a phone call, as well location, time and duration. (More)
- It can hack Chinese phones and text messages. (More)
- It can set up fake internet cafes. (More)
- It can spy on foreign leaders' cell phones. (More)
- It can tap underwater fiber-optic cables. (More)
- It can track communication within media organizations like Al Jazeera. (More)
- It can hack into the UN video conferencing system. (More)
- It can track bank transactions. (More)
- It can monitor text messages. (More)
- It can access your email, chat, and web browsing history. (More)
- It can map your social networks. (More)
- It can access your smartphone app data. (More)
- It is trying to get into secret networks like Tor, diverting users to less secure channels. (More)
- It can go undercover within embassies to have closer access to foreign networks. (More)
- It can set up listening posts on the roofs of buildings to monitor communications in a city. (More)
- It can set up a fake LinkedIn. (More)
- It can track the reservations at upscale hotels. (More)
- It can intercept the talking points for Ban Ki-moon’s meeting with Obama. (More)
- It can crack cellphone encryption codes. (More)
- It can hack computers that aren’t connected to the internet using radio waves. (More)
- It can intercept phone calls by setting up fake base stations. (More)
- It can remotely access a computer by setting up a fake wireless connection. (More)
- It can install fake SIM cards to then control a cell phone. (More)
- It can fake a USB thumb drive that's actually a monitoring device. (More)
- It can crack all types of sophisticated computer encryption. (Update: It is trying to build this capability.) (More)
- It can go into online games and monitor communication. (More)
- It can intercept communications between aircraft and airports. (More)
- (Update) It can physically intercept deliveries, open packages, and make changes to devices. (More) (h/t)
"During his speech on the National Security Agency's surveillance programs today, President Obama trotted out the familiar claim that mass collection of Americans' phone records could have prevented 9/11: The program grew out of a desire to address a gap identified after 9/11. 'One of the 9/11 hijackers—Khalid al-Mihdhar—made a phone call from San Diego to a known al Qaeda safe-house in Yemen. NSA saw that call, but could not see that it was coming from an individual already in the United States. The telephone metadata program under Section 215 was designed to map the communications of terrorists, so we can see who they may be in contact with as quickly as possible.'
As ProPublica's Justin Elliott pointed out last June, "U.S. intelligence agencies knew the identity of the hijacker in question, Saudi national Khalid al Mihdhar, long before 9/11 and had the ability find him, but they failed to do so." Furthermore, it is not clear why the NSA, having eavesdropped on seven calls between al-Mihdhar and the Al Qaeda safe house in Yemen, needed a database containing everyone's phone records to identify the source of those calls. The Justice Department "could have asked the FISA Court for a warrant to all phone companies to show all calls from the U.S. which went to the Yemen number," former counterterrorism official Richard Clarke told ProPublica. "Since they had one end of the calls (the Yemen number), all they had to do was ask for any call connecting to it." It is telling that the administration cannot cite any examples better than this weak counterfactual to illustrate the supposed necessity of the NSA's phone-record dragnet...
If such safeguards pose no threat to national security, why is Obama acting only now? Because as long as the program was secret, he did not recognize the privacy threat it posed. But now that it has been revealed by a leak that Obama condemns, he realizes that "without proper safeguards, this type of program could be used to yield more information about our private lives and open the door to more intrusive bulk collection programs." He also suddenly is troubled by the fact that the program "has never been subject to vigorous public debate," although his administration did everything in its power to prevent such a debate."
"President Barack Obama’s relatively mild National Security Administration surveillance reforms... he proposed taking the bulk metadata information storage out of the hands of the NSA to avoid giving the government unfettered access and putting it into the hands of third-party companies, possibly telecoms. This would then require the NSA to request metadata, adding another gatekeeper to avoid abuse of the system. One problem. Why would telecoms agree to do this, given how upset Americans have become over these revelations? As The Washington Post notes, they do not want to serve as the NSA’s storage service..."
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