It's just wrong, that's all. Wrong because our emails are *clearly* the "papers" mentioned in the Constitution. If there's a law that makes 3rd party possession of same somehow the equivalent of "it suddenly not being yours" then it's THAT law that has to go. This is how it is in most of Europe BTW. YOU control your phone records, not Verizon.

I could almost live with TIA if I thought that it would only be accessed via a court order, but that's not what we have. What we have is secret FISA orders, executed in secret, using secret criteria in accord with secret interpretations of secret executive orders.

I sympathize with this judge's concerns, I do, but the real world consequences of what they're doing are more likely to be worse than the real world consequences of stopping them from doing it, even if we have another 9-11 every year.

  Our democracy will not survive if the government can data mine all our "anonymous" data until programs it wrote decide that we fit a "profile" and THAT itself constitutes "reasonable suspicion". This can be used to stifle all dissent, and will be used for exactly that, starting, obviously, with people who speak out against the legitimacy of this process in the first place. A guy like Howard Zinn would just be destroyed by this.. we wouldn't have legitimate dissent in this nation.

Here's something that should help people think clearly on this topic. The NSA line operators and management REFUSED to permit the NSA to apply the same level of monitoring to THEM as they apply to us. They didn't want Congress to second guess them or know what they were doing.

From:

http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/12/27/interview-with-nsa-whistleblower-bill-binney-afraid-were-spreading-secret-government-around-world/

But this is the ONE thing that MUST be implemented. If an NSA operator cuts a fart, I want Congress to be able to know what he had for lunch. Unwatched watchers cannot be permitted to exist. Period.

At the heart of what's going on here is the people at the NSA are looking into their own hearts and deciding that they're all right and the American public has nothing to fear from them or their intentions. Bully for them, I'm sure it's true, but they won't always be there.

It's not about them or their intentions. It's about the institution, the process, *the machine* and how we're building that machine.

You can't say to yourself, as an NSA employee, by way of assuaging your own secret apprehensions, "Well, if push ever does come to shove, if it came right down to it, an unconstitutional, openly fascist-level of abuse would just never happen because WE'D never permit it". At least, you can't tell yourself that and also bash guys like Snowden and Binney because THOSE guys , whom you hate so much they make you grind your teeth , they're exactly the hypothetical WE you posit in the above safeguard. It doesn't look any different that THIS .. THIS THIS that is before your eyes now.

We cannot permit a opaque surveillance machine to be used at the executive's whim which has the power to untraceably target and then undermine anyone's life in ways too subtle to detect. But this is exactly what they want. The process, every stinking step and decision and action by everyone involved has to be exposable to the full Congress and the full Senate in every minute detail leaving out nothing.

  We also have to strictly confine their activities to actual terrorism and not illegal activities of any other sort whatsoever. No criminal investigations of any kind whatsoever, no exceptions, none, unless it's shown to be funding terrorism.

We also have to have the same set of rules apply to our friends in other nations. Their personal private lives are not cheap meat for our surveillance grinder either. This is not just being decent, this is crucial to maintaining the essential goodwill we need to make our counter-terrorism programs workable ; goodwill which we have no other way to obtain or maintain and without which no amount of surveillance is going to suffice.

Can't we just GTFU ? Can't we lead here? Can't we just break from what we're doing and boldly and decisively start to do the smart, right thing by our people and by the world? This is a chance to get back some part of the credibility we lost in the eyes of the world post 9-11 when we invaded Iraq (which actually I'm glad we did for *other, non-terror * reasons that don't matter here) . This is a chance to lead by high minded and ingenious example and show the world how to both spy and secure liberty without compromising either , in fact, having both strengthened beyond what they are at now. We need both. We can have both. We need to retire the leadership at these agencies; their mindset is the road black. We need to get the civil libertarians and Constitutional scholars the technical MIT people and the CMU people and the defense people and the spies all together and motherfucking work it out. This is everything, this issue, this is bigger than anyone is making it out to be and will determine the nature of civilization for centuries to come. Surveillance with internal transparency. It seems like a contradiction but the ability to unite seemingly disparate things into a functional whole that meaningfully resolves apparent contradictions is as good a working definition of Intelligence as you're going to find.

God what assholes. It's about the government's INCLINATION and POWER to track down and ruin people they unilaterally deem to be "against them" where "them" is whatever current administration has the power. Can't they fucking see the difference? If Google starts disappearing people or neutralizing their lives, they're running the risk of being caught because they're breaking the law.

It's about data mining and having a real identity to work on, that's all. This is just bullshit from some fucking PR firm hired to float a cover story and try to build a false version of reality- people like not being able to be anonymous. False versions of reality are what PR firms exist to create.

Thin Thread

http://www.businessinsider.com/nsa-whistleblower-william-binney-was-right-2013-6

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinThread

http://www.whistleblower.org/program-areas/homeland-security-a-human-rights/surveillance/nsa-whistleblowers-bill-binney-a-j-kirk-wiebe

Binney.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/backissues/2013/06/takes-the-nsas-surveillance-programs.html

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/20/exclusive_national_security_agency_whistleblower_william

http://publicintelligence.net/binney-nsa-declaration/

Reinstate him as DNI.

FTFY:

The current iron-clad Texas misegenation law is the result of years of lobbying by the powerful and well-connected Texas Apartheid Dealers Association (TADA), founded and run for 30 years by legendary Texas slaver Buford T Justice

your point seems to be if an industry can capture a legislature fair n' square then that's all on the up and up and should changing times force exposure of the resulting outrageous and ridiculous laws to the light of day and consequently people have a PROBLEM with those laws , well, they should just mind their own business and STFU.

I think this is what people are saying. At least, it's what I am saying. You're trying to make it all about when the laws were passed or how long they've been around distorting market conditions.

But no one else CARES about that detail because it's IRRELEVANT to the fact this is nothing more than a regressive and unjust good ole' boys system which is bought and paid for by its direct beneficiaries. The longevity of the law is 100% irrelevant and yes, it IS currently being used by oil-loving Texas and its oil billionaires to keep an electric car off the road in Texas

Try OOMA. If you can get it to work, it's great. You only have ot pay some small telephone regulatory fees each month if you don't upgrade to their 100 / year package.

What we ought to do is just let Munis have community WIFI. They have actually been stopped by the courts by the telcos. Sorry, but that is just corruption. The idea that private corporations can stop the democratically elected local governments from enacting laws which are otherwise not unconsitutional is new to me and I wonder where the legal basis for such comes from.

  People need to wake up and educate themselves as to what's at stake here. Allowing auction style bidding wars for bandwidth to decide the price of bandwidth is preposterous. Should we do the same thing for access to highways? Maybe make trucking companies bid for the right to use them? I wonder what effect that would have on competition and ultimately the price of delivered goods , i.e. everything.

The fact is the FCC is a fox watching the henhouse. These people just need to go on back to their true home- the industry to be regulated- and let actual regulators attend to the process of regulation for the general welfare of society. It's not that hard to get straight on this, people just need to contact their representatives and let them know they're aware of this issue and how they feel. The telcos don't HAVE a constituency they didn't purchase and their pockets are not that deep. The solution is all about education and communication- it's not even a left-right partisan issue. Call your Congressperson and tell them how where you stand. This is how democracy works people.

.

Sure thing El-ron.

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1087815_tesla-underground-texas-franchise-rules-make-model-s-owners-skirt-the-law

http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/news/2013/11/06/tesla-left-out-of-texas-new-electric.html

Other shenanigans from Comcast includes: Charging extra ($35) for the battery inside the cable modem to keep the telephony working during blackouts

Get OOMA, the get used to paying virtually nothing in the way of a bill . Get a UPS that kicks in when the elec goes out. It will run your router + OOMA for a *very* long time.

Done.

Spoken with all the intelligence, insight acumen and sincerity of a bought-and-paid-for sock puppet employed by a major PR firm.

Don't you have another issue you're supposed to be spamming online forums with industry speak for ?

Better get working down today's list or you're going to be out of a job pretty soon, bitch.

Shoot anyone against it.

Also. The FCC is filled to the gills with politically well connected, revolving door sycophants there to do industry's bidding before jumping back on the gravy train. It's the poster child for a watchdog agency overrun and infested with regulatory saboteurs and common's-hating overpavers.

http://www.npr.org/2011/05/20/136492206/new-republic-the-fccs-revolving-door-is-shameless

http://www.opensecrets.org/revolving/search_result.php?agency=Federal+Communications+Commission&id=EIFCC

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62718-2004Nov19.html

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/aug/30/business/la-fi-mo-powell-20130830

http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/20/3670940/michael-powell-fcc-chariman-cable-companies-mercy-contet

Tesla is a danger to the prostitute and coke habits of the CEOs and members of board of every Established Car Maker in the world. It should therefore be banned.

I am glad to see Texas is leading the way in this regard. Y'all don't Don't Mess With Texas!

http://jalopnik.com/how-texas-absurd-anti-tesla-laws-turn-car-buying-into-1451492195

Also: yeeeeeeeHAW!

God yes . AJAX == JAXASS . This whole fucking AJAX "responsive web" shit. I can think of very few sites that this is actually a boon to, yet they all have to have it. Javascript is NOT a programming language -Turing be damned- it's a fucking scripting language with severe limitations and exceeding those limitations requires the quote from Dr Johnson: after seeing a dog walk dog walk on it's hinder quarters- he commented

"the wonder is not that the thing was done well, its that it can be done at all."

Exactly. So you made javascript make your p0rn stars boobs look like they're going BOOMBA BOOMBA .. wow. Thanks for that.

Hyperlinks work people, hyperlinks work. And if they're fucking blue, people, if they're fucking blue people know WTF they are and where the fuck to find them and what the fuck to expect when they click on them.

". However over time those "A-players" with excellent skills become lazy and sloppy, because of the mediocre environment that surrounds them."

Uh. Part of the definition of an A-player is they're self motivated and willing to extend themselves vigorously into every task. They also want enough authority to *seek consensus to make changes* rather than wait for the next todo list to be issued by their idiot manager.

So no, it's not their B-player team that is dragging them down.

In fact, the environments I have been in which everyone was an A-Player or acted like one, or felt they had to act like one were the WORST for actual resultant productivity because the people who survive those environments aren't the A-iest of A-Players, they're the most devious, withholding, backstabbing and politically savvy of the assembled A-Players who have as their constant targets their nearest rivals.

Malcom Galdwell has a great article about this phenomena of anti-productivity that results from super competitive environments in exclusive universities. The upshot is that a lot of our most talented people QUIT their fields - to our everlasting detriment- because in hyper competitive environments they feel disoriented, diminished, inadequate, undermined and unsupported, especially since they tend to come from supportive high schools which want them to excel.

In Netflix case, there's also a huge amount of disingenuity built into the argument. Claims of "desperate labor shortages" and "inadequate pool of qualified candidates" for tech jobs is literally the oldest trick in the book to flood the market with labor and drive down prices for labor. Netflix is just a fucking liar. Believe it or not, they did the same thing with sous chefs in the 80-s and 90s they ALWAYS do the same thing whenever anyone in the middle class starts threatening to partake of the profits. They go to Congress and say "eh, this whole free market thing really sucks, who wants to pay according to supply and demand? We need to up supply- a lot. Give us another 20 million work visas. Here's your reelection cash. Same arrangement as last time. Thanks"

This is the eternal narcissism of the CEO, whose employment picture will never be anywhere as volatile- irrespective of his performance or the pool of qualified candidates who could do his job better than he does at 1/5 the cost to the company. This basically is the degenerate thinking of some guy who walks around with two people behind him holding up the train of his cape.

So what's the take away lesson? Don't apply to Netflix, for sure. Also, drop Netflix if you hate companies with abusive labor practices. "Use We only hire A Players ! " notices on jobs as code for "Do Not Apply" and "no thanks" to headhunters. f you're an A-Player Seek seek small company environments that say yes to initiative and are grateful for your efforts. If you're this type of person, you know there is no higher high than making cool shit people love.