Yup that is correct! The government builds roads, schools, sanitation and they will even recover your lost email for you! ...If you pay... They clearly refused this caller because he lives in Amsterdam (--> The Netherlands --> Yurp) and therefore didn't pay a single penny to the good old IRS. So why /would/ they help him? No $$$ --> No service...

Otherwise I am CONVINCED that they would help him out. That is how the government works, right?
Helping the folks that pay for their wages, comfy chairs, first class coffee on their long leisurely coffee breaks?
Always at the service of the people in a jiffy and with a smile!
Always doing that little extra to make sure your every tax-penny is a well-spend-penny.
The government that always goes for the 110% customer care.
A wink and a tip to the hat whenever you merrily walking out of some government building where they truly understood your case.
Where papers and forms are kept to a bare minimum in order to keep the well oiled machine running as cost-effective as possible.
<bleep-bleep-bleep-bleep>
The government that <bleep-bleep-bleep-bleep>

Wait... what? Is that my alarm clock? <bleep-bleep-bleep-bleep-bleep-bleep>
I just KNEW I was dreaming...

At this rate that wont happen any time soon. We are probably all dead when Linux 8 will arive :-S

>> What if I place a phone call to someone I know, or "have a special reason to know", may be sneezing... http://what-if.xkcd.com/55/

Whats next? Making witchcraft & sorcery illegal?
Oh, wait...
What?
Ah... that's my fault, that bit belongs to the Saudi's and their great thinkers...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18503550
But this is about as stupid isn't it?

Exactly, all we have now is a clock that is very stable though 5 minutes ahead :-S

Yup! If you want a sub that can ONLY go to the bottom and never resurface, just hire a Spanish Engineer. Apparently they have some knowledge on that specific field.

Hey Chuck Norris!

I never knew that you post under AC here. I always assumed that your username would be root and your UID was -1.

Yes, a Vet would. An AC? Mmnnneh :-)

Have you tried turning it off and on again?

>So the Nobel Peace Prize = "I HATE AMERICA" Prize.

In addition to that: "I HATE AMERICA BUT I LOVE THE EU"Prize.
Guess who won the Nobel Peace prize last year? Huh? Huh?
The US? Nope... Try again!

If they reward him (Snowden) the NPP, it shows that the committee has a backbone of Titanium and balls of Wedontgiveashitium. But is it the smartest thing to do? Mnnnnehdont think so.

>first thing i thought was red herring ...And then you changed your linkedin profile, and posted this huh?

In a related story to that, some researchers had a proof of concept that they could filter out the keyboardstrokes from a power line. Everytime a button on a usb-keyboard is pressed in it will give off some 'fingerprint' on the grounded bit. They somehow got information out of that. Then again, this was in a controlled lab-environment, where the power source was completely stripped of any distortion and the return was examined for little changes. Nevertheless I thought it was quite clever.
I dont think that it would work on a big office with hundreds of usb-keyboards, coffeemachines, electric pencilsharpeners and whatnot. But it is a good story around the camp fire on the next NSA camping trip :-)

RTFA.

[...]reports about Dmitry Medvedev being listened in on during his visit to the G20 summit in London[...]

Apparently the whole listening in to things is somehow covered in the spy-training curriculum. Who would have guessed that huh? </sarcasm>