>> Snowden insisted the journalists remove the battery from their phones and put the phones in the fridge.

>> That pretty much tells you how useful 'encryption' on Android would be against back doors.

Not this manure again. What if I told you, that those phones could easily be bugged physically, by adding a little mic with an antenna, that would feed of phone's main battery, sure it requires some legwork, but Snowden is high enough on US's list of targets to actually do soome physical snooping. The whole "take the battery out and put it in the fridge" has nothing to do with magic backdoors that magically activate the phone and turn it into recording device and has everything to do with physical listening devices and malice on the part of phone owner. The little electronic bug works on all phones, doesn't require breaking any encryption, device being turned on and doesn't need to use the crappy mic on the phone.

>> None, if you can't protect your speech near the phone you can't protect the password.

The door to your house won't stop a team of highly trained team of CIA assasins, so why bother locking it, right? Android encryption is used in order to raise the cost of mass snooping where they snoop first and then look for anyone looking guilty enough and to raise the cost of stealing personal information by criminal elements. If they have to spend 1000 bucks to crack one phone and the information is worth 100 on average - then they won't even do it. If it costs 10 cents per device and information is worth a dollar on average - then they will do it. Take a look at botnets and other shady businesses.

If you need to secure yourself from directed snooping by a team of professionals - then this is a completely different game and other measures come into play.

>> If that was the case you would not have given them 25% and taken 75% for you and the game makers.

Well, let's see where does the 75% go? Steam takes 30% from all transactions as a fee for keeping servers running, providing unified interface, update rollout, you know, the infrastructure, for all the games, be it an indie for 3$ or a AAA title for 60$. 45% goes to Bethesda. You know, the guys that made the Skyrim. And you know who decides how much goes to original game maker? Original game maker decides. You know why they get to decide? Because the control derivative works from their games, they created the engine, a ton of assets, models, textures, sprites, effects, the whole game. If you don't like it - vote to change the copyright laws (long overdue by the way).

But let's all whine at Gabe, because that bastard let Mod Creators CHOOSE to charge for their mods. How dare he give them the freedom to ask for money?

The whole reaction is a kid's tantrum to "how dare those slaves ask for money for their work" ? What's most bizarre (quite usual actually) is that noone has any clue as to how the pricing is made (noone cares that Bethesda takes 45% and whines at Steam for taking too much money) but still throw a fit over "but mod devs get so little".

>> If you ask me to view the story objectively, he's a con artist who never worked for any of the places he claims to have worked for and drew the allegedly leaked "Powerpoint Slides" himself in Windows Paint.

Even US government confirmed he worked at those places and said that the leaks were legit and confirmed the existence of said programs.

>> All of this is cooked up by collusion with Glenn Greenwald, a UK reporter who has no business sticking his nose in US policy in the first place, to create a paper tiger bogeyman out of the toothless US intelligence industry the likes of which even Senator McCarthy would have blushed to turn out.

> UK reporter who has no business sticking his nose in US policy in the first place

Wouldn't you like to decide who gets to stick his nose and where. Nixon was pretty sure that those pesky journalists shouldn't had no business to stick their nose into his affairs either. But, hey, if US government has nothing to hide, then they have nothing to fear, right? If they haven't done anything wrong, then Snowden leaking their info won't hurt them? Isn't that what they've been telling every time they've justified the dragnets in the internet?

Well, I was pretty sure that lying to Congress was illegal, but I guess I missed the part "unless you are too important to be put in prison, in which case it's totally legal", or that spying on your ex was illegal, using NSA resources.

>> Snowden damaged our industry.

US government damaged your industry.

>> Sure the leak confirmed what many of us expected. It didn't change anything though. We still have surveillance. Now we might not get to eat too.

And who is to blame if you are too lazy to get off your sofa? If you don't get to eat - good, maybe that will motivate you to do something about all the surveillance and start earning the trust back that you squandered.

> The older generation is smart enough to know that the cold war never ended. Stupid millennials are going to be in for a rude awakening when Russia marches on Europe.

Putin applauds this comment. Governments just love to point at boogiemen behind the fence while screwing their own people. You point out Russia, but you forget to mention that most of the surveillance was concentrated on US citizens and EU. That backdoors were built without discrimination and that the power to spy was abused to pursue personal agenda (spying on an ex-wife or ex-girlfriend).

Not sure if you're trolling or just, well, you know.

> Good it means the government it was doing it's job correctly.

On the contrary - he demonstrated that even though the government has all this resources at it's disposal, conducting unconstitutional, warrantless searches and interceptions of communications - they failed miserably at preventing recent attacks at USA (Boston marathon, anyone? Allowing a know terrorist, that even the Russians warned US about on US soil because they couldn't write his name down correctly) and further investigation brought out that NSA, FBI and other alphabet agencies were unable to provide even one single case where all this surveillance helped prevent an attack. Guess everyone was too busy spying on their girlfriend and digging up dirt on next political candidates.

> It's illegal for a neighbor. It's entirely legal for the government.

It's also illegal for the government, since no warrants were requested and even the process the government setup for itself was abused and disregarded. Snowden also exposed multitudes of abuses, where employees of said agencies used the power in their hands to pursue their personal agenda.

Fun fact, but in some countries it is actually 100% legal to reverce engineer and patch a game to restore it's functionality to original level in case the game was legally obtained and for research purposes. So whoever ESA is, they can go and cry a corner, while other countries enjoy the functionality lost to US. Also, their arguments reek of manure - reverse engineering should be made legal (as any type of research) and "hacking, closely asosiated to piracy" - that's a gem, how about we ban ESA, RIAA, MPAA because they condone "DRM, closely associated with scams, illegal spying, privacy and customer rights violations"? What's really needed is a law, that would allow people to get a refund on multiplayer games in case official servers go down and there is no way to start your own, then ESA would make a quick 180 on their stance.

>> There is simply no shady language in the license that is going to affect Mono. If they ever decide to change Mono from an implementation of the .NET platform to something else (eg. JVM) whilst retaining Microsoft's code then they could be in trouble. But do really think for a second that they would change the focus of the project like that? Absolutely not.

Imagine a situation where MS introduces changes making .NET incompatible with Linux (or making it run several times slower) on specification level, so any implementation of .NET stack must implement them. Mono can't cut the changes out, they'll get their license to use .NET code revoked, you can't fork .NET for the same reason. Endresult? Embrace, extend, extinguish.

>> So your response to me pointing out that Microsoft hasn't actually sued anyone for the last 13 years despite all the claims that they would is that Java is still bigger and that if you made something that was unlike Mono that you would get sued. How is that counter my claim that saying that using Mono will not get you sued?

Neither Sun nor Oracle sued anyone for long time, untill one time - they did. As for "using Mono" - as long as you are end user and use it to develop your apps - MS is happy, since you're tying into their platform.

>> Irrelevant. You have the ability to verify code from an open source project [github.com].

Actually, it is relevant, as significant portions of whole stack are still closed sourced. Also, license of MS .NET strictly prohibits use of .NET code in projects that don't fullfill MS requirements for .NET stack, which, surprise-surprise, they control. So should they feel the need to introduce specific changes preventing .NET usage (or hindering it) on platforms other than Windows - they change the specs, good luck then. Microsoft vision of open-source - is they let you look at the code and promise not to sue for using it, but if you want to contribute - you mus give them the rights to the code and license for the patents and any changes you make must be made according to MS vision. Effectively, this clause about .NET code being usable only in .NET stack adhering to MS standard means that should MS feel the need to change anything - you won't get to fork it or do anything with it.

> That's really another type of FUD; that anyone who says something that isn't completely anti-Microsoft must be being paid to say it.
Nope, but a person believing that Microsoft is more trustworthy than global community, that .NET runtime is a silver bullet that will kill Ruby, Go and Rust (come on, those languages have completely different uses, why not throw it Java, since it's more CLR weightclass, python, C and JS, since we're naming languages), person that keeps insisting that MS won't sue anyone over .NET despite the shady language in the license and a number of restrictions (.NET code can only be used to create a runtime adhering to MS specs and for no other purpose) does raise the question of what's the source of such misguidedness. I won't even bring up the obvious flamebait about systemd being forced on developers and opensource community.

> It has been 10 years since Mono was released and 13 years since .NET was released, and for the entire time there have been the predictions that Microsoft will start suing all and sundry for patent infringement. For that entire time it hasn't happened. For that entire time it has been complete FUD, whether you like it or not.

Also, for this same time .NET has failed to see adoption the likes of Java did, and right now, Microsoft has even more hooks inside their license allowing them to sue the living hell out of anybody, and (Like with Oracle, Google and Java) they can sue if the code used in .NET will be used for anything other than making a fully fledged .NET runtime (that part is straight in their license, no guessing involved here).

> Or are you mixing up the completely unrelated non-OSS Windows code that you can't see. How is that relevant to this discussion?

Previous comment was regarding Microsoft and open-source in general - this is an answer in general. Commenter said he trusts Microsoft more than RedHat or opensource developers, I pointed out that trust is a personal issue, ability to verify - is more objective.

You sir, are a great astroturfer and deserve a raise from MS.

Well, just recently a very interesting article covering Microsoft "open source .NET" license, you should read up on that, especially MS requiring a license to the patents in the code you contribute, but refusing to grant you license for their code, instead, providing a promise not to sue.
If you really think that .NET runtime is better than JVM, then you should read up on developers going gray from inconsistencies on both compiler and runtime level.

If you really trust Microsot more than RedHat or opensource developers, than please, don't let anyone stand in your way, trust is a personal issue, some people trust ISIS, some - the supreme leader, but some prefer to be able to verify the code themselves, and Microsoft throwing their dying platform into opensource stream, hoping for a revival is very far from transparency and verifiability.

They are not so much ignorant, as they are pursuing their own agenda. Don't think for a second that they don't have an army of tech-savy advisors and specialists that are at their beck and call, should they need a detailed explanation about how it works. But they benefit from pretending they don't know and targeting the general public that doesn't know either in order to pursue their own goals.

But the point is not to catch real criminals, the point is to dig up dirt on anyone and everyone, so when the time is right - you could use it to your advantage.

"Don't you see it's for your own protection, and for your children, protecting all of your from pedophiles, terrorists and the scary monster in your closet. And if you don't buy this argument, then obviously you are an enemy of the state, because if you don't have anything to hide - you have nothing to fear. Oh, and don't forget - arbeit macht frei."

Snooping agencies will fight tooth and nail to keep their snooping powers because they don't give a rat's behind about the read bad muthus out there - because that's entirely different playing field, you can't go after them directly, they are well protected and shifting balance includes a lot of political play, but the smaller fishes can be caught with a wider net, and to get leverage all you need is a right to snoop on anyone at any point in time. It's too convenient to give up.

>> If we're outside the scrutiny of others
We're not. We're monitored at our workplaces (by performance and endresult in smart companies, by process in the rest). Whenever someone get's some power (puts on a cop uniform, gets keys to server room, etc), he is being monitored more closely while in power, as with power comes accountability. When you go home - noone is trusting you with any power, so no monitoring is necessary, so your comment does not apply. CIA, NSA, FBI, all the alphabet agencies are working for the country, the people, no matter how much cynicism you want to demonstrate - this is how it should be, this is the goal, so they should be held accountable and closely monitored, especially if they are having the power to snoop on entire world.

If they uncover criminal activity isn't it their duty to inform the victim?