None of the above. IMHO, there was an innocence and presumption that govt followed the law and was otherwise civilized. Snowden ripped this veneer away. The NSA was revealed as intrusive as the KGB or Stasi, more frightening because of greater efficiency albeit with less wet work.

The loss of trust is by far the most damaging impact since the actual surveillence was already known but dismissed.

The spies whine and spin it their way. If what they were doing was so innocuous, uncontroversial and even beneficial then they would be happy to be praised in the press. The fact is what they ware doing is deeply offensive to a large segment of society and they wish to hide it.

As to whether the terrs benefit or not, only the stupid ones might and they probably aren't reading. The non-stupid terrs have known about surveillence since before Echelon and adjust accordingly. They won't even infer any limits because they know the release is vetted to be incomplete.

The real effect of Snowdens releases is to confirm the tinfoil-behatted. Many fringe people have been saying much the same thing for 10+ years and been dismissed as lunatic paranoids. Now it appears they were right. Many people have egg on the face (congentially oblivious).

This might be [electrolytic] capacitor or some other component-level magic-smoke release. There is also the dreaded, much-discussed "wear" from re-writing flash memory -- worse than you think because blocks of 64 KB [typically] have to be erased and re-written to change any byte therein.

Linus, of all people, ought to know his kernel has options to minimize the re-writes, many of them developed to optimize laptops (like delaying writes). Another thing is to mount partitions (/etc/fstab anyone?) with `noatime` as an option (maybe 'nodiratime` too). Un*x and other Linux-like systems by default will re-write the access time for any disk inode read. Turning it off reduces disk write load (and seeks on slow disks). I've had it off for over ten years an not noticed any malperformance, althrough there are rumored to be some, somewhere.

I would be surprised if the NSA did _NOT_ have all (few dozen) the private keys behind the Certs of Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, and their ilk. Trivially easy to get:

1) Find credible evidence of certifiable badguy using service;

2) Make application to FISA court for all keys & gag;

3) Read _all_ traffic on the service, now or later (if cycles short at that time).

The obvious problem is that ISP does not have keys for just target badguy, so have to hand everyone's keys over. The solution is to switch to per-user keys after auth, but that is more trouble.

While not for HTTP resources, I believe the first search engine (for FTP) was `archie` at McGill.

Just what did anyone reasonably expect? That in response to budget cuts a bureaucracy would suddenly get religion and root out the fat & waste? Why?

That fat and waste has resisted previous cuts and is remarkably good at protecting itself. Spends all its energy at self-defense. Otherwise it would have been long gone.

Useful activities spend at least some of their efforts at delivering services so has less for self-defense. Besides, they probably think they're too important to cut. And they are -- so what better way to stop the cutting?

If the Assange treatment didn't silence Snowden, then Snowden's fate is unlikely to silence similarly stout leakers.

Furthermore, there is a twisted logic necessary for [elected] tyrannies -- the tyrants may do whatever they like, but they are burning capital all the way and will fall when it is gone. Much less is needed to justify extreme measures to preserve "state secrets" than merely to send a message. The "justice" system is for grinding out messages.

Incredible how subservient the UK has become.

Nice to get 400 GB of encrypts. It makes the keys easier to drop. But to work as "insurance", Mr Snowden either must trust other individuals with the keys. Or machines. Somebody/thing must act when he may not be able.

Under certain circumstances (nologin for a week, too many hits on "Snowden arrested|dead") then the individuals or machines spam out the keys. Potentially in waves if the big block has sub-blocks with different encryption keys.

I note with interest the USG did NOT promise to hold a speedy, fair public trial. And the point is not redundant any more than torture is.

I like to look for "negative knowledge" -- things that could reasonably have happened, and perhaps should have, but did not. Rejected options, certainly. While imperfect, this does yield insight.

Why all this attention on extra width? It might be useful for spreadsheets and some drawings/photos but it is horrid for text. You cannot see much in the short textboxes, and perhaps that leads to microfocus (nitpicking) and flame-wars. Besides, long lines are hard to follow and read (40 char optimum).

Of course you can rotate to portrait (xrandr) and when time allows (home/work), I do! Personally, I find 1960x1080 to be a bit long(!) but 1600x1024 or 1960x1200 is fine.

But line-count has been slow to increase -- VGA had 480 (lower than NTSC at 525 and PAL at 625), then 640, 800 and now 1080 as common max. Only double in 30 years? You can find 1200 without too much expense, but any higher gets expensive quickly. Aren't all these big LCD/LEDs all stitched together from subpanels anyways?

Skip the car analogies, I understand them much worse than computers.

If the computer were stolen property, then the rightful owner of course could consent to tracking software to recover it and whomever might be in the vicinity.

But if only a service ID had been stolen, that is a different matter. The easiest way to reduce loss in that case would be to deactivate the ID. Failing that, the user/thief might have had an expectation of privacy! Not easy to argue.

Yes, indirection via contractors/others will get around some Rules or Executive Orders. But it will not get around criminal culpability, where the concept of "accessory" is well established.

Their triangulation was specifically disallowed later by the issuing judge. It might be handy and convenient, but there is no legal permission or precedent for allowing such illegal intrusion (system takeover).

Please read less carelessly: warrants allow police to do things that would otherwise be felonies. Arrest and search can be allowed. Planting viruses and forcing transmissions do not have protection by warrants. "No warrants shall issue but ..." is very closed-ended.

Sure it is -- arrest warrents allow trespass, breaking & entering, and armed kidnap. Sometimes "danger to others" or "exigent circumstances" are acceptable reasons. Would be for civilians too.

Do not kid yourselves, the police skate close to felonies. The more conscious amongst them are well aware of this and appropriately cautious.

... 'scuse me, but I see "unauthorized access to a computing system" and "theft of service" all over here. A badge should not be a free pass to commit crimes.

The fibbies might well have a warrent that would allow searching the machine, and a different one that would allow monitoring electronic conversations. But that is not the same as planting malware that creates transmissions. Not that the FBI transgressions are likely to be presented to a Grand Jury.

The interesting thing is this is a criminal trial where illegally obtained evidence and all results thereof can be excluded "fruit of the poisoned vine". So watch the admissibility rulings ...