That is a good question. I very much doubt that we can argue with them to get them to stop. The leadership of the spy organizations are both very certain that they are right, and it is to their personal advantage to continue down the current road. Political leaders tend to either agree, not care or be open for manipulation (with terrorism and pedos giving the spies leverage). Agreement comes from that insidious group of political leaders who want to control their own population. Technology can give some protection against spying, but the large governments have huge budgets, and can apply pressure to get back doors. The only alternative left (as I see it) is to create pressure on the political system from the outside, however, that requires getting a lot of people to care enough to get off their asses and demand change. Alas, it does not look like that is happening.

Most dictators, even the vicious ones, try to keep up appearances. They want to make it look like they are just and that their rule is benevolent. This is partly for their own self image, but it is also a very efficient way to keep the masses from rising up. Pulling on the iron boot and stomping out an uprising is very expensive and potentially dangerous for the dictator. As nasty as Saddam Hussein was, if you kept your head down and did your job, there was a good chance that you would not be picked up and tortured by the secret police. Any functioning society also need courts to handle all those legal issues that crop between people, from commerce to violent crime.

You seem to have unspoken assumption that propping up dictators actually make us safer or more prosperous.

This assumption is very popular among the powers that be, because it gives them a moral standing for being ruthless monsters: Their monstrosity protects their people. It even creates a self image that they are sacrifice themselves to make the world safer for their people. The same thing happened with the American slave trade: At first it was to help the poor uncivilized Africans find Christ, but when the slaves started converting to Christianity, and the slave owners did not want to give up their "property", they created the myth that Africans were stupid and childlike, so the slaves needed a firm hand (a.k.a. slavery was a good, Christian thing to do).

But that was a detour. Back to the issue at hand, we could start with an example: Iran. In 1953 the US and UK conspired with the Shah of Iran to bring down a democratically elected government (oil), and institute the most vicious dictatorship in the Middle East at the time. The Shah continued in power until he was overthrown by the 1979 revolution. When the dust settled, and the Islamists came out victorious, US ally Iraq invaded the country. Naturally, the people of Iran knew of the role that the US had played, and hated the country for its crimes against Iranians. Even now relations are strained to say the least. Iran is allying itself with Iraq, and the US and the UK is on the sidelines, slowly but surely loosing ground in the oil rich Middle East. *That* is the price of instigating the 1953 coup, and I doubt the US and UK are done paying for that nasty business. Fortunately for the physical safety of westerners, the rulers of Iran are reasonably sane, and neither train nor fund terrorism against Western targets.

Which problem do you want to solve?

Adding to my previous reply, one could also note that when the dictatorships fell in Southern Europe, the standard of living in Spain was comparable to Chile that experienced a military coup in 1973. Modern day Spain is a lot more prosperous than Chile. Yes, yes, I know that Spain is part of the European Union and received development support, so the two are not easily comparable.

Portugal, Spain, Greece and Italy were dictatorships until the late 1960s and early 1970s. Overall, I think they did alright. Staying in Europe, one could also mention East Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic. Leaving Europe, I also think Chile, Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia and Argentina are doing okay. That makes 12. More could be found, if one cared to look.

In the best of times, it may be that our overlords perceive that keeping brutal despots in power is to the advantage of the entire country and/or supports national security. But that does not mean that it is the truth. The people arguing that dealing with vicious dictators is a good long term strategy are the same that argue that war is a good way to fight Islamic State. Propping up dictators may give cheap access to resources and markets (e.g. for weapon sales), but it will cause widespread resentment against the Brits among the subjects of the dictator as well as immigrants in Britain, possibly leading to acts of terrorism or increased recruitment for Islamic State and their ilk.

As a long term strategy, I also think that it is flawed. Dictatorships are not as vibrant and dynamic as societies where people have a reasonable amount of freedom, safety and general quality of life. If the dictators fall and are replaced by something nicer (yes, that is a big if), they tend to develop faster, bringing more wealth, stability and safety for all of us.

That is a very good reason for most intelligence agencies to spy on Amnesty: Amnesty has a lot of contacts on the ground in many oppressive countries. These contacts could be recruited as spies by intelligence agencies, sold out to their local government, spied upon to learn of coming activities, leaned on to start certain activities, or something else entirely. Some of these people could even know some of the dirty secrets of the intelligence agencies and their governments. Unfortunately, their spying is likely to make it harder for Amnesty to do their work, and significantly increases the risk of their contacts. In my opinion, the spying should stop.

Jolla is based in Finland and was founded by a lot of former Nokia employees (Nokia is also based in Finland). This makes Finland (and the EU) their obvious home market.

Jolla is, to my knowledge, not subservient to Apple, Google or Microsoft. I suspect that GP suggested Jolla+keyboard because you specifically mentioned N900, rather than many of the other vintage phones out there.

Drinking water is not distributed evenly over the surface of the planet. Some areas have an abundance, others do not. Climate change means that some areas become more arid, causing widespread and long lasting droughts. Usage of various poisons in agriculture and other pollution is making it into ground water, slowly causing well after well to be unfit as a source for drinking water. On top of that, the consumption of water in many areas is larger than the replenishment due to rainfall, so local reserves are dwindling. In the richest parts of the world this is not much of a problem as alternatives exist, but they come at a cost.

Regarding fracking, the heavy use of water is an issue that has been raised, albeit I think mostly due to fear of the chemicals used seeping into ground water.

The leadership of ISIS is dominated by military officers who served under secular dictator Saddam Hussein (source). So, unless all these people just had a religious awakening (not entirely impossible), the leadership of ISIS is simply trying to grab a lot of land and power for themselves. And they found that a Sunni Islamic fundamentalist agenda would aid in their recruitment. Especially in Iraq, where the Shia dominate government and Sunnis are being persecuted.

Good point. I will take your suggestion under advisement.

I considered something like that. Then it occurred to me that it was basically like having an extra password to remember.

That one would leave me out. Given how "security questions" have been handled in the past, i.e. to be anything but, my response to that sort of thing is to type in random text and usually a lot of it. I also don't see how it increases the security. If the email address of the user has been compromised, it is likely that the intruder would have an easy time finding the correct answers to the questions. In your example, there is actually also no need to send a password to the user. If the questions are answered correctly, you could send the user directly to step 6. Indeed, most recovery tools that I have used include steps 1, 2, 3, 6.

In my experience, JNI is not significantly worse than similar wrappers, but the approach certainly would not be my first choice. I used JNI for an embedded Android app, where the performance of raw C and C++ was needed to do the heavy lifting. Good points with SWIG and the JVM overhead, though.