Destroying the laptop was not done to keep anything secret.

But without the laptop and the data, the NSA can tell everyone what Snowden stole, and there is no way to prove otherwise except for the credibility and reputation of the parties involved. "Oops! Well, at least no one can get their hands on our nuclear launch codes now!" Their punishment of Snowden, if he were still in the USA, would be based on their evidence, and "OMG -- securing the state!" would be the prerequisite that you don't know what the evidence is, or where it was procured.

Wow, it sucks that the NSA can't prove that they had video of Snowden attaching alien parasites to students at Liberty University for mind control experiments, and their desperate attempts to save the world from this nefarious plot. It would be really helpful to prove their value right about now.

At the next Black Hat competition, they should really mix it up and have teams trying to embed spy-ware and decryption in lengthy and complex encryption code. Some code would be tainted, other code would be not, and some would just be shoddy so as to obscure the obscure.

It would be interesting to see how easy or hard it is to really catch nefarious code.

Because, unless you or someone working with you can understand EVERY line of code in a program -- and its dependancies, you can't really be sure.

The other thing is, you can have exploitable algorithms that can be manipulated. The "buffer overflow" -- where you stuff malicious code at the end of a command that has more data than the query was designed to handle is not based on malicious code in a program -- just an unforeseen and EXPLOITABLE feature.

To guarantee that a program is not exploitable is more difficult than to guarantee that there are no exploits. And an expert hacker, contributing code, might have done so with the expectation that the backdoor would one day be found. It's now more inconvenient, but perhaps one prime number salts all the random number generation, for instance, and knowing that would reduce the complexity of the pass code by orders of magnitude. Or, a specific string is always at a certain location in all messages after encryption, and the cracking can start by having to find a known 128 bit value in the halfway point of any array of encrypted data -- making the process a bit easier. None of those would yield consistent patterns that might be discovered, without knowing WHY each and every routine does what it does.

OR, you might have infected the compiler, and someone naming a variable; "ReallyGoodPasswordSalt" causes it to compile these little "cracking helpers" into any application that is built on them.

Then you might look a components of the computer executing the instructions. It's possible, for instance, that all INTEL chips or emulators, or maybe a chip from some tiny fab in Asia has a component on your computer that looks for some kind of code, or compiler directive, and embeds a hidden "cracker's helper" in whatever string passes through it. So a contributor, puts in some "good clean code" but they use specific variable names, or common routine calls in a certain order -- all it requires is a "pattern". The Developers don't look for these exploits, because it's not a normal business activity to have men in dark suits show up at an office and tell someone to "build this logic area into your silicon design." They never hear of such things. It's crazy to think of it.

People working at AT&T would have laughed at you if you told them that all the data over their backbone was just copied out -- they still might depending on their level of awareness. Why? Businesses that play ball get special treatment -- like a subcommittee in Congress drops a probe, or there's no lawsuits to break up a monopoly for a while. Whether you think that is nonsense or not, depending on electronics that no one person can know all the functions of means that exploits by an organized and well funded government organization, or maybe an NGO, have more places to hide.

How could we test for a hidden "poisoning" of code on devices we cannot fully guarantee? Perhaps when compiling, have an application take all the variables and libraries and give them new, random names, then compile. See if the same salt, same password, and same text after encryption ends up exactly the same way with both applications.

Try sending out various lengths of encrypted messages from various devices (that are the same), and compare them coming from different equipment, times and locations -- they SHOULD BE the same. If they are not, or the HTTP packets have some unexplained padding and/or different byte lengths, perhaps there is unexplained messaging going on from the devices and not the software.

I'm not in software security, but I do have a devious mind, and if I can think of a way to make encryption more crackable, then others can.

I suppose then you look at the compiler and the chips on the computer itself.

There are a number of cases where the Government has forced component manufacturers to embed designs on their silicone. Laser printers for instance; for "some reason" all PostScript rasterizing chips at one time could be turned into passive antennas to indicate their location -- and in the Desert Storm war, this allowed the US to find locations that MIGHT be military command centers (assuming a computer next to a printer). Maybe the antennas are still in laser printers. Or maybe the wires in $100 bills allow them to be tracked by remote scanners and be used as listening devices -- yeah, well, who would have thought 40 years ago that metallic ink could be used to create a simple game on a piece of cardboard? There's no reason we couldn't have a pack-man game that was powered by sugary cereal in milk, is there? And, by pointing two lasers at a solid object in a room through a window, it's possible to record whatever sounds occur in that room. So it's only a matter of whether there is an intention and the creativity employed in embedding every day objects to be used to gather information on us.

For instance, let's look at something that IS PROVABLE; if you have a color printer, print out a period in color at the top of the paper. It will go "zip" and then again "zip" near the bottom. In yellow ink, in very small type, you will see a code indicating your printer's registration number. Was that a feature for you, or to track the unwary? Maybe it's just because they were worried about counterfeiters printing out money -- but the point is, your camera, your printer, your MAC address on your computer are ways to identify whatever you make on them. If the device is recorded as being yours -- whatever you do on it is not anonymous to an outfit like the NSA.

The point is; we sit on top of an infrastructure that we ignore as long as it works. Any one of the components of the Internet Routers at CISCO, or the transceiver in your phone, or in your power supply are BELOW the encryption level we assume is the important message.

So as long as you are OK with your location and identity being known, and who you sent the message to -- then encryption may be working OR, all messages have a tag tacked on with the HTTP packet from some underlying bit of hardware that relays information to a router on the internet backbone and is always being sniffed. Maybe those "lost" packets or in the noise.

The point is; it's great that they searched TrueCrypt -- but not at the expense of giving up on being paranoid. If I can think of a dozen vectors to exploit - think of the people who are PAID to come up with new vectors.

Yes, well, the agenda was; track the population so we can CONTROL THEM.

We all should know that was the excuse. Dick Cheney's PNAC group had the Patriot Act and Iraq invasion plans written years earlier and shows that he used disasters as an opportunity for an agenda - we should only wonder why anyone with internet access can know these things and yet it does not appear as a point of discussion on our TV News.

People on TV and the press talk about "reasonable things." Things that have made the gauntlet of other people on suits on TV.

Everyone watching TV news "KNOWS" that Iran is two years away from developing a nuclear weapon -- yet not that they've been two years away for thirty years now.

Everyone knows that we need security -- yet not that mercenary companies can buy tanks. That foreign companies own weapons plants on US soil. That engineers have tried to go on strike and nuclear weapons facilities over unsafe working conditions and long hours -- and that private companies are running these facilities and cutting costs.

Bill Maher pointed out the other day that about 26,000 people die due to antibiotic resistant bacteria -- the threats of a 9/11 incident each year pale in comparison to the real threats we ignore. There's obviously nothing to be gained by worrying the public with things that won't increase profits or power. You are more likely to be shot by police than a terrorist. So why did we spend $3 Trillion on Iraq and Afghanistan? We could have put everyone in those countries through college and bought them a home -- and 99.999% of them would likely kill anyone who would harm us just out of gratitude.

The media has interviews with “security experts” who debate the dangers of whistleblowers like Snowden. The “enemy” might get our secrets. Really? Did the Media cover the Wikileaks that told how agencies doing work for the NSA and CIA routinely sell databases of information gleaned about Americans to private companies? If China wants to know something - they don’t go to Snowden. They go to a firm.

Is there some “military strategy” that could be compromised? Is that F16 or drone with a GPS guided missile not going to win against that guy with an AK47 4 miles away on the infrared targeting system that costs more than his closest ten villages?

There is no "enemy" just people trying to get power vs. other people in power. A person like Cheney wants to get dirt on some political opponent or to have a war with a country that his friends paid to profit from, or a corporation wants to sell diseased cattle and cut corners and make profits so want dirt on someone who might stand in their way. Tracking EVERYONE, does not track people who are intending to sabotage the system. They will steal, disguise and use low-tech methods. But it's great to manipulate people who are part of the system and ruin their lives if they get in your way.

We can't have a Democracy or even representational government with "total awareness" -- and that's the reason it's the solution to whatever disaster they care so much about. If they cared about human life, I'd have a decent wage and Universal healthcare -- for instance. Doesn't seem to be a priority for "securing" the homeland.

I'm more interested in being protected from our Dick Cheney's and Judicial Punishment System.

I don't think the majority are fooled -- the Majority doesn't vote or is Independent. The MAJORITY is discouraged by the constant deceit and don't want to expend the energy arguing -- just making a living and enjoying what they can.

The people who are FOOLED are the ardent supporters who likely get more information on the subjects they are so ignorant about.

I remember years ago working with a company that sold the Interest Only home loans. They hired a guest speaker for about $100K for their conventions and other speaking engagements who wrote a book on how you could put all that wonderful equity from a home into the market. Keeping a mortgage is your cheapest credit card. Which, conceptually, if you crunch the numbers, works out on paper if you are a wise investor and don't ever use this money for food.

Anyway, the point is; an author who wrote a crap book promoting a crap financial concept got lots of money, and I'm a worker drone who is informed, and thought the idea was going to run a lot of people into serious trouble.

Think tanks and charlatans get paid big bucks to inform people of "wisdom" that makes people with lots of money, lots more money. The Wall Street insiders who have financial shows on PBS or NPR. The numerous "think tanks" who churn out papers on how not having tariffs allows America to "be competitive" -- as if any of that helped 99% of the public.

So who is the fool? People got good jobs and paychecks working at companies selling bad ideas. There are people working at horrible companies that every year find a new way to add a fee to their services and bilk customers.

I was aware and predicting the 2008 bank collapse because I noticed the reserve requirement on banks kept going down (it got negative in the last couple months) -- and that meant they were over-leveraged. For all my wisdom, I didn't improve my economic situation.

There are people who believe in talking snakes, that human activity cannot effect the climate, and who vote for less protection of workers even though they are a worker -- and YET, those people are better off than me financially. People who believe that America can do no wrong and has noble ideals AND can do horrible things because they have those ideals (not noticing that it can't maintain AND break ideals to be noble), are much more promotable. The person who will administer electric shocks because they were told to, and who will happily sell the Interest Only mortgage to a young lawyer with $300,000 in student loans is someone a business wants to hire.

SURVIVAL is why people in our society may not pay attention to things they think are unnecessary. And being a MORON is a good way for an average person to succeed financially. Being both aware and altruistic means that your chance for success is more limited. We have a Darwinian dog-eat-dog system in this country, and dogs are better adapted to it.

I like your comment. When you distill it down to the raw motivations; how COULD a company be trusted? Big or Small, there is a power vacuum. What do you want filling that power? Fast Food, Goldman Sachs, and a Credit Rating agency?

There was good work done by faceless bureaucrats in Washington for many years. Yes, there are careerists and cogs and people who muddle through,... but the "inefficiency"? People have no clue about an economy if they worry about the "cost of government." Every year around sweeps, our TV News covers "lazy government workers."

Someone shows up, gets paid, raises a family. Life goes on. I worked in marketing - and that's not necessary if there is one product. Most accountants aren't "necessary" if the tax code were made simple -- I'd be all for that; no taxes until your family makes over $120k and get rid of sales tax -- then you've got 1,000 less points of taxation on those who an afford and who actually get the most benefits AND that would spur investment to avoid taxation and lose the money (lowering capital gains has the effect of lowering capital investment-- see; history). Anyway -- the point is; for most of us, there is an artificial environment of inefficiency that created our job.

If we had total efficiency; there'd be a robotic plant that created all your stuff, drones would bring it to you, but they wouldn't because you'd have no money to buy anything because you were replaced by a robot.

So fundamentally; business wants you as an outlet, and wants to only pay you as little as possible, and shift costs of educating you to someone else. Government is motivated by the people involved, and who puts them in their job and gives them their power. Increasingly; that's corporate money more than votes -- the same money that owns the insipid news station that covers the heinous crimes of road workers caught napping.

I talked to someone that worked at one of the "Big Three" credit reporting agencies. You know those credit scores that make things cost more, because you have less money? Well, seems they are going to be rolling out "Work Scores" -- ratings of performance of employees that companies can use when the time comes to hire.

If they implement this "reputation system" and things like license plate tracking. Nothing will happen. You will try and get a job somewhere, and will never hear back. You will be curious why you can't get a loan. Nothing will happen TOO YOU, and nothing will happen FOR YOU. You will just be inexplicably a permanent loser.

The invisible hand of the market place will finally find it's way around your neck. The marketplace does not want people who question the way things are done and who cause a fuss. Just be popular, agree with what is shameful or interesting at the water cooler, play golf, laugh at the executive jokes, kiss ass and make a living.

Not really a good comparison; the polar bear is already a killing machine, and putting a radio collar on it "could" make it a cyborg. It's either a cyborg killing machine, or a radio tracked killing machine.

The bacteria are in essence, armored AND tracked, which makes them pretty a more like Emo kids with smart phones who tweet their every action. Sounds counter productive; "LOL, just arrived at the Colon and man, this dude is whack!" Sorry, my slang is 10 years un-hip.

That was an awesome and insightful response.

So while Nuclear is getting better technology -- it's providers are only in the game if the Government can flip the bill.

Has any business in the past two decades actually financed and built a nuclear power plant? If not, then that would challenge the concept that they are economical.

"The government views this as a revenue enhancing measure because it wants to channel gamblers to its own Espacejeux, the government's own online gaming site."

Usually the blocking of sites is for morality issues, but Quebec is seeing this as a revenue measure. Much like the provisions against bringing in your own water bottle to a concert, so you can buy their more expensive one.

Communism is redistribution of wealth, or at least apportionment of resources (can be like old USSR, or like Star Trek if you've got machines to materialize anything you can want -- resources are no longer limited).

Fascism is a government that runs for the purpose of businesses and eventually, picks a winner (like 1940's Italy and Germany, and arguably Japan today, and America is getting close).

But what is it when the government BECOMES the company? Don't government's know they can just PRINT MONEY? SEE; Real World economics explained below.

Instead of a lottery/gambling;
Form your own bank, create bonds for local infrastructure, and pay 10% per diem with tax breaks to investors and meanwhile you can put people to work creating things that will enhance business and the community. You get more money back from the wages.

Gambling is a pernicious social problem, and these scratch-card financed governments can only capture revenue from other locations and their own citizens, who will be less productive and lose a work ethic for their "get rich quick" gambling ethic. It's a way to raise taxes on the people who usually have the least education, judgement and income. In short; it's robbing Peter to pay Paul, but doing it with Pay-Day loans and Paul is going to be a useless wife-beater wearing fool who insists everyone around him write their Le Menu in French.

*In the USA we have a fractional reserve banking system. Bonds are created to be offset by dollars created and the bonds are investments the government can sell. So money is created by debt. The Money just gets shipped to banks. Why doesn't the government be the bank, you may ask, since it's both the real lender and the one taking the risk (holding and paying off the bond) - and wow, Iceland just did it and it seems to have worked fine in the past in the USA. Great question, which will get you kicked out of economics class if you ask it again. but that's because it was necessary to pay off the rich people in charge at the time during the Civil War -- I'm sure people have learned interesting and convoluted economical explanations for why our Federal Reserve banking system is yadda yadda, but they can't explain how the system doesn't collapse if you pay off all the debts that created money in the first place (because of factoring, banks can loan $10 or more dollars for each on deposit - but leverage works both ways see; Nov. 2008) -- oh, and let's not notice that the #1 Investor is offshore banks. Anyone know if we don't just manufacture money to buy our own money? But I digress, all is well and go back to whatever and just know; governments don't need to tax -- EXCEPT to engage the citizens, and to redistribute wealth (some other fools think it's because they can't pay for things otherwise and stuff about who DESERVES what they earned -- as if most wages weren't decisions made by those who valued themselves higher), and it's a way to value their currency -- you have to back a currency with the ability to pay it back if you don't have nuclear weapons (OK, someone really needs to explain to the average person how currencies are valued; military power, and/or arbitrary decision of World Banker and his last bootie call -- you are welcome).

Can anyone speak to the costs that are often left out of pro nuclear equations;

Half of all nuclear power plants don't seem to get completed -- is that fair?

Cost over-runs are rampant, they never cost what is projected, often this is 2 to 10 times projected, but maybe that's just in the USA where the winning lowest bid forces unrealistic expectations.

After the plant is out of service, they have to maintain it for 2000 years -- or that's what I'd heard. Good luck getting humanity to keep going on a project that has no benefits for longer than the aquifers of Rome were built. Companies finagle themselves out of pension obligations these days, and dump toxins whenever someone isn't looking (google any records of dumping of the coast of New Jersey for instance -- metric tons of if). So the "we'll collect money to take care of decommissioning" is only as good as the government. With Citizen's United, it's cheaper to buy a politician than store a control rod. We all need government, but then some people who are pro corporate, have a lot of wishful thinking when it comes to corporate responsibility. Nuclear power has bigger responsibilities, are we heading towards our own Fukishima one day?

It is reliable and good to have in combination with other energy sources, but mere "cost per KWH" is not the only factor. We should also be looking at the water usage of energy and how it effects standard of living (you know; creating jobs for a lot of people as the cost of Green energy, rather than mostly capital expenditures as we get with Nuclear Plants)

I've got a therapist who is helping my kids, and I'm having a hard time justifying all the practices she is promoting. But since we are getting the input -- I've got to at least try what she recommends.

But the "put all the violent video games away -- it will hurt their minds" really irks me. I know too many violent brats who aren't allowed to even play with toy guns, much less violent games. There's no damn serious studies that link the two; as if violence arose with a First Person Shooter.

The main downside I do see to games and the smart phones is over stimulation. It's kind of like how some stimulant drugs work, and the user is no longer satisfied by real-world pleasures. There is value to "being bored." Figuring out how to entertain yourself or being lost in thought -- writing down a dream you had -- that's profile of future inventors.

It isn't cartoons or games in themselves that rot the mind. In fact, I'm fairly sure anything that forces you to react quickly improves the mind -- it's that doing it TOO MUCH instead of sports, and other more cerebral endeavors where you create the content needs to be part of someone's day.

I grew up with parents who didn't think you had to do much with the kids except feed them - and I'm raising my kids as if they were orchids. There needs to be a balance between these two extremes.

I agree with that -- because, really, how can we police them all the time?

The only real solution is to educate kids on good internet practices -- and most parents aren't using them either, nor know what to do, or what to teach.

There is a vacuum here and nature or spam will fill it.

As someone who is fairly tech savvy, it's getting harder for me to detect the scams. Just forwarded a decent sounding job opportunity because I knew someone it fit, and then noticed the same text for a different company -- because I've got a "tar baby" email account. All that stuff that I have to sign up for goes to the junk account and that one gets spammed. If I get a "job opportunity" there -- it's bogus. It's funny because if I didn't have a spam account, I wouldn't have seen the duplicate job with the same text -- and it's just luck because I don't read the spam for more than a second to identify its pattern.

But obviously she liked the power more than she disliked the job conditions, and intended to ignore the job conditions anyway.

True of absolutely everyone in Washington.

Blah, blah, blah. You say that as if they are the first politicos to try and work around rules.

If you are going to refer to all the controversy surrounding ethics with the Clintons, do try and keep in mind that except for fooling around with his secretary, Bill Clinton and Hillary have never been found guilty of any of the charges.

So they had 5 court cases with a Federal Prosecutor, over a couple decades of bad press asking loaded questions, and furor over a tempest in a teapot like Benghazi.

Maybe the Clintons are not trying to be secretive, so much as paranoid. Maybe they worry that they might suddenly get an email saying; "Sent $100,000 to pay for Benghazi attack to Michelle Obama" in their sent email box.

By the time a forensic computer specialist can find the source of the doctored email, the Clintons will be defending themselves from another baseless claim.

Do you not remember who made all these different claims and why you aren't remembering that someone lied to you, but you remember that the Clintons are so corrupt?

I'm not supporting Hillary and I won't be voting for her, but she's just smart when dealing with Republicans -- not corrupt.