At least in CS, they are not. They often do not even recognize fraud and fabrications their name is on. These people hold scientific progress back by maintaining the status-quo and squashing anybody that has good ideas, lest they be recognized for the frauds they are. Yes, I have run into this repeatedly and I know what I am talking about. In one case, it was to blatant, that the remaining 3 "dominant" authors (first was the PhD student) even issues a paper basically admitting fraud, but only after their student had graduated. Gross scientific misconduct at the very least, yet nothing happened to any of them.

They are basically a classical "elite" in the sense of an aristocracy, i.e. they can publish and publish no matter what utter crap they produce. The scandals of the last few years are just the tip of the iceberg. I guess that Einstein and Shannon would be very hard pressed to get their stuff published today.

If they could not imagine this really simple countermeasure, they cannot have even a tiny bit of effective intelligence. Makes on wonder about the quality of all these other laws and not only in France.

"People that do stupid things with dangerous objects often die."

Well, strictly speaking, experience is what you have after you have overcome the problem...

Seriously, how stupid and removed from the world can you get? The US is not nearly so weak that the whole Islamic world combined can bring it to its knees. It can however self-destruct and that is well underway. The next step after fascism is complete collapse. May take a few decades though.

Indeed. And that is the extreme risk that the NSA's activities create. And after a while of using real charges (and most people have something...), just make anybody opposing the new regime a drug dealer, a child-pornography user or simply a terrorist. The FBI and many police forces already have started to practice lying to courts under oath with "parallel constructions" when they use data from the NSA. The step to complete fabrication is a small one and, I guess, has already been taken more than once. Prosecutors are also well prepared with making "deals", as in offering 30 years imprisonment if people keep quiet and a sentence exceeding the remaining lifetime of the accused if they decide to fight. This effectively cuts the courts out of the process.

This has all happened before and, for the 3rd Reich or Stalinism can be found in the history books. Unless something dramatic happens very soon to reign the NSA in, that step to pure fascism is pretty much ensured.

To be fair, it was the GeStaPo that did the killing or the shipping off of people to the KZs. So you have that pretty much backwards.

Nobody. The NSA is beginning to be what the GeStaPo was in the 3rd Reich. Of course _they_ were loyal to the Fuehrer, but the NSA does not even have that much oversight.

You really do not live in this world. Huge phone-audio archives are easy to do, small and cheap. Ask Avaya for example.

Yes, if you cannot do basic arithmetic, it is.

Unlike some other countries, the US has no experience what it is like to live under Fascism. The NSA is intent on changing that.

Indeed. That is why I wrote "governments" as in the sum of all of them. One corrupt one is enough to break things.

$10'000 gets you something like 4-5 consulting days from good security experts and that is with the $10'000 paid in every case. In that time you can only hack really bad security. Don't expect anybody good to even try this unless they are bored and not interested in the money.

This is a cheap stunt.