Thursday, May 29, 2014
App Permissions - for the NSA to collect your data
How many saw Brian Williams special interview with Edward Snowden last night? Probably didn't make much of an impression on ole BB though we learned for instance that the NSA can turn on your smartphone even when it's off and take pictures. Don't know what they'd do with my cat though or me watching Home Shopping Network. Brian Williams called this chilling and then we also learned that Mr. Snowden was not just a low-level "hacker" or NSA contractor but had worked for the CIA as a spy overseas, had training in this area and so knows what he's talking about. Also he had a nice haircut and for the ladies out there a couple of moles here and there. NSA's main concern is preventing the next big terrorist attack or even small ones leading up to that but with all these lone fuseboxes out there getting ready to blow who populate the social media and leave copious e-trails with not infrequent weird rantings you'd think there'd be an algorithm for that. I mean if we're gonna give up our privacy en masse in these massive data-mining sweeps it's not too much to ask to go to the mall or get a bite to eat in relative safety. He also said ask the US Government why he wound up in Russia. Then I went to bed.
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You outta get a Blackphone .
ReplyDeleteYou can even encrypt your pizza orders.
If TOR is any indication it is probably partially constructed/paid for by the US Gov't.
DeleteSo I'm well past the halfway mark of "The House of the Seven Gables" by Hawthorne and while it doesn't seem to be going anywhere it's beautifully written.
ReplyDeleteSnowden strikes me as one of those prototype computer geniuses. Never completed any of his schooling, but was regarded by contemporaries as an outstanding computerdude. Sort of the Bill Gates of spookdom.
ReplyDeleteLike that Monsegur guy of the hacker networks who helped the feds. If he wasn't wanted he could be working for Google speaking of which they say wearers of Google Glass often get pains in the eye.
DeleteCaught a segment on local tv discussion: the state of Washington is using data mining (a la NSA) to ferret out welfare fraud, particularly those who sell food stamps
ReplyDeletevia face book. C'mon Snowden..protect the welfare cheats.
I don't support the NSA and I don't support Snowden. Does that make any sense?
DeleteHey BB how come we weren't invited to the Kimye Wedding?
ReplyDeleteJay Carney and General Shinsecki have newfound free time. They didn't get an invite either.
DeleteSebelius too. Hmmm, gov't run health-care for our vets didn't work out.
DeleteYeah, VA has a long history of that. Now, they don't have enough doctors and given some 80,000,000 'customers' going back all the way
Deleteto St. Mer Eglise, Iwo Jima, Inchon, Shock & Awe, Kabul, etc, folks are
calling for vouchers to the private system. Either way-we pay and although I am a vet and have never used VA, we owe them, IMO.
Any profound thoughts on Sgt. Bergdahl of Idaho (and the last five years,
Hindu Kush country)?
Well yeah, I thought we didn't negotiate with terrorists, talk with the bad guys. Taliban is crowing they got the better end of the deal. Didn't know they had interior ministers and other bureaucratic titles to the hierarchy of the cave-dwellers. I was gonna get pissed at Obama all over again but then I remembered Iran-Contra.
DeleteIts a neocon thing: drone the crap out of them in their own country and think we are doing them a favor, ya know? IMO, we got a pretty good deal, considering the Israelis swap 400 prisoners for one guy. BTW, I predicted the right's reaction, given their proclivity to jump and anything
Deletethe current admin does. Of course the Idaho far wing is exhibiting mixed
signals....
It's like with the age thing and the GOP, swell when Dole and McCain ran but not for Hil. I mean at least be consistent.
DeletePersonally, I have no problem with Dole & McCain's ages...they are STILL going strong. I rather like Dole, probably because he was a RINO?
DeleteI myself have a personal fondness for the DINOS (Democrats in Name Only).
DeleteI caught an episode of a tv series where these guys motorboat into the swamp, hang up a piece of rotten chicken with a bit hook and come back the next morning and shoot an alligator that got hooked on chicken. So, the first time, a mild interest; but
ReplyDelete4-5 times a show, week in and week out?
1. What is the draw?
2. How come they haven't exterminated the gator population already?
Of more redeeming value is the episode "Amazon Apocalypse" on Animal Planet's River Monsters series. Hillbillies should have died a natural death with "Green Acres." Ann B. Davis RIP
DeleteStill support Bergdahl the Deserter BB? Actually even though Obama had those five Gitmo Talibanis released he didn't say he would never drone them and then you'd see the Right get on board (Bill Kristol: "genius").
ReplyDeleteIf Bergdahl was a deserter, he would be like Snowden; eg, he had a job to do..and he didn't. The chips haven't all fallen in his case yet, though. Maybe John Bolton would be overjoyed to give him back?
DeleteNone of the members of his unit have come out in support of him, a miscalculation on Obama's part. Who to do business with next, Boko Haram? Call this the Monte Hall Let's Make a Deal foreign policy.
DeleteYou would think the TP/right of right would back the guy up: after all, he
Deletewas homeschooled.
I would think John McCain is right, it'll encourage future hostage situations. Taliban is probably currently setting up the right bureaucratic department.
DeleteMcCain's is a Bolton pipe dream: Afghan has been a tribal warland since
DeleteAlexander the Great. They raise poppies and make war, and when outsiders show up, they get all fired up..ask the British, who left the place littered with redcoats in the 1800s or the Soviets who left the place littered
with the hulks of tanks and helicopters a few years back. The options?
Leave them to their internecine battles, capture the entire population and put them in Gitmo or drone them back into their caves. That is the big picture, like it or not, and McCain is whistling in the wind over next to nothing. He must be furious with his good friend Israel- trading 500 terrorists for a single soldier. Just my thoughts on the matter. The facts as I see them and my spin on them.
It's really quite hard to defend Obama's controversial decision but you get high marks for the effort. Think you that he followed the federal statute here? even some Dems don't think he did.
DeleteI can only guess the GOP response, if Obama had said, "let the kid rot in captivity, those Gitmo dudes are a hazard".
DeleteIt's clear what with his controversial "recess" appointments and all Obama doesn't feel bound by the Law.
DeleteFollowing precedent ? Hailey, ID cancelled the Bergdahl coming home celebration-too much hatemail and threats. Good thing, tis about time red Idaho turned blue, ya know?
DeleteBB I get your point but the salient point is Obama promised to be different, not like the rest.
DeleteDoubt Obama could do anything the current party that still calls itself the GOP would like. I see Krauthammer, of all people, is defending the release and the necessity of keeping it secret.
DeleteKrauthammer is his own neocon. Point though is that nobody seems to care about the Law. I see you've switched your ire lately from the Koches to Bolton.
DeleteApps: my 12 yr old grand daughter just took a class in how to build your own apps. Kochs/Bolton = fiscalcons/neoconpolicywonk. Just not big on
Deletecons. Speaking of my favorite folks, did you see the NRA issued a statement calling the Texas AR-15 crowd "weird" and "hurting the cause".
Then retracted it a few hours later blaming on a 'low level employee". NRA is afraid of their creepier members?
Any movement has to keep track of its fringe. At first you may not see the fringe but sometimes it takes a while. Had an neighbor once, an elderly gentleman and he was politically active on the conservative side. Fought sex ed, was pro-life, strong military and all the rest. Even if you disagree it wasn't outside the mainstream imo then he started handing out these little pamphlets saying the Holocaust was a myth and my fringemeter started vibrating. At that point you're hurting your cause. Moral of the Story: let the NRA ignore its fringe at its own peril.
DeleteBTW my sitemeter says I only got TWO visitors today. I'm either incredibly boring or the thing ain't calibrated right.
ReplyDeleteWhere is Saty? Maybe you need a referral service...I've run across a few flaming kooks that might light up your meter....
Delete& to think I have a mobile version of this site. At this rate if I had an app I'd be trending towards zero.
DeleteAlmost finished with the ebook "The Book of David" by Anonymous about a star high school QB with a gay secret. Seems formatted on the tragic Tyler Clementi case. These teen unknown diary books have dealt with drug abuse, witchcraft, anorexia and now cyberbullying. They're interesting and quick reads even if they have a good dose of creative editing.
ReplyDeleteAm I the only one who reads this stuff? The book has enough clever digs at Christian fundies to whet BB's appetite. Every character either extremely dislikes gays or is else super-supportive, no niche for the mildly anti-gay. I wonder what the next teen social issue the Anonymous Series will tackle. Perhaps Alice becomes a lesbian witch.
ReplyDeleteIt is confusing. I'm ambivalent on the whole thing..can't get into their heads,
Deleteya know?
Seems to me the primary goal of the gay rights movement is out-and-out societal approval or to paraphrase Bush you're either with us or against us. A more moderate and practical goal is tolerance imo. After Rand I heavily gravitate towards books of 200+ words.
DeleteAnd the primary goal of the Civil Rights movement was out and out societal approval. It has been 50 years and we are not there yet. But the goal remains. Until we are all equal, no one is free.
DeleteMaybe it's me but I can't get into the whole FB thing at least not full throttle like most folks. Don't want my life to be an open book or why help the NSA? I hear major intel is not happy the data giants wanna encrypt more stuff.
ReplyDeleteIt is plain common sense to use the e-media cautiously regarding information. Not only are there a lot of criminal lurkers sniffing around Facebook, Craig's List and the like, but the Intel geeks think that anything that is encrypted can be decoded one way or another.
Delete....except what the Navajo code talkers say.
DeleteTolerance does not foster equality. Tolerance is what I have for a certain predetermined number of dust bunnies under the bed. I tolerate the heat. I tolerate the nonstop screaming of some of the folks I take care of. I tolerate things that I would otherwise not. That is not equality. Tolerating is what you do with things that you hate but can't get rid of. That's not the basis for an equal society.
ReplyDeleteBut that's not realistic. There will always be some residual distaste for gay acts.
DeleteThen we will never (as we have seen with race relations) have a free and equal society.
DeleteThe part I don't get is why people get their panties so knotted up about it. Gay people, so? I think the vast majority of people who are 'uncomfortable' 'repulsed' 'have a distaste' are just dealing with their own selves. Seriously, gay people, so? At my job we have a very large percentage of very outed professionals. One of the therapists, who happens to be a lesbian in a monogamous relationship, is in the process of converting to Judaism. She said at where we work, it's harder to be a Jew than it is to be gay.
DeleteIt's like people have 'residual distaste' for interracial relationships or for people who aren't whatever race they are. Time to get over it. Time to get past it. Time to move on and realize we are all the same, and all the superficial differences are just that, superficial. There are always going to be people who are Neanderthal about it, but they will become more and more of an insignificant minority as generations pass. And I do say generations because look at where we are in race relations. Since 1863, and still we have problems with a black man in a position of authority. So gay folk have a long road to walk. The important thing is that the gate has been opened. Remember that back when the civil rights thing was going on, integration was going to bring about communism. Integration was going to collapse civilization. Integration was the harbinger of the Apocalypse. People sincerely believed these things, and they were very sincerely wrong. The screaming you hear now about gay folk is the very same thing, with just a new target plugged in.
DeleteThe thing of it is I'm just realistic. I don't expect somebody who was brought up on the Bible most of his life to suddenly do a 180. Why the need to convert them? Your argument - does every member of society have to morally approve of the act of abortion in order to have full equality of abortion? (I know I tortured the language here).
DeleteYou're conflating a medical procedure with people.
DeleteAnd quite honestly if any surveillance agency gives a rat's ass about the mundane insignificant things I put on FB they are welcome to them.
ReplyDeleteI look at it differently this whole NSA thing. If I'm sitting in my living room doing the most mundane insignificant things I still don't want somebody peeping through the blinds.
DeleteAnd where have I been, since I have got home from my trip I have gotten progressively more in need of a medication adjustment and today I have started it, which means I do little beyond eat and sleep for today. Tomorrow I actually have to start functioning on a limited basis which means I'm not leaving the house but I do have to do some things. I don't go back to work until Friday.
ReplyDeleteWell at any rate welcome back.
ReplyDeleteI'll tell you when all the snooping began. In 4th grade, I got caught passing a note with a dirty joke on it. (and it wasn't encrypted)
ReplyDeleteThank you. Today I left the house, did a couple of things, made an appointment for heat pump maintenance, mundane things that seem so small but are taking so much effort. I sleep a lot. I got a frozen Chai tea at Sheetz (do you have Sheetz?) and I was really looking forward to it but it seems I have lost my taste for sweets. Except fruit which I eat in insane quantities. Thankfully the tea was free. I've been eating a lot of cheese as well. Besides that, this is always the hardest part, because part of me doesn't think this adjustment is even necessary. I'm being a little preemptive about it because there is someone I would prefer not see me off the hook manic. Under other circumstances I probably would have waited a couple more weeks until the whole world was ready to incarcerate me. It's not a HUGE HUGE increase and I am only going to do it until September 1st. Anyway I'm doing it and no turning back because I took extra days off to get this done. Did you see all the cooking pictures from the retreat?
ReplyDeleteI'll check it out.
ReplyDeleteYesterday I said "residual distaste for gay acts." I almost said gay apps. I have technology on the brain.
ReplyDeleteCooking for 1500! it was no joke. I was in the kitchen every morning at 3AM. One morning we made strawberry milk, 50 lb strawberries, 60 gallons of milk. All the milk/yogurt/cheese/butter came from our farm in Pennsylvania which was totally awesome. I was just overawed at the sheer quantities, 500 lb potatoes to be washed/peeled/cut, cases and cases of everything. The chief cooks for the retreat manage Kalachandji's Restaurant in Dallas (at the Dallas temple) so they are very expert but I think even this was a bit of a stretch for them. Another thing is just the personnel management, 430 people volunteered to cover 1600 man-hours. Amazing as that is now add into it all the different languages people speak (and understand). I was getting the hugest kick out of watching my Mexican Godsister teach an Indian lady to speak Spanish.... and trying to understand everyone's heavily accented English. Anyway it all went off very well. Some quantities: 29 trays of lasagna, 750 enchiladas, almost 30 gallons of fruit salad. The whole thing was pretty unbelievable.
ReplyDeleteSo today I thought of doing a whole separate blogpost on the Eric Cantor situation. I even took notes but the whole thing would have been kinda boring.
ReplyDeleteI guess there is a good possibility of having a Brat in congress...
DeleteWhat kinda gave me the heebie-jeebies about him is he said it was a miracle of God that he won like it was all foreordained.
DeleteAs near as I can tell, he is some sort of Calvinist Roman Catholic, if there is such a thing. Interesting, he spent little compared to moneybags Cantor. Idaho has a congressman named Crapo, so I guess VA is entitled to a a Brat. Am I out to lunch thinking anyone who wants to run
Deletefor office is a narcissist on an ego trip?
Cantor looks like one of those political career nerds you'll always see on Capitol Hill, a Paul Ryan policy wonk type so I was actually surprised when this all went down. In fact in the days running up to the primary I recall seeing an article about the waning influence of the TP. As for Cantor's money alot of that went to fancy steak dinners at restaurants whereas Brat got down to business. I think Cantor felt like, well if you don't have a smartphone or a tablet you won't know what I mean but when you're on your tab let's say and the apps automatically update themselves. I think he thought the Settings were for automatic reelection.
DeleteI think it's a good sign that the Right are as a group becoming more and more crazy and more and more fringey. This bodes well for the next general election, in which we discover once again that fringey is, well, fringey, and that the vast majority are actually sane and rational.
DeleteThey're only doing the bidding of their constituents. Blame the constituents.
DeleteHere's hoping the Republicans veer sharply to the right and keep on heading in that direction.
ReplyDeleteYeah and your side always veers sharply to the Left and never the twain shall meet. Quite a mess with the Obama Amnesty Program don't you think?
ReplyDeleteDunno, I'm about as far left as Eisenhower, considering the paradigm shift beyond the old John Birch bunch.
DeleteIf I recall didn't they think Ronald Reagan was a communist?
DeleteHell, they thought Betty White was a commie!
DeleteThere's a slim volume of theirs called "The Insiders" and Ted Koppel and Diane Sawyer are on the List. BTW Sawyer kicked Hillary's ass on Benghazi.
DeleteBenghazi, it has become its own meme. Seriously. Benghazi. Everybody's so over it. The Right tried so, so hard to make it into something so, so big, and all it became was a big, big display of how so, so, stupid they collectively are.
ReplyDeleteTell that to Diane Sawyer. Speaking of memes did you know I never even heard of the Slender Man.
DeleteI never did either but i am never around kids. Btw my adjustment has gone well, i feel like i stopped it before it started, first time ive done that. I am pretty surpeised about Cantor, mire surprised that the extremists want the gop to be more conservative. Whats next?
ReplyDeleteWhat I wanna know is Bush fucked up Iraq so how is it Obama's fault?
ReplyDeleteEVERYTHING is Obamas fault. And whatever he supports, be against, even if you were for it until he supported it. Be against anything he does and when he does something youwanted him to do claim you never wanted him to do it and protest loudly esespecially when people present you with incontrovertible evidence of your BS.
ReplyDeleteSlightly different spin, conservatives have a bad case of Vietnam Syndrome (if we only stick it out longer). No matter if it were another Democratic president if he doesn't have VS the neocons would attack him.
ReplyDeleteIn the too much information department: prioritizing Snowden, Bergdahl, Bokum Haran, Taliban, ISIS, Bundy Ranch, drones, Koch Bros, the Donald, the Kardashians, Malichi, Hillary, Greenwald, NSA and concealed carry smartphones;
ReplyDeleteand blaming them on Obama. :-)
Iraq: the bitter conclusions of a soldier who was who was there when it started . Pretty much sums up my POV.
ReplyDeleteYou know though for a soldier to talk like that first off it's a free choice to enlist in the armed forces, it's a free choice as of now at least but once you enlist you don't have the power to tell THEM what wars you'd like to fight in and and what ones you don't, which ones you think are wrong and which you think are justified. That sums up part of my own POV.
ReplyDeleteIt really is remarkable though when you stop to think about it how much in the broader outlines conservatives all think alike. Sure there are sometimes differences when it comes to abortion, same-sex marriages but when push comes to shove in the broader outlines again it's remarkable what they ALL seem to agree on (e.g. foreign intervention, the cops are always right>see Rudy Giuliani etc.).
ReplyDeleteI personally am not going to shop or do any kind of business anywhere there are people walking around open carry. I don't need that kind of terrorism or threatening environment in my life; I am unstable enough as it is on a bright sunny day. There hasn't been any of this jackwagon bullshit around so far as I've seen, but just to put my viewpoint out there. And really, if someone is that insecure that they feel the need to bring lethal weapons to the grocery store, they have bigger issues than I do.
ReplyDeleteRe the need to own a gun I'm currently working on some phallocentric theory.
ReplyDeleteLike instead of a codpiece they pack a gat?
DeleteSeems counterintuitive ! :-)
They do call them ammosexuals lately.
DeleteI know what Saty's saying though, you're walking around in the Five & Dime and some hick has a gun in his belt. It's part of the culture in some parts but to kind of elaborate on my phallus theory consider the true aficionado of his gun collection, late in the evening he goes in his den. Many times he's an older gentleman, smokes a pipe, maybe has a bit of a silver handlebar moustache and there's an apple tobacco aroma in the room, his man cave and there he is in his big comfy den chair holding and yes caressing his gun. Maybe takes some of the pieces out, puts some lube in there, buffs it for no reason and stares at it longingly. Hey I even think there's some latent homoerotic element here too:)
ReplyDeleteAmmosexual.
DeleteI was in a liquor store with my friend couple years back in Rockland County and I thought the young man helping me was gay and no I didn't have a problem with that but just mentioned it in passing. My friend goes he might be a metrojew like Bloomberg with the high voice. Hey as long as he has my Christian Brothers which he didn't:)
ReplyDeleteLet me know when you figure out the far right .
ReplyDeleteNever mind figuring out the far right, I had trouble figuring out your link. Started reading it again and all I came up with was some far rightie camping in the woods somewhere in Northern CA and the feds were investigating vehicles there like in this age of terror and psychos they have nothing better to do...the article is a little vague BB.
DeleteBTW saw an Eastern coyote about over a week ago in Ardsley crossing the Saw Mill River Rd where Ciba-Geigy used to be. Went into the woods by the trail where I commonly walk.
ReplyDeleteIf you had your smartphone you could put your coyote encounter
Deleteon youtube.
I had my smartphone, pulled over and the coyote went in the woods. Very elusive creatures. The official response, you're supposed to yell and scream like a woman. The Eastern Coyote is supposed to have a trace of wolf in them. So the trick is to videotape AND scream like a woman.
DeleteWhen I first moved out west, the neighbor kid came by with a picnic basket full of coyote puppies. He had found a den over in the canyon.
DeleteHis parents made him take them back. Not sure how that worked out, but I'm thinking they would make questionable pets.
The coyote is a remarkable animal. The It'se-ye-ye , the coyote god of the Nez Perce, is part of their
Deletecreation myth. The genetic results of the eastern woodland coyote show it to possess some wolf genes, making it somewhat larger and able to take larger prey...like guys walking along the Saw Mill River Road. Yikes!
Of course in 2011 the US Fish and Wildlife Service declared the Eastern Mountain Cougar extinct but that's another subject. Whenever there's a plausible sighting the official version is either it was an escaped captive (like do you know anyone with these large felines?) or else a Western subspecies that wandered too far. It's an intriguing subject but getting back to coyotes they've been in the news alot in Westchester these last few years and not for the right reasons.
DeleteI'm thinking NY has considerable habitat for woodland creatures?
DeleteEven here along the Saw Mill River there's an amazing amount of flora and fauna. Also amazing is the public hysteria that ensues when a 30-40 lb. canine known as a coyote is spotted in the area.
DeleteYou would think the locals would have more important predators to
Deleteworry about .
So 'bout two weeks ago saw another loose medium-sized pit bull roaming the area, went out and told this man walking his small dog hey FYI but there's a pit bull on the loose. The young guy casually replied "I know" and proceeded to go into the park to hang out. I was like the only one who was a little upset. We're living in the era of the non-reaction.
Delete