Cars do not deliberately kill people for thinking the wrong kind of thought. The victims of random car accidents were not killed for their political viewpoint, for speaking out against the wrong candidate, for being of the wrong religion, or for the colour of their skin. Terrorism threatens the entire society by discouraging people from exercising their rights and freedoms, and replacing that society's law with the whims of whoever can muster the most violent force.
Ah yes, the metadata that is not protected by the 4th Amendment because Verizon's users freely gave it to Verizon and have no expectation of privacy that Verizon would not transmit it further. The relevant case is Smith v. Maryland, which incidentally was decided by a liberal court during a privacy-conscious time after the CIA and FBI scandals came to light in the 1970s. Furthermore, we have learned that the NSA has procedures for accessing the data for the specific purpose of securing public privacy. This is a good example of how one of Glenn Greenwald's stories was flat-out wrong.
The Verizon corporation has a good case that their 4th Amendment right to privacy is being violated, but the American people do not in this particular instance.
By my understanding, the Supreme Court has not yet ruled against the legality of long-term tracking through information freely given by the tracking subject. You might be thinking of US v. Jones where the police installed a GPS monitor on someone's car.
"just"? The BLA was shooting people and blowing up buildings, no scare quotes needed, they actually did that. That is why the police were after them: they were breaking the law in a serious way. How confused do you have to be to say that they should not have been investigated for these crimes because they were doing something else also?
I'm still waiting on Snowden to provide evidence of the NSA breaking the 4th amendment and illegally spying on the American people. For all the panic and the republication of old stories about the NSA, it is Snowden who has provided absolutely zero evidence.
What we do have is that Snowden copied a large cache of thousands of sensitive documents and gave them to who-knows-who. Suddenly countries that position themselves as enemies of the US are very happy to help him out, and he is happy to accept their assistance. In between, there was a public relations campaign to call him a "whistleblower" even though that is not what he did. The documents provided as supporting evidence do not say what Glenn Greenwald's reports say they do, while the journalists who have reported on these programs before are all facepalming at how wrong Greenwald's reporting has been.
So yes, it looks like the entire thing is a hoax and Snowden is a spy. YHBT by Glenn Greenwald and whoever else was involved. YHL. HAND.
Because he is starting at China, one superpower that is an antagonist of the US; taking the first leg of his trip to Russia, another superpower that is an antagonist of the US; and traveling through one to three countries (Cuba, Ecuador, and/or Venezuela depending on the the report) that style themselves as enemies of the US. His travel itinerary is strong evidence that he was a spy for a foreign power this whole time.
Incidentally, every one of the countries on the list plays the Great Game as aggressively as the US does, and spies on and oppresses its people more aggressively than the US. These are not places where someone with an interest in peace or human rights can seek refuge.
The entire Snowden hoax is a media event, a PR campaign to cover up the fact that he spied on the US for foreign powers. It's the most effective case of spin and damage control that I've ever seen.
Assata Shakur? The terrorist? Of course she did not "find a safe haven here in the U.S." while she and her Black Liberation Army were shooting people and blowing up buildings. The police were trying to put her in jail.
Regarding the idea that someone would have leaked something, WorldNetDaily seems to get a lot of leaks from the CIA. This raises several questions about any of these stories starting with how fake is it, what kind of person would leak to WND, and are they trying to plant a story or suppress one?
They are already effecting change; seeing this on the front page has made me have much less respect for the Hacker News community. How can so many people be so stupid, and on HN of all places?
What outrageous actions? What outrageous policies? What long-festering problem? You haven't said a damn thing, just as Snowden has yet to expose any wrongdoing on the part of the NSA. He has said that the NSA is spying on everybody, but all of the evidence he has presented has shown nothing of the kind and in fact shows that procedures to protect our privacy and 4th amendment rights are in place and being followed.
AJAX and REST sure are evil. The fact that 229 people have upvoted this is certainly proof that web-based UIs are something that we as hackers ought to oppose.
We are all aware that PRISM has been exposed to be nothing more than a user interface to information provided by companies that receive a search warrant after the request has gone through courts and lawyers, right? Surely 229 users of Hacker News cannot be that uninformed about PRISM, after so many front-page articles on the subject giving so many opportunities to hash out the details of what it is and is not, that they imagine it to be something nefarious?
As long as we're playing at labels, I am a socialist and you are a goddamned idiot. There is no such thing as a corporatist. You're just using it as a nasty word to accuse your debate opponents of malicious intentions.
Back to the point: people freely give their personal data to Facebook. Facebook now knows that information and can publish it, sell it, whatever. The people have no expectation of privacy which would be necessary for a 4th Amendment defense. Anybody can go to Facebook and just ask for the data, government agents included. It is Facebook's choice to give it away, set a price, or refuse.