Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: The United States of Surveillance?, in reply to Simon Grigg,
And we have the former head of the GCSB saying that we either play their game or unnamed enemies (“a very generic grouping of straight-out jihadists and terrorists through to nation states who may have some evil or incorrect intent against New Zealand”) will take away our freedoms, or –worse – turn off the sewage system.
That's a disappointing interview. I've spoken to Sir Bruce before and been very impressed by him, but he's not making sense there.
That said, infrastructure threats are within the scope of our security services.
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Notes & Queries: Paul, in reply to diversitynz,
Finally – and this is my final word because it’s giving me OOS – I don’t think David’s story of his interaction with Paul is a good blueprint for “The Future of Befriending Disabled People.”
And yet they've been friends for 14 years. I'm not sure there's a manual for that.
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Notes & Queries: Paul, in reply to diversitynz,
Sorry, too late, I already have! People are engaging. It’s a difficult conversation and people are feeling uncomfortable, but that’s not “mowing the rest of you down.” I’m simply articulating a point of view that makes people think differently. I’m worthy of that as much as anyone is worthy of disagreeing. But I won’t stop presenting my view simply because people don’t like what I’m saying.
Of course. And you're welcome here.
If history had been full of people who stopped challenging the status quo because it was unpopular, slavery would still be thriving, women wouldn’t have the vote, homosexuality would be illegal and gay marriage – well, we wouldn’t even have thought about it, would we?!
But if anyone has challenged the status quo, surely it's David?
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Notes & Queries: Paul, in reply to Dylan Bland,
But does that mean no one should be able to tell the story, ever?
Quite possibly, yes.
I'm just not sure that's a win. For Paul or anyone else.
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Notes & Queries: Paul, in reply to Dylan Bland,
My issue is with the article, and the personal aspects of it related to rape and abuse, that have been written and published without consent. As I stated from the beginning, I don’t think it’s another person’s place to tell this story, and I feel it was only told because the subject is disabled.
Paul does know David has written about their relationship and didn't object, although given that he doesn't read and doesn't understand the internet, the idea of informed consent is difficult. But does that mean no one should be able to tell the story, ever? Or that David should have censored important parts of the story? I'm not sure that's a good result.
I thought the "We were happy here" passage was actually one of the most powerful parts of the story.
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Notes & Queries: Paul, in reply to Dylan Bland,
Dylan, can you acknowledge that Ben and I are responding from direct, family experience of disability, and in good faith?
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Hard News: The United States of Surveillance?, in reply to Andre Alessi,
I don’t think TPTB are happy with this leak, as such, but I also don’t think many people are all that surprised about the scope or intent of the data collection. The leak itself might be the most surprising part of thus story; most of us have assumed the rest was true for years.
In the case of the original Verizon story, it's one that was broken by Seymour Hersh seven years ago. The only real news is that it's still going on under a different administration.
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Hard News: The United States of Surveillance?, in reply to Nick McBride,
Your flick of dirt in his direction is nothing compared to what he will be up against, but disappointing all the same. It’s telling and somewhat encouraging that those exploiting his “rape a nun” metaphor couldn’t find something more recent.
I've acknowledged and corrected the error. I do have some problems with Greenwald's reporting, as noted above,
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More on what Prism probably is and isn't:
So, if PRISM doesn't give the NSA unfettered access to all our online files, Gmail messages, Facebook posts, and tracking metadata, what does it do?
Basically, "PRISM is a kick-ass GUI [graphical user interface] that allows an analyst to look at, collate, monitor, and cross-check different data types provided to the NSA from internet companies located inside the United States," says Marc Ambinder at The Week. That data is stored on U.S. servers, but "a lot of foreign intelligence runs through American companies and American servers."
Here's the 2007 Rand paper for the US Air Force which calls PRISM "web-based collection management software".
I'm starting to think there are substantial errors in these stories.
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Tom Pullar-Strecker voices doubts in his column today:
Those snooping powers themselves, while controversial, have never been secret however. There is a gulf between them and the implications of the original reports concerning Prism, which strongly suggested the NSA could simply help itself to whatever it wanted, whenever it liked.
Prism is simply a boring internal tool used to analyse the results of such legal searches, according to Clapper’s explanation. That ties in with the fact that Snowden, clearly a relatively junior defence contractor (and there’s some clue there surely), had access to information about the program.
Could US spooks use Fisa to spy on your emails and internet searches if they wanted to? Very likely, if they could be bothered, but they would need to first have a specific interest in you. Nothing has changed in that respect.
Have they been harvesting our emails and internet records en masse, sticking them in an NSA datacentre and then scanning them to fish for evidence of any illegal activity?
There is no evidence to suggest that. If they have, Prism doesn’t appear to be the tool they are using.
That would fit in with what Boundless Informant appears to be – an internal data-viz tool to depict surveillance activity. It’s not the surveillance itself. I’m still wary about elements of these reports.
Again, it would help if Greenwald had asked better questions of Snowden in Hong Kong.