public information is public :teach:

tautology is tautological

Holi Krap.

Well, the CIA doesn't monitor *my* twitter, because I don't use it. And if they want to troll my livejournal, good luck - all the things that can get me in trouble are friendslocked, so they have to do more than just troll with a webspider.

I'm having a hard time getting upset over this one, except I consider it a waste of cash.

But at least the source is credible this time ;)

I dont have a twiiter or amazon or youtube or livejournal or whatever else either. I just think its concerning that the government deems it necessary to moniter law abiding citizens

Basically Sic, if you're about to overthrow the state, don't boast to your friends about it beforehand on Twitter, and you'll be fine.

I hope they can see my Amazon wishlist.

It's a pretty good wishlist.

I'm going to set up a wishlist filled with books like "I'm a good american, please don't arrest me!"

and porn, of course.

Maybe the CIA will be nice and send me something from it for the holidays?

What would the CIA see as good, though?

Some of you may remember my attempt to employ with the US Military a couple months back. If you ever need a security clearance, make sure you're online footprint is in order. My inquisitor had printouts of my facebook and decommissioned blog in his file, it was disturbing, particularly the blog, which I thought had been erased.

It is a little disturbing that they're spending the resources to monitor this sort of thing, but it's public information, so... meh.

I also have to question how much effort they're really putting into this, they only have so many resources so I find it hard to believe they're following anyone in depth who they don't already have a reason to be monitoring, at which point I would think it irresponsible of them to NOT be looking at all publicly available information on said person.

Really the biggest problem I have with this is that it could very well be a waste of time and money.

All of that being said, Sic, that was an interesting article, and I appreciate you bringing my attention to it.

Most of the legwork is done by computers, only when the computer comes back with a potential threat does a human investigate, so the amount of time wasted is minimal. As for money, these systems weren't created to "scan" citizens, they were expanded to, but even if that greatly increased the cost, if its doing some good, I'd say it's worth it.

Though I am surprised that the focus is on the CIA doing this, the NSA has been doing this for over a decade and since they don't really have to care about PR, we probably won't ever hear anything but complaints about it.

My worry about it possibly being a waste of time and money is not so much because I think it's a waste of money to look for things electronically or that that's necessarily a waste of time, it's more that if it doesn't work very well it's a waste of money, and if it gives lots of false positives and such it's a waste of agents time (time they could be spending on other more useful things).

Now i'm not saying whether or not it works well, I'm just saying that POTENTIALLY it could be a waste of both time and money if it doesn't actually work very well, or doesn't lead to any useful information.

Sorry sometimes it takes me a few tries of writing to really nail down how best to say what i want to say, so here it is in a nutshell:

I don't necessarily think this is ACTUALLY a waste of time or money, I'm just more concerned about that possibility than I am about the idea of these sorts of programs in general.

Wow Geofram that's... that's just too weird. What did he say about your blog?

This not much different than the old fasion monitoring of the airwaves. Which was done back when spies used old fasion transceivers. As seen in some old war movies. Geoform is correct about the NSA. They have been doing that sort of thing since they where established, and are most likely the real people doing most of the monitoring.

Who is Geoform???

He didn't really say anything about it. It was mostly about my last stint at uni and the grand challenge team I worked on. I think he just showed it to me to make sure I knew I couldn't hide anything.

Inquisitor! yeah, it's not surprising that intel gathering would involve copying huge amounts of information and making it available.

Of course ideally we wouldn't need protection from our fellow citizens because they all buy into the idea of solving their differences through peaceful negotiations and deomcracy; but it is apparent that few societies would like to do away with their policing force - still why does the US need such a large intelligence budget? Maybe if you tried peaceful negotiation with your enemies there would be fewer who need to be caught by intelligence services. (like the Republic of Ireland, we don't have enemies, and don't fund terrorist organisations in other countries(unlike the CIA), our main militrary aim is to promote stability in the region and neighbouring regions, because that will hopefully prevents wars which could seriously damage our own country - hence all the UN peace-keeping missions we send our troops on.) </rant>

Orathaic, the problem with your utopian option is that the United States doesn't have any enemies that want to solve any differences through peaceful negotiations.

Unfortunately, the war enemies that the US faces now simply just hate the states, and won't stop until America and its current political and militaristic structure no longer exist. There are many people trying to find a way to change that ideology, but so far, they've been largely unsuccessful.

When you take politics and oil out of it, we need to be in Afghanistan to try and combat them coming here. But the nature of terrorism means frontal warfare barely puts a dent in the problem unless you completely control their home country, which gives the reason for the large intelligence budget.

I can imagine that the number of 9-11 tragedies that have been prevented, or at least learned of in their early stages before fizzing out, are a lot more than we hear about.

actually i believe you are talking about fundamentalist Islamic groups who would be perfectly happy is the US wasn't supporting Dictators in their own countries with weapons. They didn't even think of attacking the US until they had failed to overthrow their own governments. (recall please Osama Bin Laden is a Saudi Citizen, Saudi Arabia is ruled by a king who recieves militrary aid from the US)

Now i know they actually have an objection to western culture which they feel is corrupting their own people and is supported by these dictators (because the US likes to get great advantage out of their 'friends' by having them import american goods/services with all those US dollars they've gotten for their oil - not that this is inherently bad, it's a smart move and i don't question it morally) AND they would rather the US didn't exist at all, but they would lose most of their support if the US didn't interfere with (as they see it) their own cultures, and by being in afghanistan they have the advantage that you've moved your people into range of their guns, and dropped bombs on towns full of people who will now grow up to hate America, (because they aren't educated, and don't know any better and HAVE seen American weapons killing their people)

Now I can't say whether you should be in Afghanistan at present or not, (nor whether offering money to warlords if they would give up 'taliban' fighters was a good idea because they could round up whoever they wanted) Right now you ARE in Afghanistan and can't just leave, though that country has a long and bloody history, and like Vietnam i can't see the US getting a mission acomplished there (though i think perhaps it will be easier to build a country in Iraq, because they had on there to begin with, so the people there have an idea of how to run a country, and trust that a system can work, and don't want to live in fear - they would rather have a stable system)

So, yes because you have enemies yuo should spend on the intelligence budgets, but that tackles the sympton not the causes.

But now, given the mistakes that made this situation in the middle east, it's much more effective and capitalistic for the United States to attack the symptom and not try to reverse the causes.

The US definition of peace is not the same definition the islamic extremists would agree to because the US definition of peace is not peace.

The iraq war was great for our economy, but now its gone on too long because we're trying to use minimal resources to win. For the US to achieve their goals they need to put everything they've got in there, overkill everything, and do what they want to the remains. It's in the best interests of the country in all ways but world image and politics.

I'd rather have to buy my own health care than buy my own guns. And I want cheap petrol in my car without screwing over Canada.

world image and politics are what is making the job harder for those islamic people trying to convince the extremists not to go out and kill americans. (well at least convince those youths who don't know any better yet not to become extremists, because it's always the youths who become the next terrorists (i assume)

you'd spend less on petrol in your car if your government introduced standards to get your cars up to the fuel efficiency that the japanese have achieved. (using minimal resources to do the job because they didn't have any other option - cause like the US they're not stupid) But your governement caved to pressure from the auto industry and Oil industry (claiming that people wanted big fuel guzzlers, of course they wanted them, but they'd want smaller cars if there was a tax based on the size of you engine) This being after the oil crisis in the 70s when the US government was introducing minimum fuel efficiencies because there was no other way to get enough oil for everyone's needs.

Oh, and i do think that the lobbing power of big bussiness on the scale it xists in the US is actually a detriment to deomcracy (and this is entirely speculative, but that democracy works best on a smaller scale - where people actually know their politicians, and the senate/congress doesn't seem so far away and unimportant that most people pay little attension to what their elected officials are actually doing.)

If Sicarius could monitor CIA communications traffic, or even Police communications, would he do it?

Easy question really.

An American keeping a watchful eye on their government is a far cry away from big brother reading my grocery list.

Your grocery list is a 'theft-to-do' if I remember correctly. I can well imagine the Police being interested, and rightly so. Come on, be honest: you'd love to snoop on the snoops - and use it against them.

So, that's the moral part dispensed with. Your code is quite simple, 'the ends justify the means', and on that basis you haven't really got a leg to stand on if someone else plays the same game, however big and well-funded they are.

i think his point is that he is on the same side as you, but 'they' are out to get you, so if you don't help him you're just going to be next once they've dealt with him and you will have no-one to work with you...

So really the leg he's standing on is quite impressive, if a little paranoid. (Sicarius, correct me if i'm mis-representing you)

how does this compare? publically available information on every earned in norway: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8319054.stm

would you prefer that everyone not just the intelligence agencies had access to this sort of information?