skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
>> In order to provide a more thorough understanding of the program, I have directed that certain information related to the “business records” provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act be declassified and immediately released to the public.

This is the only part of this release I really take issue with. If you can immediately direct that the information be declassified without first taking pause to think if it, combined with other information, could be dangerous then it should never have been classified in the first place. It takes a lot of care to properly evaluate that. If you had thought about it before, and still came to that conclusion then it shouldn't have been done in a secret court anyway. Secret courts are for really specific things... they are limited in supervision and accountability and aren't for stuff you'd rather not have your citizenry, whom you are responsible to and for, asking questions about.
Nature disagrees, but of course you know better.
Reading it carefully, what they are saying is this:

The press is complaining that we are spying on Americans.
This is very inaccurate. We are mostly trying to spy on
foreigners. We have a robust legal framework in place,
rubber stamped by the Star Chamber (aka FISC) which
protects your liberties. The fact
that the media reports did not report on our secret
procedures makes the reports grossly inaccurate.
Please trust us. kthxbye
I agree and had the same reaction.

But what was the alternative? McCain missed that vote, but had been strongly for telecom immunity all along, and was much more vocal about it than Obama. Hillary Clinton's husband Bill ran Echelon and Carnivore, the odds she would be different were low to nil.

Incidentally in this case it is worth noting that Obama stayed in the letter of his promise. There was a warrant. Whether that warrant was properly obtained, or should be legal is a different question. But there actually was a warrant from the rubber-stamp FISA court.
Hmmm. What's a juicier target than Apple, Google, Micrsoft? And they've all been compromised by Chinese hackers before.

I wonder how well they background check all the people working on their new data facility in Utah.
You're not even trying, are you?
unlike some of the other risks to life listed,
ionizing radiation can cause genetic damage.
An impact that is passed on to future generations.
I propose that's a factor for the special place the nuclear industry has in so many hearts.
how's that nonsense?
Brian Kernighan (The Setup)
By the time they're using these extreme powers to smother dissent, you're fucked. It's game over and your ability to speak out using the first amendment is non-existent.

The very reason why these things should never be allowed, is because the absolute protection of freedom of speech is ultimately the last safeguard against tyranny (before you get to violence anyway).

Why let the guy into my house with a gun and roll the dice on whether he intends to at some point do me harm? That's crazy. We've seen enough really malevolent politicians assume power all over the world and domestically, to know better than to take such chances. History is littered with endless examples, it's at best naive to think America can't suffer the same types of fate.
Did you vote for Ron Paul or one of the minority parties, or were you complicit in this farce?
> It's important to remember that we still have a functioning democracy

You do not have a functioning democracy when the top military intelligence officers lie to elected representatives about the existence of a massive domestic surveillance apparatus.
I emigrated five years ago. It's tough, no fuckin' foolin'.

The alternative is to go to bed every night knowing that a double-digit percentage of your value and productivity that day went to fund building bombs and buying and installing fiber splitters.

I just couldn't do it any longer.

FWIW, I have none of those circumstances you describe, and it was relatively easy, practically speaking— and I moved to Germany, one of the best places on Earth to live. The hard part was leaving my job, family, friends, and girlfriend behind on a different hemisphere.
Can you be more specific, or link to some parts that show C++ problems? I clicked on a random heading and got an explanation of how 'inline' is a complex issue, and that's in both C and C++. So it's certainly not the whole FQA.
Yes, the government has used surveillance to smother dissent. Exhibit One: the prosecution of whistle blowers.
"designed to be a primary storage resource capable of storing data on the scale of yottabytes"

That's more than 1000x the total annual internet traffic. With a budget of a few billion USD, a yottabyte is several orders of magnitude beyond current market rates.
We respectfully disagree. Our Zoho Leads iPhone app was launched in under 3 months from concept to shipment, and it was done by 2 people and it is selling! We have a substantial degree of autonomy in the company (possible because we are private) which keeps us nimble.

On David vs Goliath, Microsoft, Google & Salesforce are just 3 of the companies we compete with.
But remember, we have to disarm, because guns are evil you see. And because we can trust big brother, you see. The government knows what's best for us--after all, it knows everything about us.

This is the sort of reason the wingnuts cry about guns and gubberment, and unfortunately, they're looking a bit less alarmist with each passing day.
So? 1/10,100 isn't bad at all. Suppose you have many independent tests, each creating watchlists. Suddenly you have the intersection of individuals hitting each of these, and the number of "interesting" individuals narrows. This is not a univariate problem; they're likely correlating everything to everything, and have adaptive snooping methods based on how high you are ranked a risk. Once you're high enough, field offices know about you and will keep a closer eye. It's really not a needle in a haystack (and as a privacy nerd, it pains me to say this, but I bet it is working).
These denials have been refuted by the Director of National Intelligence.

http://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/191-pre...

http://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/191-pre...

The program exists. Each and every company lied. They may have been Bill Clinton-esque, "legally accurate" lies, but make no mistake: they intentionally lied.
Not bitter, but it felt like it was written by an old-school rapper:

"You like bitches and stocks, we like builds and money" - Master V(embu)
I've spoken with younger engineers who work on internal systems at Google in NYC and they mentioned working on systems that help the legal department find problems, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if it was under such a guise that these things can be retrieved.
Most my examples would be of the US acting in cases that are technically illegal and only so related directly to this kind of surveillance (like ELF, bradley manning, mccarthyism (not to mention other, foreign policy related or historical atrocities)), I certainly do not think that, even if we pretend the US always has super great intentions, they are not always the best to have stick their hands in things.

I wonder if this fits your bill:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO

And, from the little I know, the actual stifling part is [allegedly?] evident in malcom X and fred hampton cases, as well as others I might be missing.
> The guy could have said "all religions' holy books take place in a time when child marriage was common and even endorsed".

Did you even read the OP? He was relating a conversation he had with a Muslim friend that had conflicted views. Why would he try to convince his Muslim friend using "all religions" instead of islam?
Why is this flagged and other stories posted after it that report the same thing are not flagged?
Oh well... easy for me, hard for you. Best of luck! :)
> "It's called protecting America," added Senator Dianne Feinstein

I wish she would hug us a little less tight. We need a less protecting, so we can breathe.
It's wordy but worth the read.
Nope. It was obvious from the get-go that the purpose of the Patriot Act was to normalize what had previously been the domain of covert investigations of individuals. I don't personally feel terrified about it because I am too boring to become a likely object of suspicion; realistically, the chance of my being swept up in a government intelligence operation is about as likely as my being blown up by terrorists. And frankly, the Patriot act has had considerably less impact on individual liberties and Democratic participation that I expected it to at the time it was passed.

On the other hand, I'm quite depressed that it's taken people so long to put it together that they're willing to buy into the idea that Obama a) invented it or b) had the freedom to single-handed dismantle it. The entire country badly needs a remedial course in civics, not least in Congress's ongoing game of hot potato.

This book predates the war on terror but seems extremely relevant: http://www.amazon.com/Power-Without-Responsibility-Congress-...
No, because the NSA directly collecting the information under PRISM doesn't mean that the FBI won't also be issuing NSLs, under more specific justification, for information that the NSA already happens to have.

Just because the NSA has it doesn't mean the FBI has access to it.
Why don't you just let your product speak for itself?

I don't think a bitter blog post like that accomplishes anything positive.
https://whispersystems.org/ has an excellent pedigree, but it's only voice and text, and only on Android right now (though I've heard an ios version is coming soon...)
I mostly meant build an API for iOS and get people to use it. I don't know much about android internals.
I did, and it was.

Also, I was speaking to HN when I suggested it.

Please keep your comments relevant and productive. A snarky "this" doesn't add a lot to the discussion, especially when your silly claim is exactly at odds with reality.
Better to work in the US or France?
Last friday, a journalist from Les Échos, a french newspaper, visited our office. During our casual conversation, a question came up: "What is the difference between French and American companies?" While this question appears very straightforward, there are many elements to consider.
4G Mobile Hotspots go social: Free 100mb if you share ~ ForTechiesOnly
chailatte, your comment is dead. I think it triggered the beautiful prose filter.
Don't want to sound like a smart ass, but I would have been more surprised if it were confirmed they WEREN'T spying on Americans. Its the American Government ???? Really, are Americans that naive to think that their own country doesn't spy on them.
Your article makes a lot of very good points about some of the difficulties of hiring talented staff and some of the downsides of making mistakes. The strategy to hire people in as consultants and then promote those to full time salary positions once they've proven themselves and their ability to work with the team is a good one. We tend to do that whenever possible.

On the other hand, I think the headline question can be answered rather quickly: someone like Steve Jobs would never apply for an interview in the first place. :-)
Generally the math of the acquisition is that there is "synergy" (i.e 1+1 much greater than 2 kind of logic). Generally when a big price is paid in an acquisition, the intent is that the acquirer would be able to recoup their investment through such synergies, leveraging the acquired company's technology, leveraging the acquirer's own reach and distribution channels to sell more of the acquired product and so on.
Warren Buffett isn't a valid reference on nuclear terrorism, first of all.

Second, his calculation is bogus, amusingly enough. The odds of the actual event occuring don't improve every year that goes by. That's assumes everything is static and unstoppable to begin with, among other false assumptions embedded into it.

It'd be like saying: given enough time, a nuclear bomb will go off in Greenland. That's not true at all, but if you calculated using Buffett's false premise, then yes, after N years it would have to happen (because his premise is that there's N chance per year, and then he treats the equation like a coin flip, where eventually it is supposed to be 99.99999% likely to land on heads, but that's false because every flip is independent of the last flip in reality; his calculation only works in an artificial reality / vacuum). In actuality, a nuclear attack could just as easily occur tomorrow morning as 80 years from now, and that completely debunks Buffett's point.
Unfortunately, despite the disturbing fact that we are reading about PRISM (disturbing both that it exists and that our government can't keep highly sensitive secrets), it is classified Top Secret until September 1, 2036. I could be wrong but I believe that FOIA requests regarding it will fail until then.
They claim the US Patriot Act gives them the right to legally do this stuff without a warrant or due process.

As it turns out in addition to the DMCA they don't even need to pass SOPA or CISPA they can combine the DMCA with the Patriot Act to monitor Internet use and then claim a DMCA violation even if it does not violate any copyright, and they can take down any website or blog or comment that way and arrest the person behind the IP address as a 'suspect' and hold them indefinitely.

The same is true of phone calls, you make one they don't like and you become a 'suspect' they can hold indefinitely.

Don't blame Obama for this, Bush and Congress passed the Patriot Act for domestic spying long ago.

They'll be looking for anyone who wears a Guy Fawkes Mask, or who advocates gun rights, or who speaks out against government corruption, or who supports Bitcoins and Darknets, or who chooses to use free and open source software instead of commercial software with NSA backdoors and spyware in them, or who calls themselves a 'hacker' or even talks about 'social networks' and advanced science terms involving chemistry and physics that could lead to bomb making. Did you order a pressure-cooker recently and then some fireworks? Well you might end up on one of their lists then.
Why are 28/30 of the Top articles about the same thing?
Neither of these refutes the PRISM denials. One is about the Verizon court order story, which (while thematically related) is not directly relevant, the other seems intended to be refer to the PRISM stories in the Post and Guardian, but seems to be an attempt to characterize the program referred to in the story as being radically different than either what the story describes or what the providers have denied, so it cannot be a refutation of the denials.
> The unauthorized disclosure of a top secret U.S. court document threatens potentially long-lasting and irreversible harm to our ability to identify and respond to the many threats facing our nation.

> The article omits key information regarding how a classified intelligence collection program is used to prevent terrorist attacks and the numerous safeguards that protect privacy and civil liberties.

The dissonance between those two sentences, which appear consecutively in the statement, could not be mores striking. "Transparency damages your security! Yet your lack of information makes us seem unreasonable!"

So convince us! Don't hide behind a wall of unconvincing secrecy and then tell us it's good for us. We're the People; we're happy to decide how much you can spy on us for the sake of our security.

You know what I think? I think you kept this all a secret because your case for doing it utterly sucks, and you knew we'd object. And I think you've earned precisely that level of trust.

Edit: minor expansion
Google Timelapse: Urban Explosion
Seeing the same phrase pop up over and over is a bit unnerving.
Be realistic, neither the political right or the NRA exhibited the least bit of opposition to the Patriot Act at the time of its adoption; 2nd amendment types were too busy printing and buying bumper stickers such as the one below for their cars.

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f258/heyman1104/My%20Rivie...
Wrong, read them. They refer broadly to both the Washington Post article (PRISM) and the Guardian article regarding "collection of communications".
It would be perfect if I could add one-time expense/income.
Israeli(then, now BOEING) NARUS(R U NSA(?)) built `glass vampire' boxes at all (6?) main trunk ATT overseas (routers?) scraping voice flagged words, names. Lengthy detail of Bush administration free reign of (all?) domestic digital surveillance. I may have this wrong, I read this some four, five years ago. Scared me then scares me still. See Amazon review, Wikipedia, etc. There's Youtube Bramford interviews, and more recently William Binney whistle blowing -quite disturbing re: NSA execs revolving door with huge growth of vast intelligence industrial complex.
US: China, we scared, you all scary with your cyber-espionage. Sure we hack, topple nations, all in good fun. But when you do it, you so serious.

China: Fine, give us Taiwan.

US: No.

China: Fine we continue to have fun too!
of course. just have your own smtp server on your own computer. and your friend. then emails will go directly from your computer to your friend's. internet is a meshed network, not a star network! just use ssl to prevent the isp between you and the recipient to catch the packets. even better, build your own links with your neighbors!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuET0kpHoyM
I'd be more likely to believe that the substance of the story wasn't true if they denied the substance (the scope of information provided), rather than peripheral inferences made in the story about the procedure and mechanics by which the information gets to the NSA.

Given the actual denials, I will assume that, at a minimum, everything about the story that they didn't deny -- that is, the scope of the customer data which has been provided by those providers to the NSA -- is implicitly confirmed, and that the (mostly irrelevant) details they have denied are in doubt.
No, everything is not certain given enough time.

Because the facts of each iteration can completely alter the whole chain.

This is the argument that if you flip a coin enough times, heads MUST come up. But that is in fact not true. Each flip is completely independent of the last flip. Given enough time, there is in fact no law that says heads must occur.

Real life events work much the same way. Any given event can be interrupted. The 'everything is certain' premise doesn't work if a human exists and can stop or alter the process with free will (in any number of a zillion variable ways). For example, Buffett's calculation says that after, say, 100 years a nuclear bomb essentially must have gone off, but that's not true at all, because people can always stop it from happening and interrupt the theoretical math calculation (which only actually exists in a 'vacuum'). In any given year, the odds are N, but that does not in fact compound into following years inherently.
I think they have to get replaced to get that credibility back.
Chilling: William Binney in Dec 2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuET0kpHoyM … 20 to 30 trillion communications "stored" #Prism #NSA
Only the innovators need emigrate for the plan to work, fortunately.
> Surveillance programs like this one are consistently subject to safeguards

Not sure if they realize but saying that makes it worse. It is like the thief caught red handed stealing saying "this is a very responsible operations, victims are carefully screened ... blah ... blah"
I like the way you think, especially with regards to happiness, and I would love to hear more about this part:

> and for god sakes, travel

I'm very fortunate to have a position where I work exactly 40 hours (some of which is programming). This has allowed me the freedom to pursue other activities, such as meeting and developing an extremely deep relationship with my girlfriend, being an active participant in my church, completing Financial Peace University, joining a local Toastmasters club, and joining CrossFit and getting in the best shape of my life.*

However, I have not yet done any major traveling. Why do you put such high importance on it?

I'm not asking why traveling is generally good, but why _you_ specifically are recommending it so highly.

* [Edit: After reading this, it sounds like bragging but sincerely that was not my goal. I just wanted to say I totally understand and agree about what you said with regards to work and happiness.]
Seems kinda relative right? Compared to 10,000 it isn't a lot.
It clearly doesn't only cost $20 million. That would be ignoring the multi-billion dollar Utah data center required to store / analyze everything. The bandwidth / networking capacity alone would cost more than that to setup and operate.

They are getting a discount in this case however, as companies are doing a lot of the work for them.
These guys have millions of dollars already, and just think about the goodwill generated from standing up on principle. We're not at the point where the government can seize their assets "because f___ you, that's why"

They're just as cowardly as many others facing this situation, except the CEO has a lot less to lose (if you can understand this paradox, cheers)
Yes, he made its amateurness clear, at length, in the opening paragraph.
From Russia, Without Love
Rsync.net Warrant Canary
With all of the submissions regarding the collection of personal data, rsync commented about a feature they have with their service referred to as a warrant canary. Hopefully this is of interest as many are still not familiar with them.

http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary
Maybe its because I work in the telecom industry, I'm used to CDR's being all over the place, easy to get, export as text even, and not particularly private. It's always seemed to me that what you say on the call is far more important than who you are calling.
For what period of time?
I did; one refers explicity to the Guardian article on the Verizon wireless FISA order, the other refers to supposed Guardian and Washington Post articles referring to data collection under Section 702 of FISA, and accuses the articles of misrepresenting basically everything about that collection. Neither the Post nor the Guardian article abouut PRISM actually says anything about data collection under Section 702 of FISA, and, even if it did, the DNI press release claims everything substantive about the article is wrong, and doesn't in any way refute the denials by the providers (which deny peripheral elements of the story and aren't, actually -- as I address in other posts in the thread -- actually denials of the substance of the stories, anyway.)
I love their circular logic: "The disclosure of our illegal spying threatens our illegal spying in the future".

Hey at least they don't use the "we don't tell you we're spying on you so we don't infringe on your privacy" line, anymore.

These comments go to the top, along with FBI's last year's quote "Warrants make our job hard" i.e. check and balances make their job harder, which is kind of the point, I think.
False.

http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International-Taxpayers/Forei...

My line 14 has been zero for several years. I am a US-born American citizen.
It's not very fair to call this "mining." Mining has a specific meaning, and implies you have general read access, which is not true in this case. They actually have very narrow, operational read access.
Funny how tech companies don't mind breaking the law on principle when it aligns with growing their company, but when it comes to principle alone, they break like twigs.
"oops, this just happened to fall into our pockets

finders keepers!"