skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
How has Assange, credibly, risked his life for this issue? There hasn't been any documented attempt upon his life, and very few on his livelihood (what serious attempts have been made to shut down Wikileaks)?

Hyperbole does nothing to help someone who, in the eyes of many, appears to be increasingly a victim of his own ego.
نتيجة اعدادية المنيا 2013
نتيجة اعدادية محافظة المنيا 2013 برقم الجلوس نتيجة الشهادة الإعدادية التيرم الثانى بمحافظة المنيا minia natiga

نتيجة الشهادة الاعدادية بمحافظة المنيا 2013 برقم الجلوس التيرم الثانى من موقع محافظة المنيا
Yeah it reads weird because I should have put the comma after such (with the parenthetical reference before it). At least entering comments doesn't work like a complier so I don't have to spend hours trying to figure out where all my syntactical errors are haha.
Well no: Congress is well capable of granting retroactive immunity. The constitution restrains it from retroactively criminalizing things, so that you can be prosecuted for something that wasn't illegal when you did it; but retroactive decriminalization happens fairly frequently and is an essentially liberal action. Why should a private actor be burdened for the perceived misdoings of government? It's not up to corporations or individuals to regulate the government, from a legal standpoint.
WWDC 2013 Predictions
I seemed to be banned for a while. All my comments were appearing dead. I quit logging into HN for a couple of months and then my account went back to normal. So, it appears that some things may be permanent while other things may not be.
So why haven't any members of Congress spoken up about this program? Rand and Ron, where were you?

Some did speak up, pretty loudly. Did you read this story (Wyden & Udall) when it came it out in 2012? I did.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/16/us/politics/democratic-sen...

Here's follow-ups from this week, linking their warnings to the current stories:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/07/us/politics/senators-wyden...

http://www.denverpost.com/politics/ci_23406958/sen-mark-udal...

Rand and Ron? I'm reasonably confident they've been against this from the start (it's part of their core ideology), but Rand Paul was never on the secret Senate committee that was allowed to know about this, nor Ron on its House counterpart:

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

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

Wyden and Udall were (on the Senate side), and they did inform the public. Sort of. The public doesn't really care that much.
No, John Sculley really doesn't want to be your friend on LinkedIn
> What does that mean? Does the company have any oversight over what's being requested? It doesn't sound like it. How does that square with the statements from the CEOs that each request is carefully considered and restricted?

This was covered yesterday, in the NYT article http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/technology/tech-companies-... :

> The data shared in these ways, the people said, is shared after company lawyers have reviewed the FISA request according to company practice. It is not sent automatically or in bulk, and the government does not have full access to company servers. Instead, they said, it is a more secure and efficient way to hand over the data.

So, it seems, there are Google-lawyer mechanical Turks clicking "OK" or "Contest" (or whatever) for each FISA order in the Google FISA-order queue. If the lawyer clicks "OK" it seems the requested information is slurped automatically from the Google user-data servers into the PRISM server's outbox (and/or a live data feed is set up). If the lawyer clicks "Contest" then presumably something messier and more manpower-intensive happens. A system like this raises plenty of questions - but it doesn't at all automatically conflict with or falsify what the tech CEOs said.

EDIT: Actually there's apparently a direct conflict between the NYT's version and what WaPo appears to be saying here:

> According to a more precise description contained in a classified NSA inspector general’s report, also obtained by The Post, PRISM allows “collection managers [to send] content tasking instructions directly to equipment installed at company-controlled locations,” rather than directly to company servers. The companies cannot see the queries that are sent from the NSA to the systems installed on their premises, according to sources familiar with the PRISM process.

That seems to imply that there's no Google-lawyer mechanical Turks reviewing the individual FISA orders. Given that that would contradict both the NYT report and the statement from (for example) Page and Drummond http://googleblog.blogspot.ie/2013/06/what.html this is a big deal. Given the WaPo's demonstrated ability to misunderstand information from NSA sources, for the moment I'm inclined to assume that the Post has got this wrong, too - but let's see. (Another possiblity might be that some companies are waving FISA orders of the form "give us the personal data of Suspect X" through automatically, while others still have a lawyer clicking "OK".)
The thread posting sounds like a roundabout (but very detailed) way of saying your VPS provider is running your server and anything they can do with the host key, they could just do by installing whatever they want on your actual VPS instance.

It seems kind of moot when you're using a VPS though. Aquiring the host key would open up man in the middle attacks, but the VPS provider is also the "man at the end."

It goes on to say "replacing passwd" and such, but that's not necessary. One could just replace the file with dd or boot via single user. Potentially, one might also be able to hotswap an executable image on a running machine in memory, but I never tried it.

In short, physical access to a machine is game over and everything else is just kind of over verbosity that gets to the same point.
I think you have to start with the fact that while AQ was at full force and relatively untargetted by the US it took them 8 years between attacks on the World Trade Center, there is just no epistemological model which gives you any way to measure effectiveness once we are already at war in Afghanistan.

Additionally you have a problem of us saying that we have to fight them over there so they can't fight us over here, but that has a side effect of ensuring that they don't have to come over here to fight us. If we include every bombing in Iraq or Afghanistan which has targetted US or coalition forces, the result has been a flurry of successful attacks against us. If you exclude them you end up with a footnote which says "true we haven't been attacked over here but it is also true that resources are being diverted to attack US interests in war zones."

The simple fact is they have done so much and in such a way that the success couldn't be measured even if they wanted to.
I've been saying this for years. Pretty much all I've said over the last few days is "I told you so".

My biggest concern is come a week everyone will go back to not caring and I'll go back to pestering people to give a shit.
So, tell us about operations from 2001 through 2008 which are no longer ongoing.

I don't think that would help though because there isn't a reasonable way to measure success and that's what the real problem is.
Nearly every person wants their country to be a beacon of democracy (and freedom). Except those in power, of course (in America and elsewhere).
Definitely something to keep an eye on. If the title were "cross platform mobile common lisp" it would probably do it a bit more justice!
This bill would do absolutely nothing at all legally. Here is the operative part of the bill:

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution shall not
be construed to allow any agency of the United States
Government to search the phone records of Americans
without a warrant based on probable cause.

The 4th is part of the Constitution. Congress cannot change its meaning with a mere bill. Changing the meaning requires a Constitutional amendment. So, no effect from Paul's bill as far as that goes.

The courts interpret the Constitution, and due to separation of powers, Congress can't tell the courts how to interpret it. So, no effect from Paul's bill here, either. Separation of powers also prevents Paul's bill from having any effect on the executive branch.

To make this sort of thing work, I think you'd have to go to the laws that actually created or authorized the agencies whose behavior you want to change, and amend those laws.
The discovery of Room 641A is more profound than PRISM. Every web request, text message, phone call... it goes through these hubs where the data is copied and saved. PRISM is just about getting access to data sent over secured HTTPS connections, from what I can tell. It's not (currently) economical for them to use computing power to break (all of) those codes, and it's easier to apply pressure to tech companies to just hand them the keys.
I did say average, and your examples seem like outliers in a lot of ways. I guess I was falling into the trap of only considering "modern" cultures which have their differences but are pretty similar in many others. For instance, the vast majority of Americans (N + S), Asians, Africans, Europeans and Pacific Islanders don't practice child fellatio. You're right that it wouldn't necessarily accommodate certain sub-cultures very well.

I dunno man, just offering my take.
It's almost impossible to propose such a ideology because it will be instantly interpreted as Socialism.

I'm not saying Socialism is good or bad, but I do think that people give too much credit and loyalty to Democracy. What we have isn't a Democracy, the handful of representatives we have are bombarded constantly by self-interested groups and corporations who couldn't care less if anyone indirectly suffers from their actions.

I agree that humans should have larger goals and responsibilities such as providing basic needs and should funnel a large majority of funding into projects that are progressive for humans and life in general. The problem is that there are 7+ billion people on the Earth right now, most are hungry, most are religious, most lack sufficient education. Most Americans can't wait to watch a play-by-play of every pointless sporting event that they can find time to watch. I find it refreshing when someone gets on stage and tells then entire world to get their head out of their ass. Unfortunately, group think is strong and ignorance is rampant. We've come so far, but have such a long way to go. Humans are very similar but environment plays a huge part in personality, thankfully rational and logical debate are tools that we are able to use to inspire progress.

Sure, there is the possibility that there is a "God" in another dimension, but the US in particular has an overwhelming percentage of adults and brainwashed children that what the bible says goes, that discrimination is acceptable because "God is on our side", and that progress is evil. I've always considered myself agnostic, but after encountering so many people who blindly consider themselves Republican Christians, I have slowly become against organized religion. We need more community centers and less Churches. I wish I had a community center to turn to for life advice, mentors, and guidance in general that my parents and teachers were unable to provide, but instead my community pooled all of its funds towards a huge new chapel for everyone to come worship a myth. /rant

Transparency is key. Checks and balances need re-balancing. Preventing corruption should be a top priority. Only then can we efficiently progress as a species.
But the government can still be sued over it, right? At least if they don't request sovereign immunity...
I'd be happy with just locking geographies to a 1 hour offset and getting rid of DST.
Linked comment is interesting:

There’s been a webmail service that tried to do just this
in the past. Unfortunately, they were also successfully
compelled to turn over cleartext emails (or passphrases,
which produce cleartext) to the government. ...

http://inklesspen.tumblr.com/post/52507704784/google-take-a-...
Key is efficient caching. So there are more seeds than leechecrs. This is also true with Freenet and one of the points which I really like Freenet & GNUnet versus other protocols. Older versions of GNUnet didn't have cache eviction at all which I found to be major longterm issue, but they fixed it after discussing the topic. Btw. Bittorrent could be also modified to provide caching, but currently it doesn't and that wastes a lot of bandwidth. Tor doesn't use caching either, and wastes even more bandwidth.
Yes, that must be exactly what they're doing. Siphon all the unencrypted data at the ISP level, and gain access to the rest of the data that is encrypted from the biggest companies - and then expand the "program" to more companies in the future.

And to think that they rejected the idea of UN doing the same thing (the ITU debacle last year). It was only so they are the only ones doing it, all along.
No, sorry, but there's absolutely nothing "weird" about a windowless telephone exchange building. At one time, every single neighborhood in this country had one.

This building was not created for this, it's just an old Bell building that had some empty space which could be repurposed.
The companies are people. You should always blame people that engage in activities they know to be unethical. Why should they get a pass?
Hey, it's not so bad, I was there for the great $rtbl meta-mod banning of 2002. http://slashdot.org/journal.pl?op=display&uid=442574&id=4236
Silicon is only required because we're lazier doing repeated simplistic operations. Apply alot of pencils, paper, a 1GB sufficiently long one time pad(OTP) 11 miles off the grid without mobile, for the rest of your life, if you think you need it.
WTC was a military target, not civilian.
An ancillary irony is the B1 Bomber, yet another example of a zombie military-industrial complex project that should have died decades ago. There's no good reason for it to be flitting around Afghanistan in the first place.
They knew it was the village. They knew there were Taliban there shooting on US and Afghan forces. They didn't know where the civilians were - because when there is shooting going around, civilians hide and it is very hard to see if there are any around, and how many of them, especially when you're being shot at at the same time. So they called an airstrike, and that turned out to be a big mistake. They could suspect that there might be civilians - since among Taliban, just like similar groups like Hamas or Hesbollah - hiding among civilians and using them as a cover is a common tactic, and since it is a village after all - but they did not know where, how many, etc. After many hours of fighting against hundreds of Taliban and after suffering casualties, the people on the ground made decision to call in air strike. Unfortunately, that resulted in tragedy, since the places where airstrikes were asked (presumably where Taliban forces were concentrated) turned out to be at or near the same places where the civilians hid. If the US soldiers on the ground knew that, they probably could do something else, but I don't see how they had to know it in the heat of the battle.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/world/asia/15farah.html
Zoho offer a pretty simple email service, only 5 mailboxes though (but you can get creative and use groups as well)

www.zohomail.com
They weren't disappeared -- the American population was aware that it was happening, and there was a mix of support and opposition. The US Supreme Court in 1944 -- during the war -- voted 6 v 3 in Korematsu vs United States that it was a military necessity and, thus, Constitutional. Perhaps we would see stronger, more organized opposition today, but it wasn't hidden from the population.
Can you elaborate? It's pretty simple in my opinion: democracy is the power of people and in a democracy (which would be also a republic, since it's not a monarchy or a theocracy) the people is the ultimate source of power. That could be either a direct democracy (where all people get to decide) or representative democracy, where the people choose representatives to decide everything. There is no power above the people's in a democracy.

In the USA the ultimate source of power is the Constitution of the US. It rules over the power of the people. Since the ultimate source of power in the USA is not the people it cannot possibly be a democracy.
If the ends justify the means in the political struggle you describe, what exactly are the ends?
But every culture is exceptional in some way, right?

For example, is it a violation of the human rights of African Americans that someone can get up in front of a KKK meeting and advocate genocide, and then defend the statements as protected by the first amendment?[1] The US is quite exceptional there.

Instead most cultures recognize that there is a right not to be harassed politically by private individuals on account of race, religion, etc. and so uncivil discourse including advocating genocide or other hate speech can be regulated. If you post a cartoon in France glorifying 9/11 expect to be prosecuted for "condoning terrorism" (see the case of Denis Leroy whose conviction was upheld by the ECHR).

Your rule, I think, would again move every aspect of culture to the mode, would it not?

[1] In Brandenburg v. Ohio, excerpts held to be protected included "Kill the niggers... we intend to do our part..." as recorded in footnote 1 of the majority opinion. Vile stuff, but the court held that in the absence of actions to imminently incite lawless activity, the words alone were protected. I can't think of any other culture in the world which holds that freedom of speech extends so far.
How the fact how many FBI people speak Arabic has any relationship with the Granai tragedy?
"I often joked that it was probably a spy agency/wire tapping operation. I was pretty surprised when I read that it pretty much was built for that purpose."

The building wasn't built to be a spy agency or a wire-tapping operation. It's an AT&T switching center. Among other things, it's the terminus of a number of important trans-Pacific fiber cables, and it's been around for longer than the NSA has been rumored to have a room inside of it.
That being said, UK/Canada/Aus/NZ are part of Echelon, no? so information could flow both ways.

Of note - how the NSA spies on the Americans it's not supposed to: send the relevant info to UK/Aus/NZ/Canadian SIGINT assets and have them do it...
In this case, they probably were somewhat afraid of about 400 or so Taliban shooting at them whole day long. At least that's what I read here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/world/asia/15farah.html
Can't you straighforwardly strike the "Fourth Amendment... construed" part and leave the core "no agency of the US government... [shall]"? Because that's be solidly in the purview of Congress. And my flimsy understanding of law is that, if SCOTUS were to look at this, they would do something like what I said -- respecting the intent of the legislature as closely as possible -- rather than throwing out the whole thing.

I think this bill isn't expected to pass anyway, so it makes sense if it's been optimized for rhetorical, not legal, power.
This is incoherent, unless you equate culture with nation.

Nationalism says that people in your nation are special, that, in effect, rights pertain to them that are not granted to other nations - it is incompatible with morality.

On your Hopi/Swedish point, the question here is whether the Hopi child deserves government by the same standards and access to the same opportunities as the Swede. Yes. Yes, she does.
got an article I can read?
Ok. Posting your provocative link here on HN just flagged you on a specific watch list in Utah.
From Matt Bors:

"There’s a line I’ve seen trotted a few times now that goes, “Ah, we knew all this was happening, you idiots!” We didn’t know. If you knew about PRISM you should have scooped The Guardian and made a name for yourself. The fact is, this story is mammoth and is bringing an incredible amount of attention to a program that’s been operating in total secrecy for a decade. But, yes, you’re smart and get a pat on the head for not being a “sheeple.” "

http://www.mattbors.com/blog/2013/06/07/prism-thoughts/
I don't blame them though, if you are lured into buying something like a smartphone, and want the convenience of say, using your addressbook across devices - than what options do you have?

I'm slightly older and a little paranoid - to the point I'm scared of even activating something like a Windows account on Windows 8 - because I'm not even aware what data will be exported from my computer.

So to a lot of people they trade privacy for convenience. Everybody else is doing it, so why not me?
Poetry Corner ~ Jim & Yahtzee's Rhymedown Spectacular: A Tale of Two Poets
Facebook and Google (Zuck & Page) have also stated that each request for data is inspected individually. I don't know where you're getting that there's some automated system for pulling user data.
Scary accurate geolocation using personal wifi data collected by Apple
>nationalism: an infantile disease; the measles of humanity. Our generation's challenge is to conquer this.

The first alternatives to nationalism that come to mind are global capitalism and global humanism. Global capitalism seems to be winning out over global humanism and is, in many ways, worse than nationalism. Global capitalism, for example, isn't particularly concerned about environment damage to any given country.
Sure, but it would be a bit of an uphill struggle. You'd need to show standing for starters, which is quite difficult in the wake of Twombly and Iqbal (two recent and important cases address this key aspect of civil procedure, which I don't feel up to explaining).

Bear in mind that the judiciary does not want to be in the business of micro-managing the executive branch, both because it jeopardizes its independence and because its rulings would almost certainly be circumvented on a technicality, thus weakening its actual reach. Among other factors, this is why the courts often decline to hear matters that are political questions (that is to say, questions of policy) and invites plaintiffs to work through Congress instead.

EDIT: well, political derives from polity rather than policy, but given the context, I hope my meaning is clear.

this is not to say it might not be worth filing a lawsuit to draw attention to the issue or to put the Executive branch on record as to what its position is; often change does result from some gestural litigation. But you want to be careful to separate the issue you care about (mass surveillance in the age of technology) from the long and bumpy road of legal procedure; it would be a mistake to express one's understandable frustration with the latter as a malign consequence of the former.
The Japanese internment was not done in secret. Hell, the government advertised it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_for_Japanese-America...

I doubt that having twitter would have helped. The public knew and there was significant support for it.

Interesting related aspect of that dark point in history: "The United States Census Bureau assisted the internment efforts by providing confidential neighborhood information on Japanese Americans. The Bureau's role was denied for decades, but was finally proven in 2007.[11][12]"

"Nothing to hide" indeed...