In the Cloud

Through treaties, intimidation and just plain old fashioned Blackmail, there are no safe havens anywhere.
Our three-letter boys have infiltrated all the so-called 'Safe Havens', in this world anyway.

A few years back, I had a savings account in a bank in Latvia, Eastern Europe, till is was confiscated by the Russian Moffia.
I still have the Debit Card, but the money is gone. It just as well have been up in a cloud. Eh?

That was a good article.

In light of all the recent shock and awe with respect to NSA and their Link Removed program, I thought I would revive this old thread.
It would seem that things are progressing nicely (depending on your point of view) towards the total erosion of personal privacy.
While the whole concept of Cloud Computing is definitely attractive to many, on various levels, it still seems to me a very slippery slope.
Bruce Schneier did another nice article for the The Atlantic yesterday.
Read more here

I know that a lot of people are going to say something like, " Well..... if you aren't doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about".
I'm pretty sure that historically, that is exactly the type of passive permission, head in the sand approach that has allowed this type of personal rights infringements to flourish.

Totally agree with the above

Once the cloud server be attacked, the consequences would be unbearable to contemplate.

Important implications in the EU about these programs:

Link Removed

I have extreme disgust towards harassment and control, be it private through, say, malware, or official through wider control. Guess the worst of plagues is not Black Death, or something, but the urge to rule.


Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a priest in Nazi Germany, and he wrote, out of my free memory, sorry I can't recall it all, First they came for the Jews, and we did nothing; then they came for the Gypsies, and we did nothing; then they came for XXX, and we did nothing... When they came for us, there was no one left.

I agree fully with Trouble: the attitude of an ostrich is not healthy.

"The experiment requires that you continue"

Psychology of Obedience

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

I find the last comment in the video, I find that scary, to be sound.

We have our own history here in Finland, the term was introduced by the German Magazine Der Spiegel in 1970's, Die Finlandisierung = Finlandization, referring to a whole nation submitting to a "common concept" of what is right and wrong, given from above. Read brainwash, and you're just about right. We were a neighbor to Soviet Union, quite powerless, dependent of trade with them, and we had President Kekkonen doing the job, concentrating to uphold peace - not a bad thing, but... well...

The result was, almost all independent thinking was lost, and Finnish economy was concentrated to a sick level.

The Swedish singer Björn Afzelius sings, If freedom goes lost in one place, it goes lost everywhere.

Hardly any joy for most of you, it's in Swedish, but


There's also the generational gap. But freedom knows no age, does it?

When I was in Portugal, I had some very intimate experiences, alone, listening to fado music performed by live singers. These singers go around and do this at hotels, as well as in cafes and events. There is also as a traditional rancho dance performance and routine. It was definitely something different. Yes, I can certainly appreciate different types of music. Sometimes you can appreciate the sentiment more when you can't even understand the words. As for Milgram, and his experiment, it is the typical response from people. The Stanford Prison Study became prominent again after the prisoner abuses in Iraq. These studies, when they were done, were extremely controversial, because they involved human test subjects, but provided a wealth of information. Anyone who would repeat a study like Milgram's today would be banned from psychology. But it just goes to show you the danger of a "follow the leader" mentality. Really, the concern with the NSA program is, on a practical level, if you are a business, where is the privacy of your business? If you are a person, where is the privacy of your information? So this is not going to go away. Congress is in recess right now, but when they come back, they will probably argue over it ad nauseum.

This guy ran for president too and is against it:


It is only the top level officials at both parties that are for keeping it online. I found it very interesting from a tech, psychological, and political standpoint. Even if the program never existed, just saying it did is a huge intimidation against the public, especially the free press. I am not much of a political activist, but it is mind numbing when you think about the amount of data being collected. Even if nothing was wrong with such a program, it sure is a massive waste of hard disk space, to say the least.

Sure, a massive waste of hard disk space... Also a massive waste of free thinking capacity between ears.

You perhaps know this: JOHN ST CLAIR AKWEI - CIVIL ACTION 92-0449

I came to know it through Texe Marrs' book Project Lucid. Don't know what has happened in the case, but it sure is "interesting", heh. Not only electronic control of computers and phones, but actually reading what's inside your head - or what your eyes see...

Haven't been very active in this field since Y2K, simply because these questions don't wake people in this country. And I'm not really a Don Quijote.