Patrick Henry did not say, "Give me absolute safety or give me death."
John Stossel

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That statement is an oxymoron. It is like fighting for peace. (wtf?) The more liberty you give, the more exposed you become, and ultimately the more vulnerable you are.

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There's no right. There's no wrong. There's only popular opinion.

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Originally posted by toshirozawa That statement is an oxymoron. It is like fighting for peace. (wtf?) The more liberty you give, the more exposed you become, and ultimately the more vulnerable you are.

That's what liberty is, freedom with restrictions. Its utilitarianism, what makes the most happy should be law (more or less, this isn't a philosophical debate). Depends whether you think your freedom should be restricted by not being able to murder people and get away with it, or whether you think freedom should be restricted by not being able to write this on a messageboard without a government agency analysing it and bulding up a profile on you

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"It's too bad she won't live, but then again who does?"

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Originally posted by Lover Boy or whether you think freedom should be restricted by not being able to write this on a messageboard without a government agency analysing it and bulding up a profile on you

Well, their datamining has grown to be so pervasive that I don't think that there's much chance of them NOT building profiles on all of us.

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While the extent of NSA's technical facilities is guarded as a national security measure, the NSA's headquarters is believed to house the second most powerful supercomputer in the world. The NSA operates other computer labs, offices, and satellite interception posts around the world. http://ludb.clui.org/ex/i/MD3129

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Washington, D.C., March 11, 2005 - The largest U.S. spy agency warned the incoming Bush administration in its "Transition 2001" report that the Information Age required rethinking the policies and authorities that kept the National Security Agency in compliance with the Constitution's 4th Amendment prohibition on "unreasonable searches and seizures" without warrant and "probable cause," according to an updated briefing book of declassified NSA documents posted today on the World Wide Web. Wiretapping the Internet inevitably picks up mail and messages by Americans that would be "protected" under legal interpretations of the NSA's mandate in effect since the 1970s, according to the documents that were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by Dr. Jeffrey Richelson, senior fellow of the National Security Archive at George Washington University. The NSA told the Bush transition team that the "analog world of point-to-point communications carried along discrete, dedicated voice channels" is being replaced by communications that are "mostly digital, carry billions of bits of data, and contain voice, data and multimedia," and therefore, "senior leadership must understand that today's and tomorrow's mission will demand a powerful, permanent presence on a global telecommunications network that will host the 'protected' communications of Americans as well as targeted communications of adversaries." http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB24/index.htm

And here's a little something about our OLD supercomputers:

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Working with companies, such as Cray Research Inc., NSA has been a leader in computer development throughout its history. Some of the earliest supercomputers were designed and built for the National Security Agency. On exhibit in the museum are two Cray supercomputers. The XMP-24 on display is the upgrade to the original XMP-22 that was the first supercomputer Cray ever delivered to a customer site. It was in operation from 1983 to 1993 and was arguably the most powerful computer in the world when it was delivered. It used serial processing to conduct 420 million operations per second. The second generation Cray, the YMP, replaced the older version in 1993. It had a 32 gigabyte (32 billion bytes) memory capacity. In 1993 most personal computers held only 16 million bytes. The YMP used vector processing, a very powerful form of overlapping, parallel processing to conduct 2.67 billion operations per second. The YMP was decommissioned and went on display at the museum in 2000. http://www.nsa.gov/museum/museu00018.cfm#cray

But of course by this time I'm sure that they're using computers which are more along the lines of Blue Gene/L!

What really worries me, though, is that there is no way to have any recourse once improprieties are discovered within the system. The whistleblowers simply get forced out of their respective jobs and are then slapped with gag orders so that they can't warn the public or anyone else within the government.

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Originally posted by Lover Boy That's what liberty is, freedom with restrictions. Its utilitarianism, what makes the most happy should be law (more or less, this isn't a philosophical debate). Depends whether you think your freedom should be restricted by not being able to murder people and get away with it, or whether you think freedom should be restricted by not being able to write this on a messageboard without a government agency analysing it and bulding up a profile on you

People often confuse freedom with anarchy. Once a person infringes upon another person's freedom, they are in vialation of their own freedom. Freedom with restrictions is no longer freedom. I personally think freedom does not exist in this world. The closest form of freedom one can obtain would be independance from the system, and even that can be near impossible to reach.

The problem with freedom is that we, as humans, are savages and would not be able to live with freedom. We have to be caged like beasts, for the good of ourselves. We are constantly finding new ways to restrict ourselves more and more to find more security, but ultimately just enforcing the walls built around each of us. Humans are a facinating species. Instead of all the other species on this earth trying to contruct, and evolve themselves into something greater, we are depleting our individualism and growing more into a factory of a mass production belt with identification numbers on each of us, where we are treated as products of a global market.

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There's no right. There's no wrong. There's only popular opinion.

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Originally posted by toshirozawa That statement is an oxymoron. It is like fighting for peace. (wtf?) The more liberty you give, the more exposed you become, and ultimately the more vulnerable you are.

You're both misinformed and misguided. Safety or security and liberty are separate from each other and cannot, despite your claim, be tied together.

There are countries that have or had no liberties and they slaughtered millions of people. Yet you claim the opposite without even knowing it.

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Originally posted by toshirozawa People often confuse freedom with anarchy. Once a person infringes upon another person's freedom, they are in vialation of their own freedom. Freedom with restrictions is no longer freedom.

That is why you have a Court of Law that is supposed to interpret the law and how people violate it.

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I personally think freedom does not exist in this world. The closest form of freedom one can obtain would be independance from the system, and even that can be near impossible to reach.

I think it's a little too late myself. To sidetrack a bit: There are about five countries in the world without a central bank that issues fiat money. And those five have been in the media a lot in the last 10 to 15 years. It's all bread and circuses from here on in.

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The problem with freedom is that we, as humans, are savages and would not be able to live with freedom. We have to be caged like beasts, for the good of ourselves. We are constantly finding new ways to restrict ourselves more and more to find more security, but ultimately just enforcing the walls built around each of us. Humans are a facinating species. Instead of all the other species on this earth trying to contruct, and evolve themselves into something greater, we are depleting our individualism and growing more into a factory of a mass production belt with identification numbers on each of us, where we are treated as products of a global market.

So I guess by that statement we should be treated as such, savages? Keep making statements like that and you'll wonder why you're locked up trying to figure out how you got in because you thought you had too much liberty.

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Originally posted by ogvh5150 Keep making statements like that and you'll wonder why you're locked up trying to figure out how you got in because you thought you had too much liberty.

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Savage: 3. A rude person; a boor. 4. Lacking polish or manners.

Case dismissed.

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There's no right. There's no wrong. There's only popular opinion.

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Originally posted by toshirozawa Case dismissed.

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ig·no·rant ( P ) Pronunciation Key (gnr-nt) adj. Lacking education or knowledge. Showing or arising from a lack of education or knowledge: an ignorant mistake. Unaware or uninformed.

What case did you possibly make?

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Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...

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Originally posted by toshirozawa Case dismissed.

Explain since you are making no sense but maybe to yourself.

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A small taste of what we'll be seeing under the police state...

http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=11262

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Big brother -style surveillance growing on Britain’s roads [ SUNDAY, JANUARY 29, 2006 01:39:52 AM] LONDON: Big Brother-style surveillance is growing on Britain’s roads, where police will have the greatest ability in the world to scrutinise, control and record the movements of drivers by the end of the year. Thousands of cameras reading vehicle number plates and comparing data with a central data base will analyse some 35 mn pieces of information per day. The data will be transmitted to the police and also MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, to help in the hunt for suspected criminals or terrorists. It will be kept for two years, but the period may be ex-tended to five years. Prime Minister Tony Blair’s centre-left government has invested some $ 27 mn dollars (15 mn pounds) in the project this year. “The plan is to deny criminals the use of the road,” said retired police officer John Dean, who is co-ordinating the Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) programme

link

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