Meh. I've been running Ghostery for years and will continue to do so. The option in question reads:

"

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Frankly, I give a shit if it's anonymous. If the company that gets Facebook off my back wants to turn around and sell Facebook anonymous data about why everyone wants Facebook off their back, more power to 'em.

40 is the old age of youth; 50 is the youth of old age.

- Voltaire

letters from home are messages from a shore we are forsaking.

- Kundera

Remember back when the NSA was busted tapping all voice and data traffic at AT&T back in 2006? Well, they never stopped (they were never ordered to stop) and have since expanded their surveillance to pretty much every major phone and internet company headquartered in the United States.

The argument put forth by the NSA is that they're only conducting surveillance on foreign nationals, which is within their charter. The argument put forth by everyone else is that the NSA has never been particularly choosy with their definition of "foreign nationals", extending their coverage to "people talking to foreign nationals" and "journalists who cover foreign nationals."

Before there was the NSA, there was the "Black Chamber", the United States' first cryptographic program. Henry Stimson shut it down in 1929 saying "gentlemen do not read each others' mail." Herbert Yardley, who ran the Black Chamber, retaliated by publishing a tell-all book. That, for me, is the NSA in a nutshell - misunderstood, overreaching, and prone to drama. However, without something like the NSA, the British get to con us into joining WWI.

The bottom line is that there exists a gigantic, enigmatic branch of government whose entire purpose is eavesdropping and every now and then, the American public needs a moment to go "holy shit! The government is totally eavesdropping on me!" This is usually followed by the NSA saying "of course we aren't eavesdropping on you, you're a law-abiding citizen COUGH butwehavetolistentomakesureofthatletsneverspeakofthisagain COUGH" and then, two days later, by the press saying "HOLY SHIT KIM KARDASHIAN IS PREGNANT" and everyone forgets for another decade.

I know more about this than most, so go ahead and ask away... but I know more about this than most, so the answers are likely to be jaded and fatalistic.

I can't wait until I buy a PS4 so I know what you're talking about.

Okay, so that's awesome?

...but it's also $250!!!

For that price you can buy six Fiskars axes (which are also Finnish) or skip the exercise entirely.

It would be awesome, but yeah - this is basically the government saying "give us money to cover our shortfalls." I wonder if you get naming rights - "the Nokia Graves Island Light Station" might make it worthwhile to somebody.

The English Channel sea forts come up for sale occasionally. People do stupid things with them. if I didn't need to be in regular contact with people, I'd totally live on one.

I got started on this this morning and then had like five different jobs erupt. Lemme start again:

Every journalist who writes about wiretaps, espionage, the NSA, the NRO or the Internet should be required to read a little Bamford. The dude's been covering the NSA for 30 years.

Fun facts in no particular order:

- Google colocated a data center with the NSA in 2003 in Texas

- Microsoft colocated a data center with the NSA in 2005 in Utah

- The foreign complaints against the NSA are rarely related to human rights, and invariably related to industrial espionage

- The NSA has been caught red-handed time and time again handing over trade secrets gleaned in pursuit of "terrorism" to American companies for economic advantage

- Routing telecommunications traffic through the United States is now, has been and shall always be a convenient way to conduct wiretaps on foreign manufacturers without running afoul of the World Trade Organization (we've been very careful to protect the NSA in all trade agreements)

- the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has been used as justification for economic spying since 1977 - Woolsey is straight up about it

why on earth would these "don't be evil" companies be in bed with the NSA?

IT'S THE MONEY, STUPID.

Everyone's all twitterpated over PRISM like they can't believe the NSA would do such a thing when for fuck's sake, people, the NSA has had all ( ALL ) voice and data traffic in the world running into its servers since 2003. That "warrantless wiretapping" everyone freaked out about in 2006? THEY NEVER STOPPED.

Read this. The NSA has had software that allows them to mine voice traffic for context since 1989. They've had carte blanche to mine ALL OF IT ( ALL OF IT - ALL THE DATA - ALL THE VOICE - EV.RY.THING ) for a mutherfucking decade.

And now people are all "holy shit they're still spying on us?"

* * *

That said:

These people had every email the Tsarniev brothers ever sent. It did nothing. They had all the voice traffic and emails associated with Bengazi. It did nothing. They've had total, unrestricted access to anything they want and they still are ineffectual - UBL wasn't caught because someone hacked his gmail account, UBL was caught because someone read the HUMINT right.

Look. The NSA doesn't want a sip, they want a firehose. They've been able to make that firehose wider and wider. It's never going to stop. However, their ability to actually drink from the firehose has gone down in the past 20 years because there's so much more water to drink.

...Which journalists would tell you if they read a little Bamford.

I'm big on privacy. I think there ought to be an amendment guaranteeing it. It offends me to my core that the NSA could read this right now if they wanted. But I'm also aware that they're not, because that's not how they roll.

Know who should be offended by PRISM?

Alibaba and Baidu.

And I'll bet they are.

Eating brats and playing corn hole in rural Wisconsin. Maybe Tuesday.

Looking back on it, and I think it was your argument that was most compelling, the problem is that R&R's data suggests a trend while their paper suggests an inflection point.

Trends are guidelines. Inflection points are calls to action. One should not be confused with the other.

And the herping and derping commenced within minutes.

The stupid thing is it has to be a shoutout, rather than a straight-up monitor, which has been available via metareddit for about five years now.

Thing is - people have been asking for this shit for years. If you want to see what Reddit will look like in six months, cruise /r/Ideasfortheadmins from 2010. Supposedly they have a master list of code improvements that they want, and whenever they hire somebody new they have all these visions of implementing some of them, but then discover that simply keeping the kernel from crashing takes 99% of their time, so they leave.

Diemorz has been on a roll, but he's gonna burn out.

Hacker News would be an awesome site if it weren't 99% about programming. For those of us who not only couldn't give a shit about programming but are still suffering the scars of an education focused on Fortran and Turbo Pascal, a visit to Hacker News feels a lot like a visit to the dentist.

shorter and less New-Yorker-ey