US US Politics General - Discussion of President Biden and other politicians

 

[Standardized Profile]

The state may be constantly recording the phone calls and other communications and tracking the online activities of every American

They're not. It's not even feasible to record the phone calls or track the online activities of every American, and if anyone tried to do that, there would be a huge shitstorm across all three branches of government.

Electrospaces did a pretty good job of debunking Snowden in their review of Snowden's book:

At that time, Edward Snowden worked as a systems administrator at the NSA's Pacific Technical Center (PTC) in Japan and in Permanent Record he says that he read the unclassified report about the President's Surveillance Program in the Summer of 2009, so shortly after it came out. (p. 173)

He concluded that the new FAA extended the NSA's powers: "In addition to collecting inbound communications coming from foreign countries, the NSA now also had policy approval for the warrantless collection of outbound telephone and internet communications originating within American borders." (p. 173)

It seems that Snowden, at least at the time, didn't really understand this subject, because the expansion provided by the FAA wasn't from inbound to outbound communications, but from a few specific foreign enemies (like al-Qaeda) to a wider variety of foreign intelligence targets. As such, Section 702 FAA became the legal basis for Upstream collection and the PRISM program.

Misleading

The limitations on storing data from PRISM, Upstream and Section 215 only became public through the declassification of opinions from the FISA Court as well as from a report from the NSA's Civil Liberties and Privacy Office, both in response to one-sided press reports about these programs.

This means that while he was working at the NSA, Snowden may not have been aware of these limitations and therefore jumped to the conclusion that the agency wanted to store its data as long as possible. But by still not mentioning these limited retention periods in his book, Snowden deliberately misleads his readers.

Stellarwind

The content of these target's communications was collected by filtering backbone cable traffic using some 11,000 phone numbers and e-mail addresses.* On pages 38 and 39 the report says that the bulk collection of both telephone and internet metadata was also strictly limited to finding unknown conspirators of known members of al-Qaeda.

Between 2004 and 2007, all four components of the STELLARWIND program were moved from the president's authority to that of the FISA Court (FISC), based upon a creative interpretation of the Patriot Act and the new Protect America Act.

According to the original report, STELLARWIND was not used for large-scale monitoring of American citizens,* but that's not something we learn from Permanent Record, which is not only misleading but also fails to account for the reason why Snowden was apparently so upset after reading it.

Whistleblower?

Just like in his first job at CIA headquarters Snowden started with automating his tasks by writing scripts to do the work for him "so as to free up my time for something more interesting." (p. 214)

That more interesting activity is described in what is probably the most important and most surprising revelation of Permanent Record:

"I want to emphasize this: my active searching out of NSA abuses began not with the copying of documents, but with the reading of them. My initial intention was just to confirm the suspicions that I'd first had back in 2009 in Tokyo. Three years later I was determined to find out if an American system of mass surveillance existed and, if it did, how it functioned." (p. 215)

Here, Snowden basically admits that he isn't a whistleblower: he wasn't confronted with illegal activities or significant abuses and subsequently collected evidence of that, but acted the other way around by gathering as much information he could get, only based upon a vague and, as we have seen, rather far-fetched suspicion.

Snowden also doesn't share whether he found any concrete misconducts in those numerous files, things that could have triggered his decision to hand them over to journalists. He even omits almost all the disclosures made by the press, which makes that Permanent Record contains hardly anything that justifies his unprecedented data theft.

Snowden assumes that none of his new colleagues intended to abuse XKEYSCORE's capabilities, but if they would, then for personal rather than professional reasons. This led to what he calls "the practice known as LOVEINT [...] in which analysts used the agency's programs to surveil their current and former lovers". (p. 280)

It's rather exaggerated to call this a practice because in 2013, NSA Inspector General George Ellard reported that since January 2003, there had been 12 instances of intentional misuse of NSA collection systems. Of these 12 cases, only 8 involved current or past lovers or spouses, most of them foreigners and which were brought to light either through auditing controls or self-reporting.

Snowden's problems with the program

After reading the report, Snowden could have concluded that his fears about domestic mass surveillance turned out to be unfounded. But on the contrary, he hid the exculpatory evidence by leaving all the aforementioned details out of his book and even said that what he found in the report was "so deeply criminal that no government would ever allow it to be released unredacted". (p. 176)

Permanent Record says that Snowden found two things in the report which he considered evidence of illegal domestic surveillance. The first thing is that the President's Surveillance Program marked a transition "from targeted collection of communications to "bulk collection", which is the agency's euphemism for mass surveillance". (p. 176)

But that's not what happened. The NSA has always conducted bulk collection for contact chaining, although traditionally that involved foreign military communications. The real shift in 2001 was not from targeted to bulk collection, but from collection abroad to collection inside the United States - but still against foreign targets.

There's a lot more. Snowden was nothing more than a computer janitor tasked with cleaning up data spillages. He read documents he didn't understand and made incorrect conclusions about them, probably due to confirmation bias. He's almost certainly better informed now, but his personal brand is "NSA whistleblower" so he can never admit how much of a dumbass he was.

 

[Vaclav]

He should have pretended to agree and then when the interview started, he conducts the interview as normal. That way, he can still maintain his image as a centrist while Kamala has nothing but lose-lose-lose choices to make:

1. Continues the interview. She then fumbles and says some commie or woke shit. Least damaging since Rogan will also softball the interview, so she just ends up sounding like a dumb politician.
2. Walk out of the interview and complain she was ambushed. Makes her look bitchmade.
3. Call Rogan out for changing the terms in the interview, thus breaking the pretense of being the least bit adaptable.

So, while backing out is not technically the worst decision she could have made, it's far from mitigation because now Trump has an interview and she does not.

Someone else in the thread had a better idea. He should have agreed to the terms with the pre-written questions, then during the interview he would pull out the printed list of questions and read them off in a stilted way. He could even start to ask follow-up questions to her answers and then suddenly stop, look at the papers and say "Oops, sorry, that's not on the list, never mind."

That more than anything else would melt her brain. She would realize on some level how damaging it is. But what to do? Complain? Stop the interview? Imagine seeing on video as her staffers invade the studio to drag her away. It could be filmed on a hidden backup camera as the staffers tell Joe "stop recording now and erase the video!"

But Joe probably likes being able to fly on small planes and move around in public outside of an armored SUV convoy formation with 20 armed bodyguards so he wouldn't do that.

 

[ForgedBlades]

If the site goes down like that again on the 5th I might kill myself.

 

[invisibult plus+]

Another DDoS?

If the site goes down like that again on the 5th I might kill myself.

Don’t Jill yourself friend. We’ll all be sorry.

 

[Vaclav]

Double post, another DDOS?

I clicked Post once, there was no feedback message. I clicked again and reloaded, got an Nginx error. Site doesn't seem too choppy otherwise. DDOS? If so, trannies need to step up their game.

 

[Nuns with guns]

It’s increasingly clear Biden only kept Kamala around as insurance. What other reason would you have for picking the first loser of the 2020 primaries.

Reminds me of House of Cards, when the Kevin Spacey character picks a doormat of a VP just so nobody tries to pull off the same move he did.

 

[invisibult plus+]

I clicked Post once, there was no feedback message. I clicked again and reloaded, got an Nginx error. Site doesn't seem too choppy otherwise. DDOS? If so, trannies need to step up their game.

I figured as much, the site wouldn’t load for around half an hour.

 

[LeChampion1992]

I was taking a shit and had a bit of a brainwave about political memes. The reason leftwing memes are so long and preachy is because they think you’re stupid and that you need to be explained to and told how to think in excruciating detail. This is how they learned to be good boys and girls in college, thus you will learn the same way. Right wing memes are to the point because they assume you’re smart enough to get the joke. They are laid back and casual and give you the intellectual credit for a simple idea. Just my 2 cents.

Don't forget the famous stonetoss vs Horsey meme that shows the shitlib mentality. It is in their mentality to look at their opponents as either dumb or evil. Where stonetoss humanizes his opponents but makes them seem silly.

 

[FMW13]

6 Minutes of Big Mike telling fellow men you have to again do what women say. Gilead can't come soon enough:
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Listen to the whole thing and it's just "nothing is more important that what women think, nag and destroy them into submission." So often I think of that one facebook or twitter post of the woman who held her boyfriend and just sat there, and he almost broke down crying because he had never been held like that in years if ever, and it made her realize how much men get shit on.


Poso's WH source says Joepedo knows it's over, and is only lucid when it comes to Kamablah's fuckups.
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Maybe old Joe isn’t as demented as we think he was. Maybe he and Jill said you fucks want to fuck me over then I’ll fuck you harder than Andrew Jackson did to his salve girls.

 

[Pendulous Dong]

If Trump has 54% support and that's above the margin of error he wins 1000/1000 simulations.

The 54% isn't his popular vote support, it's his chance of winning the electoral college. Going by the polls the most likely outcome for Trump is losing the popular vote but winning the EC, because even though the popular vote is at 48/49 or whatever it is today, Democrats need to have larger popular vote margins than that to have a solid chance of winning. Hell, in this election things are polarized enough that the chances of either candidate winning swings dramatically based entirely on their performance in one or two swing states.

This isn't a new thing either, it's what pretty much every poll aggregator has done for years.

 

[Gondolindrim]

So that bombshell Trump story they keep hyping up? Apparently it's morphed from "Trump groped a minor" to "Proof that the assassination attempt was a hoax". Which would be awkward since the FBI confirmed the attempt was real.

Obviously the "story" is complete fucking bunk but I think it's really fascinating how all these last minute revelations just keep changing. It's like someone's trying to gauge what would outrage people the most.

 

[YarrBlueballs]

'Not masculine' for being fashion savvy and having thick eyelashes. Fuck off. Cunts.

This is an unironic political position I've found with feminine-wannabe types, both men and women: Having naturally full/long lashes absolutely FUCKS with them, and they tend to trend towards being the liberal feminist/lgbt types. I have literally no idea why, because it's such a small thing, and bringing it up is against their stated values (yes hypocrites lol I know). Is it just more seething over conventional attraction shit? Femcels/OFwhores? Jealous gay guys (who think everyone else should be gay) that don't look like chad mcchad with a full head of hair and long lashes that woo ladies?

Let me shorten the question, is having natural lashes the sign of nazism?

 

[FedPostalService]

Arabs do pizza surprisingly well. Most of the local chain pizza I got in the middle east blew domestic chain delivery out of the water.

That’s because Americans can’t do pizza and “Italian”-Americans don’t know how to make Italian food.

 

[Betonhaus]

So that bombshell Trump story they keep hyping up? Apparently it's morphed from "Trump groped a minor" to "Proof that the assassination attempt was a hoax". Which would be awkward since the FBI confirmed the attempt was real.

Obviously the "story" is complete fucking bunk but I think it's really fascinating how all these last minute revelations just keep changing. It's like someone's trying to gauge what would outrage people the most.

They're false accusations with no facts backing them up. They are fluid and ever changing. It's a tactic they used for a long time, as even if nothing is concrete at least some of it will stick in the minds of those who want to believe it.

 

[CaddestSlown]

The site going down as soon as I pressed "Post Reply" to cyberbully that French asshole was pretty goddamn funny, but not something I'd want to happen again.

Let me shorten the question, is having natural lashes the sign of nazism?

Yes. If only because linking the two together will make a lot of dumb people genuinely believe it and start parroting it as a talking point. Like the okay hand symbol and Pepe being linked to nazis. And milk, somehow.

 

[cantankerous jackalope]

The 54% isn't his popular vote support, it's his chance of winning the electoral college. Going by the polls the most likely outcome for Trump is losing the popular vote but winning the EC, because even though the popular vote is at 48/49 or whatever it is today, Democrats need to have larger popular vote margins than that to have a solid chance of winning. Hell, in this election things are polarized enough that the chances of either candidate winning swings dramatically based entirely on their performance in one or two swing states.

This isn't a new thing either, it's what pretty much every poll aggregator has done for years.

It's fascinating because Trump's numbers have always been underestimated (because people hide their support) but yesterday for the first time in the history of him running he's actually taken the lead in the popular vote.

This has never happened before going into the election. Not in 2016 (Clinton +3.2), not in 2020 (Biden +7.2), and in those two elections RCP underestimated his voting turnout by around 4-5 points. They may have improved their methodology from 2020, but when you make supporting one candidate completely taboo in the mainstream you're not going to get accurate reporting. But even with the inaccurate reporting (and no reason to not expect them to get his support wrong again by a few points), Trump is actually the projected leader in the popular vote. Harris has got to be at defcon 1 right now, the prospect of losing to Trump again (when they "beat" him before and were finally free of that "nightmare") is going to absolutely break some of their brains.

 

[Sekirodiealot]

6 Minutes of Big Mike telling fellow men you have to again do what women say. Gilead can't come soon enough:
View attachment 6565921
View attachment 6565919

Listen to the whole thing and it's just "nothing is more important that what women think, nag and destroy them into submission." So often I think of that one facebook or twitter post of the woman who held her boyfriend and just sat there, and he almost broke down crying because he had never been held like that in years if ever, and it made her realize how much men get shit on.


Poso's WH source says Joepedo knows it's over, and is only lucid when it comes to Kamablah's fuckups.
View attachment 6565920

View attachment 6565922

I wanna see that Twitter post about the boyfriend.

 

[Vaclav]

We are going through a massive shift again. Like how GG to 2016 the woke took over. From 2022-2024 the pendulum has swung back really hard. You could see this coming a few years ago where people aren't as afraid to speak up when Musk bought Twitter.

Moving forward anyone who values freedom of expression needs to remember the leftist reign of terror in their bones. Don't let it happen again and remember that anyone seeking status on the basis of pity deserves all the bullying they can possibly get. If someone says you should let them moderate your group because they wish they had different genitals, bombard them with most vicious mockery possible until they run away or rope.

 

[Fapcop]

There's a lot more. Snowden was nothing more than a computer janitor tasked with cleaning up data spillages. He read documents he didn't understand and made incorrect conclusions about them

Why yes, suuuure!

All those giant NSA server farms in Utah and elsewhere that cost billions of dollars, and were capable of holding unimaginable amounts of data, were just to spy on a handful of Al Qaeda folks!

Yes indeed folks! After all, you can TRUST the intelligence community. They’d never break the law. After all, it’s not like they’ve been spying on Americans for years, through a loophole where the Brits and Aussies intercepted data and shared it with the NSA.

Oh wait, never mind that.

Anyways, it’s all Kosher! After all they have a special court approving wiretaps. Totally not a rubber stamp kind of court that basically approves anything, and even approved spying on an American citizen who worked on the campaign staff of Donald Trump.

Oh shit, that’s right. Scratch that.

But that Snowden guy, he basically has no idea what he’s talking about. He just misunderstood things you see!

You can totally trust our spook friends, who’d never dream of violating your privacy.
Just ignore the fact that the PATRIOT act is somehow still around, despite the fact that the war on terror is over. Ignore the fact that they moved heaven and earth to get to Assange, and that the NSA employs over 40.000 people. They’re all busy spying on a few thousand Al Qaeda people. Yes!

 

[Eekum Bokum]

Can we not do the Snowden shit again please.