So this guy Russel Tice, a former NSA analyst, the same guy who came out in 2005 with the NSA’s illegal wiretapping ordeal is back. Tice told Keith Olbermann on MSNBC Countdown that not only has the NSA still been conducting warrant-less wire tapping, but that its bigger than we thought. Here’s the video:
6 minutes in Tice says “I don’t know what was done with the data”, which I’m sure is the truth, but can you imagine the possibilities of this sort of operation? Imagine if politicians were spied on and all of their conversations and interactions recorded. The type of dirt that could and would be dug up would be easy leverage to support virtually any sort of legislation the leverager wants.
No one should have that sort of power. I’m seriously blown away by this, its every one of our wildest paranoia about big brother coming TRUE. For years we’ve seen Hollywood run wild with the whole “big brother is watching” idea, and I always laughed it off… you know its just Hollywood. But now, if Tice’s information is correct, its all real.
I’m glad he stepped up, I can’t wait to see where this goes, especially with Obama in control now. This could and should be a defining moment in the earliest stage of his presidency. His reaction to this matter will be the first crucial to step to setting the tone for his presidency.
I just picked up a copy of PC Magazine for the first time in years, and I was very very surprised. My memory of PC Mag is a bloated review magazine full of some great reviews, but impossible to navigate to the point of giving up. I have to be honest with you, when I read through this magazine I skipped the reviews, and instead headed straight for the columns. John C. Dvorak was cover material on the special edition “Green Issue”, and my purpose for picking up the magazine in the first place, so I headed straight for his article “Turn off the Lights!”.
I’m a huge fan of Dvorak so I was a bit biased going in, but after reading/loving his column I skimmed through the rest. First was an interesting article by Lance Ulanoff titled “Can We Stay Green?”. The article discussed the problem of not going green, but staying green. Once the media stops pumping us full of this newest fad we call “Going green”, are we really going to stay green, and follow through in our every day actions? It was a great read that really got me thinking about our culture today. Images of PC Monitor rivers, and landfill-slides like from Idiocracy stained my brain. But more importantly I was hooked, so I read on.
“Whats our 75-Year Tech Plan?” by Sascha Segan was the third article I read. It first proposed the issue of planning ahead by comparing our metro system with the French’s metro system and quoting its President saying something like “you need to plan more than just 5 years ahead, you need a 50, 75, 100 year plan!” Segan then lays out his ideas for an Infrastructure, Wireless, Transformative Technologies, and of course Energy Plans over the next 50-100 years. I love his thoughts, and I definitely recommend you check the article out yourself to avoid me rehashing.
The whole time I read the article I kept thinking about Obama. The things Segan talked about were the exact type of things Obama brings up over and over again. Obama has embraced the need to plan ahead, and the need to overhaul our technology infrastructure as is to ensure a better and more efficient future. Check out his one on one with Eric Schmidt from the @Google Talks. You think McCain knows what wireless spectrums are? Oops, enough political bashing, back to the point.
Those three articles alone was worth the price of purchase. I guess I always knew in the back of my head that Dvorak was a writer at PC Mag, and I guess I could have deduced that that meant PC Mag had some good reads, but I never gave it a chance. Magazine isn’t my medium of choice, but PC Mag just gained a new loyal web customer.
