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Professional Reading Drop Box

Recovering LSO

Suck Less
pilot
Contributor
In an effort to keep all the cross links and shares in one place, and thus easier to find, let's use this thread to drop links when we find them.

I'm the guiltiest of all for dropping what I think are interesting links all over the place, trying to find the a thread that is a best-fit.

Working with Webmaster to turn the "Required Reading" forum into the Air Warriors scotch and cigar room with bookshelves full of large leather-bound books. Rich mahogany and all....
 

nittany03

Recovering NFO. Herder of Programmers.
pilot
None
Super Moderator
Contributor
Ah, hence why I'm getting alerts about posts from years ago moving around.

"You see; I know people."
 

Recovering LSO

Suck Less
pilot
Contributor
Why Americans Hate Government Surveillance but Tolerate Corporate Data Aggregators - Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

excerpt:

"NSA personnel know better than anyone that by far the greatest collector of data on ordinary Americans is not our government, but the private sector entities gathering personal data for marketing and commercial purposes. And the most malevolent threat for an individual American is not our government but the vast armies of hackers—many sponsored by foreign countries—who are constantly trying to steal our personal and financial information. Against these hackers, government is our defense."

"And yet, the plainly observable fact to anyone paying attention to the debate we are having in Congress, is that Americans have become more skeptical of government intelligence gathering, while at the same time they willingly accept that corporations learn virtually every detail of their lives. Indeed, some of the most successful internet companies today are really information companies, and the most valuable commodity they possess is data about their customers."

"So I ask you this: Why is it that a popularly elected and democratically accountable government—the democracy in which Americans take such pride—is more suspect than immensely large and wealthy private corporations?"
 

Flash

SEVAL/ECMO
None
Super Moderator
Contributor
Why Americans Hate Government Surveillance but Tolerate Corporate Data Aggregators - Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

excerpt:

"NSA personnel know better than anyone that by far the greatest collector of data on ordinary Americans is not our government, but the private sector entities gathering personal data for marketing and commercial purposes...."

One of the biggest things that drives me up the wall about the debate on government surveillance is the difference between capability and actual exercise of those capabilities. What the NSA and others can do isn't necessarily what they are doing, especially domestically. That is often lost in many of the debates, and demonstrated by the AP's recent story about the FBI's aerial surveillance fleet which was definitely newsworthy but alarmist as well.
 

wink

War Hoover NFO.
None
Super Moderator
Contributor
One of the biggest things that drives me up the wall about the debate on government surveillance is the difference between capability and actual exercise of those capabilities. What the NSA and others can do isn't necessarily what they are doing, especially domestically. That is often lost in many of the debates, and demonstrated by the AP's recent story about the FBI's aerial surveillance fleet which was definitely newsworthy but alarmist as well.
Registered to secret front companies? Well, no. They are not real companies, just names on public registration docs for the op sec reasons stated. Let me help the AP with their next big investigative story. Almost every vehicle driven by field agents is registered to a fake name and a vacant lot or public building/facility. Alarming indeed.
 

wink

War Hoover NFO.
None
Super Moderator
Contributor
Here's a pretty good blog piece about the art of effective reading, titled "Getting More Out of Professional Reading." Something I wish I had found a number of years ago.
Shared the link with Mrs Wink. She liked it a lot and may use it. She is a voracious reader of legal blogs, articles and books. It is in large part why she is so successful. She simply knows her stuff. Several of her associate lawyers and even peers have gone so far to say she is a freak of nature, that they can't possibly reach her level of professional knowledge and success. But they miss the point, illustrated elsewhere in a Green Note Book blog pointing out how awed JOs are of LTG McMaster. People like Mrs Wink and General McMaster are the product of a career of self study. Most anyone can do it. It just takes going beyond NATOPS and GMT (or whatever they call it these days), or in her profession, Bar require Continuing Legal Education. If only she could get her associates to thoroughly digest some of the material she shares with them.
 

IKE

Nerd Whirler
pilot
Why Americans Hate Government Surveillance but Tolerate Corporate Data Aggregators - Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)

excerpt:

"NSA personnel know better than anyone that by far the greatest collector of data on ordinary Americans is not our government, but the private sector entities gathering personal data for marketing and commercial purposes. And the most malevolent threat for an individual American is not our government but the vast armies of hackers—many sponsored by foreign countries—who are constantly trying to steal our personal and financial information. Against these hackers, government is our defense."

"And yet, the plainly observable fact to anyone paying attention to the debate we are having in Congress, is that Americans have become more skeptical of government intelligence gathering, while at the same time they willingly accept that corporations learn virtually every detail of their lives. Indeed, some of the most successful internet companies today are really information companies, and the most valuable commodity they possess is data about their customers."

"So I ask you this: Why is it that a popularly elected and democratically accountable government—the democracy in which Americans take such pride—is more suspect than immensely large and wealthy private corporations?"
The key difference left unsaid by the senator is that I don't HAVE to use Google's search engine, Gmail, etc. If I do, I am consenting to their information policies.

When the government engages in similar collection efforts, it does so without my consent. When it demands the information from private companies, it does so not via some prior-existing contract but via the threat of force (even if only implicitly).

In short, it's not the existence of the data as such that is a problem, but the nature of government and its proper role.
 
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