By featuring warrantless agents who thwart domestic terrorists with fantastical technology, shows like NCIS essentially ask Americans to root for Big Brother.
The shows depict a world in which terrorists planning mass slaughter are under every bed … In the NCIS version of reality, we’ll all die unless powerful government agencies treat the United States Constitution like a big joke.
Source: America’s Creepy, Surveillance-Endorsing Love of NCIS – The Atlantic
“Actions in which the ends justify the means, in which everything that is technically possible is done, violate trust, they sow distrust,” she said. “The end result is not more security but less.”
“Is it right to act this way because others in the world do the same?”
“Billions of people living in undemocratic states today are looking very closely at how the democratic world responds to security threats – whether it acts with self-confidence and prudence, or whether it cuts off the branch that makes it so attractive in the eyes of billions: the freedom and dignity of the individual.”
Source: Angela Merkel rebukes US and Britain over NSA surveillance – Telegraph
A federal judge today upheld a President Barack Obama administration policy allowing U.S. officials along the U.S. border to seize and search laptops, smartphones and other electronic devices for any reason.
Source: Court Upholds Willy-Nilly Gadget Searches Along U.S. Border | WIRED
This is a very interesting case which brings up a lot of interesting questions:
Developers have a responsibility to users. At no point in human history have so few people been able to reach so many with so little oversight. Yes, we have had mass publishing for more than 500 years. But to reach an audience of millions there would have been dozens of reviewers, fact checkers, editors, and investigators. Now, a very small group, or even a solo developer, can reach their hands into the private lives of millions of people in a matter of days.
US privacy organization EFF invites you to click on thumbnails of the summaries it managed to pry out of the government, but let’s save your finger muscles the workout with this summaries summary: : ——————————.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation managed to pry a secret document out of the US government that describes how authorities should interpret the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act (FAA).
But a fat lot of good that does, given that a) they weren’t the actual documents the EFF requested and b) they were redacted into a ridiculously useless pile of dashes.
Source: Ridiculously redacted interpretation of FISA snooping law released – Naked Security