The Surveillance State 2

I have not been flipping out over the recent NSA stories because, as I mentioned, it’s old news. If you didn’t know this was going on, you haven’t been paying attention.

In this video, Alan Grayson falls into the trap of believing some of the more fantastic inferences in some of the news stories (as has most everybody else who doesn’t understand how networks work), particularly the one of confusing SFTP with a “backdoor into a server”; nevertheless, I think that his comments on the the entwining of domestic surveillance and the military establishment are worth a listen.

On Linux Outlaws this week, Fab, whose university training was in Political Science (and whose rants are legendary in the Linux podcasting world), went off on this topic. He had a good handle on the facts, international law, and the implications of this practice, if not on his language.

The relevant portion of the show starts at the 55 minute mark and lasts about half an hour (follow the link to listen; if you do, remember that the language is NSFW and that the standards for “acceptable” profanity in the UK, where Fab resides, differ significantly from those in the US–in particular, the list of the most forbidden words in the UK does not include the most forbidden swear word in the US).

Video via AmericaBlog.