DoJ to Snowden: Hope your 15 minutes were worth it, pal

[Syt]

[Neil]

I wish someone would insert a glass rod into that guy's urethra and his it with a hammer.  Then he could complain about Stasi 2.0.

[Ed Anger]

I wish someone would insert a glass rod into that guy's urethra and his it with a hammer.  Then he could complain about Stasi 2.0.

MAH PEEHOLE

[Savonarola]

And what does the well dressed Caudillo think of Morales' jet diversion, you ask:

Apology demanded over Morales' jet diversion

Six South American leaders condemn four EU states for 'virtual kidnapping' of Bolivian president.




Evo Morales (L) lashed out at US ahead of a special meeting of South America's leaders [Reuters]


Six South American leaders have demanded an explanation and public apology from four European countries for diverting Bolivian President Evo Morales' plane earlier this week.

Morales' presidential plane landed in Austria on Tuesday night after France, Portugal, Italy and Spain closed their airspace over suspicions that the fugitive US whistleblower Edward Snowden was aboard. The information was inaccurate and Morales, who was returning from a summit in Russia, was able to fly home on Wednesday.

At the summit in the Bolivian city Cochabamba on Thursday, five regional leaders joined Morales in denouncing his "virtual kidnapping" and the US pressure they believed spurred it behind the scenes.

At the end of the summit, which included the leaders of Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador, Surinam and Venezuela, a statement was issued demanding answers from France, Portugal, Italy and Spain, the European Union (EU) member states that closed their airspace. The US was not mentioned in the statement.

'We don't need US embassy'

Morales warned that he could close the US Embassy in Bolivia, blaming Washington for pressuring European countries to refuse to allow his plane to fly through their airspace in what he called a violation of international law.

"We don't need a US embassy in Bolivia," Morales said. "My hand would not shake to close the US embassy. We have dignity, sovereignty. Without the US, we are better politically, democratically."


We're here to tell President Evo Morales that he can count on us. Whoever picks a fight with Bolivia, picks a fight with Venezuela.

Nicolas Maduro, President of Venezuela


"Europe broke all the rules of the game," the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said in Cochabamba. "We're here to tell President Evo Morales that he can count on us. Whoever picks a fight with Bolivia, picks a fight with Venezuela."

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa said he and the other leaders were offering "all of our support" to Morales following the rerouting of the plane, calling it an aggression against the Americas.

Morales said that while the plane was parked in Vienna, the Spanish ambassador to Austria arrived with two embassy personnel and they asked to search the plane. He said he denied them permission.

In a separate statement, Russia also criticised France, Spain and Portugal on Thursday for delaying the Bolivian president's flight home.

"The actions of the authorities of France, Spain and Portugal could hardly be considered friendly actions towards Bolivia [...] Russia calls on the international community to comply strictly with international legal principles," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

During his visit to Russia before his plane was forcefully landed, Morales suggested that he would be willing to consider a request from Snowden for asylum.

'Apologies not enough'

Morales, long a fierce critic of US policy towards Latin America, received a hero's welcome in an airport in the Bolivian capital of La Paz late on Wednesday night. His return followed the dramatic, unplanned 14-hour layover in Vienna.

France issued an apology to the Bolivian government. But Morales said "apologies are not enough because the stance is that international treaties must be respected."

Morales said he never saw Snowden when he was in Russia, and that Bolivia had not received a formal request for asylum for him.

Bolivia has said that it will summon the French and Italian ambassadors and the Portuguese consul to demand explanations.

Snowden, who leaked a National Security Agency surveillance programme, is far from public eye, believed to be at a transit area in an airport in Moscow.

I assume that leis are a Bolivian custom.  Does anyone know what the green and white symbolize?

[merithyn]

A year ago all their jobs were satellite communications; now they're mostly data analysis.  My favorite title so far "Big Data Scientist."

That's what Max is.

[Savonarola]

A year ago all their jobs were satellite communications; now they're mostly data analysis.  My favorite title so far "Big Data Scientist."

That's what Max is.

Uh...   I love America and... the NSA is the only real guardian of our liberties 

[Caliga]

AMERICA, FUCK YEAH 

[Zanza]

How dare the postal service look at the outside of my letters! 

Weak.

Actually I think he's right.

No, he isn't. It's one thing to look at the outside of the envelope to sort the mail for delivery and another to keep the information after that. Data protection is always about keeping data just as long as you need it for its purpose. The purpose of mail is to deliver it, not to give the government information on who is writing whom.

[Liep]

AMERICA, FUCK YEAH 

You're still the best at surveillance. At least quantitatively.

[merithyn]

Uh...   I love America and... the NSA is the only real guardian of our liberties 

It's okay. He only does work for DARPA and IARPA.

[Kleves]

I think recording the outside of envelopes is a much less serious infringement on your privacy than listening in to telephone calls or even getting the metadata from such calls. For one thing, with a letter you are giving the information to the government agency to use on your behalf - you want them to look at the information (rather then just sending the letter somewhere randomly). You also probably suspect that, at some level, the information on where mail is going is being retained by the government - if only because they need the information to plan out how to efficienctly (heh) run the post office. They need to know where mail is going, and how much of it there is. For packages, we probably have even less of an expectation of privacy, as we probably expect some amount of scrutiny of even the contents of the packages (by X-ray, or some bomb-detection device perhaps). So I think the government keeping a record of the outside of envelopes/packages for some unknown length of time is not (relatively) that big a deal.

[Zanza]

If they just need it for planning purposes, the data can be anonymous and aggregated and there is absolutely no problem. The postal service having statistics on how many items of mail they typically transport per day, week, season, whatever from NY to LA is obviously total fine. But knowing that John Smith from NY has written four letters to Jane Doe in LA in the last six months is not relevant to planning purposes at all. That particular information is not needed by the post office anymore once Jane has gotten her letter. A good privacy policy would be to only keep that the number of letters sent a letter from NY to LA, or maybe that a particular road in LA received so many letters that day/week/month, or that the mailbox in NY typically has so many letters per day etc.

Doing an x-ray of a package is the same. Once the package is cleared or at least once its delivered, that information serves no security purpose anymore and should not be stored.

[The Brain]

I think recording the outside of envelopes is a much less serious infringement on your privacy than listening in to telephone calls or even getting the metadata from such calls. For one thing, with a letter you are giving the information to the government agency to use on your behalf - you want them to look at the information (rather then just sending the letter somewhere randomly). You also probably suspect that, at some level, the information on where mail is going is being retained by the government - if only because they need the information to plan out how to efficienctly (heh) run the post office. They need to know where mail is going, and how much of it there is. For packages, we probably have even less of an expectation of privacy, as we probably expect some amount of scrutiny of even the contents of the packages (by X-ray, or some bomb-detection device perhaps). So I think the government keeping a record of the outside of envelopes/packages for some unknown length of time is not (relatively) that big a deal.

In free countries you can send your letters with private services.

[garbon]

If they just need it for planning purposes, the data can be anonymous and aggregated and there is absolutely no problem. The postal service having statistics on how many items of mail they typically transport per day, week, season, whatever from NY to LA is obviously total fine. But knowing that John Smith from NY has written four letters to Jane Doe in LA in the last six months is not relevant to planning purposes at all. That particular information is not needed by the post office anymore once Jane has gotten her letter. A good privacy policy would be to only keep that the number of letters sent a letter from NY to LA, or maybe that a particular road in LA received so many letters that day/week/month, or that the mailbox in NY typically has so many letters per day etc.

Doing an x-ray of a package is the same. Once the package is cleared or at least once its delivered, that information serves no security purpose anymore and should not be stored.

I'm not sure why it is so bad to let the gov't track that if they really wanted to (apart from likely a large waste of funds), given that not only do we let email providers see who we send emails to, but also the content.

[Syt]

not only do we let email providers see who we send emails to, but also the content.

Does that seem right to you?