Ok, so the President made his big presentation on NSA reforms today. For your convenience, here’s the actual transcript of what he said. If that’s too wordy for you, here’s a summary with commentary, and the EFF kindly provides a short version. Today I have just a little round-up of what people are saying. And what better way to start a round-up than with another round-up?
Seriously though, from where I sit, it looks like “Meh, better than nothing but it’s still a fig leaf.”
Just a reminder, many of our “elected” officials don’t think we need any reform at all.
In the meantime, more and more information about what the NSA is really up to continues to dribble out. Here we have an official who concedes that they haven’t caught any terrorists, but they might someday so we need to spy on everybody. I am unsure how they plan to catch terrorists if they are too busy learning about Comrade Misfit’s lunch plans and the fact that I’m cooking meatloaf for dinner. You can’t find a needle in a haystack by building bigger haystacks. Although I am told that part of learning to search for something specific involves sifting a lot of data to see what it looks like, that phase should be temporary and shouldn’t involve storing the data forever.
Oh, and I wouldn’t dream of leaving out the thoughts of security guru Bruce Schneier, who thinks that encryption is the key to keeping data private.
In Closing: maybe real school reform starts with the schedule; black widow; not better off; the last Imperial soldier; pens; even skywriters doodle when they are bored; don’t forget to remind your Congressmice that TPP is a bad idea; make then talk; and no, “fit but fat” isn’t a thing.