“You just looks so young!"
....I barely belong here at these school events, single and Black, so every time I hear this, it's like they're confirming that, too. It makes me want to roll out my whole resume to justify my place, Like, I have a master's degree from UCLA, lady! I was eight month's pregnant with Pearl at the ceremony, but still! I'm grown, just like you! I use Sensodyne, and I have enough white hairs that I can't keep casually plucking them without looking like a "before" in one of those women's hair loss Instagram ads I keep getting, and I am pretty sure my back hurts more than it doesn't hurt now....”
Source: It's Elementary
“The Obama administration, which has brought more prosecutions against leakers than all prior presidencies combined, has sought to create a climate of fear that would stifle any attempts at whistle-blowing. But Snowden destroyed that template. He has managed to remain free, outside the grasp of the United States; what's more, he has refused to remain in hiding but proudly came forward and identified himself. As a result, the public image of him is not a convict in orange jumpsuit and shackles but and independent, articulate figure who can speak for himself, explaining what he did and why.”
Source: No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State
“There is now the capacity to make tyranny total in America. Only law ensures that we never fall into that abyss—the abyss from which there is no return.”
Source: The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America
“I'm sure I've had my phone tapped for years, I don't think it's a crime against humanity they just ought to quit doing it, god damn it.”
“Lots of data gets collected through the latest technology today, and not all of it is about people's consumer preferences.”
Source: Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe
“Brash souls made jokes about what must be mountains of unread spy-eye data stored who knew where and how.”
Source: Her Smoke Rose Up Forever
“la Agencia de Seguridad Nacional, Facebook, Google y Cía. nos espiaban con los móviles, y nosotros, los propietarios de los móviles, lo sabíamos, pero nos importaba una mierda, porque estábamos encantados con ellos”
Source: Mieses Karma hoch 2
“Imagine yourself sitting at a computer, about to visit a website. You open a Web browser, type in a URL, and hit Enter. The URL is, in effect, a request, and this request goes out in search of its destination server. Somewhere in the midst of its travels, however, before your request gets to that server, it will have to pass through TURBULENCE, one of the NSA’s most powerful weapons.
Specifically, your request passes through a few black servers stacked on top of one another, together about the size of a four-shelf bookcase. These are installed in special rooms at major private telecommunications buildings throughout allied countries, as well as in US embassies and on US military bases, and contain two critical tools. The first, TURMOIL, handles “passive collection,” making a copy of the data coming through. The second, TURBINE, is in charge of “active collection”—that is, actively tampering with the users.
You can think of TURMOIL as a guard positioned at an invisible firewall through which Internet traffic must pass. Seeing your request, it checks its metadata for selectors, or criteria, that mark it as deserving of more scrutiny. Those selectors can be whatever the NSA chooses, whatever the NSA finds suspicious: a particular email address, credit card, or phone number; the geographic origin or destination of your Internet activity; or just certain keywords such as “anonymous Internet proxy” or “protest.”
If TURMOIL flags your traffic as suspicious, it tips it over to TURBINE, which diverts your request to the NSA’s servers. There, algorithms decide which of the agency’s exploits—malware programs—to use against you. This choice is based on the type of website you’re trying to visit as much as on your computer’s software and Internet connection. These chosen exploits are sent back to TURBINE (by programs of the QUANTUM suite, if you’re wondering), which injects them into the traffic channel and delivers them to you along with whatever website you requested. The end result: you get all the content you want, along with all the surveillance you don’t, and it all happens in less than 686 milliseconds. Completely unbeknownst to you.
Once the exploits are on your computer, the NSA can access not just your metadata, but your data as well. Your entire digital life now belongs to them.”
Source: Permanent Record
“At any point, for all perpetuity, any new administration—any future rogue head of the NSA—could just show up to work and, as easily as flicking a switch, instantly track everybody with a phone or a computer, know who they were, where they were, what they were doing with whom, and what they had ever done in the past.”
Source: Permanent Record
“Agent Tanner sagte, dass die NSA sich etwas einfallen lasseb will. Anselm und Hannah haben sich eben spontan entschlossen, auf Weltreise zu gehen. Postkarten, E-mails, ja, sogar Telefonate von unterwegs sind kein Problem.”
Source: Das Rätsel der Templer