Europeans are hiding a terrible secret

as they spy on the U.S.

(Yes, I ignored the rest of your post to answer your rhetorical question)

And you know this how...?

I read it on the internets!

But to believe that every soveriegn nation-state, with the capacity, is NOT spying on every other nation ... is a display of a special kind of special.

I think I've heard that sort of argument before.

it's used quite often ... most frequently, to refute pointing out that others are doing what you're criticizing me for.

But that said, so I guess you advocate that the U.S., unilaterally, stop doing what you object to, even as others are doing the same thing?

I also dislike the phrase 'that said' because it means nothing. You have no reason nor standing to guess what I advocate when I am here to do that for myself. I advocate not using 'they do it too' as a substitute for ethics. Do you think it is a suitable and mature replacement for a moral system? 'They do it, thus it is right for me to do it' is enough for you? You would raise your children to live by such a creed?

That works on some levels; but not on others ... like ... international affairs, defense, and alot of other things. When the other side gets/has/doesn't something; we should be willing and able to have/do it too.

Here we go ...



And that said ... Governments are amoral institutions; it would be nice if we lived in a world where they were, but it ain't this world.

In your gut?

this is way puzzling.

If we dig deep enough into any individual's electronic communications, we can always find something that we can smear them with, and help prevent them from being elected. Many democratic minded candidates could easily be prevented from running for office in this way, and more dissenters could be silenced. With the evidence we have gathered of clandestine sexual affairs, trysts, and tricks, we now have dirt on 80% of the politicians in DC - and this has given us unprecedented control of both Houses!

We could call this process "Weinerizing", after our successful first trials on the renegade liberal NY Democrat Rep. Weiner.

Weinerizing will be one more effective way we can cull the herd in order to help keep even more our world safer from democracy.

Europeans should be grateful. No more nasty little social democracies, no more leaders to the left of Maggie Thatcher.

The system works!


(BTW, Third Way Manny, could you call Eric and ask if he could get the agency to wipe those incriminating texts from Lola for me? If Barb ever got hold of them, she'd leave me and take all her money with her. And don't worry, I'll return the favor in a big way, heh-heh )

"We could call this process "Weinerizing", after our successful first trials on the renegade liberal NY Democrat Rep. Weiner."

Eric owes me, big time, for posting this stuff.

TWM

Those unappreciative bastards!

They complained so they must be racist

Not that there's anything wrong with that.™

That the US is still probably No. 1 in computing power. The "save all encrypted information" program points to the idea that if they CIA/NSA becomes interested in anyone that they can and will be able to break the encryption fairly easily despite the common techie's belief that it would take them decades to break current encryption. They don't have time to decrypt every message but can certainly break it for any particular messages they may be interested in.

Don't expect any leaps and bounds on home/individual computing power becoming available any time soon. The govt. needs to exponentially ahead of us little guys for our own protection.