from the If-you-can't-trust-spies,-who-can-you-trust? dept.
Submitter ticho writes:
"The latest Snowden revelation suggests that Australia's spies are committing economic espionage on Americans, for the benefit of the American government.
The NSA's espionage partners in Australia offered the U.S. intelligence agency surveillance information on an American law firm that was representing the Indonesian government in a trade case against the U.S., according to leaked documents from Edward Snowden's stash.
Read more here."
[Ed. Note] This is another long-denied open secret now documented. One can only wonder what we gve Australia in return. Here is the NY Times article referenced in the above article.
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So, as I write this, day one has officially come to an end. I'm still somewhat in shock over it. Last night when I was editing the database to change over hostnames and such, I was thinking, man, it would be great if we got 100 regular users by tomorrow. Turns out I was wrong. By a factor of ten. Holy cow, people. I'm still in a state of disbelief, partially due to the epic turnout, but also because our very modest server hardware hasn't soiled itself from the influx (the numbers are, well, "impressive" is a way to put it). Anyway, I wanted to do a bit of a writeup of where we stand now, what works, and what doesn't. Check it out (and some raw numbers) after the break! Warning, it is a bit lengthy.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Eunuchswear on Monday February 17 2014, @10:23AM
Continuing tradition, eh!
Watch this Heartland Institute video [youtube.com]
(Score: 1) by Wodan on Monday February 17 2014, @10:27AM
Now we just need first posts saying first post! and it'll be just like home
(Score: 1) by Nerdfest on Monday February 17 2014, @10:31AM
More appropriately, non-first posts saying first post.
(Score: 1) by umafuckitt on Monday February 17 2014, @10:29AM
I think you mean "second dupe" :)
(Score: 1) by githaron on Monday February 17 2014, @11:41AM
We have a dupe of a dupe?
(Score: 1) by mattie_p on Monday February 17 2014, @11:36AM
Difference is that here someone is able to remove them. Thanks for being patient!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by linsane on Monday February 17 2014, @11:53AM
And merge the comments from both? Now that would be neat...
(Score: 1) by mattie_p on Monday February 17 2014, @11:57AM
With only three comments (2 in one story, 1 in the third) I didn't feel the extra effort was necessary. Besides, those comments were Dupes themselves.
(Score: 5, Funny) by pillo on Monday February 17 2014, @10:24AM
Wow, first day online and we're already BETTER than the original! ;-)
(Score: 1) by mmcmonster on Monday February 17 2014, @10:54AM
Hopefully with the need for two editors to sign off on an article, this will happen less frequently in the future.
Actually, since these are identical articles, it's more likely the editor hit 'publish' three times instead of waiting for the first time to push through to the live site.
(Score: 5, Informative) by LaminatorX on Monday February 17 2014, @10:28AM
I apologize for the multiple post everyone. There were some weird errors as I was attempting to post it, but it seems to actually have been working.
First Dupe!
This is our news site. There are others like it, but this one is ours.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by TrumpetPower! on Monday February 17 2014, @10:38AM
I just noticed -- there actually was a glitch. The headline reads, "Posted by on..." with the username of the poster omitted. Hope that helps point to whatever went awry....
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2014, @01:12PM
The submitter's handle is actually a single nonbreaking space character. Pretty cool, huh?
(Score: 1) by crutchy on Tuesday February 18 2014, @02:43AM
damn why didn't i think of that when i signed up
(Score: 2, Insightful) by linsane on Monday February 17 2014, @10:40AM
At least you can blame it on sleep deprivation / many many well deserved beers?!
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2014, @10:43AM
1. Publish dupes.
2. Apologize for publishing dupes.
3. ???
4. Karma profit!
(Score: 2, Funny) by gundul on Monday February 17 2014, @10:54AM
is this site Beta? ;P
(Score: 1) by Nerdfest on Monday February 17 2014, @11:32AM
Don't let the usability improvement of the beta at that other site confuse you; this site is alpha.
(Score: 1) by aaaa on Monday February 17 2014, @11:31AM
No no, you misunderstand. It's great! Feels like home
(Score: 5, Funny) by TrumpetPower! on Monday February 17 2014, @10:35AM
CChheecckk yyoouurr dduupplleexx sseettiinngg..
CChheerrss,,
bb&&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 1) by VLM on Monday February 17 2014, @10:39AM
According to Crocodile Dundee, Austria or Australia or WTF it is, has had better intel gathering capabilities for 30 years now, so its no great surprise they're still giving us intel in 2014.
"Neville Bell: Oh no, you can't take my photograph.
Sue Charlton: Oh, I'm sorry, you believe it will take your spirit away.
Neville Bell: No, you got lens-cap on it."
(note to kids, people used to take selfies and stuff with cameras, not phones, and most real cameras had a lens cap to protect the optics so the pix wouldn't turn out as awful as a modern selfie)
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Popeidol on Monday February 17 2014, @10:51AM
I'm very interested to see what this leads to. Late last year, it was revealed that Australia had tapped the phones of the Indonesian president. This led to a fairly major incident - some joint ventures were canceled outright, some were delayed, and the Indonesian ambassador was recalled from Australia. Our relations with them have not recovered completely, despite a personal written apology from the Australian prime minister. Local sentiment seems to be that this is a personal insult from Australia. http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-n ews/indonesia-recalls-ambassador-to-australia-over -phone-tapping-20131118-2xrfw.html [smh.com.au]
I do not think the Indonesian government will take it lightly, and I support them: For a long time, our politicians have treated the countries surrounding us fairly roughly, while reserving their respect and admiration for the US and UK. If it takes an international incident like this to remind them that a powerful neighbor can only be pushed so far, Then I guess this is how they'll learn.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by romanr on Monday February 17 2014, @12:54PM
Funny thing is that every government looks terribly outraged by the fact that intelligence agencies are spying and gathering information on them, but in my opinion, if they had the resources, they would do exactly the same (or maybe they are doing it already).
(Score: 2, Informative) by edIII on Monday February 17 2014, @01:59PM
I don't understand why this isn't causing a huge uproar right now in the US.
It's one thing to be spying on the plebes who cannot defend themselves, and let's face it, most often are so blissfully ignorant with their banal distractions, but this is a law firm.
Attorney client privilege and work product is supposed to mean something, and in cases like this does affect big business. This is espionage performed by the US government.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Dale on Monday February 17 2014, @10:56AM
It is sad that the government is completely willing to subvert the spirit of the law by doing the "we can't collect it, but we can help you collect it and you can then hand it to us" game.
(Score: 1) by internetguy on Monday February 17 2014, @01:53PM
Doesn't asking someone to collect information on your behalf still fall under the definition of "collecting"?
Sig: I must be new here.
(Score: 1) by Dale on Tuesday February 18 2014, @01:01AM
Those funny rules things don't apply to the overlords for some reasons.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2014, @11:10AM
Just came here to say I'm converted from slashdot
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2014, @11:37AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2014, @01:06PM
No.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2014, @01:54PM
"Bro reflected that good Americans were fine people and that most of them seemed to come from Texas." -- Ian Fleming, "Casino Royale"
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2014, @01:29PM
Former Slashdot(RIP) user here too...
I just want to give you guys a heads up about a cool Greasemonkey script which works on Soylent News:
Slashdot Expandable Comment Tree v2
Adds [+][-] symbols next to all comments allowing you to expand and collapse any of them for viewing.4 [userscripts.org]
The script is here-----http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/3818
To modify the script to work on SoylentNews:
Open the script in a text editor, and add this line:
// @include http*://*dev.soylentnews.org/*
Cheers
--AC
(Score: 1) by cubancigar11 on Monday February 17 2014, @04:11PM
To the powers that be, can we add this into the original website? Some testing on mobile version will be required, I suppose.
(Score: 1) by Azmodan on Monday February 17 2014, @11:39AM
"what we **gve** Australia in return" :)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Monday February 17 2014, @04:09PM
So, all the 5 Eyes are using each other to do an end-run around the Constitution (and their analogues in the other Eyes) and national laws. For me, this reveals a much larger problem than simply tearing down Washington DC and starting over. Instead, we need a global solution, or at least, a transnational one. Now that we've all had a year to absorb what Snowden has revealed, it's time to begin taking drastic measures to put things aright.
First, in America, an Article 5 national convention called for by 2/3rd's of the state legislatures to cut DC out of the loop is a great start. DC, K Street, and Wall Street can have no part in the conversation. The Constitution 2.0 must permanently separate wealth from politics. Publicly funded elections, Non-partisan redistricting, revoking corporate personhood, and similar measures that have been talked about for decades must be realized. Personally, I would also like to see measures taken to keep sociopaths out of office, but I realize that's more difficult to accomplish than the aforementioned.
(Score: 1) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Monday February 17 2014, @05:53PM
One can only wonder what we gve Australia in return.
Most prbably you prmise not to gve us mre dmocracy.
:)
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.