IRS NSA LOL

Here's a hilarious follow-up to the pathetic Lois Lerner "lost emails" mess. 

Look at this headline. Just look at it: "IRS Claims Two Years Of Emails Were Destroyed In A 'Computer Crash;' Congressman Asks The NSA To Supply 'Missing' Email Metadata."  Bwahaha!

This is also a perfect excuse to listen again to the NSA Slow Jam, as Alessandra just said.  Well, I never need an excuse to post a Remy video, so here you go.

Kafka and the Modern Surveillance State

Whenever life imitates Kafka, it's never a good sign.

So You're Not Paranoid If They Really Are Spying On You

My technophile buddy Alessandra would like you to know that she was right after all about digital privacy: "I told you so."

Cuba Libre Is Only A Drink

It's not a location. Stalwart journalist Michael Totten reports from the land of Fidel (via Samizdata).  His account is full of fascinating information, but I was especially struck by this observation:

I had to lie by omission every minute of every hour of every day just like the Cubans.  A person could get used to this sort of thing, I suppose, but that does not make it less alienating.  That’s the counterintuitive thing about totalitarian systems.  They herd people into Borg-like collectives, yet every individual is savagely atomized. 

I never felt so alone in my life.

Cartoon Commentary: Internet Privacy

Meet ZXX, the Anti-NSA Font

Well, it's a heck of a font all right.  Maybe the NSA can't read it very well, but I'm not sure that I can either for any length of time without getting a massive headache.

Life Imitates Science Fiction: 10 Examples

10 Sci-Fi Predictions That Became Science Fact by alltime10s

"All Your Data Is Belong To Us"

I link to this Foreign Policy article on the NSA because the image is too pointedly amusing not to share.

Steyn on Politically Correct Big Brother

"The bozo leviathan sees everything ... and nothing." *Sigh.*   It also doesn't help that all this takes place in the middle of Scandal-a-palooza's apparently endless shenanigans.

Friday Fun Video: The NSA Slow Jam

Remy over at Reason.tv has long been in the habit of making hilarious musical political commentary (remember this and this?), and he just can't resist singing this slow jam:

"The Daily Show" Vs. the NSA

Jon Stewart is away, so John Oliver is sitting in, and he's just as pointedly humorous.  His last sentence is a zinger, all right:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,The Daily Show on Facebook

Taiwanese News Animators Vs. NSA Snooping

Dystopian Literature or Current Events?

Buzzfeed - yes, Buzzfeed, home of cute baby animals and celebrity gossip - wants to know if you can tell the difference between Orwell and Obama.

Fill In That Scandal-a-Palooza Wildcard Bracket, People

This scandal bracket was supposed to be a wry joke.  Well, nobody's laughing now as we know that we can definitely fill in that last wild card bracket with the news about the NSA and Verizon.  

People are furious, and they should be.  Don't give us that stupid argument that if we've done nothing wrong, then we've nothing to fear from government agencies snooping around.  Secret blanket surveillance is not OK.  This isn't even targeted.  This isn't about people suspected of wrongdoing.  The NSA's just indiscriminately scooping up everything on everybody.  Anyway, see this and this, which pithily snarks, "from the Verizon: home-to-nearly-100-million-terrorism-suspects! dept."

Oh, by the way, am I the only one starting to get a case of "scandal fatigue"?  Another day, another mess in the news ... Hey, government overreach?  Must be Thursday.

Also, Rand Paul.

UPDATE: But wait, there's more!

Quote of the Day: On Obama and Journalism

From the guys at TechDirt:

The Obama administration has used the Espionage Act against more cases of whistleblowing to the press than all other Presidents combined. 

... Obama said that "journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs," but that the "focus must be on those who break the law." Oh really? Then why did your own DOJ claim that a journalist was an aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator for reporting on a leak -- just like tons of other reporters?  

President Obama sounds like someone campaigning against his own policies. Either Eric Holder and the DOJ have "gone rogue" or the President is hastily pretending that his administration is not doing what it clearly has been doing for years.

Steyn on Surveillance and Drones

Steyn is always worth your time.  Here are two tastes of his latest: "the government is too craven to stray beyond technological warfare and take on its enemies ideologically" and "government is increasingly comfortable with a view of society as a giant “Panopticon” — the radial prison devised by Jeremy Bentham in 1785, in which the authorities can see everyone and everything." 

Geek News: Revolutionizing Digital Privacy

There's an app for that!  Read the whole thing. There is a related thought. I also couldn't resist making this:

Here's a nice little Quote of the Day from Silent Circle CEO (and former Navy SEAL, by the way) Mike Janke: 

"We feel that every citizen has a right to communicate, the right to send data without the fear of it being grabbed out of the air and used by criminals, stored by governments, and aggregated by companies that sell it."

PREACH.  Surveillance society snooping pushing you?  Push back.  The fact that I have nothing to hide doesn't mean that you get to look at my stuff just because you can and feel like it.  The app launches on February 8.

Quote of the Day: Surveillance Society

Absolutely:

It’s anyone’s guess how we are supposed to stop terrorism by focusing so much of our energies on monitoring the activities of people who will never be terrorists.

Not unrelated: the execrable (and useless) TSA, along with everything we've ever said about the encroaching, intrusive, snooping government playing fast and loose with civil liberties and every rant ever about how we are citizens, not subjects.

What Fresh Hell Is This? Email Privacy

Oh yeah, I'm sure this is going to turn out frickin' awesome:

A Senate proposal touted as protecting Americans' e-mail privacy has been quietly rewritten, giving government agencies more surveillance power than they possess under current law.

CNET has learned that Patrick Leahy, the influential Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, has dramatically reshaped his legislation in response to law enforcement concerns. A vote on his bill, which now authorizes warrantless access to Americans' e-mail, is scheduled for next week.

Leahy's rewritten bill would allow more than 22 agencies -- including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission -- to access Americans' e-mail, Google Docs files, Facebook wall posts, and Twitter direct messages without a search warrant. It also would give the FBI and Homeland Security more authority, in some circumstances, to gain full access to Internet accounts without notifying either the owner or a judge.

UPDATE: Given universal outrage, Leahy backs off. Good.