CIA boss: Make America (a) great (big database of surveillance on citizens, foreigners) again! While Washington is busy with the inauguration of President Trump, not all political business has stopped. The incoming administration is hoping to get its new CIA boss appointed today, but the Senate is having none of it. Trump's pick for the top job is Representative Mike Pompeo (R-KS), who has some interesting views on data …
Even in more developed countries than the US*, meta-data is somehow billed as less important, not that well protected, I-can't-believe-it's-not-data - but it is.
Meta data is still data, but because it's circumstantial rather than direct factual we have somehow arrived at a stance that considers that less important. There are two direct issues with this.
1 - it is misleading. Meta data IS data, but not about events as such, but about interaction. As such, it is just as important as data itself because the data WILL be used - and usually incorrectly, which is why you should not let control be taken from your hands.
2 - interpretation is usually flawed. Because this data is derived from circumstances, it is not factual, but probability. Combine meta data and you arrive at a balance of probabilities, but that still does not equate a fact, it equated an motivated probability. A non-wild guess, if you like. The problem is that the people that get to work with those probabilities are usually not trained to understand that rather vital distinction and if you want an example of how that can come off the rails, look at all the incidents involving the no-fly list.
Be on guard: the US has long discovered that your data means money, and now all constraints will go out of the window.
* Sorry, but I can't continue considering the US as part of the developed world. It's now got all the issues that you normally find in a banana republic
> Sorry, but I can't continue considering the US as part of the developed world.
And that is where you got it wrong. The US is a developed country. It is just further along the civilisation development path and entered (or is about to enter) the ‘rot from within and crumble’ stage. Occasionally, civilisations go out with a bang but let us hope it does not come to that in the US case because the bang could be a nuclear one...
We will all get to this stage eventually. Where I live we just have the (dubious) luck of being quite far behind in the civilisation game.
Collecting national intelligence and foreign metadata from/on citizens is for busy fools on a crazy mission. Placing it freely and widely into the public domain is creatively subversive and disruptively revolutionary and leads with media reacting with stories you can believe to be real.
Words create, command and control and collapse worlds. Welcome to the Great Game ..... now opening and playing a whole new iteration with novel intelligent editions which suffer not the folly of fools?
And shared here in question form lest a statement be considered an arrogance drivering an ignorant following ........ although is that not how everything past fools you into accepting a news item and media production as a current unfolding reality to marvel at?
Change the script, realise whole new brave worlds ...... with words. It aint difficult if you know what you are doing and what to do differently.
I Kid U Not.
A lot of Americans confuse socialism with communism, and as such don't like the idea of their taxes being used to heal degenerates who don't pay into the system.
Needless to say the entire medical system in the US is operated solely for the benefit of the insurance companies. Imagine being made bankrupt because you can't afford to pay for your kid's operation. A 2013 study found medical debt was the number one cause of bankruptcy:
https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/health/managing-medical-bills/nerdwallet-health-study-estimates-56-million-americans-65-struggle-medical-bills-2013-2/
Maybe the following from this page will help you understand the sleight of hand, weak of mind policy, Mystic Megabyte.
I’ve read a number of articles this week which glowingly praise President Obama’s accomplishments. Others offer scathing critiques.Most tend to focus on the Affordable Care Act (ACA), i.e. Obamacare, suggesting that reforming healthcare is one of his most important legacies.
Maybe so.
There are undoubtedly millions of people who now have medical insurance that never had insurance before.
And that is certainly a noble accomplishment.
The problem is that focusing on this single metric is a terrible premise.
Millions of people are no longer uninsured. Check. But that’s where their thinking stops.
What’s the overall quality in the system? What’s the cost?
Those metrics are conveniently overlooked.
Not even two months ago, the Obama administration was forced to publicly acknowledge that healthcare premiums will rise by an average of 25% in just a single year under Obamacare.
Plus, many consumers will only have a single option to choose from as a number of major insurance companies scale back insurance policies they offer.
The administration also admitted last year that overall healthcare spending continues to rise, surpassing $10,000 per person for the first time ever.
Then there’s a question of quality and efficiency.
In 2016, a Johns Hopkins study concluded that the number of preventable medical errors has soared in recent years and is now the third leading cause of death in the United States.
Obviously no one can blame Barack Obama for this trend.
But that’s precisely the point: it’s impossible for any program to be successful when the way you define success is so fundamentally flawed.
Obamacare focuses on one thing: coverage. Are more people insured? Yes. And in their mind, that makes it successful.
But anyone who looks at the big picture will reach an entirely different conclusion.
Premiums rose. Overall spending increased. Quality didn’t improve. Americans aren’t getting healthier.
(Not to mention the matter of that $2 billion website…)
However noble the intentions, it’s hard to consider these results a major success worthy of an enduring legacy.
Nothing is ever as it seems whenever only half truths are aired and lauded.
That's a flaw of the system, wherein insurers and hospitals want their profits and so they keep playing an escalating bargaining game of raising prices and having them limited or pushed back again. Want $2000? Charge $4000. Insurance cuts it back to $2000, maybe makes the patient pay a chunk, and raises their premiums because of "the rising cost of health care".
I know someone that was charged $500 for 3 Aspirin and a shot of insulin, after having been made to send same home because it wasn't the hospital's stuff.
If the Republicans really want to control the cost of healthcare, they need to institute the Department of Calling Bullshit on Medical Charges. We need to cut the cost of medical school, we need to cut the cost / pay of the people it turns out, and bring certain professions back down out of the nosebleed section in terms of cost and compensation.
You wrote: Premiums rose.
Yup. And under Bush, pre-ACA, premiums... also rose. 58% in his last 6 years in office, 2002 - 2008.
2009 to 2016, according to Kaiser/HRET, premiums rose 34%.
This is an example of a misleading argument using partial information.
What else is wrong in the list you quoted? How about, "Americans aren’t getting healthier."
For an opposing, research-based viewpoint, see the NY Times, August, 2016:
"A few recent studies suggest that people have become less likely to have medical debt or to postpone care because of cost. They are also more likely to have a regular doctor and to be getting preventive health services like vaccines and cancer screenings. A new study, published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, offers another way of looking at the issue. Low-income people in Arkansas and Kentucky, which expanded Medicaid insurance to everyone below a certain income threshold, appear to be healthier than their peers in Texas, which did not expand."
Finally, a bit of meta: here's what a media bias / factcheck website wrote about your source:
"Notes: Zero Hedge is a financial blog that aggregates news and presents editorial opinions from original and outside sources. In between the aggregated news there are crazy economic conspiracies and general right wing biases."
I would expect premiums to rise if you're looking after more people. More people, more cost. That's expected.
Complaining that helping people get well who couldn't afford it otherwise impinges on your choices about which insurance policy you can buy... well, that's one way to look at the world, I guess.
I don't understand why people voted for a man who stated that he would repeal affordable health care.
I saw a poll after the election that said that amongst Trump voters who wanted "Obamacare" dismantled, a majority wanted to keep Affordable Care Act, which is actually what Obamacare is. They don't even know what they are voting for, just that they don't want anything that Obama has done.
The hatred of Obama is perverse; he inherited a country with profound economical difficulties - losing 800k jobs a month when he took office - that was fighting and losing two wars. He got out of Iraq and Afghanistan as best as was possible. He delivered 75 consecutive months of jobs growth, adding 10 million jobs in 8 years. S&P 500 up over 180% over his tenure. US GDP grew faster than any other NATO country during his presidency..
He should be considered an amazing success, but you have hordes of people who dislike this man so much that they cannot even type his name without it becoming OBAKA. Obummer, Odrama - and usually uppercased - as if to even utter the name Obama relies on some tourette like shout.
It seems like the conspiracy theorists have taken over, with acronyms like "MSM" and "TPTB" being blamed for anything negative about Trump - even the things he says himself!
"I don't understand why people voted for a man who stated that he would repeal affordable health care. Maybe someone can educate me."
Health care and health insurance are not the same thing. Health care is when a medical professional is doing something for your benefit, health insurance is the runt in "The Incredibles" screaming about taking care of the stockholders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OjLjvbZMDs
When our government declares war on something, we usually get more of the thing they are trying to wipe out.The war on poverty gave us more poverty. The war on drugs gave us more drugs. The war on terror gave us more terrorism. So, too, the war on unaffordable health care gave us more unaffordable healthcare because, while 20 million more people have insurance, it's got such a high deductible that they can't afford to use it. What we need is a war on gainful employment and a war on affordable housing. And a war on health.
Don't worry, it's not like the US has a president who makes statements about his 'enemies' or anything like that.
I mean, there's no risk whatsoever that anyone might compile a list to go after personal vendettas.
It's also not like any agencies or anyone associated with the US Government has ever used leaked private information to destroy a political candidate or anything like that.
Nothing to worry about! - just let he nice man install CCTV in your bedroom and hand over your HDD contents, just in case you might be a liberal leftie or some kind of dangerous paranoid 'investigative journalist' who should be safely sent off to some kind of mental institution for questioning authority or for patriotic reeducation.
Let the war against fake news begin...
He's a breaker. He doesn't care about the niceties of law or privacy, so more surveillance looking for enemies of the state is just fine with him.
Oh well, it wasn't like Barack "Hey, before I leave, let's allow a dozen or more agencies to access unfiltered intelligence data" Obama was great either.
Most people are missing an additional aspect of what is going on.
This is a continuation of a decades-long turf war. The CIA wants an expanded domestic spying role. The FBI wants an expanded off-shore law enforcement and surveillance role. Both with a larger budget to match their new powers, preferably coming from the other.
"He should be brought back from Russia and given due process, and I think the proper outcome would be that he would be given a death sentence" reminds me of this exchange...
Gul Dukat: In Cardassia, the verdict is always known before the trial begins; and it's always the same.
Commander Sisko: In that case, why bother with a trial at all?
Gul Dukat: Because the people demand it. They enjoy watching justice triumph over evil, every time. They find it comforting.
Commander Sisko: Isn't there ever a chance you might try an innocent man by mistake?
Gul Dukat: Cardassians don't make mistakes.
Commander Sisko: I'll have to remember that.
Who will use this info. for what purpose? Who control the controllers? Why have secretes in an open society, market and democracy? What is the constitution for? What happened to the unreasonable search and seizure? Innocent until proven guilty? Habeas Corpus? Government of, by and for the people?
Is the info. going to be in the hands of the same people who went to the UN about Iraq's WMD, who denied in front of cameras in Congress they did not collect metadata on Americans? Whose government is it anyway? Why not put the idea to referendum?
Governments created with profiteers media manipulations and trickery on people's feelings do not have much concern about the interest of the majority as indicated by Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century...
Those at the apex of mega private organizations must pay attention to the massive iron fists being raised with every manufactured crisis and should use resources to counter with forces to remove the threats. Raised iron fists are bad omen for a free society based on Constitutional foundation without revising the foundation through mass participation in the process.
Hold your collective noses. The Register's description of Pompeo (Pom-pee-u) reveals that Trump may very well be a worse fascist, authoritarian, dictatorial nut than Obama, who supported spying on absolutely everyone. The pee-u prick even wants to murder Snowden, whom I admire for his courage and dedication to democracy, despite his recklessness in endangering his own life. What a great beginning to Trump's U.S. autocracy. The word 'Fascist' is used here out of historical context, merely to highlight the anti-democratic nature of the appointee and his boss.
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