Posts by dan1980

Exposes their priorities pretty clearly

What this shows most strongly is that the NSA and the associated apparatus around this (and similar) programs just does not value the privacy and civil liberties of their fellow human beings very highly at all.

You might say that of course they don't care for privacy but within the scope of spying, it is still possible to make such concerns a high priority.

There is a shell of just such a concept in that that is how the official mouthpieces talk about it but the reality seems to be that there is just no responsibility because they always assumed they would just continue on without any 'accidents' ever seeing the light of day. In other words, they don’t care about doing something ‘wrong’, only about being caught.

That's the really disturbing part about this. It's not the spying per se - that happens and I think there is a certain amount of that we all have to accept, reluctantly. No, the more disturbing part is the way these people view the public.

This is the core problem with almost all information gathering, whether it be massive government-sponsored surveillance, electronic health records, or even simple customer data. The ends are viewed as FAR more important than the means and that is unacceptable when dealing with people's personal information.

Collection of personal information should be seen like borrowing someone's car. Sure, you borrowed it to benefit yourself and so will use it to drive yourself off wherever you need to go. BUT, your primary concern should be making sure you keep the car in good condition because it's not yours and the owner trusted you to take care of it.

In the analogy, say you're running late and have the option of taking a shortcut down an unsealed road or the congested freeway. The correct choice is the sealed freeway because although the unsealed road would be faster and more convenient, you might get scratches or a chip in the window, upset the suspension or simply wear the tires more than necessary.

That's the way privacy and personal liberty should be treated - like an expensive, easily-damaged, and costly to repair possession.

Unfortunately, all the NSA (et al) care about is their surveillance and it feels like that has become an end in itself, with all other considerations secondary.

In short, what this shows is that the NSA and, by extension, the government, view citizens' privacy and personal liberty as unimportant. There can be no defence - if they considered these concerns important then they would have such safeguards and oversight as to make these breaches and 'accidents' almost non-existent.

Do I still have to pay for it?

Excellent news.

Now I am just waiting for the announcement that, since the Kinect is finally entirely optional to USE, it is also optional to BUY. That would be nice. Because, you know, paying for something you don't want and don't need kind of makes you feel like you're being taken for a ride.

What this whole series of changes has done is raised a question - do you punish MS for trying to screw us over in the first place (if that's your position) or do you reward their moves to listen to feedback and adjust accordingly?

I'm still not sure. I'm definitely going to get a PS4 so the question is do I get a 'bone as well?

I think the main point of this review/investigation/inquiry is to find out how the Government's secret spying programs can best remain secret.

In that regard, Clapper is a fine appointment as he is even willing to perjure himself to keep the pesky prying eyes of the citizens on the USA (you know, those people that the government is supposedly FOR, BY and OF) away from any information they might want to have an opinion on.

While IBM should be beyond ashamed of their role in this, much of the blame rests with the government. I appreciate that the whole exercise was likely quite challenging but the simple fact is that the government let it get like this.

It happened because it's not the government's money and, while government's can get voted out for truly disastrous implementations, they are more concerned with being seen to be doing things than actually doing them properly.

Governments in general are notoriously poor when it comes to projects - be it infrastructure, military purchasing or IT systems like this. While it doesn't necessarily make for great headlines, I have never seen a report of a major government project ever being delivered on time and on budget. Moreover, while overruns of both budget and time are pretty common in all projects, the scale of both when it comes to government projects is simply staggering.

In the end, IBM sold, built and implemented a system that they knew would never work as it should have and they did this because the government let them.

It reminds me of a story about a company getting their eCommerce website developed by an Indian team. As it turns out, the eCommerce system simply didn't work at all, rendering the site useless. When challenged, the Indian team were very defensive, claiming to have fulfilled the specifications exactly. Technically they had, but a good developer would have brought potential issues to the client before and during the process. This is what likely happened with this QLD Health system - IBM likely went to pains to fulfil the letter of the scope and contract without bothering about if the system would actually work.

When you ask a builder to complete some work, you expect them to assess the situation and let you know of any issues and make pertinent suggestions on how best to accomplish the RESULT you want, not focus solely of what you have asked them to DO. IBM as the head contractor here really should have analysed exactly what the requirements were and made sure that the system they were designing and selling was actually what was needed.

Maybe that's naive and sure IBM get a good chunk of money out of this but that kind of attitude doesn't win you more business. A good tradie who works with the customer to make sure the end result is the best possible will get more work than he/she can handle and most IT companies understand this. I'm sure IBM do too (somewhere) - they just don't care so long as they get paid and make their numbers in the short term.

"Be a government informant. Betray your family and friends. Fabulous prizes to be won."

The problem this story shows is not any one specific thing but the culture that has built up that says that people are essentially untrustworthy and should be suspected by default.

That started as a 'genuine' public reaction but has since been stoked by the government (not just in the US) and their agencies, resulting in more fear than any terrorist plot has ever achieved.

The trick (and it's not an overly sophisticated one) is to turn any result or situation into proof that the government is doing the right thing.

Evidence of terrorist activity? That means we need more surveillance and power to counter these threats. No evidence of terrorist activity? You'd think that would mean the opposite but you'd be wrong. What it ACTUALLY means is that the terrorists are even more nefarious than ever, which requires - shock - more surveillance and power.

This was not an instance of government monitoring but it WAS an excellent example of the fruits of the government's unrelenting FUD policy. As such, I view it as even more worrying than said government monitoring.

It reminded me of a poster (had to look up the exact wording) in a Red Dwarf episode where the crew find themselves in a fascist fantasy world - see the title of the post.

'SMB' is a grossly imprecise term, covering (depending on country and industry) companies with anywhere from 1-1000 employees.

For that matter, 'cloud' is also imprecise, or at least a very broad term covering a huge range of offerings. As I explained to my mother when she asked "What is the cloud?" - anyone who has a hotmail/yahoo/etc... e-mail account has their e-mail 'on the cloud'.

For myself, as an IT services provider, anyone who simply refers to the 'SMB'/'SME' market/segment is not paying enough attention to real businesses and how they operate because the difference between a 10-user company and 50-user company (not to mention a 100-user company) can be HUGE.

I've attended many vendor and channel seminars, presentations, conferences and 'breakfasts' talking about the SMB 'space' and almost all completely disregard the bottom part of that market and so make sweeping assumptions that just aren't valid. Many times I have left day-long conferences after the morning session when I realised that despite it being billed as covering 'SMBs', the reality was that the vendor was only really interested in, well, 'MBs'.

For SMALL businesses, Microsoft's removal of SBS with pre-packaged Exchange is a big driver in moving to the cloud. Many of those companies have aging SBS 2008 or even 2003 servers and the massive increase in cost to retain in-house e-mail is simply too much for most. So, off to Office365 or Gmail or an equivalent 'cloud' solution. From there, we have found that these companies look to move more and more into the cloud.

We do not have a single client previously on SBS that has decided to stick with in-house e-mail going forward, given the cost of the extra licenses for Exchange over the SBS package. They are going to 'the cloud' for lack of any other viable option.