Alexa, set a motherfucking timer

@mikibell It’s a dollar! That’s cheap entertainment,

@sammydog01 but wouldn’t I need to buy it on her account? To link it the her alexa?

@mike808 The Waze celebrity voices don’t do street names, so the novelty wears off quickly.

Morgan Freeman was fun. C3PO lasted maybe ten minutes on my phone.

@therealjrn They’re not for motherfucking sale yet.

@sammydog01 @therealjrn fuck this… motherfucking doesn’t page @carl669

Did you know that @carl669 is the keeper of the count?

@carl669 @mikibell @sammydog01 @therealjrn

Damn it. Now I want Alexa.
Just for Samuel L Jackson’s fucking voice.

Fuck you, you motherfucking Alexa.

Did you know that @carl669 is the keeper of the count?

@sammydog01

@sammydog01 Gonna see if Alexa will put a ring on it eh?

@sammydog01 speaking of invites, I got my code for echo auto. I guess it released to general availability today, but by requesting a (second) invitation I got a code for the $25 price.

Samuel L. Jackson may sway me towards actually buying this thing.

@djslack I got my echo auto a couple of weeks ago. I got it all set up and then it wouldn’t connect. I went through all the troubleshooting steps. I finally unplugged it and used it as a stand for post-it notes.

Yesterday I tried again and so far it’s pretty nifty. Except sometimes it won’t play Spotify. It tells me to restart the Spotify app. I can’t restart it if it isn’t running. You want me to use Amazon music? FINE I’LL USE AMAZON MUSIC! Bitch.

@djslack @sammydog01

Been using Echo Auto for about a month… or attempting to use it.

Note, I like Alexa in the hole and am a “believer”.

So tired of the 3 different ways Alexa says “Attempting to connect…”

When it works, it is slick, but I’m about to go back to my $12 Anker. It just pain works. Every time.

Could this be yet another painful lesson in “always wait for gen 2?”

Amazon should not have released to general purchase. It isn’t ready.

@djslack @RedOak So far it works as long as I reopen the app right before I drive off. Fingers crossed. The price was right anyway.

@djslack @sammydog01

That requirement to open the app is not a good thing.

I like Alexa in the hole.

*home.

Haha, iOS auto-correct has been wonky for me lately.

It just pain works.

*plain.

Must be a user problem.

@RedOak @sammydog01
It’s kind of telling that there are no reviews on the Amazon page for echo auto. I thought the whole invitation period was to get feedback and reviews on it.

@djslack @sammydog01

No reviews because Amazon blocked them. The definition of a private beta/invite program.

But it certainly isn’t that hard to stumble on feedback online in other spots.

@RedOak but now it’s out for public order, they have same day and one day delivery options, so non beta people have them in their hands. If they’re still blocking reviews it’s not a good look.

@djslack if my experience is even close to typical, the product is not ready for general release. Perhaps not surprising they still have reviews blocked.

Just a thought for those considering, wait for gen 2.

The gen 2 Dot was a big improvement just as was the gen 2 (10”) Show.

@sammydog01

And they’re ugly to boot.

@Pony $5 a month??? No fucking way.

Hey @lichme can you tell caaaaaarrrrllllll @carl669 about this?

@therealjrn I ain’t lyin’ mothafucka

@Pony I think it’s just a purchase, not a monthly deal.

No way Samuel L. Jackson coming out of my NSA capture terminal is worth as much as my VMP.

@Pony That’s some fucked up shit! I thought it was just 99 fucking cents if you fucking got in early enough. Fuuuuck.

Did you know that @carl669 is the keeper of the count?

@djslack If that’s the case, then I stand corrected and gladly so.

@djslack @Pony
99 cents? That’s some motherfucking gourmet shit there.

@djslack @Pony The NSA is not spying on you. Amazon is. Russia might be. The FBI might, if they have a warrant.

@Limewater And how would you know?

Just want to verify before I scratch their name off the list of entities who are spying on me.

@djslack
They don’t have legal authority to do so. Doing so would be unauthorized access.

In 2013, the Office of the Inspector General sent Chuck Grassley, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee all of the instances of unauthorized access in the prior ten years. The letter is public, and it’s a fun read.

Grassley Letter

Unauthorized access gets people in trouble.

@djslack @Limewater

I’m sure the NSA always tells the folks upstair exactly what they are doing.

Better to ask permission or
(only if caught red-handed or only if another whistleblower goes public)
forgiveness?

If you were a data-gathering spy, which would you choose?
Hmmmm.

@djslack @f00l Out of the tens of thousands of U.S. citizens who work there, you don’t think any of them care about protecting their own privacy and that of their fellow citizens? You think they all want to live in a surveillance state?
And for an agency whose mission is foreign intelligence, what is the value in listening in on U.S. citizens’ private homes?
It does make for exciting TV, though.

@djslack @Limewater

you don’t think any of them care about protecting their own privacy and that of their fellow citizens? You think they all want to live in a surveillance state?

I think there are varying attitudes and varyong willingness to cross lines at that agency. Just like in every single spy agency that ever has a name, and many spy operations that didn’t have a name.

Many spies sort of “get off” a bit -our more than a bit - on spying. This is well-documented.
That quality tends to keep them dedicated to the job. In some cases it also leads to profound and completely self-righteous personal and institutional transgressions.

And for an agency whose mission is foreign intelligence, what is the value in listening in on U.S. citizens’ private homes?

Quite a bit of value is there. For starters, if some data is good, more data is often seen as “better”. way way better. More to sift thru, once they finally figure out what to do with their “embarrassment of data riches”, so to speak.

Plus … esp ever since 9/11 … foreign data is often sometimes best or most readily first hinted at or extracted over here.
Data gathered “here” tends to make great suggestive or definitive info for what data might be “over there”, as well as offering a “lead” on where to look and what to look for abroad.
And foreign operations, and foreign intelligence targets, bleed, as we all know all too well, into operations here.

No spy agency ever wants to stop gathering. Nature of the beast is that it’s always hungry for more more more.

And “domestic” is relatively easy.

If most NSA employees never deal with domestically originated data, i’d bet that some reasonable headcount do exactly that. And their bosses either explicitly know, or tacitly “know” and deliberately turn a blind eye to it.

if you were head of the NSA, which failure would you rather endure:
Moral failure because you collected domestic data?
Or
Operational failure because you missed a significant threat that went real?

I’m not trying to excuse or justify domestic data hoovering.

I’m just damned sure it goes on.

Either that, or every spy memoir (there are many, written by serious and knowledgeable people), and every intelligence-community-focused journalism book ever published has been way erroneous about how these agencies operate.

I also know some of them do it, because human nature.

agencies do what agencies do. Secretive agencies take that to an extreme. They don’t stop The don’t cut back, unless someone fires everybody and leaves a bunch of empty desks. They grow. They are ravenous. they are well funded and creative. They like power. they have power. They like secretive power especially.

if they get caught, they provide a few “apparently-guilty-fall-people”; then they just figure out a better way to cover their tracks for next time.

They have whistleblower problems? They keep going and restrict the “need to know” group down to the all-in-committed.
they build a substantially facade of legal compliance and then they operate exactly as they wish behind the facade.

This is the way every spy operation or agency known as operated. since before Jesus and Julius Caesar. in the West, Vatican spy operations worked that way.
And so do the rest of them, esp ever since govt spy operations became newly re-formalized during the Renaissance.

The trends are completely consistent over the centuries.

The best nations at “human intelligence” are believed to be, way above the others, the Brits and the Russkies and their “Great Game”, played for centuries in Europe and Asia.
We’re not bad at it. They are better

The best at tech/data intelligence are:
The US in the lead
then a collection of:
Russia (and some former USSR constituent states), China, both Koreas, and the Brits; and then other ex-Brit Empire nations and other tech nations following.

@djslack @f00l @Limewater There’s a big difference between wanting to maintain my privacy and not being OK with violating the privacy of others. The “greater good”, “higher purpose”, even “I was just following the rules” all have the power to push personal ideologies aside.

@djslack @Limewater @ybmuG

And some data collection and data analyst persons at the NSA and other intelligence agencies, eso military intelligence agencies, are simply data fanatics and data obsessives.

They work for the govt. they think of themselves as patriots. the data exists. They want it. It’s prob garbage data, but maybe not. That’s all the moral justification they need to proceed. And every notable agency has some concentrations of people like this who cooperate in skirting the spirit of the law, if not blowing right thru it. And these people, even if there are only a free, usually manage to corral power, resources, access, money, and stamp it all highest “need to know”.

If they can get their paws on something, they will.

They prob play a few games with methodology; looking for loopholes and alt definitions of questionable actions. Going round another way to achieve the same result. Just plowing forward.

If they work it right, no one outside a tight few ever know anything close to the extent of what they do.
And, to them, this is patriotism and justified. And also a substantial power trip.

Surely you know something of the CIA’s sordid, continuous, extreme, law-violating history at home and abroad. (No, I don’t hate the CIA. I just try to be realistic)

The NSA is more so. Far more a law unto itself than the CIA. Way more so.

It’s part of the power trip and the patriotism-justified cover story these obsessives buy into. They’re “saving the world”. They improving the tech. They are watching for terrorism. They’re staying “cutting edge”.

They can’t let the Russians and Chinese get a jump, or get the upper hand (even tho they have failed at this, repeatedly. The failures just provides “the argument and proof” for “more”.)

It only takes a few of these people, if they are in the right places.

The rest of the agency can be “legal “. And moral. And genuinely respectful of personal privacy.

That’s completely cool with the “grab-everything obsessives”. They are happy to have the “legit” cover.

@djslack @f00l @ybmuG I’ll just refer to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board 702 Report.

here

At risk of sounding dismissive, the rest of your post about rogue groups within the agency or whatever spying on Americans sounds like conspiracy theories and Hollywood, not the realities of working in a modern government bureaucracy in the United States.

@djslack @f00l @ybmuG

even “I was just following the rules” all have the power to push personal ideologies aside.

But “the rules” specifically prohibit unauthorized targeting, which includes targeting U.S. Citizens. People are audited and if they break the rules they likely get caught. It happens occasionally and every instance of it for a decade was listed in the document I posted earlier.

@f00l @Limewater @ybmuG this is the first time I’ve seen an Alexa/NSA joke met with so much discussion and information. I’ve learned a thing or two. I’ll learn more when I can sit down and read the links.

@djslack @f00l @Limewater @ybmuG

There’s a big difference between wanting to maintain my privacy and not being OK with violating the privacy of others. The “greater good”, “higher purpose”, even “I was just following the rules” all have the power to push personal ideologies aside.

And don’t forget, the Feds work by the principle of
Rules are for thee but not for me

@djslack @f00l @macromeh @ybmuG Politicians work by that principle. The overwhelming majority of federal employees are not politicians.

@djslack @Limewater @ybmuG

Obviously, neither @limewater or I can prove this one way or another.
Maybe, in decades to come. Or maybe not.

But one can check the serious and verified histories of all these agencies that came out later, often decades after the events in question.

all the stuff we wouldn’t have a clue about even having happened, except that some journalist would not quit. Or a whistleblower spoke.

Know anyone who works for or has worked for the CIA? Or for military intelligence? At a reasonable mid-or-high level? At any level? Including the person who mops the floors?

Ask them sometime, what percentage of controversial or law-breaking or civil-rights-violating operations ever became even hinted at publicly?

Ask them, how well do official public reports on the scope and limits of real operations correspond to the actual scope of operations?

Persons who work in these agencies normally consider themselves to be the strongest of patriots. They also usually consider themselves to be fanatically loyal to the agency they work for. They rarely see a contradiction there.

Common reasoning:
The agency and its operations are essential. The agency will break rules and laws, and sometimes or often will cause incalculable harm, perhaps even incalculable harm to substantial portions of human history in certain countries. But that’s the nature of the beast: since the agency is essential to the nation, employees must protect the agency, all for the “greater good”.

Not everyone buys into this, of course. But of all the NSA employees and contractors who must have had some awareness of what the agency was up to during the early 2000’s, only Snowden broke ranks.

So many of the rest of them knew, and didn’t speak. Out of institutional loyalty. Out of fear for their jobs, careers, finances. Out of fear of potentially terribly legal consequences. Because of their definitions of patriotism. Out of loyalty to the operating group. Out of a philosophy of “doing your job and not asking questions and keeping your head down”. Out of a belief or hope that they are doing more good than harm. Out of having bought into or fully justified the scope of data scoping and surveillance to themselves as being intrinsic to national security.

When the long-within-the-future histories of these agencies are written, and the old hands feel they can be more open about days long past, it will come out that they routinely, as a part of normal operations, treated legal restrictions as being little more than a gossamer cobweb, when they felt justified in doing that. And they are always ways around mere “laws”, if one has the resources.

Another aspect of these agencies:
Within them, there is a rather intense operating philosophy of loyalty.
One must be loyal to, and protect, the agency.
One must be loyal to, and protect, one’s fellow employees and contractors and cooperating assets.
One’s must be loyal to and protect the mission.
One must protect one’s higher ups.
One must “protect” the in-house lawyers and compliance people.
One must protect reputation of the agency.
One must protect the political people. The appointees and their staffs. The various representatives and their staffs. The executive chain.

Persons who work with these agencies encounter this culture full in the face the min they are considered for a job. It’s part of the job and it comes with the deal. They are “worked on” over this. Also part of the job.

These people understand from the get-go that, during political eras when the agencies themselves are under fire, political people will not be informed of anything seem as critical to the agency’s work that could embarrass the political establishment, if doing so will harm the operations and the institution, and if the sensitive matters can be kept secret. Unless something is threatening to blow.

When the agency needs to “clean up it’s act”, according to the current public/political mood, they always have some programs and operations that can be made public, apologized for, and ditched. These become “hush puppy operations”, sacrificed for the greater good.

In cases where the political establishment is highly pro-operations, then political people often have some considerable knowledge of what goes on. This was certainly true of the years from Eisenhower thru the early Nixon years (until Nixon started to fall apart. Even then, Kissinger, Schlesinger, and other trusted parties were seen as “OK”.).
It was true for the Truman admin, once the agencies decided they could trust him after FDR’s death. It was true during the Reagan years. And the agencies really like Cheney’s philosophy.

I’m not intending to demonize these agencies. They are what they are.
And, incidentally, they are not normally, as institutions, particularly D or R.
They are pro “the security of the United States”, as they define that mission and their part in it. If they have to break laws along the way, well … they signed up.

According to some memoirs and other commentary by persons who lived their working lives in this world, any political person who thinks they know what is going on in these agencies is a naive idiot by definition. The political establishment doesn’t know. They believe that those of the political class who have real “savvy” ought to know enough to be rather careful about what they actually want to know.

@djslack @f00l @ybmuG

Know anyone who works for or has worked for the CIA? Or for military intelligence? At a reasonable mid-or-high level? At any level? Including the person who mops the floors?

Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, and Yes.

Not everyone buys into this, of course. But of all the NSA employees and contractors who must have had some awareness of what the agency was up to during the early 2000’s, only Snowden broke ranks.

So, tens of thousands of American citizens chose to look the other way while one patriotic American patriotically carried our country’s secrets to Russia.

Snowden has a verifiable relationship with the truth that is quite similar to President Trump’s. He lied on his resume to get his job. He lied about the kind of work he did at the Agency. He lied about his education history. He clearly lied to all of his colleagues to steal all that data. We know this. But we’re going to trust him on all the stuff that is not publicly verifiable.

I’m going to shut up now.

Slight correction re remark about Cheney.

Overall, long haul, he was seen as friendly and protective to Intelligence assets for most of his career in biz and politics.

The Valerie Plame incident no doubt modified that perception to a degree.

(plame is seen as controversial, in her own right, for other reasons. But her outing as an agent, which destroyed her career effectiveness, was, at best, dubiously justified, as a means to attempting to discredit her husband, an ex-ambassador.)

@djslack @Limewater @ybmuG

while one patriotic American patriotically carried our country’s secrets to Russia.

Being interested in what Snowden says does not imply that one thinks of him as some ultimate patriot. Or as intrinsically trustworthy, without looking into it.

All these stories are partial, and partially subjective. And any source likely has an agenda.

Is it too late to edit my comment?

No way Samuel L. Jackson coming out of my KGB capture terminal is worth as much as my VMP.

@djslack @f00l @Limewater @ybmuG

TLDR; if I believe not using Alexa reduces the chance NSA is spying on me… then I’d sure as hell better take a hammer to my smartphone. And my tablets. And my laptops.

As to the commercial spying aspect, I chose to believe Amazon and Apple are less evil than Google (whose internal slogan is ironically, “do no evil”).

Nobody is perfect, but…

Apple: demonstrates loudly and regularly it cares about privacy both to law enforcement and in its policies and App policing. And their primary business model is hardware and services.

Amazon: primary business model is selling goods and services.

Google: primary business model is selling you and your data.

What we need: legislators who have a clue about privacy and judges who are willing to see our existing laws actually protect us better than they think… and rule accordingly.

@djslack @f00l @Limewater @RedOak You make very good points, though I will say that I have disabled the mic and camera on my laptop (I know, soft switches not as secure as the old-days hard ones!), and I limit mic and camera access to as much as possible on my phone. But again, your assessment of the players is spot on.

I can’t eliminate risk, but I can reduce it. And, especially BECAUSE of the commercial self-interests you describe, it is not so much about blocking out the NSA or some other government agency, but everyone else, especially when the weak point is outside of my control. I have a hardware firewall on my network with anti-virus, anti-spyware and intrusion detection at the appliance.

But I will say, while I hate the exclusivity approach of Apple (ties me to their products much more than other manufacturers), I do appreciate their stance on privacy.

@djslack @f00l @Limewater @ybmuG

I don’t hate the Apple “all with us” business model.

It is part of the system design and (mostly) seamless design and security.

It’s a choice.

And that very all in design puts a lot of pressure on Apple to get stuff right for the folks who appreciate it… or Apple risks completely losing a customer from their ecosystem.

We use Apple for mobile/tablets and family sharing services and Amazon for Alexa. With a bit of Google for email. And Microsoft for Outlook.com and desktops and laptops.

We very, very minimally use Facebook with the exception of WhatsApp. We use Skype.

And Waze for cameras/security, mostly TP-Link for smart plugs, Ecobee for the thermostat (wouldn’t touch Nest anything).

We choose to diversify in an (perhaps feeble) attempt to diversify our footprint, realizing we give up some integration benefits.

@PocketBrain Yep. They’re one and the motherfucking same.

@djslack @PocketBrain

Fuck. Really?

Did you know that @carl669 is the keeper of the count?

@djslack @f00l @PocketBrain
Fuckin’ A. Same motherfucker.

@sammydog01 Me too. : (