Woah. This is a pretty cool reactive article. It's the first one that I've personally encountered which reacts like it's supposed to, engaging me as I read.
Congratulations to whoever put this together, it was very well done.
I agree...except that if you select any text it prompts you to tweet it. For readers that compulsively select text as they read (like me), it's infuriating.
This is probably the coolest site I have seen in terms of reactiveness. They even had the insight to have the backgrounds of the videos the same color as the site background. Awesome!
"You ask me proofs that it works, I can show you proofs that the lack of it really fails"
That is so flawed from a logic point of view that I won't even bother.
"We can't be transparent .. we have to get comfortable with the idea that we're delegating to somebody.."
There are two things here:
1) Most people agree that we can't talk about the details of implementation of a strategy agreed to by the US people to defend our country. The problem is that the mass surveillance that we've heard of in the last 5 months is not exactly a "detail of implementation" is it? It's a whole gods damn strategy that the US people didn't directly agree to. (Now yes, it's a democracy, we elected representatives who agreed to this. So what? Our constitution doesn't give full power to our representatives. If they didn't think for a second that a question of that magnitude might require some public debate, they are wrong, period).
2) He talks about trust. The problem is that trust is not something that you just ask for. If you are corrupt, lie, cheat, and all around screw up for long enough, people will stop trusting you.
> not exactly a "detail of implementation" is it? It's a whole gods damn strategy that the US people didn't directly agree to ... we elected representatives who agreed to this.
Well, the people who wrote the law which the NSA is claiming authorizes this also said they didn't agree to this.
So much for any kind of "rule of law" or "oversight".
The description about Feinstein is wrong. She didn't backtrack about anything. She's only pretending to do it, while passing Newspeak bills with backdoors that codify and legalize NSA's mass spying.
Feinstein has done nothing but help the NSA so far. She's not going to just stop because she suddenly developed a conscience. I wish Californians would just recall her, because otherwise we're stuck with her and her pro-surveillance state bias until 2018. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, if she wasn't also the head of the Intelligence Committee, and having tremendous power in the Senate to continue things as they are.
She continues to support the NSA while at the same time proving she doesn't know exactly what they are doing. Not really two things that should be combined.
This is the same lawmaker who wanted to ban "the shoulder thing that goes up". She should have been laughed out of office long ago, but for some reason enough people love this authoritarian idiot enough to keep her in office since 1992. It boggles the mind.
With these NSA revelations, I feel like there is still an elephant in the room nobody has yet started talking about...
THIS DATA CAN BE USED TO UNDERMINE YOUR STARTUP.
It's not just privacy we should be concerned about. It's our economy.
Whether it is corporations willfully collaborating in secret with the government or government secretly infiltrating corporations - either way, this presents a serious opportunity for exploitation of the public marketplace.
Because with this amount of data, the NSA has a goldmine of business intelligence that it can put to 'strategic use' via third-party 'partners' who can actively participate in the market; ie- COMPETE WITH YOU.
This is unfair and a terrible flaw in an economic system.
I'm not sure about the US, but in the UK GCHQ has this sort of activity explicitly as one of its three principal mandates - it's something along the lines of "protect the economic interests of the UK". You can imagine the applications to the UK's huge arms industry, for example, which has historically had very strong ties to the government.
Totally aside from the content, this is a really good example of effective design of long-form exposition in the medium of a web browser. Designed for the affordances of the screen, without sacrificing in-depth textual content.
I found myself only watching the videos while I am usually more attracted to text than video. So I question the effectiveness of it. Maybe others noticed the same behaviour?
Why are so many people persuaded by arguments of the form, "It doesn't matter what the government knows if you have nothing to hide?"
I'm not questioning why the NSA uses this argument -- clearly, they use it because it works -- people are persuaded by it. What I'm asking is, why does it work?
Just World fallacy: the belief that things happen for a reason, that bad things happen to those who deserve it, and that the world is ultimately fair.
That is, they prefer to believe the government is a superhuman entity that has everyone's best interests at heart, rather than facing the reality that it's made up of fallible, selfish humans who are only interested in covering their own asses.
He uses archive footage in his exceptionally well written articles to make a hybrid documentary that is not plodding (like how TV is if you actually count the words per minute) and not devoid of moving pictures (every picture tells a thousand whatever).
I wish more news and current affairs was presented in this mixed-medium way.
The problem I have is that on my smallish (13"? Not too small) monitor, the top and bottom of the video are always very close to the top and bottom of the viewport. On a 24" monitor it would be better, but I found watching the videos to feel very claustrophobic.
Can someone explain why, if I change the slider to indicate that I have only one friend, the number of "friends of friends" is 163? Is my only friend really so popular?
[+] [-] JonSkeptic|12 years ago|reply
Congratulations to whoever put this together, it was very well done.
[+] [-] pdubs|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blueblob|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] welder|12 years ago|reply
Video: Bob Sacha
Production: Kenan Davis, Nadja Popovich, Kenton Powell, Ewen MacAskill, Ruth Spencer, Lisa van Gelder
Additional Production: Spencer Ackerman, Kayla Epstein, Paul Lewis, Amanda Michel, Katie Rogers, Dominic Rushe
Also:
By EWEN MACASKILL and GABRIEL DANCE
Produced by FEILDING CAGE and GREG CHEN
[+] [-] emhart|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shmerl|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leephillips|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abraxasz|12 years ago|reply
"You ask me proofs that it works, I can show you proofs that the lack of it really fails"
That is so flawed from a logic point of view that I won't even bother.
"We can't be transparent .. we have to get comfortable with the idea that we're delegating to somebody.."
There are two things here: 1) Most people agree that we can't talk about the details of implementation of a strategy agreed to by the US people to defend our country. The problem is that the mass surveillance that we've heard of in the last 5 months is not exactly a "detail of implementation" is it? It's a whole gods damn strategy that the US people didn't directly agree to. (Now yes, it's a democracy, we elected representatives who agreed to this. So what? Our constitution doesn't give full power to our representatives. If they didn't think for a second that a question of that magnitude might require some public debate, they are wrong, period).
2) He talks about trust. The problem is that trust is not something that you just ask for. If you are corrupt, lie, cheat, and all around screw up for long enough, people will stop trusting you.
[+] [-] DerpDerpDerp|12 years ago|reply
Well, the people who wrote the law which the NSA is claiming authorizes this also said they didn't agree to this.
So much for any kind of "rule of law" or "oversight".
[+] [-] nodata|12 years ago|reply
Do bother, if you're going to show someone up as screwing around with logic, make it easy for everyone to see it too.
[+] [-] aaronem|12 years ago|reply
> That is so flawed from a logic point of view that I won't even bother.
Well, I don't blame you; trying to disprove p ⇒ q ∴ ¬q ⇒ ¬p would probably cost you some embarrassment.
[+] [-] devx|12 years ago|reply
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/sen-feinsteins-nsa-bil...
Feinstein has done nothing but help the NSA so far. She's not going to just stop because she suddenly developed a conscience. I wish Californians would just recall her, because otherwise we're stuck with her and her pro-surveillance state bias until 2018. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad, if she wasn't also the head of the Intelligence Committee, and having tremendous power in the Senate to continue things as they are.
[+] [-] sitkack|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jcromartie|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tropicalmug|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrschwabe|12 years ago|reply
THIS DATA CAN BE USED TO UNDERMINE YOUR STARTUP.
It's not just privacy we should be concerned about. It's our economy.
Whether it is corporations willfully collaborating in secret with the government or government secretly infiltrating corporations - either way, this presents a serious opportunity for exploitation of the public marketplace.
Because with this amount of data, the NSA has a goldmine of business intelligence that it can put to 'strategic use' via third-party 'partners' who can actively participate in the market; ie- COMPETE WITH YOU.
This is unfair and a terrible flaw in an economic system.
[+] [-] cracell|12 years ago|reply
And really if you have the data, why not?
[+] [-] Zigurd|12 years ago|reply
If you are preparing a bid at Embraer, you may get the feeling the only ones you win will be the ones Boeing finds unprofitable.
The NSA has the data to rig the economy globally, and to rig politics within the US.
Who here is going to stand up for them and say: No, they wouldn't. They have too much restraint.
[+] [-] lemming|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrochkind1|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hnha|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danabramov|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rejoinder|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jarred|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] csense|12 years ago|reply
I'm not questioning why the NSA uses this argument -- clearly, they use it because it works -- people are persuaded by it. What I'm asking is, why does it work?
[+] [-] johnbm|12 years ago|reply
That is, they prefer to believe the government is a superhuman entity that has everyone's best interests at heart, rather than facing the reality that it's made up of fallible, selfish humans who are only interested in covering their own asses.
[+] [-] vermontdevil|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] metastew|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JoseVigil|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] glitchdout|12 years ago|reply
With that said, you haven't seen the Snow Fall article by the NYTimes? [1]
[1]: http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/snow-fall/#/?part=tunne...
[+] [-] Edvik|12 years ago|reply
One small tweak I would make is to have the video start playing not when it's in the middle but closer to the top of the page.
Reason is, I find myself distracted by listening to the guys speak before I finish reading the text.
[+] [-] Theodores|12 years ago|reply
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/
He uses archive footage in his exceptionally well written articles to make a hybrid documentary that is not plodding (like how TV is if you actually count the words per minute) and not devoid of moving pictures (every picture tells a thousand whatever).
I wish more news and current affairs was presented in this mixed-medium way.
[+] [-] danudey|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nimble|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dandandan|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cLeEOGPw|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] singold|12 years ago|reply