Whats on with Rororo? Look Championship.

Schau in Rororo's Profil, der bot spielt nicht mehr…weil Phil javascript ablehnt (ich auch, weil unnötig und man zu viel Blödsinn damit machen kann) und diese Seite ohne die Freigabe von Skripten im Browser nicht mehr zu bedienen ist. Mein bot spielz auch sein letzte Runde. (Mal in deutsch, bei den Nachrichten der letzten Tage ist mir die Lust am Englischen vergangen…)

Schau in Rororo's Profil, der bot spielt nicht mehr…weil Phil javascript ablehnt (ich auch, weil unnötig und man zu viel Blödsinn damit machen kann) und diese Seite ohne die Freigabe von Skripten im Browser nicht mehr zu bedienen ist. Mein bot spielz auch sein letzte Runde. (Mal in deutsch, bei den Nachrichten der letzten Tage ist mir die Lust am Englischen vergangen…)

Traurig…

Mal in deutsch, bei den Nachrichten der letzten Tage ist mir die Lust am Englischen vergangen…

Haben Sie gegen Brazil nicht gewonnen?

Hello Carroll,

I think YHW means the new NSA scandal with the

spy/spies in Germany.

Ingo.

Ingo's right. Germany undergoes the 2nd super-disappointment within 8-9 years with respect to the US. Typically, they could have all kind of information from us - and they're getting definitely everything - we are an aly (we understandi now what this means), however, they are monitoring our chancellor's mobile and we found one american spy in our intelligence service last week as well as another rat in our department of defense this week. What masterpiece - especially in our country - our doors stood always wide open for them, our counter-intelligence never acted in their direction, but this was obviously a mistake! It feels like an epidemic of crab lice and that's not only the case in this moment. Many people know that from their companies. We know that this will not come to an end, we dön't want a no-spy-contract, but we want to re-define our role from US perspective. There's currently a commission from our department for foreign affairs in Washington but it looks like the US don't want to talk about it. Everyone knows how the US is acting with spies from other (friendly) states (e.g. Pollard, Israel), we likely have a sack of them now, but the US is simply saying nothing ! If we would act like this they would kick us out of their country promptly… I wonder if people in the US know that the reason for declaration of war on Iraq was coming from Germany? We had an Iraqi located in Hamburg who told incredible things - transportable laboratories on trucks to produce biochemical weapons in Iraq - any bullshit - we didn't believe him. We thought he wanted to get money only (what he got, we even had to finance his kife later, because he was the only source). We passed this to the US, they published this stuff and joined a new war…unbelievable! So, this is the way how US government uses information…?! The rest is well-known: We couldn't join this war (not because a teller of fairy tales) and convicted it, as well as the french government who got the same information - people in the US dumped french wine on the streets and Mr. Rumfsfeld said we would be the 'old europe'. - sounded like we are having new friends in (eastern) europe (or anywhere else)…that hurted the people here in Germany and we will not forget that. Even if there is no 'concept of enemy' in US government today like Bush or Rumsfeld, not even someone who I don't like, but obviously are those guys not needed to do dumb foreign affairs! I will take a look in the future (even more than today) not to buy american products. No joke. (I'll rather feed the chinese which are not our friends but we are getting less shocks from them. )

You should reread John Le Carré novels, he said all about how dumb and unethical foreign affairs world is.

NSA ways are a problem for everyone, and I guess Americans start to be worried too.

But is it really an excuse to lose both Rororo and Naive_child?

Maybe try to join Richard and convince him to change what is too cumbersom with javascript.

I think this Spiegel Article asks the right questions. You mention China, but the evident choice for Germany is to turn to Russia.

This would be a big mistake, I greatly prefer Obama's politics to Putin's one.

The way to make things change is to act to promote laws that will protect citizens privacy and turn away to post September 11 paranoia to make every citizen a potential terrorist.

In Russia too there is a fear for islamist or Chechen threat, but their solution is direct murder (Anna Polikovskaya) or nuclear contamination for opponents accusing the government (Alexander Litvinenko).

But maybe it is too late and through energy crisis, as the Europeans don't manage together to deal with the serious problems, Putin has already won and Prince Charles was right.

Hello Carroll,

> you should reread John Le Carré novels, he said all about how dumb and unethical

> foreign affairs world is.NSA ways are a problem for everyone, and I guess Americans

> start to be worried too…

Thanks for your wise words. It is a pity how America's paranoia is going to

destroy a friendship between nations.

Cheers, Ingo.

Hi Ingo. It's been a while.

I couldn't agree with you more. And we can't do the usual thing of blaming “the other party” since both are equally guilty of this idiocy.

P.S. Maybe I should return to you those recordings I made of our conversations in your office.  :)

Richard, how can you prevent that a country wastes their/your own values without blaming it in public?? If one nation in europe is doing any stupidity (or turning into a direction in which the others can't go) are two or more friendly nations/partners always stronger than the first one. So, we are always anyhow on a similar course. The USA don't have those friendly partners at eye level (and they would not accept anyone in such a role) that our undestanding of values (which the US even brought to us) like freedom or constitutional legality are totally drifting apart. The people are often laughing about the EU, but I'm able to walk from Germay to the Nederlands or France (as well as in every neighbored country) without beeing controlled at the (offical) border today, where a turnpike was located when I was a child. When the Czech republic (e.g.) came into the european union was the difference in material prosperity on both sides (Germany/Czech) higher than the difference between USA/Mexico, we are also speaking different languages, lived even in different systems (East/West) and no european citizen would something like Schengen ever throw away again today. That's our understanding of freedom as well as the fact that our privacy is proteted, we can do what we want without beeing controlled (all the time) and no one has the feeling that anyone of the others wants to kill us. In contrast to the US, you are transforming your country into a prison. My last immigration was choking, I'm handled as a potential terrorist , I lost my human dignity promptly at the airport and I was very happy when I was back at home/ Schengen in this case Ireland. If this is your understanding of freedom, then we cannot go this way together anymore; and if the US wants to declare everyone to potential terrorist and if this is the legitimation to control everyone by the NSA then not in Germay please. You will go this way also without us, this is not our way…

Hi Richard,

thanks for your words of understanding. Concerning people from Germany there

is one special twist. Before 1989 we were two states: democratic

west and socialist east. The Eastern German regime had a “fully developed”

control of their “own” people, called “StaSi” (Staats-Sicherheit = state safety).

To defend (their private lifes and also their dignity) against state control people

had developed lots of creative strategies.

Now, 25 years after unification, these people can (and have to) remember

their old mechanisms to keep the control out of their (private) lifes.

Angela Merkel is an East German girl. For her it must be especially

annoying that the US have developed paranoia with similar consequences.

(I am orignially from Western Germany; but for instance Johannes Waldmann

also grew up in the Eastern part.)

To YHW: Do not make the mistake to throw all people from the US in

the same pott. There are many many guys, like Richard, who know well

that the current way is not a good one.

Ingo.

PS: One of my computers is still running under Windows98. In April 2014,

Microsoft stopped support. How does it come that every day, when I logout,

one new update is installed? Is MicroSoft still supporting (in contrast to their

official policy) - or is someone else simply collecting my activities from that day?

Ingo, I know that. The most customers/visitors/partners in my last company came from US, some people of my family are/was coupled with americans and I never met any unfriendly american in my life. I liked them all. These people are all good guys. The strange thing is that one of the 0911 terrorists - I don't know the name anymore- even studied electrical engineering like me in Duisburg here in Germany - he was educated by german and american professors at my university. I know that he started his study one year after me, so I must have seen him - at least anytime in cafeteria, but I couldn't remember his face (from photos of 0911 terrorists). This message choked me. One another lived in Hamburg, that's why I can understand NSA activity on german ground. We were obvisiously blind or naive but not to trust us anymore in general is the wrong reaction. The terrorists came all from Saudia Arabia but the connection to this state seems to be more constant/valuable than the connection to us…

Sorry, the child runs parallely on the same computer. I'm automatically logged out when the program switches the accounts… Ingo, the updates can also include programs like internet explorer, media player, office products and so on…

Speaking as an American, I sure wish our Government would stop being so paranoid.

I wish we had tried the prisoners in Guantanamo in US courts (or turned them over to the International Criminal Court).

I wish we had never invaded Iraq.

I wish, once it was acknowledged that there were no weapons of mass destruction, we had gone to the UN and said “We are sorry that we made this error.  We will continue to provide the majority of the troops, but could the would community please advise us of some way to transfer overall command authority, because we no longer have sufficient credibility to continue as we are.”

I have written to my representatives asking for all of these things.

Unfortunately, there are far too many Americans who are willing to do anything to feel safe (not quite a majority, but a rather noisy minority), and far too many politicians willing to pander to them.

The US surveillance state is unnecessary. While waiting for the political will to get rid of it (Don't hold your breath.), there are a few things you can do to make surveillance more difficult.

1. Read Bruce Schneier's blog at https://www.schneier.com.

2. Where possible, use https rather than http. There's a Firefox plugin (called “HTTPS Everywhere”, I think) that attempts to do this.

3. Download the Tor Browser from https://torproject.org. Use it, to make mass surveillance more difficult.

4. If you can figure out how, operate a Tor Relay node.

5. If you can figure out how, change your browser's https configuration to avoid cipher suites that don't include forward secrecy (a.k.a. “perfect forward secrecy”).

Notes:

When using a Tor browser, the Tor exit node that you're using gets to see the traffic between you and your intended endpoint. If that traffic is encrypted (e.g. https), that should be harmless. For non-https traffic, think about how bad it would be if a malicious exit node saw the data. E.g. I don't care that much if someone sees what I'm reading on arstechnica.com but you'll have to decide for yourself how bad it would be if someone got your littlegolem.net session cookies.

Tor routing is slower than connecting directly. Forget about Tor when you're streaming video.

None of these measures will, or can be expected to, hide criminal actions. None will have much effect if you personally are singled out for investigation. They're intended to make en-masse suspicionless surveillance more difficult and less productive.