Well...It's kind of now or never

[dequire]

If the recent Facebook travesties haven't hit you hard enough the last few days, this might:
https://professional-troublemaker.co...ge-from-skype/

So...I ask my fellow grey-bearded friends...when do we fight back and take running open source existentially happen? Meaning, when do we wake up and practice what we preach? Enough is enough. I WILL NOT stand down and watch the US constitution be shat upon!!!

Oh and this - just in case you were trying to live a normal life while YOUR ELECTED DOUCHEBAGS PASSED THIS...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGX-PXfRSGY


Maybe we're too old to care and we're conceding America to the next generation? I sure hope not. Please tell me I'm wrong about my country.

[TWPonKubuntu]

Being a member in good standing of the "Grey Bearded Clan" I can agree with your sentiment on this.

Since my only comment to Micro$haft would be censored because it would contain many more than one use of banned words, I will let you use your imagination...

And doesn't their stated policy now allow outright theft from user accounts? I expect some blowback from the first time they attempt that tactic.

Sadly, I also think country has taken a wrong turn. Pick your metaphor: "Over the cliff", "Wrong way on a one way road", "Gone south", "Young whippersnappers want to drive the truck now too", etc.

Retiring to the bunker now to fold more tinfoil hats.

[notabug]

Thanks dequire, a lot to think about, things that are distressing to think about.

[GreyGeek]

The Cloud Act has formalized the establishment of a Fascist US Government which has given corporations the right, in direct contradiction to the 1st and 4th Amendments, to use their ToS and "Code of Conduct" to do Thought Control. The second video above explains very well how the US gov can use conduct codes of foreign governments and corporations to infringe American's 1st Amendment Rights, and the right of their person and property to be private and secure from unwarranted searches and seizures.

How long has it being going on? From 1791 to 1952 Americans enjoyed 99% of their Constitutional rights. In 1952 Pres. Truman signed into law the NSA. In less that 21 years the SCOTUS had to reign in the NSA and re-enforce the 4th because the NSA wasn't obtaining warrants before searching and seizing property. It only took the NSA 3 years to persuade enough Congressmen (extortion?) to create and pass the FISA act in 1978, supposedly to protect American citizens from domestic spying. Uh huh. The opposite happened. FISA was used to conceal evidence from the accused, who could no longer face the faceless accuser, or cross examine "it" in an open court of law under public scrutiny with a jury of 12 peers.

2001 was the year when the 4th Amendment actually died. When the 9/11 attack occurred, totally surprising the NSA and other security agencies, it became red meat to them. Individual liberties preserved in the US Constitution were no longer a consideration at the NSA. Around that time the infamous NSA Letters started appearing. Letters which contained a non-disclosure clause which forbid the accused from saying anything to anyone except his lawyer about the charges filed against him by the NSA. In 2002 the FISA judge was replaced by Colleen Kollar-Kotelly. Remember her? She replaced Judge Jackson and even after MS lost the trial AND the appeal under Jackson, she allowed MS to pick 2 of the 3 monitors that were to guard against their committing more illegal or unethical tricks, and to office them on the MS campus at Redmond where their access to the world was through MS's networks and phone systems. MS knew how many sheets of toilet paper they used to wipe themselves. That trial effectively gave MS a get-out-of-jail-free card for EVERY illegal act they did before the trial ended, including Gates perjuring himself with his doctored video tape explaining how impossible it was to remove IE from the Win OS without breaking it.

So now, an MS lawyer or corporate head can decide, on their own, that they didn't like what you said during a supposedly encrypted Skype conversation, or wrote to a friend using Word in the cloud, and they are going to punish you for disagreeing with THEIR political view by terminating your licenses to use MS products, canceling any remaining time left in those licenses, and confiscating any monies accrued or remaining in any of your MS accounts. THAT, ladies and gentleman, is FASCISM, the unholy alliance between business and government, where gov uses business to circumvent Constitutional protections. After all, haven't even some on this forum proclaimed in their defense of YT and Twitter that it is "their website, they can control what is said or written on it"?

Rather than strengthening our Constitution as they promised in their oath of office, our elected officials have decided to pass the Cloud Act to give corporations control over how many of the Bill of Rights you are allowed to freely practice.

Microsoft, FB, Goog, Twat or other corporations have exchanged their heritage of freedom for Group Think and Thought Control and have become traitors to the freedoms our parents and grandparents for 250 years have fought and died to preserve. Why would anyone who loves freedom continue to use those products and sustain those companies?

EDIT: Adding stuff about the CLOUD Act

The Cloud Act "Clarifying Lawful Use of Overseas Data Act".

https://www.congress.gov/115/bills/h...15hr4943ih.pdf

Ԥ 2713. Required preservation and disclosure of communications and records
‘‘A provider of electronic communication service or remote computing service shall comply with the obligations of this chapter to preserve, backup, or disclose the contents of a wire or electronic communication and any record or other information pertaining to a customer or subscriber within such provider’s possession, custody, or control, regardless of whether such communication, record, or other information is located within or outside of the United States.’’.

So, all those search websites that promise not to track you have to now maintain "any record or other information pertaining to you", in or out of the US. That is, your IP address and search records must now be kept by DuckDuckGo or StartPage? Seems so.

And Sec 4 allows your info to be sent to foreign governments and you can't sue the provider for giving it up in violation of your 4A rights. The last part of the bill has "MINIMIZATION PROCEDURES", i.e., unmasking the identify of the writer of possibly content, illegal or not. We know how well that worked during the closing months of Obama's administration when Susan Rice and James Comey unmasked Trump's private info in an attempt to get him impeached.

[dequire]

Thanks for the concise and thorough expanded explanation GG, Much appreciated.

[vinnywright]

take it back now ,,,,,,,,

VINNY

[Bings]

Always surprised people still use Skype.

[GreyGeek]

Always surprised people still use Skype.

IF they realized what “Legal Intercept” is and what MS does with it, and that MS just admitted that it can eavesdrop on “encrypted” conversations they’d drop it like a hot potato. But, ignorance is bliss ... until it bites them.