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The Swedish Kings of Cyberwar

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Re: The Swedish Kings of Cyberwar

#51

Post by dragonwriter »

berntb wrote: post #48
dragonwriter wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Check the democratic peace theory -- democracies don't fight wars with each others. The Democratic Peace theory has always been bunk: even when it was formulated, for any definition of democracy restrictive enough for the claim "Democracies don't fight wars with each other", the number of available democracy-democracy pairs is so small compared to thr number of pairs of countries that the expected number of wars be…

>> the number of available democracy-democracy pairs is so small compared to thr number of pairs of countries that the expected number of wars between them is, rounded to the nearest integer, zero. There are literally dozens of modern democracies that have been free since WWII, how can that be too few "pairs"? >> Certain, since the wars in the Balkans from the 1990s, the Democratic Peace theory is even less defensibl…

> There are literally dozens of modern democracies that have been free since WWII, how can that be too few "pairs"?

There's a little under 200 countries now. The number of democracies by any definition that leaves no inter-democracy wars is a small fraction of that (though, yes, in the dozens). The ratio of democracy-democracy dyads to total dyads is smaller (for reasons which should be mathematically obvious) than the ratio of democracies to countries.

> Uh, Soviet ended 1989. Then the Balkan got free -

Uh, Yugoslavia split from the Soviet bloc in 1948, and Tito died in 1980.

Re: The Swedish Kings of Cyberwar

#52

Post by eternalban »

croon wrote: post #3

Interesting read for a variety of reasons. As a countryman of Sweden, I think it's sad that we've been playing lapdog throughout history. Germany during WW2, and now the US. The article refers to much less publicized occurances, but there's also lesser stories (but important signaling) like the piratebay court cases farce. Is Russia up next as our masters, when they want to secure their fiber pipeline? It's in cases…

> As a countryman of Sweden, I think it's sad that we've been playing lapdog throughout history.

I wouldn't take it to heart. It's a matter of geography. You were caught between a rock and a hard place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Poltava

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_East_India_Company

Re: The Swedish Kings of Cyberwar

#53

Post by AndyMcConachie »

oskarth wrote: post #17
croon wrote: post #3

Interesting read for a variety of reasons. As a countryman of Sweden, I think it's sad that we've been playing lapdog throughout history. Germany during WW2, and now the US. The article refers to much less publicized occurances, but there's also lesser stories (but important signaling) like the piratebay court cases farce. Is Russia up next as our masters, when they want to secure their fiber pipeline? It's in cases…

As another Swede, 100% agree. For another example, look into how Sweden treated Raoul Wallenberg who courageously saved 100 000 Jews in Budapest during WW2. I can highly recommend this book: https://www.amazon.com/Wallenberg-Marton/dp/B005X8V19S/ Sweden is great in lots of ways, but that attitude in combination with Sweden's often holier-than-thou attitude towards other countries is really hypocritical. PS. As an asi…

Some quick Googling says that Raoul Wallenberg died at the hands of the NKVD and that Sweden had nothing to do with it. What exactly do you think the Swedish government did to Raoul Wallenberg? Where can I find more information on that?

Re: The Swedish Kings of Cyberwar

#54

Post by lern_too_spel »

lostlogin wrote: post #35
lern_too_spel wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much everybody in Silicon Valley knows how wrong Snowden was about PRISM. Unlike The Guardian, The New York Times interviewed actual engineers and got the story correct from the very beginning. Here is a competent explanation of how Snowden didn't understand that DITU is an FBI department and not a bulk collection system on internet companies' networks: https://medium.com/@alecmuffett/how-to-talk-about-prism-a…

What? That doesn't say PRISM doesn't exist it says it does and suggests how it might be used ("I imagine"). It says the info is collected.

In particular, the information is collected by the FBI and is not bulk collection of all their data but targeted Section 702 collection of certain users' data, as I said above.

Re: The Swedish Kings of Cyberwar

#55

Post by lern_too_spel »

jessaustin wrote: post #38
vkou wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why you're being downvoted, considering this one fact: PRISM was ran on a budget of $200,000/year. This may be enough money to put together and maintain a sad-looking web portal that lets you make requests for user data against Google, Apple, and Yahoo's legal compliance departments. This is by no means enough to do bulk data collection for billions of users. (That was the domain of the other hundr…

It's called the "black budget", and it's $50B/yr. Plenty of room there for PRISM. [EDIT:] Any "documentation" for that $200k "fact"? It smells strongly of an orifice, from which it perhaps was extracted?

The cost is $20 million per year. We know exactly what PRISM is and exactly how much it costs. The slides tell us: https://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/nov/01/pr.... The engineers who worked on the integration with the FBI have also told many of us who work in the Valley, and The New York Times had competent enough editorial staff to get the story right while The Guardian continued to spew nonsense: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/technology/tech-compani....

In particular, we know that PRISM isn't "bulk data collection" as this article wrongly states.

Re: The Swedish Kings of Cyberwar

#56

Post by sslalready »

FRA made a deal with an entity called Krigsarkivet, a Swedish national archive for military history, to store data they collect in and around Sweden. For like, future research. Naturally they couldn't store this data within the Krigsarkivet's existing archives, so K had to open an archive on FRA's premises. Because this was for future research, the deal was that they were, you know, just to store the data and be done with it. Of course, that's not what happened at all. Instead, they're actively maintaining the archive, meaning that they're effectively using the "for future research" K archive as their own XKeyScore.

Re: The Swedish Kings of Cyberwar

#57

Post by dromen »

nugator wrote: post #42
robert_foss wrote: post #21

I find the pressure Sweden was exposed to by the US to ram this legislation through making us literally spy on our neighbors appalling. Sweden was at the time threatened with being delisted from a US preferential trade list if it did not comply. As a result of bowing down to the US, Sweden is now complicit in the crimes of the US. The global spying, the drone killings it leads to, the increased pressure Russia finds…

"... the increased pressure Russia finds itself under (and has to act out against)." Sounds a bit biased to my Swedish ears.

How is that biased?

Russia is getting tonnes of flak for basically doing some hacking. They're just a useful distraction from the massive civil rights violations by the US government now people are starting to become less amenable to the "AGAINST TERRORISM!!!" theme.

Re: The Swedish Kings of Cyberwar

#58

Post by jacobush »

henrikschroder wrote: post #45
berntb wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding Sweden and WW II: If Sweden shouldn't have been a "lapdog" -- which side of the war should it have joined? With Norway or with Finland? Not a simple choice, neither now nor at the time. And regarding USA today: Check the democratic peace theory -- democracies don't fight wars with each others. (Not even USA. :-) ) So it is arguably in the Swedish interest to help all democracies be as strong and informed as…

Sweden always claims to be neutral, but the open secret is that Sweden is protected by NATO in case "someone" = Russia invades. Such protection costs, but since it's a secret, there can be no public debate about the price and if it's worth it. So each elected government gets to negotiate the protection payment themselves, and the whole reason for the FRA law was to legally increase and secure the amount of sigint tha…

And tap fiber cables was cheap vs other favours we might have made to the US, so was probably deemed cost effective.

Re: The Swedish Kings of Cyberwar

#59

Post by ggame »

berntb wrote: post #46
finid wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of Iraq, I wouldn't call it democracy. We just took a secular state and made it an Islamic state - a very unstable one at that. Did we stop there? No! We did the same to Libya. And if not for Russia, we'd have completed a trifecta in Syria.

A revolution is scary, the dice are thrown in the air and you have no clue how they fall. It didn't go well in Libya, so far. But mainly Putin and his employees seem to think that it was bad to support an uprising to get rid of the previous junta in Libya (and they are probably mostly upset because Gadaffi was a good customer). And about Syria -- how many tens of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of civilians have t…

Revolutions are reasonably predictable, after all, history rhymes.

From my point of view I would agree that Libya was better off with Gaddafi. Gaddafi was negotiating a surrender with free elections but Hillary Clinton blocked it because she wanted him dead and needed to boost her foreign policy resume. She then bragged about it afterwards. Libya is unlikely to recover in a meaningful way for the duration of the modern islamic uprising - which will be a very long time.

Syria was, is, going to be a massacre either way. We are much much better off to have Assad winning. Obama's support of Al Nusra / ISIS in their fight against Syria / Russia resulted in much greater destruction, suffering and loss of life that what would have happened without Obamas help.

Why the US is pushing so hard for an economic war / proxy war / shooting war with Russia is pretty complex and out of scope for this response. But as Noam Chomsky would say; modern states maintain power either by force or by propaganda. As a democracy we get the propaganda.

To round it out; Iraq was created by the British with the intent of making an easy to control failed state. Hence why their borders make no sense. The British have a long tradition of this and are very good at it. The fact that Iraq failed and keeps failing should be of no surprise to anyone.

Re: The Swedish Kings of Cyberwar

#60

Post by berntb »

dragonwriter wrote: post #51
berntb wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> the number of available democracy-democracy pairs is so small compared to thr number of pairs of countries that the expected number of wars between them is, rounded to the nearest integer, zero. There are literally dozens of modern democracies that have been free since WWII, how can that be too few "pairs"? >> Certain, since the wars in the Balkans from the 1990s, the Democratic Peace theory is even less defensibl…

> There are literally dozens of modern democracies that have been free since WWII, how can that be too few "pairs"? There's a little under 200 countries now. The number of democracies by any definition that leaves no inter-democracy wars is a small fraction of that (though, yes, in the dozens). The ratio of democracy-democracy dyads to total dyads is smaller (for reasons which should be mathematically obvious) than t…

AGAIN: You claim that Yugoslavia was democratic before the civil war, since you claim that exact Balkan war (?) is a counterexample to the claim that democracies don't wage war.

How many free elections did they have? :-) How many free transfers of power did they have? :-)

(The next point here is that the democratic peace theory didn't say anything about civil wars?)

EDIT: I am NOT going to comment on Dragonwriter's answer to this and for a THIRD TIME ask for references about how Yugoslavia and Serbia are stable democracies that have been doing transfer of power after free elections AT THAT TIME PERIOD. :-( I am disappointed over a 30+K karma account for this bullshit.

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