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Thiel Urges U.S. Probe of Google's 'Seemingly Treasonous' Acts

bloomberg.com

101–110 of 114 posts

Re: Thiel Urges U.S. Probe of Google's 'Seemingly Treasonous' Acts

#101

Anyone who thinks Google executives are exfiltrating core IP to China clearly hasn't ever used Baidu, the leading Chinese search engine that makes Bing look good.

Microsoft and Apple do business in China, yet somehow it's Google that's apparently working with the Chinese. These people are honestly out of their mind.

To further your point, Apple doesn't just do business in China, they manufacture in China.

Re: Thiel Urges U.S. Probe of Google's 'Seemingly Treasonous' Acts

#102
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not OP, but I'm guessing in the same sense that communist activists used to (still are?) be considered treasonous. Like any active promotion and support against a free democracy and towards another means of organizing society, so fascism, dictatorship, feudal, communist, etc., could be seen as treasonous in a way.

I see, I was not aware that Thiel was "active promotion and support against a free democracy and towards another means of organizing society" - if that is the case then I guess it would make sense to say he is treasonous. Seems like that would be a relevant tidbit of information to include in the article.

Oh, I don't know if Thiel is or isn't. But the parent comment implied that he had Fascistic rhetoric. I don't really follow Thiel, so I can't confirm or deny if he's rhetoric is fascistic or not. If it were though, with his level of power and influence, it could be seen as a challenge to the US democracy.

Edit: After doing some quick research, there definitely seem to be evidence of support and active involvement in anti-democratic circles. Now to what extent I can't say. It is also unclear if it is intentional, as in, he could be accidentally promoting and contributing to those circles. But I found sections describing his beliefs that women suffrage was a mistake (because they tend to vote against his agenda), that monarchies aren't so bad and startups are a form of them, that democracy prevents libertarianism and are thus incompatible etc. Now, those could all be misquoted or out of context ofcourse. Even then though, he seems pretty open about the fact that he is not in agreement with the current democratic system and wishes to change it. It all feels a bit my way or the highway. Like since he hasn't been able to have people democratically agree with him and pass the laws and rules which he believes in, he started to look for other alternative means in order to achieve putting those laws and rules in place, which are anti-democratic and tend towards forceful.

Re: Thiel Urges U.S. Probe of Google's 'Seemingly Treasonous' Acts

#103
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good argument could be that the NSA is violating the intent of Congress by weakening encryption standards which are essential to online commerce. Could even be extended to authentication standards which there can be no legal restriction on.

Wouldn't this be "weak encryption is used for offensive purposes as well"?

No, this would be [insult to the NSA] at the idea of packet injection by controlling all the major backbones, and endorsing unauthenticated protocols.

The DoD’s faith in PKI is so great that many public facing DoD websites are signed by the DoD root CA.

Re: Thiel Urges U.S. Probe of Google's 'Seemingly Treasonous' Acts

#104
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have reason to disagree with any of the facts he presented?

You can't just throw around the word treason. More than Google Fb should be investigated.

I agree with both statements. But apparently you have no quarrel with the facts he presented.

Re: Thiel Urges U.S. Probe of Google's 'Seemingly Treasonous' Acts

#105
post #75
post #60

Bloomberg goes a long way to avoid saying that Thiel was speaking at the National Conservatism Conference , a conference with a very biased audience in mind. Just look at the other speech titles like "The Nationalist Awakening". Can this be taken as anything but pure propaganda?

Do you have reason to disagree with any of the facts he presented?

I suspect so-called facts when the framing is bonkers. The assumption that I'm a nationalist would be false, therefore the "facts" aren't really facts.

Re: Thiel Urges U.S. Probe of Google's 'Seemingly Treasonous' Acts

#106
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peter Theil's actions are pretty questionable without your incredible attempts to paint gawker as anything besides a trashy, disingenuous tabloid. I've heard other parts of the company were decent but their bread and butter was the trashy stuff. He can still be wrong to have funded their destruction even if they suck too.

And what about Palantir and its spy software ? Guy also supported Trump. Seems to be nothing but cashing in on the nationalism wave.

Spy software? You should actually go to their website and inform yourself of their primary software offerings.

Re: Thiel Urges U.S. Probe of Google's 'Seemingly Treasonous' Acts

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong encryption is used for offensive measures as well.

How do you mean? Isn't encryption essentially building a wall around your data - about as defensive as it gets? Is your argument essentially "invaders can carry shields, therefore shields are a tool of attack"?

Is a cloaking device a tool of attack?

Re: Thiel Urges U.S. Probe of Google's 'Seemingly Treasonous' Acts

#108
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you mean? Isn't encryption essentially building a wall around your data - about as defensive as it gets? Is your argument essentially "invaders can carry shields, therefore shields are a tool of attack"?

I’m not the person you asked, but I think they’re referring to ransomware

Thanks, that example makes sense to me, hadn't thought of that!

Re: Thiel Urges U.S. Probe of Google's 'Seemingly Treasonous' Acts

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It had an exploitable end point that wasn’t exploited and google shut down G+ rather then let it become exploited.

My theory is that it was less embarrassing than saying they failed so spectacularly. A shame really.

I suspect that fixing the bug would have cost more then G+ was making them. Which is a pity because the world needed a nonfacebook social media platform.
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