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Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

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Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#201

Post by bsimpson »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #187
empath75 wrote: post #138

I think the administration badly, badly mishandled Snowden and Assange, and allowed Russia to coopt them by isolating and threatening them. If they had treated them as whistleblowers and journalists (even if they had nefarious motivations), they could have kept them in "the west" instead of driving them into the arms of Russia. I don't believe that Assange was a Russian agent at the beginning but he was surely one by…

Yeah it would have been an opportunity for Obama to shine but alas he didn't. Just the mediocre, status quo President that we elected. In retrospect, I'll take him any time over our current Mango Mussolini.

People spend so much time patting themselves on the back for electing the First Black President - who was witty, looked leader-ly on TV, and wore a (D) behind his name - that they totally let him off the hook for so many abhorrent policies, like mass surveillance, drone assassinations, and the way he mistreated the biggest whistleblower of our time.

It's so disappointing how few people seem to have complex thoughts about our political system/politicians, and it shows in the ever-decreasing quality of those things as time advances. Bandwagons are dangerous, and it seems we only have bandwagons left.

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#202

Post by INTPenis »

stef25 wrote: post #63

Before his story broke there was an AMA on Reddit about govt surveillance, I'm 90% this was Snowden. Does anyone else remember this? The person spoke of these things happening in ways we "couldn't imagine". People were guessing at what he meant and his responses were mostly "it's much worse". One redditor posted some highly technical speculations to which the author responded "you're getting close". Reddit's search i…

Funny enough Google has great tools for searching within that time period. Snowden broke around Q1 2013 right? So I tried searching from Q4 2012 to Q1 2014 and the first thing that came up on government surveillance was actually this[1].

Which I assume is not what you meant but it's pretty early in the timeline of Snowden's revelations.

Setting the timeline to 2012-01-01 - 2013-07-03 is just before Greenwald broke Snowden's story and those results are very different.

Interspersed are results that were likely updated in Google's index after july 3rd so there are some false positives so to speak.

You'd have to browse more of those results. I've only got 3 pages in.[2]

Edit: Actually this IAmA from Cory Doctorow could be it.[3] He's definitely in the know about what the government is capable of and speaking from that experience. Which pretty much predicts Snowden's revelations.

Of course I remember when AT&T was implicated in mass surveillance by a former employee back around 2004, that story just got lost in the ether.

1. https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2wwdep/we_are_edward_...

2. https://www.google.com/search?q=site:reddit.com+%22IAmA%22+g...

3. https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/11bm9i/iam_cory_docto...

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#203

Post by mlyle »

kareemm wrote: post #113
ptero wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key difference is that you can decide not to buy corporate products you do not want, but have to comply with the laws. I am a lot less concerned about stupid things done by a majority for convenience (and I can choose whether to do participate or not) than about the law that forces the same stupidity down my throat. My 2c.

The problem is that you can't always opt out of someone else's decisions. Example: Doorbell Cams taking video of you walking by, uploading it to a corporate database, identifying you using photo recognition algorithms and your location using the home's address, and using that information to sell you things.

That's the thing.

All of our legal precedent about privacy, law enforcement surveillance, commercial data gathering, etc, really dates to the 1800's and early 1900's when things were fundamentally different. There is a qualitative difference when information can be automatically processed in aggregate.

I don't really care about individual corporate -- or LE -- surveillance actors if the data is partitioned over many and requires real subpoena power or active, limited sharing. If there's thousands of cameras owned by homes and businesses in my town, and everyone uses the pictures on their own for their own purposes, and law enforcement occasionally asks for and/or subpoenas the data when it'd be particularly useful and there's at least some suspicion-- that's great.

On the other hand, when we automatically read license plates and form a big database about where everyone goes every day, that's not so great. When individuals are all subject to mass-scale surveillance that we use with data processing and machine learning to manipulate those people-- that's not so great either.

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#204

Post by EpicEng »

not_a_cop75 wrote: post #191
EpicEng wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a difference without a distinction, and I'm not even sure it's correct. If he's acting in the interest of Russia, he's a Russian agent.

Going by that standard, 95% of all Russian peasant farmers are "Russian Agents" and that's pure ridiculousness from any angle.

>Going by that standard, 95% of all Russian peasant farmers are "Russian Agents" and that's pure ridiculousness from any angle.

Oh please, you're the one being ridiculous. I think we all know there's a line between farming for the good of civilization and actively working to push an agenda. C'mon.

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#205

Post by jonnybgood »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #168
outside1234 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are kidding right? The whole cold war?

Unfounded claims, calling someone incredibly uninformed and ignorant, with zero evidence to back up these admonitions, shouldn't be posted here. If you have a claim to post, back it up with some kind of evidence or data. No one should have to be called "kidding" when they call out a lack of any kind of data.

The person you’re responding to didn’t call anyone anything. Be sure to check usernames.

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#206

Post by wallace_f »

slg wrote: post #176
empath75 wrote: post #138

I think the administration badly, badly mishandled Snowden and Assange, and allowed Russia to coopt them by isolating and threatening them. If they had treated them as whistleblowers and journalists (even if they had nefarious motivations), they could have kept them in "the west" instead of driving them into the arms of Russia. I don't believe that Assange was a Russian agent at the beginning but he was surely one by…

I think you do Snowden a disservice when you lump him in with Assange. Snowden you can easily argue is a whisleblower. You can't argue that with Assange since he doesn't have first hand knowledge of what he is leaking and instead actively recruits people to feed him information to leak. He also seemingly encourages people to commit crimes to get more information for him. Snowden did that all himself. In addition, Ass…

You are right that Snowden deserves special recognition, but not at the expense of Assange.

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#207

Post by AndrewBissell »

qroshan wrote: post #194
eeZah7Ux wrote: post #89

We were called "paranoid lunatics" even when we started speaking about ECHELON in the '90ies. Same with the clipper chip. Same with TPM/DRM/ME. Same with Internet centralization. It's worth asking why the general public keeps trusting authorities and distrusts techies, even those among us with a career in security.

I'll trust techies the day they actually are in the job of protecting people and have to deal with real danger of bad actors continuously trying to blow up Western democracies. It's funny the tech/security/sysadmin guys complain that their work is appreciated only when things go wrong, but fail to give the same benefit of the doubt for US law and order.

The FBI sat on incriminating info about Epstein for years and even still has yet to raid his New Mexico ranch for evidence. Given that he had damaging info on many people with their hands directly on the levers of power in "Western democracies" you'll have to excuse my skepticism that these agencies are acting in the interest of their common people.

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#208

Post by [deleted] »

option wrote: post #199
MiroF wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the contrary, I think the fact that you think both Snowden and Assange are Russian agents demonstrates that the administrations response was actually quite effective.

this. the public in US is so easily brainwashed it is actually very scary. Having lived in an oppressive state USSR and now in USA I find too many alarming similarities :(

[deleted]

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#209

Post by mengibar10 »

I wonder what if he would mention anything about 5G in the book. As far as I understand, all the fuss US making against Huawei is actually due to its (future) crippling of its eavesdropping capability. Not that 5G is a panacea for that but Huawei is augmenting their equipments against such attacks, and they will be the main supplier.

Re: Edward Snowden: Permanent Record

#210

Post by madengr »

slg wrote: post #176
empath75 wrote: post #138

I think the administration badly, badly mishandled Snowden and Assange, and allowed Russia to coopt them by isolating and threatening them. If they had treated them as whistleblowers and journalists (even if they had nefarious motivations), they could have kept them in "the west" instead of driving them into the arms of Russia. I don't believe that Assange was a Russian agent at the beginning but he was surely one by…

I think you do Snowden a disservice when you lump him in with Assange. Snowden you can easily argue is a whisleblower. You can't argue that with Assange since he doesn't have first hand knowledge of what he is leaking and instead actively recruits people to feed him information to leak. He also seemingly encourages people to commit crimes to get more information for him. Snowden did that all himself. In addition, Ass…

Snowden also leaked everything he had. It certainly was not targeted.
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