81–90 of 99 posts
If a trial I was on a jury for involved the CIA, I'd just find innocent. Evidence is easy to fabricate with the time and expertise and that's a major part of what they do. Digital evidence is the flimsest kind generally and the easiest to fake...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, the CIA doesn’t need to seek out such content. There is a giant repository of it at FBI headquarters, used to create the hash database that they scan people’s computers with in order to convict them. This database is decades old. The government has people clearly capable of torturing actual living children in Guantanamo Bay, so I doubt they will have trouble finding someone capable of planting a picture t…
>To be fair, the CIA doesn’t need to seek out such content. There is a giant repository of it at FBI headquarters, used to create the hash database that they scan people’s computers with in order to convict them. Could you show how you know they're still storing the photos, and not just the hashes? >The government has people clearly capable of torturing actual living children in Guantanamo Bay, so I doubt they will h…
I think Nazi Germany should have been enough proof that humans are perfectly happy to do anything to support their side. Planting CP to target political prisoners is nothing compared to what the Nazis and various other regimes have done. What makes you think the humans in this place are any different?
If a trial I was on a jury for involved the CIA, I'd just find innocent. Evidence is easy to fabricate with the time and expertise and that's a major part of what they do. Digital evidence is the flimsest kind generally and the easiest to fake...
Then they would boot you off the jury and replace you with someone else
Basically, yeah, if you admit to the attorneys at the beginning (during "jury selection") that you'd do this, then yes, they'd use this to make sure you don't get on the jury, because you're obviously biased.
But if you lie or keep your mouth shut and get on the jury, and then during deliberations you bring this up only among other jury members that you don't believe anything the CIA says, I don't see how they can boot you from the jury at that point. Most likely, it would result in a mistrial due to hung jury.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get what you're saying, but there is a difference between discussing conspiracies that we know the CIA participated in, such as the overthrow of various governments, vs. theorizing about things such as framing someone with child porn. Both actions meet the definition of conspiracy, but we can discuss the facts of CIA conspiracies to overthrow governments without theorizing- the historians that wrote books about thi…
We can also discuss the trustworthiness of the CIA when deciding whether to believe anything they claim to be true. They have the power to do that sort of thing. They would have a clear motive to do it. It’s not any different from the regular business-as-usual sort of thing they get up to. What reason would I have trust this?
You are perfectly normal to be suspicious of the actions of the CIA, and some of the theories are likely to be true, but that was not the point I was making.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To contemplate the actions of the CIA is to be a "conspiracy theorist". What does the CIA do all day, every day, besides "conspire"?
To speak of conveniences and "cui bono?" instead of disinterested analysis of the evidence is to be a conspiracy theorist. Of course they conspire all day, because any covert action can be called a conspiracy. It doesn't necessarily lead one to think they're conspiracies in the sense of planting child pornography on a US citizen suspect's computer. One can't rule anything out when you're dealing with intelligence age…
Not the CIA, but should be close enough.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is “cui bono” at odds with a disinterested analysis of the evidence?
Not at all, but for situations like these, it seems like a very high percentage of the time, it stops at "cui bono" and skips the analysis part.
If a trial I was on a jury for involved the CIA, I'd just find innocent. Evidence is easy to fabricate with the time and expertise and that's a major part of what they do. Digital evidence is the flimsest kind generally and the easiest to fake...
Then they would boot you off the jury and replace you with someone else
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>To be fair, the CIA doesn’t need to seek out such content. There is a giant repository of it at FBI headquarters, used to create the hash database that they scan people’s computers with in order to convict them. Could you show how you know they're still storing the photos, and not just the hashes? >The government has people clearly capable of torturing actual living children in Guantanamo Bay, so I doubt they will h…
>I think there are millions of people who wouldn't lose a wink of sleep over assassinating someone in cold blood, but wouldn't be able to live with themselves if forced to acquire and plant images and videos of children being raped so that a political prisoner could be falsely convicted. I think Nazi Germany should have been enough proof that humans are perfectly happy to do anything to support their side. Planting C…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, because some fallout is much worse than others, and some breaches of due process are much worse than others. I could list things that I consider just as bad or worse, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they will do literally anything and everything imaginable to achieve their objectives, especially when many decades have passed since many of these things. Also, is torturing any better if the people are guilt…
I don’t understand your reasoning. It seems like either astonishing naivety or arguing in bad faith... Do you really believe that a huge organisation that has plenty of people that are fine with illegally assassinating people, kidnapping people and torturing them, lying to Congress, etc. would have any moral issue with planting some images on a suspect’s hard drive? These are very much “ends justify the means” kinds…
At an organizational level? Yes, absolutely. I could believe a few people there taking such an action independently, but I believe it's a lot less likely the organization itself would approve it. Possible, but unlikely.
Either way, even if I thought they would have absolutely no qualms about doing it, there are still plenty of reasons not to do it (optics, etc.). And even if that weren't an issue, the onus is still on the accuser to produce at least some evidence.
>There is plenty of precedent too. One of the largest child abuse web sites on the dark web was confiscated by Australian police and then they continued to run it for another year [1]. But not only that, they did indeed post additional content (that they had confiscated elsewhere I assume) to keep the site’s users believing it was running as normal!
This is very questionable, but still a different thing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not at all, but for situations like these, it seems like a very high percentage of the time, it stops at "cui bono" and skips the analysis part.
Actually, stopping at "cui bono" would be a great thing. The common pathology is that people start with the legitimate idea of who has benefited, get hung up on unsupported specifics, and end up creating straw men that then get used to discourage talking about the obvious incentives.