NSA Owns Everything (2015)

How close is difference between theory and conspiracy, if the main actor does not want you to know something?

One of the strategies can be to completely poison information, as you said "label". In that way it would be hard to distinguish between "true" and "untrue", and in that way basically force researchers to even approaching subject. In that way only person from inside could uncover truth... I guess ...

And this is same problem like with corrupt government, if they hold all the keys it is very hard to overthrow dictator, as it is very hard for truth to surface out.

There is absolutely no proof for that. No one found that chip.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-supermicro-chips/super-mi...

And:

Apple, Amazon and U.S. and U.K. officials have all said they have no knowledge of any hardware attacks via Super Micro

> Your individualism leads not to "freedom" but to accountants who help companies dodge (not avoid) tax, to politicians who don't speak up because it will damage their career, to bankers who extend credit when they know it's unsustainable in pursuit of their bonus, to news anchors who hold their tongue to avoid upsetting sponsors, on and on.

Every one of your complaints is a criticism of institutional incentives and publicly traded corporations rather than individualism.

There is no journalist alive who prefers, as an individual, to hold their tongue to avoid antagonizing sponsors. The possibility of doing otherwise was only ever enabled by the members of the local community who had enough resources to not have to care about losing sponsors by doing the right thing, and who were then willing to stand behind the journalists as the owners of the media company.

Today the companies are publicly traded, and doing that costs the shareholders money (or the parties votes, for political institutions), so anybody who does it is replaced by someone who doesn't. That is what's wrong. But that, ironically, is the consequence of a form of collective ownership. It's the principal-agent problem, where the shareholders as people don't actually want that but the institution is configured to prioritize making more money and you, as the owner of a retirement account which is the owner of an index fund which is the owner of a corporation, are not actually consulted on the decisions being made in your name.

Much of this would be solved if we had fewer layers of indirection between the principals and the agents, i.e. more smaller companies rather than fewer larger ones, or government which is more local and less central, so that the stakeholders who never wanted any of this to begin with are closer to the decisions that are being made in ways they don't prefer and have a better chance of causing them to be made in a different way. That's more of an increase in individualism than anything, though.

My background is a technologist who observed the Snowden story. I followed some of the details and was genuinely shocked at the revelations therein. I was looking at HN for more info at the time. But I also followed main stream media. The gulf between the technical details that were reported on HN and mainstream news sites was so large, it was clear to me that a damage limitation exercise was being undertaken. That in itself raised loads more questions for me.

Here's a link to a video on Snowden's disappearing glasses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QqxLalvh-4

Cutting to the chase, if it is as I suggest it is - that most media is there as part of the governance structure to beam a particular type of messaging to us - you then have a few options.

You can refuse what I say, and accept the media as is presented. This is surely the path of least resistance.

If you care about the truth, you can look more deeply and research all ideas before accepting them as true. Just because you see something on TV does not make it true. My thesis is that news media is just production of a show, like a film or cartoon. You don't trust films or cartoons - so don't trust the news. Here's a fun example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cDYKXMkSRs - check the folder change colour live on the news! Is it fair enough to manipulate what we see on account of a "green" budget?

My bottom line nowadays, philosophically speaking, is that I am only prepared to accept as true that which I can confirm for myself via my own experience. This may sound a weak position, and it is perhaps. But I stand on solid ground as I am personally able to verify whatever I claim.

With regards to events that are presented in the media, I take an aggressive deconstructive position, and ask questions such as: have I been provided evidence, am I being emotionally manipulated, is the story coherent, etc. I find my questioning frequently provides evidence that the story is not coherent, and can be dismissed. That again may sound weak, but the thing with truth is that it is resilient and not incoherent - when you are presented with an incoherent story then you can dismiss and ignore _all_ of it.

So, my default position with media stories is to autohoax them and to lend far greater weight to personal experience.

> These reasons are also why the oligarchs are after control of the internet. As a withering but still standing bastion of anarchistic freedom of speech, it is their primary threat right now.

"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."

- Commissioner Pravin Lal, Peacekeeping Forces (Alpha Centauri, 1999)