NSA Owns Everything (2015) • Hacker News Board

Re: NSA Owns Everything (2015)

#161

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 2:50 PM UTC

ynniv wrote: post #146

jacquesm wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to pick nits at least use the full definition. For a shorthand it was accurate enough, and in popular usage the assumption is not that it is incorrect but that the facts as known do not support the outrageous claims made by the believers in these theories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory#Etymology_an... Examples such as the Climate Change hoax, Moon Landing hoax, COVID-19 hoax, New Wor…

The problem is that the term is a combination of name calling and appeal to authority used to quickly discredit a theory, and has been applied to significant minority theories that have turned out to be true. It’s more work but better form to avoid the term and confront fringe theories with solid argumentation.

"fringe theories" are bullet proof against solid argumentation. The counter argument is: you are a paid shill of - insert boogeyman shorthand here.

If fringe theories would be susceptible to reason then the bulk of them wouldn't exist and the remainder would not be classified as a belief system but just another theory waiting for confirmation or rebuttal.

Re: NSA Owns Everything (2015)

#162

Post by ciarannolan » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 2:55 PM UTC

raxxorrax wrote: post #70

azinman2 wrote: post #12

Yet somehow Russian / China are hacking the US left and right. If the NSA is so good, then at some point dont they have the responsibility to actively defend?

I am still amazed how many people believed the Russian election manipulation story without any evidence. Especially large portions of the press should stand ashamed in a really, really dark corner. In hindsight I believe the people selling penis enlargement were correct about the reasoning abilities of humanity...

I am still amazed how many people go around saying that there isn't "any evidence" that Russia actively interfered in the 2016 US election.

We both have access to Wikipedia, right? Or is all that Fake News too?

Re: NSA Owns Everything (2015)

#163

Post by arminiusreturns » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 2:57 PM UTC

minerjoe wrote: post #151

arminiusreturns wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>why is it still ridiculed to say it might be happening? This thread is full of opportunities for me to contribute, but this is the comment that is the most important. I've spent a long time sifting through conspiracy theories, and I came to a conclusion at one point that the most important thing in the world the oligarchs and TPTB have at their disposal is control and influence of various degrees on the mass media i…

I'd be interested in you going specific, even if in private. Good to have critical thinking researchers out there.

I'm increasingly close to doing an AMA where I just let HN ask me any conspiracy related question right before I burn this account... I figure it would get lost in the sauce though...

Any specifics you are most curious about?

Re: NSA Owns Everything (2015)

#164

Post by JoelMcCracken » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 2:58 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #127

smolder wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A conspiracy theory is just a theory that a conspiracy has happened. In popular usage there's an assumption that it's incorrect, but that's not part of the definition of conspiracy theory.

If you're going to pick nits at least use the full definition. For a shorthand it was accurate enough, and in popular usage the assumption is not that it is incorrect but that the facts as known do not support the outrageous claims made by the believers in these theories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory#Etymology_an... Examples such as the Climate Change hoax, Moon Landing hoax, COVID-19 hoax, New Wor…

I think there are two forms popularly used. One is to refer to what might be thought of paranoid, irrational beliefs. Another is that there is a theory about a conspiracy.

The issue is that by not acknowledging that there are two separate uses, people end up lumping any theory about a conspiracy into "conspiracy theory".

For example, I remember reading a comment on HN around 2010 from someone who worked at an internet backbone. They said that there was some secret fiber cables, nobody knew what they were for, but they were not allowed to touch them. However they were the same size/caliber as the other cables that went to the next backbone, so the reasonable conclusion was that basically all traffic that went out of one pipe went out the other one too. And it was some kind of US government thing.

That, plus other things I've seen over the years, convinced me that the US had a massive domestic spying operation, like the NSA. There were news articles about the NSA building massive new facilities post 9/11 -- what would the point be of them? Turns out I was right, thanks to the Snoweden revelations, and honestly I didn't understand why they were such a big deal. OK, it was hard evidence, but it blew my mind that people were sooo surprised that it existed. Sometimes, occam's razor suggests a conspiracy.

This is a far-cry from the theory that the world is ruled by lizard people.

Re: NSA Owns Everything (2015)

#165

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 2:58 PM UTC

NiceWayToDoIT wrote: post #152

jacquesm wrote: post #104

The difference between a theory, a conspiracy theory and the truth are best described by varying levels of evidence. A theory is not currently accepted as the truth, but it might be the truth. A conspiracy theory is something that has been proven to be untrue, but people still believe it and pass it on. The truth is the internally consistent and fact supported state of the world as it was and as it is. There were man…

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…

One way a wannabe dictator could do this is to make it seem as though all sources of news should be distrusted.

Re: NSA Owns Everything (2015)

#166

Post by ciarannolan » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 2:59 PM UTC

panny wrote: post #35

j88439h84 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide some evidence for these claims?

Snowden docs have been available for years. ShadowBrokers. Just this week a 20GB dump of private Intel source was dumped with backdoors included. It is beyond a reasonable doubt that x86 hardware has NSA backdoors in it. You're now sitting on a time bomb. Remember when the NSA tools were dumped with their secret Windows exploits? WannaCry? North Korea picked that up and launched ransomware attacks. That's the sort of…

> Just this week a 20GB dump of private Intel source was dumped with backdoors included.

> That's the sort of thing that's going to happen again with the newly published Intel backdoors.

This is not even remotely true. You have to read more than just the headlines.

> Anyone on WiFi AC or up are backdoored right now by NSA. All of them are compromised, no doubt in my mind. All the LTE. All the x86 hardware on the market. All of it.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Please provide some.

Re: NSA Owns Everything (2015)

#167

Post by jitteriest » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 3:01 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #41

dleslie wrote: post #5

The basic premise is false. > "Why did we never see it coming?" Many people saw it coming. I was warning about the possibility of dragnet surveillance, the existence of ECHELON, the use of the American security apparatus to steal trade secrets, the surveillance of non-American politicians, et al... For many, many years before Snowden. And I'm just some rando on the internet who follows the mainstream news! We were ca…

> We were called Conspiracy Theorists ... It was a theory that there was a conspiracy. The issue is that people dismiss conspiracy theories out of hand - even when the theory is backed by means, motive and incentives. "This power is being used to influence the political process in the US" is still a conspiracy theory and will likely turn out to be true as well one day - because again the people involved have means, m…

Conspiracy theory is just a buzzword to stop thought. "That doesn't need to be discussed or disproved because it is a conspiracy theory."

Re: NSA Owns Everything (2015)

#168

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 3:03 PM UTC

JoelMcCracken wrote: post #164

jacquesm wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to pick nits at least use the full definition. For a shorthand it was accurate enough, and in popular usage the assumption is not that it is incorrect but that the facts as known do not support the outrageous claims made by the believers in these theories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory#Etymology_an... Examples such as the Climate Change hoax, Moon Landing hoax, COVID-19 hoax, New Wor…

I think there are two forms popularly used. One is to refer to what might be thought of paranoid, irrational beliefs. Another is that there is a theory about a conspiracy. The issue is that by not acknowledging that there are two separate uses, people end up lumping any theory about a conspiracy into "conspiracy theory". For example, I remember reading a comment on HN around 2010 from someone who worked at an interne…

Spot on. So, the one was a theory, the world being ruled by Lizard people is a conspiracy theory.

This list:

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

Does not include anything even remotely like 'The NSA is listening in on all of us'. At present it is not even a theory, it is established fact but at no point in the past would I have put that on the same level of the items on that list.

The paranoid irrational beliefs one is the one that I think best covers the payload. The second one is only interesting from a pedantic/academic point of view.

Re: NSA Owns Everything (2015)

#169

Post by minerjoe » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 3:05 PM UTC

arminiusreturns wrote: post #163

minerjoe wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be interested in you going specific, even if in private. Good to have critical thinking researchers out there.

I'm increasingly close to doing an AMA where I just let HN ask me any conspiracy related question right before I burn this account... I figure it would get lost in the sauce though... Any specifics you are most curious about?

I'd hope HN wouldn't clean it out...

How dire? Where to look? Timeline?

I wish there was a wiki build on a trust network where I could control the weights.

Re: NSA Owns Everything (2015)

#170

Post by BickNowstrom » Thu, Aug 13, 2020, 3:06 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #104

The difference between a theory, a conspiracy theory and the truth are best described by varying levels of evidence. A theory is not currently accepted as the truth, but it might be the truth. A conspiracy theory is something that has been proven to be untrue, but people still believe it and pass it on. The truth is the internally consistent and fact supported state of the world as it was and as it is. There were man…

Snowden was even willing to burn his future career, as he took a job with Booz Allen Hamilton with the sole purpose of leaking as much information as he could get his hands on.

As an admin at BAH he was using his colleagues' passwords for discovery. He was willing to burn their careers to hack access to more leaks.

So much leaks that he could not vet these all. This was no Ellsberg tasked with copying some confidential papers and reading lies in them. It was wholesale collection of all Snowden could get his hands on.

Then, instead of making his point with his own whistleblower findings, he went to journalists and handed them over all the documents, instantly making them available to intelligence agencies all over the world, burning all NSA/CIA analysts with records in the dump (for instance, everyone who contributed to Intellipedia, which had zero reason to be in a dump meant for whistleblower purposes).

Then instead of facing justice (and there are whistleblower protections for doing the right thing), he cooperated with Wikileaks and fled to China and Russia, causing a permanent PR disaster for US intelligence with his new public speakings, book deals, and social media influencing career.

The reason Snowden's leaks got a lot of attention is that they "proved" (we never got confirmation that they were real) that data on Americans is being collected. We already knew, by law, that the Americans are allowed to fully spy on European civilians. That's how they are able to warn on impending terrorist attacks and improve their buy-in with European countries leadership (or how they are able to perfectly copy Germany-invented motors or Belgium-invented speech-to-text technology before these countries are even building it, because a strong US economy is a matter of national security).