Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

covertactionmagazine.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 510 posts

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#441

Post by mandmandam »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #416
mandmandam wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Media megacorporations won't die on their own. As much money as they lose; they make enough returns for their owners in indirect ways to be worth the investment. Murdoch and Turner are many things, but poor isn't one of them. Btw, did anyone else find it disturbing how "do your own research" became a trigger phrase that allows a rather large group of people to discount anything and everything you said? And at the sam…

trusting science / expertise has always been a turn-off for a certain portion of people with some sort of inferiority or persecution complex or oppositional defiant disorder unfortunately some politicians seek to gain power by appealing to this

Sure, that's a hallowed tradition in America.

And at the same time, blindly trusting institutions and their dogma has long been a turn-on for people with a superiority complex, or those content with the status quo.

Each cheek of the political arse seeks to gain power by simplistically appealing to these groups, because it's more effective for raising funds and votes than it ought to be.

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#442

Post by nullityrofl »

penneallagricia wrote: post #432
nullityrofl wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean 2 of 5 and those 2 still involve the EU spying on it's allies, right? So all 5 examples of the EU spying on its allies a thing that you said there was "no proof whatsoever" of? I never said that the US is or isn't a positive net on the world: I said that spying isn't evidence of your point. Because by your definition no country is positive net on the world.

> I never said that the US is or isn't a positive net on the world: I said that spying isn't evidence of your point. Because by your definition no country is positive net on the world. Spoken like a true devil's advocate. Apparently you have no opinion, you just want to refute mine. The fervor with which you scrambled for evidence to only tangentially counter my argument suggests me otherwise, but oh well. If all you…

> Apparently you have no opinion, you just want to refute mine.

I do have a point, you just don't like it. The point is thus: Europe spies on their allies and enemies just as much as the United States does.

> You won't find anything comparable on any other country. And the fact that every nation has secret services means nothing.

I think you may have forgotten that Russia exists.

> By the way you realize that other countries being bad doesn't make the US any better?

I never said it does. I said that spying on other countries isn't the deciding factor.

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#443

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

mandmandam wrote: post #441
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

trusting science / expertise has always been a turn-off for a certain portion of people with some sort of inferiority or persecution complex or oppositional defiant disorder unfortunately some politicians seek to gain power by appealing to this

Sure, that's a hallowed tradition in America. And at the same time, blindly trusting institutions and their dogma has long been a turn-on for people with a superiority complex, or those content with the status quo. Each cheek of the political arse seeks to gain power by simplistically appealing to these groups, because it's more effective for raising funds and votes than it ought to be.

perhaps, perhaps not

one thing is for sure, though: falsely portraying trust in expertise and science as,

"blindly trusting institutions and their dogma"

or

"for people with a superiority complex, or those content with the status quo",

has been a trope of those same anti-science, anti-expertise politicians for even longer. As Asimov wrote:

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'"

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#444

Post by penneallagricia »

nullityrofl wrote: post #442
penneallagricia wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I never said that the US is or isn't a positive net on the world: I said that spying isn't evidence of your point. Because by your definition no country is positive net on the world. Spoken like a true devil's advocate. Apparently you have no opinion, you just want to refute mine. The fervor with which you scrambled for evidence to only tangentially counter my argument suggests me otherwise, but oh well. If all you…

> Apparently you have no opinion, you just want to refute mine. I do have a point, you just don't like it. The point is thus: Europe spies on their allies and enemies just as much as the United States does. > You won't find anything comparable on any other country. And the fact that every nation has secret services means nothing. I think you may have forgotten that Russia exists. > By the way you realize that other c…

> Europe spies on their allies and enemies just as much as the United States does.

"Just as much" is simply false, as the extent and scope of USA espionage is unrivaled in Europe.

> I said that spying on other countries isn't the deciding factor.

Spying per se might be not, the intent behind it clearly does tho. You might spy to exert your power over or disrupt another country, or you might spy as a precautionary measure. We all know which country has the goal to make the world unipolar.

> I think you may have forgotten that Russia exists.

I obviously didn't, and I still believe Russia foreign interference isn't comparable with what the US has done.

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#445

Post by pastacacioepepe »

zirgs wrote: post #419
handedness wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaking sources and/or methods gets people killed. Good people often living in terrible places and circumstances, many of them. Maybe most. It also makes good information more difficult to come by for a long time. Nations spying on nations (even allies) feels terrible but in practice is probably a net good for all. It reduces uncertainty, and uncertainty has historically been a major trigger for armed conflict as one…

I agree. If Putin had better intel on Ukraine and the west (and the true state of his own armed forces) then he, most likely, would not have started the war.

Weird how the West knew exactly what Russia was going to do beforehand, yet couldn't stop it. All that intel couldn't help preventing a war apparently.

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#446

Post by pastacacioepepe »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #415
infamouscow wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Leaking sources and/or methods gets people killed. Is there any evidence of this being true or speculation?

yes, tons throughout history here is 1 such example off the top of my head: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen

The only instance of Hanssen causing deaths seem to be when he exposed "Martynov and Motorin" to be working for the FBI. They were arrested, tried, convicted and executed by the Soviet government.

Getting corrupt spies to be exposed doesn't really seem to be a great datum to back your argument. He might have actually saved more lives indirectly since he stopped them from leaking secret Soviet information to the US. Anything else?

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#447

Post by Phileosopher »

shrubble wrote: post #118
freetime2 wrote: post #17

It’s a travesty that Edward Snowden is still a fugitive in the United States. James Clapper went in front of congress and lied about the scope of surveillance on US citizens. Snowden saw it as his moral obligation to expose those lies, and he did it in the least destructive way possible by leaking the evidence to qualified journalists.

It's even worse than it appears... https://www.zerohedge.com/political/over-10000-fbi-agents-ca... Over 25 per cent (at the least) of FBI employees can access secret databases on people. 'In his investigation, Horowitz found that none of the 29 randomly chosen queries had been carried out properly or legally. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) said from an earlier conversation with Horowitz that in 25 of the cases, “there was…

Who, exactly, is responsible for the FBI, CIA, NSA, et al. if they over-reach?

We tend to believe there's an implicit checks-and-balances system in place, but the most dramatic historical time time a government official wanted to defund a secret-holder of the government was JFK.

In other words, how is this not a quiet dictatorship by another name?

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#448

Post by George83728 »

fakedang wrote: post #424
George83728 wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This story is a bit convoluted, mostly true but incomplete as the Ars article tells it. From what I can gather, the way the system was originally meant to work is that each Minuteman squadron had five Launch Command Centers (LLCs), each with two men in them who would have to simultaneously turn their keys. In order for the missiles to fly normally, at least two of the five LLCs would have to command a launch. The com…

LCC*

Dammit, how did I fuck that up?

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#449

Post by ok_dad »

kodah wrote: post #392
kelnos wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't both things be true? Like any large organization, different parts of it behave in different ways. While you had a good impression of the whistleblowing infrastructure due to your experience, it's perfectly reasonable and unsurprising that others might have a bad impression of it due to their experience. And perhaps Manning was one of those latter people.

That can be true, but you can't really have your cake and eat it too though, no? If the process is robust enough for serious internal affairs and someone skips requesting mast, which they can do all the way up to the President, then the next question is "why?". She could've even gone to a Congressperson with this and it'd have afforded her protections. Instead, she went to WikiLeaks.

You’re assuming that anyone in the government cares about what she was surfacing. That’s why whistleblowers go to the press, because the power structures that be don’t care.

Re: Whistleblowers are the conscience of society, yet suffer gravely

#450

Post by hotpotato98478 »

opportune wrote: post #372

The only difference between a leaker and whistleblower is whether you agree with their motives and reasoning. It’s basically the same difference as between a revolutionary and insurgent or terrorist, or a partisan and rebel. The parallel goes even further because it’s essentially a sacrificial asymmetric resistance from within that is impossible to fully prevent. We definitely need to remember that character assassin…

This is very good
Post reply on HN