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Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

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Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#101

Post by hackerlight »

motohagiography wrote: post #52

When the Snowden docs came out, the main thing that surprised me wasn't the tech, it was the scale. I thought I had seen the tip of the iceberg doing security work for over 15y prior, but I had barely seen ripples in the surface. Most of what I saw would have been in the category of "BULLRUN," which I incorporate into client threat models today, but also some of the ISP interception equipment I saw at peering points…

> parrot absurd official lines and slogans about russian interference because being seen to align with it is just how they are trying to survive

That was out of left field. What about people who believe it was plausible that Russian intelligence services were behind the leaks of the DNC and Podesta emails, that the intent behind those leaks was to interfere in elections, and that such leaks had a non-trivial influence given the election was so narrow? That seems like a reasonable set of beliefs to hold, not "absurd official lines". I don't have access to the evidence behind the set of claims, but it strikes me as highly plausible.

Many of these "spook-adjacent types" (why not just call them "NPCs", wasn't that the lingo as of a week ago?), don't believe such attempts are primarily trying to skew the outcome in favor of Trump, they believe a general effort is being made by Russia and China to weaken confidence in elections, liberalism, democracy and the West broadly. Not because Russia and China are intrinsically evil, but because they are rivals, and as rivals have found an effective tool capable of undermining from within. The DNC/Podesta email leaks being only one of the more visible outcomes of these efforts.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#102

Post by dmbche »

theaussiestew wrote: post #88

I have a vaguely related question about Signal. People say it’s secure and encrypted but it was widely publicised that Sam Bankman Fried’s Signal messages were inspected by authorities. How did this happen?

Signal protects your messages while it's on the web, on the way to your recipient. During this time, it is encrypted - but while on your or the recipients device, its plain text (as you can read it).

There are many ways to get to those messages, like getting access to your unlocked phone/unlocking your phone, if your signal is not password locked (and if they can't break that password), or doing this with your recipient.

OpSec is a process, not single tools!

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#103

Post by pstuart »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #79
bboygravity wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Random examples that I can think of: Trump has/had (strong) ties with Russia, needed those Russian ties to win the election and used them to win the elections. People still believe this to this day. Globally.

> People still believe this to this day. Who? It is accepted that Trump got help from Russia and that he publicly asked for it. It is not accepted that he has strong ties with Russia, and unlike what the GGP has claimed, there is no "official" story saying that. The only person who did say that was private investigator Steele, in a dossier that Clinton didn't believe and discarded but that McCain did and leaked.

As I understand it, the Wikileaks DNC email dump was just a front for Russia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_National_Commi...

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#104

Post by leptons »

drumhead wrote: post #48

Realistically intelligence agencies have access to whatever information they want. If they can crack encryption they're not going to tell us and they will probably act like they can't. You're compromised and you have no secrets and can't hide anything from them. The best thing we can do is stay safe from criminals.

Take this as an anecdote, but I have a friend that works at the top of a large quantum computing program at a well known company and he related once that the government is making it very difficult for them to retain talent in the field and make progress. The government feels it has to be at the forefront of quantum tech because of the possibly game-changing encryption capabilities. It was a bit chilling to hear but not at all surprising.

As a participant in the "digital underground" since the early 80's, we were very aware of "ECHELON", "5 eyes", and other spying programs. The "Snowden revelations" are not really anything new, living a life around digital communications 20 years before most people ever heard of the internet it was clear very early that surveillance is just something the government is going to do. And yes, they definitely would consider it top-secret info if they did create a quantum computer capable of cracking modern encryption. We wouldn't know about it unless someone leaks it, but I don't really care if anyone leaks that info - they either already have it or will have it first so it's fair to just assume that they do have that capability.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#105

Post by hackerlight »

theaussiestew wrote: post #97
landryraccoon wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A decade later, participation in elite circles like media, academia, and politics is based on how convincingly one can be seen to parrot obvious untruths, not because anyone believes them at all, but because it signals status to be able to lie to the faces of people who know you are doing it, and still say nothing. I don’t understand this. Can you elaborate on what untruths you mean? Who’s parroting these lies?

Basically anyone who sits at a panel, interview or a discussion and talks about geopolitical affairs. It’s the space around politics and think tanks and national security. There’s an implicit expectation that you talk about certain topics in a certain way, and that way usually conforms to the narrative that’s acceptable to the apparatus of power. It’s a vague description but that’s because of the nature of this unspo…

> Basically anyone who sits at a panel, interview or a discussion and talks about geopolitical affairs. There’s an implicit expectation that you talk about certain topics in a certain way, and that way usually conforms to the narrative that’s acceptable to the apparatus of power.

How do you know that this is true without mind reading or lie detection powers? I'm not being sarcastic. You see these people talking and have somehow arrived at the strong belief that they do not believe what they are saying. How?

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#106

Post by vlovich123 »

redeeman wrote: post #92
api wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump openly asked for help from Russia on national TV. I don’t see how the existence of some degree of Russian collusion is debatable given that it was done in the open. I do agree that there are people who vastly overestimate the extent or effectiveness of whatever Russia did do. Trump won due to general discontent with the status quo coupled with the fact that Hillary Clinton was a politically tone deaf candidate…

[flagged]

Makes a fun sound bite but given the context was he was speaking about a program for people to navigate voter suppression, do you really think he has a secret voter fraud plan and accidentally revealed it like that Politicians speak a lot and I know I myself can mix up words sometimes and I don’t speak nearly enough.

> OK, trump wanted the TRUTH to come out, he wanted facts exposed to the american people, that admittedly benefitted him, but still, facts relating to illegalities to his political opponent.

That’s just clearly false.

> Russia tried to hack Hillary Clinton’s office five hours after Trump called on Moscow to find her deleted emails

https://www.vox.com/world/2019/4/19/18507580/mueller-report-...

So basically Trump solicited a third party to commit a crime on his behalf. As far as I know that makes you an accessory. Also Russia later also hacked the RNC so the lack of release of anything incriminating there leads a reasonable person to conclude I think that they have blackmail info on the RNC that they’re holding back because they have an agreement with the elites in that party. Notice how especially pro-Putin right wing media has been since that time period.

The Meuller report is pretty thorough. If you haven’t read it at least find unbiased analysis of what it shows.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#107

Post by pstuart »

redeeman wrote: post #92
api wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump openly asked for help from Russia on national TV. I don’t see how the existence of some degree of Russian collusion is debatable given that it was done in the open. I do agree that there are people who vastly overestimate the extent or effectiveness of whatever Russia did do. Trump won due to general discontent with the status quo coupled with the fact that Hillary Clinton was a politically tone deaf candidate…

[flagged]

The fact that you cite has been been shown to be false: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-fact-check-biden-voter-pr...

From your enthusiasm I'm going to guess you'd not be satisfied with that fact.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#108

Post by redeeman »

pstuart wrote: post #107
redeeman wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The fact that you cite has been been shown to be false: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-fact-check-biden-voter-pr... From your enthusiasm I'm going to guess you'd not be satisfied with that fact.

[flagged]

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#109

Post by vlovich123 »

ls612 wrote: post #77
theaussiestew wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding Qwest, wasn’t the CEO jailed for insider trading? Or is there another side to this story?

He claimed that he was actually jailed in retaliation for not playing ball with the NSA before 9/11. Idk if what he did specifically is something you’d usually be charged with insider trading or fraud for, which would seem to me the best indirect evidence of who’s story is right.

The whole situation was a mess. One of the things Nachio was accused of was inflating the share price by making statements that growth would continue when it didn’t. However, the reason it maybe didn’t is that the CIA blocked the lucrative contracts that Qwest was otherwise eligible for in retaliation for Nachio not going along with their request for illegally wiretapping everyone (he asked for a court order). Suddenly statements that would have been reasonable looked not so. However, he did also engage in insider trading but it’s less clear if that’s again just the CIA keeping an eye on him and helping the prosecutors get him through dual reconstruction (ie yes he did wrong but the government went about figuring that out illegally).

Of course a lot of this is just conjecture and we may never know what happened from the government side.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#110

Post by vlovich123 »

Scoundreller wrote: post #98
ls612 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He claimed that he was actually jailed in retaliation for not playing ball with the NSA before 9/11. Idk if what he did specifically is something you’d usually be charged with insider trading or fraud for, which would seem to me the best indirect evidence of who’s story is right.

In other words, there's the possibility that others in his position was doing it, but only his trading was thoroughly scrutinized.

Or that others weren’t doing it but the CIA helped point prosecutors in the right direction using information that is illegal for the government to have.
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