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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

#361

Post by Aerbil313 »

epolanski wrote: post #350
zoogeny wrote: post #205

In the last ten years technology has increased substantially. In the last five years AI has advanced significantly. That is worth really letting sink in. I try my best to avoid every kind of online discussion on these topics that I reasonably can avoid. Some might even see it as paranoia. But I assume that every single thing I post online (or say on the phone, send in text, or write in emails) is traceable back to me…

I share the spirit. Encription and privacy are important, not sharing important data digitally even more so.

Encryption and privacy is futile when posting online. If what you post is publicly accessible, it’s accessible to govts too.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#362

Post by Aerbil313 »

neuronic wrote: post #289
zoogeny wrote: post #205

In the last ten years technology has increased substantially. In the last five years AI has advanced significantly. That is worth really letting sink in. I try my best to avoid every kind of online discussion on these topics that I reasonably can avoid. Some might even see it as paranoia. But I assume that every single thing I post online (or say on the phone, send in text, or write in emails) is traceable back to me…

Will Gov-GPT then invent answers and generate a profile that is a potpourri of several random folks details? If you need clear facts without the possibility for r/confidentlyincorrect material then I don't believe GPTs are the tools of choice.

Langchain and such tools can do it.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#363

Post by luke727 »

nyokodo wrote: post #318
luke727 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Says who. Just a few tabloid rags like The Washington Post [1], The Guardian [2], and The Atlantic [3]. > That doesn’t mean he has to pledge allegiance during that period. Regardless it’s not what an American patriot does. That narrative is untenable now. Pledging allegiance is required to obtain Russian citizenship, which grants him additional protections from the United States. It is also required to obtain a Rus…

> Russian citizenship, which grants him additional protections from the United States Protections he apparently didn’t need for nearly a decade, but did once Russia was executing its genocidal war. Your “he’s merely scared of America” narrative doesn’t hold water. > trapped him in an adversarial foreign country No one made him travel and his passport was revoked before flying to Moscow, evidence elsewhere on the thre…

>Protections he apparently didn’t need for nearly a decade, but did once Russia was executing its genocidal war. Your “he’s merely scared of America” narrative doesn’t hold water.

Protections he couldn't get for nearly a decade, but did once the law was changed and he was able to do so [1].

>No one made him travel and his passport was revoked before flying to Moscow, evidence elsewhere on the thread. He trapped himself!

He could have (and in hindsight probably should have) stayed in Hong Kong. Regardless, it's unclear when he knew his passport had been revoked. Even if he had known beforehand, he thought he had documents for safe passage to Ecuador.

>Russia is systematically raping and murdering Ukrainians while Snowden is giving his oath to Russia and you call that “awkward optics?”

Please reserve this emotional tripe for Reddit, where it belongs.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/23/edward-snowd...

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#364

Post by throwaway892238 »

_8j50 wrote: post #239
throwaway892238 wrote: post #176

Years ago, when I interviewed at places that did USG-related work, the stuff I heard about that I didn't have to sign an NDA to hear , scared me enough that I knew Snowden-scale stuff was entirely within the capabilities of the US Govt. I didn't realize they would use it against us just blatantly in direct violation of every law put in place to prevent it, though. I think the lesson I learned from the Snowden leaks i…

I think your takeaway is wrong. It isn't the government doing naughty secret things but the government doing so with support from a plurality of the people. The patriot act is a non-partisan issue that gets renewed every administration. Snowden and Assange should be locked up accroding to a majority of americans. Your takeaway should be that a democracy would always reflect the will of the people with or without any…

> a democracy would always reflect the will of the people with or without any law because that is what the rulers must do to continue to get elected

Except that's never been how democracies work. Going back to the first democratic greek city-states, to now, they all tend to operate on a number of different motivators, the last of which is law-makers changing what they do to fit the public interest.

Landed gentry and the aristocracy get priority, followed by merchants, and then the rest of the government gets its say, which often competes/clashes with other parts of the government. For the most part, anyone who gets elected got there through political savvy, money, and being exceptionally good at convincing people to trust them and give them power. So they're quite good at doing what they want despite what the people might want.

I agree that the people are often quick to give away their rights to secure their safety (or desires). But with transparency in government, people will notice the things they don't like (despite what they've given away or sold, including their principles) and can become outraged enough to reverse their previous acquiescence. You actually see this outside of democracies in most nations where people see enough bullshit that they eventually revolt.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#365

Post by poxrud »

Matl wrote: post #307
genman wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you completely misinterpret the situation with Russia and China. Russia and China have the objectives of their own. For Russia it is to expand their empire that in their own mind rightfully belongs to them. They didn't attack Ukraine because of US actions but because they seriously believe that they have some kind of right over Ukrainians lands, or even more seriously, that Ukrainians don't exists. If US woul…

There are many, many explanations for i.e. why didn't China attack Taiwan (yet) and while the U.S. finger in the region helps in some ways, supporting Taiwan proclaiming independence for example may actually not be helping to prevent war there. It seems to me like China is much more reluctant than Russia is to go to such a war, probably because apart from facing domestic nationalistic pressure to do so, there's littl…

"as well as Ukraine say banning Russian language books"

Russian language, and Russian books are not banned in Ukraine. Some anti Ukraine books were removed from public libraries.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#366

Post by CamperBob2 »

super256 wrote: post #358
CamperBob2 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL. Well, that's certainly... "useful." Amnesty is a captive organization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Amnesty_Internati...

German public media also has some reports which underline the information above: "How nationalists continue to divide Ukraine (2014)" https://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/archiv/2014/Hitlers-Helfer-... "Putsch in Kiev: What role do the fascists play? (2014)" https://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/archiv/2014/Putsch-in-Kiew-... When I was searching for an English source, I stumbled upon Craig Murray's blog, who was a diplomat f…

So, what do those NGOs have to say about Russia? Ukraine didn't start this little affair, remember. No amount of gaslighting or blogspam is going to change that.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#367

Post by super256 »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #366
super256 wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German public media also has some reports which underline the information above: "How nationalists continue to divide Ukraine (2014)" https://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/archiv/2014/Hitlers-Helfer-... "Putsch in Kiev: What role do the fascists play? (2014)" https://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/archiv/2014/Putsch-in-Kiew-... When I was searching for an English source, I stumbled upon Craig Murray's blog, who was a diplomat f…

So, what do those NGOs have to say about Russia? Ukraine didn't start this little affair, remember. No amount of gaslighting or blogspam is going to change that.

I think you are arguing in bad faith. The UN is an intergovernmental org, which by definition can't be operated outside of government control (it consists out of member states' governments!). And neither Das Erste is an NGO. Das Erste is legitimized through public mandate by the people in Germany.

> So, what do those NGOs have to say about Russia?

Nothing good, but you could click through the links if you were genuinely interested.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#368

Post by PaulHoule »

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…

It would have been a big scandal if Snowden revealed that the NSA was not doing what he said they were doing. That is, it was well known that the purpose of the NSA was to do exactly that.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#369

Post by marssaxman »

throwaway892238 wrote: post #176

Years ago, when I interviewed at places that did USG-related work, the stuff I heard about that I didn't have to sign an NDA to hear , scared me enough that I knew Snowden-scale stuff was entirely within the capabilities of the US Govt. I didn't realize they would use it against us just blatantly in direct violation of every law put in place to prevent it, though. I think the lesson I learned from the Snowden leaks i…

> we're more likely to find out about it, so we can do something about it.

How does that help? For me the lesson of the Snowden affair has been that it does not matter whether we know what the government is up to, because they will do what they want to us regardless; there is nothing we can do about it.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#370

Post by javifu »

brabel wrote: post #311
genman wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you completely misinterpret the situation with Russia and China. Russia and China have the objectives of their own. For Russia it is to expand their empire that in their own mind rightfully belongs to them. They didn't attack Ukraine because of US actions but because they seriously believe that they have some kind of right over Ukrainians lands, or even more seriously, that Ukrainians don't exists. If US woul…

No, you're misrepresenting it. Your rationale is that Russia is an evil empire trying to expand its borders to its former glory, and that's why it attacked Ukraine... a primary school level of simplification. You ignore that Russia's number one fear after the collapse of the USSR was for another military invasion from the West, as had happened several times over the last few centuries... that Russia's border with Ukr…

You are completely right and I highly recommend to watch "The Putin interviews" by Oliver Stone to those who disagree. America is trying to drive Europe and Russia away, just to defend a collapsing empire. The sabotage of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline ($10B) began long before it was blown up and the Ukraine war has deep roots and consequences to Europe. The EU is just one of the Sauron's rings of power, it's not Europa.
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