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On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

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Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#181

Post by yreg »

denton-scratch wrote: post #117
yreg wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth almost everyone but US government predicted the Russians won't invade. Zelensky himself predicted there is no imminent invasion and complained that the west creates panic which is harmful to UA economy.

This is true; and I find it hard to understand. I mean, I can understand Zelensky talking it down; as the public face of Ukraine's government, I assume everything he says is propaganda of some kind (whether or not it's true). But back in December, the satellite photos were showing the huge build-up of troops and armour on Ukraine's border. I didn't believe it was just an "exercise", nor did I believe it was sabre-rat…

I am no expert, but I too thought that they wouldn't do a full scale invasion. It seemed like a dumb move and I didn't think they would do dumb moves.

I have since learned to listen to what Pentagon has to say in this conflict, because their intelligence (and what they decide to share with the public) has proved to be on point.

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#182

Post by yreg »

93po wrote: post #154
yreg wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of comments you read on reddit are written and/or upvoted by bots I don't think that's true yet. At least regarding the portion of comments written; I have no idea about the votes.

There’s an important distinction here. Most of the comments you read . You being the general you. Most people will read a few dozen comments at most. These comments are overwhelmingly written by bots or inauthentic participants in subreddits like r politics. And they’re the most visible because these same groups also upvote them inauthentically

I just don't think that's the case yet, but we probably have no evidence one way or the other.

I don't know about /r/politics since I don't read it, but say in /r/worldnews, /r/europe, /r/ukrainewarvideoreport, /r/noncredibledefence, when I open a thread and pick ten comments at random and then take a look at their user histories I believe most are human.

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#183

Post by caskstrength »

bjourne wrote: post #176
caskstrength wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm Ukrainian, so possible Russian assets like Snowden and Greenwald, or (senile) useful idiots like Chomsky and Waters are obviously much bigger threat to me than some dude in Maryland reading my emails.

Can you explain how?

Sure. Ukraine at the moment is completely dependent on its allies to support the war effort. Without their help Ukraine wouldn't hold on for long.

Recent Russian disinformation campaigns seem to be concentrated on eroding public support for Ukraine in western countries through various means and they had some success among the whole Greenwald-Taibbi-Snowden-Peterson crowd specifically and MAGA-people in general. Losing US support would put Ukraine in dire straits since I'm not sure EU/UK can provide all necessary equipment and ammunition by themselves.

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#184

Post by throw0101c »

willis936 wrote: post #119
denton-scratch wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ED25519 is not a NIST curve.

And Ed25519 is not supported by major CAs.

> And Ed25519 is not supported by major CAs.

Perhaps because until February 2023 (when FIPS 186-5 was published) it wasn't approved for US government use:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EdDSA#Standardization_and_impl...

So there would have been complications for a sizeable base of potential customers (US, contractors, allies).

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#185

Post by justsomehnguy »

clucas wrote: post #178
justsomehnguy wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1294271/us-troops-europe... Germany 35k Italy 12k UK 10k ----------- Total 57k

So... zero on the border with Russia or China.

Ah, yes, the technical correct, best kind of correct.

Remind me, why the country an ocean away has it's troops in these countries?

And while we are it, can you explain why the country with only two countries on it's borders (one is allied, the other one is clearly not hostile) has a standing Army (not navy, not air force) of 460k+ active personnel?

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#186

Post by verdverm »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #185
clucas wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So... zero on the border with Russia or China.

Ah, yes, the technical correct, best kind of correct. Remind me, why the country an ocean away has it's troops in these countries? And while we are it, can you explain why the country with only two countries on it's borders (one is allied, the other one is clearly not hostile) has a standing Army (not navy, not air force) of 460k+ active personnel?

> remind me...

Because they asked, because WW2 & NATO, because of the USSR and now Russia. If they weren't there, what might Russia have tried before 2022?

> And while we are it

Because of the Russia, China, NK, Iran. Who's going to stop them from attacking their neighbors?

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#187

Post by floorballchamp »

bell-cot wrote: post #165
93po wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is information anyone can get by flying a drone around military equipment or buying old equipment offered for sale, this seems like a startling suppression of first amendment rights

How so? Hollywood wants to make money. And most Hollywood decision makers want to brag about having Important Friends in High Places (like the DoD). Producing anti-war movies (or otherwise making the DoD look bad) would get them ~nothing that they really want.

That goes down the same conspiracy theory rabbit hole like claiming that all state employee bureaucrats just try to bloat their dept. to have more power which ultimately wastes tax money.

Some people have standards and want to do good. Some of them work in Hollywood. And some of them in your city's administration. Not everybody is as selfish and unethical as portrayed here.

Maybe it reflects on the person expressing such theories though.

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#188

Post by kcatskcolbdi »

throw__away7391 wrote: post #147
bandrami wrote: post #16

The weirdest thing is that Drake had already whistleblown about the program in 2005. It was front page on the NYT and WP. But 8 years later everybody seemed to have completely forgotten that and acted like Snowden was revealing something new.

Right, a friend told me about this many years before. She worked on the networking infrastructure and knew what it was being used for. I didn't think much of it at the time and I thought it was common knowledge. When the Snowden "revelations" came out it, I was surprised that this was considered news. I understand that perhaps there wasn't an official website laying the whole thing out, but at a minimum it took a lot…

"My friend who worked directly on this told me about it, so I don't understand how everyone else didn't already know about it."

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#189

Post by clucas »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #185
clucas wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So... zero on the border with Russia or China.

Ah, yes, the technical correct, best kind of correct. Remind me, why the country an ocean away has it's troops in these countries? And while we are it, can you explain why the country with only two countries on it's borders (one is allied, the other one is clearly not hostile) has a standing Army (not navy, not air force) of 460k+ active personnel?

OP claimed it was reasonable to say "Russia won't invade" because he claimed the US does things similar to Russia's buildup, but it doesn't invade.

I was saying that, whatever your thoughts about US military policy, its deployment patterns are not, in fact, anything like what Russia did in late 2021/early 2022.

Pointing out that the US has troops in other countries, and a massive military in general, does not address the point.

Re: On the 10th anniversary of the Snowden revelations

#190

Post by kcatskcolbdi »

didntcheck wrote: post #172
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are claiming that the NSA (at all levels) lied to the House Intel committee? That's a big claim, you should back it up with some evidence. Which part of the report is not accurate? Have you read the report?

Isn't it confirmed that they've lied under oath to Congress before?

It is confirmed they have lied under oath to Congress about the very thing Snowden blew the whistle on.

So yes, they are perfectly acceptable sources of information regarding Snowden.

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