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Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

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Re: Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

#51

Post by psunavy03 »

alex1138 wrote: post #45
psunavy03 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he violated a trust given to him, he deserves to be in jail, and if he had an ounce of moral character he'd come back and face trial like a man. Unlike the movies there aren't secret death squads out to get him, just a courtroom where he can face the consequences of his actions like an adult. Instead, he's hiding out playing the victim in a country that's actively genociding Ukrainians to a degree beyond anything…

You forget the security-state apparatus has secret courts and secret laws It may not be a fair trial. He's always stated his willingness to undergo a fair one

That's not how any of that works. Criminal trials are public record and there are no such things as secret laws.

Re: Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

#52

Post by ProllyInfamous »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #15
jjordan wrote: post #7

If you've ever watched the movie "Enemy of the State", which came out in 1998, I don't know how you can come away from that movie thinking anything other than someone in that script writing pipeline had some insider knowledge of what was happening. So many of the things they talk about in the film were confirmed by the Snowden releases that it's kinda scary. Today, it's almost a national societal resignation that "yo…

:) I've long held that a useful counterintelligence strategy is to weave real operations into fictional films, such that if someone catches on and tries to tell people about it, the response is simply "you schizophrenic - that's the plot of Die Hard 4!" Slightly less conspiratorial version is that agents and clerks with knowledge of operations get drunk at the same bars as Hollywood script writers

Right before Snowden, I met a "fiction" author whose DefCon presentation was about government attempts at management of conspiracy theorists. His SciFi writings were the technically-dense ramblings you'd expect from somebody who'd spent much of his early decades contracting for secretive government agencies.

During both his speech and in the introduction to his book Mindgames, he mentions that most DoD-funded personnel (staff or contract) sign agreements which give Agency-censorship, even after employment ends. Richard suggests that a method to reduce overall censorship is to write "fiction" books that contain less than 90% truth. The secret, he maintains, is to not distinguish between truths and embellishments.

----

I listened to most of Richard's speech, some fifteen years ago, with my eyes rolling around in my head (yeah... sure... okay...). It wasn't until my IBEW apprenticeship, primarily working inside large data centers during the Snowden revelations, that I realized the orchestrated lies narrating our headlines.

Don't carry the internet in your pocket with you everywhere; use cash; spend some unmonitored time reading real books purchased from actual stores; pet your cat for just one more minute.

[*] Note: I belive Richard's surname was Thiele or Thieme, but cannot locate his book at the moment — he was an absolute nut, but 80% of his publications seem to have proven truthful to-date.

Re: Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

#53

Post by ginush »

hopelite wrote: post #42
ginush wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope he's still not deluding himself into thinking he did anything positive.

That's rather harsh. Exposing illegal, objectively treasonous activities by the government is not exactly not something positive, regardless of whether the regime has only gotten worse and more totalitarian and tightened its noose even more around the neck of humanity. By objective measures, having the courage he did to do what he did was courageous, albeit possibly foolish, since his understanding of the USA did not…

He sought revenge after not getting a desired job promotion. There was nothing noble about his intentions, just narcissistic fury with what he, in his narrow world view, saw as unfairness towards himself.

I find it amazing how many people have been taken in by the bullshit narrative he concocted about human rights and privacy. So gullible.

He helped our adversaries on an immense scale, and even went to live under the protection of one of them. Some patriot he is, gladly embracing the Russian regime.

Re: Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

#54

Post by doctorpangloss »

jjordan wrote: post #7

If you've ever watched the movie "Enemy of the State", which came out in 1998, I don't know how you can come away from that movie thinking anything other than someone in that script writing pipeline had some insider knowledge of what was happening. So many of the things they talk about in the film were confirmed by the Snowden releases that it's kinda scary. Today, it's almost a national societal resignation that "yo…

> you have no privacy, get over it.

> privacy as the basic right it should be again.

See, this isn’t complicated. Privacy in the sense of Limiting Government Overreach is completely different than privacy in the sense of The Unwanted Dissemination of Embarrassing Personal Information.

The problem has nothing to do with the societal resignation you’re talking about. It isn’t even true. People are resigned that they cannot really prevent the dissemination of embarrassing information (some people would call that “growing up” ha ha). They’re not “resigned” that government overreach is inevitable.

The problem is that a lot of people WANT government overreach, as long as they perceive that it’s against the Other. That’s the problem. Advocates have failed because by conflating the two issues, they make no headway.

Re: Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

#55

Post by timschmidt »

xbmcuser wrote: post #49
sdoering wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most ironic thing that never came to fruition was an X-Files spinoff [1]. The pilot aired a few months before 9/11. Depiction a plot by the (I believe) CIA to crash a passenger airplane into the WTC. And the three computer freaks/conspiracy theorists that often helped Mulder trying to stop that. I watched it a few months after 9/11 happened. That definitely was an experience I will never forget. Even as a German,…

Tom Clancy also had a similar plot in the Jack Ryan series

Don't forget "Rebuilding America's Defenses" a paper published by Project for the New American Century, a think tank who's founding statement of principles was signed by 25 individuals, 10 of whom went on to serve in the George W. Bush administration, which calls for "A New Pearl Harbor": https://www.visibility911.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/reb...

Re: Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

#56

Post by jeffbee »

timschmidt wrote: post #46
ginush wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know now that communications are being intercepted in bulk as a matter of intelligence gathering, but that does not equate to everyone being surveilled by the government. What this actually provides, first and foremost, is the capability to perform targeted surveillance more rapidly, and to do so temporally by reaching into datasets already recorded. Obviously this provides a much-needed capability for legitimate…

William Binney, former technical director of NSA disagrees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3owk7vEEOvs I see further down the thread you claim that surveillance data is deleted without ever being looked at. Must be why they need a half dozen gargantuan datacenters full of storage and compute.

This is the correct point of reference, but you are misinterpreting it and I urge you to think about it again. All of the government's facilities put together amount to almost nothing in the data center landscape, therefore it should be quite obvious that they certainly are not equipped to broadly intercept, store, and search "everything".

Re: Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

#57

Post by timschmidt »

psunavy03 wrote: post #51
alex1138 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forget the security-state apparatus has secret courts and secret laws It may not be a fair trial. He's always stated his willingness to undergo a fair one

That's not how any of that works. Criminal trials are public record and there are no such things as secret laws.

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

Re: Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

#59

Post by squigz »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #15
jjordan wrote: post #7

If you've ever watched the movie "Enemy of the State", which came out in 1998, I don't know how you can come away from that movie thinking anything other than someone in that script writing pipeline had some insider knowledge of what was happening. So many of the things they talk about in the film were confirmed by the Snowden releases that it's kinda scary. Today, it's almost a national societal resignation that "yo…

:) I've long held that a useful counterintelligence strategy is to weave real operations into fictional films, such that if someone catches on and tries to tell people about it, the response is simply "you schizophrenic - that's the plot of Die Hard 4!" Slightly less conspiratorial version is that agents and clerks with knowledge of operations get drunk at the same bars as Hollywood script writers

It's not a conspiracy - this is why Stargate exists!

Re: Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

#60

Post by sunaookami »

This comment section is strange, a lot of people trying to discredit Snowden, saying he shouldn't have released the files, should be in prison, etc. 12 years ago this was HUGE news and had a major impact on the internet and everyone thanked Snowden for these documents! I certainly am thankful. Disappointed in my country that they literally said that "spying between friends is a no-go" but then did nothing and intimidated journalists and legalized it instead. And thanks to the author for giving the documents another look, found it very interesting. There is also part 2: https://libroot.org/posts/going-through-snowden-documents-pa...
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