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

Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

libroot.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 232 posts

Re: Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

#121

Post by ProllyInfamous »

hackernudes wrote: post #120
ProllyInfamous wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I coincidentally read Kurt Vonnegut's first novel, Player Piano , during my first few weeks exploring ChatGPT (~January 2023~). The book explores the rebellion of automated factory workers, drawing inspiration from Vonnegut's own mid-20th-Century experiences working at a GE manufacturing facility. That was a Cassandra-like experience. If anybody has never read Vonnegut, I'd definitely recommend Piano over Thieme's Mi…

The Scythe books are written by Neal Shusterman !

Thanks — corrected!

Did you enjoy Thunderhead even more than Scythe (like I am, 2/3rds done)? Some absolute insanity... poor "Scythe" Tyger's deception!

Book was recommended to me by my now-attorney, after rambling about LLMs enabling commoners access to lawfare during our initial consultation. Despite being "young adult fiction," Shusterman has definitely helped me to better understand my attorney brothers questing their powers [0].

[0] I am an avid reader, 70+ books per year, including all Wallace/Steinbeck/Vonnegut. The Scythe series hits. Just so good. So simple yet complex. Doesn't require thinking to read, but leaves you thinking about what you read.

Re: Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

#123

Post by OkayPhysicist »

alphazard wrote: post #98
sunaookami wrote: post #60

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 intimid…

"User" generated content on the internet is mostly bots, HN included. Opinions that seem too radical or stupid to be believed are often bots, or NPC humans repeating bot content that they read somewhere else.

Too radical is in the eyes of the beholder. Most of the most intelligent people I know, people who rather carefully analyze their own beliefs, tend to have at least a few things that they are extremely outside the Overton window on. It's not particularly hard to see why: if you apply even a surface-level analysis of the world around you, a lot of stuff is "we all believe X because we've always done X that way".

On the flip side, there's plenty of just very dumb people out there. I play enough games that involve VOIPing with others that I can confidently state such.

Re: Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

#124

Post by [deleted] »

GuinansEyebrows wrote: post #84
bandofthehawk wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My memory is that Hacker News comments were even more anti-Snowden at the time, but I could be mistaken. I would have thought people here would be very supportive of his whistle blowing, but I think a lot of people on this site unfortunately have a strong loyalty to the government organizations that were exposed.

i think a lot of people on this site work on the same types of projects snowden worked on and blew the whistle over, for the same organizations, and feel good about it. i wonder how many users here are happily employed by booz allen hamilton?

[deleted]

Re: Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

#125

Post by bnolsen »

SamDc73 wrote: post #62

The Wyden–Daines Amendment in 2020: a huge privacy amendment that would’ve limited surveillance missed the Senate by literally one vote. It would’ve stopped the government from getting American's web browsing and search history without a warrant. And honestly, I still have zero respect for anyone who voted against it. If you need a warrant to walk into my house, you should need a warrant to walk into my digital life…

And they tried to hang him for it. I wasn't particularly pleased with some actions he took after he ran off but the government reaction was truly out of hand and forced him into full survival mode. This part of government is full of weird power crazed spooks.

Re: Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

#126

Post by sholain »

sunaookami wrote: post #60

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 intimid…

One cannot just release whatever one wants, and some of the docs should not have been released.

There were huge variations in the nature of the content that he released, and this is the problem with the narrative.

He's a 'whistle blower' and 'broke the law' at the same time.

A lot of people seem to have difficulty with that.

Edit: we need better privacy laws and transparency around a lot of things, that said, some state actors are going to need to be around for a long while yet. It's a complicated world, none of this is black and white, it's why we need vigilance.

Re: Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

#127

Post by ProllyInfamous »

broadbandbob67 wrote: post #83
ProllyInfamous wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 personn…

It's Thieme: https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Games-Richard-Thieme/dp/09383262... Thanks for the info/rec!

Thanks for the link; I liked the author's introduction more than the rest of the book, and wouldn't recommend it to any casual reader, nor most people.

Instead, read Shusterman's Scythe trilogy (~2016-2020~); each author embraces fiction for different reasons, but I feel Shusterman's storytelling is rapidly becoming truth, whether his soothsaying was intentional (or not).

----

Welcome to /hn/

Re: Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

#128

Post by masfuerte »

sholain wrote: post #126
sunaookami wrote: post #60

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 intimid…

One cannot just release whatever one wants, and some of the docs should not have been released. There were huge variations in the nature of the content that he released, and this is the problem with the narrative. He's a 'whistle blower' and 'broke the law' at the same time. A lot of people seem to have difficulty with that. Edit: we need better privacy laws and transparency around a lot of things, that said, some st…

I find it very strange that so many people are more exercised by the small crime of Snowden releasing this information than by the large crime of the federal government spying on us all.

Re: Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

#129

Post by bnjms »

mistrial9 wrote: post #108
DamnInteresting wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was the main thread about Snowden on the day his identity was revealed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5850590

https://hn.unlurker.com/replay?item=5850590

> You need to have been convicted to receive a pardon, the petition should be not to prosecute.

Hahaha / I’ve made myself sad

Re: Going Through Snowden Documents, Part 1

#130

Post by ginush »

Larrikin wrote: post #65
ginush wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it doesn't. Think about it. Some computer somewhere that is involved in bulk interception happens to record your browser connecting to, say, the Hacker News website, at various dates and times. This is stored in a dataset. No-one ever views these connection records. No-one ever writes a query for the dataset that returns these connection records. These connection records are automatically deleted after the retenti…

Analytics are mining the data on here every second. Hacker News is a wildly popular site with higher ups in major Fortune 500 company posting anonymously and publicly here. Say anything bad about a major country's government (or even a minor country like Israel or Palestine) and all kinds of accounts you've never seen before start defending and attacking. Everything you are saying is being actively monitored at this…

An analyst who is tasked with investigating, say, terrorist threats, is not going to be remotely interested in the browsing habits of random people who pose no threat whatsoever.

It's just pure paranoia. Yes, we know bulk interception is being done by intelligence agencies. No, they're not watching you. They have more important things to be getting on with.

Post reply on HN