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

Edward Snowden 'missing' in Hong Kong

bbc.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–96 of 96 posts

Re: Edward Snowden 'missing' in Hong Kong

#91

Post by Someone »

jlgreco wrote: post #42
JonFish85 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he was a systems admin, there were undoubtedly other system admins around to keep an eye on each other. If he got data out, he likely walked out with it physically in some way, or there was a severe breakdown in the network security.

> If he was a systems admin, there were undoubtedly other system admins around to keep an eye on each other. Of course. The question is are sys-admins as effective at watching other sys-admins as they are at watching regular users? It seems reasonable that they are not, if only because sys-admins are more skilled than other users. Sys-admins likely also implicitly trust other sys-admins more than other users, not int…

That's why you frequently deploy moles who try to get away with something (e.g, with writing a password on a post-it), and seriously reprimand persons who do not report that.

All your personnel must be paranoid; you cannot get there with only the real break-in/data theft attempts, as those are too rare.

Also, you regularly shift the roles, turning an operator into a watcher and vice versa.

Finally, you cannot have someone teamed up with the same person for weeks, because they might befriend each other and start to let things slip.

Re: Edward Snowden 'missing' in Hong Kong

#92

Post by dllthomas »

junto wrote: post #86
dllthomas wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the case in the US - the President's power to pardon is pretty broad, and has been used before conviction numerous times.

But normally you pardon rich people that did something stupid, like Wall Street bankers who commit fraud.

There would certainly be some unusual things about this pardon, but none of those have a bearing on whether it is within the power of the presidency.

Re: Edward Snowden 'missing' in Hong Kong

#93

Post by jacquesm »

mpyne wrote: post #70
markdown wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a guy in a 3rd world country. Your government could assassinate me tomorrow, and then simply say that I was in Al Qaeda. They have proof of this, but of course they can't reveal that information for reasons of "National Security". You think this is OK, because your Congress has given the president authority to kill anyone who (according to whoever is holding the trigger) is involved in that organisation. Fuck yo…

"Military force" doesn't actually mean indiscriminate killing is OK, otherwise we wouldn't consider My Lai a massacre. So my government would have to, at the very least, demonstrate that you actually play some operational role within AQ where a targeted killing of you would appreciably impair the military capacity of AQ. This was the logic used by the U.S. to send what was essentially a kill mission against the Japan…

If 'you' (not you personally) really thought My Lai was a massacre then there would have been some more serious sentencing around that event.

From the relevant wikipedia page:

"While 26 U.S. soldiers were initially charged with criminal offenses for their actions at Mỹ Lai, only Second Lieutenant William Calley, a platoon leader in Charlie Company, was convicted. Found guilty of killing 22 villagers, he was originally given a life sentence, but only served three and a half years under house arrest."

Putting this event forward as an example of how well the US deals with military excesses is really not clever. See Fallujah for a more recent example.

Re: Edward Snowden 'missing' in Hong Kong

#94

Post by mpyne »

jacquesm wrote: post #93
mpyne wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Military force" doesn't actually mean indiscriminate killing is OK, otherwise we wouldn't consider My Lai a massacre. So my government would have to, at the very least, demonstrate that you actually play some operational role within AQ where a targeted killing of you would appreciably impair the military capacity of AQ. This was the logic used by the U.S. to send what was essentially a kill mission against the Japan…

If 'you' (not you personally) really thought My Lai was a massacre then there would have been some more serious sentencing around that event. From the relevant wikipedia page: "While 26 U.S. soldiers were initially charged with criminal offenses for their actions at Mỹ Lai, only Second Lieutenant William Calley, a platoon leader in Charlie Company, was convicted. Found guilty of killing 22 villagers, he was originall…

My point is not that the U.S. "deals well" with military excesses. Like most other nations we have a hard time coming to grips at the time of an atrocity with the blood on our hands. We do usually come around though, such as My Lai which is now considered a massacre even by the U.S. Army, which now uses My Lai (among other notable crises) as a case study in their officer training curriculum at West Point. The massacre is taught as a "massacre" in our history books, and our guilt is not shirked or avoided.

On the other hand you'll even today see people claim that the German Heer (Army) wasn't so bad during WWII, that they were simply a professional army that wasn't involved in atrocities like the actual villains such as the Nazis, the Waffen SS, and the Gestapo. It's not actually true; senior German Army officers were just as involved in atrocities as the rest, even if they didn't participate in the worst extremes. I won't say that the current German Army training curriculum and senior leadership don't look at that aspect of their own history (in fact I'm sure they do), but if more armies had been like America's over the past 100 years world history would have been very different.

My point instead related to the comment about Anwar al-Awlaki. He was playing a military game and was treated as such, nothing more or less. If he didn't want to be treated by military rules then he shouldn't have joined a quasi-military organization that ended up at war with the U.S. But once it became a martial conflict different rules apply, including the Law of Armed Conflict and the Geneva Conventions.

Re: Edward Snowden 'missing' in Hong Kong

#95

Post by darkarmani »

chongli wrote: post #37
jjtheblunt wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Reveal" is a verb, not noun, historically; that said, it seems many are copying many others, to cast reveal as a noun. Random observation.

This is a pet peeve of mine as well. Another common one is when people cast "addict" as a verb and inflect it to create "addicting", seemingly unaware of the perfectly adequate "addictive". According to the dictionary, these are all valid forms but I just find them irksome for some reason.

Mine is "performant" used to mean pretty much anything you want it to mean. It might mean "high performance" (this algorithm is performant - highly performant is even funnier) or "performs better" (more performant).

Re: Edward Snowden 'missing' in Hong Kong

#96

Post by ScottBurson »

snogglethorpe wrote: post #77
ScottBurson wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's odd, isn't it? -- Considering we have this perfectly good noun "revelation", whose connotations are, to my mind, more than apt. Oh well.

I don't think the words are equivalent. "Reveal" (as a noun, like it or not... :] ) carries connotations of showiness and intentional manufactured drama; it's the explicit act of making information available. A "revelation" on the other hand, is something that just happens, a sudden awareness of information (which may have previously been available).

if you want showiness and intentional manufactured drama, I would go with "unveiling".
Post reply on HN