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'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

theguardian.com

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Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#41

Post by rainsford »

kleiba wrote: post #2

Folks, take a step back and take a look what is going on here. When you were a child, would any of you have believed that one day in the early 21st century, you would wake up in a world where your own government spies on each and every single citizen, plus whoever is connected to them in another country, where they send agents to newspapers to oppress the freedom of the press? I mean, isn't this almost surreal? Like…

I certainly get the "cheap sci-fi novel" feeling reading a lot of commentary on the Internet. But honestly, taking a step back and looking at what's actually happening puts things in a much different perspective and makes comments about living in a dystopian future seem more than a little silly.

Look at the David Miranda situation. The Internet reaction about living in a police state was immediate, but the rhetoric didn't seem to match what really happened (at least to me). A non-UK citizen (as far as I'm aware) was transporting classified information through a UK airport almost certainly for the purposes of releasing that information, information the UK government considers damaging if it was to be released. The information is confiscated, but the man himself is let go. And afterwards, the man's journalist husband more or less openly threatens the UK government with the release of more classified information in retaliation. That's not quite how I remember sci-fi police state stories usually going.

Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#42

Post by smegel »

If they do succeed in "shutting the leaks down", I wonder if that would be enough for supporters to finally release all the docs publicly. Or for Assange to give out the key to one of his insurance files.

I wouldn't get my hopes up though, these so called leakers seem more stringently against full pubic disclosure than the people they are leaking against.

Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#45

Post by lifeisstillgood »

a3n wrote: post #7

"Here is David Miranda explaining to BBC what it's like to be forced to turn over your passwords to security agents who have detained you under a terrorism law, so they can troll through your emails and Facebook account and Skype program while you are detained. Just watch that short video and judge for yourself." As I read this I tried to imagine how to reset my digital life, now that all my passwords are exposed. Yo…

They already were reading his gmail, if he still used it. What they may have got were his PGP keys, which presumably he was using to talk to his boyfriend. I doubt however he had any real stuff on his laptop. That would be insane for a reporter who seems to have been as careful as Greenwald.

Nope, straight forward intimidation. I cannot imagine how they thought it would work, so either we assume the security services are incompetant, or there is some other cunning plan. Sadly the latter is very unlikely these days.

Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#46

Post by arethuza »

keithwinstein wrote: post #39
swalsh wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In regards to your first paragraph, its a question I keep wondering. What was different about these leaks then all the previous? Why NOW are people caring?

It's too soon to tell whether this time will be different -- that depends on whether Congress or the executive branch actually changes something in the end. So far it isn't different. From the perspective of the U.S. and U.K., the Chinese and Israelies and French are undoubtedly doing their best to spy on as much of the Internet as they possibly can, and they're probably pretty successful at it, so why would we unila…

So we are in an era of Mutally Assured Spying where every power spys on as much as they can just because that's what every other power might be doing?

At least in 1984 you only had to suffer the attentions of one of Oceania, East Asia or Eurasia!

Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#47

Post by padobson »

Almost anything can be crowdsourced nowadays. 237 years ago, the founders of the US tried to crowdsource power. I don't see why we can't reboot that whole idea.

Political candidates, lobbying initiatives and legislation can all be directly impacted, in the current framework they exist under, by crowdsourcing. While Kickstarter and Indiegogo have shown us it's possible with art and industrial design and dozens of other media, there's not a go-to place to do it for politics.

So if this community really wants to change our dystopian future, then that's the answer. We could have the NSA completely defunded in a year if we wanted.

Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#48

Post by lazyjones »

padobson wrote: post #28
nwh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really see a solution, and I'm assuming that nobody else does really. Citizens and foreigners (like me) have equally little power over what their governments do, just a mild decision between two parties come election time. The general population seems to be apathetic about it all, I don't think I know a single person who has any opinion other than the tired "nothing to hide" line.

Sounds like we need a campaign against the "Nothing to hide" line. You could probably point out to them that there are so many laws now, they probably broke 10 of them before they left for work in the morning.

We need more "leaks", especially of the kind that shows the politicians who repeat the "nothing to hide" line, that they themselves have plenty of things to hide ... So perhaps it's time to start digging through the private lives of some politicians.

Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#49

Post by mtgx »

swalsh wrote: post #32
keithwinstein wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> would any of you have believed Yes, honestly. For more than 20 years, the basic message of the cipherpunks and related communities has been that the NSA spends tens of billions of dollars to spy on everything "foreign" that it can possibly get its hands on, and its foreign adversaries are doing the same, so you'd better use PGP (or more) if you want any chance of keeping your communications secret from the governme…

In regards to your first paragraph, its a question I keep wondering. What was different about these leaks then all the previous? Why NOW are people caring?

Proof. Overwhelming proof. And all of the media reacting on this at once. There have been a few stories about spying before but at best each site ran one story about it and that was it. The next day everyone moved on.

I think both the brilliance of Greenwald/Guardian to launch a new story every few days and the stupidity of the US government when abusing its power to stop the press or Snowden, is what kept this for so long, and hopefully will continue to happen.

Re: 'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do

#50

Post by rahoulb »

cabalamat wrote: post #25
acheron wrote: post #14

Of course, remember that the Guardian was perfectly fine with the government harassing journalists as long as it was not them: http://reason.com/blog/2013/08/20/despite-its-battle-with-th...

While dare say the Guardian isn't perfect (not that it's relevant) I would distrust anything coming from Spiked, a magazine whose modus operandi is to be contrarian on every issue. They are, in effect, professional trolls.

"Spiked" used to be "Living Marxism", which was the magazine of the Revolutionary Communist Party. The RCP members I used to know (only a handful) would revel in their own inconsistency - so since the demise of the RCP I can fully understand Spiked carrying on that particular tradition.
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