Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Will you join me? I wonder how many people are genuinely afraid of raising their own profile in such a way. I'm not American, but I would certainly be partaking in any political action against the actions being discussed here. Although as it is, I'm very hesitant to even level criticism at the CIA on HN. I'm by no means an important person, but from what we've learned I don't even want to register on the radar of th…
But that is the exciting part, pretending that the CIA is concerned about you, or even knows that you exist.
The CIA Campaign to Steal Apple's Secrets
101–110 of 138 posts
Re: The CIA Campaign to Steal Apple's Secrets
#102Apple should stage some sort of protest. Perhaps they should go on some sort of tax strike.
I don't think it would have any material effect. Most if not all hyper-corporations route transactions off-shore, and hold cash off-shore, specifically to drastically reduce the amount of tax they pay.
Re: The CIA Campaign to Steal Apple's Secrets
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Look at the grassroots, bipartisan, loud and successful cry from the public not to enter Syria. How many months did that work? It is true that the system must represent the people. If and when it does not - whose fault is it? It can not be the people. We don't design people. We design a system to conform to the people, to communicate with them and to represent them.
Its our fault because we put those politicians in power. Its our fault because we on the whole would rather watch sports, reality tv, play games, etc... than get involved in the running of our country. And it doesn't even take much. Can you really not spare a 5 minutes once a week to call your representatives? Think about if more people did this. Suddenly those lobbyists voices would get a lot less powerful.
No they wouldn't. Lobbyists represent moneyed interests. You don't. You're just one person.
Seriously, you are committing two mistakes here. The first mistake is to assume that your letters and phone calls to representatives actually matter. The second mistake is to assume that your representatives have any power to stop our rogue intelligence agencies, particularly the NSA.
I want to address the second one first, because it's more important. Simply put, the NSA is out of control. They have an extremely sophisticated apparatus in place that has been growing exponentially in complexity and reach since immediately after 9/11, and they have the balls to lie to the Congress about it while under oath. And there are secret courts - secret courts! - that seem to give them blanket approval with absolutely zero accountability. An organization like that cannot be stopped, not just because it's political suicide to try to stop them but also because it would genuinely cause a lot of collateral damage.
But the other point is also worth addressing. The idea that writing or calling your representatives actually affects anything is an illusion. An illusion that must be maintained to keep things stable, but an illusion nonetheless. Because here's what actually happens when they get a letter from you: they skim through it and send you a canned response. That's it. Your opinion does not matter unless you have deep pockets and are an existing or potential donor. This is difficult to accept for some people but it is the reality.
Re: The CIA Campaign to Steal Apple's Secrets
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its our fault because we put those politicians in power. Its our fault because we on the whole would rather watch sports, reality tv, play games, etc... than get involved in the running of our country. And it doesn't even take much. Can you really not spare a 5 minutes once a week to call your representatives? Think about if more people did this. Suddenly those lobbyists voices would get a lot less powerful.
>>Think about if more people did this. Suddenly those lobbyists voices would get a lot less powerful. No they wouldn't. Lobbyists represent moneyed interests. You don't. You're just one person. Seriously, you are committing two mistakes here. The first mistake is to assume that your letters and phone calls to representatives actually matter. The second mistake is to assume that your representatives have any power to…
Sorry. I'm not defeatist enough to do that.
Re: The CIA Campaign to Steal Apple's Secrets
#105Re: The CIA Campaign to Steal Apple's Secrets
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm actually somewhat torn on this. While I'm against mass surveillance, I think that targeted surveillance can be a good thing. By nature of it being targeted, it is expensive to use on more people than necessary. The kind of spying the CIA would enable through compromising Apple secrets would be restricted to high-value targets if for no other reason than to ensure none of their targets knew they had that capabilit…
I'm strongly opposed to sweeping surveillance, but not even a little bit torn on this story. I'm glad it's now public knowledge, but this is exactly the sort of thing our intelligence agencies should be doing. Edit to expand on "should be doing": at the very least, they ought to explore such vulnerabilities as a defensive measure since their counterparts in every other State are clearly doing the same thing whenever…
The reason for mass surveillance is control of the populace. Mass surveillance clearly doesn't prevent terrorism: most of this 4th-Amendment-violating dragnet surveillance was in place well before the Boston Bombing, and nobody caught the Tsarnaevs.
So, I'm not a little torn, either: the CIA shouldn't be looking to crack iPhones, they should be looking to beef up iPhone security to keep those other nations from doing unethical stuff. Exploiting vulnerabilities for surveillance purposes is a bad thing all around. Close them holes!
Re: The CIA Campaign to Steal Apple's Secrets
#107How much longer can this continue? We have American agencies attacking American companies "because terrorism". It's been 13 years since our trauma, maybe now's the time to remove the razor blade from our wrists, look ourselves in the mirror and just carry on. Bad stuff is always going to be in our future — stuff that will increasingly appear preventable between the Internet and a lot of hindsight — but our current so…
I'm actually somewhat torn on this. While I'm against mass surveillance, I think that targeted surveillance can be a good thing. By nature of it being targeted, it is expensive to use on more people than necessary. The kind of spying the CIA would enable through compromising Apple secrets would be restricted to high-value targets if for no other reason than to ensure none of their targets knew they had that capabilit…
Re: The CIA Campaign to Steal Apple's Secrets
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Will you join me? I wonder how many people are genuinely afraid of raising their own profile in such a way. I'm not American, but I would certainly be partaking in any political action against the actions being discussed here. Although as it is, I'm very hesitant to even level criticism at the CIA on HN. I'm by no means an important person, but from what we've learned I don't even want to register on the radar of th…
Although as it is, I'm very hesitant to even level criticism at the CIA on HN. I'm by no means an important person, but from what we've learned I don't even want to register on the radar of these entities. I understand where you're coming from, and clearly it's an individual choice, based on one's judgment of risk vs. reward. But let me add that when people choose that position, it just makes it that much easier for…
How can you be certain? How many really successful job interviews have you had since you started your one-person campaign, where the hiring company inexplicably dropped you like a hot potato? Do you regularly check your credit rating to see if weird stuff is showing up? Have your bicycle tires quit holding pressure?
I ask the last question because East Germany's Stasi did that sort of thing (https://books.google.com/books?id=GlbAmn_cajYC&pg=PA160&lpg=...). The USA "national security" establishment/"intelligence community" gets unbelievable amounts of money, that they must spend. Why not make and use "smell chairs" or randomly screw with people that openly oppose the deep state?
Re: The CIA Campaign to Steal Apple's Secrets
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>Think about if more people did this. Suddenly those lobbyists voices would get a lot less powerful. No they wouldn't. Lobbyists represent moneyed interests. You don't. You're just one person. Seriously, you are committing two mistakes here. The first mistake is to assume that your letters and phone calls to representatives actually matter. The second mistake is to assume that your representatives have any power to…
So we shouldn't try? Just give up? Sorry. I'm not defeatist enough to do that.
If you call your representatives once a week, it's not going to hurt so I encourage you to do so. It's just not necessarily the solution.
Re: The CIA Campaign to Steal Apple's Secrets
#110I mean whether they've backdoored the regular version available to all or only those in use by specific developers, the implication (to me) would be that binaries/applications/etc produced would then be automatically backdoored or at very least weakened?
Disclaimer: I know zip about Xcode or dev in the Apple ecosystem