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Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

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Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#131

When the Snowden docs came out, the main thing that surprised me wasn't the tech, it was the scale. I thought I had seen the tip of the iceberg doing security work for over 15y prior, but I had barely seen ripples in the surface. Most of what I saw would have been in the category of "BULLRUN," which I incorporate into client threat models today, but also some of the ISP interception equipment I saw at peering points…

>I tolerate the spook-adjacent types in my field who parrot absurd official lines and slogans about russian interference because being seen to align with it is just how they are trying to survive I present to you a real, still-active Russian troll account. https://twitter.com/blackintheempir How do I know it's a troll account? Take a look at this: https://twitter.com/reshetz/status/1662112840554098688 Just like "Ther…

There's so many of them and they're so hyperbolic and wrong. Take good old @witte_sergei, claiming here during the huge gains Ukraine had last year that the "scale of Ukraine’s defeat at Lyman will become clear in the coming days": https://twitter.com/witte_sergei/status/1575975278652043264

Meanwhile Lyman remains under Ukrainian control: https://deepstatemap.live/en#11/48.9534/37.8129

That's just one of them, this guy was on an absolute tear during this period. He deactivated his account to clean it up a little because it got a bit too obvious and hard to hide at one point.

Their strategy seems to be to just flood every channel with all sorts of ridiculous things to make people think "I can't make sense of this stupid conflict, it's too complex" and tune out. It's not a bad approach within Russia and it certainly strikes a chord within a few people in the west. It's just that if they don't clear their tracks when they're wrong you can pretty easily identify them for as pro-Kremlin trolls

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Joe is gaffe prone, and from the article that I linked to he apparently said the words but misspoke. I voted for Joe and I like the guy but I've definitely got issues with him. He certainly wasn't my first choice. But you appear to be a True Believer and there's no point in furthering this discussion because you mind is made up and that's that.

no, I also believe he misspoke, but the point was, "we" take trumps jokes at total face value, as to actually believe he asked the russians, where if you watch the video, and know anything about how trump talks, you know he was not really asking them to do that, but making a joke. Something he often does. It may have been a stupid joke to make, all things considered, but it was one nonetheless. If you can suspend bli…

That's an interesting pivot. You brought it up in the context of it being a confession but now it's not?

His ask was actually delivered on shortly after: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-asked-russia-to-...

Trump had plans to build in Moscow, held unprecedented unsupervised conversations with Putin, etc.

I could go on and on, but would you listen or care? Anyway, we're effectively sullying the salient value of the OP.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#133
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer to point out: if only “interesting” people encrypt their messages, then encrypting your messages becomes a signal that you are interesting. As a boring person who thinks the state shouldn’t be allowed to focus the Eye of Sauron on anybody, I have a responsibility to encrypt my boring brunch plans. I think “I’m not that important” is basically either the result of someone not thinking very hard, or it is a di…

What about as a boring person who does think the state should be allowed to focus the Eye of Sauron on people? And that person doesn't have to be anti-encryption, just anti-bad opsec.

> What about as a boring person who does think the state should be allowed to focus the Eye of Sauron on people?

Sure. Not everyone has to agree with me. I think it is unpopular to be happy about intelligence agencies spying on us. So hopefully I can win over some of the in-between people by causing them to fully face their position. But if someone just fundamentally disagrees with me, I think this tactic won’t work. Coming up with arguments for people who fundamentally disagree with you is pretty difficult.

> And that person doesn't have to be anti-encryption, just anti-bad opsec.

I’m not sure I follow here. But in general, for example I don’t think it is reasonable to expect non-technical people who aren’t, like, spies to have perfect opsec all the time. So, like journalists and activists, they will inevitable slip up sometimes, anything we can do to mitigate that is good.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#135
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer to point out: if only “interesting” people encrypt their messages, then encrypting your messages becomes a signal that you are interesting. As a boring person who thinks the state shouldn’t be allowed to focus the Eye of Sauron on anybody, I have a responsibility to encrypt my boring brunch plans. I think “I’m not that important” is basically either the result of someone not thinking very hard, or it is a di…

What about as a boring person who does think the state should be allowed to focus the Eye of Sauron on people? And that person doesn't have to be anti-encryption, just anti-bad opsec.

They should remember to get their booster shot.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically anyone who sits at a panel, interview or a discussion and talks about geopolitical affairs. It’s the space around politics and think tanks and national security. There’s an implicit expectation that you talk about certain topics in a certain way, and that way usually conforms to the narrative that’s acceptable to the apparatus of power. It’s a vague description but that’s because of the nature of this unspo…

Russia commits countless war crimes on a daily basis (there is tons of documentation) and China has concentration camps. America is not perfect but they are legitimately much worse

This is the exact narrative that I’m talking about. It’s a hand wavy pseudo intellectual narrative that goes, Russia commits war crimes and kills civilians, China is Nazi Germany 2.0 and is trying to exterminate Muslims like the Nazis tried to do with the Jews and America is bad, you know with even more casualties in the Middle East but it’s not as bad as these cartoonishly evil regimes. I mean no offence to you by calling it hand wavy and pseudo intellectual but this is the exact attitude I’m talking about. It goes, “Everybody knows [something] [something]” and that’s usually a big warning sign for me; I know because I had to examine some of my own beliefs that way and it was painful to realise that most of it was talking points I had unfortunately picked up from so called thought leaders.

It’s a lot to unpack and I’m not going to discuss Russia because a lot of that is actually true, but why don’t you hold America to the same standards? Also regarding the concentration camps thing, this is another narrative. Can you describe to me what you think is going on in China? I’m genuinely curious. My understanding, after a lot of research and incredulity is that it’s essentially China’s version of Guantanamo Bay, because you know, they had terrorist attacks where there were hundreds killed in stabbings in Xinjiang but you probably don’t know about that right? It seems all that people know is the pictures of lots of Muslims sitting in blue overalls behind wired fences, which has been deliberately used to evoke comparisons to gas chambers and the Holocaust, by ASPI. But when I say this, people often have a knee jerk reaction which is along the lines of: “How can you support genocide or another Holocaust, you’re evil.” Which is the exact problem because the whole premise of the discussion has been completely warped by so called accepted “truths“ and people manipulating our emotions in a classic appeal to pathos. Could the world really be this cartoonishly black and white and good and evil, where my side is morally righteous and our adversaries are morally despicable? This is exactly what Orwell described in his essay, “Politics and the English Language.”

Regarding the concentration camps narrative, just Google ASPI and you’ll realise that about 70% of this narrative originates from them. Not only that but they’re literally funded by the military industrial complex (e.g. Northrup Grumman, Thales) and their plan worked because Australia recently bought billions of dollars worth of crappy missiles from the very companies that sponsor this so called “think tank”. It’s most definitely NOT a conspiracy theory and it’s very revealing that these think tanks can be this brazen. If you want to get to the root of this, just search for the origin of common narratives like this one and you’ll find it’s just a handful of sources all repeating the same misleading points. You’ll be shocked at how easily narratives can be seeded in the media.

https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/the-think-tank-be...

And this video is kind of memey but you get the gist.

https://youtu.be/_fHfgU8oMSo

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> It's important to remember that they invaded Ukraine for no reason This is not true. Real people have motives, „being evil“ is a child's explanation for things it doesn’t understand.

You can categorize some motives as evil, but the definition of evil is quite relative. You could extend it to "disturbing the peace", which Russia clearly did.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#138
post #9

Bellovin's Governments and Cryptography: The Crypto Wars is the most grand & sweeping review of governments & encryption across time that I've seen! https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-farrell-tenyearsafter-...

Indeed. I guess that whole DUAL_EC_DRBG random-number-generator story - the NSA backdoor deal with RSA is essentially true? No confessions yet it seems, however.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically anyone who sits at a panel, interview or a discussion and talks about geopolitical affairs. It’s the space around politics and think tanks and national security. There’s an implicit expectation that you talk about certain topics in a certain way, and that way usually conforms to the narrative that’s acceptable to the apparatus of power. It’s a vague description but that’s because of the nature of this unspo…

Russia commits countless war crimes on a daily basis (there is tons of documentation) and China has concentration camps. America is not perfect but they are legitimately much worse

China does not have "concentration camps." All that reporting goes back to a single man: Adrian Zenz.

Re: Reflections on Ten Years Past the Snowden Revelations

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People still believe this to this day. Who? It is accepted that Trump got help from Russia and that he publicly asked for it. It is not accepted that he has strong ties with Russia, and unlike what the GGP has claimed, there is no "official" story saying that. The only person who did say that was private investigator Steele, in a dossier that Clinton didn't believe and discarded but that McCain did and leaked.

As I understand it, the Wikileaks DNC email dump was just a front for Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_National_Commi...

Why wasn't there a discussion of the contents of the leaks, that the DNC did everything in their power to coronate Hillary, and only a discussion of the leak's provenance?
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