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Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons

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Re: Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons

#151

Post by xenadu02 »

RodericDay wrote: post #111
doktrin wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> surely surely his supporters don't subscribe to at least the latter view there? You must not have very many conservative friends on Facebook. "Russia didn't write the emails" has to be one of the most popular memes of the last 6 months.

How is that a "meme"? I don't know any conservatives but every single leftist I know thinks that russophobia is at absolutely deranged levels, as a vehicle for Clinton apologism. The idea that "Russia decided the election" is absurd, but repeated often enough, is starting to be taken as truth by those who find it palatable.

If Hillary Clinton didn't have such high unfavorables it wouldn't have been a contest. If Bernie hadn't siphoned off some of her support it wouldn't have been a contest. Russian meddling and Comey's last-minute maneuver definitely cost her the election, but only by swinging the vote less than 1% in a few key states.

I don't think Putin seriously believes he can control US elections and probably recognizes this as a one-off lucky break.

The whole point for him is the PR value: having Trump claim elections are rigged is pure PR gold for Putin. Having Trump claim protesters are paid Democratic shills (rather than real people who don't like him) is Putin cover. He gets to point at those words and say "see, it's the same everywhere". It gives Putin supporters cover to believe his lies and it takes the wind out of the sails of Putin's detractors.

My guess is Putin's original plan was to take advantage of Trump claiming he lost due to election rigging but we'll probably never know.

Re: Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons

#152

Post by doktrin »

rev wrote: post #133
doktrin wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> claims along the lines like "Russia uses online trolling" seem exaggerated. What? gamergate, /pol, /b, alt-right, the_donald, antifa use online trolling. In context, saying a state actor uses online trolling is an extremely conservative claim. I'm sure there's online trolling in favor of and sponsored by US, Chinese and Macedonian interests (to name a few) too - but Russia's actions are much better documented.

Alacritous state actors more nimble at trolling than 4chan? You decide, I don't care. My problem is that US, Chinese, Russian and Macedonian sponsorships by state actors are equally unproved - if you read into "Trolls from Olgino" reports carefully. US's sponsorship is objectively less probable: English being lingua franca hampers American wannabe "hybrid trolls" [0]. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive…

> My problem is that US, Chinese, Russian and Macedonian sponsorships by state actors are equally unproved

Disagree. There's no such thing as perfect certainty, but the only real question about Russian troll sponsorship is one of scale.

https://globalvoices.org/2015/04/02/analyzing-kremlin-twitte...

> US's sponsorship is objectively less probable: English being lingua franca hampers American wannabe "hybrid trolls"

This is an interesting observation, but I think you either underestimate American resources, or overestimate the logistics of online influence manipulation campaigns.

For illustration : there are about 1m fluent Russian speakers in the US, and about 4m fluent English speakers in Russia. Sure, it's a bigger talent pool : but both countries could rope in bilingual cyber propagandists by the thousands if they felt so inclined.

Re: Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons

#153

Post by [deleted] »

rev wrote: post #133
doktrin wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> claims along the lines like "Russia uses online trolling" seem exaggerated. What? gamergate, /pol, /b, alt-right, the_donald, antifa use online trolling. In context, saying a state actor uses online trolling is an extremely conservative claim. I'm sure there's online trolling in favor of and sponsored by US, Chinese and Macedonian interests (to name a few) too - but Russia's actions are much better documented.

Alacritous state actors more nimble at trolling than 4chan? You decide, I don't care. My problem is that US, Chinese, Russian and Macedonian sponsorships by state actors are equally unproved - if you read into "Trolls from Olgino" reports carefully. US's sponsorship is objectively less probable: English being lingua franca hampers American wannabe "hybrid trolls" [0]. [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive…

[deleted]

Re: Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons

#154

Post by 0x38B »

Like others are saying, there's a mismatch between the overall sentence structure and progression - which strikes me as more native - and the mistakes. I don't buy the verb misconjugation especially, a Russian ESL learner at that level would get that right more often than not.

Source: many conversations with Russians learning English (also near-native Russian)

Re: Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons

#155

Post by trendia »

mirimir wrote: post #148
jorblumesea wrote: post #147

Is there any doubt the Shadow Brokers are Russian and working for Russian interests? The timing of releases, international events concerning both countries and pointed measures are far too suspicious to be considered circumstantial.

Sure, but that's what someone would do if they were trying to implicate Russians.

Maybe they knew we'd think it odd for Russians to speak with a Russian accent so they did it anyway to trick us.

"Are you the sort of man who would put the poison in his own goblet? Now a clever man would put the poison into my goblet, because he would know that only a fool would drink the goblet given to him. I am not a fool, so clearly you wouldn't do that. But you must have known that I was not a great fool, so I mustn't drink from the wine in front of me!" [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_eZmEiyTo0#t=1m20s

Re: Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons

#156

Post by Implicated »

bluecreator wrote: post #140
akud wrote: post #49

The content reads pretty clearly like a native English speaker imitating immature hacker-speak. It comes across as if it were written by a script-kiddy; that may be intentional.

NONE of you guys read poetry? This is a bend on "America", by Ginsberg. All coding and no poetry makes Jack a dull boy. Read it.

Care to elaborate on this? (No, I don't read poetry but I'm curious about the connection)

Re: Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons

#157

Post by jorblumesea »

mirimir wrote: post #148
jorblumesea wrote: post #147

Is there any doubt the Shadow Brokers are Russian and working for Russian interests? The timing of releases, international events concerning both countries and pointed measures are far too suspicious to be considered circumstantial.

Sure, but that's what someone would do if they were trying to implicate Russians.

Almost certainly what a Russian disinformation campaign would include. But you cannot easily hide motives and attack patterns. These kind of campaigns scream Russia, no one else in the world operates like them or could operate like them. Almost everyone in the intelligence circles include Snowden agrees they are Russian. Smells like a duck, quacks like a duck...

Re: Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons

#158

Post by mirimir »

jorblumesea wrote: post #157
mirimir wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but that's what someone would do if they were trying to implicate Russians.

Almost certainly what a Russian disinformation campaign would include. But you cannot easily hide motives and attack patterns. These kind of campaigns scream Russia, no one else in the world operates like them or could operate like them. Almost everyone in the intelligence circles include Snowden agrees they are Russian. Smells like a duck, quacks like a duck...

Well, if it's so obvious to you, then you could easily copy it. And so, why not someone else?

Re: Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons

#159

Post by mirimir »

trendia wrote: post #155
mirimir wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but that's what someone would do if they were trying to implicate Russians.

Maybe they knew we'd think it odd for Russians to speak with a Russian accent so they did it anyway to trick us. "Are you the sort of man who would put the poison in his own goblet? Now a clever man would put the poison into my goblet, because he would know that only a fool would drink the goblet given to him. I am not a fool, so clearly you wouldn't do that. But you must have known that I was not a great fool, so I…

Yeah, pretty much. Except no poison drinking was involved here. Unless it was the NSA that did it. And of course, this was all old stuff, so it wasn't really very poisonous.

But really, really, really. There's just no way to know.

Re: Snowden: NSA just lost control of its Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons

#160

Post by throwaway71959 »

throwaway71958 wrote: post #82
ktta wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. The GP is implying that they are Russian with this >since they can't just say "I work for Russia and we're reminding America that they're not invulnerable." But the person who replied is saying how the grammatical obfuscation doesn't look like something that's done by a Russian but by an English speaker who is trying to sound like a Russian with bad English. Because a Russian with bad English wouldn't mak…

To my ear, this obfuscation sounds Middle Eastern, due to the frequent use of "-ing" in verbs whether it belongs there or not. I know an Iranian guy who does this a lot.

I'm middle eastern myself, and this definitely seems like it was written by a native Arabic speaker. Or Farsi. Or Hebrew.

Definitely not Russian though, of that I am certaining.

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