191–200 of 314 posts
Aside: Kaspersky is a Russian company.
Not sure it's really meaningful to simply say they're a "Russian company". More specifically, they're a company that has been accused of cooperating with the FSB in attacks against the US government. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaspersky_bans_and_allegations... Whatever the case, it's probably wise to take their statements with some skepticism of bias in this regard.
We need to end all secret gov agencies. They are out of control & happily stomping out liberties without discretion.
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The tit-for-tat goes the other way: 1. expose malware the CIA doesn't want exposed 2. get accused by the CIA of being in bed with the Russians "working for the Russians" is the go to baseless political smear these days
I would like to point out that a russian security company almost certainly has ties with the russian government. Particularly a very large, well respected one. It would be like accusing oracle or amazon of having ties with the US government.
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I recall how when we had North Korean hacking activities and official attributions people would say, but how do we know it was them and how do we know the government isn’t making things up? But when someone accuses the US we never add any salt. Not that I don’t think it’s false, it’s just that the lack of consistent skepticism is interesting.
Because the entire goal is to promote skepticism about the USA while remaining as mum as possible on Russia and China. In the case of Russia, it’s not a secret that they try to disrupt and divide the states via internal conflicts so they can take over if we decline because of it. Here is just one example: https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-backed-facebook-account... We also know that hundreds of thousands of foreig…
Here's an example that in major parts contributed to a civil war going on to this day: The existence of a US military operation that manipulates social media trough sock-puppet accounts [0] was revealed around the same time Syrians were riled up to regime change trough.. social media [1].
Said social media presence kept announcing "Days of Rage" protests in Syria which initially no Syrian even showed up to.
These operations predate anything noteworthy Russia did on the same front, as most of that only started in the wake of the Ukraine revolution, which also saw plenty of blatant US interference [2]. Back then Russia was diplomatically very vocal about how unprecedented the foreign interference in Ukraine was.
What followed was St. Petersburg troll farms heavily targeting the US.
> We also know that hundreds of thousands of foreign-sponsored accounts on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc, have been banned over the years. (Please fact check by googling!)
How many domestic sponsored accounts have been banned? Zero, which means that on US based social media these kind of outfits are fighting with a heavy home game advantage [3], yet in most of these places that never comes up, it's always "Look out for the Russian/Chinese propagandist!", just like you are doing here. Which usually ends up targeting skeptical people not wholeheartedly endorsing the "Good vs Evil" narrative and not any actual propagandists.
[0] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-ope...
[1] https://www.france24.com/en/20110203-syria-democracy-protest...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/15/john-mccain-uk...
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/4ylml3/reddit...
Interesting in light of the recent comments on HN that therecord.media is (partly) funded by the CIA.
1. https://twitter.com/campuscodi/status/1387026165597151234
2. https://twitter.com/riskybusiness/status/1387194016790323200
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I would like to point out that a russian security company almost certainly has ties with the russian government. Particularly a very large, well respected one. It would be like accusing oracle or amazon of having ties with the US government.
Kaspersky himself is a 1987 KGB school alumni. The naïveté of Westerners is sometimes astonishing.
Nope, it's ONLY the evil Russians. The naïveté of non-Westerners is sometimes astonishing.
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> Let's not pretend Who is pretending? The discussion is about the CIA. When I discuss cats, there is no reason I should have to always qualify it by saying "yes, and dogs are cute, too."
Kaspersky's ties to FSB are an open secret, so it's really believing FSB vs believing CIA unless you have a way to verify them.
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>If I had to wager I'd always bet on national security agency of any powerful country lying, I don't see how anyone could come to another conclusion given their history. Let's not pretend the FSB and MSS don't also lie constantly. That you're more familiar with the CIA lying is a testament to the free press of the US, not the other way around. The point of the previous post is that it could easily be another security…
The CIA has a budget for lying and cheating that is an order of magnitude larger than anything else other countries have. I always assume that they are doing more damage than what we know about.
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Or they just ask, which is essentially how prism already worked for user data.
Didn't some PRISM documents show that Google's internal use of TLS 1.2 was blocking a more widespread collection of data? I'll see if I can find the slide that articulated the issue.
The other part was "Do what we tell you, or you'll be Joe Nacchioed"
In a 2013 interview, Marissa Meyer made it abundantly clear this is why Yahoo "voluntarily" joined PRISM. One can assume the rest were similarly influenced.