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Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

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Re: Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

#31

Post by lovemenot »

chiaro wrote: post #9

He writes well, and it's an interesting look at how intertwined the government has become (was it ever not?) enmeshed with corporate empires. Unfortunately in the wider population, Google's image is nigh unassailable. The average user wouldn't know about their being saddled with military contracts through their Boston Dynamics acquisition, for example. For this, and other reasons, 99 times out of 100, "free market" c…

He does indeed write well. This made me lol:

>> That April, $32,300 went to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. A month later the same amount, $32,300, headed off to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Why Schmidt was donating exactly the same amount of money to both parties is a $64,600 question.

Re: Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

#32

Post by DanBC »

grecy wrote: post #27
lern_too_spel wrote: post #5

The last section reads like the ravings of a conspiracy nut. From associating the DARPA grants that fund many university computer science projects with nefarious spy collaboration to repeating PRISM is the long-debunked full take program of Greenwald's fantasy, it's straight lunacy.

> reads like the ravings of a conspiracy nut. As do all the articles about the information Snowden made available to us. Imagine it's somewhere in 2005-2010 while reading... you would be nuts if you didn't think they were conspiracy nuts.

ECHELON was an open secret much earlier and the European Paiament had written reports on it in the 1990s.

People claiming it was conspiracy theory were fucking idiots given all the reputable evidence. The stuff about Boeing and McDonnal Douglas was late 1999 / early 2000.

Re: Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

#33

Post by lotsofmangos »

Is interesting to read other people's suppositions on this stuff. In a similar vein, I tend to think of Facebook as being just another government agency, but Google has always been much more curious. Google seems to have ambition beyond getting close to power, Google has since the very earliest days seemed that it is interested in being a power in and of itself. The International Olympic Committee has this unusual designation of being a non-geographical state-like entity. I suspect Google would also like that designation.

Re: Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

#34

Post by incision »

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #19

I did not realize what a nut Assange has become. The more there is the danger that he might be forgotten, the more ridiculous his theories of the world. However, you have to think about his target audience. The audience doesn't consist of people who are familiar with things like DARPA grants, and think tanks. For people in the know, this writing will read like lunacy, because they will understand that Assange sees de…

The piece is 5800+ words, exactly one of which is DARPA.

It's entirely possible that Assange is a nut, but nothing he says presents quite as nutty as extrapolating that single mention into a tale of innocent students being seeded with delusions of CIA double agents and elite shadow cabals by a scheming madman.

Re: Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

#35

Post by dismal2 »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #30
dismal2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please let us know how it has been debunked.

The NY Times published a correct description of PRISM very shortly after Greenwald's published his insane misread. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/06/08/technology/tech-compani... This description matches the declassified PRISM documents, the description in Snowden's leaked slides, US law, the miniscule price tag in Snowden's slides, and the description of a specific PRISM integration I heard from one of the implement…

I believe he is referring to XKeyscore, not PRISM, which is as insane as it sounds, unless you believe the NSAs denial.

Re: Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

#36

Post by dismal2 »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #5

The last section reads like the ravings of a conspiracy nut. From associating the DARPA grants that fund many university computer science projects with nefarious spy collaboration to repeating PRISM is the long-debunked full take program of Greenwald's fantasy, it's straight lunacy.

Please read up on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XKeyscore

It actually does what you claim was Greenwald's fantasy/lunacy

Re: Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

#37

Post by TheMagicHorsey »

incision wrote: post #34
TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #19

I did not realize what a nut Assange has become. The more there is the danger that he might be forgotten, the more ridiculous his theories of the world. However, you have to think about his target audience. The audience doesn't consist of people who are familiar with things like DARPA grants, and think tanks. For people in the know, this writing will read like lunacy, because they will understand that Assange sees de…

The piece is 5800+ words, exactly one of which is DARPA. It's entirely possible that Assange is a nut, but nothing he says presents quite as nutty as extrapolating that single mention into a tale of innocent students being seeded with delusions of CIA double agents and elite shadow cabals by a scheming madman.

The DARPA point wasn't the only point of insanity. I just don't have the patience to sit and list out why his other points are equally silly for anyone versed in the space. The DARPA point was the easiest to explain and the most accessible for the Hacker News audience.

Re: Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

#38

Post by jeangenie »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #5

The last section reads like the ravings of a conspiracy nut. From associating the DARPA grants that fund many university computer science projects with nefarious spy collaboration to repeating PRISM is the long-debunked full take program of Greenwald's fantasy, it's straight lunacy.

This comment reads like the ravings of a deluded government stooge.

Re: Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

#39

Post by adventured »

api wrote: post #6
lern_too_spel wrote: post #5

The last section reads like the ravings of a conspiracy nut. From associating the DARPA grants that fund many university computer science projects with nefarious spy collaboration to repeating PRISM is the long-debunked full take program of Greenwald's fantasy, it's straight lunacy.

A lot of what's happened in the past ten years is straight out of the rantings of 1990s-era conspiracy nuts. If anything, the 90s conspiracy wackos were too conservative. Nobody would have imagined that everyone would think it perfectly okay to carry a portable device that constantly reports their location to central servers 24/7, not to mention that it has a microphone that can be switched on by malware.

The Patriot Act, indefinite detention, torture camps, the NDAA bill, NSA spying, the immense violations by the FBI and DEA when it comes to parallel construction and aggressive localized spying and tracking, StingRay, fake cell towers, local jurisdictions (eg Virginia) compiling phone records and tracking citizens, killing thousands of innocent people around the globe via drones, Guantanamo, arresting people under terrorism charges for joking on Facebook or online games, the TSA, Homeland Security...

And on and on

If you told someone in 1997 that that's how America would look today, they'd never believe it.

Re: Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

#40

Post by lovemenot »

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #37
incision wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The piece is 5800+ words, exactly one of which is DARPA. It's entirely possible that Assange is a nut, but nothing he says presents quite as nutty as extrapolating that single mention into a tale of innocent students being seeded with delusions of CIA double agents and elite shadow cabals by a scheming madman.

The DARPA point wasn't the only point of insanity. I just don't have the patience to sit and list out why his other points are equally silly for anyone versed in the space. The DARPA point was the easiest to explain and the most accessible for the Hacker News audience.

>> ... Think of the audacity it takes to write this gibberish with such confidence.

Thanks for your heads-up.

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