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CIA malware and hacking tools

wikileaks.org

571–580 of 1001 posts

Re: CIA malware and hacking tools

#571

It's interesting to note that Julian Assange didn't demonstrate control of the wikileaks private key during his Reddit AMA 1 month ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5n58sm/i_am_julian_as... Considering the political situation unfolding in the US and who this leak weakens, there is some evidence that wikileaks is not in the hands of a neutral party. There is clear motive right now for undermining the CIA. Th…

> This may not have been an act of altruism like Snowden I'm still really surprised no one questions the Snowden narrative. A man who earned $200k a year, worked remotely in Hawaii with his smoking hot wife, suddenly decided he has a conscience, either collected data slowly over time or did a massive data dump and released all this information to Greenwald and Der Sepgiel. Then he flees to Russia where he openly twee…

If Snowden was fake, and someone can make the NSA and government's response to his leaks look as genuine as they did, this is going to be someone so powerful, well-connected, and invisible, that's it's likely it's not even human. Every time you come up with a complex conspiracy theory, ask yourself how easy it would be to orchestrate that and just handle all of the logistics of it with zero leaks and 100% undying loyalty without getting stabbed in the back yourself.

People did question it -- he was getting spy accusations as soon as Russia let him in, but then they looked at the actual documents and realized that Snowden is irrelevant as far as the content is concerned. You don't need Snowden's motivations to interpret any of that.

What benefit does it serve you to suddenly get all of your enemies and frenemies to suddenly change all of their communication methods to avoid the NSA? You're spying on them without them knowing about it -- that's exactly what you want!

Re: CIA malware and hacking tools

#572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that in my heart as well. However, we don't currently live in a world with a federated global government. The recent election in the US highlighted that people do divide the world into imaginary lines on maps and it had a slogan: AMERICA FIRST. It's not just the political class that sees these divisions, it's a majority of the citizens. How would you spark a revolution in people's thinking?

Do keep in mind that Trump received 63M votes out of a total population of 319M (~20%). Even if you consider the election a referendum on globalization (and there are many reasons besides nationalism that people may have voted for Trump, as well as reasons that an anti-globalist might have voted for Clinton), that's pretty far from a majority. Similarly, Brexit received 17.4M votes out of a total UK population of 64M…

The right denominator is either eligible voters (241 million) or registered voters (146 million) not the overall population.

[1] - http://www.statisticbrain.com/voting-statistics/

Re: CIA malware and hacking tools

#573

It's interesting to note that Julian Assange didn't demonstrate control of the wikileaks private key during his Reddit AMA 1 month ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5n58sm/i_am_julian_as... Considering the political situation unfolding in the US and who this leak weakens, there is some evidence that wikileaks is not in the hands of a neutral party. There is clear motive right now for undermining the CIA. Th…

> * Someone is seeking to control the narrative. * Uh... welcome to /r/conspiracy....

Is the concept of a 3rd party attempting to steer a conversation so hard to believe?

Re: CIA malware and hacking tools

#574

It's interesting to note that Julian Assange didn't demonstrate control of the wikileaks private key during his Reddit AMA 1 month ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5n58sm/i_am_julian_as... Considering the political situation unfolding in the US and who this leak weakens, there is some evidence that wikileaks is not in the hands of a neutral party. There is clear motive right now for undermining the CIA. Th…

It looks like someone wants to pull an Erdogan, and they know that the CIA, FBI, and NSA (the American security deep-state) are the chief obstacle to their goal. Which makes sense, considering it's those agencies who are usually responsible for both preventing foreign intrusion into our government (if the enemy is foreign) and mounting coups d'etat (if the enemy is domestic).

Re: CIA malware and hacking tools

#575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that anyone who has been following the Wikileaks social media accounts has noticed what can only be described as a blatant subverting of those accounts by another party.

What are some examples?

Julian Assange can't demonstrate control over the Wikileaks key. That's a pretty damn solid canary for control over Wikileaks being out of the proper hands.

Re: CIA malware and hacking tools

#576

It's interesting to note that Julian Assange didn't demonstrate control of the wikileaks private key during his Reddit AMA 1 month ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5n58sm/i_am_julian_as... Considering the political situation unfolding in the US and who this leak weakens, there is some evidence that wikileaks is not in the hands of a neutral party. There is clear motive right now for undermining the CIA. Th…

He very clearly explained his motives for not doing so in the AMA, and he gave an alternate POL by reading from the blockchain.

This whole narrative of Wikileaks not being neutral is a very weird story, because they've never published anything that wasn't verified to be true. Since that's something they can't be attacked on, it seems that the strategy for discrediting Wikileaks has now become to accuse them of association with the Russians. Assange touches on this in the AMA as well.

Beyond that, only speculation remains. So why even give a shit? As long as what they're publishing is true, which it has always been so far. Let them fight each other with the truth and the people will be better off. Nothing you've said changes the validity of this article, in fact, it only distracts from it. So I'd say you're doing us a disservice by distracting from the real story here.

Re: CIA malware and hacking tools

#577

It's interesting to note that Julian Assange didn't demonstrate control of the wikileaks private key during his Reddit AMA 1 month ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5n58sm/i_am_julian_as... Considering the political situation unfolding in the US and who this leak weakens, there is some evidence that wikileaks is not in the hands of a neutral party. There is clear motive right now for undermining the CIA. Th…

edit: tl:dr; I don't think Assange signing a message with a private key would disprove he's not compromised (which was the implication). It's naive to say otherwise.

> It's interesting to note that Julian Assange didn't demonstrate control of the wikileaks private key during his Reddit AMA 1 month ago

It's easy to see why Assange didn't oblige, compromised or not.

Minor note: the Reddit thread was from Jan 11th. This is relevant because Assange wasn't only asked to verify control of the private key. Assange hadn't appeared in public and skeptics wanted "proof of life." The Reddit comment, currently at 15K upvotes, even includes Assange's response with reasons that talk to the difficulty of maintaining private keys and avoiding taxing precedents like having to provide proof of life all the time. Again, compromised or not, I can understand why Assange wouldn't want to become conditioned to respond to every request for proof of life or locking down private keys.

Re: CIA malware and hacking tools

#578

It's interesting to note that Julian Assange didn't demonstrate control of the wikileaks private key during his Reddit AMA 1 month ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5n58sm/i_am_julian_as... Considering the political situation unfolding in the US and who this leak weakens, there is some evidence that wikileaks is not in the hands of a neutral party. There is clear motive right now for undermining the CIA. Th…

There are several elements:

1) what the material exposes

2) how it was obtained

3) why it was released

We should condemn (2) and (3) even if we condemn (1). That is, a properly functioning society shouldn't need to rely on leaks for corruption and abuse of power to be exposed.

At the same time, we should always respond to abuse of power and trust; to do so because we don't want to help "the bad guys" simply creates an environment in which such abuses are tolerated.

Similarly, we should not assume that any comment that we disagree with is a conscious manipulation by malicious actors; otherwise, I could just as easily argue that you have some ulterior motive to post your comment.

Re: CIA malware and hacking tools

#579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the scale matters for the past. You spent the majority of your time with other people in your tribe or village, and they knew everything about you, and you knew everything about all of them. New information could be distributed to 90% of the people within minutes. You could physically ask most the people any questions you wanted about someone else with just a little more time than that. The current scal…

Today the observer can be anywhere on Earth, and the data are vastly more detailed. Impunity of the observer is far greater. The subject isn't conversations but surveillance.

> Today the observer can be anywhere on Earth

It's all a matter what you consider "the world". If you were born into and died in a small group of people and had little to no interaction with outsiders, your "world" is that group. In that respect, anyone in the "world" can easily know just about anything about you just by asking, because there's almost always someone around you, and people like to share information (gossip).

> and the data are vastly more detailed

How so? Because they can determine everything down to what food I like and dislike? I know that about most my coworkers. I think you are treating information you leak through normal interaction with people differently than what is gathered about you online, when really they are no different.

> Impunity of the observer is far greater.

In the end it's all about enforcing compliance with some group norm and governmental dictate. That's no different in the small group either. The group is the government, and you can take measures to hide your behavior, which in both systems might actually draw attention to yourself, or you can attempt to fit within the group norms, whether that group is the literal or figurative world.

A sweet deal has existed for a couple millennia if you've been in a large enough group to benefit from anonymity and the increased privacy that imparts.

Re: CIA malware and hacking tools

#580
post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do keep in mind that Trump received 63M votes out of a total population of 319M (~20%). Even if you consider the election a referendum on globalization (and there are many reasons besides nationalism that people may have voted for Trump, as well as reasons that an anti-globalist might have voted for Clinton), that's pretty far from a majority. Similarly, Brexit received 17.4M votes out of a total UK population of 64M…

The right denominator is either eligible voters (241 million) or registered voters (146 million) not the overall population. [1] - http://www.statisticbrain.com/voting-statistics/

Depends what you're using it for. The parent poster seemed to be implying a wish-list for a future utopian society, in which case the right denominator really is the whole population. (Or even more accurately, the set of all human beings that will be born in the future, but this causes issues with the numerator, since unborn humans don't exist yet.) The fact that children are legally prevented from voting has no bearing when you're talking about a future legal system that doesn't even allow the concept of national sovereignty; only their opinion matters. Indeed, there's reason to believe that their opinion may vary significantly from the majority opinion of people several decades older than them.
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