Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems • Hacker News Board

Re: Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

#91

Post by dalke » Fri, Oct 24, 2014, 1:41 AM UTC

pedalpete wrote: post #41

Sadly, I found the following pieces gave Assange so little credibility that if he had just written about the last 3rd of the article, it would seem more credible to me. If a suspended employee was shopping around "the location of the encrypted file, paired with the password’s whereabouts" and in "two weeks most intelligence agencies, contractors and middlemen would have all the cables", wouldn't you just move the fil…

> wouldn't you just move the files and change the password?

Quoting from http://unspecified.wordpress.com/2011/09/03/wikileaks-passwo... - "speculation says that since it was on the WikiLeaks server temporarily, and WikiLeaks was aggressively mirroring their site to avoid being taken down, it was copied within the few hours that it was available online, and spread from there." Quoting from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_diplomatic_cables... - "This included WikiLeaks volunteers placing an encrypted file containing all WikiLeaks data online as "insurance" in July 2010, in case something happened to the organization." In either case, the encrypted file could not be moved from everyone's computers.

Several people knew the password. One was a journalist. The journalist published the password.

> He has his own political agenda, and is given a huge volume of classified information by a third party, and he then decides what of these classified information gets published and what doesn't. What makes him the deciding factor in all of this? If you think you're doing good publishing information that others think is classified, than publish the information. Don't pick through it, see what you think will make headlines or embarrass people you don't like, and publish only that which you feel is fit to press.

Don't we all have our own political agendas? Assange is at least somewhat direct about expressing them.

But ... have you not read any of the history of Wikileaks? Assange invited the US to "privately nominate any specific instances (record numbers or names) where it considers the publication of information would put individual persons at significant risk of harm that has not already been addressed" and "reached an agreement with media partners in Europe and the United States to publish the rest of the cables in redacted form, removing the names of sources and others in vulnerable positions." (Quotes from that Wikipedia leak.)

Your proposal might kill people.

Slow leaks also keep the pressure up. If your agenda, for example, is to point out the contradictions in the government's statements and actions, then a partial release may elicit an official response, then a later release of more information can be used to show that that response was a lie, or to highlight how certain words were carefully chosen based on differences between an internal meaning of certain words and the general public meaning of those same words.

Re: Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

#92

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Oct 24, 2014, 1:43 AM UTC

bduerst wrote: post #79

mturmon wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's another one: "In 2012, Google arrived on the list of top-spending Washington, D.C., lobbyists—a list typically stalked exclusively by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, military contractors, and the petro-carbon leviathans. Google entered the rankings above military aerospace giant Lockheed Martin, with a total of $18.2 million spent in 2012 to Lockheed’s $15.3 million. Boeing, the military contractor that absorbed…

From a business perspective, you want to look at these as rates against revenue, not just bulk sums for reasons you pointed out. Normalized for dollar spend per $1000 in revenue (2012), the % spend on lobbying is: HP 232% Facebook 75.6% Northrop G 69.4% Yahoo 55.1% Google 36.3% Lockheed Martin 32.4% Boeing 19.1% Oracle 18.1% Microsoft 10.9% IBM 4.6% Ideally you would want to normalize by revenue from government contr…

> Ideally you would want to normalize by revenue from government contracts

I'm not sure that makes sense; normalizing by revenue tells the tale of how much of what the company brings in is devoted to swaying public policy, but I'm not sure what normalizing by revenue from government contracts get you -- presumably, any profit maximizing corporation trying to sway policy is trying to do so for its own benefit, whether the way in which it hopes to receive that benefit is by direct government contracts, or by government policy encouraging (and perhaps even subsidizing) others to purchase the service it sells, or by some other shift in policy that helps the firms business.

Re: Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

#93

Post by chaz » Fri, Oct 24, 2014, 1:45 AM UTC

modifier wrote: post #63

To any "outsider" unfamiliar with Hacker News, it's heavily populated with Google employees, contractors, and developers that build on to Google products and services. Keep that in mind when you read the comments here.

It's also heavily populated with people who work at or with Google's competitors, of which there are many more. Bias and differing opinions are everywhere.

Re: Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

#94

Post by Ironchefpython » Fri, Oct 24, 2014, 1:47 AM UTC

pedalpete wrote: post #41

Sadly, I found the following pieces gave Assange so little credibility that if he had just written about the last 3rd of the article, it would seem more credible to me. If a suspended employee was shopping around "the location of the encrypted file, paired with the password’s whereabouts" and in "two weeks most intelligence agencies, contractors and middlemen would have all the cables", wouldn't you just move the fil…

> wouldn't you just move the files and change the password?

The encrypted files were distributed via bittorrent, with the password given to trusted individuals. This was done as a "dead-man's switch"; insurance against "prior restraint" (which can cover anything from incarceration to termination, depending on your level of paranoia).

See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/01/cablegate_leak_row/

The problem is this:

    Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

    -- Benjamin Franklin

Once the password started being shared to people without professional security training and the temperament to keep secrets, it was only a matter of time before it all came out. Regardless if you agree with wikileak's political and social philosophies, and even if you feel they provided much-needed sunlight/disinfectant, as an organization they acted like a bunch of preteens running a club out of a treehouse.

Re: Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

#95

Post by mkal_tsr » Fri, Oct 24, 2014, 1:49 AM UTC

hardwaresofton wrote: post #85

Despite all the people that think he sounds like a lunatic, is any of what he is saying a lie? Lots of people who sound like lunatics but aren't telling lies are worth listening to, I think. So, he's putting a lot of "these guys are all evil" spin on it, but then again, all the connections he is making seem to be true. Whether it means Google is in bed with the US government or not is up to the reader (with nudging f…

What I've always found interesting in the nebulus of Assange/Google/NSA/etc. is 90%+ of the time, people only focus on this as it if is only as US-gov issue. As if Russia, India, China and others haven't developed similar systems of surveillance. It's not to say that any system is wrong or right (whole different debate for another time) ... but it just astounds me that people look at what was leaked/released/unclassified and say, "well, look at all the threats to the US, look at what we need to protect. it's for our safety" completely ignoring that other governments and organizations are also developing similar systems. In my mind, it should just be treated as a baseline of possibility/capability.

Re: Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

#96

Post by dalke » Fri, Oct 24, 2014, 2:00 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #77

dalke wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those interested in geopolitics have their own cultural references. The last is a reference to Thomas Friedman's "A Manifesto for the Fast World" (NYT, 1999). The more complete context is: > It's true that no two countries that both have a McDonald's have ever fought a war since they each got their McDonald's. (I call this the Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention.) But globalization does not end geopolitics --…

The Golden Arches Theory (even before it was disproven by the Russia-Georgia war of 2008) -- and similar theories like the "democracies don't fight wars against each other" theory -- have always been silly things that take rely on people not understanding math. You've got a feature that (at the time the theory is articulated) is historically fairly recent and that, when you take the number of pairs of countries that…

If you read the Wikipedia page about the book you'll see Russia-Georgia listed as 1 of 5 such counter-examples, going back to the US invasion of Panama in 1989.

You'll also see his responses.

But I'm not trying to justify either which way. My point is that there are certain concepts in geopolitical dialog that are used as short-hand to express a larger concept. Expressions like "McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas" are to outsiders as meaningless as "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" or "information wants to be free".

In other words "[Schmidt] struggled to verbalize many of [his politics], often shoehorning geopolitical subtleties into Silicon Valley marketese or the ossified State Department micro-language of his companions" can be turned around - Assage uses a different language than you or I, though he doesn't struggle to verbalize his politics.

Re: Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

#97

Post by chj » Fri, Oct 24, 2014, 2:02 AM UTC

hardwaresofton wrote: post #85

Despite all the people that think he sounds like a lunatic, is any of what he is saying a lie? Lots of people who sound like lunatics but aren't telling lies are worth listening to, I think. So, he's putting a lot of "these guys are all evil" spin on it, but then again, all the connections he is making seem to be true. Whether it means Google is in bed with the US government or not is up to the reader (with nudging f…

> I think most people in the tech industry (and sadly not many people outside it) have already realized the Google is very very big-brothery.

.. and is politically oriented. For example, the China government hacking incident was blown way out of proportion, greatly damaging the company's business in there. The consequence is still hurting them that Google services are now almost inaccessible in China.

Re: Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

#98

Post by jortrp » Fri, Oct 24, 2014, 2:11 AM UTC

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…

Thread derailed successfully, plus character assassination.

Congratulations, JTRIG! /half-s

BTW, I agree that this may look nutty, because what these people do is and has been quite normal for decades... it's called "globalization", and it's just the same thing people used to call "capitalist expansion"

Re: Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

#99

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Oct 24, 2014, 2:11 AM UTC

chj wrote: post #97

hardwaresofton wrote: post #85

Despite all the people that think he sounds like a lunatic, is any of what he is saying a lie? Lots of people who sound like lunatics but aren't telling lies are worth listening to, I think. So, he's putting a lot of "these guys are all evil" spin on it, but then again, all the connections he is making seem to be true. Whether it means Google is in bed with the US government or not is up to the reader (with nudging f…

> I think most people in the tech industry (and sadly not many people outside it) have already realized the Google is very very big-brothery. .. and is politically oriented. For example, the China government hacking incident was blown way out of proportion, greatly damaging the company's business in there. The consequence is still hurting them that Google services are now almost inaccessible in China.

[deleted]

Re: Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems

#100

Post by smtddr » Fri, Oct 24, 2014, 2:12 AM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #72

smtddr wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Unfortunately in the wider population, Google's image is nigh unassailable. Well, for me I _still_ [1] think of Google as the good guys because I place the blame for this mess squarely on USgov, which perhaps ultimately leads to the public's lack of empathy - but I see this as a chicken-and-egg problem. I don't know if USgov laws created a socioeconomic setup that made people too stressed about day-to-day life not…

> What are they [Google] suppose to do? Not have a business model predicated on datamining users' information, and build their systems in such a way that they are unable to collect troves of unnecessary information. But the only way we'll ever see any change is through users/developers: Detach yourself from such businesses. Don't build your dream on top of their corrupted platform. And if you must use some of their s…

Basically, you're saying to just not create a business like Google. That's not a practical solution because... money. If there's an opportunity to make money, it will be taken. Even the illegal & immoral ones, not to even talk about perfectly legal avenues.

More tangible problems with your idea of never collecting huge amounts of userdata are:

- If Google didn't collect userdata, I suspect their search wouldn't be working even half as good as it does now.

- Gmail, or any email provider?

- Amazon's shopping history with your address and CC recorded?

- Youtube?

- cellphone service provider? (yeah, you could avoid logging conversations & SMS but you're still the kind of company the NSA would come to for spying on a person simply because you'd be a major hub of communication)