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NSA and GHCQ Employing Shills To Poison Web Forum Discourse
Advocatus Diaboli writes with this excerpt from an article by Glenn Greenwald on the pervasiveness of shills poisoning web forums: "One of the many pressing stories that remains to be told from the Snowden archive is how western intelligence agencies are attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction. It's time to tell a chunk of that story, complete with the relevant documents.. ... Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the Internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable. To see how extremist these programs are, just consider the tactics they boast of using to achieve those ends: 'false flag operations' (posting material to the Internet and falsely attributing it to someone else), fake victim blog posts (pretending to be a victim of the individual whose reputation they want to destroy), and posting 'negative information' on various forums."
I guess Cryptome was right. Check out the the training materials provided to future forum spies.
This message paid for by the NSA.
How many of the comments on this article will be from shills?
It is all a lie
I saw something about this the other day, and simply figured I'd stumbled across Prison Planet or something similar... any suggestion that it isn't feels really creepy.
Seen the Snowden character assassination even here on Slashdot. "Look at that traitor with the dodgy face, not the highly unconstitutional government surveillance program which basically takes a huge dump over your privacy rights!"
Not that it would do much good here, but God bless 'em for tryin'!
Governments have been doing this for a very long time, the only difference now is the media in which it is delivered.
Previously it was the newspaper and radio, now it is the Internet. Playbook stayed the same.
But cold fjord told us his bosses didn't pay him to shill. Apparantely, he just whores himself out for free.
Shill.
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
Seems to have missed out on recent election results, that man.
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
No, really not. We should recommend the governments in Israel, Syria, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Mexico, China, North Korea and New Jersey to finally implement all those surveillance systems, sting operations, character and person assassination techniques our agencies use to finally make their countries better places.
This made me wonder if they have a team of volunteer zealots working in church basements or paying an Indian call center troll slashdot inbetween calls.
Also, do you think years ago the Chinese hacked an NSA directors workstation, stole his 10 year plan, and got the Great Firewall of China first to market?
Why waste a bullet when you can label someone a rapist, narcissist, child molester, etc.--and then threaten all their friends into bad-mouthing them, disparaging them online, and so on?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Why should corporate shills get all the good times? Those in the public sector deserve their fair share.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
well. that would explain why maharishi mahesh yogi was accused of all sorts of things. and why various scientists get "discredited". it would be interesting to consider how best to counteract these measures, although Mr Maharishi Bounces-on-the-Mattress Mahesh Yogi had a tactic that seemed to work: ignore them....
The government is the source of all the false information on the internet?
I knew it. People couldn't be that dumb.
vi? Who's that?
The notion that shills are poisoning the discourse itself poisons the discourse. Shouldn't we then treat whoever brings forward this notion as a troll?
It's not just the NSA. It's evident in forums across the web that there is quick, coordinated trolling of any discussion of climate change or health insurance - the main targets of the Koch Bros' web of disinformation front groups.
What remains to be seen is whether the Koch Bros' fronts and the NSA are allies in these efforts to poison the watering holes, sharing techniques and perhaps even operatives. There's clear evidence the NSA has spied for American industrial interests, for instance against Petrobas in Brazil, which competes against some of the Koch Bros' firms.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Would you prefer to live in constant fear, as if in Israel? Syria? Egypt? Iran? Pakistan? Mexico? China? North Korea?
I'm much more afraid of living in constant fear of my own country.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
The NSA is in trouble for domestic spying. Are the targets here domestic? If not, then they are just doing their job.
Any shelter in a shit-storm.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
How is that irony? And, much more important question, how would you come to think that it is any different in the USA, UK or any other western countries? Whats the point of trying to change the focuse of the discussion towards Russia? They all have been doing that since even before the Internet existed. I can't see how things could have been any different in the Internet Era.
I'm sure you'd get bonus points at the game for posting fake material about posting fake material to manipulate public opinion in order to manipulate public opinion on the material published.
This is precisely the reason why WE (Americans/Europeans) have to stand up for what is right.
In Russia, cross the wrong person and you may find yourself in prison for a very long time.
At least, in the US and in the EU, we can still stand up for our rights.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
It's GCHQ, but we all knew that, right?
No GCHQ is a well loved benign organisation that has never been wrong or done harm. It is frequently confused for GHCQ, who was responsible for phone tapping, dodgy dossiers and more. GHCQ is believed to be run by that dubious organisation "liberty" together with those who want to cut spy funding.
.... that 'll be £5 shill fees £5 please
Poor quality graphics. Ridiculously complex infographics. Irrelevant pictures. Overuse of mantras. Incredible lack of consistency. A powerpoint presentation this bad has to be from a government or a large corporation.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
The NSA would never use shills to alter and/or direct web discussions. Most citizens of the western world misunderstand the intelligence enterprise as it relates to counter-terrorism, which contributes to the NSA's limited ability to develop necessary anticipatory knowledge to mitigate risks, or respond to emerging threats. People who insinuate that there are NSA shills on web forums demonstrate a clear affinity and tendency to support for the cyber-terrorists that infiltrate our webspace.
I am Audience.
At one point or another, you have to believe someone. Greenwald & Snowden are, to me at least, a lot more credible than anything the NSA and GCHQ may say or do.
Fact: we know Snowden worked for NSA. The NSA has admitted as much.
Fact: we know Snowden has left NSA with a cache of several thousands of classified NSA/GCHQ documents. The NSA has admitted as much.
Fact: we know Snowden has communicated most of these classified documents to Glenn Greenwald and associates. They have both said so many times.
The fact that the presentation is amateurish does not diminish its value or disproves its origins - after all, GCHQ boffins are not required to take PowerPoint courses... or are they? (We won't know either way - don't bother replying to that question).
Reasoning just five minutes shows that the quality of the presentation or the smartness of its content is irrelevant to the information it imparts to us: that we are under surveillance, and subjected to relentless secret "psy-ops". That information alone is chilling.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
At best federal agencies hope to sway public opinion. they dont want you to do what they tell you, but rather to want to do what they tell you. the government predicates their position upon the conviction that online forums are no different than a public forum, which could not be further from the truth. Tea Party 'town halls' are a prime example of the FUD and disinformation tactic being used to disrupt a political group in power. Its a functional effort to turn civil discourse into a cattle car by injecting audience that stand, scream, and then immediately sit or defend pointless illogical opinions to run down the clock.
the internet interperets ignorance, malice, and poorly defined opinions and conjecture as spam, and has for 15 years honed tools and systems in online forums to ensure. the 50 clandestine posters in a free software forum defending SOPA or PIPA will, nearly instantaneously, be downvoted to oblivion in a system which is very much designed to keep the topic of discussion of relevance. systems like karma and abuse tracking dont exist in meatspace forums, but these are tools which members can use to shut down abusers or track malicious participants who abuse the tools as well. and finally its worth nothing to poison one forum when in its place dissuaded or frustrated posters can erect 10 more. mobility is a moot concern on the internet; a luxury meatspace forums just dont have.
Good people go to bed earlier.
But then maybe I'm a shill. Or maybe I'm a victim of shills. Or maybe I'm just biased and easily led because I think that GG is thoroughly intellectually dishonest in at least some of the statements that he does put his own name on.
BTW: If you care to read that one through, it culminates with the best smackdown I remember seeing.
Assume that this report is true (I note that this is not the first time that we have heard this sort of thing) and take the NSA/GCHQ aims at face value and desirable: ie that they are acting to prevent harm to people in their respective countries.
What they appear to be doing is to damage some innocent people to prevent harm to some other people. I can understand that this might be a trade off that is worth paying - paid by the innocent people. I am far from convinced that this trade off is right or moral; but for the sake of this argument - I will accept it.
So: we have an equation, it is worth it if: Number-of-people-protected > Number-of-people-harmed.
It is, of course, more complicated. The above assumes that the amount of harm is the same in each case, this will not be true. Arguably the worst harm is someone being killed. There are lesser harms to individuals: financial loss, loss of reputation, damage to personal relationships (estrangement from families, divorce, ...), loss of liberty - these all seem to be results of the sort of tactics that the article talks about.
The difficult part is ranking the harms, so how much financial loss is equivalent to loss of liberty or death ? Cleverer people that me might be able to come up with a rough ranking.
There is also the general harm to society that is caused by gumming up free discussion and exchange of information.
Once we have done all of the equations: are we, as a society, better or worse off ? This is the big question.
The other question is: who is better off ? I said ''society'', but is that who this is really who benefits, might it not be politicians, powerful business people, those who work at NSA/GCHQ ? If those who suffer from these actions are different from those who gain - the cost equation changes depending on which camp you find yourself.
I note that some of these same tactics are also used by some large corporates who wish to protect their profits or confine knowledge of their wrong doing.
So: can anyone come up with a cost/benefit analysis, please ?
Whether it be governments or corporations or trolls, there will always be posters with less than the best intentions.
The ever reliable cold fjord, bringing the gospel of his masters to the unwashed masses. Taking a break from sucking your boss's cock?
I was just thinking, if I wanted to create enough fear that our my enemies would be looking over their shoulders everytime they used the internet, nothing would work better than creating the belief that I was omnipresent on the web. One the one side, people are certain that the government in incapable of managing the simplest of programs or managing it's own affairs, but when given the notion that that same government could orchestrate a massive campaign of internet monitoring and targeted strikes again individuals, most seem to have no doubt of it's validity. Every other week there is a new revelation of the widening scope of the NSA powers to peer into every aspect of our lives and yet when asked, people still believe that same government is buying $400 toilet seats. Perhaps the biggest conspiracy is that the NSA isn't omnipresent, but wants you to think they are.
Genuine training materials can vary from section to section, contractor to contractor, gov to gov, year to year....
Also the idea that you only give a broad overview to all new cleared staff is just good basic security.
It would mostly be for introductions and training i.e. what can be done and might need rushed computer support on varied servers around the world.
e.g. ip locations that seem local, spelling, using the correct free IM for that part of the world, ensuring back dated logs, looked and feel to art work, any fake metadata in images, faked blogs fit the time line of the events and style of been home made 3-5 years ago.., that names used are not too early or late... in some life story to shatter confidence in a person..
vs the ongoing years of legends on a site such as Slashdot
The deeper stuff is for the teams who actually work on the methods day to day. e.g.
A slashdot sock puppet could follow the classic ideas in "The Gentleperson's Guide To Forum Spies (spooks, feds, etc.)"
http://cryptome.org/2012/07/ge...
You would see a picture of name calling, left right rants, trying to save up the mod points by pushing bland science stories. Trying to invoke authority by posting many different links to left/right media all reporting on the same simple media release backs up their world view.
Trying to change the subject to make it all seem so legal.... post as an anonymous coward and then 'jump in' later...
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Right now the social networks are flooded with alleged "discoveries of fraud", according to which the opposition is spreading pictures from protests elsewhere as being from Venezuela right now. It's interesting that the original photos are very easy to find in the internet, but the ones supposedly shared by the venezuelan opposition are nowhere.
Either the venezuelan opposition is dumb enough to get pictures that are widely available and spread them as their own or there's some seeding taking place in hopes that the opposition will get framed by spreading a false pic that was given to them by someone else.
, and most importantly - self restraint - seem to be missing from intelligence services. This has always been the case.
The difference today is that we pretend we're in a "war on terror" because if you don't pretend it's an active war, you can't even begin to justify the ridiculous kinds of constitutional subversion and 'National Socialist' behavior that would make a WWII veteran pick up his rifle and start shooting (probably beginning with Congress.)
It's really pretty simple. America has always been a country with flaws, but at least we didn't promulgate torture as policy, we didn't systematically suspend habeas corpus. We may have always been pretty shallow on the greed and capitalism side of things all along, but we've always aspired to be better.
Now, because 3000 people died on 9/11 because some a**hole wanted to change America, we torture people and call it enhanced interrogation, we detain people (even American citizens) without any form of due process or the hope of habeas corpus, the government actively spies on its own citizens, government bodies lie to Congress without being censured, our government routinely lies to the American people about what is actually happening during drone strikes, we now attack people inside sovereign countries on a regular basis without that country's permission or knowledge, we have a 'homeland security' (how jingoistic and propagandist is the term 'homeland' in that phrase? LOL) The 4th amendment has been corrupted so that anyone can be searched at any time for no discernible reason at all. Last but not least, you can now, apparnetly, order the death of an American citizen without any form of due process at all by perverting the "clear and present danger" rationale.
Congratulations Usama you f***ing c*nt, you managed to change America. Not that it will benefit the Islamic world in any way, you've simply changed our government into the government you always thought it was, to the detriment of both America and the rest of the world (especially the Muslim world.)
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[citation needed]
Is it just me, or do others feel that the quality (heh) of Slashdot discussions has deteriorated over the years? Maybe I'm just an old curmudgeon, but it seems like there has been a perceptible infiltration of shills. Will everyone posting on behalf of the Nominal Security Authority please raise your hand?
Sheesh.
The referenced source document (https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/) uses the abbreviations GBR and NZL for two of the members of the Five Eyes community. I worked at one of those five establishments (retired before 1998) and for all of the the 28 years during which I worked there, the standard abbreviations were UK and NZ, as in
CANUKUS Eyes Only and
AUSCANUKUSNZ Eyes Only.
I wonder who wrote the source document and why the standard abbreviations weren't used.
Yes the press can take all the whistleblowing material to various private sector security experts and ensure they are not been used in a larger intelligence operation.
e.g. a forgery meant to last a news cycle vs much real material hiding long term disinformation to bait the press or other govs.
The actions of a gov can be telling too - validation in the press days later and many wonderful paragraphs and pretty pics in the left and right press.
The next question for the press is that of been used for a limited hangout http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
Pre sorting of material and gatekeepers also become long term questions.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Russia is doing this sort of thing pretty extensively. On one of the national forums I happen to frequent we know who these people are - in fact, they are not really in hiding (though they never officially confirm or deny their identity). Human psychology works in curious ways, though - even though the perpetrators are well known, the rest of the community still gets into extensive discourse that includes these people and even allows them to steer discussion in whatever direction they need to. I have to give it to these guys - they are well prepared and master mass psychology quite well.
They can't put anything on the Internet that isn't true!
Strategy of tension was the old method http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
Now its more colour revolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
A slashdot sock puppet could follow the classic ideas in "The Gentleperson's Guide To Forum Spies (spooks, feds, etc.)"
Slashdot moderation makes it a lot harder. For example, off topic rants are down modded to oblivion, and the structure of the reply tree make forum sliding much more difficult.
It would be far easier for the NSA to destroy Slashdot by buying it, then changing the way the forum works.
As to "sheltering" Snowden, it seems he was in contact with the Russians before his arrival in Moscow, and that his arrival was no surprise. In the view of a number of former Soviet bloc intelligence officers, Snowden was collaborating with them for some time.
Trafficking in suggestion and innuendo now are we?
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Sorry to break it to you but we have very rarely held the moral high ground. We systematically killed off the Native Americans. We locked the Japanese in internment camps. We carried out medical and military experiments on US citizens and military personnel without their consent or knowledge. Some of these people died and it took decades for the Government to apologize to the families of the victims. Our government put MLK on surveillance, planned to discredit him and smear him in the public eye. The CIA facilitated drug trafficking. Our government hatched plans to attack US cities to try to drum up support for an invasion of Cuba. The US has a long and rich history of violating human rights in the name of security.
TL;DR: We have been doing this shit for a long long time. Because of our dominance we get to write the history books and therefore your average person is ignorant of the crimes of the US government. It would disturb the general population so they just don't discuss it. Anyone who would care already knows, anyone who doesn't already know probably wouldn't care.
It's really pretty simple. America has always been a country with flaws, but at least we didn't promulgate torture as policy, we didn't systematically suspend habeas corpus.
The domestic police departments used to routinely beat people. Until not that long ago, lead slaps/saps were nearly universal among police officers and beatings used as a means of summary justice and extracting confessions. And this was for domestic criminal law enforcement. The tactics were even more severe for breaking strikes, suppressing civil dissent (Chicago, 1968?) and race riots.
I think the idea that violence hasn't been used until five minutes ago by those in power to further their goals is ludicrous. We've just adjusted who is eligible to be beaten.
why worry about it? after all, we are so free today!!
why just the other day it was pointed out how free we truly are.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/...
Standard herd psychology instructs us that you only need to control a relatively small percentage of the perceived crowd support in order to sway the behavior of the whole herd.
You can see this in effect here. When AGW comes up, the tone of the discussion tends to swing either one way or the other after a brief period at the start where it is determined which camp will dominate. After that point, people with opposing views will more often stay quiet for fear of being mobbed by group consensus, and those in the majority feel confident in mobbing.
Take a look at the whole Slashdot Beta outcry. When more than half the posts were complaining about Beta, the Slashdot lords actually responded.
But these are just pocket instances. In the context of the whole internet and society at large, a highly consolidated stance in one forum will be counterbalanced by the opposite view in another.
Cohesive group consensus across the whole of a large population becomes very unlikely, and the decision makers can simply follow their agendas without worrying about large blocks of public opinion forming which might actually result in real pressure to stop them.
Mobs need to feel like a mob to act like a mob. When you keep a herd factional through the injection of artificial objections, the mob never coalesces into something which gets out of control.
There are whole disinfo thrusts designed just to promote stupid, argumentative view points in order to confuse any given issue. Confusion prevents herds from stampeding.
Then, when the leadership really wants something to happen, (like a war), the media kicks into overdrive to create the impression of a cohesive message and the confused cattle follow because their own ability to decide amongst themselves has been so exhausted and the need to move in SOME direction due to a high state of anxiety is overwhelming. -And that state of high anxiety is maintained through a variety of controlled pressures.
The system works really well, as we have seen. The oligarchs haven't been stymied at all in their activities. They got all the wars they wanted and maintain control to this day.
It means we can't trust people on the internet. This should come as no surprise. Experienced internet users already know not to take things at face value, not to feed trolls, and not to take anyone's "word for it". In civil, learned communities (like Slashdot, for example) a "shill" is fighting an uphill battle when trying to spread disinformation--anything that's posted here will be carefully examined. Even in volatile, less-learned sites (4chan's /b/, for example), they'll still have to trudge through a hundred miles of skepticism and snark to convince any sizable demographic of any one thing.
I'm not saying "shills" can't be effective on the internet. I'm just saying I'm glad I don't have their job.
Isn't it the dilettante who is too ignorant to see through the shill who ultimately poisons the discourse? The shills are usually hyper-polite. It is the hobbyists who start to amplify the shill's message and get hurt feelings when they are corrected that start with the swearing and personal attacks.
Usenet is much harder to control than web forums, so making it useless by posting endless rubbish would be attractive.
I don't know of any country that holds any 'moral high ground' and there are virtually no countries without a checkered past or present, BUT many of them manage to hold onto their identity through times of crisis and not forget what made them special.
Post 9/11 America is fundamentally different from pre 9/11 America in ways that previous generations of Americans would be (and probably are) horrified by.
We've basically given up many of the things that made us standout (despite our moral outrages.) Due process, habeas corpus, NO torture, the 4th amendment.
I'm not sure what history books you read in school, but mine clearly covered slavery, Native American genocide, racism, sexism, et cetera... College/University went further of course, but high school was pretty thorough about how deeply flawed we (and every other country made up of human beings) had been.
Interestingly, that same education made it clear that post 9/11 America has introduced changes that quite closely mirror changes in 1920/30's in totalitarian governments where those in power fear the truth as the government clearly does now in America, and believe that the end justifies the means.
This one thing alone, I believe, is the antithesis of what I believed America to be based upon - that the ends do NOT justify the means. That how you play the game is more important than the results.
That being true to being an American was more important than if you were killed because of it.
Now, that's criminally easy of me to say without having to offer any sacrifice, but I truly believe that.
"They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Possibly our greatest American.
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You apparently ignored the part about it being American policy.
You are also grouping all forms of violence as being the same thing. The police beating an actual suspect during the race riots in 68 could be entirely justified depending upon the context. It could also be entirely unjustified depending upon the context.
Also, I'm not arguing that we've only suddenly started using violence, I'm arguing that we've only suddenly started accepting torture as policy. That we've started accepting unreasonable search and seizure as policy. That we've suddenly allowed the suspension of habeas corpus. That we've suddenly allowed Americans to be killed without being charged with a crime or any form of due process. That we've suddenly allowed the intelligence arms of our government to flat out lie to congress without repercussion. That we've suddenly accepted that our government spies on us extensively in whatever legal means they can AND in clearly illegal means (which are in turn lied about in congressional investigation...)
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Infiltration, astroturfing and reputation destruction are as old as the hills. Such as this not really amusing story of a Muslim organization turning in a member who was hyping terrorism, only to discover he was an FBI infiltrant:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/2946...
I think such things are to be expected. It sucks, but if you've a security vulnerability in any system, you can expect it to be exploited. The question we should be asking is, can online groups adapt to account for such possibilities, and how?
"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." George Bernard Shaw
We've basically given up many of the things that made us standout (despite our moral outrages.) Due process, habeas corpus, NO torture, the 4th amendment.
This is the only part that confuses me. You seriously think that we upheld the values of our constitution up to 9/11 and then just threw them out the window? You really think the US Government didn't violate due process and habeas corpus before 9/11? You claim that people of the WWII era would be disgusted with the current state of things. I completely agree. They also would have been disgusted with the state of affairs 50 years ago too if they had knows about it. I guess I just disagree that things got dramatically worse after 9/11. Things have always been very very bad. But as time passes we just forget, gloss over, and move on; we end up romanticizing the past and start pretending the present is much worse.
Unethical Human Experimentation
Eugenics
Torture
Drug Trafficking
It is really important to be critical of our current government. It is also really important not to ignore or forget that our previous governments have violated the constitution and our laws on a massive and criminal scale. Most of the time they acted with impunity.
This is the only part that confuses me. You seriously think that we upheld the values of our constitution up to 9/11 and then just threw them out the window? You really think the US Government didn't violate due process and habeas corpus before 9/11?
You keep missing the part where I specifically use the term "as policy." I believe there have been incidents of everything imaginable under the sun involving the U.S. government; however, pre-9/11 these were not standard government policy in a time of peace. This is entirely the reason behind the bullsh** title "War on Terror" - it can never ever end, so justification of behaviors that could be potentially stomached as short term aberrations can continue ad nauseum.
The U.S. is not at war with anyone other than itself right now.
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It would be far easier for the NSA to destroy Slashdot by buying it, then changing the way the forum works.
That explains Dice and the new slashdot beta!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
This is precisely the reason why WE (Americans/Europeans) have to stand up for what is right.
In Russia, cross the wrong person and you may find yourself in prison for a very long time.
At least, in the US and in the EU, we can still stand up for our rights.
For now. I'm sure they are working on changing that.
Be seeing you...
4) Slashdot itself is most likely being paid by the US government to tolerate this
Probably not paid but possibly forced :P
Whatever this piece of shit ColdFjord claims, you can count on a number of things :
I think its equally likely that coldfjord is just an idiot
You keep missing the part where I specifically use the term "as policy." I believe there have been incidents of everything imaginable under the sun involving the U.S. government; however, pre-9/11 these were not standard government policy in a time of peace.
Assmasher I really think we are in near agreement. I guess we just disagree about the definition of the phrase "as policy". If the President condones it, leaders in Congress condone it, the Attorney General condones it, the Joint Chiefs of Staff condone it, the directors of the FBI, CIA, and other 3 letter agencies condone it, then I consider it standard policy of the government. Just because they didn't make a press release announcing they were going to violate the constitution doesn't mean it wasn't the policy of the government to violate the constitution.
This is entirely the reason behind the bullsh** title "War on Terror" - it can never ever end, so justification of behaviors that could be potentially stomached as short term aberrations can continue ad nauseum.
There has always been a war on terror, it was just called something different. Replace terror with communist. Replace terror with drugs. I agree that the US government uses "war on X" to justify criminal acts. I just believe that it started long before 9/11.
I do find that highly ironic, although probably unavoidable in this kind of thing. In showing that this training material exists, but without evidence of specific targets or operations, Greenwald's article is effectively following the guidance laid out there. Just look at this comment section - anyone who does not toe the party line will simply be accused of being a shill from here on out, with reference to these documents as "proof". No longer is there any need to pay attention to dissenting opinions (on either side of an issue) - anyone disagreeing with you can be dismissed as just another shill.
So, business as usual on the internet.
>Reminds me of amateur materials
It's hard to find a good pony-tailed adobe jockey with clearance.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Actually, Beta is really good and it is just Slashdot's evil competitors paying shills to badmouth it that is convincing everyone it is evil incarnate. Shills, shills everywhere!
Assmasher I really think we are in near agreement. I guess we just disagree about the definition of the phrase "as policy".
- I agree.
Our primary difference is that I believe that the pervasiveness and solidification into "policy" of the erosion of our basic rights in the name of "security" is significantly different post 9/11 than pre 9/11.
The "Patriot Act" (another horrifically inappropriately titled bill) is a perfect example.
There has always been a war on terror.
- Here I have disagree. My problem with the "war on Terror" is that it can never be won or finished, and that's why they chose it. This is why it was never termed the "war on Al Qaeda" because the administration that established it doesn't want there to be a quantifiable measurement that could signify the end of the "war on..." It's a crude attempt to legitimize what is basically a 'martial law' style approach to suspending and re-interpreting hugely important aspects of the Constitution.
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The slides in the linked article really look fake. As you point out they didn't even get the name of the organization right. There are other mistakes that are obvious to anyone who has worked in a classified environment.
Someone isn't just poisoning discourse, they're driving it.
wake up masher sounds like you've drinking a bit too much of that constitutional kool-aid all "democracies" have been screwing over their citizens from day 1. this just didn't happen under Obama's watch and blaming him is weak cop out.
here is a good example that Chomsky uses at http://www.salon.com/2013/12/2...
"So, for example, if you go back a century ago, right after the U.S. invasion of the Philippines — a brutal invasion that killed a couple hundred thousand people — there was a problem for the U.S. of pacification afterwards. What do you do to control the population to prevent another nationalist uprising? There’s a very good study of this by Alfred McCoy, a Philippines scholar at University of Wisconsin, and what he shows is that the U.S. used the most sophisticated technology of the day to develop a massive system of survelliance, control, disruption to undermine any potential opposition and to impose very tight controls on the population which lasted for a long time and in many ways the Philippines is still suffering from this. But he also points out the technology was immediately transferred home. Woodrow Wilson’s administration used it in their “Red Scare” a couple years later. The British used it, too."
pick any period in history and these power hungry cunts have always been trying to stay in power no matter what. I haven't got any answers just know that what we call democracy is not working because it always allows the people in power to get away with shit.
The best way to fight trolling and character assassination is not to engage in it yourself. And to totally discount anyone who does. And to demand evidence. It hardly seems necessary in /. to remind people how easy it is create fake web sites, blogs, whatever. This kind of sabotage only works if you let it.
Depends on the presenter, really. It's hard to tell exactly what was being represented by some of the graphics/images without knowing what the presenter was saying.
You can't believe anything Lamer has posted. I read that he eats baby seals and hates children. I personally have been a victim of his false accusations regarding a flock of sheep. He is actively destroying the environment by pouring barrels of oil into the rivers and salting farm fields. He wears bloomers under his clothes.
Don't get me wrong, I don't blame Obama - although he's not doing enough to reverse this trend and is, in fact, establishing some new ones (targeted killings of American citizens without charging them with a crime.)
The start of all this I blame on neo-conservatism which has a fundamental tenet of using fear to get what you want. That doesn't make the Bush administration entirely responsible because we stood by and let it happen.
We're not a demoncracy anyhow, we're an oligarchy now (and have been in the 19th century as well) thanks to the idiocy of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
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Errors can help with internal doc tracking, upset any other govs getting the material as been 'fake'.
Or advanced training has been handed to other countries staff and they are doing more introductory course work contracts too.
The press should have had every page, letter, font, date, layout - looked at by document experts.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Did Greenwald just say that if you disagree with him, Snowden, or Snowden's pals in the PRC and former USSR you're a "government shill"?
I'd note, by the way, that injecting misinformation into "stolen government documents" after the fact isn't only a piece of cake, it's old hat.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"