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The CIA Does Las Vegas
Nicola Hahn (1482985) writes Despite the long line of covert operations that Ed Snowden's documents have exposed, public outcry hasn't come anywhere near the level of social unrest that characterized the 1960s. Journalists like Conor Friedersdorf have suggested that one explanation for this is that the public is "informed by a press that treats officials who get caught lying and misleading (e.g., James Clapper and Keith Alexander) as if they're credible."
Certainly there are a number of well-known popular venues which offer a stage for spies to broadcast their messages from while simultaneously claiming to "cultivate conversations among all members of the security community, both public and private." This year, for instance, Black Hat USA will host Dan Greer (the CISO of In-Q-Tel) as a keynote speaker.
But after all of the lies and subterfuge is it even constructive to give voice to the talking points of intelligence officials? Or are they just muddying the water? As one observer put it, "high-profile members of the intelligence community like Cofer Black, Shawn Henry, Keith Alexander, and Dan Greer are positioned front and center in keynote slots, as if they were glamorous Hollywood celebrities. While those who value their civil liberties might opine that they should more aptly be treated like pariahs."
Certainly there are a number of well-known popular venues which offer a stage for spies to broadcast their messages from while simultaneously claiming to "cultivate conversations among all members of the security community, both public and private." This year, for instance, Black Hat USA will host Dan Greer (the CISO of In-Q-Tel) as a keynote speaker.
But after all of the lies and subterfuge is it even constructive to give voice to the talking points of intelligence officials? Or are they just muddying the water? As one observer put it, "high-profile members of the intelligence community like Cofer Black, Shawn Henry, Keith Alexander, and Dan Greer are positioned front and center in keynote slots, as if they were glamorous Hollywood celebrities. While those who value their civil liberties might opine that they should more aptly be treated like pariahs."
Journalists like Conor Friedersdorf have suggested that one explanation for this is that the public is "informed by a press
Balderdash. There is not a press. What is this, communism, comrade? We have many presses. The problem is that the public follows the sensational ones instead of the informative. We The People have the government, and thus the press, which we deserve.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They even call the conference "Black Hat". Why would professional black hat hackers not be expected there?
Closing one's ears to people one might disagree with is a sure way to rot as a community. It's not like the community that attends such conferences is unanimous in their views; it's not *all* technolibertarians. If you look at other presentations by such bodies at past conferences, you see that they're often quite good.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
If a CIA or NSA official told me it was daytime outside and my watch said 12 noon, I would still have to walk outside to believe it.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
If you hosted a well known "true black hat" hacker at the conference they would still command everybody's respect purely for their abilities, and everybody would want to hear what they had to say. You take for granted that much of it is going to be a lie, but it's still more interesting and on topic than (say) inviting a politician to speak.
Hang'em high.
This isn't a matter of disagreement but rather than being lied to perpetually.
Should false propaganda have a voice? Their goal isn't to be unanimously believed, but to muddy the issue.
Agree or disagree is one thing. Trust is orthoganal to that. Whatever these people have to say, their word is worthless to me.
Have gnu, will travel.
[Citation needed]
There is a time for listening, and a time for no longer listening. All great communities have systems for penalizing trolls and idiotic opinions which have been debunked many times before. Slashdot is a good example of such a community: lots of "comments" end up at -1, which is an excellent form of censorship.
The point of the article is that, once some members of the community have been shown to be untrustworthy and plain liars, they should not be listened to anymore. Or at least, they should not be invited to high profile venues where they can spread their "side". The slashdot equivalent would be that such people should not be getting +5, but rather -1.
In 1950 Joe McCarthy claimed to have a list of communists in government and started a process that destroyed the lives of common US citizens without due process or ability to appeal. In the mid 1960's most young people were against the government because they were being forced to serve their country in the military, which generated a great deal of anti-government sentiment because they did not want to. If we look what is happening today, most of the government overreach does not effect such average of high profile private citizens. For the most part this overreach is seen as only targeting foreigners or terrorists. Susan Sarandon is not being hauled in front of congress and being prevented from working because of what she says. In effect, the government has gotten much more sophisticated at managing the perception of the public. Of course not everyone is governement is so sophisticated. Some are still playing 'there are 400 communists in the Obama white house' card or claiming so other such nonsense and trying to use it to limit rights. But for the most part, the days of stupid seem to be at a lull.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
That's a good description of how the tech press has treated Snowden.
"Criminals" is the word I'd choose, given their actions.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
As I suggested here: http://pcast.ideascale.com/a/d...
"Now, there are many people out there (including computer scientists) who may raise legitimate concerns about privacy or other important issues in regards to any system that can support the intelligence community (as well as civilian needs). As I see it, there is a race going on. The race is between two trends. On the one hand, the internet can be used to profile and round up dissenters to the scarcity-based economic status quo (thus legitimate worries about privacy and something like TIA). On the other hand, the internet can be used to change the status quo in various ways (better designs, better science, stronger social networks advocating for some healthy mix of a basic income, a gift economy, democratic resource-based planning, improved local subsistence, etc., all supported by better structured arguments like with the Genoa II approach) to the point where there is abundance for all and rounding up dissenters to mainstream economics is a non-issue because material abundance is everywhere. So, as Bucky Fuller said, whether is will be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race to the very end. While I can't guarantee success at the second option of using the internet for abundance for all, I can guarantee that if we do nothing, the first option of using the internet to round up dissenters (or really, anybody who is different, like was done using IBM computers in WWII Germany) will probably prevail. So, I feel the global public really needs access to these sorts of sensemaking tools in an open source way, and the way to use them is not so much to "fight back" as to "transform and/or transcend the system". As Bucky Fuller said, you never change thing by fighting the old paradigm directly; you change things by inventing a new way that makes the old paradigm obsolete."
Or here: http://www.phibetaiota.net/201...
"The greatest threat facing the USA is the irony inherent in our current defense posture, like for example planning to use nuclear energy embodied in missiles to fight over oil fields that nuclear energy could replace. This irony arises in part because the USA's current security logic is still based on essentially 19th century and earlier (second millennium) thinking that becomes inappropriate applied to 21st century (third millennium) technological threats and opportunities. That situation represents a systematic intelligence failure of the highest magnitude. There remains time to correct this failure, but time grows short as various exponential trends continue.
To address that pervasive threat from unrecognized irony, it would help to re-envision the CIA as a non-ironic post-scarcity institution. Then the CIA could help others (including in the White House) make more informed decisions to move past this irony as well.
A first step towards that could be for IARPA to support better free software tools for "crowdsourced" public intelligence work involving using a social semantic desktop for sensemaking about open source data and building related open public action plans from that data to make local communities healthier, happier, more intrinsically secure, and also more mutually secure. Secure, healthy, prosperous, and happy local (and virtual) communities then can form together a secure, healthy, prosperous, and happy nation and planet in a non-ironic way. Details on that idea are publicly posted by me here in the form of a Proposal Abstract to the IARPA Incisive Analysis solicitation: "Social Semantic Desktop for Sensemaking on Threats and Opportunities"
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
"
Or various other places...
Lately I've been thinking about such a system fo
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
... can best be determined after examining both..
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I'd expect that if I were to take a collection of the last 100 statements from most techno libertarians on matters of fact and 100 statements from the average CIA spokesperson on matters of fact and had a God's eye view of the situation the CIA would be more accurate. In the case of the CIA / NSA they are often deliberately misleading the public on a few facts they consider crucial while being accurate on a huge collections of information. In the case of the techno libertarians, like many semi-credible analysts they are making wild conjectures and exaggerating to "raise awareness".
A responsible professional press's job is to try and start crossing between them and try and build a better factual picture for their readership. So yes they have to have a voice.
Look at your "major" cable news organizations. They throw more fuel on the fire of partisan politics than the average citizen can keep up with, yet there is a safe harbor for debriefing available for the extremists in both parties.
The way they've gamed the system, there's a talking head somewhere who'll defend your accusations as a Partisan Attack.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
They certainly sponsor some really neat research from time to time. I particularly liked this one: https://lwn.net/Articles/56894... Then again... that was an IBM researcher who did the actual research and gave the talk, not a government official.
If a CIA or NSA official told me it was daytime outside and my watch said 12 noon, I would still have to walk outside to believe it.
And it's the same with businesses, too.
We need to stop this attitude that government, businesses, and anyone in authority considers our interests and automatically assume they are telling the truth. The opposite should be the case.
As far as I am concerned, I feel completely justified calling them liars until proven - independent proof - that they are not. I assume the worst because that is usually the case. Whether it is the refiners saying lead in gasoline is safe, or the cigarette companies or the fracking companies saying their products or techniques are safe, I do not beleive them until proven otherwise. Profit rules and bureacrats protecting themselves rules; the people drools in our country.
If they don't like it? Tough shit.
And the person who moded the parent "Troll" must be quite gullible or a shill mod from the NSA/CIA or some corporate master.
You know the news doesn't cover it when when the CIA tells the truth.
If you feeling completely outraged about something, you probably do not have enough information. When you have enough information you can be angry at a particular subset of an issue not just the entire thing.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
... most people really don't give a shit about what Snowden revealed. Most people already suspected it and didn't give a shit. A few privacy-fanatics cared and screamed a lot. I wasn't surprised by it, and understand how it's being used and am not terribly upset.
It's funny .. 60 years ago, when people went to the store, people loved it when the store owner stocked their favorite things because he knew they bought them. Everyone in the neighborhood watched our kids, and if little Johnny did something wrong, they told his parents. We all knew everyone, and news spread through town like wildfire. We had party lines that people could listen into our conversations without us knowing it. It was considered rude, but people still did it.
Sixty years later, everyone demands privacy. Google is evil if they scan our emails and provide ads for what we want. Cameras on the street corner are evil because we don't want to be watched. License plate scanners are an invasion of privacy and are just evil incarnate.
I get it that it's because it's the government or a large businesses instead of our neighbors or the store down the street. And the ability to do bad things with all that data exists.
But let's look at other things. Because of the government keeping private information, we now have a huge database of people convicted of sex crimes available telling anyone where they live. It doesn't make any difference how small their crime was, it's available for the rest of their life. No one seems to mind that invasion of privacy. We can go online and see what major contributions Bill Gates makes, or anyone that makes contributions over a certain amount. I can see how many times that house across the street has been sold, what they pay for property taxes, and what it's worth. License plate scanners routinely catch people without car insurance, I have been one of them (actually .. I did have it, it was a clerical error.) Everyone has a camera phone now, and anyone can have their picture taken with a time stamp and GPS location at any time.
Oh wait .. that's all OK because it's for the 'common good'. And 'transparent government'. Or because people love to take selfies.
We let the privacy genie out of the bottle decades ago, we've just gotten much better at it since then. The people whining are only whining about the lack of privacy for things they are sensitive about, and I'm sure take advantage of other aspects of loss of privacy and don't think twice about it because it doesn't affect them.
Yawn .. nothing new to see here. Move along.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
The slashdot equivalent would be that such people should not be getting +5, but rather -1.
I'd add to that the karma system that keeps them from getting mod points and silencing others is also an important aspect. If we're going to allow for some light censorship (modding down to -1) we must also ensure that those doing the censoring are doing so responsibly and for legitimate reasons. (E.g. troll comments vs. I simply disagree with you)
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
Yeah, I'm a minority here in that I don't think Snowden revealed anything illegal at all. So this whole story is basically a group of people with an opinion getting upset that other people don't share their opinion. Of course, it *must* be a conspiracy against them... Couldn't possibly be free will or anything.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Better analogy would be buying American automobile for it's 8 cup holders while compromising on reliability and economy.
"Treasoners" is the word I'd choose, given their actions.
Never post anything over at HackerNews which can be remotely construed as criticism of the modern hip whistleblower crowd, lest you be downvoted into oblivion. Slashdots more limited moderation horizon is a boon in that regard - much more diversity and value of comments.
The media doesn't bat an eye when the president's treasury secretary or attorney general are found guilty of tax evasion. Why would we expect that they conform to any other standard for other members of the administration?
-Styopa
Good for you, you don't matter. You know why? Cause Snowden has already been charged with espionage, therefore you're wrong.
It doesn't matter what you (the minority) think if another group (the CIA) drowns out your voice.
If they ever do, we'll test your theory.
...informed by a press that treats officials... as if they're credible
More like informed by a press that's controlled by the CIA (look up "Operation Mockingbird").
FTFY, BTW.
Seriously, no secrets here, folks; just short memories, even shorter attention spans... and a fuck-ton of inexcusable ignorance (no wonder the elites have no qualms about treating us like cattle...)
Until a few "ordinary" people get outed, no one really thinks it'll happen to them. What I mean is, a leak needs to name an individual who is well liked and famous (a "household name"). The leak needs to entirely document their recent past in some detrimental manner, indicating that those random trips across town might be an affair, and that this morning they cracked one out looking at some elf porn or whatever. This needs to happen multiple times, to multiple unrelated people.
The problem of course is that initially at least, no one will believe it's a surveillance problem. They'll just shrug it off as another celebrity gone bad. However, once a good few people have had their lives ruined, the ordinary folk will start to think "hmm, maybe the same could happen to me, after all, I like elf porn too" and get upset about it. Only when "just anyone" thinks it could happen to them will the ordinary folk like you and I get off our collective arses and actually throw some eggs at the twats who are responsible for all this stuff.
Right now, I've got more to lose by speaking up than I have by staying quiet.
I would like to compare the last 100 Snowden statements to the last 100 NSA/CIA statements, thank you very much.
s/Greer/Geer
Should false propaganda have a voice?
Absolutely yes! Otherwise it would be so easy to silence legitimate voices without ever giving them a chance. Muddied issues demand either clarifications, or else demand understanding that there are inherent uncertainties and limits to knowledge, and that we need to take actions according to that, predict consequences of trust or distrust, or just plain old-fashioned go with whatever our gut feelings tell us.
I am beginning to think that we are being subjected to total propaganda. The US public may be almost in a state of mind control by continuous misinformation. You can get a glimpse of this by the way your local news is reported. You have your local Sally Sunshine who greats you with happy, friendly tones and the delivers the greatest pile of nonsense one can imagine. The audience is felt to be in need of comfort and confrontation or disturbing news is suppressed every day. You see a similar tactic with organisations that are subject to the good will of the community. For example a church may give a free meal to the poor one night a week. When this is done many of the poor or homeless will walk or bicycle quite a distance for the meal. But when you see what is served and the caloric intake of the meal vs. the energy needed to get to the church the actual effect may be to increase the level of starvation. The image of the church is enhanced and I do understand the money issues involved but in the end the food programs at the church may be negative. At a more drastic scale we see California in urgent emergency over lack of water and forest fires. Yet you will not see news reports on what can actually be done to stop the growing emergency. For example freezing building permits should lower the demand for water as growing populations demand more water. Building many new lakes and reservoirs could help with fire control and water supply issues as well. Yet we see no news about such topics at all. And on a nation wide basis we see no mention of the notion that population growth increases all of our negative trends such as lack of water, low paying jobs, poverty, addictions, crime and mental illness are all increased by swelling populations.
No, you completely misunderstood my post. Maybe it wasn't clear. I'm not saying that Snowden didn't do anything illegal. I'm saying that I don't think that the NSA did anything illegal. The whole point of my post is that people have different opinions on the legality of the NSA's operations, while this story assumed that they didn't.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I don't agree that the only way to fix the issue is by the communist path. You don't need a complete re-distribution to fix things, you only need to dismantle a very small number of monopolies (including financial monopolies).
Start with media, and break up the monopoly. Having 90% of all media owned by 4 people is why we lack rational discussion of issues and have a public that knows more about a celebrity than a political decision that could impact their lives for the rest of their lives. Deregulation broke this.
Financially, our woes are not due to the 1% but rather the .01%. Lock this down and redistribute their wealth and every poor person in the country would be set for life. Bill Gates (easy yet deserving target) does not need 50 billion dollars. Simply knocking him down to 1 billion would return enough money to purchase 490,000 people houses valued at 100,000, and Mr. Gates would still be rich. Now imagine how many people could own a home and be out of poverty if you corrected all of the .01% (There are at least a few with way more wealth than him). Deregulation broke this.
Banks need to be broken up and regulations put back in place to ensure that a bank can not operate in more than one state. Too big to fail should not exist, and deregulation broke this.
Notice that deregulation broke each of these things, all starting around the 1970s. As more and more deregulation occurred, more and more corruption has happened.
These three things are not the only things that need to be done, but each is a valid starting point. It should also be obvious that since deregulation caused failures, it does not require communism to "fix" things. Enforced regulation is all that's required.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
...keep your friends close and your enemies closer, perhaps.
As one observer put it, "high-profile members of the intelligence community like Cofer Black, Shawn Henry, Keith Alexander, and Dan Greer are positioned front and center in keynote slots, as if they were glamorous Hollywood celebrities. While those who value their civil liberties might opine that they should more aptly be treated like pariahs
Do you imagine that you are addressing the organizers of those events? Who knows, some of them might even read Slashdot, but I doubt the general opinion of Slashdotters determines who gets to be given slots like a "glamorous Hollywood celebrity" and who doesn't. Ultimately, those things are decided by the people who organize those events, and it's their call.
That's actually pretty easy to do.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
"Abundance for all" is unlikely. However, "guaranteed subsistence for all" is easily doable. We have more empty, foreclosed on homes than we have homeless people. We're paying farmers not to grow food while people go hungry. We insist everyone have a job in order to have access to food and shelter, yet there are not enough jobs for everyone to do, and a large portion of the jobs we do have are make-work. There is enough for everyone's basic needs to be met but resources are poorly distributed.
Over the last 40 years per capita GDP in the US doubled but real median income has fallen. The American worker is the most productive motherfucker on the planet. They're generating twice as much wealth as they were 40 years ago, and yet they are keeping less of it. Where did that wealth go? If it didn't go to the workers, the only other place it can go is to the owners. The system is designed to concentrate wealth at the top and it's done a very good job of that.
I'm not advocating for a forced redistribution of wealth. I don't know what the answer is. But the problem is pretty easy to spot.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
You examine. A cursory glance is all I need.
Facts>opinions
Especially stupid opinions.
..here's a bunny... Your message is weak and garbled unless it's really only to express gratuitous rage against the U. S. intelligence community, in which case, OK, at least that part is loud and clear. If, however, your point is to discourage participation of an informed and interested party in a useful forum that, independently, addresses a valid global concern, cyber security, then your message is both muddy and unsupported.
Closing one's ears to people one might disagree with is a sure way to rot as a community. It's not like the community that attends such conferences is unanimous in their views; it's not *all* technolibertarians. If you look at other presentations by such bodies at past conferences, you see that they're often quite good.
Closing your ears to those that have shown contempt for the truth and a desire to deceive you however is entirely appropriate. I'd have no problem if it were an open debate and I just disagreed with their point, but that's not what it is. They are bold faced lieing. You're just giving people proven to be bold faced liars a chance to lie some more.
Then you are not in the demographic, anyway.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I think you misunderstand us here. We don't care if what the NSA did was legal. We are outraged by what they are doing and even more so if in fact it is legal. Legality cannot replace morality, because laws are far too easy to change.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
People who use the word "facts" in their posts = morons.
You can have my SIG when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
In-Q-Tel is just a way for the CIA to get around laws limiting their purchasing powers. They are prohibited from buying services the way they want, so instead they 'invest' in the services they want. What they are supposed to do is define their needs and let people bid on providing those services, but then the CIA executives wouldn't get to hob-nob with VCs and drink champagne on yachts.
But for the most part, the days of stupid seem to be at a lull.
If the days of stupid were at a "lull" (and they are about as far as they can get from it) your post alone would have fully restored their vigor.
You can have my SIG when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
But you do need to accept, once and for all, that economy can't be left to itself. Otherwise you'll get the same push to deregulate, followed by new monopolies and economic ruin. And that means that "communism" and "socialism" need to stop being boogeymen and become social and economic options that can be mixed with other options as needed, without this being a slippery slope to Stalinism and gulags.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Perhaps you could cite an example of the CIA telling the truth so we can test your claims?
Great post. I completely agree that morality should not be confused with legality. Shame on me for implying they were the same. I do disagree that what they did/are continuing to do is immoral. However, I would welcome additional oversight to their activities. While, there is nothing heinous I currently see in their activities, if they are left unchecked they could wander off into areas that I would consider to be immoral.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
People today accept that governments are evil. They are quite content to let people like Snowden fight the good fight for them, and hope the problems work themselves out.
They won't of course. Widespread sloth ensures that the evil will continue.
False claim much?
But you do need to accept, once and for all, that economy can't be left to itself.
Where exactly do I state or even imply that the economy can be left to itself? The fact that I state "Enforced regulation is all that's required." should make it abundantly clear that the economy can not be left to itself.
Any claim you make that socialism and communism are required to fix issues are pure rubbish.
Go read and comprehend what Socrates stated in the allegory of the artisan 2,500 years ago. Go read what Adam Smith stated repeatedly in his works defining "Capitalism". Read Milton Friedman's works and comprehend what he wrote. All three of those people were for a "FREE" Democratic Republic style of Government, not socialism or communism. All three tell you that the primary role of Government in an economy is to enforce regulations to stop monopolization.
To claim that you need a particular form of government to achieve this ignores history, period.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I'd mod you up if I had the points. Legality in certain cases just means the clowns at the top had enough foresight to change the laws.
What the hell are you talking about? There was a story about how CIA Director Brennan just got around to finally telling the truth for a change just yesterday.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Please tell me you aren't a US citizen who made it past the sixth grade. Please.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Facts, Truth ( with a capital T) are indeed greater than opinions. However, that doesn't really mean much in our current discussion. The question at hand is: Why aren't people more outraged about what the NSA/CIA do? The correct answer is: Because they don't think that what the NSA/CIA did is wrong. Now those people ( myself included), could be dead wrong, but that still answers the question. That's what my post is doing: answering the question of why people aren't outraged. Maybe you feel they should be. Great. Have fun converting everyone over to that (opinion or Truth ). Then people will be outraged and then change will come.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
So we can agree that you are a moron then. Fair enough.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Journalists like Conor Friedersdorf have suggested that one explanation for this is that the public is "informed by a press that treats officials who get caught lying and misleading (e.g., James Clapper and Keith Alexander) as if they're credible."
My explanation is that the public has ALWAYS suspected and we expect the CIA to do morally and legally questionable things, and now we don't really care that our suspicions have been confirmed.
At its root, I think the problem is the definition of socialism:
a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.
Your notion of the government regulating capitalism is socialism. Socialism isn't some anticapitalism that will explode on contact with capitalism, and it's not a form of government, though it does sort of imply a couple things about that government that are not at all at odds with capitalism (but are kind of at odds with universally unregulated capitalism).
To claim that you need a particular form of government to achieve this ignores history, period.
The history of three cherry-picked men talking about economics?
Those other folks don't deserve to be in the same room as Dan Geer. See his RSA talk http://geer.tinho.net/geer.rsa... for example.
Why would anyone listen to liars, criminals and torturers that work against their own people and then believe a single word ever again coming out of their mouth?
Insanity
The problem is not mine, the problem is yours. You are attempting to conflate an economic system into a form of government, or trying to conflate a government into a form of economics. Either way is wrong!
I'll go further and state that you know you are wrong, as evidenced by your overblown use of adjective in your second paragraph. No, it does not present the appearance of knowledge.
There are countless others who wrote about economics and government, but to claim it is "cherry picked" is laughable. Why is it laughable? Simple, the United States of America, which we are discussing, was intended to have Capitalism as it's form of economics. Capitalism is derived from the works of one of those authors. The form of Government we have was defined by Socrates in "The Republic". Should I really assume a 3rd party interpretation (and possible corruption) of the original thoughts and writings over the original thoughts and writings? The answer to that is NO!
You may be fair if you only claimed that the last member of the list as "cherry picked". I'd counter any such argument by stating that Milton Friedman was ignored by our politicians who carried on with Keynesian policies regardless of who was pointing out it's failures. Friedman's principles were never implemented or tried, even by the so called "great conservative" Reagan who dismantled numerous protections against monopoly during his two terms in office and started the massive shift of wealth in the hands of very few with "Trickle Down Economics".
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
I understand your stated expectations. This is to be expected of one who blindly trusts authority. However it is worth noting that most of the statements by CIA/NSA/etc. spokesmen cannot be checked by anyone not a member of those organizations. (And this is why the "blindly".)
Just not being able to prove them wrong is not grounds for trusting them, when they (i.e. the organizations collectively) are the reason that those statements cannot be checked.
OTOH, statements from "techno libertarians" aren't always correct, but if they can't be checked, then it's clear that they can't check them either. This is a very significant difference.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
True but techno libertarians often make claims that can be checked but are complicated. For example what XYZ said or how ABC acts when exploded or...
In general there have been some leaks, example the Wikileaks embassy stuff that gave us a pretty good statistical basis for where the State Department was lying and where it was telling the truth. That's extremely useful for estimating the likelihood of lies in other cases.
Excuse me, but many of us, or at least myself, do believe that they broke actual laws as well as being blatantly immoral. IANAL, so I can't be certain, but I believe that they did.
OTOH, I don't normally condemn people for breaking the laws if I feel the laws are unjust. I'm much more upset that they acted immorally than that they acted illegaly.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Good to know. I hope you will be equally accommodating after you catch me peeking through your bathroom window, watching your wife take a shower.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Wow, I could write the same thing a million times and people would still miss the point entirely.
All I really need to do is to figure out how to invert this situation, so people don't care how much they disagree with my position and just pay attention to the question I'm asking. Then anything I want will be mine.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Chomsky explained everything you need to know in the 70's. Educate yourself, idiots.
No, I got the point perfectly. You simply think that collecting data on everyone, watching and recording everyone's private moments is not by itself immoral, until you do something with it. A bit of oversight could solve most of the problem, no biggie. Did I get it right this time?
The thing is, I grew up on the other side of Iron Curtain where the state police was also snooping on everyone. So I have a pretty good idea what can be done with the information once it is collected and so I'd rather it was not collected in the first place so nobody gets tempted. It's the same I'd like to have less guns around so when someone gets pissed, they go for a knife or fists, rather than a gun.
The thing about today's society is that there are simply too many laws. It is increasingly difficult to lead a life without breaking any of them. So it does not really matter whether you broke any law, but who knows about it and if they decide to prosecute. Everyone is guilty of something and you can lock up anyone on a legitimate crime, if you just know about it and he is inconvenient enough to stay in your way. You see?
I hope this enlightens my stance on mass surveillance. Stay out of my business! I'll take my chances with getting killed by a terrorist rather than let you snoop.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
This is the principle of false equivalency - treating propaganda, vapid opinions, and just plain falsities with the same weight as facts, in the aim of being "fair and balanced." Letting the CIA, NSA, others speak at conferences where they are there to spread their own propaganda and to then treat these presentations as valuable facts is intellectually dishonest at best.
There is a time when various people need to be shunned to give them a wake-up-call, and not allowing these jerks to take time at our conferences.
The CIA fucking spied on the fucking Congress and made up "evidence" to turn over to Eric Holder to prosecute congressional staffers. Because they didn't like the investigation into plainly illegal torture.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08...
These people need to be shunned and locked out, not catered to. Many need to be in jail at the very least.
--
BMO
Corporations are not ACTUALLY people; if they're too big to fail, then they're too big to exist. And I fully believe in my dad's day we were a nation of laws; but in ?recent decades? lawyers and friends bent word to unrecognizable shapes to suit their purposes. (BC: "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is. And a friend: I want to be a corporate lawyer not to keep the company out of trouble, but to find laws and precedents so they can do what they want. (i.e., it's a logic puzzle.))
Now I do have some comments about your comments:
Now imagine how many people could own a home and be out of poverty
redistribute their wealth and every poor person in the country would be set for life.
I'm sorry, I laughed so hard that Dr. Pepper came out my nose! Really? REALLY? Errrm, no.
Without discipline (and some help), they'd never make it. Go look up the "normal" people who instantly got millions -- almost half lost it all within 5 years. ALL. (And half didn't.) (*1)
Here are some fitting lines from (*2):
they believe success comes entirely from luck and chance. So [when] "set for life," they still don't understand success and end up losing it all
[Being given money] might put more money in your pocket, but it doesn't make you smart.
Unearned success rarely lasts.
I agree wholeheartedly with that last one. If you didn't earn it, you won't guard or appreciate it, and you won't be able to keep it going long-term.
Finally, take it forcibly from the 0.01%? Why just them? They're all mean, greedy, uncaring, smart, or lucky? Then take it from the 0.1% as well. But then why not the 1.0%? Or the 10%. Or, pushing it, the 100%? Who decides? You?
Yes, YOU. Individually. Don't rely on "someone else and their resources" to do it, YOU do it. I've been handing out small amounts of cash to people who beg for things, and then stopped. Why? I felt like I was being taken advantage of. So I started listened to what they were asking for and then immediately went and gave it to them. No government, no tax write-offs, no church. I don't do it all of the time, and I don't do to to everyone (I've given to whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians, if you must know. But they have to ask nicely, and they have to speak English.) Don't wait on a nebulous "them" to solve the problem; help directly yourself when you can. (*3)
Oh, it's a bigger problem? Then start a local group and give your personal resources and coordinate with other out-of-state local groups if necessary. Don't just gripe and take money away from the top 13% because you're the 14% and "that's where it makes 'sense' to stop." It's theirs to give away, not your to take away. And the Feds? They're trying to normalize everything and everybody, but the top of Mt. Everest does not have the same requirements as the middle of Death Valley.
After all, "A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have." -- Thomas Jefferson
1: Reference
2: Reference
3: I *know* I helped (just) at least one person get a job. He asked for some money to clean up for an interview the next day. I got him a shaving cream, razor, tower, toothbrush and toothpaste, mouthwash, and a brush at a nearby Dollar Store. It was all of $10. A month later I bumped into the guy again; he had gotten a (that?) job and was doing better
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
So the USA, where its own educated supporters have admitted the government is an oligarchy or plutocracy, cannot be socialist. It also means that a dictatorship cannot be socialist. Which is strange since most dictators gain supreme power peacefully, so they can fix an obvious social injustices.
Marxism and Communism also advocates the means of production being owned by the employees/people. To many people outside the USA, socialism means the government alleviates the injustices suffered by the poor.
This is one problem: The collective press no longer demand that government serves the people.
The biggest problem is the civil rights movement being a victim of its own success. With the US steel monopoly and the booming '50s, the black, the poor, ethnic immigrants and uneducated women of the country could use 'the good life' mantra to expose how the same 'good life' didn't include them. Add to that a war based solely on telling another country what economic model to implement, and rebellion to the 'good life' became widespread. But now that everyone has a slice of the 'good life' pie, plus a promise for more, political activism has been replaced by bread and circuses. The press give so much attention to edge issues like abortion and gay marriage because so many people are invested in telling the principal actors how to live. Which is the cause of the problem: The principal actors don't have a voice and vocal people use their version of the 'good life' to deny equal opportunity to others. The voice of the people has gone from saying "this community must include me" to "this community doesn't include you".
ask yourself about morality.
"But after all of the lies and subterfuge is it even constructive to give voice to the talking points of intelligence officials?"
The only civil liberties they value are their own and they've already proven they can destroy ours while theirs remain unscathed.
Don't denigrate people because of associations. I've seen no evidence that Dan Geer is in a position to know about what the NSA and CIA have been lying to us about; indeed it would be gross operational incompetence for him to be in that position. His responsibility is to make near-future dual use security technology available to intelligence agencies. Although I'd prefer to see the CIA abolished and the NSA completely redirected and reorganized, that doesn't mean everyone associated those organizations are liberty destroying liars. For that, you need to be directly responsible for violating fourth amendment rights and lying about it to congress, e.g., James Clapper.
This isn't a matter of disagreement but rather than being lied to perpetually.
Well I'm not sure who Dan Greer is, but I've known Dan Geer for ages, he's a libertarian academic type who publishes somewhat philosophical texts on the economics of information security. If you're looking for some sort of evil CIA spook, you'll need to try again.
Throw rotten garbage at them, and they might get a hint as to public perception of their bullshit opinions.
Obama, or any president (or any politician really) runs squat: BIG money runs them all. How do you *think* they got where they are in the 1st place & don't you also realize they all have something on EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM as well (just in case) for control purposes? There are NO "democrats" or "republicans" - there's "republicrats" (owned by the same puppet masters, corporate bodies & the 1% investment class wealthy). They literally "hedge their bets" & back BOTH parties' candidates (take a look @ any MAJOR Fortune 100-500 corporate campaign donations, tells you it all).
Separation of CORPORATION & STATE is needed, much as why separation of Church & State was instituted largely.
* THIS is the REAL world man... get used to it.
APK
P.S.=> It's pretty much ALWAYS been that way, & I wouldn't complain *if* those guys running the show, for real (ala "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" Wizard-of-Oz style), wouldn't be yielding such lousy OVERALL results - they seem to have forgotten that even KINGS need serfs (like Gods need worshippers, or they are the God of Zero/Nothing, without them) - However: I have great faith those running things do *NOT* want their status quo applecart upset, & will revert to the old mantra of "you have to give a little/spend money, to get a lot/make money" once their social experiment in current motion (as of the last 60++ yrs. or so that is) ALMOST completely fails, coming in "sweeping in from the wings" to "save the day", but... I do follow what those in power do with their monies, & they are buying up Gold & land in say, Ecuador (which ontop of putting the squeeze on since idiots can always be counted on to do the WRONG thing, putting up cameras everywhere along with mass-surveillance also) - which tells ME @ least, there's a GOOD possibility they're getting ready to "give up & fly the coop" while the getting's good (scares me some actually, since chaos is NOT preferable by any means)... apk