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Assange: Google Is Not What It Seems
oxide7 (1013325) writes "In June 2011, Julian Assange received an unusual visitor: the chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt. They outlined radically opposing perspectives: for Assange, the liberating power of the Internet is based on its freedom and statelessness. For Schmidt, emancipation is at one with U.S. foreign policy objectives and is driven by connecting non-Western countries to Western companies and markets. These differences embodied a tug-of-war over the Internet's future that has only gathered force subsequently. Assange describes his encounter with Schmidt and how he came to conclude that it was far from an innocent exchange of views."
Mr. Assange, what you've just written is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having read it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
... compiling dossiers on everyone. Since in order to use the internet you need to use a search engine, a good idea is to look at you chrome browser history and note the title, time, where you visited, is there, then combine this with analytics and cookies (machine identification) remember this is the kind of shit and more they got behind closed doors. This will be used to pro-actively deny employment to people and 'screen' people for their political views/sites/news they visit/any health problems/etc. i.e. it allows corporations unprecedented insight into the flaws of our evolved nervous system and minds. We are not "free" in any way or form our minds were shaped by evolution and they have a lot of problems reasoning or perceiving reality, if in doubt see here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
They are trying to map political dissident to pre-emptively strike against political change using science and big data they are fervently trying to figure out how to regain their control, since they know media's days are numbered with newer generations. So they are learning techniques in controlling populations and manipulating public opinion on social media, to socially engineer how people think, etc. The reality is america has been the greatest success in propaganda in human history, most americans were hyper capitalist, virulently anti-communist for the last few decades and the upper class would like the working classes to keep voting against their own interests to keep their ill gotten wealth. So if you vote for D&R you are one of the illusioned and the elites aren't worried about you at all because you are politically illiterate just like they want. They want you all to vote democrats and republicans so as not to rock the boat. They don't want political change to manifest outside the political system (aka threat to corporate power).
This (mass surveillance) is just more part and parcel of state suppression of dissent against corporate interests. They're worried that the more people are going to wake up and corporate centers like the US and canada may be among those who also awaken. See this vid with Zbigniew Brzezinski, former United States National Security Advisor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Look at the following graphs:
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesa...
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesa...
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesa...
And then...
WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would Stay Cheap
http://www.businessinsider.com...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Free markets?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
http://www.amazon.com/Empire-I...
"We now live in two Americas. One—now the minority—functions in a print-based, literate world that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other—the majority—is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. To this majority—which crosses social class lines, though the poor are overwhelmingly affected—presidential debate and political rhetoric is pitched at a sixth-grade reading level. In this “other America,” serious film and theater, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of society.
In the tradition of Chr
Well if you'd been holed-up in a small room for years under the threat of extradition (ulitmately) to some US holiday camp where waterboarding is considered a social activity, wouldn't your outlooks and perceptions have been somewhat altered by the experience?
Let's not forget that Assange, through his Wikileaks disclosures, has done a hell of a lot to wake the people of the world up to the nastiness of those who forget they are in the public service and instead believe they are rulers and demigods by right.
While Assange is open to criticism on many fronts, never forget that he *has* done a lot to help preserve what few freedoms we still have.
I more strongly criticise those who see the wrongs that have been done and do nothing to right them. That's the *vast* majority of the great unwashed out there.
Maybe someone needs to explain to Assange that Google is a large, for-profit US corporation with access to huge amounts of data. Most people can figure out the rest of it from there.
Seriously, I tried reading the article (but I couldn't finish it) and I don't know what Assange thinks Google is, unless he's been deceived by the way the US government and the private sector pretend to be adversaries.
>> the liberating power of the Internet is based on its freedom and statelessness
"In 1995!" says Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.
(Seriously, where do you begin. Server logs, cookies, magic URLs, IP lookups, etc.)
You beat me to it - but my concise reply was going to be...
" the liberating power of the Internet "
Citation needed.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
I'm still lost on why Sweden, of all places, is more likely to deport Assange to the US than England is.
I mean fuck, The Pirate Bay, which is by far the worst enemy of the Hollywood owned US Government, has safe harbor there in many respects. Meanwhile England goes out of its way to block access to that site because, among other things, it offends the US Government.
Julian Assange is the internet equivalent of Kevin Trudeau. Both of them have their followers convinced that they are just innocent victims of the US Government, meanwhile both of them are big lying fucks not only to themselves, but all of their followers as well, and both of them would happily lie to and/or steal from anybody who supports them just for the sake of feeding their own ego.
Kevin Trudeau is currently serving a 10 year sentence, and I hope he disappears into oblivion there. Same with Assange, likewise, I don't know why anybody bothers writing articles about him.
At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought.
Seriously? I'm not sure you read the same thing I did. I especially found his attempts to understand his interviewers (in the opening paragraphs) to be unusually analytical and.....rational.
Certainly Assange holds different viewpoints than I do, but his points seemed more logic based than your post, for example.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
His main points, as I understand them:
1) Eric Schmidt is getting involved in politics, and is becoming influential.
2) Google doesn't always follow "do no evil" but fanboys love Google anyway
3) Google is getting involved in government more than is healthy.
He has some other rambles about the Bilderbergs, and how the governments are secretly controlling world events, but his main points seam reasonable enough.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I am from China. Assange is from Australia. Those of us who are not from the United States of America tend to have an advantage over those who were born and raised inside America because we were not indoctrinated with the Pledge of Allegiance throughout our childhood (into the teen years) but the Americans do
That is why when Assange said
For a man of systematic intelligence, Schmidtâ(TM)s politicsâ"such as I could hear from our discussionâ"were surprisingly conventional, even banal
I have to agree
Schmidt, no matter how smart he is, chooses to remain inside the box, and as one who stays inside the box can't see how bad the system that governs America has turned into
America used to be the one who fight for liberty. That was why I left China and went to America decades ago. Now? America is as bad as China in term of the suppression of liberty
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I suspect Assange hasn't really done much these past year or so is because of Snowden's leaks. The leaks on NSA's illicit activities, and the U.S.'s response to them, have completely dwarfed every other whistleblowing discussion. At this point, more leaks would just be lost in the crowd.
It's also why Snowden's been fairly quiet too with only one or two revelations every so often. He's already got the ball rolling on discussions on government invasionof personal privacy, security audits, etc. People today are more aware of just how badly they've been violated by their government than ever. So long as that ball keeps rolling and doesn't stall, there's no need for him to give it a push.
Things are a shitshow anyway. Between Western Europe's fear or Putin despite their governments' reluctance to do anything about his land grabs, ISIS threatening to destabilize the Middle East, the ebola outbreak that will certainly affect everyone if it's not brought under control very soon, the riots in Hong Kong, and all the other usual stuff (drug cartels, extreme weather, etc.) there's strife in almost every part of the world. People really aren't going to be interested in what happens abroad if their own country is losing stability.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
The only threat has been the implied threat he created. They are happy to let him imprison himself in the Ecuadoran embassy and know with absolute certainty at some point in the future the president of Ecuador will change and the new one will probably throw him out. Then he will get taken to Sweden and whatever charges will eventually be resolved and he'll proclaim widely that the reason the US didn't put him in Guantanamo bay is because he scared them out of it.
He's never going to be prosecuted or even arrested by the US. They are happy to let him think he is though, because of the extreme measures he's taken to avoid it including breaking English law which might end up putting him in an English jail.
And lets not forget the naive English supporter he fucked over that lost their house because they put it up as collateral to bail him our of jail and then he violated his bail. I don't know why anyone would be stupid enough to support him considering how he likes to fuck people over, literally and figuratively.
While I do think the article is too long, I think some of the actions of Google are to be expected. Microsoft is also lobbying massively in Washington, and Google has to put some counterweight on that - one could think.
But what Assange lists about Google Ideas is disturbing.
And when I look at the Google Ideas website, it seems to be a very valid point. And even more disturbing.
Yet I do believe he thinks the CEO of Google has more power than he has in reality. And I might be naive. But, seriously, they should look better into what Jared Cohen is doing with the money of Google, there certainly is something fishy about this guy, his connection and interpretation of 'do no evil', thanks to Assange for pointing that out!
You people in other countries are just as indoctrinated (on average; some are less and some more so, I imagine) as we are here in the States. You acting superior because you're from somewhere else is equivalent to an American acting superior because he's an American.
He's not in England. He's in Ecuador.
No he isn't. He is in the Ecuadorian embassy, in London, England.
The embassy is their sovereign soil, by international treaty.
No it isn't.
Contrary to popular belief, diplomatic missions do not enjoy full extraterritorial status and are not sovereign territory of the represented state.
If the English police set foot in there to deport him to Sweden (as they would do if he left), that's an invastion of their territory.
No it isn't.
It would break a very important international treaty though, and likely
lead to lots of diplomatic problems.
Don't forget the internet was invented by DARPA. Just like missiles and nukes and subs and carriers, the internet is a weapon. It is slow, but very sure to penetrate and destroy dictatorships and repressive governments worldwide. It's slow enough to say that we just deployed it recently. Even so, a number of governments have already fallen or been pressured by it; we see repressive regimes like China throwing all kinds of defenses up against it. I don't see how even China can stand against it for very long.
Assange gets this, at least on some level. That would mean America wins, and he sees America as the enemy. Oh well, suck it Assange. The business of America is business. The only real way to do business, is when people are free, and can spend their money on stuff they want. That's us winning. (Not to excuse our recent spate on NSA abuses; they are going to always try to do that, and it's up to us voters to keep them in check.)
I'm still lost on why Sweden, of all places, is more likely to deport Assange to the US than England is.
Everyone is surprised by it, but
I mean fuck, The Pirate Bay, which is by far the worst enemy of the Hollywood owned US Government, has safe harbor there in many respects.
And the people behind it are serving their time in prison although the prosecutor claimed that they didn't break any Swedish laws just a month before they were arrested. The justice department got a mail from the US government that told them to deal with TPB and suddenly the violent inmates of a high security prison wonders what the fuck a little non-violent nerd is doing there.
There is also other incidents that shows that Sweden is handing over people to the US and bending over both ways when asked to.
What they get out of it nobody knows.
This is one of those cases when theory and practice doesn't follow each other. In theory Sweden should be safer for Assange but practice has shown that that isn't the case.
The first part rambles and it seems like he isn't going to tell us anything then it winds into commentary that is spot on. I fear Google, but even I can't envision how the public perception will ever swing far enough negative to stop them. Google is a stranger with candy, sure it's free, but it pays to question the motives.
----
"By all appearances, Google's bosses genuinely believe in the civilizing power of enlightened multinational corporations, and they see this mission as continuous with the shaping of the world according to the better judgment of the "benevolent superpower." "
"This is the impenetrable banality of "don't be evil." They believe that they are doing good. And that is a problem."
"For an American Internet services monopoly to ensure global market dominance, it cannot simply keep doing what it is doing and let politics take care of itself."
Credit: Newsweek: Google Is Not What It Seems, by By Julian Assange
http://www.newsweek.com/assang...
-----
No shit shirlock. But why do you think he's hiding there? Avoiding extradition to the US has nothing to do with it.
Avoiding extradition to the US has everything to do with Assange hiding in the Ecuador embassy. Swedish prisons aren't the hell holes in the US or Australia. Even if Assange had an irrational fear of being labelled a sex offender felon, it would not outweigh the price he is paying being holed up in the Ecuador embassy.
Its all about not going to a country that will extradite him to the US over a trumped up security issue. Assange does not have the legal rights an American citizen has. He can be put into Guantanamo, or any other black ops prison, because the US does not respect universal notions of due process. If the US did, Guantanamo couldn't exist.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
1) Your assurances are meaningless.
2) Look at what happened to Kevin Mitnick. Because the American public had such a poor understanding of hacking and the level of threat posed by hacking, people though Mitnick had to be placed behind bars to keep America (corporations) safe. Because the American legal system is much more complex and byzantine than the simplified mythology propagated to its citizens, Kevin had to spend many years in a medium security jail before even going to trial, to optimize his chances of either beating the conviction, or reducing the maximum penalty. What actually happened was that the technology moved so fast, and the public's miniscule understanding of hacking was modified ("Why worry about some jerk that went on a computer joyride, when hackers are stealing American intellectual property and money from the safety of Russia or China"), it eventually became cost effective for the US DOJ to deescalate the witchhunt they were making over Mitnick.
The point being that as long as organizations exist to reveal information the US government prefers to conceal, the security apparatus of the US will treat those organizations as national security threats. This even sort of includes legitimate news organizations like the NY Times, UK Guardian, etc. They are captive to the US government. As long as they operate within the laws defined by the judicial branch, and "play ball", they aren't going to get the Assange treatment. No one like Assange or Snowden can assume they are beyond the reach or interest of the US government.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
It's "Don't be Evil".
~15 years ago, Google was "Chaotic Neutral" (openly disruptive, with both lawful and lawless tendencies).
Today, they're more "Neutral Neutral" (they still enjoy being disruptive, but they've been reined in by self-preservation and forced to pay lip service to lawfulness).
Twenty years from now, they'll probably be "Lawful Neutral", with increasingly-frequent side trips into "Lawful Evil" territory (which they'll rationalize and publicly blame on government regulations, even when those regulations are more of a pretense than a legally-binding order backed up by overwhelming firepower and force).
The real danger isn't Eric Schmidt. It's his successor's successor, who (more likely than not) will be a bland, Wall Street-approved CEO with a completely conventional background who'll contentedly fill his role of making Google the government's favorite bitch... as long as he can invoice the feds for the effort, eliminate R&D, outsource everything to Nigeria, and prop up the stock price with annual layoffs and the sale of a division or two, just like every other major corporation in America that's owned primarily by risk-averse institutional investors run by CEOs who went to the same elite universities.
He's not in another country. Read the entire post:
"That was why I left China and went to America decades ago."
His observation isn't based on domestic propaganda or nationalism and an inability to consider perspectives outside his only cultural upbringing.
You're condescendingly dismissing the perspective of an expat who came to America looking for Freedom and Liberty. When expats ask for a refund, that's a good sign your marketing is better than your product.
If your neighbor's dog spits out the slop you feed your pet, it raises the question: "is the neighbor's dog picky? Or is my dog just used to food that tastes like shit?"
You're welcome.
If you want a libertarian Utopia, fuck off to Somalia. You'll be allowed to play with your guns there.
So a country half controlled by Muslim terrorists and the other familial warlords and real pirates is a libertarian Utopia? Hitting the pipe a bit too hard, eh?
I'm still lost on why Sweden, of all places, is more likely to deport Assange to the US than England is.
Why else are they going to such extraordinary lengths to obtain him? There are no charges, and Sweden refuses to question him in the UK.
The UK is spending millions of pounds on a case where even the allegations do not add up to anything that would be a crime in the UK.
If you think Assange has no cause for fear, read this:
In December 2001 Swedish police ... two Egyptians who had been seeking asylum in Sweden. The police took them to Bromma airport in Stockholm, and then stood aside as masked alleged CIA operatives cut their clothes from their bodies, inserted drugged suppositories in their anuses, and dressed them in diapers and overalls, handcuffed and chained them and put them on an executive jet with American registration N379P. They were flown to Egypt, where they were imprisoned, beaten, and tortured
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
Have gnu, will travel.
Before posting next time, at least glimpse at an article to know who Mitnick was. Then try not to confuse him with Aaron Schwartz, who is a totally separate person and circumstance.
Your opinion of all 3 of those people is exclusively based on a non-existent fantasy land.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Why else are they going to such extraordinary lengths to obtain him? There are no charges, and Sweden refuses to question him in the UK.
The UK is spending millions of pounds on a case where even the allegations do not add up to anything that would be a crime in the UK.
Not this bullshit again - there doesn't have to be charges (the extradition judge explained why), Sweden doesn't have to question him in the UK (the extradition judge explained why) and the UK extradition judge already affirmed that all the extradition charges are indeed crimes in the UK. You people really need to read up on the situation you are trying to ridicule, because your standard lines make you look stupid.
If Assange was in British custody and the USA made an extradition request, he would be extradited unless the crime that the USA wants to charge him with carries the death penalty. Even if there was a possibility of the death penalty, I expect we would extradite him if the Americans gave us an assurance that he won't be executed.
Note that the British did have Assange in custody for a bit and the USA made no attempt to extradite him. I don't think they have anything on him. Assange is currently holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy because he thinks he might get convicted of rape.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
No other environment was as absurd to facilitate creation of jokes as Soviet Russia.
--Coder