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The Most Striking Thing About the WikiLeaks CIA Data Dump Is How Little Most People Cared (qz.com)
Last week, WikiLeaks released a trove of web pages describing sophisticated software tools and techniques used by the C.I.A to break into smartphones, computers, and IoT devices including smart TVs. Despite the initial media coverage, it appears normal people don't really care much about it, reports Quartz. An anonymous reader shares the report: There's also one other big difference between now and 2013. Snowden's NSA revelations sent shockwaves around the world. Despite WikiLeaks' best efforts at theatrics -- distributing an encrypted folder and tweeting the password "SplinterItIntoAThousandPiecesAndScatterItIntoTheWinds" -- the Vault 7 leak has elicited little more than a shrug from the media and the public, even if the spooks are seriously worried. Maybe it's because we already assume the government can listen to everything.
Most people with half-a-brain already assumed that the CIA, NSA, and FBI were doing stuff like this. This merely confirmed our suspicions.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
These were things the Obama admin were in charge of. The press doesn't want to cover it
EVERY. SINGLE. PERSON. I. KNOW. has commented on Vault#7
It is simply not being reported.
This recent "leak" concerns expected activity, and legal activity, the CIA possessing the technical means to gather intelligence. The 2003 leak concerned domestic surveillance by agencies prohibited from performing domestic surveillance. In short, the public expects the CIA to be able to break into an iPhone.
It was fiction in 1998... and now it appears to be all too real.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120660
The only question that remains is how autocratic are those in power to manipulate these capabilities to their benefit and at the expense of the public welfare.
I think most people have figured out wikileaks only seems to be pushing an agenda with their leaks
did you forget to take your meds?
But I do not think that's the reason no one really cares. I think most people don't trust wikileaks.
Julian is clearly a complete and total fuck head with a political agenda.
Personally, I would have a hard time believing anything released by that jack ass has not been carefully cherry picked.
At this stage, everyone knows the US government is spying on the everything they do. Most people just don't care. Everyone also knows that wikileaks guy is a fart muffin. So... they also don't care.
Most "normal" people the summary refers to have never heard of the Wikileaks release concerning the CIA. In fact, I am pretty sure if I took an informal poll of friends and family most of them (8/10 at least) wouldn't have any idea what Wikileaks is.
The majority of people do not consider whether they are being spied on, it doesn't occur to them at all. It's not necessarily that they don't care, but they are simply unaware it's an option. If you don't follow tech news this is not something that comes up on people's radar.
Sometimes I will tell friends about hacks that can break into phones or ways that government or companies can intercept traffic. A few might express concern, but not enough to do anything about it, the spying is "out of sight, out of mind", it doesn't affect them. Most others think I'm just being paranoid or making stuff up.
Remember, the best way to cover up information in the age of the internet is not to censor it, but to present so many conflicting and mutually exclusive sets of information that the casual observer doesn't have a baseline from which to judge truth or fiction. All they will be able to know is that they are being lied to -- but they will be incapable of telling who is lying or how much of what they are hearing is lies. Poison any legitimate leak with factually false information and the entire thing becomes suspect.
No one cared because it had no "mascot" like we had with Snowden or Manning.
I only heard CNN mention the dump for a couple days then seemingly dropped it entirely in favor of more trump. So either the alphabet guys are kindly suggesting that the media limit its coverage, or most Americans don't care unless there's a celebrity figure behind it. I'm guessing it's the latter, because out of the possible answers that one makes me facepalm the hardest.
Shut up you CIA shlll. This has nothing to do with left vs right, and everything to do with us all losing our liberty.
I'ts because nearly everything in the release was already known ancient exploits or techniques. None of this is new.
And because WikiLeaks, while it had potential at one time, is irrevocably tainted by the a-hole in charge.
We've known for years that any wired device connected to the net is vulnerable. Changing the end use of the device does not change a thing regards security.
The majority of us also know the what comes out of his mouth is complete bullshit.
This is why letting an election get decided by popular vote is so damned dangerous.
Few understand the underlying issues and, the few that do, even less care.
People make no sense to me.
Trump is elected and the people riot like chimps. The CIA is hacking and spying on everything under the fucking sun with no oversight and the response is " meh ".
I may have missed it, but did the leaks say the CIA was actually using this stuff illicitly? If not, then it's on par with someone leaking that the Army has tanks. Well... yeah, it's par for the course.
So you are angry whats the next step? write an angry post? go on a protest? what is that going to achieve at best they will say they are going to stop doing it and go on doing the same thing in secret. Maybe a few people will lose there jobs, but they will be replaced by others that are just as unethical.
Until people stop having irrational fears of terrorist, communist, immigrants, homosexuals, witches, ... (pick your favorite group that is going to "destroy" civilization) we will allow agencies the CIA to have too much power, and once anyone has too much power they will abuse it.
In part because they're hosted in Russia.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Isn't developing and using tools like this kind of their job?
I mean they should never use this stuff against American citizens or without a warrant and due process, etc, etc.... But complaining we have the tools necessary to turn some warlord's cellphone into a microphone is like complaining about how the army has drones that can fly a grenade through his car window.
I mean if anything maybe these tools will be kind of useful. "Hey, before we bomb that large group of people over there, turn on their cell phone cameras and make sure it's not a sweet sixteen party.
WikiLeaks is all bark and no bite. All cowboy and no cattle. All sizzle and no steak. All rape and no recourse.
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What are we supposed to do about it?
The real issue isn't the fact that the CIA/NSA/ [insert bureau here] can do these things. The issue is that they can't be held accountable for it.
We saw this in the financial crash of '08 (albeit in the private sector) as well: no one who is actually responsible for these things will ever see jail time. This won't end anyone's career. There's just not much the American people can do about it, and I think there's a sense among the general populace that they know this, even if only on a subconscious level. It's not apathy. It's a helpless resignation.
The US military can call in a strike on any position in the world, with 1 meter accuracy, and deliver a deadly payload in less than 6 hours. 2 hours to most populated areas. They can wipe out an entire city in a day, even without nukes. They have nearly invisible fortresses both above and below the water all over the globe. They have aircraft which carry nuclear weapons which are nearly invisible to radar and can circumnavigate the globe without ever having to land.
That's insane. And yet we don't react when we find out because, even for the stuff we didn't know for certain, we kind of figured they could probably do it. CIA is the same way, it's just not talked about as much. Most people hadn't hear of (or dind't know much of) the NSA back when Snowden dumped his data) so it was a surprise. The CIA is not a surprise. To anyone. They may be secret, but they're not shrouded in mystery.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
It's mostly alarm fatigue. Constantly we're berated with news about how our rights are eroding and the government is working against us. While much of it is very true, until it extends to the point of interfering with the common citizens daily life, they won't care.
People are sheep. You can shave their coats and even pick off a few to slaughter, as long as the heard is large enough to feel anonymous, they really have no reaction. It's not until the sheep feel like they're the next in line do they care.
Is it a shock that our covert HUMINT foreign intelligence agency has a pile of tools for covertly gathering human intelligence? No. I'd be more surprised if they didn't have stuff like this. These tools are useful for the kind of targeted, one-off, POI-focused surveillance that we want our spies to be doing, rather than the sweeping, rights-trampling dragnets we've been seeing from the FBI and NSA.
I'm mostly upset that this stuff was mishandled and leaked, not that it exists.
So am I upset that our spies are spying? No, no I'm not.
I care a lot.
I'm waiting to see what will be done about it, by the new sheriff. Maybe nothing, maybe little, but... Wait and see.
We get to vote them out again in a little while.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Most people don't care. They never did, not even back in 2013.
The difference now is back in 2013 the media needed headlines. Now they're more focused on Trumps spelling mistakes in his tweets.
But right vs left is such a good way of distracting the people! After all, both sides of the political establishment are very different in who they want to give the things that they steal from you to.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Maybe there are 'more interesting' things going on, but in the last week have asked more then a few of my non - tech industry friends if they have heard about the new wiki leaks drop and non of them have. Frankly it just isn't being reported. That is one of the problems with our modern media, they serve as a filter for what is important but are driven by political ideology even more so then what sells and certainly have no real way of determine or interest in what is and isn't important to people. Many people are appalled when they hear about this drop, but it has been dreadfully under reported because the trump administration is much more salacious.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
In China and Saudi Arabia, the government doesn't just control the media, it is the media.
I see the media is in full-out damage control.
Are you really so naive as to think they're only using these tools against non-Americans?
Having hacking tools and using these tools against Americans are two very different things. The former is what was leaked and its exactly the sort of tools the CIA is expect to have in order to perform its mission. If and when the later is shown the public will show greater interest, as they did with the 2013 revelations.
I've seen coverage on The Blaze, Fox News, Daily Wire, Daily Wire, NPR, my local talk radio guys, my local cable news guys, etc.
People saying "it's been ignored by the media" probably haven't been watching the media at all. It has been covered. Not 24/7, and not exactly accurately (some networks are better than others in this regard), but all of them have been talking about it.
The village is being terrorized by a tribble-topped wackaloon and his minions, and people wonder why we're not paying more attention to a gov't agency doing exactly what we assume they do?
People cared about Snowden because NSA overreach affected virtually every US citizen. What NSA was caught doing is ILLEGAL.
Everyone assumes CIA hoards 0-days to be used for espionage purposes against OTHER countries. This is why CIA exists. CIA brass has been publically talking about the cooption of smart* products for such purposes for a number of years.
If there is evidence in one of these leaks of CIA spying on US citizens without a warrant this would be certainly be worthy of more attention.
If CIA was for example caught bulk hacking everyone's smart TV's and recording everything said this would certainly be newsworthy and most likely lead to legal repercussions for the individuals involved.. or maybe not... nobody at NSA went to jail for stealing everyone's phone records.
Nobody cares, because the intelligence community is supposed to be able to get information that the "bad dudes" want to keep from them.
I was very upset by the latest round of Wikileaks. It is clear that our security agencies are not making us safer. As we build western civilization on technology and the Internet of Things IoT, we have to know that our technology can not be used against us. This has the potential to kill new markets like autonomous vehicle because in a recent poll, 70% of women to no trust self driving cars. I imagine with the Wikileaks revelations of using a hacked car for the "perfect" assassination, that this percentage is going to climb.
This needs to stop. When a fatal security flaw is found in a product, the vendor needs to be notified so that the problem can be fixed. If we have the exploit, so does everyone else.
Worse, the latest wikileaks dump is shows the unprofessional-ism of the cyber unit. It looks like 15-year olds are running a spy agency. Lastly, the most unforgivable thing is not being able to hang on to your toys. It is bad enough all these security holes are being exploited, but to lose control of your tools is unforgivable.
I urge everyone to call their senators and leave a message or talk to a staffer. This sh*t needs to stop. The senators control the purse strings and they can stop it.
The civilized world has at least a base level of universal health care for everyone within their country. We find that gets in the way of profit so we won't allow it to happen. This isn't a partisan issue, either - the health insurance industry owns politicians of every flavor and invests heavily to ensure that this does not change.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
If the CIA can do this, then I guarantee that China, Russia, India, Israel, and many of the EU countries can as well. False flag tactics have been a thing for centuries, and IMHO is a key component in counter intelligence activities.
On a personal note, it's also why I have a very hard time integrating "definitive proof" that this group or that group were responsible for a hack, doc, swat, or DDOS attack. Even the ones where politicians claim they initiated the action...
Re "The young people know how to do this stuff."
The problem for the CIA is the "The young" are all over social media and any can buy all the years of social media data from the private sector.
A US person entering the State department might be on some type of social media. Its hard to hide their skill set and place CIA deep in an embassy if the other nation has counter surveillance.
So the CIA has to follow the NSA into nations digitally. When a computer collects data domestically it not illegal domestically as no human is listening in real time?
The post Church Committee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... color of law acts that still saw domestic spying do not work with young people.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The IT professionals that failed to secure their hardware and software when working for big US brands?
New brands with smarter staff will secure their new brands hardware and software and offer strong crypto.
The "average user" will then have options.
Buy into a few more decades of US brands that offered the CIA a way in? Or support a new brand thats more secure as the hired skilled IT professionals?
Stay with the brands that lost control of their hardware and software or try a brand that can secure their products?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Was that someone was able to get all the documentation and source codes out of the CIA's hands and them not knowing about it. There wasn't anything in there that we didn't already know or expect. Just the fact that supposedly 80,000 pages of documents (when its all said and done) got loose into the wild. For an Agency who's mission is secrecy and keeping information quiet, they sure messed that one up.
Not wanting people to find out it was CIA is not equal to framing another state. Most of it has to do with simple code reuse and developer efficiency by re-appropriating existing or stolen malware.
Confidence in who did what in terms of state-backed hacking is already bordering on impossible. Nobody really knows who did Stuxnet, for example, except for the fact that the US and Israel practically brag about it every chance they get and that its target was Iran.
If the leak had been about a Totally Illegal Private Email Server, then people would have chanted to "Lock Her Up"
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
...the risk that the CIA is presenting to the USA. By hoarding vulnerabilities in operating systems and software and then developing tools to exploit them, they're making the internet very insecure; as Bruce Schneier puts it, today's top secret government hacking tools are tomorrow's organised crime hacking tools. Which country has the greatest economic and national security dependency on the internet and is therefore the most vulnerable to hacking tools? The USA. The CIA are quickly becoming a bunch of useless idiots to the USA and useful idiots to anyone who wants to exploit the USA (and everyone else). Expect hacking-based disruption and extortion to take a serious toll on all internet dependent economies and especially the USA's.
Is it that we do not care or is it that we are not at all surprised?
More importantly, who feels empowered to make a difference?
Similar things were said about Snowden's revelations which continue to bear fruit for the world. Don't be fooled into believing the unexamined belief the /. headline wants you to believe—that "most people" don't care. The Democrats are sore that they lost the US presidential election, a majority of state governerships, and control over Congress. They're still pushing this undefended Russophobic idea that the Russians somehow "hacked" (to use their language) the US election. They even chummed up with the CIA to help curry favor for this notion. They're hardly interested in learning that, for instance, the CIA's "UMBRAGE" effort works to plant false evidence making it look like another party did something they actually did (one of the many interesting newsworthy items found in the WikiLeaks initial "Vault 7" leak) carries a vastly different story which challenges the Democrats' as-yet-unproven tale. Neoliberals really want to get their war with Russia on and anyone who doesn't join in that effort will find a chilly reception among the neoliberal elite right now.
Also, there's been considerable coverage of this from around the world, but if you're only paying attention to American corporate mainstream media you will not find dissenting views that challenge a corporate narrative which stood fully behind Mrs. Clinton's 2nd failed attempt at becoming US President. Americans don't make up most of the people in the world and American mainstream media is taken less seriously these days (for good reason).
Digital Citizen
What "most people care" about is not only not represented by mainstream corporate so-called journalists (stenographers to power, really) but that doesn't even jibe with telling people encryption works.
Digital Citizen
Sure, it was not really "new" news, yet it is, nonetheless, supremely alarming!
One major contributor to the public's lack of enthused reaction is the absolute lack of real responsibility on the part of the media - especially mainstream media.
Media has become a tool of those with the power. Electronic media, in particular, is a powerful tool that does brainwash and brow-beat the public into submission, while leaving a feeling that just hearing it is enough!
The other issue is that most people are truly idiots. Period. Thanks, in LARGE part to ever more powerful corporations!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.