No, but none of the wikileaks leakers were serious spies. It will stop your average to semi-above average joe.
True but laws of probability work against you here. If Wikileaks ethos catches on (as it seems to amongst a lot of people) there will be always a few who combine the will and the skill set. So the only long term defense will be removal of more and more features from these systems combined with restricting access to smaller and smaller subsection of data for each user - which will of course cripple the human resources more and more...
Hence my joking Fallout reference.
This in fact was always the cornerstone of Soviet intelligence apparatus. Unlike the US which focused on more and more sophisticated and convoluted technology, they focused on people as the inevitable weak link, with the assumption that technological measures are essentially useless in the face of questionable loyalties of people with clearance...
When I was working tight security conditions like this, such was the case. No wifi devices, no bluetooth devices, no cellphones. Anything that had to be plugged in (mice, keyboard, etc.) had to
be cleared and secured (glued shut) before it was plugged in and we didn't have access to the back of the computer as it was in a locked cabinet.
None of which would of course stop a serious spy. I can think of at least two ways to download large amounts of data form a PC with this setup, and I am sure others could do even better.
Except, of course, my USB stick is masquerading as a wireless USB mouse receiver, complete with a fully testable mouse functionality, but not by default. Only if I press some of the mouse keys in a right combo and then it sprouts a 16GB flash storage device. Another combo click and its back to mere mousing...
And so on, etc and the like.
Unless they ban all USB devices, all BlueTooth devices, all WiFi devices and pretty much go to Fallout-style green-screen VT100 revival terminals...
Everything you said is true...and I'm still opposed to more countries getting nuclear weapons. I really wish nobody had them.
That is a noble and quite logical notion. Unfortunately it does not match the insane nature of greed and lust for power and it is these two that rule the world, no matter what propaganda is being spewed to obscure this obvious fact. Mentally disturbed people run the show everywhere and they try to make their insanity the "norm". Just look at systems like Capitalism where whomever is the most insane with avarice is deemed most meritorious, examine lunacies such as Feudalism still present throughout much of the world, take a peek at the way greed and desire to dominate others perverted any attempts at creating some sort of sanity, as in the Soviet and Chinese "communisms" which resulted in a madness even worse than what they aimed to repair. Etc and so on.
I really don't like nuclear weapons. Plagues at least only decimate a few species.
Speaking of plagues, I really do not have high hopes for humanity. Nuclear weapons are a child's toy compared to what artificially engineered biological or other nanotech weapons can do. Nukes, even with their associated long term fallout have geographically restricted impact (unless there is so many of them used as to cover the whole planet). Self-propagating and self-replicating nanoscale agents have no such limitations, nor do they have a "half-life" (unless specifically engineered so).
So I am quite seriously expecting the shit to hit the fan in a few decades or so when these technologies become viable and inevitably spread. The investment of money and materiel required to make this stuff is a tiny fraction of that of nuclear weaponry - soon everyone will be able to get their hands on this tech. Then come mass-extinction-level nanotech events. Race-specific extermination viruses. And all kinds of similar fun. Trust me, there will be a time when whoever is left will be looking back at nukes in the same way we look at ballistas, with a word "quaint" coming to mind.
More of the "I am, just, like toooo smart for you! I do not, like, have to explain myself! Cause, you see, like, I am too smart for you! Did I mention, me smart, you stooopid? Yeah!" kindergarten stuff. Just keep on whining like that and it is bound to gain you oh-so-much credibility and to utterly destroy your opponents arguments! Oh and keep on wandering why your views are so "unpopular" outside of the ignorant-and-proud-of-it redneck crowd.
Here we go again. Moronic "justification" #1: "I don't need to explain why I am right, cause, like, I am right and good by definition! Mom told me so! And you are, like, wrong and evil, just because, like, you don't agree with me! So there!"
Its no wonder that all these veritable intellectual giants have to post as ACs.
... this is a bigger win for freedom and security in the free world and anything wikileaks or their supporters could dream of doing.
You know, as far as brainless and brainwashed idiots go, you are near the top. "Freedom"?! What fucking freedom is improved by this?! Whose?! Israeli supremacist thugs to dick around the region unopposed?! "Freedom" of US military cartels to send their mercenaries to run over Iran and murder millions?! What the fuck are you, delusional fool, blabbering about?!
And no, do not even attempt to bring "democracy" into this as a "democratic" Iran would just as proud to be able to defend itself as its despotic version.
"Security"?! You mean Iran is responsible for starting wars in the region, as opposed to a pair pooor, oppressed, blushing innocents like the Israel and USA. Eeeeveryone is picking on these dewy eyed, lips quivering defenseless darlings who never hurt a fly...
Or is it that you think that nukes from Iran are more likely to get into hands of Al Queda wackos than those from Pakistan?! That brain thing of yours, you do use as a door stop, right?
I commend these hackers for slowing down the evil Iranian government's nuclear ambitions.
And there you have it. The world according to an Israeli or US AC moron (there is no chance that imbecile lives anywhere else):
Killing and maiming hundreds of thousands in a war of aggression based on lies and fabrications = good because US/Israel always good! By definition! No matter what assholery they commit!
Financing a war of a lunatic dictator on Iran, complete with chemical weapons = good because US/Israel always good! Just because! No matter what atrocities they commit! It is all those who dare to not genuflect who are responsible!!
Propping up a corrupt, vicious dictator in Iran whose secret police murdered tens of thousands = good because US/Israel always good! By God's Orders! No matter what oppression they support!
Starting exactly ZERO wars abroad but trying to resist the thieving paws of the US and Israel = EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! (best screeched at the top the lungs, with veins popping out and spittle flying all over, while wrapped in an US flag).
And people mod up this stupidity so dense that it is a wonder that it does not have its own event horizon...
And's that's something I don't understand. Why should payments in Country X be subject both to X's laws and the US's laws?
Because the US is an Empire in all but name. It controls most of the financial transactions globally.
Why should Visa/MC have to have a cut of every single transaction on the Earth? Especially domestic?
See above. Visa/MC, with great assistance of the US government, destroyed any potential competitors in all Western countries (and many other countries around the globe). US opposed any laws that would protect the local operators from Visa/MC and thus ensured that none survive and that every country is dependent on the US-based financial networks. That is what Empires do.
There are also other reasons beyond mere ensuring of financial control and domination: most people do not realize that MC/Visa-branded debit bank cards issued by most banks in Europe are also handled by the same networks and the US government can access at will all transaction histories of all EU citizens that use them...
Denmark (and Russia, etc.) should simply pass a law mandating banks to hand out free debit cards working on an in-country basis outside of Visa/MC.
Why do you think the ruling elites of the US are so pissed off at Wikileaks for revealing that they force their foreign "partner" nations to use Visa/MC and to destroy their own national networks? Wikileaks proved what many already suspected, that the hypocrisy of the US upper classes knows no bounds and that their only interests are greed and power, at all costs, and that to that end they are willing to use the strength of their nation as leverage, sacrificing in the process all silly pretenses of "freedom" or "democracy", which many of the lowly US cannon fodder citizenry still believe their country is supposed to represent.
Wikileaks scares these kleptocrats and oligarchs immensely because if these stupefied US peons snap out of their delusional trance and realize what sort of crooked deal they live in that is so far removed from all the official state rhetoric and what they are being brainwashed into in their civic classes, the consequences might be severe and completely unpredictable.
Hell, for one they might finally discover the answer to the question that has the average doofus American baffled to no end: why oh why they are so hated everywhere when they are all just such pleasant, warm and fuzzy, eager helpers, busy like bees helping around the world...
Wait, are you saying if a Danish customer buys something from a Danish (non-exporting) firm, the money is first converted from Kroners to USD and then back?
No, the poster I replied to was insinuating (I assume since he was not entirely coherent) that US-based MC or Visa are not involved in transactions between various combinations of customers/vendors located within the same country or different countries outside of the US. I was pointing out that they still are in all of those cases and on top of that they are also doing other financial "services" like converting currencies at usury rates in case of some customer/vendor country combinations.
In the case of a Danish firm and a Danish customer, the whole transaction is in the customer's native currency, but MC or Visa (depending on a network) processes the transaction (in many cases via their US data-centers) and still gets its due. That is because they own most of the payment processing networks in the world, Denmark included. Local Danish banks pay MC or Visa for the privilege. And it is that very situation that MC and Visa (with a rather pushy help from Uncle Sam) tried to re-create in Russia.
So, MC/Visa already own nearly all of the CC processing facilities in the world and route many of the transactions via the US, even if they happen to be denominated in Krone. And those pesky Russians are so far refusing to roll over...
Actually, that's patently false. The only facts I was using in my argument are here for everyone to see: spazmonkey's argument and your response. Everything I said was supported completely by these facts.
Which are: Spazmonkey makes an analogy, I correct it to fit the facts as I see them, you object with weak and unlikely excuses, the actual facts come out from the horse's mouth, the facts confirm my correction and invalidate both Spazmonkey's version and your supposed special circumstances under which Spazmonkey's analogy could have possibly worked (if the facts were not what they were). Anyone can read this and verify. It is as straightforward as it can possibly get. And yet your ego refuses to let you admit it...
Hence the lovely detour into the wondrous exhibition of the grotesque, the weird, the unbelievable, the abominable and the titillating: The Improbable And Psychedelic World of TheVelvetFlamebait's Ego!*
*Not for people suffering from seizures, pregnant women, and individuals with weak bowels.
...
My argument is one of the most fundamental and important facts that needs to be considered before countering it. If you can't succeed at that, then there's really very little hope for you.
"We are now entering a new section of TheVelvetFlamebait's Ego. And on the left please note the well-developed Megalomania. Observe its gigantic size, marvel at the nauseatingly convoluted twists of illogic that support it! That smaller odious wart-like structure on its side is the Superiority Complex. Please do not look directly at it as it can cause adverse reaction... please use the bags in the pockets of the seat in front of you should you experience it!"
...
Everything that I assert is written for anyone to see, and anyone with intelligence to understand. Everything. I am extremely precise with my words, to protect against semantics, and to ensure that vast majority of people who contradict me either make the one-time mistake of misreading me, or are simply idiots who can't seem to comprehend the subtleties in what I've written.
"And this impossibly handsome person in a snappy military uniform with rows of shiny medals who is perfecting precise salutes to a mirror while mumbling plans to put down all those who "make the mistake" of insufficient respect for him, but who has the feet of a crow is TheVelvetFlamebait's self-image. Oooh! Look! Note how the feet are now a polished pair of knee-high boots but his nose is suddenly that of a pig? We are observing his attempts to maintain this improbable 'perfect' image of himself in the face of rather contradictory facts in the real world! Ah do you feel the cosmic struggle of will! Oh what determination! What desperation! Ouch! Look! Isn't that a donkey with a head of a vulture?! Something must have disturbed his concentration! Please refrain from screaming!"
...
I have been known many times in the past to defend arguments that I fundamentally disagree with. Not because I necessarily feel that they have some merit, but because no argument, no matter how bad, warrants the use of bad arguments to refute it. If it's going to be refuted, it needs to be done properly, preferably with an argument that is unassailable.
"This vast library-like construct is TheVelvetFlamebait's idea of his own fame amongst others. Each of these books is supposed to be filled with adulations, accolades, acclaims, dissertations on and poems to his glorious exploits. Yes nearly all of the pages of these millions of volumes are blank. But not all! Look here it says that he "has been known" to fight dragons! Oh it disappeared... Keep looking he will make something up again right away! Oh! That one over there exclaims that "he has been known" to defend blushing virgins of immaculate breeding from rampaging ho
We're still fighting a war here. Not the war on terrorism, not a war against corruption. A war to free the remaining peoples of the world who live under totalitarianism (real totalitarianism). On that front, the U.S., the EU, Wikileaks, and people like you and me are on the same side.
Right, Assange was the door gunner in that chopper in Nisour Square in Baghdad popping those corrupt runaway pedestrians and the rest of us were feeding him the ammo in that glorious "war against corruption".... err, hold on...
You know, as far as utter apologist bullshit goes, there's gotta be some prize for posts like yours. I mean you got everything: insinuations of phony camaraderie, attempts at false equivalence, appeals to ignore far larger, actually murderous crimes in the supposed effort to fight the inconvenient to your masters petty ones, pleas for "moderation" while you practice utter extremism in your own backyard, demands to maintain a veil of secrecy over crooked deals to protect them from the scrutiny of their supposed benefactors and so on. Also even my personal favourite: an attempt to hide behind obscure villains to hide your own, far greater, crimes - after all most of these "evil totalitarians" put together did not kill and maim as many people as the "oh not so bad at all" US had in the last decade alone in some, to put it mildly, rather dubious Imperial escapades. I wonder if all those corpses in graves around Falluja and all those kids somewhat prematurely introduced to anal intercourse in Abu Grahib share your opinion on that one...
My hat off to you Sir, and I sympathize with your loss of career options due to the fact that Dr. Goebbels is no longer hiring.
No, he is quite correct. Every government in the world is corrupt, not only that but every government that has ever existed was corrupt. The only difference between them is the degree of corruption. Anyone who believes otherwise is a naive dolt who has no business outside of a kindergarten.
Why is this so? It is very simple: governments are nothing but collections of people with power over others. In this analysis it is irrelevant what basis that power is derived from - be it hereditary despotism or democratic media circus or something else entirely - it matters not. That is because people are imperfect and corruptible to various degrees irrespective of their location in the world or a political scheme they were raised within. Laws of probability alone guarantee that a number of corrupt individuals is present, and was present, in every possible governmental scheme, with the absolute numbers present increasing with the size of a government. Even if others within the same government detect the corruption and work against it (which itself is based on chance) there will be only so many that get expelled and due to natural generational cycles they will be replaced with new crooks elsewhere.
Its basic, historically testable, undeniable logic. It is the way things are. Corruption-free government is a theoretical ideal that has never been (and will likely never be) achieved as long as the nature of the human race does not somehow change dramatically.
The USA has no such law and if you buy anything from a foreign company in their currency it will likely not be processed in the US.
Err, I know you are an AC, but maybe once, just once one of you turkeys could read about what you are braying about... the Russian law deals only with establishing a payment processing network for credit card transactions within Russian territory. Both MC and Visa were invited to participate. Both declined because they do not want mere participation, they want total control of all CC transactions within Russia, the kind of control they already exercise nearly everywhere else in the world. Yes, nearly all CC card transactions are processed by MC and Visa, no matter what country you buying from or what currency you are using (the bill appears in your local currency on your CC, converted at a thieving rate by MasterCard or Visa for you). That is unless you are dealing in cash at which point what you are doing in a discussion thread discussing CC payment processing?
In essence the Russians are trying merely to setup some local (and rather feeble) competition to the US-centered but pan-national cartel that MC and Visa had become. And the kleptocrats running the US want none of that.
Why would any company want to support an organization that purposefully breaks US law and jeopardizes our own nation's safety? Any corporation that helps to shut down wikileaks can have my
business.
And since you are not a hypocrite, you will also stand for any company that refuses to break Iranian, North Korean, Chinese, Cuban, Saudi Arabian etc laws! And they will have your business! You will steadfastly defend them when they help out in stoning women for adultery, finance Al Queda, deliver parts to make nukes and so on, no?
Or maybe, just maybe you are a typical "Rah Rah Rah USA #1" supremacist asshole who believes in God-appointed "manifest destiny" of the US of A, that US laws are "special" and worth unquestioning obedience - unlike all these inferior laws everywhere else - and who thinks that Pax Americana is a "good thing"...
If you read he cable, what it says is this: Russia wants to enact a law that would force all credit card transactions to be processed in Russia.
Which of course is not the case in "the land of the free, home of the brave", the Glorious USA, where in the spirit of freedom and competition all credit card transactions are welcomed to be processed by assorted small companies in Russia, Finland and Monaco and are not nearly exclusively dominated by a pair of nasty anti-competitive global US-based cartels like Mastercard or Visa who own all the processing facilities almost everywhere and enjoy protection of bought-and-paid-for politicians!
Private companies have no requirement to respect anyone's freedom of speech or press and have every right to refuse to do business with other individuals or entities.
That idea was valid only in the long-gone days when companies were relatively small as compared to countries and when meaningful competition existed.
The age of unchecked consolidation resulted in global mega-corps whose finances exceed that of most governments and total destruction of meaningful competition by global duopolies (Pepsi/Coke, Mastercard/Visa, etc).
Under those conditions, trying to pretend that things are still the same way as they were in 1700s is at best naive, or at worst an active attempt at bringing about some kind of corporate neo-feudalism where "freedom of speech" is an activity to which citizens have a supposed "right" (at which idea CEOs giggle during lavish parties) but which cannot be exercised in any practical, meaningful way. Just like any peasant had the theoretical right to petition the king, an event that never actually occurred in practice as peasants were property and could not travel.
No, you were defending his arguments. On Slashdot. Spazmonkey and I weren't on a street corner having it out with baseball bats. There was no opportunity for you to defend him.
I wasn't actually trying to comment on Wikileak's situation, merely saying that if spazmonkey's concerns were legitimate, then they couldn't be dismissed in the way that you dismissed them.
And if you had a pony...
As I already pointed out, the analogy was accurate and the entire discussion was about Wikileaks. Your arguments were not validated by facts, mine were. It is as simple as that. You are attempting to change the topic of the discussion, making your ego the center piece of it.
I should also say that you need to get a clue sometime soon, because every comment I read of yours is making me lose faith that you'll ever actually comprehend what's going on around you. I'm not here to babysit for you; at some point you're going to have to listen to the people talking to you.
Again, its not about your ego. Your "lack of faith" in your opponents, who it seems without exception fail sadly to live up to your rather rarefied standards of being 100% approved by you, leaves the Universe somewhat indifferent and unmoved - which is what I suspect leads you to these rather full of emotion and devoid of facts outbursts. Also your kinky fantasies about babysitting others are best left private, in my humble opinion.
And you then deliver me even more evidence.
All of which you cunningly failed to present. Repeatedly.
Ha! Like you even know what I'm asserting!
Ok. Now, there you got me. Since all one can see on a discussion board is what is written, I have rarely the unparalleled privilege of sparring on Slashdot with adversaries who insist on ensuring that no relationship whatsoever exists between what they write and what they assert! Whatever it says about you, this somewhat unorthodox strategy sure makes for a difficult task to address your assertions, I give you that!
Perhaps if you could, for a moment, suspend your policy of writing everything and anything that comes to your mind but what you assert, we could perhaps get closer to the gist of the matter.
Either that or you could just take your medication as prescribed.
In light of this momentous revelation of yours, I find that any further discussion with you might have all the enlightening properties of trying to get a duck to recite Macbeth and so I will refrain from it until you demonstrate a somewhat firmer grip on reality.
Assange isn't a hero and his actions are doing more harm than good.
Err no. This opinion varies wildly between classes in the various countries polled. Autocrats, ruling classes, mega-businesses and people financially profiting from war and despotism all seem to think as you do. Everyone else (particularly outside of USA) sees him as a hero.
In releasing the documents about the Afghan and Iraq wars, he can paint himself as some kind of noble crusader fighting against unjust wars, a David against the Goliath of American military imperialism. But in releasing the diplomatic cables, he's undermining attempts to avoid and settle conflicts through diplomacy. You can't claim you want a more peaceful world when you're sabotaging the mechanisms needed to achieve that.
Except, of course, you forgot to mention that diplomacy can also be used to foster conflict and war as easily as it can be used to suppress it. A point very, very carefully avoided by all of the defenders of the poor, maligned "diplomats" (who also are - according to their own dispatches - spies, saboteurs etc). May I remind you that it was the "diplomats" who were at the centre of the promulgation of the lies and fabrications about the WMDs and also at the forefront of organizing the "coalition of the willing" in the utterly illegal "pre-emptive" invasion of Iraq? Without their efforts the war would not have happened. But again I am sure that would have been a "bad thing" in your books, all those people not-killed who "needed killing" and all that money in the hands of the dumb taxpayers which really belonged to the "more deserving" people higher up the food chain...
And I think the New York Times article, showing him as a controlling narcissist, did a hell of a lot of damage to his cause. He's no longer seen as a pure and noble crusader, but as someone more akin to Bin Laden: he doesn't like the existing order, but rather than trying to change it, he wants to tear it apart. He wants to send a giant "F*** YOU" to America, he's just found out that he can do it with email instead of hijacked airliners.
I seem to recall something about many of the Founding Fathers being total jerks in person and all of them wanting not to merely to "change" the way the British Empire worked but actually to "tear it apart", by means violent. Fancy that!
Absolutely! Particularly and especially if she remembers to say "stop" 3 days after the fact...
And yes, the man will lose in court and go to jail for that, unless he taped the whole thing, in which case he will go to jail for "non-consensual taping".
And so we have the classic "he said - she said" scenario in which it is completely impossible to establish the truth. That is why Assange is toast, in Sweden (and most Western countries these days) the current state of affairs, arrived upon after decades of relentless assault of screeching Feminazis, is that what the woman says about sex is always assumed to be 100% true, no proof required (as it is not even possible to begin with outside of a very small number of cases).
Subsequently I think that any man who has sex in these jurisdictions and whose identity is known to the woman in question is taking wild and completely unreasonable chances with his freedom, finances and quite possibly life. Any sane man with an itch either pays a local hooker or flies to Thailand for an additional level of separation from the western female psychos.
And then they wonder why the birth rates in the west are declining. Maybe the Feminazis will finally start what they always wanted: mass artificial fertilization centers where, of course, they will carefuly select for the embryos to be female only... its just a matter of time really.
Right. I couldn't help but notice that you failed to address the point of this entire pleasant discussion, i.e. that Wikileaks did not hide the older files because of some "anti American" biases - as the post you defended insinuated - but simply because they could not maintain the site in the face of attacks.
Your inability to process the factual information available around you has me laughing at your attempts to preach to me.
Let me see: I said that Wikileaks removed the information because of technical problems, the post you defended claimed it was because of "anti American bias". I made an analogy, you claimed it was inaccurate. Then Assange's interview was published. End result: Assange validated both my assertion and the analogy. The original poster and your "objections" were proven to be factually incorrect. Beyond any doubt - Assange was backed up by other Wikileaks people.
And then you accuse me of an "inability to process factual information", which "has you laughing". I assume it must be a hysterical kind of laughter just prior to a nervous breakdown.
Have a nice life, idiot. Remember, you can't learn anything in life by assuming implicitly that you're right all the time.
If I am right or wrong is decided by the facts, like in this case, in which they validated my assertion completely. And in which case you assumed implicitly that you were right all the time...
But then again, it is one of defining characteristic of idiots to see their own major flaws in everyone else. There is even a term for it: "Psychological projection" of which the "straw man argument" is but a sub-species.
Part of the problem is we need storage. Another part is that we need uptime. Neither is really compatible with booting even from a USB stick - and really, that's out of scope anyway, that's
something somebody should write who knows more about building operating systems than we do.
Unfortunately it is quite in the scope of the problem of dissidence. You are confusing technical/developer issues with real-life ones, which unfortunately trump any cop-outs of that sort. A bunch of government thugs is unlikely to take a pity on you because the developers of your "secure" communication system you used had difficulties making it secure beyond a small fraction of what was required to make a difference between you being roughed up but crawling out of jail or you finding your way onto the execution grounds. It will be a small comfort while you stand there to realize that it was not in their "scope"...
Also I mentioned the USB stick / bootable CD scenario only as the "OS" part of the deal - the local, encrypted, plausible-deniability storage would of course have to be on a separate hard disk (formatted by a system like Freenet to achieve the steganographic/multi-layer effect).
However, we do take some precautions with regards to local security, and plan to take more in the near future. For instance, we tell the browser not to cache anything, we encrypt (optionally with a password but in any case easily got rid of) potentially incriminating data on disk, and we strongly recommend users install Truecrypt (since unfortunately we can't turn on swap crypto or lock pages in memory).
All of these are woefully inadequate in places where Freenet is actually needed. To begin with, anything more complex than a simple HTML page data on Freenet, such as manifestos, documents, images, videos etc must be downloaded and viewed outside of its protection, thus making Freenet's encrypted cache a moot point.
As to TrueCrypt, their protection is seriously flawed because it is incapable of hiding the activities (and thus extensive traces) created by the OS itself. One can for example easily find what one watched from Windows registry entries that Media Player creates, temporary files etc.
So it all comes back again to containment. Until Freenet (or a system like it) offers full containment, the dissidents are much better off staying far away from it.
A significant proportion of the community think taking any local precautions is a bad thing, since it violates the unix philosophy...
Right. Just shout "Unix philosophy forever!" instead of "Down with the Dictator!" at that execution...
Anyone who prefers "Unix philosophy" or some other ideology over real-life protections during development of a supposed dissident tool is essentially arguing for people to be jailed and killed to feed his/her ego...
Again, this total lack of perspective is what leads to Freenet's unpopularity. Unfortunately dissidence is an all or nothing proposition. There is no "cool" or "neat", modular, "small tools each doing their job well" way to do it. You either get the whole fool-proof, plausible-deniability enchilada or you go down in flames. And even when you do have totality of untraceability and encryption, you can still go down from your unfriendly regime's random thuggery. That is why you are a dissident to begin with. Having half-assed tools increases your chances of being a martyr exponentially. The problem is even more severe due to the fact that most dissidents are not computer experts and thus they misunderstand the weak nature of protections offered by Freenet and things like TrueCrypt and thus end up with a false sense of security, which is very likely to put very wide smiles on the Secret Police interrogator's faces.
As regards darknet, it is simply the only possible option in any even vaguely hostile regime. For instance, Ch
Slashdot Mirror
True but laws of probability work against you here. If Wikileaks ethos catches on (as it seems to amongst a lot of people) there will be always a few who combine the will and the skill set. So the only long term defense will be removal of more and more features from these systems combined with restricting access to smaller and smaller subsection of data for each user - which will of course cripple the human resources more and more ...
Hence my joking Fallout reference.
This in fact was always the cornerstone of Soviet intelligence apparatus. Unlike the US which focused on more and more sophisticated and convoluted technology, they focused on people as the inevitable weak link, with the assumption that technological measures are essentially useless in the face of questionable loyalties of people with clearance ...
None of which would of course stop a serious spy. I can think of at least two ways to download large amounts of data form a PC with this setup, and I am sure others could do even better.
See my reply to the dude above. There are so many other ways that it boggles the mind.
And so we will move onto one of these, a camera in my watch or Van Eck phreaking gizmo in my shoe (with all due respect to Mr. Smart) and so on ....
I assume they did not strip everyone naked and checked their cavities and recent surgery marks...
Except, of course, my USB stick is masquerading as a wireless USB mouse receiver, complete with a fully testable mouse functionality, but not by default. Only if I press some of the mouse keys in a right combo and then it sprouts a 16GB flash storage device. Another combo click and its back to mere mousing...
And so on, etc and the like.
Unless they ban all USB devices, all BlueTooth devices, all WiFi devices and pretty much go to Fallout-style green-screen VT100 revival terminals...
That is a noble and quite logical notion. Unfortunately it does not match the insane nature of greed and lust for power and it is these two that rule the world, no matter what propaganda is being spewed to obscure this obvious fact. Mentally disturbed people run the show everywhere and they try to make their insanity the "norm". Just look at systems like Capitalism where whomever is the most insane with avarice is deemed most meritorious, examine lunacies such as Feudalism still present throughout much of the world, take a peek at the way greed and desire to dominate others perverted any attempts at creating some sort of sanity, as in the Soviet and Chinese "communisms" which resulted in a madness even worse than what they aimed to repair. Etc and so on.
Speaking of plagues, I really do not have high hopes for humanity. Nuclear weapons are a child's toy compared to what artificially engineered biological or other nanotech weapons can do. Nukes, even with their associated long term fallout have geographically restricted impact (unless there is so many of them used as to cover the whole planet). Self-propagating and self-replicating nanoscale agents have no such limitations, nor do they have a "half-life" (unless specifically engineered so).
So I am quite seriously expecting the shit to hit the fan in a few decades or so when these technologies become viable and inevitably spread. The investment of money and materiel required to make this stuff is a tiny fraction of that of nuclear weaponry - soon everyone will be able to get their hands on this tech. Then come mass-extinction-level nanotech events. Race-specific extermination viruses. And all kinds of similar fun. Trust me, there will be a time when whoever is left will be looking back at nukes in the same way we look at ballistas, with a word "quaint" coming to mind.
More of the "I am, just, like toooo smart for you! I do not, like, have to explain myself! Cause, you see, like, I am too smart for you! Did I mention, me smart, you stooopid? Yeah!" kindergarten stuff. Just keep on whining like that and it is bound to gain you oh-so-much credibility and to utterly destroy your opponents arguments! Oh and keep on wandering why your views are so "unpopular" outside of the ignorant-and-proud-of-it redneck crowd.
Here we go again. Moronic "justification" #1: "I don't need to explain why I am right, cause, like, I am right and good by definition! Mom told me so! And you are, like, wrong and evil, just because, like, you don't agree with me! So there!"
Its no wonder that all these veritable intellectual giants have to post as ACs.
You know, as far as brainless and brainwashed idiots go, you are near the top. "Freedom"?! What fucking freedom is improved by this?! Whose?! Israeli supremacist thugs to dick around the region unopposed?! "Freedom" of US military cartels to send their mercenaries to run over Iran and murder millions?! What the fuck are you, delusional fool, blabbering about?!
And no, do not even attempt to bring "democracy" into this as a "democratic" Iran would just as proud to be able to defend itself as its despotic version.
"Security"?! You mean Iran is responsible for starting wars in the region, as opposed to a pair pooor, oppressed, blushing innocents like the Israel and USA. Eeeeveryone is picking on these dewy eyed, lips quivering defenseless darlings who never hurt a fly ...
Or is it that you think that nukes from Iran are more likely to get into hands of Al Queda wackos than those from Pakistan?! That brain thing of yours, you do use as a door stop, right?
And there you have it. The world according to an Israeli or US AC moron (there is no chance that imbecile lives anywhere else):
Killing and maiming hundreds of thousands in a war of aggression based on lies and fabrications = good because US/Israel always good! By definition! No matter what assholery they commit!
Financing a war of a lunatic dictator on Iran, complete with chemical weapons = good because US/Israel always good! Just because! No matter what atrocities they commit! It is all those who dare to not genuflect who are responsible!!
Propping up a corrupt, vicious dictator in Iran whose secret police murdered tens of thousands = good because US/Israel always good! By God's Orders! No matter what oppression they support!
Starting exactly ZERO wars abroad but trying to resist the thieving paws of the US and Israel = EVIL! EVIL! EVIL! (best screeched at the top the lungs, with veins popping out and spittle flying all over, while wrapped in an US flag).
And people mod up this stupidity so dense that it is a wonder that it does not have its own event horizon ...
Because the US is an Empire in all but name. It controls most of the financial transactions globally.
See above. Visa/MC, with great assistance of the US government, destroyed any potential competitors in all Western countries (and many other countries around the globe). US opposed any laws that would protect the local operators from Visa/MC and thus ensured that none survive and that every country is dependent on the US-based financial networks. That is what Empires do.
There are also other reasons beyond mere ensuring of financial control and domination: most people do not realize that MC/Visa-branded debit bank cards issued by most banks in Europe are also handled by the same networks and the US government can access at will all transaction histories of all EU citizens that use them...
Why do you think the ruling elites of the US are so pissed off at Wikileaks for revealing that they force their foreign "partner" nations to use Visa/MC and to destroy their own national networks? Wikileaks proved what many already suspected, that the hypocrisy of the US upper classes knows no bounds and that their only interests are greed and power, at all costs, and that to that end they are willing to use the strength of their nation as leverage, sacrificing in the process all silly pretenses of "freedom" or "democracy", which many of the lowly US cannon fodder citizenry still believe their country is supposed to represent.
Wikileaks scares these kleptocrats and oligarchs immensely because if these stupefied US peons snap out of their delusional trance and realize what sort of crooked deal they live in that is so far removed from all the official state rhetoric and what they are being brainwashed into in their civic classes, the consequences might be severe and completely unpredictable.
Hell, for one they might finally discover the answer to the question that has the average doofus American baffled to no end: why oh why they are so hated everywhere when they are all just such pleasant, warm and fuzzy, eager helpers, busy like bees helping around the world ...
No, the poster I replied to was insinuating (I assume since he was not entirely coherent) that US-based MC or Visa are not involved in transactions between various combinations of customers/vendors located within the same country or different countries outside of the US. I was pointing out that they still are in all of those cases and on top of that they are also doing other financial "services" like converting currencies at usury rates in case of some customer/vendor country combinations.
In the case of a Danish firm and a Danish customer, the whole transaction is in the customer's native currency, but MC or Visa (depending on a network) processes the transaction (in many cases via their US data-centers) and still gets its due. That is because they own most of the payment processing networks in the world, Denmark included. Local Danish banks pay MC or Visa for the privilege. And it is that very situation that MC and Visa (with a rather pushy help from Uncle Sam) tried to re-create in Russia.
So, MC/Visa already own nearly all of the CC processing facilities in the world and route many of the transactions via the US, even if they happen to be denominated in Krone. And those pesky Russians are so far refusing to roll over ...
Which are: Spazmonkey makes an analogy, I correct it to fit the facts as I see them, you object with weak and unlikely excuses, the actual facts come out from the horse's mouth, the facts confirm my correction and invalidate both Spazmonkey's version and your supposed special circumstances under which Spazmonkey's analogy could have possibly worked (if the facts were not what they were). Anyone can read this and verify. It is as straightforward as it can possibly get. And yet your ego refuses to let you admit it...
Hence the lovely detour into the wondrous exhibition of the grotesque, the weird, the unbelievable, the abominable and the titillating: The Improbable And Psychedelic World of TheVelvetFlamebait's Ego!*
*Not for people suffering from seizures, pregnant women, and individuals with weak bowels.
...
"We are now entering a new section of TheVelvetFlamebait's Ego. And on the left please note the well-developed Megalomania. Observe its gigantic size, marvel at the nauseatingly convoluted twists of illogic that support it! That smaller odious wart-like structure on its side is the Superiority Complex. Please do not look directly at it as it can cause adverse reaction ... please use the bags in the pockets of the seat in front of you should you experience it!"
...
"And this impossibly handsome person in a snappy military uniform with rows of shiny medals who is perfecting precise salutes to a mirror while mumbling plans to put down all those who "make the mistake" of insufficient respect for him, but who has the feet of a crow is TheVelvetFlamebait's self-image. Oooh! Look! Note how the feet are now a polished pair of knee-high boots but his nose is suddenly that of a pig? We are observing his attempts to maintain this improbable 'perfect' image of himself in the face of rather contradictory facts in the real world! Ah do you feel the cosmic struggle of will! Oh what determination! What desperation! Ouch! Look! Isn't that a donkey with a head of a vulture?! Something must have disturbed his concentration! Please refrain from screaming!"
...
"This vast library-like construct is TheVelvetFlamebait's idea of his own fame amongst others. Each of these books is supposed to be filled with adulations, accolades, acclaims, dissertations on and poems to his glorious exploits. Yes nearly all of the pages of these millions of volumes are blank. But not all! Look here it says that he "has been known" to fight dragons! Oh it disappeared ... Keep looking he will make something up again right away! Oh! That one over there exclaims that "he has been known" to defend blushing virgins of immaculate breeding from rampaging ho
Right, Assange was the door gunner in that chopper in Nisour Square in Baghdad popping those corrupt runaway pedestrians and the rest of us were feeding him the ammo in that glorious "war against corruption" .... err, hold on ...
You know, as far as utter apologist bullshit goes, there's gotta be some prize for posts like yours. I mean you got everything: insinuations of phony camaraderie, attempts at false equivalence, appeals to ignore far larger, actually murderous crimes in the supposed effort to fight the inconvenient to your masters petty ones, pleas for "moderation" while you practice utter extremism in your own backyard, demands to maintain a veil of secrecy over crooked deals to protect them from the scrutiny of their supposed benefactors and so on. Also even my personal favourite: an attempt to hide behind obscure villains to hide your own, far greater, crimes - after all most of these "evil totalitarians" put together did not kill and maim as many people as the "oh not so bad at all" US had in the last decade alone in some, to put it mildly, rather dubious Imperial escapades. I wonder if all those corpses in graves around Falluja and all those kids somewhat prematurely introduced to anal intercourse in Abu Grahib share your opinion on that one...
My hat off to you Sir, and I sympathize with your loss of career options due to the fact that Dr. Goebbels is no longer hiring.
No, he is quite correct. Every government in the world is corrupt, not only that but every government that has ever existed was corrupt. The only difference between them is the degree of corruption. Anyone who believes otherwise is a naive dolt who has no business outside of a kindergarten.
Why is this so? It is very simple: governments are nothing but collections of people with power over others. In this analysis it is irrelevant what basis that power is derived from - be it hereditary despotism or democratic media circus or something else entirely - it matters not. That is because people are imperfect and corruptible to various degrees irrespective of their location in the world or a political scheme they were raised within. Laws of probability alone guarantee that a number of corrupt individuals is present, and was present, in every possible governmental scheme, with the absolute numbers present increasing with the size of a government. Even if others within the same government detect the corruption and work against it (which itself is based on chance) there will be only so many that get expelled and due to natural generational cycles they will be replaced with new crooks elsewhere.
Its basic, historically testable, undeniable logic. It is the way things are. Corruption-free government is a theoretical ideal that has never been (and will likely never be) achieved as long as the nature of the human race does not somehow change dramatically.
Err, I know you are an AC, but maybe once, just once one of you turkeys could read about what you are braying about ... the Russian law deals only with establishing a payment processing network for credit card transactions within Russian territory. Both MC and Visa were invited to participate. Both declined because they do not want mere participation, they want total control of all CC transactions within Russia, the kind of control they already exercise nearly everywhere else in the world. Yes, nearly all CC card transactions are processed by MC and Visa, no matter what country you buying from or what currency you are using (the bill appears in your local currency on your CC, converted at a thieving rate by MasterCard or Visa for you). That is unless you are dealing in cash at which point what you are doing in a discussion thread discussing CC payment processing?
In essence the Russians are trying merely to setup some local (and rather feeble) competition to the US-centered but pan-national cartel that MC and Visa had become. And the kleptocrats running the US want none of that.
And since you are not a hypocrite, you will also stand for any company that refuses to break Iranian, North Korean, Chinese, Cuban, Saudi Arabian etc laws! And they will have your business! You will steadfastly defend them when they help out in stoning women for adultery, finance Al Queda, deliver parts to make nukes and so on, no?
Or maybe, just maybe you are a typical "Rah Rah Rah USA #1" supremacist asshole who believes in God-appointed "manifest destiny" of the US of A, that US laws are "special" and worth unquestioning obedience - unlike all these inferior laws everywhere else - and who thinks that Pax Americana is a "good thing"...
Which of course is not the case in "the land of the free, home of the brave", the Glorious USA, where in the spirit of freedom and competition all credit card transactions are welcomed to be processed by assorted small companies in Russia, Finland and Monaco and are not nearly exclusively dominated by a pair of nasty anti-competitive global US-based cartels like Mastercard or Visa who own all the processing facilities almost everywhere and enjoy protection of bought-and-paid-for politicians!
Oh, wait...
That idea was valid only in the long-gone days when companies were relatively small as compared to countries and when meaningful competition existed.
The age of unchecked consolidation resulted in global mega-corps whose finances exceed that of most governments and total destruction of meaningful competition by global duopolies (Pepsi/Coke, Mastercard/Visa, etc).
Under those conditions, trying to pretend that things are still the same way as they were in 1700s is at best naive, or at worst an active attempt at bringing about some kind of corporate neo-feudalism where "freedom of speech" is an activity to which citizens have a supposed "right" (at which idea CEOs giggle during lavish parties) but which cannot be exercised in any practical, meaningful way. Just like any peasant had the theoretical right to petition the king, an event that never actually occurred in practice as peasants were property and could not travel.
No, you were defending his arguments. On Slashdot. Spazmonkey and I weren't on a street corner having it out with baseball bats. There was no opportunity for you to defend him.
And if you had a pony ...
As I already pointed out, the analogy was accurate and the entire discussion was about Wikileaks. Your arguments were not validated by facts, mine were. It is as simple as that. You are attempting to change the topic of the discussion, making your ego the center piece of it.
Again, its not about your ego. Your "lack of faith" in your opponents, who it seems without exception fail sadly to live up to your rather rarefied standards of being 100% approved by you, leaves the Universe somewhat indifferent and unmoved - which is what I suspect leads you to these rather full of emotion and devoid of facts outbursts. Also your kinky fantasies about babysitting others are best left private, in my humble opinion.
All of which you cunningly failed to present. Repeatedly.
Ok. Now, there you got me. Since all one can see on a discussion board is what is written, I have rarely the unparalleled privilege of sparring on Slashdot with adversaries who insist on ensuring that no relationship whatsoever exists between what they write and what they assert! Whatever it says about you, this somewhat unorthodox strategy sure makes for a difficult task to address your assertions, I give you that!
Perhaps if you could, for a moment, suspend your policy of writing everything and anything that comes to your mind but what you assert, we could perhaps get closer to the gist of the matter.
Either that or you could just take your medication as prescribed.
In light of this momentous revelation of yours, I find that any further discussion with you might have all the enlightening properties of trying to get a duck to recite Macbeth and so I will refrain from it until you demonstrate a somewhat firmer grip on reality.
Err no. This opinion varies wildly between classes in the various countries polled. Autocrats, ruling classes, mega-businesses and people financially profiting from war and despotism all seem to think as you do. Everyone else (particularly outside of USA) sees him as a hero.
Except, of course, you forgot to mention that diplomacy can also be used to foster conflict and war as easily as it can be used to suppress it. A point very, very carefully avoided by all of the defenders of the poor, maligned "diplomats" (who also are - according to their own dispatches - spies, saboteurs etc). May I remind you that it was the "diplomats" who were at the centre of the promulgation of the lies and fabrications about the WMDs and also at the forefront of organizing the "coalition of the willing" in the utterly illegal "pre-emptive" invasion of Iraq? Without their efforts the war would not have happened. But again I am sure that would have been a "bad thing" in your books, all those people not-killed who "needed killing" and all that money in the hands of the dumb taxpayers which really belonged to the "more deserving" people higher up the food chain...
I seem to recall something about many of the Founding Fathers being total jerks in person and all of them wanting not to merely to "change" the way the British Empire worked but actually to "tear it apart", by means violent. Fancy that!
Absolutely! Particularly and especially if she remembers to say "stop" 3 days after the fact...
And yes, the man will lose in court and go to jail for that, unless he taped the whole thing, in which case he will go to jail for "non-consensual taping".
And so we have the classic "he said - she said" scenario in which it is completely impossible to establish the truth. That is why Assange is toast, in Sweden (and most Western countries these days) the current state of affairs, arrived upon after decades of relentless assault of screeching Feminazis, is that what the woman says about sex is always assumed to be 100% true, no proof required (as it is not even possible to begin with outside of a very small number of cases).
Subsequently I think that any man who has sex in these jurisdictions and whose identity is known to the woman in question is taking wild and completely unreasonable chances with his freedom, finances and quite possibly life. Any sane man with an itch either pays a local hooker or flies to Thailand for an additional level of separation from the western female psychos.
And then they wonder why the birth rates in the west are declining. Maybe the Feminazis will finally start what they always wanted: mass artificial fertilization centers where, of course, they will carefuly select for the embryos to be female only... its just a matter of time really.
Right. I couldn't help but notice that you failed to address the point of this entire pleasant discussion, i.e. that Wikileaks did not hide the older files because of some "anti American" biases - as the post you defended insinuated - but simply because they could not maintain the site in the face of attacks.
Let me see: I said that Wikileaks removed the information because of technical problems, the post you defended claimed it was because of "anti American bias". I made an analogy, you claimed it was inaccurate. Then Assange's interview was published. End result: Assange validated both my assertion and the analogy. The original poster and your "objections" were proven to be factually incorrect. Beyond any doubt - Assange was backed up by other Wikileaks people.
And then you accuse me of an "inability to process factual information", which "has you laughing". I assume it must be a hysterical kind of laughter just prior to a nervous breakdown.
If I am right or wrong is decided by the facts, like in this case, in which they validated my assertion completely. And in which case you assumed implicitly that you were right all the time...
But then again, it is one of defining characteristic of idiots to see their own major flaws in everyone else. There is even a term for it: "Psychological projection" of which the "straw man argument" is but a sub-species.
Unfortunately it is quite in the scope of the problem of dissidence. You are confusing technical/developer issues with real-life ones, which unfortunately trump any cop-outs of that sort. A bunch of government thugs is unlikely to take a pity on you because the developers of your "secure" communication system you used had difficulties making it secure beyond a small fraction of what was required to make a difference between you being roughed up but crawling out of jail or you finding your way onto the execution grounds. It will be a small comfort while you stand there to realize that it was not in their "scope"...
Also I mentioned the USB stick / bootable CD scenario only as the "OS" part of the deal - the local, encrypted, plausible-deniability storage would of course have to be on a separate hard disk (formatted by a system like Freenet to achieve the steganographic/multi-layer effect).
All of these are woefully inadequate in places where Freenet is actually needed. To begin with, anything more complex than a simple HTML page data on Freenet, such as manifestos, documents, images, videos etc must be downloaded and viewed outside of its protection, thus making Freenet's encrypted cache a moot point.
As to TrueCrypt, their protection is seriously flawed because it is incapable of hiding the activities (and thus extensive traces) created by the OS itself. One can for example easily find what one watched from Windows registry entries that Media Player creates, temporary files etc.
So it all comes back again to containment. Until Freenet (or a system like it) offers full containment, the dissidents are much better off staying far away from it.
Right. Just shout "Unix philosophy forever!" instead of "Down with the Dictator!" at that execution...
Anyone who prefers "Unix philosophy" or some other ideology over real-life protections during development of a supposed dissident tool is essentially arguing for people to be jailed and killed to feed his/her ego ...
Again, this total lack of perspective is what leads to Freenet's unpopularity. Unfortunately dissidence is an all or nothing proposition. There is no "cool" or "neat", modular, "small tools each doing their job well" way to do it. You either get the whole fool-proof, plausible-deniability enchilada or you go down in flames. And even when you do have totality of untraceability and encryption, you can still go down from your unfriendly regime's random thuggery. That is why you are a dissident to begin with. Having half-assed tools increases your chances of being a martyr exponentially. The problem is even more severe due to the fact that most dissidents are not computer experts and thus they misunderstand the weak nature of protections offered by Freenet and things like TrueCrypt and thus end up with a false sense of security, which is very likely to put very wide smiles on the Secret Police interrogator's faces.
2010 "The Honest Man" (represented by Bernie Madoff and your average politician) ...