humanji wrote: » And they don't care! These are people who will kill their own citizens if they feel it's for the "greater good". They don't care what the people think, or what they know. As I said, they're competing with other nations intelligence agencies. That people now know what they assumed for the last couple of decades, is irrelevant to them. There's a bigger picture they concentrate on.
Riddle101 wrote: » This reminds me of that scene in The Simpsons Movie when Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie are heading back to Springfield and the NSA are listening into their conversation. Only in this scenario it's the CIA. But yeah they don't call the CIA spooks for nothing.
Irish Praetorian wrote: » I can't really knock a hacktivist organisation releasing what it believes to be files in the public interest, but it would nice if every so often the target wasn't a Western democracy.
MightyMandarin wrote: » That's why wikileaks is a biased source of information. We already know a lot of the stuff the Kremlin and Putin do, yet wikileaks have yet to release damning information, and considering they seem to pretty good at what they do, I just find it very convenient that all of their leaks seem to be about western Governments.
MightyMandarin wrote: » That's why wikileaks is a biased source of information.
Irish Praetorian wrote: » I can't really knock a hacktivist organisation releasing what it believes to be files in the public interest, but it would nice if every so often the target wasn't a Western democracy. I mean the laser focus on Hillary Clinton during the election didn't exactly work out so well.
Autonomous Cowherd wrote: » I don't understand how people cannot get that revealing that the good guys aka our guys are just as dirty-handed as the bad guys (aka the Russians) is useful. Our western governments have been very good for a very long time pretending to be the upstanding moral order.
Hank Scorpio wrote: » Of course they care what people and companies know, by releasing details and the code on how they're exploiting iphones for example, apple, as they've come out and said, are patching the holes thus rendering their current hacking techniques useless. Foreign adversities can see which programs are vulnerable and stop using them. Samsung have said they're working on a fix to stop their TV's being vulnerable. Besides all that, it makes people trust the Government less, an example is that the case of the Russia hacking is less credible because the CIA was shown to have a wing that works on faking foreign signatures left behind in hacks. Your argument, at best, is daft.
osarusan wrote: » They have been pretending that, but I don't think that many people have believed them for a long time.
Autonomous Cowherd wrote: » I don't understand how people cannot get that revealing that the good guys aka our guys are just as dirty-handed as the bad guys (aka the Russians) is useful. Our western governments have been very good for a very long time pretending to be the upstanding moral order. Remember when we all used to be fed western movies when we were kids about the awesome cowboys and the degenerate savage Indians, a whole narrative arena built on white-washing genocide. It's been kind of the same re geopolitics.
humanji wrote: » It's a little hard to take Wikileaks seriously as an unbiased organisation when it's owner had a tv show on Russian tv. That alone should be enough for people to question them. And as I said above, all intel agencies use these exploits. But Wikileaks are going out of their way to sell it as a failing of western democracy, something that Russia is selling to it's people.
Hank Scorpio wrote: » Wikileaks hasn't done anything to promote it as a failing of Western Democracy besides tweet, which is what they always do, media pick it up and report on it. Again saying that the CIA don't care about the information being released is just complete nonsense for the reasons I stated above.
Autonomous Cowherd wrote: » Yes, but if that's the case, why are we all so compliant? Why do hundreds of thousands of women pull on vulval hats when they are told to object to Trump and yet protest not one jot at the MILLIONS killed by imperial oil-grabbing wars for the past 25 years? If people really KNOW what is going on, why do we do absolutely feck all about it? We are like idiots. I just don't get the ''We all know how it is'' thing anymore....if we really did, if people really ''knew'', the whole deviant cruel inequitable world system aught to implode.
humanji wrote: » And I showed that it isn't nonsense in the reasons above. Also, Wikileaks releasing specific information from one side should cause people to be suspicious. They are targeting the US democratic system. It's foolish to pretend they're not.
Autonomous Cowherd wrote: » Memes are very powerful symbols. Instant psychic triggers that affect millions of people with short attention spans who think they are casually buying into ''knowingness'', humour and irony. It's no wonder that they are studied for propaganda purposes.
humanji wrote: » No, I addressed them. Intelligence agencies play the long game. Current exploits may or may not be fixed, and when ones are fixed, new ones will be found. They have more important things to do than worry what the people they're spying on think of them.
Autonomous Cowherd wrote: » To be honest I don't give a hoot about Wikileaks or Assange, I'm not into fawning over any of the new ''radicals'' - it does n't really matter how proof emerges. It could be hacked by Guccifers or left carelessly on someones car-seat, or whatever. It also does not strike me as important which ''side'' is being revealed to be the bad guys...they are all cut from the same cloth. What matters to me is that somehow, in whatever manner, the ruling system - wherever it rules, east, west, north, south, US, Russia, EU, Africa, whatever! - is being revealed absolutely as incontrovertibly corrupt (in every possible way )...and we, the people, the plebs, the serfs, the ''ruled'', respond with our usual indifference and apathy. As if it has nothing at all to do with us that we are forced to be active knowing accomplices with the greater forces who make policy for the devastation and impoverishment and enslavement of our planet. It's a bit of a mind fcuk to watch it all helplessly, to be honest.
humanji wrote: » The thing is, nothing really new has been revealed. We all knew governments spy on their own people. We've simply been given the proof. Nothing is going to change. Wikileaks aren't doing us a service by revealing the info. They did it for a very specific reason. And this reason is more important, as it can be used to sculpt our own society. For example, Russia doesn't want democracy. So by undermining Western democracy, it gets to show it's people that democracy doesn't work and that they should trust him. Putin's reign continues unchallenged. And the West does the exact same thing against Russia to show that democracy is best. And both sides (and everyone in between) will continue playing that game. We're not completely helpless, but as you say, we're mostly apathetic. We argue amongst ourselves rather than making the change. We can do something about it, we just mostly won't bother, sadly.
osarusan wrote: » What is it that we really 'don't know' though? I mean, you just mentioned the millions killed by imperial oil-grabbing wars for the last 25 years...but you still get fuel for your car, right? I still do anyway. And when you buy a cheap tshirt in Penneys, can you really say that you don't know about the conditions in which it was made? Even though I'm sure you've seen news footage of those factories after they've collapsed? There's a scene in the film Blood Diamond where the journalist wants to get the truth out about these diamonds and how they're mined, and she says something like 'people wouldn't buy a diamond like this if they knew that it had cost a miner their hands'...but in reality, people buy them anyway. We don't really want to examine too openly the mechanisms which allow us a high and happy standard of life...but I don't think we can claim that, in general terms at least, we don't really know about them.
Autonomous Cowherd wrote: » Thats what i meant by us being forced to be complicit. After all it would be possible to have oil without wars and murder if an imperial power did not wish to control the prices and sources of it, but would purchase it and everything else in a fair market economy. Africa would be the richest place on earth if that was so. I also do not shop at Penneys or anywhere really, beyond necessities...I don't know what the whole endless drive for endless clothes is all about. I buy fair trade and try to make hard decisions on everything I purchase. It is not possible always unfortunately, and I feel crap about that, I mean about using or enjoying stuff that is wrought from the slave labour of other human beings. It's horrible.
gerrybbadd wrote: » It's going to be interesting to see what comes next. Wikileaks said that this release was less than 1% of what they have. This file was 500mb in size, so they have over 50gb of material yet to drop.
Hank Scorpio wrote: » He might have been referring to the actual code of the programs, though I hope lots more goodies on the way He's hinted the programs themselves won't be leaked, so I'm likely wrong. If he has 50gb of other stuff it will be a leak of epic proportions.
