Now getting "The Abbottabad files are temporarily unavailable pending resolution of a technical issue. We are working to make the material available again as soon as possible. "
Prior to accessing this file collection, please understand that this material was seized from a terrorist organization. While the files underwent interagency review, there is no absolute guarantee that all malware has been removed.
The CIA cannot guarantee that files they have spent 6 years poring through are free off malware? Wonder why anyone will download these documents after this.
Don't be ridiculous. Any reasonable and representative democracy like ours would not be a government interested in subverting the privacy and rights of its own people. /s
If all the executables in the archive were, say, loop-free trivial programs, then of course you could instantly confirm an absence of malware.
If there are some loops and complications in there, you would do some more logical work, and then depending on the power of your logical system, either conclude safety or unsafety, or time out.
Rice's theorem does not mean that static analysis is impossible, even of machine code!
Right, but Rice's theorem means that you either have false positives, false negatives, or "Unknown" answers in any static analysis. Which means that the CIA could never guarantee the absence of malware, for example, if any of the programs timed out in the static analysis.
It seems likely that they wouldn't be able to guarantee that, but we need to be more clear.
The fundamental limitations of computer science, as expressed by Rice's theorem, says that the CIA cannot make a program that given any archive says in finite time whether there is malware there.
It doesn't say that for some specific archive the CIA cannot guarantee the absence of malware.
There are infinitely many EXE files that you can prove malware-free, and this set expands with the progress of static analysis.
But of course, if one EXE file says "if (unsolved_math_problem()) { malware(); } else { harmless(); }" then the CIA would have to spend a lot of effort proving its status.
Well, he was a human being responsible for an attack which killed about 3,000 people and wounded 6,000. It's not entirely unreasonable to demonize him.
For comparison you could look at the casualties numbers for things like the unsanctioned US invasion of Iraq. And then consider if the people responsible for that are as villified.
Without defending the war in Iraq (afterall what good has it done?) this really is a false equivalence and we probably don't realise how good we have it, and how much worse it could be - namely if some one like UBL was the ruler of the worlds largest superpower how many people would be killed and oppressed.
You may pine for an ideal of no unjust/unfair deaths in the world, but the reality is the number caused is in some way proportional to the power wielded. The assessment of the morality of the US should take this into consideration. That is to say there is an implicit negative opportunity cost (? opportunity benefit) to existing power. This is perhaps the opposite to the way most overly moralising critics view things (if only I had the power to change the world). Afterall perhaps the biggest lesson of Iraq must be that just getting rid of power based on simplistic moralising is not a good idea. Careful what you wish for.
lsd5you has already provided a good response, but in addition to that:
1. Explicitly targeting civilians is generally considered grounds for vilification - it's why we call them "terrorists", and why we have rules of warfare, etc.
2. It's pretty standard to vilify people who are trying to kill you, rather than people who are trying to kill others on your behalf. If you want to take a stance outside of national interests, that's fine, but again it's not unreasonable for Americans to feel more hostile towards Bin Laden than Bush, even if they disagree with the Iraq War and its consequences.
3. In a better world, the Iraq War certainly should have resulting in crimes against humanity charges being brought and tried against perpetrators like Bush, Cheney, and his gang. But the fact that we don't live in that world doesn't change the fact that what Bin Laden did was a bad thing, which justifies vilification.
Let's say I do this, and arrive at a verifiable mathematical proof that George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld and whomever else aren't as vilified.
What will I have learned?
If I'm a decent human being, what different choices do I make for having learned this?
At the end of the day, all three of these people are horrible, murderous thugs. UBL will of course never have a chance to apologize or make amends. We can hope that Bush and Rumsfeld have life-altering experiences that cause them to dedicate themselves to making their victims whole, but history is somewhat short on these sorts of stories.
The best we can do is to live lives as decent human beings, helping and loving each other and refusing to work for welfare-warfare states and crony capitalists. There's no additional benefit, as far as I can see, to efforts to parse whether some murderers are vilified in proper proportion to their war crimes.
I know those files. That looks like a list of files from a family computer.
Bin ladin, like many others in that region, likely had family and friends over all the time. Kids sit at the computer when their parents are being boring and drinking tea.
Nobody eats bagels like that through, they slice em in half and either butter, jelly, or cream cheese each half. I've never seen anyone walking around just munching on a full bagel like that.
hey cia, we know bin laden’s worldview and don’t need to see his diary, gym playlist, or favorite movies.
we need info about las vegas. the police blotter that night tells a different story from what we hear on the news. the local police have reports of multiple shooters. what was on the hard drive and camera the main shooter had in his room? where is security footage of the shooter around the hotel? why does the airport report a helicopter stopping on the mandalay roof at 10:25pm that night? why was no light shone on the hotel while the shooting occurred? what’s the full story?
46 comments
[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 86.4 ms ] thread> Access Denied
NOTE: The access denied message contains a unique string that changes when you hit refresh.
NOTE: At 1 Nov 2017 18:19:43 UTC, archive.is was able to save a copy of the OP. Now, it can't due to a 301 redirect.
The CIA cannot guarantee that files they have spent 6 years poring through are free off malware? Wonder why anyone will download these documents after this.
</tinfoil hat>
If all the executables in the archive were, say, loop-free trivial programs, then of course you could instantly confirm an absence of malware.
If there are some loops and complications in there, you would do some more logical work, and then depending on the power of your logical system, either conclude safety or unsafety, or time out.
Rice's theorem does not mean that static analysis is impossible, even of machine code!
The fundamental limitations of computer science, as expressed by Rice's theorem, says that the CIA cannot make a program that given any archive says in finite time whether there is malware there.
It doesn't say that for some specific archive the CIA cannot guarantee the absence of malware.
There are infinitely many EXE files that you can prove malware-free, and this set expands with the progress of static analysis.
But of course, if one EXE file says "if (unsolved_math_problem()) { malware(); } else { harmless(); }" then the CIA would have to spend a lot of effort proving its status.
You may pine for an ideal of no unjust/unfair deaths in the world, but the reality is the number caused is in some way proportional to the power wielded. The assessment of the morality of the US should take this into consideration. That is to say there is an implicit negative opportunity cost (? opportunity benefit) to existing power. This is perhaps the opposite to the way most overly moralising critics view things (if only I had the power to change the world). Afterall perhaps the biggest lesson of Iraq must be that just getting rid of power based on simplistic moralising is not a good idea. Careful what you wish for.
Look into the history of the middle east maybe?
1. Explicitly targeting civilians is generally considered grounds for vilification - it's why we call them "terrorists", and why we have rules of warfare, etc.
2. It's pretty standard to vilify people who are trying to kill you, rather than people who are trying to kill others on your behalf. If you want to take a stance outside of national interests, that's fine, but again it's not unreasonable for Americans to feel more hostile towards Bin Laden than Bush, even if they disagree with the Iraq War and its consequences.
3. In a better world, the Iraq War certainly should have resulting in crimes against humanity charges being brought and tried against perpetrators like Bush, Cheney, and his gang. But the fact that we don't live in that world doesn't change the fact that what Bin Laden did was a bad thing, which justifies vilification.
What will I have learned?
If I'm a decent human being, what different choices do I make for having learned this?
At the end of the day, all three of these people are horrible, murderous thugs. UBL will of course never have a chance to apologize or make amends. We can hope that Bush and Rumsfeld have life-altering experiences that cause them to dedicate themselves to making their victims whole, but history is somewhat short on these sorts of stories.
The best we can do is to live lives as decent human beings, helping and loving each other and refusing to work for welfare-warfare states and crony capitalists. There's no additional benefit, as far as I can see, to efforts to parse whether some murderers are vilified in proper proportion to their war crimes.
Bin ladin, like many others in that region, likely had family and friends over all the time. Kids sit at the computer when their parents are being boring and drinking tea.
"Pigeon: Impossible (2009)"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1423419/
Available on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEjUAnPc2VA
It's about the agent who carries the president's "Nuclear Football"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_football
and his interaction with a pigeon who wants agent's doughnut.
Anyway, thanks for linking to that, it’s a delightful short.
we need info about las vegas. the police blotter that night tells a different story from what we hear on the news. the local police have reports of multiple shooters. what was on the hard drive and camera the main shooter had in his room? where is security footage of the shooter around the hotel? why does the airport report a helicopter stopping on the mandalay roof at 10:25pm that night? why was no light shone on the hotel while the shooting occurred? what’s the full story?
According to Wikipedia, the direct translation of his name is usāmah ibn muḥammad ibn ‘awaḍ ibn lādin