My first thought, too. Fuck that was an amazing piece of worldbuilding. Really allowed me to recognise the sorts of shell-games people play everywhere in everyday life: the more "strategic" social butterflies, the corporate power plays.
As a country, it is important that you have smart spies and the way to recruit is to identify potential candidates when they are young and nurture them. But as a parent, it will be your most important responsibility to prevent your kids from falling into this seemingly cool traps and become a spy which will not be a good life for your kids.
It very much depends on exactly what kind of intelligence role they're in. Few CIA members are doing wet work. Exposure to the intelligence community sheds light on a lot of information that the vast majority of people don't have access to, and can be a pathway to lucrative careers in government or industry.
That’s ok. If you don’t want your kids to be spies in the future, just say some stuff online that the agencies will dislike but which is not illegal to say.
Hopefully that will discourage them from recruiting your children in the future. After all, who would want to hire the sons and daughters of a person who raised them with views that run so obviously counter to the opinions of the agencies.
Edward Snowden is a humanitarian hero, and I will raise my kids to know that that is true :)
If you discovered that Snowden was actually the patsy for a limited hangout operation designed to protect the sector from declining regulatory and congressional will in a post-911 market...still a hero?
I agree the 'whole of agency' funding thing doesn't really make sense.
Look at all the budgets, they dip, slightly, around that time then continue their upward or stable trends, as least publicly. Maybe the NSA really did get a budget win in the years post 2013.
Regardless, it was just too good to be true, tho, as a leak. Don't you think?
I think the most likely scenario is, it was a "false flag" "own goal"/self-inflicted wound, that then necessitated useful and remunerative healing and mending by restructuring and getting congress back on their side. Probably hastily executed in response to some looming threat: like they were going to merge NSA with some other agency, aggressively restructure, etc.
So, from one point of view, yes, Snowden is a patriot and a hero for playing the role of patsy in a scheme to save the US intelligence community from muddleheaded regulators, or whomever. But from another point of view, the conventional "public" one, if that's true, he's not.
But, the way it was designed is very clever: everybody wins! Public gets happy that they are now more safe and private. IT sector gets happy with a new shiny product "privacy". Defence and intelligence gets happy because they have to be "saved" by congress from the damage done by the leaks to vital national security.
Who knows maybe there was even an aspect of long game preparation to raise public awareness about privacy to prevent the eroding away of US internet company customer base by Chinese competitors thrown into the mix?
Well obviously they would pick someone who had the right ego-bias / personality to act as this savior figure. Someone who wouldn't just do their duty but love it and go beyond it. The selection of the right patsy would be half the problem!
Even under the weaker assumption he wasn't like that to begin with, a savvy and ambitious person would ride such a wave of opportunity and "grow into the role" so to speak.
But yea, it's well designed, so it's supposed to be "hard to believe". The public is supposed to believe the simple fable that Snowden is a hero exposing privacy violations, and that it's about privacy. This is no denigration of the public really, it's just the sophistication of the storytellers! :)
>But yea, it's well designed, so it's supposed to be "hard to believe".
It's so "well designed" that it makes no sense :) Reminds me of Rick and Morty's heist plot developed by that robot. At the end of the day you can come up with endless conspiracy theories and plots if your imagination is good enough and you watched all the Mission Impossible movies, and then then when people question it you just tell them "it's so well thought out that it's hard to believe" and you win every argument.
Why is it so hard to accept that Snowden really walked out with confidential info and sent it to the press out of his own accord over his own worries of privacy violations he was in charge of? The simplest expatiation is usually the right one, no need to come up with false flag spy plots.
FFS, some teenager working for the Airforce leaked military intelligence on the war in Ukraine on some Discord server just to win an online argument. Do you think that was some false-flag op too? Intelligence blunders happen all the time, it's a wonder we don't get even more leaks.
So your critique of Snowden being a patsy is: I (the person saying it) am like a robot from some cartoon that sees everything conspiratorially just to win arguments, is that right?
Doesn't it sound like you're being too negative? It does seem more like you're trying to 'win arguments' by calling anything besides an official take a conspiracy theory, and disparaging anyone who says such, so nothing else can be said, right?
No, I didn't call anything besides the official take a conspiracy theory, I only called your take a conspiracy theory because it seemed like hard to believe fantasy written for a show, and your only argument to support it was "it's well designed, so it's supposed to be hard to believe", which is just more fantasy designed to shut up any and all arguments against it, just like your last comment I'm currently replying to.
Interesting how hypothetical we have to be for snowden to not be a hero and equally hypothetical in degree for the CIA,NSA,FBI to be "actually no longer the bad guys we know they were despite zero accountability for it"
Each of those things isn't impossible, right? It'd be nice if the latter could be made true because accountability actually existed for brazen criminality.
I don't think it's a huge "hypothetical" distance to cover for an intelligence organization, perceiving itself to be existentially threatened, to resort to the types of operations it is known for in order to protect itself.
Your second point tho I don't understand, 'hypothetical in degree for the CIA,NSA,FBI to be "actually no longer the bad guys we know they were despite zero accountability for it" Each of those things isn't impossible, right? It'd be nice if the latter could be made true because accountability actually existed for brazen criminality.'
Can you explain more? How are CIA, FBI related to this? Also, it seems you mean it could have been a factional thing: some faction wanted to shake things up because they weren't happy with the criminality (except the criminality was not the spying on the public type, but much worse), and this was their lever?
I think if it was factional, a more banal reason is more likely, e.g: General A didn't like that General B's division was going to get funding for Project Y instead of General A's Project X, so A organized this leak to make General B's division look like klutzes, and ensure General A would get the funds for her project.
But it just seems a bit over the top for people in the shadows to blow their whole modus operandi with a public expose for some factional thing. I think it's more likely it was very much sanctioned from the top and "whole of agency" in essence.
It's a huge hypothetical when you imagine the possibility of something that has zero evidence and in truth seems pretty unlikely.
Snowdon not a hero. Whatever your prior, it has been updated with a lot of data none yet pointing that direction.
CIA,NSA,FBI the good guys now. Left as an exercise as to what should be necessary to update a view based on the clear evidence we actually have about those institutions, however long it took to come out.
I’m sorry, I can’t understand your English. Would it be a terrible idea if you really spelled it out for me what you’re saying or used your native language and I’ll Google Translate it. Thanks! :)
No. You need pay nothing nor indeed take part in intellectual life at all.
But at least your abuse made for a change from the usual "this is Markov chain authored" in response when someone rightly abuses the CIA which really seems to need reform. That might well be coincidence, of course.
So if someone says they can’t understand your English, and then you’re rude, and they then say you have poor communication skills, you’re being abused, is that right?
And if anyone disagrees they're just missing out on your brilliance?
You're pretty new at HN judging by your account. It's clear to me in numbers that other people understood that post I wrote in plain english, as they have what I write for years here. You didn't? And you were pretty rude about it. I've noticed this exact pattern happens often when someone picks up on smears of Snowden, or Assange or criticizes the CIA, NSA & FBI. Maybe that is simply a coincidence.
Disagree all you like, that is encouraged around here. Make pretend Snowden is a crook with zero evidence to back it, you'll get picked up on the point. Enough of us have followed the story.
A world in which organizations like these are looked upon with the utmost contempt is the better one. When judging another nation's civilizational status (ie. is it a banana republic), in the future we should include how regulatorily contained these agencies are.
Checks note: Just about every western news outlet, privately and publicly funded, is quoting "NGOs" like Bellingcat, Freedom House, Transparency International or the "Atlantic Concil's Digital Forensics labs" as if they weren't the CIA cutouts that they are.
The CIA will continue to be funded no matter what PR they conduct, just like intelligence agencies continue to be funded in every industrialized country in the world.
Instead work like a slave for a non existing reward. All your superiors spied, intrigued and ultimately defected to their own side or company. Loyalty is for sucker's and I can not understand how somebody can do this lifestyle, especially to his own kid. I can understand how the upper crust can promote the looser lifestyle so there are expendable pieces on the game board. But willingly, knowingly choosing no future for ones kid, while society defects all around you..
"Spy Kids" has a trademark and sells video games, I don't see why this isn't trademark infringement. Surely the CIA would be aware, could Disney have approved it? Wouldn't there be notice at the bottom then?
I mean, the CIA helped Walt Disney set up the insane property deals he used to build Disneyworld, so it's not outside the realm of possibility.
edit: oh, I misread your comment and thought the CIA page was making some specific references to "spy kids." But now that I've looked, what's there doesn't seem to infringe on anything.
If this site was made recently, it’s possible that it was released with that title and slipped through without oversight (I would guess that this page is the CIA’s millionth priority). Perhaps the page getting attention will cause them to take a closer look and change it.
>If this site was made recently, it’s possible that it was released with that title and slipped through without oversight
Maybe named by some current youngsters who didn't grow up in the '90s's with the cheesy movie franchise with the same name. Or maybe it was intentional and they don't expect to get a ceis and desist from a movie studio when they're the government.
* Slip some substances in your parents drinks and see if they'll tell you the password to the bank account so you can buy whatever you want:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra
I mean if you know your sibling has just placed bombs on 42 ice cream trucks in order to shut down nationwide ice cream distribution (they don’t want you to have any) then I think it would be reasonable to use enhanced investigation
Exactly! Extra bonus points if you can avoid leaving traces or your work and manage to plausibly deny the methods you used when questioned by parents. Hint: it's not "waterboarding" if you don't use water. What other liquids might you use? What does your gas station sell?.
Played the Aerial Analysis challenge. There's a bit of overfitting/oversimplification on a couple questions. For instance, how can you be for sure the town is industrial just because you see 5 buildings? Also, who's to say danger isn't lurking at the park masked as celebration? We all remember JFK in Dallas.
66 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 113 ms ] threadHopefully that will discourage them from recruiting your children in the future. After all, who would want to hire the sons and daughters of a person who raised them with views that run so obviously counter to the opinions of the agencies.
Edward Snowden is a humanitarian hero, and I will raise my kids to know that that is true :)
Look at all the budgets, they dip, slightly, around that time then continue their upward or stable trends, as least publicly. Maybe the NSA really did get a budget win in the years post 2013.
Regardless, it was just too good to be true, tho, as a leak. Don't you think?
I think the most likely scenario is, it was a "false flag" "own goal"/self-inflicted wound, that then necessitated useful and remunerative healing and mending by restructuring and getting congress back on their side. Probably hastily executed in response to some looming threat: like they were going to merge NSA with some other agency, aggressively restructure, etc.
So, from one point of view, yes, Snowden is a patriot and a hero for playing the role of patsy in a scheme to save the US intelligence community from muddleheaded regulators, or whomever. But from another point of view, the conventional "public" one, if that's true, he's not.
But, the way it was designed is very clever: everybody wins! Public gets happy that they are now more safe and private. IT sector gets happy with a new shiny product "privacy". Defence and intelligence gets happy because they have to be "saved" by congress from the damage done by the leaks to vital national security.
Who knows maybe there was even an aspect of long game preparation to raise public awareness about privacy to prevent the eroding away of US internet company customer base by Chinese competitors thrown into the mix?
Even under the weaker assumption he wasn't like that to begin with, a savvy and ambitious person would ride such a wave of opportunity and "grow into the role" so to speak.
But yea, it's well designed, so it's supposed to be "hard to believe". The public is supposed to believe the simple fable that Snowden is a hero exposing privacy violations, and that it's about privacy. This is no denigration of the public really, it's just the sophistication of the storytellers! :)
It's so "well designed" that it makes no sense :) Reminds me of Rick and Morty's heist plot developed by that robot. At the end of the day you can come up with endless conspiracy theories and plots if your imagination is good enough and you watched all the Mission Impossible movies, and then then when people question it you just tell them "it's so well thought out that it's hard to believe" and you win every argument.
Why is it so hard to accept that Snowden really walked out with confidential info and sent it to the press out of his own accord over his own worries of privacy violations he was in charge of? The simplest expatiation is usually the right one, no need to come up with false flag spy plots.
FFS, some teenager working for the Airforce leaked military intelligence on the war in Ukraine on some Discord server just to win an online argument. Do you think that was some false-flag op too? Intelligence blunders happen all the time, it's a wonder we don't get even more leaks.
Doesn't it sound like you're being too negative? It does seem more like you're trying to 'win arguments' by calling anything besides an official take a conspiracy theory, and disparaging anyone who says such, so nothing else can be said, right?
Each of those things isn't impossible, right? It'd be nice if the latter could be made true because accountability actually existed for brazen criminality.
Your second point tho I don't understand, 'hypothetical in degree for the CIA,NSA,FBI to be "actually no longer the bad guys we know they were despite zero accountability for it" Each of those things isn't impossible, right? It'd be nice if the latter could be made true because accountability actually existed for brazen criminality.'
Can you explain more? How are CIA, FBI related to this? Also, it seems you mean it could have been a factional thing: some faction wanted to shake things up because they weren't happy with the criminality (except the criminality was not the spying on the public type, but much worse), and this was their lever?
I think if it was factional, a more banal reason is more likely, e.g: General A didn't like that General B's division was going to get funding for Project Y instead of General A's Project X, so A organized this leak to make General B's division look like klutzes, and ensure General A would get the funds for her project.
But it just seems a bit over the top for people in the shadows to blow their whole modus operandi with a public expose for some factional thing. I think it's more likely it was very much sanctioned from the top and "whole of agency" in essence.
But maybe that's not what you mean! :)
Snowdon not a hero. Whatever your prior, it has been updated with a lot of data none yet pointing that direction.
CIA,NSA,FBI the good guys now. Left as an exercise as to what should be necessary to update a view based on the clear evidence we actually have about those institutions, however long it took to come out.
But at least your abuse made for a change from the usual "this is Markov chain authored" in response when someone rightly abuses the CIA which really seems to need reform. That might well be coincidence, of course.
And if anyone disagrees they're just missing out on your brilliance?
Disagree all you like, that is encouraged around here. Make pretend Snowden is a crook with zero evidence to back it, you'll get picked up on the point. Enough of us have followed the story.
Best of luck.
So basically the only conclusion from following the story is the one you've reached?
And an offer to understand your native language is rude?
I see no shame in English not as a first language. However, you think I should be punished for your mistaking it as rude?
No.
I mean, an inside and upstairs job?
I mean, screw it you know what I mean.
Checks note: Just about every western news outlet, privately and publicly funded, is quoting "NGOs" like Bellingcat, Freedom House, Transparency International or the "Atlantic Concil's Digital Forensics labs" as if they weren't the CIA cutouts that they are.
I think we're good!
Intelligence can be an extremely rewarding career. I know several former intelligence officers who loved the work.
edit: oh, I misread your comment and thought the CIA page was making some specific references to "spy kids." But now that I've looked, what's there doesn't seem to infringe on anything.
They definitely have a relationship, it's whether this is part of it I'm unclear of.
Maybe named by some current youngsters who didn't grow up in the '90s's with the cheesy movie franchise with the same name. Or maybe it was intentional and they don't expect to get a ceis and desist from a movie studio when they're the government.
Spy Kids [CIA children's site] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23409312 - June 2020 (1 comment)
I can't be the only one who was hoping for a thermonuclear war option :)
* See if you can make your sibling confess to eating an extra scoop of ice-cream: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Intelligence_Committee_...
* Slip some substances in your parents drinks and see if they'll tell you the password to the bank account so you can buy whatever you want: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra
* Jealous how this one kid at school is too influential? Let's see if you can ruin their reputation and maybe put them in the hospital: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...