They are already trying to dirty Snowden with spin. Yesterday morning on ABC "News" they kept saying he is dangerous because might defect to China which is complete speculative BS considering all he has sacrificed (don't normally watch that disney-owned cr*p but it was on at the laundrymat).
Don't forget the "Snowden's girlfriend is a 'pole dancer'" news story that has been on CNN America, the Daily Mail, Washington Times, Telegraph, USA Today, the Huffington Post, ABC News, and a few others.
If anyone thinks that Western news isn't propagandist then there is your proof, right there, that they are. That isn't a real news story. It isn't in the public interest. It is just a character attack on the man and his family.
I don't like it either, but: "Somewhat strange information related to a story that's big right now" is quite a desirable commodity in the news business. It's a perfect opener ("Have you heard this candid fact about a person that you didn't even know about before yesterday!?") and fakes in-depth knowledge ("Oh boy, they're really looking into everything!") even if there's isn't much of a story right now.
Yes, it's devoid of information. Yes, it's not in the public interest to know. Yes, it comes at a cost to the person talked about that is disproportional to the gain the audience has from the information. Yes, she wasn't in the public eye.
But is this definite proof of propaganda? No.
More likely it's just yet another outgrowth of what happens when news organizations are competing for attention. It's histrionic. But, well, there's human nature for you.
[edit] As noted by a comment - I'm only pointing out a flaw in the OPs logic. This really might be propaganda, but OPs "proof" simply isn't one.
It's not logic. There are women all over the country doing "pole dancing" classes and men and women who frequent "pole dancing" establishments and so it's really just a smear of a young woman for guilt by association.
That's how shitty the "elites" are, they will go after anyone and everyone in their mad scramble to protect their golden gooses.
Absolutely, but the bar for news is low. As long as people recognize something and then think "Oh!", it's good enough for release. "Pole dancing" may be a hobby for some folks, but it still is uncommon enough to be a tiny bit remarkable.
I read the fact about the pole dancing stuff and thought "Oh.". So there.
Once again - I completely follow the train logic and it could be that way. But it isn't necessarily proof for a theory about propaganda or "the elites".
Indeed. The bit about the "elites" is just my own opinion. I mean people who are invested in the status quo and thus interested in maintaining it, even when it is apparent that there is a need for change.
I put the term in quotes because it's more of a mindset they seem to have than an objective qualifier.
Of course she is in the public eye: Friends and family of interesting parties always get pulled into the public eye, for stories having nothing at all to do with 'propaganda'. The same is true of so many other details that will always get looked up on people in this social media/online world time. There is nothing at all nefarious about it.
Indeed, it is getting bizarre seeing people outraged that some truth about people is reported. Ms Mills identifies herself as a pole dancer. Snowden made banal online comments. Snowden dropped out of high school. These are not smears but are just interesting facts. They don't diminish either of them an iota in my eyes, but do add colour. A lot of people here seem to think these are deeply embarrassing facts that should remain hidden.
Blame falls on all of us. The media or the propaganda masters don't do this on a whim -- people have a hunger for details around a story. It is in all of our nature.
I agree these are interesting details, and I'm happier for knowing more about the people involved. However, I also believe that these facts are smears. They are being published not to inform but as ad hominem attacks on Snowden.
When the war logs leaked, I doubted that anyone would take the initial smears against Julian Assange seriously. I'm Swedish and the sexual misconduct allegations were a big conversation subject here.
After a while, I realised that though I wasn't impressed by the ad hominems, they really did work on the general public. Older relatives and friends who were not in tune with the particular issues of the leak were much more interested in stories about the people behind it. These stories require no expert knowledge; they're relatable. It's daunting for a layperson to try to judge who's right or wrong in issues like war or spying, but it's easy and familiar to judge people over the perceived wholesomeness of girls they're involved with. Thus, to my disappointment, these friends and relatives categorically dismissed anything about the war logs by referring to Assange's personal affairs.
Things like this are published to create negative associations; to cater to personal vanity (better-than-thou) and focus judgement on Snowden's character rather than the faceless institutions he ousted.
However, I also believe that these facts are smears. They are being published not to inform but as ad hominem attacks on Snowden.
When Snowden bravely outed himself, the media was in a race to find as many details on him that they could. If they could find people saying that he saved kittens, they would report that. If they find people saying he dropped out of high school, they report that. If Ars Technica discovered that he posted there, of course they're going to capitalize on that and post summaries of the sorts of things he said.
It required no conspiracy or concerted attack. It happens for spree killers. It happens for "hackers". It happens for politicians. It happens for heroes.
I just don't buy the ad hominem/smear angle when the things reported thus far have been rather banal facts that thus far have gone uncontested.
Now if the NSA suddenly claimed that they found child pornography on his workstation, or mysterious women appeared claiming to have been raped by him, a serious consideration would be in order. That hasn't happened (yet, at least), and instead people are seemingly acting knowing and world-weary about absolutely standard media reporting.
> I just don't buy the ad hominem/smear angle when the things reported thus far have been rather banal facts that thus far have gone uncontested.
In my view, neither the banality nor even the truth of the allegations are particularly important. The key reason I chose to file this as a ad hominem/smear is that it invites judgment of Snowden without pertaining to the contents of the leak or even the act of leaking.
Beyond that, there's even been tripe reporting about his forum participation, photos of his girlfriend and him, and several other tabloid-y types of articles that are attempting to paint a picture of an unintelligent, ideological, high-school dropout.
Also, are you sure you want to be googling "defect to China" given the recent disclosures? ;)
See - isn't that horrible that we have to watch what we say or google because the government might take it the wrong way? I mean sheesh, that is just crazy and the whole problem with this mess in a nutshell. It's the TSA but with scary super-powers. The TSA gropes you physically, the NSA gropes you in every other way.
because might defect to China which is complete speculative BS
It's no BS, but it's our (USA's) fault if he does. Faced with no better choice he may decide that doing what pleases China beats a lifetime of Bradley Manning prison treatment.
USA should've bit the bullet and offered him immunity if he stopped leaking and surrendered himself at a US Embassy. That might have been the best of both choices, despite setting a bad precedent. The interesting part is that China gets all his info if they arrest him (or sneak in his room.) I hope he encrypted it and that China cannot decrypt it. I suspect that hundreds of agents from all major secret services are following every step of his. I'd bet every penny I have that every secret service worth their salt knew where he was since day one.
No. It's because the majority of the population (62%) fully support it.
They want the US to be actively preventing the next Boston Marathon bombing or 9/11. And are more than happy to give up a small amount of their own privacy in order to do so.
Yeah, I think a person could easily spend enough time on the Internet to get an improper sense of what the American people would like, especially in a case like this.
I for one am not all that upset about what these leaks have shown, and while I'd like for the companies who get ordered to hand over data to announce that they're doing so, I don't mind the actual transfer.
People just don't generally think in terms of, "Have Gmail/Facebook/HackerNews/Reddit, or have privacy."
>They want the US to be actively preventing the next Boston Marathon bombing or 9/11. And are more than happy to give up a small amount of their own privacy in order to do so.
The thing is that these surveillance tools are never enough. They enhance them, and a terrorist act happens, and they start saying that they need more power to prevent something like that in the future. It's baloney.
The only way for them to prevent future crime is to turn the country into an Orwellian dystopia.
The thing is that we don't even know how effective these surveillance programs are, since the gov't doesn't release any data. Any time questions of efficacy rise, 'they' say that these programs help catch terrorists, but they don't give any concrete data.
Most of the anger at PRISM is that it apparently involves collecting data about everyone.
Carnivore was supposedly designed to be deployed against people who are suspects for a particular reason already. While some of the ECHELON satellite intercept hardware and the existence of the UKUSA agreement is known, exactly what is intercepted does not appear to have been ever leaked, and so the public have never had any reason based on mainstream media reports that they personally are being spied on.
Many people might be happy for a scheme that involves criminals being monitored, because they never think it will apply to them. But those same people will be angry when they hear definitive proof that a government is filing away data on them even though they didn't do anything wrong.
What makes you think PRISM collects data about everyone? BLARNEY/FAIRVIEW are their "upstream data collection" programs. PRISM isn't one of their dragnets, so it confuses me that people are only talking about it. And what about the "give us all data for everyone each day" orders to phone companies? Why aren't we talking about that?
It mystifies me why everyone is so focused on PRISM, there is zero logical basis - and I'm starting to suspect it's intentional that the most innocuous program is taking up the majority of media time.
These are the kinds of leaks I would love to see far more of--be they from intelligence operatives, contractors, political staffers, journalists, etc. Talking points are a huge game among the media, pundits, and leaders. Leaking the talking points as issues arise would make for excellent public discourse as more people become increasingly aware of their presence (hopefully) and become able to actually notice the ways in which the language surrounding issues is carefully constructed to shape public opinion.
I always get annoyed when governments claims secret things they have done have "protected us from an attack". First off they will never ever give specifics "because its secret", but secondly prove to me that this attack would not have been thwarted anyway using more traditional policing methods.
I think it's a wrong strategy to defend that the data did not prevent the subway attack or for that matter whether it's useful or not.
You are standing up for liberties and constitutional rights. And you can't have it both ways.
It's a good test for anyone against NSA collection:
If NSA proves that the data did stop terrorist attacks, will it be ok to intrude privacy then or put it another way are you ok with a terrorist attack on your country in exchange for your privacy ?
There are so many things wrong with your comment, I don't even know where to start. I think you might either be 8 years old, or simply trolling. Based on that, I don't see any reason to invest any time and energy into replying factually. Instead, I'll resort to just shaking my head, rolling my eyes and moving on, trusting that nature will take care of itself.
"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
They're pretty much just defending that it's legal, which I think we can all sadly admit is true. I just don't think it's right, our government should not be keeping that kind of records on its citizens, or anyone.
Please, write to your senators, not all of them are convinced. If you are a foreigner, write to your legal representatives expressing your concern. If we are loud enough our government will listen. I believe that our government still listens to its people, but if we don't take action in democracy, our voice will be lost.
The US government has been fighting hard to stop a proper adversarial determination on whether it is legal; it is hard to challenge the legality of a secret system without even having all the facts about the system, and an ex parte hearing (i.e. where the only party putting forward arguments is the US government, to a secret court) isn't likely to fully explore the legality.
As I understand it (IANAL, I am not an American), the US government is only supposed to spy on people with a warrant, but in this case they got essentially a 'blank cheque' warrant that let them spy on everyone. Such a broad warrant is not due process, because the court is not able to consider the specifics of each case data might be used for before data is collected.
> They're pretty much just defending that it's legal, which I think we can all sadly admit is true. I just don't think it's right, our government should not be keeping that kind of records on its citizens, or anyone.
but that's the entire point. it isn't legal. the supreme law of the land is the Constitution and everything after it is inferior. I could careless what Congress passes or the NSA writes in its policy documents -- it's not legal. it's all very much illegal.
Just because congress secretly approved it doesn't make it legal. If congress secretly approved gulags where prisoners are worked to death like in North Korea, it wouldn't be legal just because congress said it was.
This is an awful lot of effort to catch a "liar/criminal" (one precludes the other).
I think it's time for a "truth and reconciliation" committee where we remove every sitting congress-person, the Obama Administration at large, and at least the top-level of bureaucrats involved.
One other thought I had is, was the H1-B thing in the immigration act a "payoff" to the same tech CEOs selling the world out? A cynical thought, but a cynical time indeed.
My question: Is there actually anybody prepping talking points for pundits who oppose these pro-government spying ideas? I suppose there are already few think-tanks working on opposing ends, but these tend to be "slightly" partisan (Cato, etc). Is the EFF active in these kinds of policy circles?
In a paranoia bout, I was connecting some dots. The US and EU are currently dealing a trade treaty. Imagine the treaty mandates that RFPs are to be open to both side of the pound. Then a US entity (private company or State entity) starts an RFE. The NSA as part of it's mandate can spy on any EU citizen without any limit of what it does about the data (yeah, not a US-citizen). So imagine if by pure luck an NSA employee stumbled on the proposal data of an EU entity before filling and passed it along to an US competitor of the EU entity. Now you have the perfect crime because terrorism no investigation possible at the treaty level and foreign citizen no law as been broken on the US soil.
There are suspicions that this game has been played between Boing and Airbus (I overheard that the US was the spy, but being in Europe, my environment is biased).
I also noticed a lot of similarity between these talking points [1] and various statements by politicians and pundits as well as newspaper articles over the past week. However it is hard to track them down.
Does anyone know how to do automated text comparison? It would be interesting to know who (politicians, reporters, etc) are simply parroting what the NSA tells them. Google kinda works for this but is pretty inefficient. Something like a plagiarism system would be perfect.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 105 ms ] threadHa, look what source comes up for news when you google it: https://www.google.com/search?q=defect+to+China (ABC "News")
If anyone thinks that Western news isn't propagandist then there is your proof, right there, that they are. That isn't a real news story. It isn't in the public interest. It is just a character attack on the man and his family.
She wasn't even in the public eye.
Yes, it's devoid of information. Yes, it's not in the public interest to know. Yes, it comes at a cost to the person talked about that is disproportional to the gain the audience has from the information. Yes, she wasn't in the public eye.
But is this definite proof of propaganda? No.
More likely it's just yet another outgrowth of what happens when news organizations are competing for attention. It's histrionic. But, well, there's human nature for you.
[edit] As noted by a comment - I'm only pointing out a flaw in the OPs logic. This really might be propaganda, but OPs "proof" simply isn't one.
That's how shitty the "elites" are, they will go after anyone and everyone in their mad scramble to protect their golden gooses.
I read the fact about the pole dancing stuff and thought "Oh.". So there.
Once again - I completely follow the train logic and it could be that way. But it isn't necessarily proof for a theory about propaganda or "the elites".
I put the term in quotes because it's more of a mindset they seem to have than an objective qualifier.
Indeed, it is getting bizarre seeing people outraged that some truth about people is reported. Ms Mills identifies herself as a pole dancer. Snowden made banal online comments. Snowden dropped out of high school. These are not smears but are just interesting facts. They don't diminish either of them an iota in my eyes, but do add colour. A lot of people here seem to think these are deeply embarrassing facts that should remain hidden.
I find this aspect and the fact that is obvious to most people, barbaric at best.
When the war logs leaked, I doubted that anyone would take the initial smears against Julian Assange seriously. I'm Swedish and the sexual misconduct allegations were a big conversation subject here.
After a while, I realised that though I wasn't impressed by the ad hominems, they really did work on the general public. Older relatives and friends who were not in tune with the particular issues of the leak were much more interested in stories about the people behind it. These stories require no expert knowledge; they're relatable. It's daunting for a layperson to try to judge who's right or wrong in issues like war or spying, but it's easy and familiar to judge people over the perceived wholesomeness of girls they're involved with. Thus, to my disappointment, these friends and relatives categorically dismissed anything about the war logs by referring to Assange's personal affairs.
Things like this are published to create negative associations; to cater to personal vanity (better-than-thou) and focus judgement on Snowden's character rather than the faceless institutions he ousted.
When Snowden bravely outed himself, the media was in a race to find as many details on him that they could. If they could find people saying that he saved kittens, they would report that. If they find people saying he dropped out of high school, they report that. If Ars Technica discovered that he posted there, of course they're going to capitalize on that and post summaries of the sorts of things he said.
It required no conspiracy or concerted attack. It happens for spree killers. It happens for "hackers". It happens for politicians. It happens for heroes.
I just don't buy the ad hominem/smear angle when the things reported thus far have been rather banal facts that thus far have gone uncontested.
Now if the NSA suddenly claimed that they found child pornography on his workstation, or mysterious women appeared claiming to have been raped by him, a serious consideration would be in order. That hasn't happened (yet, at least), and instead people are seemingly acting knowing and world-weary about absolutely standard media reporting.
In my view, neither the banality nor even the truth of the allegations are particularly important. The key reason I chose to file this as a ad hominem/smear is that it invites judgment of Snowden without pertaining to the contents of the leak or even the act of leaking.
Also, are you sure you want to be googling "defect to China" given the recent disclosures? ;)
It is kinda relaxing, actually. Like the man on his way to a gulag in Doctor Zhivago, it is the only way to be truely free.
I just want to say to them "You're already on the List, we all are!"
Yes, I would prefer they stopped spying, but it won't change what I write for public consumption.
It's no BS, but it's our (USA's) fault if he does. Faced with no better choice he may decide that doing what pleases China beats a lifetime of Bradley Manning prison treatment.
USA should've bit the bullet and offered him immunity if he stopped leaking and surrendered himself at a US Embassy. That might have been the best of both choices, despite setting a bad precedent. The interesting part is that China gets all his info if they arrest him (or sneak in his room.) I hope he encrypted it and that China cannot decrypt it. I suspect that hundreds of agents from all major secret services are following every step of his. I'd bet every penny I have that every secret service worth their salt knew where he was since day one.
> Why, then, have so many people, both in the Congress and the public been shocked at the extent to which the NSA is snarfing up data?
Because people ignore what they're being told. Eschelon and Carnivore have been around for a LONG time so none of this should be shocking.
They want the US to be actively preventing the next Boston Marathon bombing or 9/11. And are more than happy to give up a small amount of their own privacy in order to do so.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/06/nsa-spying-p...
I for one am not all that upset about what these leaks have shown, and while I'd like for the companies who get ordered to hand over data to announce that they're doing so, I don't mind the actual transfer.
People just don't generally think in terms of, "Have Gmail/Facebook/HackerNews/Reddit, or have privacy."
The thing is that these surveillance tools are never enough. They enhance them, and a terrorist act happens, and they start saying that they need more power to prevent something like that in the future. It's baloney.
The only way for them to prevent future crime is to turn the country into an Orwellian dystopia. The thing is that we don't even know how effective these surveillance programs are, since the gov't doesn't release any data. Any time questions of efficacy rise, 'they' say that these programs help catch terrorists, but they don't give any concrete data.
Carnivore was supposedly designed to be deployed against people who are suspects for a particular reason already. While some of the ECHELON satellite intercept hardware and the existence of the UKUSA agreement is known, exactly what is intercepted does not appear to have been ever leaked, and so the public have never had any reason based on mainstream media reports that they personally are being spied on.
Many people might be happy for a scheme that involves criminals being monitored, because they never think it will apply to them. But those same people will be angry when they hear definitive proof that a government is filing away data on them even though they didn't do anything wrong.
It mystifies me why everyone is so focused on PRISM, there is zero logical basis - and I'm starting to suspect it's intentional that the most innocuous program is taking up the majority of media time.
You are standing up for liberties and constitutional rights. And you can't have it both ways.
It's a good test for anyone against NSA collection:
If NSA proves that the data did stop terrorist attacks, will it be ok to intrude privacy then or put it another way are you ok with a terrorist attack on your country in exchange for your privacy ?
Yeah, I'm cool like that.
"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/713590-fisa-business...
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/713592-nsa-internet-...
They're pretty much just defending that it's legal, which I think we can all sadly admit is true. I just don't think it's right, our government should not be keeping that kind of records on its citizens, or anyone.
Please, write to your senators, not all of them are convinced. If you are a foreigner, write to your legal representatives expressing your concern. If we are loud enough our government will listen. I believe that our government still listens to its people, but if we don't take action in democracy, our voice will be lost.
As I understand it (IANAL, I am not an American), the US government is only supposed to spy on people with a warrant, but in this case they got essentially a 'blank cheque' warrant that let them spy on everyone. Such a broad warrant is not due process, because the court is not able to consider the specifics of each case data might be used for before data is collected.
but that's the entire point. it isn't legal. the supreme law of the land is the Constitution and everything after it is inferior. I could careless what Congress passes or the NSA writes in its policy documents -- it's not legal. it's all very much illegal.
I think it's time for a "truth and reconciliation" committee where we remove every sitting congress-person, the Obama Administration at large, and at least the top-level of bureaucrats involved.
One other thought I had is, was the H1-B thing in the immigration act a "payoff" to the same tech CEOs selling the world out? A cynical thought, but a cynical time indeed.
There are suspicions that this game has been played between Boing and Airbus (I overheard that the US was the spy, but being in Europe, my environment is biased).
Does anyone know how to do automated text comparison? It would be interesting to know who (politicians, reporters, etc) are simply parroting what the NSA tells them. Google kinda works for this but is pretty inefficient. Something like a plagiarism system would be perfect.
[1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/713590-fisa-business... (click on text button in upper left for raw text).