The OP had said that tptacek was a shill. I defended tptacek by saying I didn't know that he was paid or whether he was just in the circle of security contractors (he is) or whether he merely bought into and was regurgitating their propaganda.
I did not call tptacek a shill nor make a baseless accusation. It's absolutely true that tptacek is a stalwart defender of public narrative. This is the base of OP (not baseless) of his calling tptacek a shill. I entertained the possibility that he wasn't paid or anything like that.
Anyway, this isn't really interesting content any more. I think the real shame is that the main topic was downvoted to oblivion where people will not see the comparison to the US. The information about Binney (that tptacek clearly showed he was noncharitably and polemically engaging) and Risen and others won't be seen.
I'm not sure if he's paid, if his interests align (he's in the security contracting circle), or if he's genuinely naive in his cheerleading.
I think most of the stuff he has to say is legitimate. It's just he very often is fallacious and uncharitable as well - and that's when you hope others can see through the BS.
Right, he was involved in insider trading. If you don't do anything illegal it's hard to blackmail you for it. That was the claim. Blackmail. Sure, he did something wrong(-ish).
You are right about Risen and Sterling. I think you get the point though. The leverage placed on Risen to reveal his sources and the placement of Sterling under the Espionage Act - the use of backroom deals to keep Risen's publication of mass surveillance out of the Times when it was first published - the use of NSLs - the hacking of the Associated Press to spoil their sources during the Benghazi Affair. The US uses these things to curdle journalistic coverage and their sources.
Binney wasn't indicted for anything. He and his family was held at gunpoint and threatened.
The link you gave just had people calling Nacchio pathetic. Was there a specific fact you were trying to highlight? (I mentioned character defamation in the top post.)
Germany's Secret Service just charged their leading Civil Rights group on treason for publishing information about the German government's plans to further expand domestic mass surveillance.
This is not different than what has happened in the United States - though the US uses National Security Letters, gag orders, financial and criminal leverage and defamation - its only when these don't work that the US will reach toward the Espionage Act.
We look back in history and question why citizens in history asked their governments to send civil rights activists to prison and to silence certain stories in the press.
Today we get modern answers to these questions at least every few months.
I have polled friends, family and acquaintances: the overwhelming response is that we don't feel safe.
I have also sampled the official stance from press releases and speeches: the overwhelming justification is that we are not safe.
As all things are, the truth is much more complicated.
Oh yeah. That's totally happening. The Sunshine Policy was ended some time ago. President Geun-hye called for international support for the unification at the UN. SK, the US and Japan have joint plans for the destabilization of the regime and other contingencies, US foreign policy thinktanks are devising plans for the event (http://www.brookings.edu/research/presentations/2015/01/20-k...), SK and US are in talks with China about getting their support, interception capabilities have been moved out to the Korean peninsula, anthrax was sent from the DoD to a bunch of labs in the Asia Pacific (North Korea is afraid of being framed - came to the UN with a complaint and offered to open up inspection of its laboratories to the international community).
Uh, a bunch of other associated facts. But yeah, give it a pretty short couple of years and you're going to see this happen.
I find this neither complete nor accurate but it's good to see a list like this. Thanks for doing the legwork.
Don't forget the Japan mutual defense deal, the upcoming Korea unification and all the other hundred things in the Asia Pacific.
Be careful about many of these things - the way you present them needs to be pretty careful. The goal in the Asia-Pacific (TPP included) is to contain China with a balance of power in their region. This includes Australia, Philippines, Japan of course, Guam, and Singapore, Vietnam, India, Thailand, Northern Mariana Islands, etc. Ukraine was being purposefully Westernized (Project UNITER) for inclusion into the EU and Russia is the goal after Ukraine. It is against the backdrop of NATO, EU and in general Western liberal expansion that Russia solidified its position in Crimea. In other words many of the things you list here can be seen as policy failures or at least haven't played themselves out (Saudi Arabia and Israel with Iranian nuclear deal, etc). We don't know whether this will actually prevent Israel from invading Iran yet.
Yadda yadda.
Anyway, thanks for compiling a list. It's hard to follow American domestic politics without understanding American Foreign policy and Geostrategy. So it's good to see information and dialogue posted here.
During the White House press briefing the WH spokesperson mentioned that normalizing ties was being done for international strategic purposes (and of course, Cuba was blacklisted for similar and for political reasons - not because they had anything to do with terrorism). I don't actually know what they mean by this. Do you have some idea of what strategic investment/partnership is being made?
I do not. Microsoft Research and Google Research and IBM are examples of places where some of this research is done - and there's Universities. MITRE does as well as other semi-public orgs.
But it's the case that all of these places also sponsor work and work with the military. I guess the answer is yes that it exists, but no it doesn't exist (AFAIK) completely military free.
I don't have very good visibility into pharma companies and agro companies. I know that they do some long term research and I don't know (I would suspect) whether they have partnerships with DoD folks.
The work that DARPA does is incredible and we should be proud, as a country, that we pursue transformational research. One of the big weaknesses of the private sector is that there are few opportunities to pursue high-risk high-reward research and research that must be done on long timelines.
The stuff DARPA funds is fundamentally important and has an incredible track record.
That said, their primary customer is the DoD which has demands for technology that is sometimes rather creepy. Without going too far down that route and forcing a tangent on the thread I'll just plug here that technology is power and that power can be used for good and evil, for noble and ignoble and for personal or public gain. We need to cheer on DARPA for its development of technology and keep its customers accountable for how it applies that technology.
No, what my post was claiming is that the presence of malware didn't hurt my system and wasn't an issue when I browsed the files (on a practical basis).
I understand the potential.
I think it's valuable for you to do this.
You should continue to look for malicious files in a variety of places online.
Even if you practice safe computing it's likely that your information will be compromised - especially in the long term and especially if you are an organization.
That's not to say this practice isn't important. It's just that it's not enough. We need both of these things (and more).
The state of computer security is fundamentally asymmetric.
> I missed all that–can you point me in the right direction?
Sure!
The CEO of SONY, high level state department officials, RAND specialist on nuclear deproliferation, regime change and North Korea, and Special Envoy to Korea discussed what direction the ending of the movie should go for it to most optimally destabilize the Kim regime. Special Envoy talked about plans (and RAND specialist Bennett) mention plans to seed the film into NK:
The decision to name the leader of NK in the film came down from executives - in the original script it had entirely fictional names (http://www.scpr.org/programs/the-frame/2014/12/15/40758/how-...). This is also confirmed by the SONY leaks, which have the executives trade emails concerned about the appearance of their having brought up the idea.
This all came out pretty early during the hacks but unfortunately the skepticism over it having been NK behind the hacks overwhelmed the media at the time. (It did turn out to be pretty definitively North Korea, or at least sympathizers, after all).
> 99% v. 1%
I happen to agree with you wholeheartedly. I do like the way that Wikileaks operates, though. They don't want to be the people in charge of curating and censoring information because they feel that this process can become politicized. So they publish everything.
The cost of their publications is extremely high. The returns are also high and IMO the ROI is good so in general I'm for them. But yeah if the ROI wasn't very good I would question it a lot more.
Definitely Wikileaks operates in pretty challenging legal waters.
The OP had said that tptacek was a shill. I defended tptacek by saying I didn't know that he was paid or whether he was just in the circle of security contractors (he is) or whether he merely bought into and was regurgitating their propaganda.
I did not call tptacek a shill nor make a baseless accusation. It's absolutely true that tptacek is a stalwart defender of public narrative. This is the base of OP (not baseless) of his calling tptacek a shill. I entertained the possibility that he wasn't paid or anything like that.
Anyway, this isn't really interesting content any more. I think the real shame is that the main topic was downvoted to oblivion where people will not see the comparison to the US. The information about Binney (that tptacek clearly showed he was noncharitably and polemically engaging) and Risen and others won't be seen.
That's okay. One battle at a time.
Thanks dang, for your help and attention.