ok ill be the one to say it then: the NSA are fascists. the NSA is evil.
Lol i really cringed at that phrasing about “good people doing bad things”. Theyre literally fascists doing fascism to advance their interests, it really doesn’t matter if they are vegan and have dogs.
Je was a contractor for the NSA, sis you think he was going to say anything different?
What is your definition of Fascist, here?
It seems to get tossed around at everything, these days. Not a fan if the NSA either, nor the Patriot Act, either.
fascism is capitalism showing its teeth, like what trump is doing more overtly now. one part of it involves enforcing a bolder and more baldfaced surveillance/police state.
the NSA is literally one of the intelligence arms of said surveillance state. they help manipulate people, find and disappear dissidents, suppress resistance and such. not unlike a few other 3 letter agencies.
they’ve been quacking like fascists way before trump, they have feathers like fascists and swim like fascists. hence why i call it fascist.
fascism is capitalism showing its teeth, like what trump is doing more overtly now
AFAIK that is not the definition of fascism
But I’ve seen a TikTok of someone who is studying politcal doctrines (IDR if their level was Major or PHD) and what is currently going on was ticking off all the boxes
there are many, sometimes conflicting definitions. this one sums it up.
i focus on the police state and militarism part of it because thats what the NSA is for.
and if it ticks all the damn boxes, thats wtf it is. your phd person on tiktok is probably referring to the 12 early signs. its been ticking them for decades now.
but please don’t rely on tiktok to get informed and read up on it, regardless of what qualifications tiktokers claim to have. its slop that barely clears the basics at best.
“The early Internet’s dissociative opportunities actually encouraged me and those of my generation to change our most deeply held opinions, instead of just digging in and defending them when challenged. This ability to reinvent ourselves meant that we never had to close our minds by picking sides, or close ranks out of fear of doing irreparable harm to our reputations. Mistakes that were swiftly punished but swiftly rectified allowed both the community and the “offender” to move on. To me, and to many, this felt like freedom.” ~ Permanent Record, Snowden.
One of the things I warn people about privacy is that it’s not about what they might find, it’s about what they might pretend to find.
Plenty of dirty cops plant evidence. Who’s to say they don’t like someone and keep a flash drive full of Cheese Pizza to plant on their computer. Usually that kind of logic gets people on board more easily.
My response to this is usually “Do you have curtains?”
Very late edit: I have found it very effective. It causes pause for thought because everyone values privacy, they just find it hard to picture themselves needing it. Curtains.
Let me check your Attic why not, you’re not hiding any jews are you?
Yeah, so what if I want to hide a bunch of Jews in my attic?
He misattributes that quote
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1558
You will find the quote in this book that predates Nazi Germany
Not merely was my own mail opened, but the mail of all my relatives and friends—people residing in places as far apart as California and Florida. I recall the bland smile of a government official to whom I complained about this matter: “If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear.”
Here’s a scientific dissertation on how and why that phrase sucks: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565
It’s so easy to use but very hard to fights against. Worst case of bullshit.
Nah the NSA are nazis
Snowden is a brave guy in some ways, but even in spite of his leaks, he’s remained a naive US-supremacist libertarian, who evangangelizes tech over political action, defends the OTF, silicon valley, and US-DoD funded crypto tools and privacy apps.
The lesson of 2013 is not that the NSA is evil. It’s that the path is dangerous. The network path is something that we need to help users get across safely. Our job as technologists, our job as engineers, our job as anybody who cares about the internet in any way, who has any kind of personal or commercial involvement is literally to armor the user, to protect the user and to make it that they can get from one end of the path to the other safely without interference,” he told an auditorium filled with the world’s foremost computer and network engineers at a 2015 meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force in Prague. He reaffirmed his view a year later at Fusion’s 2016 Real Future Fair in Oakland, California. “If you want to build a better future, you’re going to have to do it yourself. Politics will take us only so far and if history is any guide, they are the least reliable means of achieving the effective change.… They’re not gonna jump up and protect your rights,” he said. “Technology works differently than law. Technology knows no jurisdiction.”
Once a fed, always a fed…
The answer to that Reddit post is to delete your account on Reddit.
We desperately need a constitutional right to privacy, but I doubt that will happen in my or our country’s lifetime.
Which country? Plenty of countries have at least a nominal right to privacy, but it doesn’t end up meaning much when US companies own your country’s communications platforms.
I’ll let you guess, although you probably only need one guess.
Fuck me, the last part hit me HARD. I won’t get into the details why because it is painful for me to talk about it.
I have “nothing to hide” but I STILL like privacy tyvm. Hence I’ll shit in public with the stall door closed, and not disclose my wank schedule on Facebook
Weird how Edward Snowden is basically a Boddhisatwa and Julian Assange
Weird how Edward Snowden is basically a Boddhisatwa and Julian Assange
Defining someone a Bodhisattva is complex. Snowden & Assange acted with potential benefit & harm. True Bodhisattvas act from pure compassion & wisdom, embodying equanimity. Their actions offer reflection on truth & consequences.
Where is the harm?
Where is the harm?
Snowden’s disclosures, while aiming for transparency, risked national security, compromised sources, strained relations, & potentially enabled misuse of info. Buddhist principles emphasize avoiding harm & maintaining order, aspects potentially impacted by his actions. A balanced view acknowledges both benefit & risk.
Maintaining order in this context would mean letting some people harm other people’s privacy though.
Maintaining order in this context would mean letting some people harm other people’s privacy though.
You’re right to question “order” at the expense of privacy. Buddhist principles highlight interdependence & ethical action. Security shouldn’t erode fundamental rights. Privacy & security are interconnected, not opposing forces.
Could you explain what you mean by that please?
Snowden is very zen and I don’t know what Assange but it’s not zen
Retaliation for exposing the truth, likely to never speak the full truth again.
What did she say after Snowden dropped that bomb?
We’ll be right back after these messages
I’m gonna guess a whole lot of flustered backpedaling amounting to not a lot of anything, but I’m willing to be surprised if someone wants to dig up the video.