Dev.SN ♥ developers
Sections
Dev.SN
from the I-have-nothing-to-hide-...-right? dept.
Blackmoore writes:
Glen Greenwald at The Intercept has published another expose on how western intelligence agencies are attempting to control and manipulate online discourse.
The newest article from Greenwald is based around a document from JTRIG (Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group), a previously secret unit of Britan's GCHQ. Entitled "The Art of Deception: Training for Online Covert Operations", the document outlines tactics used to achieve JTRIG's purposes of (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable.
From the article: "The broader point is... these surveillance agencies have vested themselves with the power to deliberately ruin people's reputations and disrupt their online political activity even though they've been charged with no crimes, and even though their actions have no conceivable connection to terrorism or even national security threats."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by n1 on Wednesday February 26 2014, @10:25PM
Until very recently, The idea of this happening would have been dismissed by the general public because of the perception of the internet being full of nothing but sites like this(geek/nerd hubs) and pornography. The Arab Spring may have been the turning point in public perception in online discourse mattering in the 'real world', the apathy to the people targeted still continues though.
No longer do some of the movies about dystopian futures with overt government surveillance, no oversight and technology to do it seem paranoid, they are a reality.
I don't even know what to think or do about it anymore. Resistance and subversion are futile when the kool-aid is still being drunk by the majority, you can easily be discredited and your reputation destroyed even if you have nothing to hide, as these leaks prove.
Maybe I should just admit defeat, the inevitable acquiescence to the machine looms large. If Manning and Snowden could barely rock the boat with their access and exposure as a result, what can I do with my good intentions?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday February 27 2014, @01:42AM
There are really only 2 choices: lay down and die, or stand and fight. As tired and discouraged as I often get, I am just not wired to do the former. Too ornery. Also, I have seen who these people are on the other side. They are not supermen, they are not all-powerful. They are largely deviant, sociopathic D-stringers who underwhelm on every level. A brief thought experiment could help clarify this. Imagine that you're a brilliant, transcendentally competent and creative professional for whom complex puzzles are trifles and conventional wisdom and accepted thinking are unbearable straitjackets to your free-flying mind. Then picture yourself working in a job that requires you to fill out paperwork in triplicate to get more pens and take orders from someone who doesn't even know enough to understand when to write "they're" and when to write "their." Now, try to add up how many nanoseconds it would take before you got the fuck out of that place. Sure some might say well they'd stay if they were paid enough, but how many people do you know who are at that level who are motivated by money? So you have to slide the bar on down the steep side of the bell curve to get to the people who are so mediocre that the things that repel the bright, they find comforting.
In short, the evil dudes in government who do this stuff are eminently beatable. Don't surrender. Beat them.
(Score: 2) by dmc on Thursday February 27 2014, @02:21AM
How about option number 3- don't put 666 as a suffix to your username. It makes you appear to be a shill (saying the right things, but informationally poisoned to ensure you get the opposite of mainstream traction to your ideas)