Thinly veiled propaganda.
Until our government actually starts being transparent these hacks are the only insight into the actual thoughts and motivations of our world leaders.
Until our government actually starts being transparent these hacks are the only insight into the actual thoughts and motivations of our world leaders.
Americans read the government's emails: "This is an outrage!"
It's the government that should be the more transparent one - not the citizens, who are supposed to "own" the government.
Yet things are very much the other way around right now - by a long shot. Government secrecy has only expanded under Obama, even after promising more transparency compared to Bush's own secrecy. Almost every remotely sensitive government document gets "classified" these days. This nonsense needs to stop.
It's even worse when the media colludes with the government to tell citizens that it's "illegal" to read these emails.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161019/07004935835/cnn-t...
I'm pretty confident Zittrain would like to see greatly reduced government secrecy and greatly increased privacy protections and doesn't mean to defend the status quo around either of those things.
Should everyone who ever worked for the government have all of their private email and correspondence exposed? Should anyone who is connected to any political party in any way be subject to having their private digital lives splayed open for everyone to see?
I could see if someone was exposing some specific correspondence that is relevant to government wrongdoing. But what purpose does it serve to dump everything from someone's account(s) indiscriminately? Does the guy that does the trip-planning for the Secretary of State deserve that?
Going down this road, one can see how these hacks can be used to silence dissent, punish political dissidents, influence elections, and who knows what else. Maybe it is inevitable given that there are many state actors who will do whatever they want to further their goals.
But who knows, maybe stuff like this will convince the powers that be that trying to weaken or ban encrypted communications is a REALLY bad idea.
Anyone who doesn't see how we are on the path to totalitarianism is deluding themselves.
Was that rhetorical supposed to convince me of something?
why do you think you should have the right to this? it is quite extreme. anyone's "actual" thoughts are their own business. judge them by their actions. godknows, there's proof enough out there about how shitty the US government is.