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Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

Tim Cook isn't in charge. They're starting the process of complying with, acquiescing to, the multitudes of politicians in the West that are demanding a change in the super structure of online privacy and how it's treated.

Anyone here think Yahoo executives actually decided whether the company joined PRISM or not? Those executives also were not in charge. There is a bigger boss in DC, radically more powerful, and most everybody here knows what they're after. They're sick of waiting, they're going to attempt to make another big surveillence move during the relative calm of the Biden Admin (they couldn't do it effectively under Trump, there was too much chaos, the government wasn't functioning very well). What program is actually being put into place right now - that Apple is probably joining up to, as with PRISM - that we won't find out about for many years?

It's going to get a lot worse across the board over the coming decade.

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You got downvoted into greyness on your comment despite the clear, bleeding obvious fact that just a few fucking years ago, several major tech companies got outed by Snowden's leaks for having done exactly these kinds of things t the government's behest for years while those who claimed such a thing was happening were considered paranoid. It's absurdly blind to think that the same isn't possibly happening again quietly under somewhat different conditions now.

OP is probably getting downvoted for insinuation without explanation:

> There is a bigger boss in DC, radically more powerful, and most everybody here knows what they're after.

OK, so tell us! Who is the mustache-twirling villain, and what are they after? I'd love to know. Be specific. Is it Joe Biden? If so, what's the end result? He gets money? OK, draw the lines for us between this technology and Joe Biden getting money. If it's somebody else leading this conspiracy, who specifically? What specifically are they after? Without these details, OP's post is just an episode of the X-Files: Something's out there, and you know what it is, I just won't tell you!

It's obviously not Joe Biden. It's the intelligence and law enforcement agencies of the USA, i.e. CIA, NSA, FBI, who despite perhaps not having "mustaches" to "twirl" have definitely done things like "spy on all American's phone calls" and "overthrow democratically elected leaders of South America to preserve American business interests."

Joe Biden couldn't lead himself out of a paper bag; I think we all know that if ever there was a figurehead president, he's it.

Not sure why the source of things like PRISM and all have to be a single evil person - I think you watch too many Bond films. I can't articulate any sort of form to the driving will behind what we see happening to the security state over the last twenty years in particular, but we do know that privacy continues to erode, that agencies basically dictate agendas to the press through "leaks" and even by putting retirees directly on their payrolls. That much is known. I don't know if it's productive to attempt the characterization of this phenomenon as some Scoobie-Doo mystery to be solved and unmasked. It's probably more important to oppose the policies, politicians, and press that seem to align with an agenda that promotes the bargain of us turning in freedoms for a promise of safety.

Obviously it's not Joe Biden. And it's not an "evil" conspiracy of mustache-twirling villains, either, although it may seem that way if you don't agree with their worldview, which is not exactly secret.

We know there is a global elite who have virtually unlimited financial resources and massive influence over nearly every key institution on the planet, including intelligence agencies. Some of them publicly attend meetings like the one in Davos. And yes, that includes names like Rothschild, Soros, and Gates. These are incredibly smart and hardworking people, and because of their powerful positions, they have an enormous responsibility over the governance of the planet. It's not all about money; this group has control over monetary policy, and are therefore above the fray of being divided into abstract economic units.

This group is making decisions like enacting free trade policies that reduce opportunities for the American middle class in order to more equally distribute opportunities to developing countries. Or creating surveillance networks to prevent catastrophic events which may include nuclear, biological, or cyber attacks that could threaten the global order and feasibly be deployed by a small group of individuals. Obviously, these policies give this group an enormous amounts of control over populations, but it's easy to argue it's for the greater good.

Something like CASM is more like a Noble Lie used to manufacture consent for a vital tool needed to advance their agenda, for lack of a better word. The tech community, for the most part, knows it's bullshit. But the media will control the narrative (or just ignore it), and the tech community will sound like paranoid nerdy pedophiles.

If you feel like CSAM is an overreach, then please continue to pay attention as the cyber-pandemic narrative gears up. Although anti-vaxxers are currently in the spotlight, you may have more in common with them than you think.

OK, we're getting somewhere. 1. Who are the conspirators, 2. What are they doing, 3. What is the end result, and 4. How does it benefit the conspirators?

So, for 1. you mention a shadowy "global elite" but also name Rothschild (which one?), George Soros, and Bill Gates. OK. Another poster points to the CIA, NSA, and FBI. All right.

For 2. It's "deploys CASM on cell phones". I guess this means Tim Cook has to be another conspirator.

3. What is the end result? Now, we're getting hazy. But, don't worry, most conspiracies start getting vague at this step. You say "manufacture consent for a vital tool needed to advance their agenda." What does that mean? What is the tool and what is their agenda? You hint at "equally distribute opportunities to developing countries." Is that what's going on here? How do you connect the dots between CASM and that? Or, maybe it's "prevent nuclear, biological, or cyber attacks." How does CASM do that? What is the end game?

Finally, 4. How does this all benefit the Rothschilds, George Soros, and Bill gates? Beats me, these people already have everything. What benefit would motivate this shadowy conspiracy? This is where most of these conspiracies totally break down: Drawing the line back to how the conspirators benefit.

The Rothschilds are also reportedly working with PG&E, Jerry Brown, and Solaren to use space lasers to start wildfires, resulting in high speed rail in California. Even if you could connect those dots, I don't get how it benefits the conspirators.

> Who is the mustache-twirling villain, and what are they after?

No need to try to be silly to avoid reality.

Just read all the Snowden revelations. Those very same agencies, whose mission statement is to spy on everyone, are still working their jobs of spying on everyone. It's not like they were disbanded just because Snowden revealed a tiny slice of what they were doing then.

Your strawman is absurd. Nobody needs to claim any moustache-twirling villain or some narrow conspiracy to see how the OP makes extremely valid points.

We factually know that a number of powerful three letter agencies work in tandem with each other and with other agencies in other allied governments around the world to maintain as much secretive information scooping as possible about the affairs and communications of civil society. This was blatantly revealed in 2013 for all the world to see and nothing has happened since then to indicate that it hasn't stopped happening only with some moderate adjustments to procedure.

If anything, a number of governments are now trying to normalize their efforts to the public enough that they can do it more overtly (see recent attempts at arguing for backdoors on major E2E-encrypted communications apps as an example). The simple inertia of massive state security and surveillance budgets is enough to explain much of it without resorting to any sort of James Bond-type villians, let alone pinning any specific blame on Biden as anything more than just one more president among many heads of state and previous presidents, who supports the status quo of the mission-creeping institutions around him.

This isn't even and shouldn't be viewed as a partisan-politics thing. It happens almost equally regardless of specific party in power. Obama was tacitly complicit in it just as Bush was, and Trump's administration was likely no different either, except for its internal chaos causing certain rather unique administrative problems. What evidence indicates anything sincerely changing under Biden now?

That you could be so condescending about these very established tendencies despite the absolutely concrete revelations of their existence is what's strange and disappointing.

Apple hasn't made this argument, so this isn't why they're doing it. Don't create artificial reasons. If we were to base this on hypothetical law requirements apple might as well remove all forms of encryption too. But they're not.

I mean, if it's true of course they wouldn't. No company was saying they were doing things because of prism, either. If there is a forced government cooperation they will be under a gag order.

Has Apple even once admitted knowing of, or that they participated in PRISM even when official documents were released showing that Apple joined PRISM just after Jobs died? Nope. None of the companies listed did, in fact they all publicly denied it because they are not allowed to by national security "law".

So, how can Apple make any argument when they legally aren't allowed to talk about it? Do you think Cook believes in your privacy so much he will go to prison for revealing it? Nope, he's the one who let them in Apple to begin with and "privacy" is a sales pitch everyone laps up. They've been compromised for over a decade. There is no security. It's all lies on top of lies. Have you ever heard of what happens to people when they reveal top secret government spying programs? Snowden? Drake? Binney? Manning?

The presence or lack of an argument by Apple that they're being coerced by intelligence/LE agencies is not demonstrative of anything. You know that gag orders are a thing. You know that the programs revealed by Snowden were not the subject of disclosures by the participant organizations or any argument such as you're expecting Apple to make under the same conditions.

All we know is what they do. It's not a stretch by any means to suspect that when an American corporation adopts uncharacteristic policies that violate their customers' privacy, the government is probably involved. Difference here is that unlike TrueCrypt, Apple can't just shut down. Hell, even the rumor of Apple doing this has beneficial impact to law enforcement. The press release may be the product.

Let's take the effort at the most altruistic face value - defeating child porn mongers. If you're trying to herd such people to a very narrow set of solutions that you can monitor and/or control, simply undermining trust in the alternative options may be enough without actually implementing invasive tools being discussed. The comedy in some of this is how hammy the next act can get - if I were a cynical man, I'd expect a technology to come out in response to Apple's move, or maybe it's out there already but suddenly gets a new push for mindshare. I'm sure the security world has a term for solutions like this. Not really honey pots, but more like fly paper. A product the agencies have either straight up owned or surreptitiously gained control over, marketed to people who would use it for ill.

Apple has announced they are only rolling this out to iPhones in the US. That makes it look like a legal requirement to me.

> Apple has announced they are only rolling this out to iPhones in the US. That makes it look like a legal requirement to me.

I'm just some guy with a beard, I honestly don't know anything about anything- in my eyes, it looks like less of a legal requirement and more of a stepping stone. Granted, those things aren't mutually exclusive and I'm not privy to any information others don't have, I'm just cynical.

Hell go back and check out what happened to quest over the carnivore shit. “Our” government has been pulling this shit since the 90s.

Who is “they”?

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