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Comment by bandrami | Hacker News Reader

The weirdest thing is that Drake had already whistleblown about the program in 2005. It was front page on the NYT and WP. But 8 years later everybody seemed to have completely forgotten that and acted like Snowden was revealing something new.

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People keep forgetting because of this good old two-pronged psy-op:

"Wow, you must wear a tinfoil hat, you really think the government is tapping your phones?"

"Wow, you didn't already know that every phone is tapped? You're so behind the times. Every cool person is already jaded about that."

There's almost no will from voters to fight this, so the discourse instantly leaps from "impossible" to "acceptable".

And if it's in a 'I can't believe they would be doing it, really?' territory (black ops, black sites, torture, drone killings, ...), they make a movie about it, effectively normalizing the action for the audience.

"They"? Is Hollywood now part of Pentagon/NSA/...?

Hollywood has been influenced by the Pentagon for a long time.

To put more context in this: movies made with military equipment need special approval by the us military, and they will not generally approve “unpatriotic” movies and blacklist studios who do make movies they disapprove of… from Defense dot gov:

“ The Defense Department has a long-standing relationship with Hollywood. In fact, it’s been working with filmmakers for nearly 100 years with a goal that’s two-fold: to accurately depict military stories and make sure sensitive information isn’t disclosed.”

https://www.defense.gov/News/Inside-DOD/blog/article/2062735...

If this is information anyone can get by flying a drone around military equipment or buying old equipment offered for sale, this seems like a startling suppression of first amendment rights

How so? Hollywood wants to make money. And most Hollywood decision makers want to brag about having Important Friends in High Places (like the DoD). Producing anti-war movies (or otherwise making the DoD look bad) would get them ~nothing that they really want.

That goes down the same conspiracy theory rabbit hole like claiming that all state employee bureaucrats just try to bloat their dept. to have more power which ultimately wastes tax money.

Some people have standards and want to do good. Some of them work in Hollywood. And some of them in your city's administration. Not everybody is as selfish and unethical as portrayed here.

Maybe it reflects on the person expressing such theories though.

The theory is actually that some people have standards, some people just want to advance, and in the long run the latter will inevitably dominate the organization.

Yep. About as "conspiracy" as "managers in the XYZ Corp. Sales Dept. are all eager to make XYZ Corp's products look good".

Meanwhile...the US Army's Public Affair Dept. is headed by a 2-star general (same rank as the top general in command of an entire Army Division), and its mission is:

"Public affairs fulfills the Army's obligation to keep the American people and the Army informed, and helps to establish the conditions that lead to confidence in America's Army and its readiness to conduct operations in peacetime, conflict and war."

(Source: https://www.army.mil/publicaffairs/ I'd guess that the Navy, Air Force, etc. all have similar...)

Not necessarily. Good company leadership pushes against this and keeps the people with standards.

This kind of statement assumes a too simple model of the involved actors.

https://worldbeyondwar.org/the-pentagon-and-cia-have-shaped-...

The Pentagon and CIA Have Shaped Thousands of Hollywood Movies into Super Effective Propaganda

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/how-hollywood-became-the-unof...

How Hollywood became the unofficial propaganda arm of the U.S. military

https://www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/military-culture/2022...

New documentary scrutinizes Pentagon-Hollywood relationship — but is it propaganda?

https://www.jstor.org/stable/45129369

The Historical Roots of CIA-Hollywood Propaganda

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/may/26/top-gun-for-hir...

Top Gun for hire: why Hollywood is the US military’s best wingman

https://netzpolitik.org/2022/dude-wheres-my-privacy-how-a-ho...

How a Hollywood star lobbies the EU for more surveillance

The European Union debates a new law that could force platforms to scan all private messages for signs of child abuse. Its most prominent advocate is the actor Ashton Kutcher.

> "Wow, you didn't already know that every phone is tapped?..."

Not sure I'd call it psy-op.

When it became feasible for the NSA to essentially tap every phone in the U.S. I think most of us just presume that they will do just that.

Historically, it's what those with power will do — exercise it.

And for all number of examples in history we are not naive enough to think that their saying they're not doing it (are no longer doing it) means nothing.

> When it became feasible for the NSA to essentially tap every phone in the U.S. I think most of us just presume that they will do just that.

Much narrower claims were dismissed as paranoia before Snowden's disclosures. The comment you replied to made that point specifically.

One bit of trivia that came out of it is that since WWI, the FBI has received from USPS a photograph of the destination and return address of every letter mailed in the US (the analogy with telephony metadata is pretty obvious).

When they brought back the X-Files for one season a few years ago they did an episode on this premise: the shadowy conspiracy master actually releases youtube videos describing what he does, on the grounds that nobody knows the difference between truth and untruth anymore, so it only helps him to further muddy the waters.

This is similar to the climate change problem.

First it was a problem for the people of 2050.

Then 2023 happened and it was too late so why bother doing anything.

I think the simplest explanation is that people have it good enough to not rock the boat, and those among the literally unwashed, and untreated, masses who don't have bread and circuses would quickly be shutdown if they tried to move on any part of the government.

Seems to me this state of surveillance has just been accepted as a norm. People in the business have taken precautions like using more encryption and auditable open source, while the people outside the tech business just shrug their shoulders and shake their fists at dirty politicians.

>People in the business have taken precautions like using more encryption

Do you mean for their own small scale activities?

The only ECDH curves possible to use on the big tech internet were given by the head of the NSA with no explanation and are manipulatable.

ED25519 is not a NIST curve.

And Ed25519 is not supported by major CAs.

Oh, major CAs. GP spoke of Ed25519 not being useable on "the big tech internet", but didn't mention certificates or certificate authorities.

> And Ed25519 is not supported by major CAs.

Perhaps because until February 2023 (when FIPS 186-5 was published) it wasn't approved for US government use:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EdDSA#Standardization_and_impl...

So there would have been complications for a sizeable base of potential customers (US, contractors, allies).

I meant in many ways, not just encryption. Just didn't feel like elaborating.

For example my $dayjob does government contracts (in europe) and we're noticing a lot more agencies request on-prem, within borders, service hosting.

Before Snowden people thought you were a conspiracy theorist if you talked about it. Snowden's revelations changed that...

Snowden also brought the goods (actual docs) so that the existing cases and inquiries could proceed without getting the Glomar response - “cannot answer the question of whether you have standing, as we can neither confirm nor deny the program either exists.”

And this was deliberate. Those in the know knew _of_ the program, but could do little actionable with that knowledge without Snowden’s public proof.

The president's order expired in 2007. Some people thought it meant the illegal parts stopped. And some reports before 2013 said Trailblazer never operated fully.

Except after Drake's revelation Congress rushed back to DC for an emergency session to make the program legal.

What law do you believe made domestic spying legal?

Right, a friend told me about this many years before. She worked on the networking infrastructure and knew what it was being used for. I didn't think much of it at the time and I thought it was common knowledge. When the Snowden "revelations" came out it, I was surprised that this was considered news. I understand that perhaps there wasn't an official website laying the whole thing out, but at a minimum it took a lot of people to set up and run and I really don't think it was ever terribly secret to begin with.

"My friend who worked directly on this told me about it, so I don't understand how everyone else didn't already know about it."

And 20+ years earlier in Bamford's The Puzzle Palace most the capabilities were laid out, but also forgotten to maybe the previous generation?

It's really not weird at all.

When the mainstream media doesn't report on something, it's forgotten within days. They dictate what most people think and talk about.

Pandora papers? Pleasure Island?

What was the name of the woman that got jailed? Do you remember her jail sentence being a joke? What about the list?

What was in the news two weeks ago? What was NOT in the news two weeks ago, despite being noteworthy?

Manufacturing Consent is a must read.

And here I'm searching why the rapper Drake whistle blowed the NSA

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