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Comment by jjordan | Hacker News Reader

If you've ever watched the movie "Enemy of the State", which came out in 1998, I don't know how you can come away from that movie thinking anything other than someone in that script writing pipeline had some insider knowledge of what was happening. So many of the things they talk about in the film were confirmed by the Snowden releases that it's kinda scary.

Today, it's almost a national societal resignation that "you have no privacy, get over it." I wish that weren't the case, but I'd like to see more representation embrace privacy as the basic right it should be again.

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The 1982 book "The Puzzle Palace" from James Bamford covered NSA capabilities (and was sanctioned, nonetheless), etc..

There were also FOIA requests revealing much capability.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bamford

I wrote my dissertation on information privacy back in 2003. Post 9/11, privacy was WILDLY unpopular thanks to government propaganda. It's never recovered. I walk around all the time thinking about how we are so close to what East Germans had to deal with, it's just soft glove tyranny here <for now>.

i.e. The movie "The lives of others." :|

If they remade that movie with a modern spin, it would be an AI model deciding who is loyal and who isn't.

I don't think it needed any kind of special foresight to write that script. The idea that the NSA/Intelligence community was monitoring communications to that degree was fringe but not outlandish. Snowden confirmed and provided crucial evidence for what many suspected for a long time.

I've long held that a useful counterintelligence strategy is to weave real operations into fictional films, such that if someone catches on and tries to tell people about it, the response is simply "you schizophrenic - that's the plot of Die Hard 4!"

Slightly less conspiratorial version is that agents and clerks with knowledge of operations get drunk at the same bars as Hollywood script writers

> that's the plot of Die Hard 4

I must admit, the plausibility of corrupt government officials triggering a disaster to irreversibly steal bajillions of tax dollars hits a little differently today, 18 years later.

Not just due to the dramatis personae in charge, or the existence of cryptocurrencies, but also the real-world overlap of the two.

That is largely correct, even if not for that specific purpose/reason. Those people are largely self-discrediting, among other things.

Right before Snowden, I met a "fiction" author whose DefCon presentation was about government attempts at management of conspiracy theorists. His SciFi writings were the technically-dense ramblings you'd expect from somebody who'd spent much of his early decades contracting for secretive government agencies.

During both his speech and in the introduction to his book Mindgames, he mentions that most DoD-funded personnel (staff or contract) sign agreements which give Agency-censorship, even after employment ends. Richard suggests that a method to reduce overall censorship is to write "fiction" books that contain less than 90% truth. The secret, he maintains, is to not distinguish between truths and embellishments.

----

I listened to most of Richard's speech, some fifteen years ago, with my eyes rolling around in my head (yeah... sure... okay...). It wasn't until my IBEW apprenticeship, primarily working inside large data centers during the Snowden revelations, that I realized the orchestrated lies narrating our headlines.

Don't carry the internet in your pocket with you everywhere; use cash; spend some unmonitored time reading real books purchased from actual stores; pet your cat for just one more minute.

[*] Note: I belive Richard's surname was Thiele or Thieme, but cannot locate his book at the moment — he was an absolute nut, but 80% of his publications seem to have proven truthful to-date.

> government attempts at management of conspiracy theorists.

The Mel Gibson movie Conspiracy Theory goes into a version of this.

In the conspiracy world, there's the trope on Merlin's magic wand was made from the wood of a holly tree and was used to cause confusion and mind control type of spells.

Thanks for tonight's movie recommendation (Braveheart was sick, I'll give Mel another chance!).

>Merlin's holly wand

The More You Know™ [0]

[0] https://www.perplexity.ai/search/what-is-the-significance-of...

Oh please don’t think I was suggesting it. It’s just what the movie was about. It’s. It on me if it’s not your cup of tea. Brave heart it isn’t.

How had I never seen this? Mel Gibson and a red-headed stalkee Julia Roberts as co-leads!?! Patrick Stewart as government villain?!?

My review after watching it last night (thanks again): definitely worth watching, but you'd be a nut to recommend this to anybody that has both feet on this planet. The first-half does a great job capturing what being a schizoid talkaholic feels like (both for self and others). The second-half is action packed with multiple mindfucks for the audience ("why does he have that picture?!" 3x). Not a good date movie, keep it for a personal tinfoil.popcorn movienight.

Ensemble: 9/10

Mel: 5/10 plays crazy too well

Julia: 10/10 wow no publishable notes

Patrick: 8.5 strobelit flashbacks of Captain Kirk waterboarding The Passion

Actor Synergy: 2/10 nobody seemed too thrilled with the screenplay

Explosions: 10/10 guy knew what he was doing DAM

Tinfoil: all the squarefeets

Believability (1997): 2/10

Believability (2025): 8.5/10

Overall: 5.5/10

Worth watching, even if just certain sassy actress scenes. Julia Roberts explores all damsel emotions in this one.

Maybe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echelon_Conspiracy ? Less shizzles, more AI.

Or can I interest you in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person_of_Interest_(TV_series) ?

Even moar AI! (Much better than Mr.Robot, IMO. Also Amy Acker!1!!)

Here's the book: https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Games-Richard-Thieme/dp/09383262...

Homepage:

https://www.thiemeworks.com

To be clear I am NOT endorsing this author/book (even though I've met him, enjoyed conversation, and read this book), I just thought his introduction (10% lies) was a clever way to avoid government censorship. Was actually surprised the rating is >4 stars =P

>>"Not for those whose feet are firmly planted on a single planet" —IMHO Best Amazon Review

Even more clearly (related to author's reputation): although I do believe in panspermia (theory of life transfer via interstellar comets), the part I consider definitely "Thieme's 10% Lies" heavily overlaps with my non-belief in extraterrestrial visitors (why would any civilization advanced-enough waste their limited resources colonizing dumb apes?).

But military drones doing absolutely unbelievable aerials!? Absolutely...

It's Thieme: https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Games-Richard-Thieme/dp/09383262...

Thanks for the info/rec!

Thanks for the link; I liked the author's introduction more than the rest of the book, and wouldn't recommend it to any casual reader, nor most people.

Instead, read Shusterman's Scythe trilogy (~2016-2020~); each author embraces fiction for different reasons, but I feel Shusterman's storytelling is rapidly becoming truth, whether his soothsaying was intentional (or not).

----

Welcome to /hn/

That's a sly workaround, but as it is delivered as fiction imagine that for him it must be a Cassandra-like experience.

I coincidentally read Kurt Vonnegut's first novel, Player Piano, during my first few weeks exploring ChatGPT (~January 2023~). The book explores the rebellion of automated factory workers, drawing inspiration from Vonnegut's own mid-20th-Century experiences working at a GE manufacturing facility.

That was a Cassandra-like experience.

If anybody has never read Vonnegut, I'd definitely recommend Piano over Thieme's Mindgames.

----

I'm currently halfway through Neal Shusterman's Scythe Trilogy, which he published right before LLMs became reality. A ficticious global AI entity, known collectively as "Thunderhead," begins each chapter with its own all-knowing passage about how it perceives humanity's progression.

It's really quite creepy reading, with many of Shusterman's ficticious Thunderhead passages having already proven possible (particularly: characters maintaining friendships with chatty Thunderhead; ability to know something about everything; hallucinations; government by uncodified code; ability to lie, either intentionally or by human deception).

Really exciting storytelling, and I foresee many more of its future non-predictions becoming foreseeable future.

The Scythe books are written by Neal Shusterman!

Thanks — corrected!

Did you enjoy Thunderhead even more than Scythe (like I am, 2/3rds done)? Some absolute insanity... poor "Scythe" Tyger's deception!

Book was recommended to me by my now-attorney, after rambling about LLMs enabling commoners access to lawfare during our initial consultation. Despite being "young adult fiction," Shusterman has definitely helped me to better understand my attorney brothers questing their powers [0].

[0] I am an avid reader, 70+ books per year, including all Wallace/Steinbeck/Vonnegut. The Scythe series hits. Just so good. So simple yet complex. Doesn't require thinking to read, but leaves you thinking about what you read.

It's not a conspiracy - this is why Stargate exists!

Can you explain the link?

It's the plot of an episode of SG-1 [1]

A TV show comes out that is practically the Stargate program and instead of stopping its production, the Air Force lets it go on as a cover in case the Stargate program has a leak

https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/Wormhole_X-Treme!_(episode)

I'm wondering if you're aware of the (allegedly, implying it goes on(emphasis mine)) former existence of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project_(U.S._Army_un... ?

So not only did they make a scifi show to cover up any leaks, not only did they put another scifi show in the first one as an extra cover, they conducted psychic experiments as a further coverup?!

There's clearly something here.

Intoning What are the odds? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Penny_for_Your_Thoughts_(The...

Edit: Hm no, IMO the Sci-Fi shows came much later, and that Stargate thing with the psychics was just an offshoot of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra which came much earlier, maybe just overlapping from its end, fizzling out, to the early beginnigs of Stargate. In between, and related is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Monroe and his institute.

It's generally called as pressure release valve. Talk about something adnauseum that it becomes so commonplace that it doesn't evoke strong feelings at all.

There is the CIA Publication Review board as described by author and former CIA analyst David McCloskey https://www.npr.org/2025/09/29/nx-s1-5442567/the-new-spy-thr...

Nothing jaw dropping but he surprised on what get through

The most ironic thing that never came to fruition was an X-Files spinoff [1].

The pilot aired a few months before 9/11. Depiction a plot by the (I believe) CIA to crash a passenger airplane into the WTC. And the three computer freaks/conspiracy theorists that often helped Mulder trying to stop that.

I watched it a few months after 9/11 happened. That definitely was an experience I will never forget.

Even as a German, 9/11 for me ranks in the top three defining historic moments that I actively remember that demarcated the timeline in a clear before and after. Next to Chernobyl disaster and 11/9 (fall of the Berlin Wall).

Edit:

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lone_Gunmen_(TV_series)

Tom Clancy also had a similar plot in the Jack Ryan series

Don't forget "Rebuilding America's Defenses" a paper published by Project for the New American Century, a think tank who's founding statement of principles was signed by 25 individuals, 10 of whom went on to serve in the George W. Bush administration, which calls for "A New Pearl Harbor": https://www.visibility911.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/reb...

> ...which calls for "A New Pearl Harbor":

Reading through your link, I don't see how one can say it "calls for a "A New Pearl Harbor":

>...Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor. Domestic politics and industrial policy will shape the pace and content of transformation as much as the requirements of current missions.

...

>...Absent a rigorous program of experimentation to investigate the nature of the revolution in military affairs as it applies to war at sea, the Navy might face a future Pearl Harbor – as unprepared for war in the post-carrier era as it was unprepared for war at the dawn of the carrier age.

> Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.

You may not see this as calling for a new Pearl Harbor, but it's incredibly conspicuous considering that it's exactly what an administration made of PNAC alums got, predicted a year in advance, via nationals of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safari_Club states with connections to intelligence services: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alleged_Saudi_role_in_the_Sept...

While conspiracy theories about 9/11 being some sort of an inside job are widespread, they are not supported by evidence.

That's a funny response to well-sourced facts and a document outlining strategy which was later enacted by the same folks who wrote it.

Plenty of actual conspiracies throughout history:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_conspiracies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Conspiracies

The existence of modern conspiracies should hardly be surprising. And are precisely the business of intelligence services such as those with established links to the attackers. The attack itself was, by definition, a conspiracy. There's a great deal of conjecture about who exactly was involved in that conspiracy besides the attackers themselves, and a great deal of evidence both concrete and circumstantial. Too much for a single HN comment. But I've made no claims about that beyond "Rebuilding America's Defenses" being conspicuously prescient. Which it demonstrably was.

And despite the X-files spinoff and the best-selling Clancy novel, the administration kept repeating "nobody could have predicted this!"

There is more. This was released in 1995: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illuminati:_New_World_Order

A few other links lazily searched -

The single card depicting it: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/illuminati-world-orde... (zoomable)

The whole set: https://www.ccgtrader.net/games/illuminati-nwo-ccg/limited/

One of countless articles covering that, and related stuff: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

I've held this card (already well used and worn) in my hand, shown to me by someone affiliated with the CCC in Hamburg, who had it always on him in his purse, about 2004/5.

Surreal.

> you have no privacy, get over it.

> privacy as the basic right it should be again.

See, this isn’t complicated. Privacy in the sense of Limiting Government Overreach is completely different than privacy in the sense of The Unwanted Dissemination of Embarrassing Personal Information.

The problem has nothing to do with the societal resignation you’re talking about. It isn’t even true. People are resigned that they cannot really prevent the dissemination of embarrassing information (some people would call that “growing up” ha ha). They’re not “resigned” that government overreach is inevitable.

The problem is that a lot of people WANT government overreach, as long as they perceive that it’s against the Other. That’s the problem. Advocates have failed because by conflating the two issues, they make no headway.

> almost a national societal resignation that "you have no privacy, get over it."

no it is not. This is parroting the helplessness you probably dislike. There are many factors at work in a complex demographic of modern America. It is worse than useless to repeat this incomplete and frankly lazy statement.

> If you've ever watched the movie "Enemy of the State",

any nuggets of truth like using the name Echelon is way over shadowed by "rotate on the 360 to see what's in his pocket" nonsense uttered by non-other than Jack Black which would be just at home in Tancious D Pick of Destiny

I think what you mean is that an uncritical reading of Snowden's smuggled powerpoints can be compatible with Grand Unified Conspiracy thinking that was promoted and advanced by 90s media like Enemy of the State and The X-Files. But compatibility is not truth. These things are all pretty unhinged and with little basis in reality.

Imagine actually believing all this in 2025.

As far as US persons are concerned, jeffbee is correct that the Snowden leaks are not compatible with the conspiratorial worldview represented by Enemy of the State or the X-Files. The Snowden docs showed things like if two people outside the US were discussing US politics and they mentioned Obama, then the name "Obama" would be redacted because he was a US person. The redaction of US personal info was not perfect but the situation was a very, very long way off from unchecked surveillance and assassination of US persons that was depicted in those films.

That is absolutely not what the Snowden docs showed. Would highly recommend familiarizing yourself at least a little bit with a major part of history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010s_global_surveillance_disc...

> Barton Gellman, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who led The Washington Post's coverage of Snowden's disclosures, summarized the leaks as follows:

> Taken together, the revelations have brought to light a global surveillance system that cast off many of its historical restraints after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Secret legal authorities empowered the NSA to sweep in the telephone, Internet and location records of whole populations.

It absolutely proved massive, unchecked surveillance. This has never been in dispute, what's your rationale that it didn't?

Please actually read what I wrote. You are responding to something that I did not write.

I did not claim that there wasn't "massive, unchecked surveillance". The specific claim that I made was that the conspiracy-theory films of the 1990s were based on the idea of unchecked surveillance of US citizens that was then used for purposes such as targeting and murder of US citizens in the United States.

There was nothing in the Snowden documents that suggested there were rogue operators going out and murdering Americans. In fact, when it came to Americans specifically, there was minimization, and attempts to abide by FISA, none of which ever featured in 1990s-era conspiracy films. I very specifically spoke about minimization as regards Americans, not globally.

Rogue agents wouldn't leave much of a paper trail. They don't tend to slap together slide decks advertising their operations.

The Snowden docs contain nothing about US black budget funded regime change, drug smuggling, politically motivated assassinations or whatever else countless ex-intelligence whistleblowers have claimed to happen in the shadows. I sure don't think all of them can be believed 100% but I wouldn't have expected anything of this nature to show up in typical S/TS/NOFORN documents that someone like Snowden leaked.

Snowden docs don't contain* anything about what happens in DUMBS, secret military facilities like biolabs, propulsion and energy research or anything else* that conspiracy researchers are interested in.

to my knowledge/memory

* Snowden docs were never published in full so we don't know what Guardian et al decided to not publish because they're all too intertwined with intelligence

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