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Comment by ogijaoijfawje | Hacker News Reader

I believe this "source code" is made up, invented for the masses. In fact, the more and more I see of these surveillance reports and reveals, the more I believe this is all purposeful deception, and that while it may be true they're doing all these things, they aren't leaks, but announcements.

On a board where most of us should be familiar with the concept of not trusting user input, I think we should all take a step backward and treat these "leaks" as just that: input from an untrusted source. This could all be a fabrication we're buying into.

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Poor enough you use a throwaway, but I see what you're trying to tell.

I personally believe the NDR/Spiegel to be reputable, trustworthy media. It may be that we have another Hitler's diary scandal there, but the other Snowden/NSA material they have published so far has held up examinations, the NSA iirc even acknowledging some of the docs as actually valid.

I'm not disputing that the NSA stuff is real - of course they're doing it, it's what the agency is expected to do.

I'm disputing whether these are leaks or announcements. The media might not even know they're part of the plan. Is it that farfetched for the NSA to say "Hey, we want to make this information public for some reason, and we're going to do so by using a whistleblower. You're going to release all these documents to a bunch of media sources and live abroad for a while and be hailed as a hero"? There's a long history of leaking information, factual or otherwise, for a number of purposes. There's potentially no end to the rabbit hole. Maybe Snowden doesn't even know he's part of the plan.

It's my opinion that the NSA, some group, or some individual, is letting us know they're watching closely. Maybe they're acclimating us to the idea of being spied on, or worse, distracting us from or preparing us for something else. I think the big picture has yet to be revealed.

Something worth considering is the conditions necessary for having both subjective and objective expectation of privacy. If nobody expects to be able to avoid the NSA, nobody can expect to have subjective expectation of privacy.

NSA will certainly know everybody's reaction to the Snowden leaks.

I figure the absolute worst case scenario imaginable is that USGOV is producing a list of sysadmins and privacy conscious individuals for extermination. Most "coding" seems to be happening now several layers up from linux systems. If the Government wanted, they could kill everyone who knew how to actually use a computer. Then they could "Teach low income Americans to program" and then just conveniently forget to teach them the full stack. Note, I don't think this is happening, but it isn't unimaginable.

In addition, the narrative has been very pro CIA since the very beginning. There have been a lot of people making the clear distinction between machine intelligence and human intelligence, which is definately a CIA line.

If it is an intentional leak then we should ask ourselves what benefit or what effect does this information have?

For example - would it reduce the number of people using TAILS, or increase? Would it make technologist laugh at incompetence and make the NSA less scary, or would it lead to more intense scrutiny and wariness?

That is what we should be asking, not disregarding the information. We should look at the effects. The nature of the comments in this thread is one of those.

A magician (conjurer) uses misdirection of the viewers attention and a strong narrative as his primary tools for deception.

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