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Comment by greenyoda | Hacker News Reader

"No phrase has been bandied about more than “conspiracy theory” in describing Hersh’s reporting. Critics argue that he’s accusing “hundreds of people across three governments of staging a massive international hoax that has gone on for years.” How could that be possible?"

The mass surveillance by NSA, GCHQ and the rest of the "Five Eyes" intelligence organizations involved thousands of people in several countries and was covered up for a long time, perpetuating the hoax that "the NSA only spies on foreign nationals". Then Snowden came along. Governments are pretty good at covering up their secrets.

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While the scope was not known, Trailblazer, Thin Thread and Turbulence were known about, and whistleblown about fairly shortly after their inception.

The difference between when Binney & Drake etc blew the whistle and when Snowden did is the time that had passed since 9/11.

Binney started making noise in 2002, when the public mood was "If it catches bad guys, it's all good" Drake began making noise at the same time, and first went to the media in 2005, when the Iraq & Afghanistan wars, and the hunt for Bin Laden were still relatively well supported.

Snowden went public much later, and with much more detail, but if the first 2 (and the others who blew the whistle at the same time) had gotten media attention, the program may not have spread as far as it had by the time Snowden came along.

Governments are fairly terrible at covering up secrets, the question is whether the media or the public want to pay attention.

> the time that had passed since 9/11.

The difference between when Binney & Drake blew the whistle and Snowden doing the same is that Snowden brought evidence. Binney & Drake were easily dismissed and buried by the media and the government because it was mostly their word against the government's word.

The public general distrusts any claim that the government might not be the constitution-following, freedom-creating ideal they were taught in school. Usually, accusations of corruption in a government agency are dismissed as "conspiracy theories" even when overwhelming evidence is available, due to a faith that "it can't happen here"[1]. You see similar faith in how the public usually accepts the police at their word, even in ridiculous circumstances as we've seen with some of the recent high-profile police-brutality/murder incidents.

Combine this paranoia style[2] of distrust with the usual spy-agency secrecy and no evidence the public could see - Binney & Drake never had a chance.

It was a lot harder to ignore and dismiss the accusations when the Guardian started publishing the powerpoint slides that were stamped "TOP SECRET//SI//ORCON//NOFORN".

[1] obZappa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svdrAHn_LGo

[2] http://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-ame...

In fact, public awareness of massive NSA surveillance probably dates back to at least 1975 with the Church Committee: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee

You realize the irony of linking to that article, with the following quote:

> Then on December 22, 1974, The New York Times published a lengthy article by Seymour Hersh detailing operations engaged in by the CIA over the years that had been dubbed the "family jewels".

Seymour Hersh was instrumental in bringing the CIA spying revelations to the public view then.

It is a commonplace that "you can't keep secrets in Washington" or "in a democracy," that "no matter how sensitive the secret, you're likely to read it the next day in the New York Times." These truisms are flatly false. They are in fact cover stories, ways of flattering and misleading journalists and their readers, part of the process of keeping secrets well. --Daniel Ellsberg - Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers

Or, alternatively, you aren't living in a democracy.

Or "a democracy" is just a word that means nothing.

Oh no, no, no. Democracy has a real meaning and we shouldn't let the politicians and opinon leaders force us to go along with their double speak.

Not any more. Now it just means that the public is involved in the selection of the ruling class, but the degree of this involvement is largely symbolic - see the US case with only 2 viable choices and the widespread gerrymandering.

That sounds good and all, but something a lot of people forget is you don't need to elect a third party for them to make a difference. Third party votes represent a block of voters ripe for cherry picking if one of the two major parties is willing to take a stand on issues that are important to third party voters.

Kings and "Nobility" were a ruling class, but we wouldn't accept them anymore. Elected (or not) "representatives" and a bunch of central bankers are another, but they're just fine.

Yes and no on the awareness of domestic surveillance.

We did have credible information prior to Snowden, Binney and Drake as noted, also Mark Klein who disclosed AT&T's Room 641A.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

What didn't exist was the extensive documentation required to push past disinformation and lack-of-standing arguments used in court cases.

Snowden changed _that_ entirely.

And, yes, he also showed the _even greater_ scope of surveillance.

Confidentiality containment has been a leaky vessel, but it's been neither perfectly contained nor perfectly disclosed. As is ever the case.

Agreed.

You can't rule out conspiracy theories automatically, because conspiracies do happen.

Conspiracy theories are right, some of the time.

edit: In fact, it's good if we have a paranoid part of the populace that constantly looks for conspiracies. Makes it more likely we'll find the real ones. Kind of like how science works!

They say that if someone really is following you, then youre not paranoid.

You can be paranoid and right at the same time.

Or, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they're not out to get you."

My usual line: not all conspiracies are merely theories.

I think there is a difference between not talking about an activity, and having dozens of people actively tell a fake story.

This is the most important point in my opinion.

If you can get the main media outlets to all tell one story, it doesn't matter if one media outlet tells the real story: The others will drown it out.

And if the 'real' story seems to be gaining any traction, they will attack.

They will attack it because otherwise it will detract from their outlet's supposed credibility, version of the truth.

If you can make 100 mouths sing, it doesn't matter than a few many be singing a different tune.

Few people will give up their career and risk prosecution or perhaps go into exile simply to reveal the truth. Snowden is an exception. If the truth does come out, but without documentation, it will be impossible to distinguish from a conspiracy theory.

I like pointing out that the Manhattan Project employed 100,000 workers.

But s much smaller few knew specifically what they were building.

And communication tech was much less efficient then.

Was it publically known that something was being built?

And then there's this:

> Oak Ridge used one-seventh of all the electricity produced in the United States

(Source http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1652.html)

You'd think someone might notice.

Truman, as vice president, did not know it was being built. It cost over $20 billion in current dollars.

With a big project like that during wartime it would probably be fairly easy to cover up. Tons of money is being expended, you just cook the books a little bit and spread that $20bil over a bunch of other huge expenses.

That might make you ask what we're currently spending $20 billion on that nobody knows about, though.

$275 billion, due to inflation.

The $20 billion figure is after inflation. I've seen estimates as much as $28 billion.

In actual dollars it was $2 billion.

"Millions of people on the planet believe in Santa Claus, proving that it's very easy to create cover ups involving crowds across multiple continents".

See the fallacy you're committing there?

I have no idea what you're talking about - perhaps you can expand on your thoughts a bit?

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