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The first sentence was sarcasm. But if you need a reference, how about Iraq WMDs. I'm not on the hook to prove anything. TFA provides literally zero evidence o

by zaroth 8y ago

The first sentence was sarcasm. But if you need a reference, how about Iraq WMDs. I'm not on the hook to prove anything. TFA provides literally zero evidence of their claim other than to assert it strongly. In my opinion, the most strongly asserted claims accompanied by "we can't tell you the evidence, but we turned it over to someone else who also can't tell you"... well, haven't we seen how that turns out enough already over the last 2 years? My point is simply that TFA asserts a lot and backs it up with nothing but hyperbole.

village-idiot 8y ago
It’s time to put “but what about the WMDs” away as an argument.
- zaroth 8y ago
  Sorry I mentioned it! It has nothing to do with my premise, as we're not even talking about intelligence agency assessments here. My point was simply that this is a mealy-mouthed statement which does not assert anything about what, if any, evidence may have been obtained or analyzed; > "Our investigators and several experts concluded with high confidence that the Saudis had access to Bezos’ phone, and gained private information."
  - village-idiot 8y ago
    This is pretty common in intelligence work because admitting what evidence you’ve found can compromise sources.
archgoon 8y ago
Funny you should mention the Iraq WMDs. WMDs were cited as justification to go to war against Iraq, a war that the Bush administration had a variety of political, ideological, strategic and economic reasons for wanting to engage in. What incentives do de Becker and Bezos have that would cause them to falsely accuse the government of Saudi Arabia? It seems that such an action would be risky to say the least. Of course, the potential risk doesn't mean that they don't have such reasons (or even that their inference based on whatever data they have is correct), but I am curious as to what you think are the likely explanations.
- ShamelessC 8y ago
  > What incentives do de Becker and Bezos have that would cause them to falsely accuse the government of Saudi Arabia? It seems that such an action would be risky to say the least. It seemed the implied incentive for Bezos to accuse the Saudis was to portray himself as the victim and not the victimizer. He also had beef with the Saudis before this happened. Finally, his medium posts and frantic behavior suggested he may have been letting panic and paranoia get the better of him. BTW, not saying that I think any of this is true (and this article suggests it isn't). Just summarizing what others have suggested.
- zaroth 8y ago
  Bezos’ initial medium post seemed to me like wild conspiracy theory born of Messiah complex. But the incentives are massive. The world’s richest man had a huge PR problem with stories coming out about how his wife actually was instrumental in helping build Amazon in the early days. Half his fortune on the line. Perhaps his controlling stake in Amazon, too? How many Amazon shares will his ex-wife walk away with at the end of this? Aside from the divorce which will be the most damaging event in Jeff’s life, the PR hit is not insignificant. If Jeff can tie AMI to illegal spying he can possibly take down the entire company. Is revenge not a good enough motive? He is certainly not a disinterested third party. This is a great albatross to distract from an otherwise big story.
  - darkpuma 8y ago
    We know there was a conspiracy to murder and dismember a journalist. Your suggestion that it's outlandish to consider a conspiracy to blackmail an owner of a newspaper is intellectually dishonest. Frankly it's insulting.
    - zaroth 8y ago
      To propose such a strawman of my position, and then accuse me of being “intellectually dishonest” and “insulting”. Wow. I never said outlandish. I said people claiming Gavin said he had evidence were incorrect, because TFA literally never claims to have evidence. Let alone direct evidence. Let alone incontrovertible evidence. I think it’s absolutely incumbent on the accuser to provide at least some general description of the form and substance of evidence that was obtained to support a claim such as this. This is not asking too much from a private citizen who apparently had unlimited funds from his boss (the richest man in the world) to exact revenge on someone who attacked him in one of the most financially damaging ways imaginable. Since when does HN accept conspiracy theories with absolutely nothing to back them up? I’ve seen the post “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” upvoted to the top of many discussions. Why does that not apply here? Doubly so in a case where the accuser is so personally vested in the outcome. You propose that because we know conspiracy A (through tremendous amounts of actual evidence) so therefore we must entertain a tenuously related conspiracy theory B without any evidence? Please don’t accuse me of being insulting and dishonest on the basis of frankly basic skepticism of a conspiracy theory, particularly if that is the extent of your rebuttal. The political skirmishes of the worlds richest men don’t really concern me. What does concern me is the posited existence of a remotely installable no-touch root access zero day for a presumably up-to-date iPhone, and secondarily, that it’s being weaponized by foreign government against private US citizens — meaning it apparently doesn’t require the carrier’s cooperation to deploy, which is what would shock me the most, because baseband exploit would be the most obvious vector.
zaroth 8y ago
I’m going to leave this link here for future reference: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/02/bezos-saudi-hacking-allegations-lack-detail-experts.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/02/bezos-saudi-hacking-allegati... So many downvotes to my comments on this story, I am curious to see where it all ends up.

by zaroth 8y ago

village-idiot 8y ago

It’s time to put “but what about the WMDs” away as an argument.

zaroth 8y ago
Sorry I mentioned it! It has nothing to do with my premise, as we're not even talking about intelligence agency assessments here. My point was simply that this is a mealy-mouthed statement which does not assert anything about what, if any, evidence may have been obtained or analyzed; > "Our investigators and several experts concluded with high confidence that the Saudis had access to Bezos’ phone, and gained private information."
- village-idiot 8y ago
  This is pretty common in intelligence work because admitting what evidence you’ve found can compromise sources.

archgoon 8y ago

Funny you should mention the Iraq WMDs. WMDs were cited as justification to go to war against Iraq, a war that the Bush administration had a variety of political, ideological, strategic and economic reasons for wanting to engage in. What incentives do de Becker and Bezos have that would cause them to falsely accuse the government of Saudi Arabia? It seems that such an action would be risky to say the least. Of course, the potential risk doesn't mean that they don't have such reasons (or even that their inference based on whatever data they have is correct), but I am curious as to what you think are the likely explanations.

ShamelessC 8y ago
> What incentives do de Becker and Bezos have that would cause them to falsely accuse the government of Saudi Arabia? It seems that such an action would be risky to say the least. It seemed the implied incentive for Bezos to accuse the Saudis was to portray himself as the victim and not the victimizer. He also had beef with the Saudis before this happened. Finally, his medium posts and frantic behavior suggested he may have been letting panic and paranoia get the better of him. BTW, not saying that I think any of this is true (and this article suggests it isn't). Just summarizing what others have suggested.
zaroth 8y ago
Bezos’ initial medium post seemed to me like wild conspiracy theory born of Messiah complex. But the incentives are massive. The world’s richest man had a huge PR problem with stories coming out about how his wife actually was instrumental in helping build Amazon in the early days. Half his fortune on the line. Perhaps his controlling stake in Amazon, too? How many Amazon shares will his ex-wife walk away with at the end of this? Aside from the divorce which will be the most damaging event in Jeff’s life, the PR hit is not insignificant. If Jeff can tie AMI to illegal spying he can possibly take down the entire company. Is revenge not a good enough motive? He is certainly not a disinterested third party. This is a great albatross to distract from an otherwise big story.
- darkpuma 8y ago
  We know there was a conspiracy to murder and dismember a journalist. Your suggestion that it's outlandish to consider a conspiracy to blackmail an owner of a newspaper is intellectually dishonest. Frankly it's insulting.
  - zaroth 8y ago
    To propose such a strawman of my position, and then accuse me of being “intellectually dishonest” and “insulting”. Wow. I never said outlandish. I said people claiming Gavin said he had evidence were incorrect, because TFA literally never claims to have evidence. Let alone direct evidence. Let alone incontrovertible evidence. I think it’s absolutely incumbent on the accuser to provide at least some general description of the form and substance of evidence that was obtained to support a claim such as this. This is not asking too much from a private citizen who apparently had unlimited funds from his boss (the richest man in the world) to exact revenge on someone who attacked him in one of the most financially damaging ways imaginable. Since when does HN accept conspiracy theories with absolutely nothing to back them up? I’ve seen the post “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” upvoted to the top of many discussions. Why does that not apply here? Doubly so in a case where the accuser is so personally vested in the outcome. You propose that because we know conspiracy A (through tremendous amounts of actual evidence) so therefore we must entertain a tenuously related conspiracy theory B without any evidence? Please don’t accuse me of being insulting and dishonest on the basis of frankly basic skepticism of a conspiracy theory, particularly if that is the extent of your rebuttal. The political skirmishes of the worlds richest men don’t really concern me. What does concern me is the posited existence of a remotely installable no-touch root access zero day for a presumably up-to-date iPhone, and secondarily, that it’s being weaponized by foreign government against private US citizens — meaning it apparently doesn’t require the carrier’s cooperation to deploy, which is what would shock me the most, because baseband exploit would be the most obvious vector.

zaroth 8y ago

I’m going to leave this link here for future reference: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/02/bezos-saudi-hacking-allegations-lack-detail-experts.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/02/bezos-saudi-hacking-allegati... So many downvotes to my comments on this story, I am curious to see where it all ends up.