6 ms·

I see this kind of thing, and I think, how will a whistleblower survive the slander? Snowden and Assange both were subject to information warfare (lies is a be

by xrd 7y ago

I see this kind of thing, and I think, how will a whistleblower survive the slander? Snowden and Assange both were subject to information warfare (lies is a better word) that facts don't refute. As they say "a lie is halfway around the world before the truth has its pants on." I bet a large number of people still remember that Clinton was involved in pornography distributed from a pizza shop. Except it was not true at all. But the hatred of her lingered. What's to happen when a normal person attempts to reveal something and then video of them surfaces showing them saying all kinds of horrible things. The scariest thing about this is you could take a picture of them from their college years and make them out to be a pedophile, and if it gets repeated enough, it will become the truth. If I admit that I had a drinking problem twenty years ago, it will "all add up." That kind of imagery is impossible for our brains to fight.

catalogia 7y ago
I don't really buy it, the general public is more clever than they're often given credit for. Editing photographs became widespread due to Photoshop and now people are correctly skeptical of photographs. It's mainstream to wonder if outlandish or startling photographs have been manipulated. Sure some people will believe the bullshit, but I think "want to believe" is a big part of that. The sort of people who think Hillary Clinton eats babies believe it because they hate her, rather than hating her because they believe it.
- xrd 7y ago
  Yeah, those are all good points, and that makes me feel less concerned after my initial reaction. It does seem like you could influence a small set of people, clearly there are people that believe and don't attempt to verify outlandish things. It seems like it might work on a small scale and that could add up.
- apocalypstyx 7y ago
  The problem may not be that manipulated images are used to convince people that X is real or Y did Z, but that anything inconvenient can be written off, something that would require an order of magnitude less effort than employing the technology itself. This issue, of course, has always existed, to a degree, but now we exist in a state that is an unprecedented, in my opinion, acceleration of such tendencies. In a few decades, will it still be possible for there to be a reaction like that which came about from the video of the beating of Rodney King?
- strken 7y ago
  The general public becomes sceptical after it gets burnt. It's usually reactive, rarely proactive.
- frequentnapper 7y ago
  but the flipside of the issue is that truths can be easily dismissed as well. For example, videos of Trump lying or acting stupid can easily now be dismissed as "fake".
- titzer 7y ago
  And yet, tens of millions will suck down propaganda from one cable news TV channel and integrate it unquestioned into their worldview. (All while claiming they don't).
- xfitm3 7y ago
  Incredibly naive viewpoint. The mob / herd mentality is real, and often invoke reactions based on emotion and not facts or practicality. I can think of 10s of stories where lives have been ruined over misrepresentation of facts in the past 5-6 years. The most prominent example of this in my mind is when a reddit ps battle faked a cheerleader having diarrhea at a game. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cheerleader-accident/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cheerleader-accident/ She appeared on TV claiming this ruined her life. It was a single well edited photo. What can a video do? The general public still thinks faking video is outside of normal capability. The real problem is SWGIT will take years to catch up to deepfakes. If you include case law it will likely be decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Working_Group_%E2%80%93_Imaging_Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Working_Group_%E2%8... Worst case: You could probably go to jail if being placed at a crime, but more likely it will just ruin your life and/or your reputation with friends and your employer.
- som33 7y ago
  No, the public is dumb. The last 20 years the entire continent allowed PC software to be stolen and made client server, now every piece of software is spying on us because of mass computer illiteracy. 20 years ago hackers and nerds on slashdot feared Microsofts and the industries move towards hardware and software drm when the internet was just reaching the masses. The last 20 years has been the public buying client-server drm infected software en masse. Everything that used to be a local PC app is being pushed client-server, in such a world on privacy can exist and the public rewarded Ultima online, Everquest and world of warcraft. For those of you who don't know, two or more PC's in a network behave as a single machine, that means whoever programs the machines in the network LITERALLY OWNS THE ENTIRE NETWORK. AKa it's the ability to rewrite the laws of every computing device on the planet and the speed of light is fast enough to take over every machine on the planet. It's no longer merely "programming apps". It's literally stealing software en masse from the public. AKA to program now is "issuing commands", so now software can be infected with commands that take over your PC and remove your control and ownership. This is what windows 10 is about. Some of you make complain that software was always "licensed" and I'd tell you that those laws were bribed into being by corporate lobbyists because Capitalist governments have always been ruled by corporate elites that have rubber stamped their own laws, if in doubt see the last 200 years of IP law. The public interest lost every time, that is a blow out of the public interest never winning once. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#/media/File:Tom_Bell's_graph_showing_extension_of_U.S._copyright_term_over_time.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#/... The fact that so many are gung-ho about "software as a service" here not grasping the huge political implications, you can't possibly audit all the software apps on google play, mobile, or steam, uplay, origin, etc. So these companies can do whatever they want and since our mind did not evolve to respond to these threats, many of the public just shrug their shoulders, because the human mind did not evolve in a technocratic society, so won't perceive nor act upon the danger. So no, the push towards locked down filesystems you can't access in windows 10, encrypted binaries and vm's, UWP, is the big push to put bombs in honest binary blobs to make software unpreservable. All these incentives exist because they know the public is dumb, the fortnites of the world and TF2's hat economy, told valve and big tech companies to keep pushing because the public will eat endless amounts of shit because they most of them don't care. Imagine it's the 90's and you're buying your first PC and microsoft sells you windows, except it requires an internet connection (aka the hardware dongle) and parts of windows files and functions are held hostage on remote servers in microsofts office, most hackers of the day would not buy those PC's. That's what "software as a service" is for many of the dolts on hackernews, its hardware dongle enabled software by way of internet and splitting all of what used to be local applications into two pieces. It's the end of local applications on our PC's and mobile devices and most of you don't seem to be alarmed, it's the end of privacy permanently. Because we didn't get any property rights to own our software outright with source-code, this is why steam, world of warcraft, and all new PC games like quake champions, overwatch, exist. The end game from the early 90's was this dystopian state where all PC's on the planet are turned into dumb clients and the entire society moves to a mainframe model where no one owns their devices. Without software ownership, our devices our useless and given the criminal way in which IP law was written for software, privacy is not coming back. So to say the public is bright when it handed everything the nerds feared to the corporate world on a platter is bullshit. The entire silicon valley industry is having a part at how dumb the public is, the "client to cloud" revolution is LITERALLY, stealing local apps and trapping them on company servers so they can finally turn software into property and kill the "local file" loophole on PC's to "kill piracy" by way of software as a service, the public has no idea what NTFS is. Microsoft is now testing remote control of your file system and PC via gamepass, where companies can now set permissions to files on your PC via remote. This is what the nerds feared in the 90's on slashdot and it has come true. The fact that hackernews is basically pro "cloud" is disturbing enough on its own. Here's the industry celebrating the death of local user control of PC's. https://tifca.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/ClienttoCloud_Vision_V2.pdf https://tifca.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/ClienttoCloud_V...
meowface 7y ago
Assange also engaged in information warfare himself, for what it's worth. Including spreading fear about the Pizzagate (Clinton child molestation in pizza shop) conspiracy theory. https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/821595404500430848 https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/821595404500430848 I recall at least one other tweet where they did this, but can't seem to find it right now.
- xrd 7y ago
  That's fascinating and adds much to my understanding. Interesting.
  - meowface 7y ago
    I have mixed feelings about him and WikiLeaks. I do think he's being unfairly persecuted by global governments (though surely he knew this was a likely risk from the start), and they have released information that was in the public interest, but at the same time, the CIA director calling them a "hostile intelligence service" doesn't seem wrong. [0] In their leaked group chat logs (https://emma.best/2018/07/29/11000-messages-from-private-wikileaks-chat-released/ https://emma.best/2018/07/29/11000-messages-from-private-wik...), they behave exactly like a "para-intelligence agency" ("para" as in "paramilitary"). They happily use deceit, trickery, sockpuppetry, trolls, propaganda, and spreading of fear, doubt, and conspiracy theories to achieve their end goals, and their end goals seem to be to push things in a certain direction to achieve particular geopolitical results. Whether or not you agree with Assange's goals, he appears to have a strong "ends justify the means" mentality, much like the militaries and intelligence agencies he's opposing. Their tactics really seem identical to any intelligence agency's, at least from an information and non-kinetic perspective. And note this was a semi-private group just to talk to their supporters. One can only imagine what their internal, top secret-classified chats and phone calls are like. I suspect those would make them look even worse than they already do, and, again, I bet they would look very similar to the most secretive of CIA meetings. Maybe it's one of those "die or live long enough to see yourself become the villain" situations, or maybe Assange was always like this. I don't know. But they're very far from a journalistic organization, or a "Wiki", or a disinterested distributor of leaked information. They are highly political. Ironically, if they had more power or national backing [1], there would probably be a "WikiLeaks" trying to inform people about them. This sort of thing seems to be a phenomenon that repeats itself over and over again in history. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/14/cia-director-brands-wikileaks-a-hostile-intelligence-service https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/14/cia-director... [1] Some claim they work with Russian intelligence or are even backed by Russia, but I think it's more that Russian intelligence just saw them as a useful tool for a particular operation. I don't think any nation backs them.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

by xrd 7y ago

catalogia 7y ago

I don't really buy it, the general public is more clever than they're often given credit for. Editing photographs became widespread due to Photoshop and now people are correctly skeptical of photographs. It's mainstream to wonder if outlandish or startling photographs have been manipulated. Sure some people will believe the bullshit, but I think "want to believe" is a big part of that. The sort of people who think Hillary Clinton eats babies believe it because they hate her, rather than hating her because they believe it.

xrd 7y ago
Yeah, those are all good points, and that makes me feel less concerned after my initial reaction. It does seem like you could influence a small set of people, clearly there are people that believe and don't attempt to verify outlandish things. It seems like it might work on a small scale and that could add up.
apocalypstyx 7y ago
The problem may not be that manipulated images are used to convince people that X is real or Y did Z, but that anything inconvenient can be written off, something that would require an order of magnitude less effort than employing the technology itself. This issue, of course, has always existed, to a degree, but now we exist in a state that is an unprecedented, in my opinion, acceleration of such tendencies. In a few decades, will it still be possible for there to be a reaction like that which came about from the video of the beating of Rodney King?
strken 7y ago
The general public becomes sceptical after it gets burnt. It's usually reactive, rarely proactive.
frequentnapper 7y ago
but the flipside of the issue is that truths can be easily dismissed as well. For example, videos of Trump lying or acting stupid can easily now be dismissed as "fake".
titzer 7y ago
And yet, tens of millions will suck down propaganda from one cable news TV channel and integrate it unquestioned into their worldview. (All while claiming they don't).
xfitm3 7y ago
Incredibly naive viewpoint. The mob / herd mentality is real, and often invoke reactions based on emotion and not facts or practicality. I can think of 10s of stories where lives have been ruined over misrepresentation of facts in the past 5-6 years. The most prominent example of this in my mind is when a reddit ps battle faked a cheerleader having diarrhea at a game. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cheerleader-accident/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/cheerleader-accident/ She appeared on TV claiming this ruined her life. It was a single well edited photo. What can a video do? The general public still thinks faking video is outside of normal capability. The real problem is SWGIT will take years to catch up to deepfakes. If you include case law it will likely be decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Working_Group_%E2%80%93_Imaging_Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_Working_Group_%E2%8... Worst case: You could probably go to jail if being placed at a crime, but more likely it will just ruin your life and/or your reputation with friends and your employer.
som33 7y ago
No, the public is dumb. The last 20 years the entire continent allowed PC software to be stolen and made client server, now every piece of software is spying on us because of mass computer illiteracy. 20 years ago hackers and nerds on slashdot feared Microsofts and the industries move towards hardware and software drm when the internet was just reaching the masses. The last 20 years has been the public buying client-server drm infected software en masse. Everything that used to be a local PC app is being pushed client-server, in such a world on privacy can exist and the public rewarded Ultima online, Everquest and world of warcraft. For those of you who don't know, two or more PC's in a network behave as a single machine, that means whoever programs the machines in the network LITERALLY OWNS THE ENTIRE NETWORK. AKa it's the ability to rewrite the laws of every computing device on the planet and the speed of light is fast enough to take over every machine on the planet. It's no longer merely "programming apps". It's literally stealing software en masse from the public. AKA to program now is "issuing commands", so now software can be infected with commands that take over your PC and remove your control and ownership. This is what windows 10 is about. Some of you make complain that software was always "licensed" and I'd tell you that those laws were bribed into being by corporate lobbyists because Capitalist governments have always been ruled by corporate elites that have rubber stamped their own laws, if in doubt see the last 200 years of IP law. The public interest lost every time, that is a blow out of the public interest never winning once. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#/media/File:Tom_Bell's_graph_showing_extension_of_U.S._copyright_term_over_time.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#/... The fact that so many are gung-ho about "software as a service" here not grasping the huge political implications, you can't possibly audit all the software apps on google play, mobile, or steam, uplay, origin, etc. So these companies can do whatever they want and since our mind did not evolve to respond to these threats, many of the public just shrug their shoulders, because the human mind did not evolve in a technocratic society, so won't perceive nor act upon the danger. So no, the push towards locked down filesystems you can't access in windows 10, encrypted binaries and vm's, UWP, is the big push to put bombs in honest binary blobs to make software unpreservable. All these incentives exist because they know the public is dumb, the fortnites of the world and TF2's hat economy, told valve and big tech companies to keep pushing because the public will eat endless amounts of shit because they most of them don't care. Imagine it's the 90's and you're buying your first PC and microsoft sells you windows, except it requires an internet connection (aka the hardware dongle) and parts of windows files and functions are held hostage on remote servers in microsofts office, most hackers of the day would not buy those PC's. That's what "software as a service" is for many of the dolts on hackernews, its hardware dongle enabled software by way of internet and splitting all of what used to be local applications into two pieces. It's the end of local applications on our PC's and mobile devices and most of you don't seem to be alarmed, it's the end of privacy permanently. Because we didn't get any property rights to own our software outright with source-code, this is why steam, world of warcraft, and all new PC games like quake champions, overwatch, exist. The end game from the early 90's was this dystopian state where all PC's on the planet are turned into dumb clients and the entire society moves to a mainframe model where no one owns their devices. Without software ownership, our devices our useless and given the criminal way in which IP law was written for software, privacy is not coming back. So to say the public is bright when it handed everything the nerds feared to the corporate world on a platter is bullshit. The entire silicon valley industry is having a part at how dumb the public is, the "client to cloud" revolution is LITERALLY, stealing local apps and trapping them on company servers so they can finally turn software into property and kill the "local file" loophole on PC's to "kill piracy" by way of software as a service, the public has no idea what NTFS is. Microsoft is now testing remote control of your file system and PC via gamepass, where companies can now set permissions to files on your PC via remote. This is what the nerds feared in the 90's on slashdot and it has come true. The fact that hackernews is basically pro "cloud" is disturbing enough on its own. Here's the industry celebrating the death of local user control of PC's. https://tifca.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/ClienttoCloud_Vision_V2.pdf https://tifca.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/ClienttoCloud_V...

meowface 7y ago

Assange also engaged in information warfare himself, for what it's worth. Including spreading fear about the Pizzagate (Clinton child molestation in pizza shop) conspiracy theory. https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/821595404500430848 https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/821595404500430848 I recall at least one other tweet where they did this, but can't seem to find it right now.

xrd 7y ago
That's fascinating and adds much to my understanding. Interesting.
- meowface 7y ago
  I have mixed feelings about him and WikiLeaks. I do think he's being unfairly persecuted by global governments (though surely he knew this was a likely risk from the start), and they have released information that was in the public interest, but at the same time, the CIA director calling them a "hostile intelligence service" doesn't seem wrong. [0] In their leaked group chat logs (https://emma.best/2018/07/29/11000-messages-from-private-wikileaks-chat-released/ https://emma.best/2018/07/29/11000-messages-from-private-wik...), they behave exactly like a "para-intelligence agency" ("para" as in "paramilitary"). They happily use deceit, trickery, sockpuppetry, trolls, propaganda, and spreading of fear, doubt, and conspiracy theories to achieve their end goals, and their end goals seem to be to push things in a certain direction to achieve particular geopolitical results. Whether or not you agree with Assange's goals, he appears to have a strong "ends justify the means" mentality, much like the militaries and intelligence agencies he's opposing. Their tactics really seem identical to any intelligence agency's, at least from an information and non-kinetic perspective. And note this was a semi-private group just to talk to their supporters. One can only imagine what their internal, top secret-classified chats and phone calls are like. I suspect those would make them look even worse than they already do, and, again, I bet they would look very similar to the most secretive of CIA meetings. Maybe it's one of those "die or live long enough to see yourself become the villain" situations, or maybe Assange was always like this. I don't know. But they're very far from a journalistic organization, or a "Wiki", or a disinterested distributor of leaked information. They are highly political. Ironically, if they had more power or national backing [1], there would probably be a "WikiLeaks" trying to inform people about them. This sort of thing seems to be a phenomenon that repeats itself over and over again in history. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/14/cia-director-brands-wikileaks-a-hostile-intelligence-service https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/14/cia-director... [1] Some claim they work with Russian intelligence or are even backed by Russia, but I think it's more that Russian intelligence just saw them as a useful tool for a particular operation. I don't think any nation backs them.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]