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Exactly. The other emphasized question, while less sexy and less quotable, is a much more accurate representation of the question TFA tries to answer: > If the

by oefrha 6y ago

Exactly. The other emphasized question, while less sexy and less quotable, is a much more accurate representation of the question TFA tries to answer: > If the NSA was owning everything in sight (and by all accounts they have) then how is it that nobody ever spotted them? It’s sad that people routinely find the first disagreeable thing in any submission then derail the whole discussion based on an out-of-context misrepresentation of that.

mh_ 6y ago
As the original author of the piece... I agree :)
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  It was a great article, but that particular phrase is so often used with the "a mile away" idiom to refer to things that are obvious. Using it to refer to how people didn't spot any evidence was a bit confusing.
  - WhyIsItLikeThis 6y ago
    The whole thing is nonsense. Years before Snowden there was plenty of evidence that some gov agency was scooping up ALL At&T's data (for example). Just like now, idiots will ignore the obvious until they can't. Right now you idiots are ignoring ALL the obvious signs of the Dollar collapsing (it already has). Then when your money is worthless you all will be asking, how did we not see it coming?
boomboomsubban 6y ago
While that practice is common, this article does say >The purpose of this post isn’t to discuss the legality of the NSA's actions or the morality of the leaks, what we are trying to answer is: "Why did we never see it coming?" They clearly made it the central theme. With enough context what they are saying makes sense, but that phrase is so often used to describe how people predicted something without evidence. I'm sure I've read several articles talking about how some health organization "saw the cornavirus pandemic coming in 200x"
- mh_ 6y ago
  What they (we) are talking about, is that nobody caught the attacks. The article then goes on to explain why, even with hundreds of thousands of ppl doing incident response investigations, nobody caught / correctly attributed these attacks.
- pmachinery 6y ago
  > but that phrase is so often used to describe how people predicted something That's really the only thing it means. It certainly doesn't mean "why did we never see it happening" (those words mean that) or "why didn't we identify the perpetrator". Edit: for example I saw the downvote coming, because some people here love downvoting simple factual statements, but I don't know who did it, because why would they want to admit it.
  - staticassertion 6y ago
    Hi, I downvoted you. Normally I don't bother explaining why a low content post was downvoted, but whatever, I'm here. 1. Even if you were right it doesn't matter. Coming to the comments to split semantics while obviously missing the point of the entire article is adding incredible noise. There was more than one sentence in the article and more than enough context to forgive an ambiguous or even incorrect sentence. 2. I don't agree that you're right. You state there's only one interpretation. I could just as easily interpret it as "Why didn't we see the NSA coming for our network?" or "Given all of these NSA attacks, how did no one detect them entering the network?". So between those things I downvoted it.
    - pmachinery 6y ago
      > Even if you were right it doesn't matter. Coming to the comments to split semantics while obviously missing the point of the entire article is adding incredible noise. I didn't 'come to the comments to split semantics', nor did I say anything at all about the rest of the article. I simply replied to an already existing discussion about the meaning of a phrase. Describing that one short post as "incredible noise" is frankly beyond absurd, particularly when you have no problem making noisy, unnecessary complaints in two separate posts here. > I don't agree that you're right. You state there's only one interpretation. I could just as easily interpret it as "Why didn't we see the NSA coming for our network?" or "Given all of these NSA attacks, how did no one detect them entering the network?". I didn't say there's only one interpretation, I said there's only one meaning, with the point being that if a phrase is used that has one specific meaning then obviously some people are going to assume that is what is meant by it and comment accordingly. Being right/accurate does matter, precisely to avoid incredible noise like this. Thank you for replying and explaining.
buran77 6y ago
> If the NSA was owning everything in sight (and by all accounts they have) then how is it that nobody ever spotted them I think this should rather say "nobody ever came forward". I'm sure there always were enough pieces of evidence even if scattered and nobody had the whole picture. But the ones who were close enough to put together some of it and get an idea had no incentive to open their mouths. Coming forward with enough evidence was likely close to impossible until a decade or two ago. The ones who have such comprehensive evidence also have some "incentive" to keep quiet. Up to the proverbial "terminated with extreme prejudice" option, which I'm sure must have been employed given the sensitivity of the topic. Or perhaps risking being labelled a terrorist which would likely lead to even worse outcomes. When the efforts were escalated after 9/11 so were the security measures and the "incentives". And coming forward with just shreds of evidence of something like this will only get you labelled a nut, enemy of the state, shill, etc. Snowden and a few others did it at great personal cost and I'm sure they now serve as an example for others to not do it. Look around even today, people see the world in black and white and if you're not with them, you're against them, and they will treat you as such.
godelski 6y ago
> It’s sad that people routinely find the first disagreeable thing in any submission then derail the whole discussion based on an out-of-context misrepresentation of that. It reminds me of that "CIA manual" that floats around about how to derail conversations and sew doubt when infuriating an organization (can't find link). About doing things like bringing up irrelevant information, highlighting less meaningful things, revisiting already solved problems, etc. I mean what did the GGP do besides say "_I_ knew about this, but you all called me a conspiracy theorist! Who's laughing now?" What good does such a statement do? Clearly they are following the CIA handbook and derailing the conversation! (I'm joking) But I think it comes down to not wanting to read the entire article _AND_ process the information contained within. I think a lot of people read things for the words written and not for the meaning, and I find this odd.
- krapp 6y ago
  I think you're talking about "The Gentleman's Guide to Forum Spies[0]" Which for some reason people seem to believe is actually a CIA/Fed document leaked to pastebin (and somehow left there) despite having clearly being written for and within the imageboard community. Most of what's listed as "disinfo agent" tactics there are the general fallacious and bad faith tactics that go on in almost any forum under heated discourse. [0]https://pastebin.com/irj4Fyd5 https://pastebin.com/irj4Fyd5
  - godelski 6y ago
    This is pretty similar, though the specific one I am thinking of is an image of a "scanned document" and seems to be more focused around workplace. But this is similar enough that it gave me better search terms to find what I was thinking of[0]. I'm not really convinced that this is a legitimate CIA or FBI document but the post I found it under claims it is a "1940s CIA memo on how to sow dysfunction in an infiltrated organization" and I've seen it many times floating around with similar titles. But yeah, I fully agree that this is essentially about bad faith tactics. My new strategy to dealing with this is to call these people out on their bad faith rather than engaging in the misdirection that they are creating. At least in my experience it seems to push these conversations down from the top spot (but that may be a selection bias). [0] https://i.redd.it/ecjzmknuz6g51.jpg https://i.redd.it/ecjzmknuz6g51.jpg

by oefrha 6y ago

mh_ 6y ago

As the original author of the piece... I agree :)

boomboomsubban 6y ago
It was a great article, but that particular phrase is so often used with the "a mile away" idiom to refer to things that are obvious. Using it to refer to how people didn't spot any evidence was a bit confusing.
- WhyIsItLikeThis 6y ago
  The whole thing is nonsense. Years before Snowden there was plenty of evidence that some gov agency was scooping up ALL At&T's data (for example). Just like now, idiots will ignore the obvious until they can't. Right now you idiots are ignoring ALL the obvious signs of the Dollar collapsing (it already has). Then when your money is worthless you all will be asking, how did we not see it coming?

boomboomsubban 6y ago

While that practice is common, this article does say >The purpose of this post isn’t to discuss the legality of the NSA's actions or the morality of the leaks, what we are trying to answer is: "Why did we never see it coming?" They clearly made it the central theme. With enough context what they are saying makes sense, but that phrase is so often used to describe how people predicted something without evidence. I'm sure I've read several articles talking about how some health organization "saw the cornavirus pandemic coming in 200x"

mh_ 6y ago
What they (we) are talking about, is that nobody caught the attacks. The article then goes on to explain why, even with hundreds of thousands of ppl doing incident response investigations, nobody caught / correctly attributed these attacks.
pmachinery 6y ago
> but that phrase is so often used to describe how people predicted something That's really the only thing it means. It certainly doesn't mean "why did we never see it happening" (those words mean that) or "why didn't we identify the perpetrator". Edit: for example I saw the downvote coming, because some people here love downvoting simple factual statements, but I don't know who did it, because why would they want to admit it.
- staticassertion 6y ago
  Hi, I downvoted you. Normally I don't bother explaining why a low content post was downvoted, but whatever, I'm here. 1. Even if you were right it doesn't matter. Coming to the comments to split semantics while obviously missing the point of the entire article is adding incredible noise. There was more than one sentence in the article and more than enough context to forgive an ambiguous or even incorrect sentence. 2. I don't agree that you're right. You state there's only one interpretation. I could just as easily interpret it as "Why didn't we see the NSA coming for our network?" or "Given all of these NSA attacks, how did no one detect them entering the network?". So between those things I downvoted it.
  - pmachinery 6y ago
    > Even if you were right it doesn't matter. Coming to the comments to split semantics while obviously missing the point of the entire article is adding incredible noise. I didn't 'come to the comments to split semantics', nor did I say anything at all about the rest of the article. I simply replied to an already existing discussion about the meaning of a phrase. Describing that one short post as "incredible noise" is frankly beyond absurd, particularly when you have no problem making noisy, unnecessary complaints in two separate posts here. > I don't agree that you're right. You state there's only one interpretation. I could just as easily interpret it as "Why didn't we see the NSA coming for our network?" or "Given all of these NSA attacks, how did no one detect them entering the network?". I didn't say there's only one interpretation, I said there's only one meaning, with the point being that if a phrase is used that has one specific meaning then obviously some people are going to assume that is what is meant by it and comment accordingly. Being right/accurate does matter, precisely to avoid incredible noise like this. Thank you for replying and explaining.

buran77 6y ago

> If the NSA was owning everything in sight (and by all accounts they have) then how is it that nobody ever spotted them I think this should rather say "nobody ever came forward". I'm sure there always were enough pieces of evidence even if scattered and nobody had the whole picture. But the ones who were close enough to put together some of it and get an idea had no incentive to open their mouths. Coming forward with enough evidence was likely close to impossible until a decade or two ago. The ones who have such comprehensive evidence also have some "incentive" to keep quiet. Up to the proverbial "terminated with extreme prejudice" option, which I'm sure must have been employed given the sensitivity of the topic. Or perhaps risking being labelled a terrorist which would likely lead to even worse outcomes. When the efforts were escalated after 9/11 so were the security measures and the "incentives". And coming forward with just shreds of evidence of something like this will only get you labelled a nut, enemy of the state, shill, etc. Snowden and a few others did it at great personal cost and I'm sure they now serve as an example for others to not do it. Look around even today, people see the world in black and white and if you're not with them, you're against them, and they will treat you as such.

godelski 6y ago

> It’s sad that people routinely find the first disagreeable thing in any submission then derail the whole discussion based on an out-of-context misrepresentation of that. It reminds me of that "CIA manual" that floats around about how to derail conversations and sew doubt when infuriating an organization (can't find link). About doing things like bringing up irrelevant information, highlighting less meaningful things, revisiting already solved problems, etc. I mean what did the GGP do besides say "_I_ knew about this, but you all called me a conspiracy theorist! Who's laughing now?" What good does such a statement do? Clearly they are following the CIA handbook and derailing the conversation! (I'm joking) But I think it comes down to not wanting to read the entire article _AND_ process the information contained within. I think a lot of people read things for the words written and not for the meaning, and I find this odd.

krapp 6y ago
I think you're talking about "The Gentleman's Guide to Forum Spies[0]" Which for some reason people seem to believe is actually a CIA/Fed document leaked to pastebin (and somehow left there) despite having clearly being written for and within the imageboard community. Most of what's listed as "disinfo agent" tactics there are the general fallacious and bad faith tactics that go on in almost any forum under heated discourse. [0]https://pastebin.com/irj4Fyd5 https://pastebin.com/irj4Fyd5
- godelski 6y ago
  This is pretty similar, though the specific one I am thinking of is an image of a "scanned document" and seems to be more focused around workplace. But this is similar enough that it gave me better search terms to find what I was thinking of[0]. I'm not really convinced that this is a legitimate CIA or FBI document but the post I found it under claims it is a "1940s CIA memo on how to sow dysfunction in an infiltrated organization" and I've seen it many times floating around with similar titles. But yeah, I fully agree that this is essentially about bad faith tactics. My new strategy to dealing with this is to call these people out on their bad faith rather than engaging in the misdirection that they are creating. At least in my experience it seems to push these conversations down from the top spot (but that may be a selection bias). [0] https://i.redd.it/ecjzmknuz6g51.jpg https://i.redd.it/ecjzmknuz6g51.jpg