4 ms·

The Snowden stuff was the event that shook me to my core. I was a happy technologist till then, thinking that such was the nature of life and progress simply w

The Snowden stuff was the event that shook me to my core. I was a happy technologist till then, thinking that such was the nature of life and progress simply was unfolding in front of me. However, the way the event was covered by the media - told a different story. The media focussed on the man rather than the info he provided, so the conversation was 'where was he?', 'where was his girlfriend?', etc - that told me everything. They hardly touched on what was provided and what that meant (that we were being spied on 24/7). And what was provided took years to come out...... So, the media are complicit - just another arm of the governance structure we find. The intercept, the MSM, all are just playing a role in mis-informing the people. Since then, I have even come to change my views on the Snowden event itself. I think this was an intentional release of data, an orchestrated event. Snowden is probably a character created by some agency. He may not be a real person - things like bits of his glasses disappearing indicate that he could be CGI. Perhaps this sounds crazy - but if you are in the business of governance, you want to manage everything, even the opposition. (Think 1984 and the way that the opposition is created and controlled in that book). Why would "they" create Snowden and the release of apparently top secret files? Well, if you know what is coming you do not respond with shock, you do not reject it out of hand. You acclimatise to the new reality. There was little we could do with the Snowden event, except watch it play out. We were put on notice and informed of what was/is coming. And what's coming is a technocratic system with very fine grained control in the hands of the technocrats.

neolog 6y ago
I found this comment so shocking I went and read your post history and I'm really interested how this view arises. Can I ask your background that made you think this way?
- sumtechguy 6y ago
  I 'follow' these theories. Most are junk. Most have a hinge-pin of a idea that if pulled out the whole thing collapses. The supporting evidence is usually designed to make that idea stronger. I use the a modified mythbusters classification of them. 'busted', 'unlikely', 'plausible', 'confirmed'. I have never heard the snoweden is a totally made up generated person before. Other than he is a CIA actor theory. That just means I am not an expert on this. But it could be 'sorta plausible'. NSA is probably a good generation ahead of most of the world tech wise. They have the compute power for it and the brain power for it. So a deepfake from them is 'plausible'. But I lean towards unlikely in that case. As what we see from deepfakes is kind of weird and strange. Some bit of him 'popping' is probably a camera roll shutter thing. He seems like he is a guy who did something, because what he saw was bad. When something jumps from 'busted' over to the 'confirmed' category that is when you can raise an eyebrow. That happens very rarely. The 2016 email dumps of Hillary did that in a few cases. Which was surprising. As to how you can end up 'there'. Well it mostly depends on what news feeds you let into your life, and do not go into them with a health dose of deep skepticism. Youtube can get a bit stuck on particular things as its alg feeds on engagement. Watch 1 video from someone and you have kind of exhausted your other threads of thought in their system and it will go hog wild and show you a different class of stuff if it is not on their 'do not show this to people list'. Remember ML/AI is basically very fancy cubic spline fitting across many nodes with some calculus thrown in and N stages. But if you end up between two points you can get strange results. But a computer does not know a garbage result from a good one. So it gives it to you with a 90% confidence. If something jumps categories some people like that idea. They like the idea they can say 'Ive know about that for years'. I think it also gives comfort to them if they can not make sense of an idea. But my jedi mind skills are weak so I can not read minds :)
- feralimal 6y ago
  My background is a technologist who observed the Snowden story. I followed some of the details and was genuinely shocked at the revelations therein. I was looking at HN for more info at the time. But I also followed main stream media. The gulf between the technical details that were reported on HN and mainstream news sites was so large, it was clear to me that a damage limitation exercise was being undertaken. That in itself raised loads more questions for me. Here's a link to a video on Snowden's disappearing glasses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QqxLalvh-4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QqxLalvh-4 Cutting to the chase, if it is as I suggest it is - that most media is there as part of the governance structure to beam a particular type of messaging to us - you then have a few options. You can refuse what I say, and accept the media as is presented. This is surely the path of least resistance. If you care about the truth, you can look more deeply and research all ideas before accepting them as true. Just because you see something on TV does not make it true. My thesis is that news media is just production of a show, like a film or cartoon. You don't trust films or cartoons - so don't trust the news. Here's a fun example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cDYKXMkSRs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cDYKXMkSRs - check the folder change colour live on the news! Is it fair enough to manipulate what we see on account of a "green" budget? My bottom line nowadays, philosophically speaking, is that I am only prepared to accept as true that which I can confirm for myself via my own experience. This may sound a weak position, and it is perhaps. But I stand on solid ground as I am personally able to verify whatever I claim. With regards to events that are presented in the media, I take an aggressive deconstructive position, and ask questions such as: have I been provided evidence, am I being emotionally manipulated, is the story coherent, etc. I find my questioning frequently provides evidence that the story is not coherent, and can be dismissed. That again may sound weak, but the thing with truth is that it is resilient and not incoherent - when you are presented with an incoherent story then you can dismiss and ignore _all_ of it. So, my default position with media stories is to autohoax them and to lend far greater weight to personal experience.
nix23 6y ago
> I think this was an intentional release of data, an orchestrated event. Maybe maybe not, but it can also be that you are a "opinion magnet" ;) See that's the fun in politics, agencies, diplomats and game of thrones, you can play mind/war-games. But often Secret services work much leaner and cleaner than you probably think, first you don't need complicated stuff to find a 'secret' and second, the more complicated the more errors can happen.
jermier 6y ago
> things like bits of his glasses disappearing indicate that he could be CGI So you're essentially saying the revelations were a false flag operation? I considered that possibility, but Snowden's background is well researched and the first thing media outlets look at before publishing their findings. The Guardian probably thoroughly doxed him before publishing anything. And in interviews he comes across as sincere and genuinely politically passionate. There's no way someone could fake all that. Snowden is the real deal. If the NSA wanted to showcase their 'box of tricks' then they would have other ways of doing that like fake leaks that have a bunch of decoy material to confuse their enemies; not the real/actual tooling that is used to surveil (as that would be stupid). They would release plausible-looking material that advertises their capability, but be scant on the details and mechanics of the tooling itself.
- feralimal 6y ago
  I'm saying that media outlets are an arm of the governance structure that are there to corroborate and promote the story. The only one that researches anything you can trust is you - and that doesn't mean reading the Guardian.
  - feralimal 6y ago
    PS - here's a link I posted in another comment about the disappearing glasses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QqxLalvh-4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QqxLalvh-4
kubanczyk 6y ago
> Why would "they" create Snowden? If it was an affair beneficial to NSA, please elaborate why non-US state actors didn't have their own Snowdens?
- feralimal 6y ago
  I don't even see the geo-political situation in terms of US or non-US. Or rather, its not a meaningful distinction to make. They are really just administrative regions for a One World Order administered by supra-national bodies such as the UN, WHO. Ie a bunch or organisations that no one voted for yet seem to have the hands on the levers of power. And it seems that "they" are shifting focus to the Chinese autocratic-technocratic model. And that it is planned for the US to take on that model too, at least the technocratic part. Hence we see things such as the roll out of UBI v1 as part of the current drama.

neolog 6y ago

I found this comment so shocking I went and read your post history and I'm really interested how this view arises. Can I ask your background that made you think this way?

sumtechguy 6y ago
I 'follow' these theories. Most are junk. Most have a hinge-pin of a idea that if pulled out the whole thing collapses. The supporting evidence is usually designed to make that idea stronger. I use the a modified mythbusters classification of them. 'busted', 'unlikely', 'plausible', 'confirmed'. I have never heard the snoweden is a totally made up generated person before. Other than he is a CIA actor theory. That just means I am not an expert on this. But it could be 'sorta plausible'. NSA is probably a good generation ahead of most of the world tech wise. They have the compute power for it and the brain power for it. So a deepfake from them is 'plausible'. But I lean towards unlikely in that case. As what we see from deepfakes is kind of weird and strange. Some bit of him 'popping' is probably a camera roll shutter thing. He seems like he is a guy who did something, because what he saw was bad. When something jumps from 'busted' over to the 'confirmed' category that is when you can raise an eyebrow. That happens very rarely. The 2016 email dumps of Hillary did that in a few cases. Which was surprising. As to how you can end up 'there'. Well it mostly depends on what news feeds you let into your life, and do not go into them with a health dose of deep skepticism. Youtube can get a bit stuck on particular things as its alg feeds on engagement. Watch 1 video from someone and you have kind of exhausted your other threads of thought in their system and it will go hog wild and show you a different class of stuff if it is not on their 'do not show this to people list'. Remember ML/AI is basically very fancy cubic spline fitting across many nodes with some calculus thrown in and N stages. But if you end up between two points you can get strange results. But a computer does not know a garbage result from a good one. So it gives it to you with a 90% confidence. If something jumps categories some people like that idea. They like the idea they can say 'Ive know about that for years'. I think it also gives comfort to them if they can not make sense of an idea. But my jedi mind skills are weak so I can not read minds :)
feralimal 6y ago
My background is a technologist who observed the Snowden story. I followed some of the details and was genuinely shocked at the revelations therein. I was looking at HN for more info at the time. But I also followed main stream media. The gulf between the technical details that were reported on HN and mainstream news sites was so large, it was clear to me that a damage limitation exercise was being undertaken. That in itself raised loads more questions for me. Here's a link to a video on Snowden's disappearing glasses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QqxLalvh-4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QqxLalvh-4 Cutting to the chase, if it is as I suggest it is - that most media is there as part of the governance structure to beam a particular type of messaging to us - you then have a few options. You can refuse what I say, and accept the media as is presented. This is surely the path of least resistance. If you care about the truth, you can look more deeply and research all ideas before accepting them as true. Just because you see something on TV does not make it true. My thesis is that news media is just production of a show, like a film or cartoon. You don't trust films or cartoons - so don't trust the news. Here's a fun example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cDYKXMkSRs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cDYKXMkSRs - check the folder change colour live on the news! Is it fair enough to manipulate what we see on account of a "green" budget? My bottom line nowadays, philosophically speaking, is that I am only prepared to accept as true that which I can confirm for myself via my own experience. This may sound a weak position, and it is perhaps. But I stand on solid ground as I am personally able to verify whatever I claim. With regards to events that are presented in the media, I take an aggressive deconstructive position, and ask questions such as: have I been provided evidence, am I being emotionally manipulated, is the story coherent, etc. I find my questioning frequently provides evidence that the story is not coherent, and can be dismissed. That again may sound weak, but the thing with truth is that it is resilient and not incoherent - when you are presented with an incoherent story then you can dismiss and ignore _all_ of it. So, my default position with media stories is to autohoax them and to lend far greater weight to personal experience.

nix23 6y ago

> I think this was an intentional release of data, an orchestrated event. Maybe maybe not, but it can also be that you are a "opinion magnet" ;) See that's the fun in politics, agencies, diplomats and game of thrones, you can play mind/war-games. But often Secret services work much leaner and cleaner than you probably think, first you don't need complicated stuff to find a 'secret' and second, the more complicated the more errors can happen.

jermier 6y ago

> things like bits of his glasses disappearing indicate that he could be CGI So you're essentially saying the revelations were a false flag operation? I considered that possibility, but Snowden's background is well researched and the first thing media outlets look at before publishing their findings. The Guardian probably thoroughly doxed him before publishing anything. And in interviews he comes across as sincere and genuinely politically passionate. There's no way someone could fake all that. Snowden is the real deal. If the NSA wanted to showcase their 'box of tricks' then they would have other ways of doing that like fake leaks that have a bunch of decoy material to confuse their enemies; not the real/actual tooling that is used to surveil (as that would be stupid). They would release plausible-looking material that advertises their capability, but be scant on the details and mechanics of the tooling itself.

feralimal 6y ago
I'm saying that media outlets are an arm of the governance structure that are there to corroborate and promote the story. The only one that researches anything you can trust is you - and that doesn't mean reading the Guardian.
- feralimal 6y ago
  PS - here's a link I posted in another comment about the disappearing glasses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QqxLalvh-4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QqxLalvh-4

kubanczyk 6y ago

> Why would "they" create Snowden? If it was an affair beneficial to NSA, please elaborate why non-US state actors didn't have their own Snowdens?

feralimal 6y ago
I don't even see the geo-political situation in terms of US or non-US. Or rather, its not a meaningful distinction to make. They are really just administrative regions for a One World Order administered by supra-national bodies such as the UN, WHO. Ie a bunch or organisations that no one voted for yet seem to have the hands on the levers of power. And it seems that "they" are shifting focus to the Chinese autocratic-technocratic model. And that it is planned for the US to take on that model too, at least the technocratic part. Hence we see things such as the roll out of UBI v1 as part of the current drama.