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>If I had to wager I'd always bet on national security agency of any powerful country lying, I don't see how anyone could come to another conclusion given their
by scoofy 6y ago
>If I had to wager I'd always bet on national security agency of any powerful country lying, I don't see how anyone could come to another conclusion given their history.
Let's not pretend the FSB and MSS don't also lie constantly. That you're more familiar with the CIA lying is a testament to the free press of the US, not the other way around.
The point of the previous post is that it could easily be another security agency.
- HDMI_Cable 6y agoWouldn't the fact that we know more about the CIA mean that they lie less, since there are verifiable claims to the contrary if they do lie? Like for example how the CIA can't claim it didn't infect Iran with Stuxnet without someone calling BS.
- hulitu 6y agoNo. They dont't lie less. They just try to canalyse the discussion to another subject. Just like ...
- thereare5lights 6y agoHow does it mean they lie less? You don't know everything there is to know about the CIA. All it means that that they can't lie about what you do know.
- _jal 6y ago> Let's not pretend Who is pretending? The discussion is about the CIA. When I discuss cats, there is no reason I should have to always qualify it by saying "yes, and dogs are cute, too."
- oytis 6y agoKaspersky's ties to FSB are an open secret, so it's really believing FSB vs believing CIA unless you have a way to verify them.
- caconym_ 6y agoI think it’s much more likely for both these orgs to be telling the truth when they’re accusing their enemies of doing bad things than it is when they’re denying that they’ve done bad things themselves. It’s not a simple case of one consistently telling the truth, and the other consistently lying...
- bcrosby95 6y agoSo when the CIA tells me some foreign government is doing something bad, I should believe them? Then when the CIA denies they lied about the foreign government was doing something bad, I should ignore them? This advice makes no sense to me.
- caconym_ 6y agoIsn’t this kind of begging the question? It’s implicit in your reasoning that the CIA does exactly what I’ve claimed they generally don’t do. Anyway, the point is that I don’t think you have to dig very deep these days to find plenty of instances of geopolitical power X doing bad things, so I’m not sure why the CIA would bother lying to stir up shit against them when they could tell the truth just as easily, with the same result. This assumes their purpose in releasing any information at all is to influence public opinion, not increase transparency, as the latter would probably mean divulging uncomfortable truths. The former does not—they can release exactly what they want, and no more. On the other hand, flatly denying you’ve done a bad thing is a form response for governments and corporations (and politicians) at this point, even when it’s risible on its face. If you’re the guy responsible for putting those comms together and you admit wrongdoing, you’re never working in this town again. Simple as that. Deny, deny, deny. Deny everything. (Isn’t that a one-off X-Files title card?) Has the CIA lied? Absolutely, though I’d guess far more often (orders of magnitude?) by omission than by outright explicit falsehood. The latter goes against the same ass-covering impulse that drives the bullshit denials. My brief comment above is meant to be a general observation on the sorts of public communication games the CIA and similar organizations tend to play, not an absolute truth or bible for living your life.
- 6y ago
- totalZero 6y agoIt's more like saying "white cats enjoy naps" when napping activity is generalizable to all cats.
- asveikau 6y agoIt's logical in the context of comments, your parent comment, the parent of that, and up the tree. Somebody says people are skeptical of attribution to governments outside the US, but not the US. Specifically he says that he does not doubt it was the US. So yeah, the discussion you're replying to is not just about CIA.
- himinlomax 6y ago> Let's not pretend the FSB and MSS don't also lie constantly How do you go from reading "the CIA is lying" to "the FSB is telling the truth"? Do you understand the difference between those statements? Reminds me of a stand up bit, "are you a Jew or an antisemite?"
- neartheplain 6y ago>How do you go from reading "the CIA is lying" to "the FSB is telling the truth"? The link is a Kaspersky press release, so there’s potential for an FSB connection: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-11/kaspersky-lab-has-been-working-with-russian-intelligence https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-11/kaspersky...
- encryptluks2 6y agoYet it wasn't until relatively recently that they stopped selling Kaspersky at major retailers. Even if they have an FSB connection they are basically saying, well we now know that company we let get loose on millions of consumer desktops and enterprise/government systems in the US is connected to Russian intelligence. Oops!
- freeflight 6y agoUsing that same logic most statements out of the US corporate InfoSec establishment should be similarly scrutinized. A whole lot of these outfits are started by former NSA employees, and they love having people that previously worked in US national security on their rooster for the marketing value. Yet whenever one of these outfits accuses China/Russia/Iran of being responsible for the latest "cyber incident"/"misinformation campaign" these accusations are widely regurgitated without any doubt like some kind of definitive factual truth.
- shkkmo 6y agoIf the leader of the infosec company is ex-CIA... that doesn't seem unreasonable.
- coliveira 6y agoThe CIA has a budget for lying and cheating that is an order of magnitude larger than anything else other countries have. I always assume that they are doing more damage than what we know about.
- stjohnswarts 6y agoI highly doubt if they have an order of magnitude more than China "budget" for CIA type activities. Probably more but not 10X, maybe 2X
- mhermher 6y agoyou can use military spending as a proxy.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Stupulous 6y agoI don't think you can, I expect different countries to have a wide variety of intelligence budgets as a percentage of military. But, if you did this anyway for the US and China, you would get 3.1x, closer to 2x than 10x.
- xyzzy123 6y agoAlso difficult to know if the CIA gets as much spying done per dollar spent.
- loceng 6y agoYou could use investment in companies that the CCP has investment in (and generating revenue for them; which also acts as taking revenue/fuel away from competing government types/ecosystems) as a proxy as well.
- bostonsre 6y agoHow do you get to those numbers exactly? You really think Russia and China are choir boys?
- admax88q 6y agoI wish we could discuss the malware at hand, and the fascinating world of state sponsored hacking instead of once again devolving into a dick measuring argument about which nations intelligence agency is better.
- ljm 6y agoClassic whataboutism, executed masterfully.
- shelbyKiraM 6y ago> free press "There is no such thing, at this date of the world’s history, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell the country for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press. We are the tools and vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes." - John Swinton, the former Chief of Staff at the New York Sun, at a toast before the prestigious New York Press Club in 1880