This article is a waste of time at best and a deliberate misdirection at worst. Focusing on the (alleged) leaker and ignoring the content of the leak is a clas

This article is a waste of time at best and a deliberate misdirection at worst. Focusing on the (alleged) leaker and ignoring the content of the leak is a classic propaganda tactic. Right at the beginning we see this claim in defense of the CIA program: This is not dragnet mass surveillance of the kind more often associated with the National Security Agency. These are hacks, or “exploits,” designed for individual targets. Perhaps the most news-making program in that leak was something called "Marble Framework", and as I recall NSA whistleblower Bill Binney talked quite a bit about it in relation to Russiagate. I don't care about Russiagate, so let's search Google with 'verbatim' (under tools) on. binney "marble framework" CIA -russiagate So, here we get a lot of interesting results and a description of Marble Framework. Here's one source for example, not sure I agree with their characterization of Binney, who was at least trying to be responsible and follow the laws that banned mass domestic warrantless collection, and who seems like a decent person (plus B-tree tutorial) but at least this source discusses the central matter: https://freethoughtblogs.com/stderr/2017/04/14/why-cia-and-nsa-tool-leaks-matter/ https://freethoughtblogs.com/stderr/2017/04/14/why-cia-and-n... > "Description: The Marble Framework is designed to allow for flexible and easy-to-use obfuscation when developing tools. When signaturing tools, string obfuscation algorithms (especially those that are unique) are often used to link malware to a specific developer or development shop. This framework is intended to help us (AED) to improve upon our current process for string/data obfuscation in our tools. The framework utilizes pre and post-build execution steps to apply obfuscation to the tool. [CIA Marble Framework docs]" This is a tool allowing for things like 'false flag' cyberattacks, such as planting malware that looks like it came from whoever - North Korea, Iran, etc. - but which reports back to CIA. Rather tellingly, this article doesn't even mention it. Nor does it dig into the issue of economic espionage, something the US government claims it never does. See the above source's discussion of something called 'Longhorn' for the counterexample. The issue is this makes all the US government claims about 'detecting the signature of foreign hackers' in all manner of news reports completely suspect. How do we know they didn't put those signatures there themselves? Now they have a massive credibility problem (see also lies about WMDs in Iraq, etc.) - and that's something the New Yorker apparently doesn't want to dig into. Kind of pathetic really.