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Google and Meta Function as Extensions of the US Intelligence Community
- smoldesu 3y agoDuh, they're incorporated in the US. Are there any domestic businesses that size that can truly say they refuse to cooperate with the intelligence community? Because that would be newsworthy.
- throwaway4PP 3y agoYou shouldn’t approach it from such a detached, cynical angle. The import is as if the OSI embedded senior agents in the postal system during the labor unrest in the US during the 1910s-20s, and the FBI in Ma Bell during the second red scare in the 40s-50s. The possibility for gatekeeping primary modes of information exchange is quite real, and quite worrying.
- smoldesu 3y agoNeither of those hypotheticals seem that far-fetched. Maybe that's just the cynical side of me talking, > The possibility for gatekeeping primary modes of information exchange is quite real, and quite worrying. It's distressing today. The US intercepts an insane amount of communiqué - we knew about India's involvement in the Canadian Sikhist assassination before it happened. American-made electronics leak insurgent battle plans, tattle on domestic terrorists, enable modem-level attacks and who knows what else. The only reason you and I aren't threatened by it is the decorum required to operate an above-ground surveillance network. No US company, especially at scale, can promise protection against the state for it's users. There's precious little anyone can do about it, nobody is selling an "alternative product" without state oversight.
- pessimizer 3y agoI do wonder on that basis what ground we could ever have to stand on when we criticize China's surveillance regime. That would be like the US accusing Russia of meddling in elections.
- smoldesu 3y agoFor me at least, China's big issue is the Great Firewall. It's easy to make big claims when your citizens are self-contained in an information vacuum. The US has a similar autocracy issue, but whistleblowers are generally lauded unless they expose state secrets. The US political landscape is grim, but the grass is most certainly not greener in the single-party states.
- DueDilligence 3y ago[dead]
- exitzer0 3y agoAs does Microsoft, Apple, AT&T and every other company involved in the PRISM program. The issue is that people just do not seem to care.
- harshreality 3y agoThis is not surveillance. This is content shaping and censorship.
- CTDOCodebases 3y agoHow do they know what to shape and what to censor if they are not surveilling?
- leoh 3y agoAlthough the CIA and State Department have unquestionably done a lot of bad stuff, I can't help but feel this may be a good thing. Online discourse has gotten extremely toxic and divisive. Moreover, it's quite likely that much of what we're seeing is the work of foreign adversaries. Encouraging bridges between Google/Meta and the US Intelligence Community, if it indeed helps reduce the sort of online discourse that is tearing the US apart (which I suspect it will), is something that I would feel extremely relieved to see.
- mcast 3y ago>"it's quite likely that much of what we're seeing is the work of foreign and domestic* adversaries" I think it's naive to assume the same weapons and tools used abroad won't be used at home. We've already found American police forces using IMSI catchers to surveil protestors in their own country.
- cheese4242 3y agoWhy do you assume their objective is to decrease toxicity and divisiveness?
- Thorrez 3y agoWouldn't the CIA want to increase love of country? I think decreasing toxicity and divisiveness within the country might help with that. They might want to increase our division against enemy countries, but decrease division within the US and against friendly countries.
- friend_and_foe 3y agoAgain, you assume their goal is the continuation of the republic as it exists and to make that more likely. This is probably not the case, first of all these agencies are compartmentalized, different projects can and often do have competing goals, and second, their ultimate goal is the continuation of state power, as is the goal of every state, and if that goal conflicts with what Americans view as being in their interest, then any expected loyalty to their countrymen cannot be relied upon.
- paganel 3y ago[flagged]
- jeffbee 3y agoDomestic terrorists hate it that corporations have sophisticated anti-terror operations. It sucks that corporations have to take this on themselves, but that's just the world we live in. It's no mystery why these people fled the CIA for private industry during the Trump era.
- cheese4242 3y agoStrange comment. I don't see anything about domestic terrorism in the linked thread.
- jeffbee 3y agoThat's because the author of the linked thread is being intentionally misleading about the careers and expertise of these individuals, and what they do as corporate executives.
- friend_and_foe 3y agoWhat are they misleading us about?
- cheese4242 3y agoI wonder what domestic terror operations these brave content moderators have thwarted.
- ThisIsMyAltAcct 3y agoFeel free to look through here: https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21083819/facebook-dangerous-individuals-and-organizations-list-reproduced-snapshot.pdf https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21083819/facebook-dan... Keyword is "armed militia". You can look a few of them up on Google to see what they get up to. People yell at Meta when they don't moderate content and when they do moderate content, so I don't envy them.
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- add-sub-mul-div 3y agoIt's curious that in as comprehensive an analysis as this, OP does not even mention Pepe Silvia.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cheese4242 3y agoThis is basically how the 1st Amendment is "backdoored" in this country. The government cannot be so brazen in curtailing freedom of speech directly so they use Big Tech as the cat's paw. Any complaint over Big Tech's censorship/narrative control can then be met with the “it’s a private company, they can do what they want” retort.
- salawat 3y agoNot just the First. Second and Fourth too.
- nfieidnrn 3y agofunnily enough my monthly NRA magazine is the only “mainstream” media source i have actually seen calling attention to this
- DANmode 3y agoAre the encryption-rights/privacy-rights crowds finally converging with the firearm-rights crowds?
- Ancapistani 3y agoIt’s been happening for years, but does seem to be speeding up a bit recently.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cheriot 3y agoIt would be shocking if there weren't dozens of former employees of each working at the others. Employees per employer Meta - 86,482 Google - 156,500 CIA - 21,575 FBI - 35,000 Dept of Defense - 747,809 (civilians) Dept of State - 13,000 Large companies with global operations end up hiring people with backgrounds in security and geopolitics. They go to conferences apparently. Concluding "the CIA's substantial control over online censorship" is a wild claim based on the evidence provided.
- pessimizer 3y agoThis critique can only be sustained if you hide in statistics and avoid mentioning specific people and their specific positions. Then, after you mention specifics, it becomes a "complicated conspiracy theory."
- cheriot 3y agoWhat does mentioning specific people change? Those stats all represent individuals. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. "Hey, here's a picture of Meta employees with a retired guy that spoke at a conference" is not that.
- p2detar 3y agoBold title with and bold claims, but really little to get from the write-up itself than LinkedIn bios. However, I could add a question to the following quote: > Is it merely a coincidence that censorship has increased aggressively since then? Well, if you really have a foreign actor waging digital war at you, then what are your short-term options really? I mean honestly, seeing what's happening around Europe and especially ex socialist countries, I can only confirm that the Putin regime wages a full-scale digital war towards European population. Why would that be different in the USA and why would it be bad to allow measures to be taken against it by working with Internet giants like Google and Meta?
- friend_and_foe 3y agoIt should be different in the US because augmenting the flow of information to manipulate behavior goes against the foundational principles that the US holds and represents. We expect Russia to manipulate and lie to the populations and control what they say to each other. We tell ourselves that our success comes from our integrity, our unwillingness to do this, that we outperform and defeat them precisely because they do this and we do not. I personally do believe this as well. And besides that, we should be condemning anyone that engages in this sort of thing, not whatabouting it. My mind is mine, it's not your battlefield. All that a state gets from me when attempting to do this is withdrawal of my loyalty to it and my faith in it.
- jeffbee 3y ago> Bold title with and bold claims It's a cut-and-paste job of articles that have been circulating among political magazines and blogs for years.
- ThisIsMyAltAcct 3y agoThis is laying the groundwork for the conspiracy theory that Google and other tech companies rigged the 2024 election, in case Biden wins. Tim pool has been posting about it recently. What most likely actually happened is these people got sick of working in the govt around 2018 (gee I wonder why) and fled to the high paying tech industry, and when a resume lands on your desk with 5+ years experience in the CIA, it's hard to ignore.
- renegat0x0 3y agoThere is and will be constant flow of people and information between corporations, and governments. This is also true when it comes to mainstream media. Same for big pharma and government health institutions. The situation is not shocking, it is normal. Although it is also part of 'manufacturing consent'. There is censorship laundering, where governments dictate narrative through corporations, and privacy laundering when governments buy citizen data from corporations. It just works like this. We should be aware about this, but it is certainly not shocking.
- mid-kid 3y agoColor me the brightest shade of surprise