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If Snowden and Assange have taught us one thing, it is that state-sponsored surveillance is not a topic you want to have a very high evidence threshold for. The

If Snowden and Assange have taught us one thing, it is that state-sponsored surveillance is not a topic you want to have a very high evidence threshold for. The available evidence is always going to lag the actuality and even what we previously thought of as exaggerations/outliers in terms of suspicions of surveillance (e.g. "NSA knows I hate broccoli") have turned out to be not so unwarranted after all.

somenameforme 2y ago
The NSA was literally spying in World of Warcraft. [1] About the time you have spooks running around in video games as Elves 'for national defense', you know we live in the dumb (but endlessly entertaining) timeline. [1] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/09/nsa-spies-online-games-world-warcraft-second-life https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/09/nsa-spies-onli...
- mschuster91 2y ago
  Online games have historically been quite a way for people to organize beyond the wide Internet. Steam and Discord in particular gained notoriety in recent years [1], but I distinctly remember UT2004 being flooded with Nazi trolls all the time even around 2010. [1] https://www.wired.com/story/far-right-took-over-steam-discord/ https://www.wired.com/story/far-right-took-over-steam-discor...
  - adamomada 2y ago
    There was a show on Amazon a few years ago called Patriot about the misfortunes of a CIA operative with hardly any support from the agency. An interesting part was that even though he used a blackberry, arguably having better e2e messaging than today, the comms were done through some online scrabble game.
    - somenameforme 2y ago
      Yeah it seems like that show's gone full Hollywood with other takes like "Leslie pull[s] his teeth to bypass facial recognition software" according to Wiki. [1] The fact facial recognition doesn't use your teeth and can be fooled using simple makeup or prosthetics to manipulate the perceived depth of your face? Nah, screw it - just pull your teeth mate! [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_(TV_series)
      - voltaireodactyl 2y ago
        If you haven’t seen it, Patriot is fabulous and clearly has little to no interest in portraying anything close to objective reality, but instead conveys a subjective experience with just enough jargon and cartoon-intuitively-correct techniques (eg “The Vantasner Danger Meridian”) to tether it down and give some genre structure to the real narrative (John’s emotional journey toward finding his own identity outside of his family and his work). Even if one pressed play expecting Carre or The Wire, I imagine by the time the main character finds himself slow-motion dog-piled under 5 Brazilian jujitsu experts who are brothers and dress identically (after just such a scenario was lightly foreshadowed several scenes before), viewers might realize they’ve walked into something unexpected (and imo magical). It’s not about the way things work — it’s about the way life feels.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  Spying by participating there is normal and expected.
- cbsmith 2y ago
  There have been intelligence leaks through games before, and chat groups... you just have to assume anything you aren't surveilling will be used.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    No there haven't been. There have been intelligence leaks from military bases where extremely young people are granted access to highly classified materials, and then just take copies of it home with themselves, and then share it wherever they fancy. The idea of preventing leaks is not to then try to surveil every single possible location people could share things - that would also entail, for instance, surveilling all communications of every single journalist. The idea is to prevent people from accessing, copying, and removing information without authorization, in the first place! Once you've failed there, your job is essentially over because you cannot and should not surveil the world. And if somebody did actually want to share things in a secret fashion, end to end encryption is there.
    - cbsmith 2y ago
      Defense in depth. It's a thing. You're right there are things you cannot or should not do. Surveilling communications where there is no expectation of privacy does not strike me as falling into that category. Surveilling the town square for potential leaks of classified information isn't oppressive. Equating that to surveilling all communications of every single journalist would charitably be described as misleading. Yes, historically nations did not have such elaborate surveillance mechanisms, but historically, communications had significantly more friction, lower velocity, and limited mechanisms for distribution.
      - somenameforme 2y ago
        One of the main reasons I feel so strongly about topics like this is that I think we're sleepwalking into authoritarianism, if we haven't already arrived. So take your comment - that the government surveilling places where there is no expectation of privacy is okay. And now think about the countries that have done precisely this - secret police spying on people in public, building up profiles on people, informants making sure nobody's getting up to anything the government might be concerned about, and so on. These are terrible places in history, literally every last one of them. Doesn't it feel to you that we're on the path to repeating this? I mean we're not not only doing the exact same stuff, but going above and beyond it. The thing about authoritarianism is that people seem to associate with some leader just oppressing the people - helpless to resist, but historically that's not how it works at all. In reality, authoritarianism tends to have an in-group and an out-group. And the in-group often feels neutral to highly positive about the authoritarian government, and feel they're only doing what is necessary to maintain proper peace, order, and value. To this day you can find people with extremely positive views of Stalin - not just for defeating Nazism but for his reign in general. This includes many whose family (and in some instances even themselves - though their numbers are decreasing due to age) lived through this time! This video [1] turned into a meme, but it's genuine and part of a real interview. I somehow get the impression you're around my age. If I'm correct there then imagine taking yourself back to the early 2000s or maybe even earlier, and describing to your youthful self what America would be like in 20 years. You wouldn't believe yourself - it'd sound like absolute insanity. But because it's all happened inch by inch, it all feels kind of normal. But I think, and hope, that when you describing what we're going through today, to your children or your children's children 20 or 40 years from now, that they'll find it just as unbelievable as the you of 20 years ago might have found it. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF0JdAim6Pc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF0JdAim6Pc
- therockspush 2y ago
  Four Lions puffin party. Parody of incompetent jihadis using a kids game to communicate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fd4yjFto0A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fd4yjFto0A

somenameforme 2y ago

The NSA was literally spying in World of Warcraft. [1] About the time you have spooks running around in video games as Elves 'for national defense', you know we live in the dumb (but endlessly entertaining) timeline. [1] - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/09/nsa-spies-online-games-world-warcraft-second-life https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/09/nsa-spies-onli...

mschuster91 2y ago
Online games have historically been quite a way for people to organize beyond the wide Internet. Steam and Discord in particular gained notoriety in recent years [1], but I distinctly remember UT2004 being flooded with Nazi trolls all the time even around 2010. [1] https://www.wired.com/story/far-right-took-over-steam-discord/ https://www.wired.com/story/far-right-took-over-steam-discor...
- adamomada 2y ago
  There was a show on Amazon a few years ago called Patriot about the misfortunes of a CIA operative with hardly any support from the agency. An interesting part was that even though he used a blackberry, arguably having better e2e messaging than today, the comms were done through some online scrabble game.
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    Yeah it seems like that show's gone full Hollywood with other takes like "Leslie pull[s] his teeth to bypass facial recognition software" according to Wiki. [1] The fact facial recognition doesn't use your teeth and can be fooled using simple makeup or prosthetics to manipulate the perceived depth of your face? Nah, screw it - just pull your teeth mate! [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_(TV_series)
    - voltaireodactyl 2y ago
      If you haven’t seen it, Patriot is fabulous and clearly has little to no interest in portraying anything close to objective reality, but instead conveys a subjective experience with just enough jargon and cartoon-intuitively-correct techniques (eg “The Vantasner Danger Meridian”) to tether it down and give some genre structure to the real narrative (John’s emotional journey toward finding his own identity outside of his family and his work). Even if one pressed play expecting Carre or The Wire, I imagine by the time the main character finds himself slow-motion dog-piled under 5 Brazilian jujitsu experts who are brothers and dress identically (after just such a scenario was lightly foreshadowed several scenes before), viewers might realize they’ve walked into something unexpected (and imo magical). It’s not about the way things work — it’s about the way life feels.
marcosdumay 2y ago
Spying by participating there is normal and expected.
cbsmith 2y ago
There have been intelligence leaks through games before, and chat groups... you just have to assume anything you aren't surveilling will be used.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- somenameforme 2y ago
  No there haven't been. There have been intelligence leaks from military bases where extremely young people are granted access to highly classified materials, and then just take copies of it home with themselves, and then share it wherever they fancy. The idea of preventing leaks is not to then try to surveil every single possible location people could share things - that would also entail, for instance, surveilling all communications of every single journalist. The idea is to prevent people from accessing, copying, and removing information without authorization, in the first place! Once you've failed there, your job is essentially over because you cannot and should not surveil the world. And if somebody did actually want to share things in a secret fashion, end to end encryption is there.
  - cbsmith 2y ago
    Defense in depth. It's a thing. You're right there are things you cannot or should not do. Surveilling communications where there is no expectation of privacy does not strike me as falling into that category. Surveilling the town square for potential leaks of classified information isn't oppressive. Equating that to surveilling all communications of every single journalist would charitably be described as misleading. Yes, historically nations did not have such elaborate surveillance mechanisms, but historically, communications had significantly more friction, lower velocity, and limited mechanisms for distribution.
    - somenameforme 2y ago
      One of the main reasons I feel so strongly about topics like this is that I think we're sleepwalking into authoritarianism, if we haven't already arrived. So take your comment - that the government surveilling places where there is no expectation of privacy is okay. And now think about the countries that have done precisely this - secret police spying on people in public, building up profiles on people, informants making sure nobody's getting up to anything the government might be concerned about, and so on. These are terrible places in history, literally every last one of them. Doesn't it feel to you that we're on the path to repeating this? I mean we're not not only doing the exact same stuff, but going above and beyond it. The thing about authoritarianism is that people seem to associate with some leader just oppressing the people - helpless to resist, but historically that's not how it works at all. In reality, authoritarianism tends to have an in-group and an out-group. And the in-group often feels neutral to highly positive about the authoritarian government, and feel they're only doing what is necessary to maintain proper peace, order, and value. To this day you can find people with extremely positive views of Stalin - not just for defeating Nazism but for his reign in general. This includes many whose family (and in some instances even themselves - though their numbers are decreasing due to age) lived through this time! This video [1] turned into a meme, but it's genuine and part of a real interview. I somehow get the impression you're around my age. If I'm correct there then imagine taking yourself back to the early 2000s or maybe even earlier, and describing to your youthful self what America would be like in 20 years. You wouldn't believe yourself - it'd sound like absolute insanity. But because it's all happened inch by inch, it all feels kind of normal. But I think, and hope, that when you describing what we're going through today, to your children or your children's children 20 or 40 years from now, that they'll find it just as unbelievable as the you of 20 years ago might have found it. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF0JdAim6Pc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF0JdAim6Pc
therockspush 2y ago
Four Lions puffin party. Parody of incompetent jihadis using a kids game to communicate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fd4yjFto0A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fd4yjFto0A