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I'm disappointed, tptacek. You're a sharp guy. Why muddy the waters like this? The deck identified specific providers as on board or coming on board. Their den

I'm disappointed, tptacek. You're a sharp guy. Why muddy the waters like this? The deck identified specific providers as on board or coming on board. Their denials looked similar. The deck characterized access as "direct"--direct in some context. As a wordsmith yourself, you certainly recognize such semantic fuzz, the loose context-dependent coupling of sign and signified. And yet, you collapse the possibilities down, giving credence to authority. You cast scorn and ridicule, you narrow the bounds of respectable opinion with language like "extreme interpretations" and "conspiracy-theoretic nonsense". One cannot have an informed opinion on a secret program. The harder you try, the more vulnerable you become to information censoring. Try the holistic approach, and reserve judgement.

tptacek 13y ago
Why am I the one who needs to reserve judgement? I'm not the one saying things like "the name PRISM suggests optical intercepts on backbones", or "the name Palantir suggests that that company is acting as an all-seeing eye for NSA". I'm not the only person with these concerns. Here's Karl Fogel of QuestionCopyright.org: http://www.rants.org/2013/06/11/epic_botch_of_prism_story/ http://www.rants.org/2013/06/11/epic_botch_of_prism_story/ And here's Mark Jaquith of Wordpress: https://medium.com/prism-truth/82a1791c94d3 https://medium.com/prism-truth/82a1791c94d3
- pradocchia 13y ago
  > Why am I the one who needs to reserve judgement? Because you are responsible for your opinions. What other people say is orthogonal to your own exercise of judgment. /schoolmarm
  - tptacek 13y ago
    Ok, then: I opt not to reserve judgement. I'd rather know the truth, whether or not it's fun to talk about.
- leoc 13y ago
  Forgive my uncertaintly, but what precisely do you have in mind when you say 'optical interconnects on backbones' here? Do Room 641A and "Collection of communications on fibre optic cables and infrastructure as data flows past" from the You Should Use Both slide http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-surveillance-prism-obama-live#block-51b36893e4b0cc6424372292 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-surveillance... cover it? (Ironically enough the slide suggests that PRISM is the name for the non-upstream half of the operation.)
tzs 13y ago
> The deck identified specific providers as on board or coming on board. Their denials looked similar. If they were innocent, we'd expect their denials to look similar. So why are so many people taking their denials looking similar as indicating guilt?

tptacek 13y ago

Why am I the one who needs to reserve judgement? I'm not the one saying things like "the name PRISM suggests optical intercepts on backbones", or "the name Palantir suggests that that company is acting as an all-seeing eye for NSA". I'm not the only person with these concerns. Here's Karl Fogel of QuestionCopyright.org: http://www.rants.org/2013/06/11/epic_botch_of_prism_story/ http://www.rants.org/2013/06/11/epic_botch_of_prism_story/ And here's Mark Jaquith of Wordpress: https://medium.com/prism-truth/82a1791c94d3 https://medium.com/prism-truth/82a1791c94d3

pradocchia 13y ago
> Why am I the one who needs to reserve judgement? Because you are responsible for your opinions. What other people say is orthogonal to your own exercise of judgment. /schoolmarm
- tptacek 13y ago
  Ok, then: I opt not to reserve judgement. I'd rather know the truth, whether or not it's fun to talk about.
leoc 13y ago
Forgive my uncertaintly, but what precisely do you have in mind when you say 'optical interconnects on backbones' here? Do Room 641A and "Collection of communications on fibre optic cables and infrastructure as data flows past" from the You Should Use Both slide http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-surveillance-prism-obama-live#block-51b36893e4b0cc6424372292 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/08/nsa-surveillance... cover it? (Ironically enough the slide suggests that PRISM is the name for the non-upstream half of the operation.)

tzs 13y ago

> The deck identified specific providers as on board or coming on board. Their denials looked similar. If they were innocent, we'd expect their denials to look similar. So why are so many people taking their denials looking similar as indicating guilt?