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A "fun" conspiracy theory I've been mulling over for a bit... What if Snowden was a false flag operation? After all, what good is panopticon if nobody is aware

A "fun" conspiracy theory I've been mulling over for a bit... What if Snowden was a false flag operation? After all, what good is panopticon if nobody is aware of it?

glitchdout 12y ago
> what good is panopticon if nobody is aware of it? You can blackmail all those in positions of power (politicians , judges, etc) into doing what you want? Who cares what the rest of the population (those low-life sheep) think. (This is what most likely goes on in their minds.)
jacquesm 12y ago
About as much as a doomsday device.
colechristensen 12y ago
The best false flag is when the actor doesn't know he's in on it. See Snowden doing the things he's doing, let him do them with minimal restraint, and let the truth into the wild. However, I don't actually believe it. This assumes competence above and beyond reasonable suspicion. It's much more believable that security was really just very poor. At some point somebody might have done a little less than possible to let him go, but that's about as much as I'm willing to believe.
EC1 12y ago
God damnit I don't know what to believe any more.
- Cyther606 12y ago
  Snowden steered the conversation towards the US political establishment's _massive_ hypocrisy. At the time, the US was wagging their finger hard at Chinese tech companies, as if to say US tech companies would never stoop to the level of backdooring consumer hardware or spying on their users and handing that data over wholesale to government spies. In addition to embarassing the American political establishment, Snowden revealed JTRIG; he revealed acts of industrial and political espionage; and he revealed the undermining of public cryptographic standards by government henchmen. This to me is the big one, and it's why it's so unlikely for Snowden to be a limited hangout. Prior to Snowden, if you weren't being paranoid, you were just sticking your head in the sand. You would be exposing yourself to the risks of parallel construction, backdoors in hardware, sabotage of public cryptographic standards, and the manipulation of online discourse if Snowden hadn't given people like me the power to credibly parry critics who are all too quick to discredit with terms like "troll" and "conspiracy theorist". Snowden showed James Clapper to be a criminal, too. And the IRS claiming its own electronic paper trail of criminality could be somehow "lost" in this age of pervasive surveillance lends credibility to the idea of there being a clear divide between those who are above the law, and the rest of us. The Rulers and the Ruled.
  - junto 12y ago
    Yet no one has been indicted, apart from Snowden (well 'criminal complaint', not an indictment, but even Obama mixed them up). http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/12/20/obama-mistakenly-said-snowden-has-been-indicted/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/12...

A "fun" conspiracy theory I've been mulling over for a bit... What if Snowden was a false flag operation? After all, what good is panopticon if nobody is aware of it?

glitchdout 12y ago

> what good is panopticon if nobody is aware of it? You can blackmail all those in positions of power (politicians , judges, etc) into doing what you want? Who cares what the rest of the population (those low-life sheep) think. (This is what most likely goes on in their minds.)

jacquesm 12y ago

About as much as a doomsday device.

colechristensen 12y ago

The best false flag is when the actor doesn't know he's in on it. See Snowden doing the things he's doing, let him do them with minimal restraint, and let the truth into the wild. However, I don't actually believe it. This assumes competence above and beyond reasonable suspicion. It's much more believable that security was really just very poor. At some point somebody might have done a little less than possible to let him go, but that's about as much as I'm willing to believe.

EC1 12y ago

God damnit I don't know what to believe any more.

Cyther606 12y ago
Snowden steered the conversation towards the US political establishment's _massive_ hypocrisy. At the time, the US was wagging their finger hard at Chinese tech companies, as if to say US tech companies would never stoop to the level of backdooring consumer hardware or spying on their users and handing that data over wholesale to government spies. In addition to embarassing the American political establishment, Snowden revealed JTRIG; he revealed acts of industrial and political espionage; and he revealed the undermining of public cryptographic standards by government henchmen. This to me is the big one, and it's why it's so unlikely for Snowden to be a limited hangout. Prior to Snowden, if you weren't being paranoid, you were just sticking your head in the sand. You would be exposing yourself to the risks of parallel construction, backdoors in hardware, sabotage of public cryptographic standards, and the manipulation of online discourse if Snowden hadn't given people like me the power to credibly parry critics who are all too quick to discredit with terms like "troll" and "conspiracy theorist". Snowden showed James Clapper to be a criminal, too. And the IRS claiming its own electronic paper trail of criminality could be somehow "lost" in this age of pervasive surveillance lends credibility to the idea of there being a clear divide between those who are above the law, and the rest of us. The Rulers and the Ruled.
- junto 12y ago
  Yet no one has been indicted, apart from Snowden (well 'criminal complaint', not an indictment, but even Obama mixed them up). http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/12/20/obama-mistakenly-said-snowden-has-been-indicted/ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/12...