Oliver Stone’s bio of Edward Snowden is now available on video. While most people are aware of the vast spy network that Snowden revealed, this film focuses more on the background of the man, his motivations and evolving thoughts.
I found the film hard to watch in a single sitting. Although I was aware of most of the spy activities that Snowden revealed, seeing them compressed in a 2 hour film paints the picture of an oppressive police state that most of us do not want to accept. It’s rather easy, as a white skinned non-Muslim male, to pretend that nothing’s wrong, and that the American government is different from other oppressive, totalitarian regimes around the world, and has good intentions. I had to stop the film half way through and continue a few days later, as it was just too damn depressing.
Snowden taught us that there are no limits to the depravity of the American security state, and although stories like this one still shock me, truly nothing is too deplorable for the deep state.
The film begins with Snowden’s famed meeting with western journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras in a Hong Kong hotel June 3, 2013. They place their cell phones in a microwave, to shield their signals, and the 29 year old Snowden begins telling his story, which will soon be revealed to the entire world.
Snowden came from a military family, and in 2004 at age 20, enrolled in the Special Forces and began his basic training. Snowden has a smaller physical frame, and one day his legs collapse as he jumps down from his bunk. He is taken to a doctor and told that he has been running around on broken legs for weeks. He developed small fractures carrying the heavy backpacks in training and he is no longer able to continue training.
2006 CIA Training
In 2006, he joins the CIA. He lacks a high school diploma, although he displays extremely high intelligence. As he’s speaking with one of the training instructors, he tells them he doesn’t drink or smoke. He is asked “What is your sin of choice?” and responds “Computers.” “Well, then, Snowden,” the instructor replies, “you’ve come to the right little whorehouse.”
In an interview he is asked who are his heroes or role models. He responds Joseph Campbell, Star Wars, Henry David Thoreau and Ayn Rand. Clearly, Snowden is a gifted and creative thinker.
Early in training, the cadets are given a programming and hacking test to complete within 8 hours. Snowden finishes in 38 minutes. The instructor can’t believe it. He asks, “What should I do now?” Reply: “Whatever you want!”
Snowden The TradCon
Snowden is very much a traditional—my country right or wrong—conservative. He puts almost blind faith in his government and his commander in chief. An early scene shows him walking past a group of war protestors, who he sees as “bashing his country.”
It’s normal for a 20 something to be rather naïve, and Snowden’s experiences over the next several years open his eyes to the truth, and the euphemistic red pill.
Snowden meets his hot stripper girlfriend online. She grew up around the D.C. area and can tell that Snowden is some type of spy, although she doesn’t know exactly where he works or what he does.
During training, Snowden’s instructor discusses a story in the news about the Bush administration being caught illegally wiretapping. The instructor tells the cadets that sometimes we have to issue warrants in secret court proceedings so that “the enemy” is not tipped off.
How quickly the nation changed in a few short decades. This is in sharp contrast to JFK’s famous speech on secrecy in 1961, which he opened stating that
The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society. and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it.
Money + Power = Wasteful Inefficiency
Snowden observes government repurposing of programs designed with good intentions for more sinister uses. He befriends a cryptographer who has been sent to the cadet school as punishment. He had developed a $3 million surveillance program that automated monitoring, sorting foreign from domestic signals, encrypting the domestic signals so they were protected, and sorting and monitoring the foreign signals. The government rejects this program, but later purchases a $4 BILLION program modeled after his, (without credit), which has all filters and automation removed, so it simply records everything.
From a public point of view, one could view this as totalitarian, wasteful, and oppressive. From a cryptographer or spy point of view, it was useless. As the man stated “The more you look at, the less you see.” Under the new program, they were drowning in data, and it was useless. At least for security surveillance purposes. If you wanted to “get the goods” on a famous politician, celebrity, business leader, or enemy, or perform corporate espionage, it was incredibly useful. Snowden would later find one of his own programs repurposed for nefarious means.
Snowden asks his lead instructor, Corbin, about this, “Are all of our [signals intelligence] programs specifically targeted?” “Of course,” Corbin responds. “What good would they be if they weren’t?”
2007: Geneva, Switzerland
Snowden’s first assignment is Geneva, Switzerland in 2007. He is working at a spy facility under the pseudonym Dave when a young hacker kid from the NSA introduces him to a search interface known as X-Keyscore.
X-Keyscore is a search interface for the huge troves of internet data that is collected worldwide. Much of the data comes from the PRISM, an agreement with all major US internet providers to share the data off the internet backbone. PRISM is the #1 source of raw data, with some estimates claiming over 90% of NSA data comes from this program. But wait, isn’t the NSA supposed to spy on foreign bad guys? How could almost all their data be domestic? That’s exactly what Snowden thought.
The Boundless Informant documents revealed that the main target of spying was not China, Russia, or the Middle East, but within the USA and Europe (for reciprocal spy agreements with allied governments).
As the NSA worker explains to Snowden, “Think of X-Keyscore as a google search, except instead of searching only what people make public, we’re also looking at everything they don’t, so, emails, chats, SMS, whatever.” “Yeah, but which people?” asks Snowden. “The whole kingdom, Snow White.”
One of Snowdens first assignments in Switzerland is given at a party where he is instructed to go spy on a banker. Which banker? That doesn’t matter. There’s no specific target, other than running a dragnet to see if anyone with possible illegal action can be found. Snowden, or “Dave” befriends a banker.
XKeyscore allows them to immediately pull up LIVE information on not just this banker, but any of his primary or secondary contacts. Once you are looking at someone’s secondary contacts, you’re talking about somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.5 million people. So let’s say you go to school with a girl whose dad used to work with a man who is now a banker who has committed no crime. One day, you ask her for her number after class. You are now 3 hops from the target, and your emails, chats, phone calls, video chats, and web history can be viewed, and you can be spied on live by activating your phone’s microphone and camera with the click of a mouse.
Snowden is shocked to see that the camera on a laptop, cell phone, or other internet connected device can be remotely activated live, even with the device powered off, to spy on not just the target (who again, is not suspected of any crime) but any of his primary or secondary contacts.
The CIA wants to blackmail the banker, to see if he has any criminal connections. They look into his 15 year old daughter’s Facebook account and pry inter her personal life. They interfere with the boyfriend, who they find is also seeing another girl, and the hysterical teenage daughter takes a bunch of sleeping pills and almost dies. The banker is very upset, and Snowden and his handler encourage him to become highly intoxicated at a bar, and then tell him to drive home, planning to call the police and report him for drunk driving, so they can blackmail him.
Snowden is incredulous. “What the fuck’s going on! What if his daughter had died?” “We could have used that, too,” the handler responds. “In the morning, when he’s facing a week in jail, we’re going to offer him a deal, and he won’t turn it down.” Snowden refuses to go along. “Hey, he’s not driving right now. Look at him! He’ll kill himself. He’s not driving.”
2008 Resignation from CIA
If pressed, I’m sure we could all incriminate a friend or acquaintance for breaking any number of laws. It’s one thing to manipulate and lie to criminals, but to go on a fishing expedition and carelessly destroy others’ lives just because you have power is sociopathic. The next day Snowden resigns from the CIA. He comes home and has sex with his girl, staring at her open laptop with camera lens exposed.
Snowden is becoming more cynical. He is optimistic of the Obama presidency in 2008. He hears campaign promises from candidate Obama promising no more illegal wiretapping of American citizens, mass tracking, or ignoring the law, and is hopeful that things will change. He takes a job in Japan as a NSA/Dell Computers contractor. As Snowden explains:
Because of the money, and because I wanted to live in Japan. And because of Obama, actually. I thought things would get better with him. I was wrong.
His team attempted to convince the Japanese government to help them spy on Japanese citizens. The Japanese were not thrilled, responding that it was against their laws. So the NSA tapped the whole country anyway, and installed sleeper programs into civilian computers at hospitals, power companies, dams, and important infrastructure, with the idea that if one day, the Japanese were no longer allies, they could be sabotaged. The same was done all over the world, in Mexico, Germany, Brazil, Austria.
Soon it became clear to Snowden that the spying wasn’t done for security, or even military reasons. The targets are world leaders, heads of industry, and corporate espionage. As Snowden states,
Ultimately the truth sinks in, that no matter what justification you’re selling yourself, this is not about terrorism . Terrorism is the excuse. This is about economic and social control. and the only thing you’re really protecting is the supremacy of your government.
In 2012, the deputy director of the NSA offers Snowden a job in Hawaii. It’s sold to him as his ticket to the top, with the implication that one day Snowden himself could be running the NSA. He observes a drone attack on a desert building which obliterates a boy standing on a rooftop. He is told that a cell phone on a list is being targeted. He asks how they know that the target is present, just because the phone is, and is given a weak answer. Then he finds out the program behind all this is his “Epic Shelter” backup program he wrote as a cadet, repurposed.
James Clapper’s Big Lie: The Final Straw
Snowden and a group are watching James Clapper’s infamous unprosecuted perjury before Congress where he claims the NSA does “not wittingly” spy on Americans.
At this point, Snowden decides to go public, contacts journalists, sets up a meeting, and leaves traces in the system so that the government knows it was him, and leaves for Hong Kong.
If you were in my position, living in Hawaii in paradise, making a ton of money, what would it take to make you leave everything behind? The fear I have most is that nothing will change. In the coming months and coming years it will get worse. And then eventually at some point some new leader will be elected who flips the switch, and people won’t be able to do anything at that point to oppose it, and it will be turnkey tyranny.
What Changed?
These guys are the real “Illegals”
Sadly, despite governments of the world retracting from American alliances, shunning American products, and building their own networks, little has changed in America.
The so-called “reforms” of the Obama administration are utterly meaningless. Now it is private multinational communications firms such as Vodafone/Verizon, Deutshe Telekom/T-Mobile, Sprint/Nextel/Virgin who are doing the spying, and providing it upon request to the government. Doesn’t that make you feel so much better? It’s the libertarian fantasy that a bad thing is only bad if government is doing it to you.
And in practice, the same spying can be done under these reforms. The reason is the CIA shares access to its spy databases with several other nations (admittedly at least Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Britain, and Germany). As the US Constitution has evolved from being a list of rules or prohibitions on government action, to a list of “rights” that “citizens” have, a government need only place a request with a foreign entity to spy on its citizens, and then share the results, and this is deemed legal and acceptable.
It is now 100% legal for the NSA to ask, say, British GCHQ, to log on to the NSA’s own XKeyscore database, spy on you, or Donald Trump, or top executives of Apple Computer, or Jennifer Lawrence, and then forward its results back to the American government.
While there are almost weekly protests because Muh Feminism after we elected President Shitlord, nothing was done when the last 2 administrations broke the law and spied on American citizens. And now, it’s become legal to do so.
A Bright Side?
Snowden’s revelations are at the very least an enormous wakeup call. A huge red pill was shoved down the throats of many, who may now go on to question other false narratives about girls, society, and culture.
Money is a huge motivator. It was money that drew Snowden to the career of spying for 9 years, and it’s largely money that encourages major ISPs and internet companies to spy on their users. The money to the surveillance state must be cut.
Donald Trump has been on the wrong side of the Snowden debate (which should be a debate about freedom and surveillance, not about one man who was a part of said surveillance). While recent news indicates he was spied on for years, Trump is still reluctant to attack the surveillance state. And while he cheers Wikileaks and attacks those who spied on him as “bad and sick,” he has called for the death of Snowden and has done little to dismantle the Deep State. Here’s hoping he will see the truth.
What is gained by “defeating” others at all costs? The schoolyard bully, or corrupt cheater is not the kid I wanted to grow up and be. America used to be the hard working, well-liked, well rounded kid, who may not always earn the top score on every test, may not be the star quarterback, but was still a great friend, a good athlete and team player, and had loyal girlfriend. If nationalism is the future for America, it must first be a nation that its citizens love and support. The conspiratorial side of me wonders if this is all a planned implosion, destroying our values, breaking bonds and allegiances, and removing the moral spine from our culture with the false fear of terrorism. As Kennedy concluded:
Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment.
Read More: 4 Colossal Lies That Men Have Been Told Since Birth
Excellent movie, if only for the fact that it got the message out to more people.
I remember when the stories started breaking in 2013 on the leaks. I was the only one of my friends running around like “guys! they’re spying on everything… there’s proof!” and them just like “hur hur, what? whatever, I don’t care… nothing to hide”.
The end of this movie brought me to tears. Snowden did what he did for us, the people.
The interviewer asks at the end about what he would do if he were caught, or ended up spending the rest of his life in jail? He answered something along the lines of “I go to bed every night comfortable with the fact that I did everything I could to stand up for the truth… that, to me, is all that matters”. Truth is such a foreign concept to many of us these days, and he gave his life away to stand up for it.
If you don’t watch the news these days, you’re merely uninformed, if you do… you’re mis-informed. I can’t decide what is worse. But I always think back to a quote from snowden where he said:
“saying you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say”.
This man deserves his day.
No, if I had something to hide, I wouldn’t speak about it to anyone, over any media. Once you flap your lips, it isn’t a secret. They spy on communications.
Prepping ……. Shhhhhhh …. do it, but don’t say it.
And,
Never trust the woman you are sleeping with. Don’t let her see bank account number, amounts, investments, CCs, pay slips. Don’t take the documents home. Shhhhhhh.
Pat yourself on the back… you’re well ahead of the pack.
(that wasn’t meant to rhyme) ha
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“I don’t care… nothing to hide”
Here’s what you say when you hear that quote:
OK, then please unlock your phone and give it to me for an hour.
I did that. Now I have no friends. 😀
The only thing I didn’t really approve of in the movie was the implication of justice in the final act. The scene I’m talking about was where Rhys Ifans’ character looked worried and got a phone call, as if it meant fucking anything.
I totally agree with what you’ve said here about Snowden, but if there was one thing Stone could have done to express where we actually stand, he shouldn’t have implied that our intelligence community is accountable.
Because it’s not accountable, to us or our elected officials, at least.
If no one needs privacy protections as long as they have nothing to hide then we also don’t need free speech as long as they have nothing to say.
AND we also don’t need firearms because “the government will ‘protect’ us”.
There is a fundamental conflict between freedom and security. A free society is less secure, and a secure society is less free.
The best way to do it is to empower individual to be secure in themselves, to give them the right to defend themselves along with the responsibility to use that right wisely and justly.
But that kind of decentralized model is anathema to a corporate government that continually seeks to grow its own power and reach.
Your idea would be great except the majority of peoples are morons/slaves and always will be. Hard to empower people like that.
The history of America up until 1963 refutes your statement. Even farmers had Shakespeare or Milton on their shelves back then.
Harder times bred stronger men, methinks.
Sure, but it does refute the notion that most people are naturally morons and stupid.
I do wonder about that. Some of the dumbest people I know are exceedingly well read, like the Bernie-supporting leftist I knew who could quote Longfellow and Shakespeare but went massively into debt on a useless degree and a car he didn’t need. Or my own kin, some of whom are musical masters with memorized tomes of poetry and philosophy yet are serial divorcees who still think Paul Ryan is on their side.
I would not call either of these stupid, exactly, but they are naive. My dad used to say that wisdom is what you learn from other peoples’ experiences, and in that context they seem to struggle with wisdom. Many suffer from this curse, including myself from time to time, but some seem to be eternal fools by nature.
All that said, you’re a damn sight better off with Milton and Shakespeare than Kardashians. I would sincerely hope no one here would seriously claim otherwise.
There is a historical anecdote that I heard– Thomas Jefferson invented a better design for plow shears, one that would allow farmers to do 8hrs of work in 7hrs. He visualized the farmers of America using that extra hour each day to study Greek.
The man was a dreamer, no questions there.
(I say this mostly because he was more of a big idea fellow than any kind of engineer or planner. He needed his Teslas to make those things he imagined possible because that, frankly, wasn’t his wheelhouse).
Oh man, talk about synchronicity! About an hour ago I was reading an Umberto Eco short essay collection and a piece was exactly on how de Tocqueville was amazed that every american farmhouse had at least one Shakespeare collection and that american farmers had the most printed Shakespeare he had ever come about! Glitching Matrix…
One of the (many) reasons I hate Hollyjewood is that they created, in the the horror movies of the 70’s, the stereotype of the redneck/inbred/dumb/barely literate/incestuous/hillbilly.
The idea of honest, conservative, with values, white people living peacefully in a farm away of society makes them crazy.
Rednecks can read?
“we don’t know what we don’t know”
Gotta get the word out and help people understand that it is far more pervasive than “just seeing what sites you can visit”
Many of the morons/slaves you mention are products of their environment. Our education system isn’t designed to educate, it’s designed to delude.
For this exact reason we have the Second Amendment. In a time where your privacy and security are all about your life and property, the ability to protect it yourself with force was all that was necessary.
Snowden is for the computer age the same as the militia in an earlier time. Not merely every man for himself, but also every citizen for his countrymen. If I protect you and you protect me, we are all safer.
The biggest threat to the 2nd Amendment is that there has been a shift in the argument — even by some of those defending it — towards owning firearms for hunting and self-defense, rather than the true purpose of the 2nd Amendment: defense of your liberties from government overreach.
An “assault rifle” ban wouldn’t be constitutional under a true reading of the 2nd Amendment, because the justification is that “assault rifles” are too powerful, too militaristic, too lethal for individual citizens to own. Applying the true purpose of the 2nd Amendment, we would see individual citizens should be allowed to own weapons just as powerful, militaristic and lethal as the government soldiers.
Once you start down this slippery slope, liberal courts can keep chipping away at what you need for hunting and self-defense until we are only left with single-shot rifles and tazers.
I like to recall that the first implementation of the Second Amendment was to buy cannons.
Cannons. Artillery. Exceedingly high caliber weapons designed to cause serious damage. And, though they were to be bought for self-defense, they were about as powerful as it got in the 18th century.
The Second Amendment is to protect the citizenry from enemies foreign and domestic, from threats small and great. Whether that enemy is an unconstitutional government bent on oppression or a rabid raccoon, we are to be empowered to address it ourselves. The “well-regulated militia” spoken of in the amendment is the armed citizenry acting in their interests, and has never meant anything else.
Frankly, as a man legally permitted to openly carry (and, soon enough, to carry concealed), I am a member of that militia. It is my duty – not merely my right or obligation – to be prepared to respond to any sort of attack to which I can be reasonably expected to respond.
I want to add a bit, actually. The militia is to protect the people, not merely themselves. A truest reading of the Second Amendment, as I understand it, is that we must have arms to be able to protect ourselves and our countrymen to the maximum extent.
We have in the States something known as the Good Samaritan Laws. Basically, if you know CPR and someone around you needs CPR, it is your duty and legal obligation to use your knowledge to help. The principle of the militia is the same – if you have the power to defend someone from some danger (in this case, through use of arms), you have the duty to do so. As a corollary, it is also your duty to be prepared to give such defense, through training and more material preparations.
An encroaching government composed of what can be reasonably termed “domestic enemies of the Constitution” (to use the phrasing from the oath all US officers and civil servants are to take) is merely one of the more dramatic dangers. A crazed gunman attacking a school or nightclub is another, as are militant thugs and wild beasts.
When the spirit of a thing is lost, its form disappears as well. We have lost the spirit – the truest meaning – of what the militia should mean, and so we have lost the ability to preserve the form of the Second Amendment. By restoring this spirit, I am hopeful the form can be similarly restored.
It all boils down to the Golden Rule. We do unto and for others what we would have them do unto and for us, and if we all adhere to that code it is only the outliers that present a threat.
Right. If the government betrays its founding principles, or if the government is destroyed by external invasion, the Constitution is a good document to aid in its rebuilding (or underground continuation), but you will always need weaponry to back it up.
Sorry dude, but the US Constitution is shit. The Communist Party of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (yes, they were a republic, too) had explicit protections for speech and such.
No law can withstand the use of force. The only law worth considering is the one that comes out of a barrel: rifle, cannon, whatever.
Problem is, we primates aren’t going to put our lives on the line for abstractions, our monkey brains evolved to force us to provide for our physical needs, it’s tough to allow ones self to be thrown in to prison for a principle that the vast majority of your country doesn’t give a shit about. Like Bradly Manning.
Maybe when I get my terminal diagnosis I will consider it. I’ve always said there’s nothing more dangerous than an atheist old man with terminal cancer.
The leadership of the USSR and the USA were/are not equal in their disregard for the law. US is still far less repressive than the Soviet Union. Also, people do fight for abstract ideals. Otherwise there wouldn’t be Christianity, which was persecuted brutally for 300 years before it gained legal acceptance and prominence, and there wouldn’t be many nation-states as we know them.
Atheists, especially old ones, are a dead-end. They have little sense of anything larger than themselves and end up self-culling. Just look at the average SJW and compare with a typical Mormon family. Your millage may vary as to their particular beliefs, but the family is going to be reproducing and expanding their numbers, while the SJWs wither and die when their ideology gets outed as a sham.
I would be more scared of my wife taking my property, than the state.
It’s far more common, and far more likely, unless you live alone.
It’s even more conflicted than that. Real security, in the sense we’re talking about regarding government, is a myth. Any entity strong enough to protect your life, also has the ability to take your life whenever it wants.
I’m all about Goldwater’s notion of making government so small that you can drown it in a bathtub if you had to.
I’ll go a step further: people aren’t even looking for security– they are looking for a feeling of safety. Women practically fetishize safety. And safety is a complete illusion. It is a feeling, that may or may not be connected to legitimate dangers or legitimate security against dangers.
The only safety in life is the safety that we take with us– by being competent, aware, and level-headed.
“Any entity strong enough to protect your life, also has the ability to take your life whenever it wants.”
Lately I’ve also noticed that it doesn’t really matter how strong the state is – they can’t seem to stop some dipshit from killing a few people. Which means that your observation is actually the most likely outcome since it is really the only thing that all that inward focused power is good at.
To quote from The King of Siam:
This is great quote… thanks for posting.
EDIT: lemme just copy/paste it to my microsoft word doc of great quotes so it can ‘telemetried’ back to HQ haha
“etcera, etcera, etcera…”
Banned movie dude, get caught with that where I live and you disappear without trial for 10 years.
Women will always choose security over freedom. And they are the majority voting block.
Take the women’s right to vote away!!!
That’s not true, women always choose immediate money over future promises of money.
Women will always choose security over freedom.
Also, women will always choose immediate money over future promises of money.
Two true different things.
I know lots of guys doing the ‘security’ talk (it’s 100% garbage), they’re just guys who want to believe their woman isn’t a whore, and they can hang on to her if they give her enough.
Of course you can never give a woman enough, they always want more and they always meet a guy they think can give them more.
And even if you were Bill Gates, and no man could ever give them more, they would still fuck the pool boy on the side. AWALT
Women will always choose spitting over swallowing; haven’t found one yet that prefers the latter.
There is no right to vote.
The powers that be allow voting since it’s useful only in keeping the sheep deluded.
There is no fundamental conflict. A free society is more secure than one that is not free. The real best way to ensure freedom is to never, ever allow sovereignty to be taken away from the individual, family, or clan.
Government is malignant,once it secures a beachhead, the fight for supremacy is over; freedom 0-slavery 1. The US Civil War(official name) was the final American revolution, as it ended any chance of a reversal.
They won. It’s over. And now thanks to digital technology, they will always control everything. The best thing for us would be a massive catastrophe that would knock us back to the tech equivalent of 1800.
A massive do over. That facility in Utah would be bombed into smithereens if Americans cared about freedom.
You’d have to be a fool to think that we’re not being monitored for everything under the sun.
That’s the cost that we have to pay for the protective state but it’s not protecting us.
Ironic, huh?
Interestingly enough, we can see how all this nonsense plays out because the government is actually trying to undermine a sitting president right now.
I’m Republican but even I feel jaded by the ruse that’s unraveling right before our very eyes.
Nah dude, it’s been russia this whole time… they have boat loads upon boat loads of eviden…. oh wait, no evidence… just boat loads of refugees.
The more recent Wikileaks releases regarding firmware security compromises and the like has had the benefit of justifying me. I have worked with computers down close to the hardware, and I have studied network and computer security, so I intuited many things.
Folks laughed when I said smart TV’s could listen to you even when off. Fewer laugh today.
What do you say in front of the Tv that’s interesting?
Consider that most televisions are close to the common areas of homes, especially big ones. When the TV is connected to the network and has an always-on mic, it is capable of hearing things from further away than most suspect.
So if you say something undesirable in the kitchen, it’s possible it’s sitting on some hard drive in Langley or something, just waiting to be reviewed.
The fact that you can be monitored through your TV is alarming no matter what you say or don’t say.
Never plot a revolution in your home or in front of your family, they are more likely to betray you than your Tv.
Never take your friends home, your wife will end up fucking one of them.
Separate your family and home from every other aspect of your life.
I suspect that, as a rule, it’s just the little things that you don’t want overheard, by and large. Not so much that you have something that must be hidden, but they’re things you just want to be private.
The fight with your wife or kids, the time you called the black lady who ran you off the road a nigger while venting to no one in particular, the time you joked about something now considered taboo – none of those things are particularly dangerous, necessarily, but in your home you have some innate expectation of privacy.
There’s plenty of stuff I don’t want my wife or step-daughter to hear. But I don’t think the government bugging my Tv are gonna tell them. Even if I were stupid enough to talk about it, to anyone, anywhere, ever.
It’s just the principle of the thing, to me. Sure, some SJW vigilante in espionage could probably use some of the things I’ve said or written to spin a case against me to my employer or something, but it’s not a persistent fear of mine. And if, god forbid, I were to run for office against a Party member they could try to use it against me there.
But in principle, I shouldn’t have to run naked into some mountain cave to say something in private, you know? I very much prefer to personally vet everyone who enters my house or views my documents.
And I am no threat, despite my accumulated firepower and skills, because I do not desire war nor destruction. To invert the common idiocy, I have nothing to hide, so there’s no reason to monitor me.
“I suspect that, as a rule, it’s just the little things that you don’t want overheard”
Exactly.
There was an article recently on the passing of the man that wrote the “Anarchist’s cook book”.
When the book was released, the FBI did an investigation on him, but dropped it after they said they found no evidence that he had tried to commit any of the crimes detailed in his book.
Later, when asked “have you ever committed any of the crimes in your book?” he said “no, but I suppose if I was cornered, there’d be a chance”.
Imagine that as a tweet these days… he’d be in jail, and stay there, evidence or not.
I saw a few pages from that a good while back. Frankly, it would make sense on the same shelf with Kevin Mitnick’s work (felony hacker whose code wasn’t anything to speak of, but who was adept at social engineering) and Common Sense.
I get these curious thoughts, where I idly want to know how X would be done or how Y is made. Yet I choose to remain ignorant, because I know looking that up would flag me as a potential criminal.
Imagine how many potential inventions have been missed because of concerns like these. Not saying I’d have some flash of inspiration from any of those idle questions, but someone else very well might have.
“I get these curious thoughts, where I idly want to know how X would be done or how Y is made. Yet I choose to remain ignorant, because I know looking that up would flag me as a potential criminal.”
Too true!
It’s like the old refrain: “government spying has no effect on me”, and then you dare them to search “how to make a bomb” on google and they’re like “no way, that’d be stupid.. I don’t want the FBI knocking on my door”.
Ah, so it has NO effect, huh?
“Somebody run to Taco Bell.”
I study and work on computers professionally. It is in my interests, and the interests of my company, to keep abreast of all the current hacking tools and techniques for existing equipment. After all, how better to prevent an attack than to know how it would be done?
Even so, if I were to browse the deep web looking for such things, I’d be in a black van faster than you can say “Cross-Site Scripting.”
That’s great… how do you like working with security?
It’s an area I’ve always been curious about… though I know little.
Gosh the bit about never taking your friends home because she will end up ****** one of them scared me. I definitely believe you on that, I know, we all know of stories like those,
It can be very dull work (at least for most people). There’s a lot of staring at screens full of data, drafting code, testing, redrafting and retesting, and even research that goes into it.
To me, it’s a big puzzle. My job when working on secure code is to not only create code that performs its desired function, but to consider all the ways it could possibly go wrong or be misused. I get to figure out ways to keep the inherently insecure parts safe and secure the rest against any threat I can dream of, then later I can be expected to harden it against threats even I couldn’t imagine.
It can be boring at times, but I love it.
They don’t know you have nothing to hide. After thinking about this for a while, I concluded it doesn’t harm me because I don’t speak much. Men who yap all the time……. No respect from me.
There will come a time when the microwave comments won’t be laughed at.
Lord have mercy, the whole Internet of Things concept my professors kept trying to sell me is even worse! Why would I want my dryer or toaster to be connected to the Internet, or my light bulbs or shoes?
And, frankly, you don’t even need microwaves to monitor people as the theorists propose. We’ve got other kinds of signals bouncing around all the time that could also be analyzed – wifi, cellular connections, classic infrared.
It’s almost enough to make you toy with the idea of building a house with its own Faraday cage.
“dance like your microwave isn’t watching!”
Why would I want my dryer or toaster to be connected to the Internet, or my light bulbs or shoes?
Do you have a better way for them to impose energy quotas and manipulate your behavior? I didn’t think so..
They want you your fridge to be connected to the internet. Using Android OS, so when you drink all your milk the system will buy for you more or send you notification, Not to mention the HAL9000 smart houses
On the upside,
If they have a complete record of your life, you will have evidence to refute your girlfriends false accusations or rape, and your wife’s false accusations of you abusing your children to gain 100% custody.
I didn’t do it, listen to the tapes.
The surveillance state has nothing to do with protecting the citizenry. It is protecting its own hold on power. It is looking for political threats. The occasional outbreak of religiously motivated violence is not a threat to the established order– in fact, it makes them stronger.
“Never let a crisis go to waste,” they say.
Indeed.
Interestingly, have you noticed how many fewer crises there have been over the last few months? Sure, the establishment is trying to spin up some Russia crisis and maintain their environmental crises, but as a rule it’s way down.
Frankly, it’s a pleasant change of pace. I earnestly hope Trump and company maintain this sensation of relative stability and order, as opposed to Obama’s “Crisis of the Day” policy.
For the MSM, Trump IS the crisis.
Good point. They are also doing a “dry run” of things so at any time they could stop all freedom of expression and association etc in an instant. All the infrastructure for surveillance and state tools of oppression would already be in place..
Orwell saw this coming..
The only reason we are not all actually being monitored 24/7 is because there aren’t enough eyes/ears to watch/listen to all the cameras/microphones that can be pointed at us at any one time. Advancing AI will solve this problem.
Classic USA putting their wealthy noses in everything and obliterating kids …and then wondering why no one likes them
Then maybe the third world should put on their big boy pants and not always cry for the United States’ help.
Iraq war – Shiites begged America to topple Saddam and the Sunni government.
Afghanistan – Northern tribes begged America to topple the Taliban and put them in power.
Libya – Begged for air strikes against Ghaddafi.
Syria – Multiple groups begging the US for airstrikes and military intervention.
I don’t think the US should be involved in any wars, but the US isn’t just aggressively bombing countries randomly. Many groups in the third world ask that the US help them destroy another group, which gives the US an excuse to intervene and exploit the situation. If they took care of their own problems the US wouldn’t have any excuse and would look really bad to the world if they did invade.
Snowden is a limited hangout. Controlled opposition. Operation Snowden is about making you feel like you like there are people out there who are taking care of the warrantless surveillance problem. It’s a boiling frog operation. Oliver Stone is also Hollyweird’s Limited Hangout director. Everything Stone says has to be looked at closer. Real whistleblowers do NOT make the cover of time. Real whistleblowers do not receive this much MSM coverage. He is telling us what the elites want us to accept and it is working. I hoped the ROK readers would be more aware of this so please do some more research and stop letting the MSM program you!
Yes, there is some truth to this. I read it was more a war between the CIA and the NSA and Snowden was the NSA (or CIA, so many letters) mole to go after the other competing intelligence agency. That said… I think there is also some truth to what Snowden is. You have to admit, this shit would serve the elite FAR BETTER if it was simply unknown. You can TRY to control the narrative, create a star “whistle blower”, use Stone to create the pressure release valve that keeps the masses from truly uprising… but Stone in the end is also using them to take them down. The man’s work on JFK was huge, huge, and the first film in the MSM to actually tackle the myth of that assassination. I remember it so well because Stone is primarily a Gen X director. JFK was HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE. You just have no idea. Everyone was talking about it. You think they wanted THAT cat out of the bag? Same goes for Kubrick’s Eye’s Wide Shut. Kubrick went to far and had to get taken out, but no one who watches that film in the 21st century… can’t see what he was doing in making that film. EWS took audiences and made them ALL go “WTF did I just watch?” Now… “Oh yea… Pizzagate shit.”
Those on the inside fighting the system should be applauded… especially if the manage to stay alive doing it. Always reserve judgement, but don’t believe “they” have 100% control. They don’t, and they are increasingly learning they never had any to begin with.
Trump needs to pardon Snowden and arrest Clapper, the Clintons and Obama, or he is part of the problem.
I’ll settle for arresting Clapper. How that guy still shows up to work makes no sense to me… he must have a a lot of dirt on a lot of people.
I’m a bit leery of Oliver Stone tbf. It might be a good pic, but I highly doubt that it’s a) accurate or b) objective.
From following the story as it broke and keeping up with both Wikileaks and Snowden (largely via Twitter), it seems pretty up-and-up.
I guess no one can be wrong all the time.
Interesting, well I may watch it in that case. I did enjoy JFK even though it was pretty crackpot in spots.
Haven’t seen Snowden, but if you like documentaries and want to see if this movie was accurate, I’d suggest a movie call citizen four. It’s actual footage of Snowden as he is breaking the news story to the journalists.
I felt the same way but Snowden consulted very closely on this and I actually think this is some of Oliver Stone’s best work following several poorly-executed films.
I suspect this suspicion of Oliver Stone is due to youth who have not
watched Platoon. If you have, and watched the behind the scenes footage
and interviews, you would know Stone has seen, first hand in Vietnam,
what the horrors of the deep police state that is the USA has done to
the world.
Charlie Sheen at one point talks about working a scene where American GI’s are essentially burning, raping and murdering an entire Vietnamese village. The scene is absolutely brutal. Stone calls cut and he, along with an assistant director (or producer, some friend from his Vietnam days)… just go silent… and say nothing… for a long time. Charlie Sheen could see… in Stone’s and his friends eyes… those guys… in making this film to destroy the myth of glory and valor in war… had gone back to a very, very, very dark place in making Platoon.
Platoon was Oliver Stone’s best attempt to try and get America and the world to never go to war again. He is still fighting. As much as we shit on Boomers here, they know how to organize and get shit done. Stone is one of them and he is trying his best to leave this world better than he came into it, in spite of the reality it is only going to get worse. For that, Stone has my eternal gratitude and thanks.
This…. is not Hollywood folks.
https://youtu.be/_5APc73pkLM
So many young faces that went on to great careers. You can not, can not,
watch this film and be unchanged by it. Do some research. Watch his
other films and watch the interviews with the man. When Oliver Stone is
gone, there will be champagne and caviar broken out around the world by
bankers and their enslaved political lap dogs.
As Charlie Sheen says in the clip and is probably Stone’s tombstone engraving to the world…
“She’s a F’n human being man. F you. F’n animals. All of you are F’n
animals. You just don’t F’n get it do you man. You just don’t F’n get.”
it.”
Yeah I saw Platoon a number of times when I was younger and always admired it. I don’t buy the rhetoric about mean old USA, though. The NVA were in fact barbaric animals, very much like the Muslims of today.
In hindsight we shouldn’t have gone over there, but let’s not fall into the leftist trap of pretending that America is what ails the world.
Barbaric animals fighting for the freedom of their country. Did you no Ho Chi Min was educated in Europe? That he traveled to the USA and was a huge admirer of Abraham Lincoln? Did you know HCM tried not once, not twice, but THREE times (if memory serves) to NOT fight? He went to the French and the USA (I think the Brits were third but the first two are fact) to ask for Vietnam’s independence USING the USA’s declaration and what was commonly held in Europe as the ideal of the sovereign state. It was only after he saw that TALKING to the western powers was useless (as is the case today), that he took up arms.
The American people… the average person on the street… is not a threat to the world.
But it’s government… very much is. I hope you are not the “muslims attacked us on 9/11 type” because if so, you have a lot of learning to do. Read John Perkins Confessions Of An Economic Hitman. The USA… is… the single source of ALL shit going down int he world today… everywhere. That is not “leftist” as you say, that is just plain fact. Americans I hold innocent to the degree they just don’t know and are uninformed. But… it is getting harder to make that claim given how much evidence is now out there for what America has done to the ME.
You blame Muslims for all the problems in Europe and America? Well… who went in and DESTROYED… Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and now Yemen? (the silent war you probably don’t know about.)
I have great respect for Americans. I want the true US of A to return. But if Americans don’t open their eyes and realize what their government has done in their name.
American is a cancer right now… and it is putting the world in palliative care on the brink of nuclear third world war. If you can’t see this… you are blind.
Come on dude, islamist goat fuckers have been killing everyone around them (and each other) for thousands of years prior to America even being a thing, lol. Don’t pretend that they’re not a huge problem for sane people regardless of what America does or doesn’t do.
I agree that the American government is cancer, and testicular cancer at that. If I could help overthrow it, I would lock and load today without hesitation.
I dont trust Oliver Stone to ever tell the unbiased truth. If the SOB says the sky is blue, then I’m going outside to check for myself.
All fake all of it. Anything mainstream, even if it seems dissenting, is still MAINSTREAM. All mainstream movies news anything are lies. Snowden is not a hero or a villain, he may as well be just another crisis actor. Power is the greatest drug in existence, and its obviously clear that governments are addicted to it. Not their fault. If you deny the violence and the desires within yourself for the sake of denial, then you are a fool. If you believe these things are wrong and act accordingly, then you do stand for something.
So many weak-willed two-tongued people in this world telling themselves comforting untruths just so they can sleep at night, whether it be a gubment stooge, a SJW, a beta blue-baller, girls, cowards, and people with no idea of the harsh and animal nature of all reality.
You mean this show wasnt dreamed up by a writer? It scared me more than Walking Dead ever could(and yet I couldnt stop watching it)
Nobody gives a shit.
One thing I learned from the movie was understanding that at times, its bigger than me
Its bigger than me in terms of sometimes knowing that what is good for me may not be good for the rest of world
Just sitting by and doing nothing while bullshit happens makes me just as worse as the people causing the issues
Sometimes you have to do whats right for the benefit of the world you may or may not see in the future
No, I am not a Superhero or any shit like that but at the same time its good to think beyond yourself at times and do what is right beyond what is safe. Going against the grain is needed when others are afraid to do
https://fakephilosophy.com/
I’ve always been wondering if the LED on my laptop’s webcam is wired in series with the cam or whether it is an independent circuit with its own control channel. If the former then it’s physically impossible to turn it on without me noticing the fact.
Best movie I’ve seen in a while, and I thought “conspiracy nut” Oliver Stone did excellent work on it. Occasionally a Hollywood film can be used as a proper conveyance of implied truth. On a different level, films like “Zodiac” and even “The Social Network” had similar deconstruction / analytical value.
What I learned from Oliver Stone and Ed Snowjob. They spread misinformation.
“CIA shares access to its spy databases with several other nations (admittedly at least Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Britain, and Germany). As the US ”
The Anglo-Saxon-Germanics are the worst. Complete sociopaths. These are the same folks that support torture, support Guantanamo. This sociopathy must be genetic. Trump is German…..hence his sociopathy: gives the military industrial complex $54 billion dollars !!!!! more than there already bloated budget….but wants to cut meals on wheels for seniors and health insurance for millions !
In this case Malcolm X was correct. “The white man is the devil”