[jjordan]

If you've ever watched the movie "Enemy of the State", which came out in 1998, I don't know how you can come away from that movie thinking anything other than someone in that script writing pipeline had some insider knowledge of what was happening. So many of the things they talk about in the film were confirmed by the Snowden releases that it's kinda scary.

Today, it's almost a national societal resignation that "you have no privacy, get over it." I wish that weren't the case, but I'd like to see more representation embrace privacy as the basic right it should be again.

[jjtheblunt]

The 1982 book "The Puzzle Palace" from James Bamford covered NSA capabilities (and was sanctioned, nonetheless), etc..

There were also FOIA requests revealing much capability.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bamford

[lisbbb]

I wrote my dissertation on information privacy back in 2003. Post 9/11, privacy was WILDLY unpopular thanks to government propaganda. It's never recovered. I walk around all the time thinking about how we are so close to what East Germans had to deal with, it's just soft glove tyranny here <for now>.

[ForOldHack]

i.e. The movie "The lives of others." :|

[underbluewaters]

I don't think it needed any kind of special foresight to write that script. The idea that the NSA/Intelligence community was monitoring communications to that degree was fringe but not outlandish. Snowden confirmed and provided crucial evidence for what many suspected for a long time.

[jazzyjackson]

:)

I've long held that a useful counterintelligence strategy is to weave real operations into fictional films, such that if someone catches on and tries to tell people about it, the response is simply "you schizophrenic - that's the plot of Die Hard 4!"

Slightly less conspiratorial version is that agents and clerks with knowledge of operations get drunk at the same bars as Hollywood script writers

[ProllyInfamous]

Right before Snowden, I met a "fiction" author whose DefCon presentation was about government attempts at management of conspiracy theorists. His SciFi writings were the technically-dense ramblings you'd expect from somebody who'd spent much of his early decades contracting for secretive government agencies.

During both his speech and in the introduction to his book Mindgames, he mentions that most DoD-funded personnel (staff or contract) sign agreements which give Agency-censorship, even after employment ends. Richard suggests that a method to reduce overall censorship is to write "fiction" books that contain less than 90% truth. The secret, he maintains, is to not distinguish between truths and embellishments.

----

I listened to most of Richard's speech, some fifteen years ago, with my eyes rolling around in my head (yeah... sure... okay...). It wasn't until my IBEW apprenticeship, primarily working inside large data centers during the Snowden revelations, that I realized the orchestrated lies narrating our headlines.

Don't carry the internet in your pocket with you everywhere; use cash; spend some unmonitored time reading real books purchased from actual stores; pet your cat for just one more minute.

[*] Note: I belive Richard's surname was Thiele or Thieme, but cannot locate his book at the moment — he was an absolute nut, but 80% of his publications seem to have proven truthful to-date.

[Terr_]

> that's the plot of Die Hard 4

I must admit, the plausibility of corrupt government officials triggering a disaster to irreversibly steal bajillions of tax dollars hits a little differently today, 18 years later.

Not just due to the dramatis personae in charge, or the existence of cryptocurrencies, but also the real-world overlap of the two.

[nizbit]

There is the CIA Publication Review board as described by author and former CIA analyst David McCloskey https://www.npr.org/2025/09/29/nx-s1-5442567/the-new-spy-thr...

Nothing jaw dropping but he surprised on what get through

[bncndn0956]

It's generally called as pressure release valve. Talk about something adnauseum that it becomes so commonplace that it doesn't evoke strong feelings at all.

[squigz]

It's not a conspiracy - this is why Stargate exists!

[hopelite]

That is largely correct, even if not for that specific purpose/reason. Those people are largely self-discrediting, among other things.

[sdoering]

The most ironic thing that never came to fruition was an X-Files spinoff [1].

The pilot aired a few months before 9/11. Depiction a plot by the (I believe) CIA to crash a passenger airplane into the WTC. And the three computer freaks/conspiracy theorists that often helped Mulder trying to stop that.

I watched it a few months after 9/11 happened. That definitely was an experience I will never forget.

Even as a German, 9/11 for me ranks in the top three defining historic moments that I actively remember that demarcated the timeline in a clear before and after. Next to Chernobyl disaster and 11/9 (fall of the Berlin Wall).

Edit:

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lone_Gunmen_(TV_series)

[LargoLasskhyfv]

There is more. This was released in 1995: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illuminati:_New_World_Order

A few other links lazily searched -

The single card depicting it: https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/illuminati-world-orde... (zoomable)

The whole set: https://www.ccgtrader.net/games/illuminati-nwo-ccg/limited/

One of countless articles covering that, and related stuff: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

I've held this card (already well used and worn) in my hand, shown to me by someone affiliated with the CCC in Hamburg, who had it always on him in his purse, about 2004/5.

Surreal.

[xbmcuser]

Tom Clancy also had a similar plot in the Jack Ryan series

[doctorpangloss]

> you have no privacy, get over it.

> privacy as the basic right it should be again.

See, this isn’t complicated. Privacy in the sense of Limiting Government Overreach is completely different than privacy in the sense of The Unwanted Dissemination of Embarrassing Personal Information.

The problem has nothing to do with the societal resignation you’re talking about. It isn’t even true. People are resigned that they cannot really prevent the dissemination of embarrassing information (some people would call that “growing up” ha ha). They’re not “resigned” that government overreach is inevitable.

The problem is that a lot of people WANT government overreach, as long as they perceive that it’s against the Other. That’s the problem. Advocates have failed because by conflating the two issues, they make no headway.

[mistrial9]

> almost a national societal resignation that "you have no privacy, get over it."

no it is not. This is parroting the helplessness you probably dislike. There are many factors at work in a complex demographic of modern America. It is worse than useless to repeat this incomplete and frankly lazy statement.

[dylan604]

> If you've ever watched the movie "Enemy of the State",

any nuggets of truth like using the name Echelon is way over shadowed by "rotate on the 360 to see what's in his pocket" nonsense uttered by non-other than Jack Black which would be just at home in Tancious D Pick of Destiny

[jeffbee]

I think what you mean is that an uncritical reading of Snowden's smuggled powerpoints can be compatible with Grand Unified Conspiracy thinking that was promoted and advanced by 90s media like Enemy of the State and The X-Files. But compatibility is not truth. These things are all pretty unhinged and with little basis in reality.

[jasonvorhe]

Imagine actually believing all this in 2025.