notveryrational's comments

China does not do that. You've abused terminology in order to try to make the argument fit, post factum.

But at least your argument has a strong thesis.

> It's less aggressive than China in terms of being used to control the lives of the entire population of the country, though.

I'm not sure that's true.

NSA and other US domestic surveillance capabilities feed the information it gathers passively (they call it "strategic listening") for DoD to understand how to influence entire countries, continents, world opinion.

For example, DARPA has a current program called SMISC: "Social Media in Strategic Communication" - where they are studying next generation technologies for determining how information and opinions spread by social media for US intelligence and military botnets and troll armies to influence opinions at scale. This is just a small evolution over the information domination US intelligence and security has applied domestically and globally for decades.

US:

Drone assassination program, kills based off metadata score.

Global rendition and torture program. Largest prison population on the planet, exhibiting UN criticized torture, forced sterilization.

China:

Has no drone assassination program. Does not kill based off metadata score.

National rendition program.

I prefer not to confuse "a level of international influence" with global information domination.

The American surveillance state feeds a global assassination and propaganda program, and seeks total information domination.

The Chinese program is about homeland security and domestic stability.

I am completely and entirely correct.

Waaay more interested in the American surveillance state, which is global, penetrating, the best funded, attached to a global propaganda system, and sits in the hands of the world's premiere superpower. I'm also a citizen there.

These Chinese surveillance state stories are all really tame compared to the abuses of the American program.

And Facebook partnered with CIA to mass surveil and propagandize billions of people.

It's an evil company with evil partnerships. Turns out it's obligated by law to work with CIA and only obligated by market opportunities to work with other intelligence agencies.

I doubt it scrambles backticks. In its example on the webpage it just creates a keywork scrambler. The grammar is intact with most of the lexing.

Aren't the biggest recent successes of whistleblowing websites the publication of the the Pentagon papers, HBGary Federal leaks, embassy cables, collateral damage material/videos and US global surveillance program? To my knowledge, whistleblowing had very little to nothing to do with the recent election.

Information manipulation is one of the core functions of the CIA, Russian Intelligence, etc. Whistleblowing agencies do not seek to solve CIA information manipulation - only provide an outlet for the publication of contradictory material. In other words: these systems publish information - they are not golden bullets. They do not protect you entirely from the CIA. They aren't intended to. Don't let perfect the enemy of good.

Regarding the third point: it's often very easy for a leader to do the easy thing instead of the right thing.

Agree wholeheartedly that a person needs to be careful about how information is used, by whom, and to what end. I think that more than equally applies to Western intelligence and national security agencies.

This is about so much more than software...

That's the thing, if you look at the NSA, they were and still are absolutely empowered to do what they did.

The only person who got in trouble for the domestic surveillance disclosures were the person who blew the whistle. That's because what he did was illegal and what they did wasn't.

Ahh same deal. Geographical restrictions are for civilian law and political purposes. National Security follows different standards.

Chip on your shoulder?

So the State Police (NY State for me) did manufacture child pornography allegations. I am glad your experience was different.

I believe that in this case, the CIA planted this evidence.

I love my username, one could even say irrationally so.

I remember getting in trouble for hacking with friends in High School. When a friend got in trouble for stealing and publishing data from our school, the state police went around scaring all of the parents and media with accusations of suspected child porn (completely made up, and never part of any actual investigation). Just uttering the words turned parents who had been closed lipped into law abiding, pre-judgemental, and supportive accolades.

In his case, there was never any plant (thank god), but honestly - I've watched this tactic used again and again to destroy reputations. If the State Police feel empowered to use it at will, it's entirely believable for me to believe the _CIA_ would go so far as to plant - especially given the extra-legal authority of impunity they are empowered by.

That's because Wikileaks is not in any way a Russian operation.

Wikileaks is globally important as a whistleblowing operation. If you go back to the 1990s you can find the US government applauding Wikileaks' publications.

When Wikileaks distributed several large caches of US documents, and would not negotiate with the US Justice Department on disclosure, censorship and propaganda agreements common with most other news providers - this more friendly relationship curdled.

The US became increasingly hostile with Wikileaks, tried to get its operators extradited, even shopped around for internet sock puppets and social media campaigns to damage their reputations.

Wikileaks in turn became distasteful of the US, and happily publishes damaging materials on the United States. These documents also happen to cover many of the details associated with unsavory activity of the world's sole superpower, which makes the reporting rather important.

US media characterizations of Wikileaks as a Russian operation are, and have been, a (successful?) domestic propaganda campaign. The way the IG talks in internal documents (go find them) about Wikileaks is that it is an independent information organization that "punches above its weight" and has geopolitical capabilities as a non-state actor. That's much closer to the truth.

North Korea was very likely the culprit behind the SONY hacks.

If you read the leaked emails, you will find that SONY had worked with the US Department of State and the CIA to add American propaganda into "The Interview" with a plan to distribute it across the Korean Peninsula. Seth Rogan also did several interviews about CIA and State Department working on the set.

The group attributed for hacking SONY was "DarkSeoul" within "Bureau 121". This group is known for actively retaliating against companies that use propaganda to attack North Korean national security as a form of deterrence.

Additionally, the group posted, along with the SONY leaks, criticisms of what they called "the movie of terrorism" ("The Interview").

Of course, American media turned it all around and pretended that they said something about blowing up movie theaters, and caused a public panic.

Nobody in the IC attributed Vault7 to Russia. Wikileaks themselves suggested that it was a CIA contractor. US media did domestically propagandize the public via IC partnerships to "infer" and "suggest" that it was Russia, but no public statements that I'm aware of were made.

Common misconception. CIA is allowed to target Americans, and does on a regular basis.

Targeting Americans for political purposes is illegal. Targeting Americans for National Security reasons is perfectly within National Security Law.

This is really nice research! Simple, effective, and brutal.

This reminds me of the research that went into finding issues in the media plugin models. Essentially, once the security community discovered that Java and Flash, etc, plugins didn't follow the same rules as the browser at all times - it became a free bug hunting exercise until the media plugin model just died.

I expect there are some "side channel" type ways to create high resolution timers in browsers which have removed built in support for them, for instance: WebAssembly? WebGL subroutines?

Anyway, congratulations.

From the guidelines: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."

I would echo the OP's concern that most foreign coverage of China and Russia on hacker news seems to be:

1. Entirely off-topic.

2. Negatively biased in some way.

This tends to be true of more internet forums than hackernews. Having been "around for a while", my experience is that the wave of negatively flavored articles about US competitors follows the tide of geopolitical competition.

I believe these general trends are a result of our nation's propaganda program, where internet discussions and homeland conversations are considered legal operating ground. I believe much of the source material is posted by ordinary people, who have had their perceptions managed and influenced by these propaganda programs.

Regarding your point about China being the second largest economy and also a leader in technology - I would expect a significantly different mix of positively biased stories focused on China's leading edge, new innovations, top scientists and mathematicians, etc.

Outside of the general scaffolding to society that law enforcement plays (e.g. "keeping the order") I have never been personally assisted in any real way by the law.

My experience is that law has been gamed and weaponized, wielded generally by the most powerful and able, and that even in situations of crime the police do not take anything that doesn't track to a big precinct objective seriously.

I've literally had a police officer laugh at me after I suggested he might be able to investigate a spree of car break-ins and thefts in my neighborhood.

A homicide attempt against my family saw the perpetrator - well connected to a network of lawyers and wealthy - escape the jaws of punishment.

On the flip side I've been harassed by police and the justice system for minor infractions or entire misunderstandings - and due to political demonstrations have a good sense that I'm registered in both my municipal and national domestic threat scoring and surveillance systems as a "possible threat".

I've spoken to friends and family about this and they share the same experiences.

I was raised on TV and media that portrayed police as neighbors and good natured civilians, but the reality for me has tracked much closer to thuggishness and intimidation.

Yes personal anecdotes only, but stolen bicycles, multiple car windows smashed and robbed, houses broken into, aggressive drivers, calls regarding domestic abuse, dangerous situations - all with friends and family generally encouraging each other not to call the police because it won't do anything to help the situation.