Comment by hrodriguez | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hrodriguez | Hacker News Reader

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> Device and information insecurity, overzealous surveillance by governments — these are real concerns that call for real attention.

I'm looking forward to The NY Time's Zeynep Tufekci's real discussion about Operating Systems that spy on us, collect our data and share that data; tracking across the internet; lack of security updates on phones; a tie-in with PRISM (allowing the NSA unfettered access to company databases) and anything else her top-notch "security researchers" turn up.

Maybe she can add a few words about the lack of oversight, transparency and accountability our tech & phone companies enjoy for the privilege of cooperating with certain government agencies. Let's get your "sources" to add a few words about backroom deals that circumvent The Constitution and the laws of this land too. It's a big topic with many players.

Be careful though, Mrs Tufekci. This kind of real news will get you into hot water with your masters.

I'm sure she'll get to it after another hit-piece on Wikileaks for actually bringing this discussion to the table instead of trying to kill it. That is, once she gets over her political biases (which are sprinkled throughout the article) and does some real journalism.

Security and Privacy are issues that need "real attention" and not something that gets tacked on at the end of an article and forgotten.

*edit: word

You are trying to imply that Tufekci is part of a tacit conspiracy to suppress the real news about... something? I'm not sure.

1) There's nothing in what she wrote to suggest that she's minimizing the dangers posed by telcos and goverment.

2) She just wrote a whole book about resisting the government using the internet. (https://www.amazon.com/Twitter-Tear-Gas-Fragility-Networked/...). She has a long history of documenting the ways governments and telcos meddle with popular action, in real time, too. (e.g. https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/449896348142555138 , which I just found by Googling "zeynep telco").

I'll restate what the article actually said, since some people seem to have missed it. She writes that Wikileaks characterized Signal and WhatsApp as being useless for secure communication; that this is not the case; and that the media reported this uncritically.

Rather than raise questions about Tufekci, I think it's more important to ask why Wikileaks is now trying to spread FUD about some of the best tools that we have.

Zeynep Tufekci was the organizer of the open letter about the Guardian reporting on WhatsApp.

http://technosociology.org/?page_id=1687

In this connection, she's particularly concerned that misreporting the nature of attacks, (edit:) or reporting them without context, will cause people to make bad security decisions. That issue is raised in reporting on these tools just as it was raised in the WhatsApp reporting, and it's the focus of her editorial here.

I don't think Tufekci wants people to refrain from talking about the terrible state of information security in general, or about how we could improve it. (While she also dislikes Wikileaks in general, which is very apparent in this editorial and slightly complicates the point, I don't think she means to suggest that we shouldn't know or talk about these capabilities or how to respond to them.)

> I'm sure she'll get to it after another hit-piece on Wikileaks for actually bringing this discussion to the table instead of trying to kill it.

If this stuff is worth bringing to the table then Wikileaks can bring it to the table with facts, not sensationalism and misinformation.

> That is, once she gets over her political biases (which are sprinkled throughout the article) and does some real journalism.

It says quite clearly at the top of the page: The Opinion Pages, and it even has "contributing op-ed writer" in all caps.

I'd sum this article up as:

This isn't news because we've known for ages and ages that governments do evil things, known for ages. None of the evils listed are new or that interesting. Nothing to see here.

To me, that is like saying, "come on, it's murder. We've had murder since Cain killed Abel. Wikileaks attempt to expose such an ancient crime isn't news. Now look what Kanye said..."

There is a huge difference between a hacker being able to read your encrypted messages, vs a hacker being able to read your encrypted messages if they have malware on your phone.

Conflating the two is dangerous, people will stop using Signal if they think it's insecure. She's right to call out Wikileaks for lying about this stuff, and at no point in the article does she imply the governments actions are acceptable either.

So you are saying that it was ok for Wikileaks to misrepresent the material it was releasing because the mainstream media has been saying for years that the government is spying on us.

Huh?

So this tweet here: https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/839105996429668352 this 141 characters is misleading? Here's the whole tweet just so we can be clear:

> CIA hacker malware a threat to journalists: infests iPhone, Android bypassing Signal, Confide encryption https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/#PRESS

If the argument is this tweet is misleading, this 14 words of content, a link and a hashtag. If that requires a 5,000+ character response to show how, I'm cool with that argument. I really am. I can see how it is misleading.

Equally, if you can read into those 14 words something misleading, I think a non-misleading interpretation is equally valid. In which case, the argument "the 14 words set the wrong agenda it's no big deal" is a little less compelling, and reads exactly like what I wrote. But what do I know? We are all free to disagree.

This is standard operating procedure at propaganda outlets like NYT/Washington Post Et Al. It's called "burying the lead". When the crux of an issue is buried as a footnote in the last paragraph.

The controlled media will quibble over symantics of a Tweet and ignore the shocking truth that innumerous government agencies can aquire blackmail on anyone they want at any time without even breaking the law; and if they fear a journalist or leaker sufficiently, cause a high speed car or plane crash to get rid of them.

> This is standard operating procedure at propaganda outlets like NYT/Washington Post Et Al.

It's an opinion piece. It's literally right there in the title that you should expect someone to be expressing an opinion, not engaging in objective reporting.

Alternate editorial spelling: burying the lede.

If you use encrypted messaging apps, and you're careful not to put malware on your phone, they probably cannot acquire blackmail on you any time.

You're spreading the exact misinformation that the entire article is trying to correct.

This kind of real news will get you into hot water with your masters.

And which masters would those be, Mr. Rodriguez? Perhaps you're unaware of the background, Mr. Rodriguez, but everything I've seen from her and a lot of other people who know and care about security have been laying into mainstream news media for quite a while over their reckless and breathless inaccurate reporting on security and encryption, and pointing out that media outlets are going to get people killed by turning them away from secure options and toward things that major governments can crack and spy on.

But acknowledging that wouldn't let you spout creepy and condescending comments like the one I'm replying to, now would it, Mr. Rodriguez? So I can see why you didn't go there.

I can appreciate comments on HN that counter the prevailing wisdom or even question if something is a conspiracy or not with some (at least circumstantial) evidence and without being too leading but hrodriguez's comment just reads like any other creepy, angry and nasty conspiracy theorist's vitriol. I don't know if it violates any guidelines but I hope we make this kind of comment style unwelcome on HN. There's entire communities dedicated to this style of discussion they can participate in.

Agreed. A main purpose of propaganda is not to persuade people, but to create enough noise that intelligent discussion is impossible. That seems to be working, to some degree, on HN.

When someone insists on that style of writing at someone, complete with the "Mrs Tufekci" bit, I just mentally read it in the voice of Hugo Weaving from The Matrix.

It works surprisingly well!

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