This sounds tinfoil hat crazy, but here we are. Not so crazy now.
Man in a position to have reams of compromising intel on the current president hired by a man in an ongoing battle with the president.
At some point we need to just say it
some of the largest tech companies are basically NSA+CIA partners and we're well on our way to having
Big Tech completely integrated into NSA and CIA and DoD
https://steveblank.com/2009/04/20/the-secret-history-of-sili...
https://steveblank.com/2009/04/06/story-behind-%E2%80%9Cthe-...
Technology is power.
I am pretty sure USA government buy's plenty of stuff from Chinese companies like everbody else does. Doesn't mean Chinese companies are working with it.
The other government has less power over me because they are thousands of miles away and don't control the institutions that I need to function as a citizen.
That being said, the foreign government might be less afraid of using my information against me, since they would be less afraid of blowback.
I guess I'm not sure. Both suck.
Better use TAILS.
If your country's software industry is comprised mostly of 10-200 person web shops and consultancies there's no real gain for the Goverment agencies to be in bed with them.
Billion, trillion, shmillion, lose some, win some, it's all virtual. Not backed by anything real. I mean, you can see the house of cards falling down because of a sneeze right now :-)
It may suit national interest, but it bodes poorly for the public interest.
Where the public suffers is that it's their tax money that funds this rather than going towards education, health, essential services, better wages, social and economic mobility - the list goes on.
Except now one of the ways the companies can help the government is with readymade worldwide surveillance. That is much scarier than anything Dole could offer.
That's a strangely Aristotelian view of organizations. It is as if you are suggesting that the 3-letter agencies have a fundamental essence outside of the intentions of the people who work there.
Typically it goes like this: lobbyist meets with policy maker, policy maker decides objectives for [a-z]{3}, [a-z]{3} undertakes missions in support of lobbyist's objectives.
I have no evidence other than the sheer obviousness of it, but the ties still continue to this day. I have no doubt it is kept hidden from most employees due to the general political leanings of most Valley engineers. For instance, my work does a ton of work for the DoE and you hear them mentioned all the time. The DoD is also a customer and you never hear their name.
Maps was caught wardriving [2] with Google Streetview, linking Wifi access point names to physical locations early on. After getting caught, they settled for $13 Million last year.
Now Google Maps and even location services on all Android devices uses wifi scanning and bluetooth scanning as part of location triangulation. This is a constantly updating map of every SSID in existance, including unique radio devices in a given location.
Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, now heads up the DoD's advisory board on new technology [3]
[1] https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-goo...
[2] https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/22/tech/google-street-view-priva...
[3] https://www.defensenews.com/industry/techwatch/2016/03/02/go... ||| https://innovation.defense.gov/Media/Biographies/Bio-Display...
The statement also linked to a third-party analysis of the relevant code which concluded: [2]
“Gslite is an executable program that captures, parses, and writes to disk 802.11 wireless frame data. In particular, it parses all frame header data and associates it with its GPS coordinates for easy storage and use in mapping network locations. The program does not analyze or parse the body of Data frames, which contain user content. The data in the Data frame body passes through memory and is written to disk in unparsed format if the frame is sent over an unencrypted wireless network, and is discarded if the frame is sent over an encrypted network.”
[1]: https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/wifi-data-collection...
[2]: https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en...
This was the moment I got afraid of every single Android device that's already on the market, sniffing around for everything they can find.
If private people do this, they get jailed. If google does it, nobody gives a damn about it.
There is no privacy, as everybody around you is compromising it without themselves knowing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Earth#History
Google Maps stems from an Australian company called Where2, which AFAIK was not funded by spooks.
The issue was that they captured data from open APs, and that collection of data was deemed illegal wiretapping.
The mapping of WiFi networks to physical locations was not.
The government didn't create Silicon Valley, Robert Noyce and the rest of the Traitorous 8 did. They did however bankroll semiconductor fabs here and in Texas for a few years but the world is better for it.
I mean, there are several books about it such as Surveillance Valley, or these two sister pieces
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-goo...
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/why-google-made-the-...
No we do need to say that because is patently untrue.
For example, here's reporting on an interview with Martin Baron, the paper’s executive editor:
Mr. Bezos holds conference calls with The Post’s leadership every other week to discuss the paper’s business strategy but has no involvement in its news coverage, Mr. Baron said. During his occasional appearances at The Post’s building, Mr. Bezos sometimes stops by a news meeting “just to thank everybody,” Mr. Baron said.
“I can’t say more emphatically he’s never suggested a story to anybody here, he’s never critiqued a story, he’s never suppressed a story,” the editor said.
“Frankly, in a newsroom of 800 journalists, if that had occurred, I guarantee you, you would have heard about it,” he added. “Newsrooms tend not to like those kinds of interventions, particularly a newsroom that’s as proud as The Washington Post.
“If he had been involved in our news coverage, you can be sure that you would have heard about it by now,” Mr. Baron added. “It hasn’t happened. Period.”
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/business/media/to-trump-i...
(edited for formatting)
The advertisers react to "wrong" coverage by withdrawing support, the chief editor is very attuned so he assigns the right people to the right jobs before trouble starts, and the journalists so assigned naturally work quite sincerely. No actual orders to publish or withdraw articles need to happen.
There's got to be a natural law that, for any given situation, one can compose a scheme whereby no proof of anything would actually exist, but evil would still be done.
Easily attributable to business decisions / climate.
> the chief editor is very attuned so he assigns the right people to the right jobs before trouble starts
Staff assignment as a smoking gun? That's going to be a stretch.
> and the journalists so assigned naturally work quite sincerely
Indeed, just people doing their jobs.
Who, pray tell, is going to leak what?
In this frame, "business decisions / climate" are exactly the driving forces which perpetuate such structures and outcomes.
The banality of evil doesn't forgive laziness in the construction of hypotheses, unless you're Fox News.
To spell it out, what leak / disclosure would constitute proof of GP's belief? A memo from the WaPo editorial staff which says "Pursuant to Mr. Bezo's comments on X, please assign Y to story Z, so that reporting will be more favorable"?
And barring a plausible method of provability / falsifiability, we're in "just asking the question" rumor territory with regards to the original assertions of malice. Which, personally, seems below the level of discourse I expect from HN.
This is the extent of the "conspiracy" in Chomsky's opinion. When things like the Amazon firing of a union organizer happen, the reporter set to cover it is going to have more connections to the corporate side and a be accustomed to writing stories that will please corporate sponsors.
If a reporter is overly critical, the story will likely get a less favorable placement and that reporter won't get similar assignments in the future. There is no overt conspiracy, but there is editorial pressure.
Just being the owner taints their coverage even with no direct influence (again, we can't just pick on Wapo here either). "So Joe, want to spend our time on researching this piece critical of Amazon or one the other hundred stories?"
When you saw that happening, did you just let it slide? Where did it happen? Was the story originally about Amazon or was it just an off-topic side remark that didn't really fit in?
Why should I stop sawing this branch I am sitting on, I havent fallen yet ?
Your argument is that we can't prove the absence of a conspiracy.
Hence, a better analogy would be
"why should i stop sawing this branch? just because gravity has never left me suspended in thin air doesn't mean it can't or won't happen in the future"
Right?
Right, your news company is the only one that doesn't smell. Maybe you should adopt the motto "fair and balanced" to reflect how editorially independent and objective you are.
> Martin Baron, the paper’s executive editor:
The newspaper's editor says that he is objective? Zuckerburg also says facebook is all about user privacy. So it must be true.
- Checking out on Amazon was always encrypted.
- Browsing on Amazon was not encrypted until quite recently. Add To Cart wasn't encrypted.
- High end network equipment includes support for monitoring your browsing on the guest wifi to send URLs from you browsing Amazon to price-compare or buy. See, for instance, Cisco Analytics for Retail.
What do you mean by this? HTTPS has always been supported for browsing and adding to cart.
HTTPS was only experimentally supported by one browser when Amazon launched so this is clearly not the case, is it?
I like the way you included just 'Americans', may be because it's just the domestic spying which is against U.S. law, may be because you thought 'spied on Americans' hits harder for an American reader than just 'spied on everyone'.
But, for someone outside USA or China; there's absolutely no difference between U.S. tech or Chinese Tech w.r.t Privacy, what U.S. does privately, China does openly and that's not limited to just spying.
Can you say for sure, that the phone will not be seized, imaged and/or bugged at the airport/border?
Anyways you are talking about differences in what they do with the data or the person to whom that data belongs and not contending the fact that tech companies from both the countries spy internationally.
See, that's what I'm trying to tell, What about 'Not in America'?
Before I proceed further, I want to categorically state that I don't intend to come off as supporting privacy violations by one country vs another; My argument over this entire thread has been that it sucks for someone not in any of these countries as they all spy on us and it's taken for granted in this kind of discussions.
That said,
>use a VPN. The NSA can't stop you if you really want privacy.
Because they have 'No logs' policy? Come on, don't be naive. Even the trillion dollar fruit company has been part of the program according to documents which hasn't been disputed.
>This is illegal in China, where every VPN must be state sponsored and monitored.
So you do agree that the Amercian VPN companies or any American company have double standards when it comes to China? Btw, almost every outsider in China installs a VPN to access content outside Great Firewall once they arrive, several U.S. services work without a VPN e.g. iMessage, Skype etc. I have heard of targeted deportation/arrests at airport, but never heard of random phone seizures at Airports.
Same advice, buy a VPN if you want the services that it provides.
>Because they have 'No logs' policy? Come on, don't be naive.
Contract with a VPN that is audited and resides in a legally favorable country. I hesitate to endorse any particular company, but they're out there. Maybe privacy just isn't convenient enough for you.
>So you do agree that the Amercian VPN companies or any American company have double standards when it comes to China?
What are you talking about?
>very outsider in China installs a VPN to access content outside Great Firewall once they arrive
You are allowed to do this at their law enforcement's mercy.
> several U.S. services work without a VPN
Surveillance wouldn't work very well if it made people quit using the services and network.
> I have heard of targeted deportation/arrests at airport, but never heard of random phone seizures at Airports.
I wonder why they don't feel the need to seize phones at airports. As an aside, I recall reading that the PRC forces Uighurs to install spying apps directly to their phones. That is, all the Uighurs who aren't in "Vocational Educational Camps" and have yet to flee to America, where the supposedly oppressive American surveillance state is a breath of fresh air.
This - >
>Same advice, buy a VPN if you want the services that it provides.
>You are allowed to do this at their law enforcement's mercy.
Do you consider secret courts to be in scope of this discussion.
Then there is this That and this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_Matrix
Yes. Secret courts are reasonable due process. Do you have an alternative method that wouldn't release damaging information?
Are you interested in talking about surveillance specifically or every talking point of the usual anti-American tirades?
You said
> If they wanted to intentionally examine your network traffic, that would require a court order.
I just gave you an example when that did not matter.
> Are you interested in talking about surveillance specifically or every talking point of the usual anti-American tirades?
Whenever you are willing to have an honest discussion rather than a blinkered and intentionally misleading cheerleading
Prove it.
Yes, independent review by a board or committee separate from the defense intelligence complex who will help determine if the information is actually damaging or if it's just some bullshit a midlevel staffer at the Pentagon determined is 'damaging.'
As an American, I am deeply disturbed by the complete absence of transparency of these programs to Congress and the American people. And honestly I'm not convinced that the people running these programs have any ability to see the forest for the trees, or if they're not just some D.C. automaton skilled enough at groupthink and not asking questions to get the tippity-top security clearance.
Is it a drooling idiot running the program? Dunno. Classified.
Their spying on Americans is reviewed by judges and courts. They get warrants for every american they spy on.
The senate intelligence committee may (behind closed doors and under the oath of secrecy) inquire about just about anything the intelligence community does.
The president may at his or her sole discretion declassify any information.
Haven't you heard, the first rule of conflict is "all warfare is deception"? Try running a state with zero secrets and see how far you get.
Those judges, and the members of the senate intelligence committee are most definitely not an independent committee. That's like calling the police commission an independent committee. Even if they were, how would we even know if they're not just rubberstamping stuff?
Congress is in the dark. Remember Niger?
"We don't know exactly where we're at in the world, militarily, and what we're doing. So John McCain is going to try to create a new system to make sure that we can answer the question (about) why we were there," he said. "We'll know how many soldiers are there, and if somebody gets killed there, that we won't find out about it in the paper." When Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was asked later on "Meet the Press" about knowing whether there were troops in Niger, he responded, "No, I did not."
https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/23/politics/niger-troops-lawmake...
If they don't even know where we have troops doing mildly classified stuff, how much do you think they know about black programs that are totally off the books?
The president has thus far decided things like, 'huh, the Coronavirus is a lot worse than everyone thinks...in February...better not tell anyone about it and we should do absolutely nothing to prepare' classified. Great guy to have in charge of that.
Think about the people we're actually fighting wars against? Do you think elaborate deception has made a sliver of difference in any conflict fought by the United States in the past 60 years?
We need transparency and civilian oversight. I'm not afraid of an Afghan Taliban fighter knowing our super secret plan to spy on the planet. I am afraid of a defense intelligence complex that has shown zero hesitancy in the past to spy on Americans and is increasingly operating in the shadows with little oversight outside of the White House.
This whole system is not engineered for the benefit of the American people. It's a juggernaut of bureaucracy and secrecy that serves a defense and intelligence community that is pursuing god knows what.
Source on this?
>Those judges, and the members of the senate intelligence committee are most definitely not an independent committee.
What does independent committee mean to you? They are from entirely different branches of government. That's as independent as it gets.
The post you linked is from the Senate Armed Services committee which is not the legislative oversight for the NSA. Different people, different processes. Geriatric senators probably forgot we had troops in Nigeria because America has troops in untold dozens of countries. No one remembers the whole list.
If you think the Taliban is our biggest threat you should leave national security to the people who do it for a living.
I can say that there are only 11 judges listed as being on the FISA court, and I don't believe that 11 people can personally oversee every instance of the NSA conducting surveillance on all potential Americans of interest around the planet. Maybe they can. Who knows, it's classified.
Congress is a different branch than the presidency, doesn't mean Mitch McConnell is an independent check-and-balance on the authority of the president.
It's literally their job to be aware of that. They have a staff whose entire job it is to keep them aware of that. If they can't keep track, what's the difference between them and the congressional committee that's supposed to be keeping tabs on the NSA?
The people who do national security for a living are in a bubble that facilitates the construction of boogeymen. And if they can't give me any credible evidence as to the existence of said boogeymen without saying 'sorry, that's all classified,' then why should I believe otherwise?
Right now I'm supposed to be scared of China, but I personally see no evidence that I should be more worried about them than my own president who covered-up the threat from Coronavirus in February, and then tried to blame it all on the Chinese as a diversion. Looks to me like the Chinese were actually trying to warn us in February, while the President was trying to cover it up:
Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China - January 24, 2020 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
Clinical course and outcomes of critically ill patients with SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia in Wuhan, China: a single-centered, retrospective, observational study - February 24, 2020 https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2...
If the Taliban aren't a threat to U.S. national security, then why was the longest war in American history fought on Afghan soil? Isn't that where all those 9/11 hijackers were from, and the country that bankrolled them? If they weren't from Afghanistan why didn't we sanction or invade the country they were actually from, and that gladly bankrolled the operation? Is that classified too?
https://www.npr.org/2020/05/13/855611173/fbi-accidentally-re...
Oops... I guess it isn't anymore.
Regardless of legality.
> I'm very sure that you're wrong. Do you have any evidence that the NSA kidnaps and tortures people?
that NSA can get people tortured or killed without much difficulty.
You started with the claim that unlike China an US citizen is unlikely to get his/her privacy encroached on quoting all sorts of processes. I just gave examples where these processes didnt do much in preventing breaches of such encroachments. Add to that what we know is just a clouded view into the tip of the iceberg because of provisions of secrecy. If the clouded tip of the iceberg looks the way it does, it is not hard for someone not so deluded, or not so deprived of a full deck, to fill in what the rest of the iceberg could look like.
If you disagree show me the proof of
> Americans who are overseas plotting imminent terrorist attacks
Show me the oversight over Anwar Awlaki's assasination that went ahead despite the fact that he had never been charged with (let alone convicted of) any crime. Proof of oversight, if you please over the killing of his 16 year old son.
I can play the same game that you have been playing in asking nothing less than irrefutable proof that will stand in a public court. Hope you believe in upholding the same standards over yourself that seek in others.
If you cannot, then how is it different from other places where such proofs are not forthcoming after killings or incarcerations ?
It also links to another similar account a few days before that. And why would Egyptian activists make that up?
Plus, even if the NSA isn't regularly doing the kidnapping, torture, and killing themselves, they certainly help our other organizations do these things. Things like the disposition matrix, black sites, and locally with parallel construction all rely on their surveillance.
Too many unanswered questions. It's more likely she made it up because it gets people angry and that's what activists need to do.
If you have problems with other parts of our government, by all means criticize them and be an activist. Speak your mind and vote. Making up stuff about the NSA is intellectually lazy.
Personally, I agree with the other poster and view the NSA's collaboration as enough evidence, but had remembered seeing the Egypt thing last year.
One popular quote by Upton Sinclair comes to me mind.
You can say, as a US citizen, that all this stuff doesn't affect you much. But I can tell you, from considerable first hand experience, that the average Chinese citizen says the same about China.
I can say that the surveillance doesn't affect me because it's almost unheard of for Americans to get arrested with evidence that the NSA collected. The NSA is not a law enforcement agency. In China arresting people based on data from surveillance is the norm.
Edit: I am mostly addressing the organize against it part. USA has far better free speech protections than China
Do you ? As an outsider it doesn't really look that way. After watching events and protest around BLM, suddenly all those rights have gotchas in them.
Watching USA protesters and Honkong protesters, and goverment respones to them, there were far more similarities than differences. (Well china was still worse, but not by as much as most USA people seem to think).
The biggest difference in USA and china at the moments is that in USA some Politicians still listen to people (if only mostly out of self interest)
Ask those who wanted to protest against recent disproportionate police actions and those who did and became targets.
"All the stuff" that was either started or expanded while he was VP. Yeah, sure he wants to tear it down.
Biden is not going to change anything NSA-related, do not delude yourself and do not mistake electioneering frenzy for policy.
He seems consistent on this issue. Prior to his stint as VP, he complained about metadata collection by the GWB administration. https://youtu.be/h2qgU8kJt-0
So the question is not whether Joe Biden ever grandstanded on the topic - I'm sure he did, as every politician would. The question is what he had done about it when he was Senator and VP - specific actions attributable to him? Because if he has been consistent to paying lip service to the issue while not doing anything in practice - it is prudent to expect the same consistency to extend into the future.
I told you in the GP post. The email metadata program was shut down, and the phone metadata collection was reduced.
> PRISM still exists,
PRISM does not collect Americans' data.
> The question is what he had done about it when he was Senator and VP - specific actions attributable to him?
Again, I told that to you.
You haven't told me anything in fact except that some things supposedly happened while Biden was a VP.
There was only one in the leaks. That one.
> how do you know there's no other programs
If there were any, Snowden would have leaked those instead of a program that had already been shut down.
> how do we know it actually was reduced and not just changed codename?
Because laws were changed, and oversight was added that showed how many metadata records the NSA requested from the telcos.
> how you know Biden personally had anything to do with shutting it down
Does it matter if he was personally in charge or if he delegated? Collection of Americans'metadata shrunk while he was VP.
Living in Europe I have the pleasure of hearing these kinds of naive comparisons on a regular basis. Somehow it's always "the US is basically China and/or Saudi Arabia".
It's exhausting having to explain to people who are seemingly only capable of operating with a binary black and white worldview that there is a massive difference between certain shades of grey.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki
The difference between 'recruiter' and a guy who sent some emails to some people is unfortunately a distinction that is up to some dweeb with more top-secret security clearances than medals on a North Korean general.
I assume it's the same thing in China, they just have more dweebs that can disappear people.
>"According to U.S. government officials, as well as being a senior recruiter and motivator, he was centrally involved in planning terrorist operations for the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda"
We are better off with him dead. He was American, but his allegiance was to al Qaeda and he was planning to murder civilians.
Does your sense of morality and ethics end at the border, shouldn't these types of values be a bit more universal?
You and I have no evidence that he was anything other than a loudmouth who bagged on the U.S. on the web and responded to emails from anyone who sent them.
Remember when Saddam had those tractor-trailer biological weapons factories driving around Iraq ready to release clouds of Anthrax on American civilians? That was also based on classified information from a US government official.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2003-05-29/cia-confident-iraq-tr...
Completely fabricated.
"not enough evidence for me to believe it" said someone on HN with your handle.
Show us the evidence (a demand you seem to be fond of) and prove that in a public court, that's called due process. I will believe it then.
America won't even let you enter the country if you, or somebody on your feeds, criticized it on social media [0]
People who are too vocal in their opposition to the US government, or just been in the wrong places at the wrong times, have been plenty known to be abducted into torture black sites [1], if not straight up killed by a drone strike because literal SKYNET [2] interpreted their meta-data [3] as that of a terrorist.
And none of that is even accounting for the reality that the US has the highest incarceration rate on the planet, so if there's a place you will most likely be arrested during your vacation, then that's gonna be the US.
But I guess it's easy to forget about these parts of US hegemony while pointing at China over "social credit scores" putting people on no-fly lists.
[0] https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/27/border-deny-entry-united-s...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraordinary_rendition
[2] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/02/the-n...
[3] https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/05/10/we-kill-people-base...
The moral criticism here is that he violated the law he swore to uphold by also spying on his own citizens, and then lied about it.
Maybe for someone outside the US and China who doesn't travel and never intends on traveling. On the flip side if you ever plan on visiting either country there is a pacific-ocean sized gap in what you'll face visiting the two countries. I can't recall the last time someone was "disappeared" for criticizing Trump on twitter. The same can't be said for those who criticize Xi on Weibo.
It stinks no matter how you look at it. Actual criminal getting rich post crimes while Snowden who let us all know what a crook he is, is stuck in exile.
The rule of law and equality before it needs to be established.
"Bezos Taps Criminal To Strengthen Bid For Government Work"
Is about the kindest possible spin you can put on a headline for this story, right?
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/we-all-wear-tinf...
Where did you get that nonsense?
And this guy lied to Congress about it. And unlike plain folks who would have been prosecuted and jailed for this, he wasn't even indicted.
When? James Clapper is not one of Keith Alexander's aliases.
Also http://www.allgov.com/news/controversies/nsa-director-alexan...
In an exchange from March 2012, Johnson had an opportunity to question NSA Director Keith Alexander about precisely the kind of concerns that the exposé of PRISM confirms — that the signals intel agency can spy on content coming through American Internet servers.
I think it's pretty accurate description of what PRISM and other NSA programs allow NSA to do. Also:
Alexander categorically denied more than once in this clip that NSA even had the capability to conduct surveillance in the manner Wired reported
We now know not only they have the capability, they are actively using it. If claiming such capability does not exist is not a lie, then what it is?
The part you quoted is correct, but he didn't claim otherwise. He said that they could not get Americans' data in that manner, which is true. Reread his exchange with Johnson in the article. ("Does the NSA intercept Americans’ cell phone conversations?") In other words, he did not lie.
1. The CIA illegally collected intelligence on Donald Trump prior to his election to the Presidency
2. This intelligence was specifically of a compromising nature to President Trump
3. This intelligence was retained and can be retrieved at a moments notice
4. The retired DCI, who is no longer a government employee, somehow retains his read ins, Need to Know or accesses or...
5. Has personnel working within the IC who do have access to this information that would give it to him.
6. That the DCI has provided the existence of this information to Jeff Bezos
7. Bezos then provides a PUBLIC position for this person on the Amazon board as a way to pay for access to this information that Jeff will then ostensibly have as a "secret weapon" to blackmail a sitting President
This type of conjecture is on par with other conspiracy theories which are so far from realistic that they defy logic to believe. I'd love to see the combined probability estimate for something like this.
Others have said it better - Hayden knows the DoD and IC process for IT basically better than anyone, and can help Amazon win more business.
The end.
Pretty simple.
Yeah, that made me laugh.
Either is possible.
The USA badly, badly needs a way to get better candidates for both parties. Is there anyone who thinks this is the best the Republicans have to do the job for the american people? Is ther anyone who thinks this is the best the Democrats have to do the job for the american people?
Without being able to falsify the claim, and by deferring to a claim that isn't the simplest possible explanation (he's got nothing), it makes me wonder whether other HN commentators will come to defend my "Bezos is a dirtmonger" conspiracy theory as well.
Do we feel better about that now?
It's not reasonable to assume anything about the Intel Bezos has without evidence. Could be none. Could have hard evidence of crimes of the president and many senior politicians and public servants. Could be something in between those two. All are possible and there is no reason to discount any of it in the absence of evidence.
Good on you sticking up for the world's richest man who just hired a criminal though. It's important to maintian principle regardless of the optics.
Nothing about Amazon hiring a former NSA director to its board is "tinfoil hat crazy". It's in fact perfectly rational, since Amazon is literally in the business of selling services to the federal government.
Worth nothing that those reams of compromising intel on the current president only exist because the current president...
has, himself, generated reams of compromising intel.
They already publish a ton of heavyweight criticism... and I think there is no new information that could persuade those that still support Trump.
I want the NSA to know everything a US President does while in office. I want the NSA to know everything a candidate for US President does while they are running for office.
The President of the US is not a regular citizen. The cost of being handed almost unlimited power is that you forfeit the assumption that you will use that power always and only to the benefit of the country.
If Alexander has compromising intel on the current president there is only one man to blame for that - the man who put himself in compromising situations.
Neglecting the fact that, according to Snowden, they already have that power, are you aware what power this gives the intelligence community and, by implication, the sitting president over elections and up-and-coming presidential candidates? Yes, Donald Trump is dangerous. But this doesn't mean we should employ even more dangerous tactics to control him.
That's an explosive claim. If Snowden knows that they have that power, why didn't he leak documents that show they do?