On 7/20/15 11:08 PM, Shelley wrote:

On July 20, 2015 2:17:54 PM Juan <juan.g71@gmail.com> wrote:

    cypherpunk :

    https://www.wikileaks.org/Op-ed-Google-and-the-NSA-Who-s.html

    "Google and the NSA: Who’s holding the ‘shit-bag’ now?"

    Not-cypherpunk-at-all :

> 2015-07-19 2:22 GMT+09:00 Stephen D. Williams <sdw@lig.net>:
>
> I feel perfectly confident that Google is going to protect their
> billions in income and valuation by being very careful with
> avoiding abusing their data or users in any strong sense.

Yes Juan, thank you for posting this link! This isn't even new, we just got proof in that Stratfor email dump. Anyone who can read that and want to have anything to do with google in any capacity is insane. Read the whole linked conversation, if you haven't. It's quite disturbing and enlightening.

This is a good link to send around to the sHillary bots, too. Not that it'll make a difference. It's Giant Douche and Turd Sandwich all over again, and if voting really changed anything they'd make it illegal.

Just for fun, I reread this. Based just on the text of this page, there is little that is really a gotcha of any significance. A bunch of well-placed, powerful people know each other, bla bla. Google Ideas is trying to spread access to the Internet far and wide and, like any US citizen or company should, consults with the State department when doing anything with a non-first-world-country. The CIA might also want Internet access far and wide in those countries, perhaps for fairly great reasons: general education, anti-propaganda, etc. A modern, educated, liberal technologist wants to counteract extremism with education in any way feasible, oh my. The government is paying for services they are using? Is that unusual?

Where is there something that is actually illegal, regressive, or otherwise actually a problem? Plenty of innuendo and situations that could potentially be bad, but where's the meat?

I like Wikileaks at all overall. Very entertaining, and some people should stay organized while heavily scrutinizing those in power to detect and expose abuse, or even the appearance of abuse. But I'm not confused by this kind of innuendo and imprecise characterizations. Be specific and clear about what exactly was wrong. What was the specific harm? What should people have done instead?

-S

sdw