Edward Snowden Says Assange 'Could Be Next' After John McAfee Suicide

[Karl]

Hi David,

Our conversations are getting a little long and I have some trouble guiding
my hands ... are you able to trim the quotes down some when replying?

On Sun, Jun 27, 2021, 8:10 PM David Barrett <dbarrett at expensify.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 25, 2021 at 4:47 PM Karl <gmkarl at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Ok that's encouraging, I agree we shouldn't give up on what we've got!
>>>
>>> What I'm not quite following, however, is that you seem to be agreeing
>>> that the court system is *so broken* that the rest of the world should stop
>>> extraditions to us -- even though the courts are apparently interpreting a
>>> complex law that has significant (and slightly majority) support amongst the
>>>
>>
>> The problem is that people are spending often their lives in prison
>> associated with politics rather than crime, and many of these people are
>> killing themselves in prison; it's not exactly a therapeutic environment.
>>
>
> No doubt prison sounds awful, and it's unacceptable for anyone to serve
> extended period behind bars without a trial and conviction -- and I agree,
> it happens all too often.  But so often to *stop all extraditions*?
>

Did anyone propose that?  Regardless, people hiding are in danger.  If
somebody is actively endangering people in an area that doesn't have a way
to protect them, extradition makes sense.  Otherwise it's just vengeance.

That said, I do like the idea of foreign nations pressuring the US to
> improve the efficiency of its justice system by basically "setting
> conditions" on extradition -- or even enabling the US justice system to
> proceed while the suspect is held in foreign custody.  This way if the US
> system isn't moving fast enough, they can just release them.
>
>
> population:
>>> https://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/poll-most-want-edward-snowden-charged-092930
>>>
>>
>> Eventually the advertisements win.  They have more air time.  I'm noting
>> this is a minority of poll results: the article states it is one single
>> poll.
>>
>
> Can you share any other data suggesting the opposite?  Is it possible that
> people genuinely feel that leaking national secrets should be a crime, and
> think it not because "the advertisements win", but because they actually
> think for themselves as much as you do, but came to a different conclusion
> than you?
>

This is possible, but I'm pretty surprised at it.  What kinds of people
think this?  What's your economic background?  I started middle class but
when I became poor I learned how much our government is harming the people
around me.

It's still our duty to defend whistleblowing and fight surveillance, or we
>> will trend to becoming a legalised empire where the same dictator is always
>> voted in.  Computers can already predict individual people's votes with
>> strong confidence.  We aren't in a democracy until protecting voters in
>> such an environment is resolved.
>>
>
> I 100% agree with the importance of defending democracy.  But can you help
> me understand how you feel surveillance undermines democracy?
>

People break the laws and enslave people by monitoring and influencing
them.  Laws don't prevent behavior, just deter it.

The worst case is when your head of state does that and stays a dictator.

Our democracy is run by spy agencies and marketing programs now instead of
common people, because common people can't surveil and influence a crowd,
or influence the people who do, when doing basic activities.

At best I think you might be suggesting that with data we can predict
> voting patterns, and then feed that into hypertargeted gerrymandering
> algorithms to create districts that protect incumbents.  And I absolutely
> agree that needs to stop.  But I think the algorithms are already pretty
> accurate with the data they've got -- more surveillance doesn't really
> change anything, gerrymandering is already a potent threat.
>

_Why_ would you ever want blanket surveillance?  Persia tried this.  It
produces oppression.

So I would 100% agree with you that we need to stop gerrymandering.  But
> the growth of surveillance (which is it's own serious problem) feels like a
> largely sidenote to that conversation.  I would love to talk more about how
> we stop gerrymandering, expand access to voting, and especially enact the National
> Popular Vote <https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/>.
>

What is gerrymandering?

I totally understand disagreeing with that law, or disagreeing with the
>>> majority -- and our government is built to manage that difficult push and
>>> pull between varied interests.  But it feels premature to throw out our
>>> entire justice system over something that most people agree with.
>>>
>>
>> I'm of the camp that punishment-oriented justice increases crime until
>> you have a possibly-violent rebellion to change whatever is stuck with the
>> enforcement of the laws.  In a community with honest dialogue crime reduces
>> due to people learning and addressing its relevant reasons.
>>
>
> I think that's a great vision. But if you agree with democracy (which it
> sounds like you do), then I hope you agree that's not necessarily the
> system we have right now -- and the way to fix it is gradually, slowly
> through voting, while defending the system we have *even though it's not
> ideally what we'd want*.
>

Our country was founded on revolution, but right now the issue is that
voting does little when a political AI can make a third of a country trust
a fake news meme.

In this community, the people have a more heightened awareness of how
>> political targets are targeted, manipulated, tortured, and destroyed by the
>> powers they threaten.  We need the information Snowden leaked to protect
>> ourselves from real violent criminals.  It's that the system is corrupt
>> more than that it is inherently unjust.
>>
>
> Can you elaborate on how anything Snowden leaked actually protects you or
> I from "real violent criminals"?  My understanding is the
>
only real world effect was to cause a spread of zero-day attacks, and
> reduce the visibility
>

Zero-days are not known only by a government.  They are known by criminals
all over the world, and used to control and spy on systems at a massive
scale.  Once you _actually hear_ about these attacks, instead of them
happening covertly, people _actually fix_ the errors, which seriously
protects everyone.

I'm too old and worn out to hunt up old documents on my misbehaving mobile
phone, but snowden revealed a whole slew of helpful things.

It's also notable that many people suffer at the hands of government
employees.  We need avenues to protect ourselves from the government, too.

of our CIA/NSA into adversary thinking.  But
>

What is visibility into adversary thinking?

I'll admit I haven't followed it very closely.
>

Here's a story:

I was surprised when I read some of the court documents of that military
whistleblower, Manning.  The military said they followed standard forensic
procedure and powered off the system to image the drive.

While I was reading that, I was actually using an operating system boot
image of my own creation that used memory remanence to automatically
decrypt the harddrive without needing to prompt the user for a key.

Memory remanence had been known for years at that time, but the military
procedure was to wipe the ram of a system before imaging it.  That ram has
all the passwords in it, the browser history, things typed into forms,
because software is made insecurely.  And my military's standard forensic
procedure was to wipe it.

Where were these people learning their forensics from?  Who was teaching
them?  What were the motivations of these people?

Situations like that are important, because they help people like me and
you think about what is really going on in the country, and how to protect
what is right and needed.

A lot of people think the military are harmful, and many have experiences
backing it up.  If communities were forthrightly included in decision
making processes, then people would appreciate formal bodies more, because
they were forthrightly directing what the formal bodies did.

There are many mediation processes that can reliably find decisions
appreciated by all parties.  But not very many well-funded mediation
organisations.

This is why I asked if you agreed with the entire concept of democratic
>>> rule, as if the majority agrees with something, write a law for that thing,
>>> and has an executive branch and court system that enforces that law -- on
>>> what basis can you claim justice isn't being served?
>>>
>>
>> I'm personally for consensus rather than majority, far safer, notably in
>> situations like this.
>>
>
> Can you elaborate on what you mean by that?  Are you saying the government
> should only do what has unanimous consent from 300MM+ voters?  You
> genuinely think that's a good method, and aren't just stating it for
> dramatic flair?
>

Yup.  Mediation works, shows and ads just fill you with stories of conflict.

- efficient, effective communication between all people

- working with people's needs and reasons, rather than their preferred
choices.

There is always a choice that everyone appreciates, if they learn enough
about what is going on, and have opportunity for what is important to them
to be valued.

I'll pick the courts here for what's unjust.  Cases like this usually use
>> secret evidence, which is not democratic.
>>
>
> It's not *transparent*.  But if that's what voters decided, how can you
> claim it's not democratic?  Also, are you *genuinely* in
>

Voters decided to keep evidence secret at trials?  I never checked off any
law like that on any ballot.

support of total transparency of evidence logged into the public record for
> all to see forever -- including, say, child pornography?
>

That's a silly thing to mention, but yes.  We need to know what is true,
very badly.  It's also clearly helpful if pedophiles can get arousal from
old court evidence rather than incentivising criminal production of new
material.

Here's the kinds of evidence that is typically kept secret.  Which of these
> do you feel should be shown publicly, and why?
> https://www.wicourts.gov/services/attorney/docs/conf_flyer.pdf
>

That's a lot of stuff, and my phone isn't letting me copy-paste it to see
it while I type.

It might be simplest to let the jury decide what to keep confidential.
It would be helpful to let people publicise evidence if it could help
protect them:
- a victim of whom the accused is acquitted could be aided by having the
right to choose arbitary evidence to publicise
- an individual sentenced to extended prison time could be aided by having
the right to choose arbitrary evidence to publicise

I suspect what you are *actually* trying to say is that "yes, I agree that
> not *everything* should be public.  But I would like more to be public."
> Which is a reasonable position to take.  Is that what you are actually
> trying to say?
>

?  Let's not convict whistleblowers using secret government evidence.  We
need to protect people our democracy from corruption more than anyone ever
needs to exert vengeance.

Regarding public and private, I would like the right to live a fully public
life.  This protects people from harm because what happens to them becomes
known.  Others would like secret lives.

I believe the operation of a government should be fully transparent and
public.  The people with classified information should be academic
researchers and such, not formal powerholders.
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