snowden on "nothing to hide, nothing to fear"
from comma_egomaniac@midwest.social to privacy@lemmy.ml on 09 May 12:59
https://midwest.social/post/27639797

#privacy

threaded - newest

comma_egomaniac@midwest.social on 09 May 13:03 next collapse

en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden

Nakoichi@hexbear.net on 09 May 13:12 collapse

Still stupid as fuck to compare the Stasi to the Nazis.

quediuspayu@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 09 May 13:54 next collapse

Yeah, it would be more correct to compare the to the gestapo and the SD instead of the whole party.

Sphere@hexbear.net on 09 May 14:01 next collapse

the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: “theres actually zero difference between good & bad things. you imbecile. you fucking moron”

FunkyStuff@hexbear.net on 10 May 01:41 collapse

Why is the Stasi, a state organ responsible for countering all the fascist groups the US was still backing, comparable to the state organs of the Nazi Germany that the communists were intent on destroying?

quediuspayu@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 10 May 09:36 collapse

Who you say you are fighting is irrelevant. It is how you do it.

The first comparison wasn’t about ideologies, it was about spying the population and the stasi took it to a whole new level.

Those governments weren’t trying to destroy nazi organizations, they were trying to destroy anything that it wasn’t them and people suffered for that.

[deleted] on 09 May 14:42 next collapse

.

Libra@lemmy.ml on 09 May 15:23 collapse

Since the Stasi were one arm of an authoritarian government and the Nazis were the whole-ass authoritarian government, including Stasi-like arms, it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison. But I mean if you’re just here to conflate fascism and communism then you are probably immune to nuance and subtlety anyway, so by all means, don’t let me stop you.

Grapho@lemmy.ml on 09 May 21:19 collapse

What the fuck is an authoritarian government? The entire point of government is to wield authority.

Libra@lemmy.ml on 09 May 21:49 collapse

authoritarian /ə-thôr″ĭ-târ′ē-ən, ə-thŏr″-, ô-/ adjective

Characterized by or favoring absolute obedience to authority, as against individual freedom.

“an authoritarian regime.”

Look, it’s right there in the example even.

If you would like to argue definitions I encourage you to spend some quality time with a dictionary. Google can point you to several.

dessalines@lemmy.ml on 09 May 22:32 collapse

“Authoritarianism” is usually just coded language to demonize anti-colonial countries. It’s almost never used to refer to the “civilized” capitalist metropoles like the US and Europe, who have done their best to strangle every country that dares to exist outside their orbit.

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/7f233fa2-d11b-4cba-a4b8-5a2770f31b35.jpeg">

Libra@lemmy.ml on 10 May 05:57 collapse

Yes, I too am aware that people often misuse words. It might be safe to assume that the guy who just demonstrated that he knows how to operate a dictionary probably isn’t one of them though. Especially if you had read my comment that they were replying to, because then you would have seen that the nation I was calling an authoritarian regime (in fact, a ‘whole-ass authoritarian regime’) was Nazi Germany, so I don’t think we were in any danger of not labeling Western colonial powers as authoritarian in this thread.

ShimmeringKoi@hexbear.net on 09 May 16:09 next collapse

Libs be libbin

SoyViking@hexbear.net on 09 May 16:19 collapse

This is your brain on liberalism

ryedaft@sh.itjust.works on 09 May 13:27 next collapse

Weird how Edward Snowden is basically a Boddhisatwa and Julian Assange

gaja@lemm.ee on 09 May 13:58 next collapse

Retaliation for exposing the truth, likely to never speak the full truth again.

technomad@slrpnk.net on 09 May 13:59 next collapse

Could you explain what you mean by that please?

ryedaft@sh.itjust.works on 09 May 18:54 collapse

Snowden is very zen and I don’t know what Assange but it’s not zen

Termight@lemmy.ml on 09 May 14:02 collapse

Weird how Edward Snowden is basically a Boddhisatwa and Julian Assange

Defining someone a Bodhisattva is complex. Snowden & Assange acted with potential benefit & harm. True Bodhisattvas act from pure compassion & wisdom, embodying equanimity. Their actions offer reflection on truth & consequences.

kami@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 09 May 14:37 collapse

Where is the harm?

Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 09 May 15:27 next collapse

Exposing truth can often get people killed, especially if the liars are in the government, want to kill witnesses or rats, or at least make their lives hell for betraying the state. Depending on the severity, livelihoods are often at stake. That’s why very few people engage in whistleblowing. They’re aware that it will not get better for them.

kami@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 09 May 16:14 collapse

Self harm then? I think it’s not only fine but also heroic.

Termight@lemmy.ml on 09 May 15:37 collapse

Where is the harm?

Snowden’s disclosures, while aiming for transparency, risked national security, compromised sources, strained relations, & potentially enabled misuse of info. Buddhist principles emphasize avoiding harm & maintaining order, aspects potentially impacted by his actions. A balanced view acknowledges both benefit & risk.

kami@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 09 May 16:13 collapse

Maintaining order in this context would mean letting some people harm other people’s privacy though.

Termight@lemmy.ml on 09 May 16:27 next collapse

Maintaining order in this context would mean letting some people harm other people’s privacy though.

You’re right to question “order” at the expense of privacy. Buddhist principles highlight interdependence & ethical action. Security shouldn’t erode fundamental rights. Privacy & security are interconnected, not opposing forces.

HubertManne@piefed.social on 09 May 18:30 collapse

termights replies to you make me agree with your original statement. any harm was to things that are themselves overall harmful. Now that I look at it, it feels like between what we saw with snowden and schwartz it was 2013 when I really realized things are really really messed up.

Termight@lemmy.ml on 09 May 13:58 next collapse

“The early Internet’s dissociative opportunities actually encouraged me and those of my generation to change our most deeply held opinions, instead of just digging in and defending them when challenged. This ability to reinvent ourselves meant that we never had to close our minds by picking sides, or close ranks out of fear of doing irreparable harm to our reputations. Mistakes that were swiftly punished but swiftly rectified allowed both the community and the “offender” to move on. To me, and to many, this felt like freedom.” ~ Permanent Record, Snowden.

dumpster_dove@hexbear.net on 09 May 13:59 next collapse

If you really got nothing to hide then why do you close the door when you use the public toilet?

butsbutts@lemmy.ml on 09 May 15:28 next collapse

pooping stage fright

schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de on 09 May 15:41 next collapse

that may in part be out of consideration to others, most others don’t want to see that… so maybe a bad example…

Lussy@hexbear.net on 09 May 16:11 collapse

If you got nothing to hide why are you wearing pants bro?

MajesticElevator@lemmy.zip on 09 May 19:07 collapse

Okay

removes pants

😉👀🧌

NuraShiny@hexbear.net on 09 May 14:04 next collapse

I really hope that, within my lifetime, the CIA, FBI and any other state spy apparatus will be correctly seen as the evil, irredeemable orgs they are.

Libra@lemmy.ml on 09 May 15:19 collapse

Capitalism’s Invisible Army often acts as the propaganda arm of the US hegemony, so it is in a very real sense a part of their job to make sure this doesn’t come to pass. Sadly they seem pretty good at it.

wuphysics87@lemmy.ml on 09 May 14:28 next collapse

What did she say after Snowden dropped that bomb?

Libra@lemmy.ml on 09 May 15:20 next collapse

I’m gonna guess a whole lot of flustered backpedaling amounting to not a lot of anything, but I’m willing to be surprised if someone wants to dig up the video.

sawne128@hexbear.net on 09 May 15:26 next collapse

Just because an interviewer brings up a point doesn’t mean they agree with it.

Libra@lemmy.ml on 09 May 15:29 collapse

Thus my skepticism that she had anything useful to say in response.

jwt@programming.dev on 09 May 18:59 collapse

I don’t think this image shows her being in a position to backpedal from. I see her providing him with a platform to counter some points that were made elsewhere; she has not necessarily taken a position one way or the other.

Libra@lemmy.ml on 09 May 21:00 collapse

I meant backpedaling in the journalistic way of ‘Oh you seem to actually know more about what you’re talking about than I do and have a lot to say on the subject, I should, uh, redirect to a different topic where I can catch you out for that sick sound bite’ or whatever. Maybe that’s not what was going on in that interview, Iono, I haven’t seen it.

Skullgrid@lemmy.world on 09 May 16:06 collapse

We’ll be right back after these messages

BRINGit34@lemmygrad.ml on 09 May 14:44 next collapse

Nah the NSA are nazis

ShimmeringKoi@hexbear.net on 09 May 16:07 next collapse

Yeah famously no nazis were ever nice to their friends and families (“good people”) while doing bad things for what they thought were good reasons. Like… Snowden, bro, what the fuck are you talking about

jaybone@lemmy.zip on 09 May 16:22 collapse

Well he worked there, so he might know.

dessalines@lemmy.ml on 09 May 16:51 collapse

Snowden is a brave guy in some ways, but even in spite of his leaks, he’s remained a naive US-supremacist libertarian, who evangangelizes tech over political action, defends the OTF, silicon valley, and US-DoD funded crypto tools and privacy apps.

The lesson of 2013 is not that the NSA is evil. It’s that the path is dangerous. The network path is something that we need to help users get across safely. Our job as technologists, our job as engineers, our job as anybody who cares about the internet in any way, who has any kind of personal or commercial involvement is literally to armor the user, to protect the user and to make it that they can get from one end of the path to the other safely without interference,” he told an auditorium filled with the world’s foremost computer and network engineers at a 2015 meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force in Prague. He reaffirmed his view a year later at Fusion’s 2016 Real Future Fair in Oakland, California. “If you want to build a better future, you’re going to have to do it yourself. Politics will take us only so far and if history is any guide, they are the least reliable means of achieving the effective change.… They’re not gonna jump up and protect your rights,” he said. “Technology works differently than law. Technology knows no jurisdiction.”

Samsuma@lemmy.ml on 10 May 10:09 collapse

Once a fed, always a fed…

WanderingThoughts@europe.pub on 09 May 15:51 next collapse

The nazi loved the “nothing to hide”. What better than all your information, like religion, nicely written down in official records if you want to suddenly round up one specific group of people. Or DEI wanting to deport a certain group, and DOGE doing their best to suck up all information on everybody. You may have nothing to fear right now, but you never know who’s going to be in office soon.

WhatThaFudge@lemmy.sdf.org on 09 May 21:15 next collapse
Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org on 09 May 21:17 next collapse

You may have nothing to fear right now, but you never know who’s going to be in office soon.

The way I always explain it to people - take any additional government power or access to information you either don’t care about or actively support. Now imagine whoever you oppose/hate the most taking office and trying to use that against your interests. Are you still OK with them having that power? Same principle applies regardless of what power or who’s pushing for it.

It’s like due process - you don’t want any category of alleged violation not to be subject to due process, and if you don’t understand why then it’s time to wrongfully accuse you of doing that so you understand the problem.

El_guapazo@lemmy.world on 09 May 21:19 next collapse

Like those people that signed up for DNA sequencing for heritage research. Now that info is going to be sold. The problem is it could be used to discriminate for health insurance or other nefarious reasons

toastmeister@lemmy.ca on 09 May 21:34 collapse

I still think DOGE is just feeding all that information to Palantir, and everything else is a pretext to that goal. They want an AI embedded directly into the government, making a large dependency on it, and bypassing checks and balances quickly has allowed that to happen.

SoyViking@hexbear.net on 09 May 16:18 next collapse

Goebbels certainly didn’t believe in the right to privacy but there is nothing connecting him to the “if you have nothing to hide…” quote. He certainly wasn’t the first to come up with it, as it can be found in a 1917 piece by Upton Sinclair.

It seems like Goebbels’ connection to the quote is one of these “it feels so true that it has to be true” misattributions that floats around on the internet and in popular culture.

And by the way, the NSA are Nazis, they are bad people doing bad things for evil reasons.

dessalines@lemmy.ml on 09 May 17:01 collapse

Snowden doesn’t even think the NSA is evil:

The lesson of 2013 is not that the NSA is evil. It’s that the path is dangerous. The network path is something that we need to help users get across safely. Our job as technologists, our job as engineers, our job as anybody who cares about the internet in any way, who has any kind of personal or commercial involvement is literally to armor the user, to protect the user and to make it that they can get from one end of the path to the other safely without interference,” he told an auditorium filled with the world’s foremost computer and network engineers at a 2015 meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force in Prague.

He reaffirmed his view a year later at Fusion’s 2016 Real Future Fair in Oakland, California. “If you want to build a better future, you’re going to have to do it yourself. Politics will take us only so far and if history is any guide, they are the least reliable means of achieving the effective change.… They’re not gonna jump up and protect your rights,” he said. “Technology works differently than law. Technology knows no jurisdiction.”

mayo_cider@hexbear.net on 09 May 16:26 next collapse

I also have plenty to hide (crimes)

umbrella@lemmy.ml on 09 May 19:06 next collapse

ok ill be the one to say it then: the NSA are fascists. the NSA is evil.

bennieandthez@lemmygrad.ml on 09 May 21:03 next collapse

Lol i really cringed at that phrasing about “good people doing bad things”. Theyre literally fascists doing fascism to advance their interests, it really doesn’t matter if they are vegan and have dogs.

Niquarl@lemmy.ml on 10 May 22:56 next collapse

Je was a contractor for the NSA, sis you think he was going to say anything different?

spv@lemmy.spv.sh on 11 May 06:43 collapse

the quote in question is over a decade old…

bennieandthez@lemmygrad.ml on 11 May 18:32 collapse

So? The US was still spying on it’s citizens and murdering people abroad at that time.

spv@lemmy.spv.sh on 11 May 21:45 collapse

i assumed you were making a comment on the modern (fascist) administration. there’s a difference between shitty politics and fascism. :P

umbrella@lemmy.ml on 12 May 09:42 collapse

covert fascism. its more than shitty politics when they are murdering millions abroad, starving tens of millions more (including their own citizens) suppressing protesters violently… this sort of thing.

FriendBesto@lemmy.ml on 12 May 07:20 collapse

What is your definition of Fascist, here?

It seems to get tossed around at everything, these days. Not a fan if the NSA either, nor the Patriot Act, either.

umbrella@lemmy.ml on 12 May 09:50 collapse

fascism is capitalism showing its teeth, like what trump is doing more overtly now. one part of it involves enforcing a bolder and more baldfaced surveillance/police state.

the NSA is literally one of the intelligence arms of said surveillance state. they help manipulate people, find and disappear dissidents, suppress resistance and such. not unlike a few other 3 letter agencies.

they’ve been quacking like fascists way before trump, they have feathers like fascists and swim like fascists. hence why i call it fascist.

INeedMana@lemmy.world on 12 May 10:29 collapse

fascism is capitalism showing its teeth, like what trump is doing more overtly now

AFAIK that is not the definition of fascism

But I’ve seen a TikTok of someone who is studying politcal doctrines (IDR if their level was Major or PHD) and what is currently going on was ticking off all the boxes

umbrella@lemmy.ml on 12 May 15:10 collapse

there are many, sometimes conflicting definitions. this one sums it up.

i focus on the police state and militarism part of it because thats what the NSA is for.

and if it ticks all the damn boxes, thats wtf it is. your phd person on tiktok is probably referring to the 12 early signs. its been ticking them for decades now.

but please don’t rely on tiktok to get informed and read up on it, regardless of what qualifications tiktokers claim to have. its slop that barely clears the basics at best.

HonoraryMancunian@lemmy.world on 09 May 19:15 next collapse

I have “nothing to hide” but I STILL like privacy tyvm. Hence I’ll shit in public with the stall door closed, and not disclose my wank schedule on Facebook

DieserTypMatthias@lemmy.ml on 09 May 19:20 next collapse

The answer to that Reddit post is to delete your account on Reddit.

khannie@lemmy.world on 09 May 19:46 next collapse

My response to this is usually “Do you have curtains?”

Very late edit: I have found it very effective. It causes pause for thought because everyone values privacy, they just find it hard to picture themselves needing it. Curtains.

gazter@aussie.zone on 10 May 03:18 collapse

My response is similar, usually the good old ‘Do you shut the door when you shit?’.

When we start getting specific, I’ll often try and frame data harvesting in a much more visceral way. If they say they don’t care that xyz keeps track of everyone they talk to, I ask them to imagine an actual person standing behind them, making notes on a clipboard about every interaction they have with someone, and how that would make them feel.

ObsidianZed@lemmy.world on 09 May 20:09 next collapse

We desperately need a constitutional right to privacy, but I doubt that will happen in my or our country’s lifetime.

dessalines@lemmy.ml on 09 May 22:25 collapse

Which country? Plenty of countries have at least a nominal right to privacy, but it doesn’t end up meaning much when US companies own your country’s communications platforms.

ObsidianZed@lemmy.world on 09 May 22:54 collapse

I’ll let you guess, although you probably only need one guess.

NewSocialWhoDis@lemm.ee on 09 May 20:33 next collapse

You mean Russian asset Edward Snowden?

Ram_The_Manparts@hexbear.net on 09 May 22:36 collapse

lmfao

novacomets@lemmy.myserv.one on 09 May 21:24 next collapse

The fediverse condemns free speech. The fediverse bans unapproved opinions and wrong think, proving that the fediverse is an enemy to the principals of Edward Snowden. But it’s fun to be on here one in awhile knowing fhe right thing to say that forces people to come undone and expose their true personality. When you through a rock into a pack of dogs, the one that helps is the one you hit, so it makes for a fun time to say the right thing for setting off everybody and watxh in the insults come in, it means that I hit my mark

araneae@beehaw.org on 09 May 23:06 next collapse

The fediverse is a bunch of websites that talk to each other with the same protocol. If you’ve been banned from one, you can still talk on all the others. If you are banned on your home instance I am pretty sure you can still post on all the others.

m0darn@lemmy.ca on 09 May 23:53 next collapse

If you don’t like the way communities are being moderated, maybe you should find/start a server that more aligns with your values.

novacomets@lemmy.myserv.one on 10 May 00:10 collapse

The fediverse imposes censorship through de-federation, as opposed to being decentralized that only requires protocol configuration with any software designed to communicate through said protocols. Fediverse requires approval before accepting messages from other servers

m0darn@lemmy.ca on 10 May 03:53 collapse

Wait, so people can choose whether or not they’re subjected to hate speech? What tyranny!

[deleted] on 10 May 06:00 collapse

.

otter@lemmy.ca on 10 May 06:48 collapse

The idea is that people can block what they don’t want to see. Some users/communities/instances are more open, and others are more closed off. There’s nothing stopping you from finding a place that aligns with what you want

If someone doesn’t want to interact with you, you’re not going to accomplish anything by forcing them to interact with you.

novacomets@lemmy.myserv.one on 10 May 12:41 collapse

I’m all for individual users block who they want. In fact I emcourage it so users onlyvsee what they want. But when server admins defederate and divide the service into sections, users have no say anymore and will have to user mutiple accounts simultaneously across different servers to check posts. The line about telling people to start their own server is a cop out to avoid tue fractoring and censorship, but then to try to promote fediverse as an alternative to th bg names, that’s all a lie and a conjob when severs run by infants block users talking to adults who do not react emotionally to reading words on a screen. In stead, the fediverse seems to be only for people who have identical opinions on every subject and every contrary view gets dogpiled in an attempt to beat into submittiom.

I can say something about people who live a certain lifestyle and have my account deleted. Others can say the exact opposite as me and they get praise and posting gets promoted. It makes the fediverse look like a cult of freakshows who are terrrified to go out to public places and debate people in the street, but come on here to escape humans who don’t agree where everybody conforms to a specific view and everything else is deleted or banned. Given the way fediverse people complain about Twitter, a pattern emerges that their complaints is the fact the Twitter allows opinions that they can’t tolerate so they stay in fediverse where they are protected from reading words. Those people will never achieve much for jobs or careers where co-workers can express offensive or insulting views and the company can’t do anything because they can’t fire someone for an opinion, so they will have to wok with people who don’t support their views or reject their beliefs. How will people on here ever handle having children when their own kids can grow up to reject their views but have to maintain a close relationship despite their child’s disapproval of what they believe?

[deleted] on 10 May 12:02 collapse

.

novacomets@lemmy.myserv.one on 10 May 12:49 collapse

Find one single instance where users are free to reject or critcize religion, reject trans people, criticize conservatives, and criticize leftists, all on a single instance.

scott@lemmy.org on 10 May 13:17 collapse

People just don’t want to be around a bigot. Simple as. Social harms that might come to you for espousing views that aren’t acceptable to the surrounding community isn’t censorship, it’s just social rejection on legitimate grounds. Fix your heart or GTFO.

novacomets@lemmy.myserv.one on 10 May 13:55 collapse

If that were true, speaking with strangers in public places would not contradict fediverse postings. It seems that being outside talking with strangers face to face closers aligns, but not identical, to what’s on Twitter than every single fediverse service. If you can’t be friends with someone who doesn’t accept what you believe but has other interests away from the internet, not being online, that is lack of intellectual curiosity. Someone, I’m not suggesting you, who can’t spend an afternoon with people without checking phone for new messages lives in misery 10 out of 10 times.

piyuv@lemmy.world on 09 May 21:40 next collapse

Here’s a scientific dissertation on how and why that phrase sucks: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=99856…

It’s so easy to use but very hard to fights against. Worst case of bullshit.

ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca on 09 May 21:45 next collapse

He misattributes that quote

www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1558

You will find the quote in this book that predates Nazi Germany

Not merely was my own mail opened, but the mail of all my relatives and friends—people residing in places as far apart as California and Florida. I recall the bland smile of a government official to whom I complained about this matter: “If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear.”

RedSnt@feddit.dk on 09 May 22:11 collapse

So the quote was about the American secret service?

ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca on 09 May 22:36 collapse

Yes

JLock17@lemmy.world on 09 May 22:50 next collapse

One of the things I warn people about privacy is that it’s not about what they might find, it’s about what they might pretend to find.

Plenty of dirty cops plant evidence. Who’s to say they don’t like someone and keep a flash drive full of Cheese Pizza to plant on their computer. Usually that kind of logic gets people on board more easily.

Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee on 09 May 22:53 next collapse

Fuck me, the last part hit me HARD. I won’t get into the details why because it is painful for me to talk about it.

MetalMachine@feddit.nl on 09 May 23:22 next collapse

Feels like out of all the amendements, the 4th is the most violated one in US history.

jagged_circle@feddit.nl on 10 May 12:23 next collapse

Don’t post screenshots of text

Kobo@sh.itjust.works on 10 May 13:13 collapse

Let me check your Attic why not, you’re not hiding any jews are you?

FriendBesto@lemmy.ml on 12 May 07:19 collapse

Yeah, so what if I want to hide a bunch of Jews in my attic?