[Motti]

Exactly three years after the mysterious disappearance of Malaysia Airlines MH370 on March 7 2014 (17:19 UTC time), the international whistleblowing site WikiLeaks dropped a bombshell on how the US Central Intelligence Agency could weaponize just about every "smart device" on the planet.

The US intelligence community has turned the global village into a prison planet; one where bedrooms are no longer sacrosanct, bank accounts are no longer secure and national secrets can be retrieved from deceptively "secure" channels and archives. Smart cars can be remotely commandeered to snuff out pesky citizens who get in the way of a train wreck called the United States!

But what apocalyptic scenarios were Year Zero and Zero Day referring to? Did Russia earlier get wind of them? Did the election of Donald Trump finally throw a spanner into the works?

Read the rest of the article here: https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201703 ... dominance/

[mikema63]

No, the actual documents don't really show that kind of amazing power. Most of their hacks were patched holes in older models and operating systems. The actual encryption that is used is fundamentally sound.

[Motti]

[highlight=]No, the actual documents don't really show that kind of amazing power. Most of their hacks were patched holes in older models and operating systems. The actual encryption that is used is fundamentally sound.[/highlight]

Yes, true. But Wikileaks seem to have released this tranche as a teaser. According to some reports, they are setting the stage for a far more explosive set of revelations down the line.

[mikema63]

They say that about every WikiLeaks dump, it often doesn't materialize but they get to bask in the attention.

[Motti]

Actually, they re-brand the next release - after a protracted delay.

[Donna]

I kind of sympathize with John Kerry when he tried to explain that a lot of US spying programs were on auto-pilot and the government wasn't even sure themselves what it meant to have all of this data. Also not discussed much is how data retention has developed with the tech itself. Most people don't even know what to do with all of the information on the internet that is available at their fingertips.

[Motti]

I kind of sympathize with John Kerry when he tried to explain that a lot of US spying programs were on auto-pilot and the government wasn't even sure themselves what it meant to have all of this data. Also not discussed much is how data retention has developed with the tech itself. Most people don't even know what to do with all of the information on the internet that is available at their fingertips.

That's interesting. I never knew Kerry said that.

[Zagadka]

There is the argument that worrying too much about government surveillance is pointless because the resources they would need to monitor one person, much less millions, much less tens of millions, would be prohibitive, but we are protected from search in the constitution.

[Motti]

[highlight=]There is the argument that worrying too much about government surveillance is pointless because the resources they would need to monitor one person, much less millions, much less tens of millions, would be prohibitive, but we are protected from search in the constitution.[/highlight]

Actually, cyber-surveillance is now much easier thanks to supercomputing and Artificial Intelligence. All the human monitors need to do is focus on individuals flagged by the system.

[mikema63]

Except that the collection of meta data is different than the collection of the content of everything everyone says or does on electronic devices. The collection of such content, we can see from these documents, has to be targeted at a specific person to crack their specific set of devices. It cannot be done en masse to be analyzed by a supercomputer.

[Motti]

[highlight=]Except that the collection of meta data is different than the collection of the content of everything everyone says or does on electronic devices. The collection of such content, we can see from these documents, has to be targeted at a specific person to crack their specific set of devices. It cannot be done en masse to be analyzed by a supercomputer.[/highlight]

True. But they are archived and can be retrieved as soon as someone earns the red flag. Or upon official requests. Who oversees the procedures and protocols anyway?