Journal smittyoneeach's Journal: Day 3: Assange 13
Two
To understand the risk that Julian Assange represented to U.S. Intelligence Branch interests, it is important to understand just how extensive the operations of the FBI/CIA were in 2016.
It is within the network of foreign and domestic intel operations where Intelligence Branch political tool, FBI Agent Peter Strzok, was working as a bridge between the CIA and FBI counterintelligence operations.
By now, people are familiar with the construct of CIA operations involving Joseph Mifsud, the Maltese professor generally identified as a western intelligence operative who was tasked by the FBI/CIA to run an operation against Trump campaign official George Papadopoulos in both Italy (Rome) and London.
I was genuinely interested to see if Trump was going to pardon either Assange or Snowden on his way out the door.
For such a purportedly loose cannon, Trump never did.
Do read the whole posts. Sundance does quite a bit of timelining of the source documents to point out subtleties.
The question he ends up leaving is: OK, if we stipulate that this "fourth branch" really is such a powerful thing, why is its behavior so shadowy? I understand why an insurrection lays low: asymmetric warfare is a well-studied topic. But all of these orchestral maneuvers in the dark, all of this fetishizing of the paperwork and the memos, seems more wasteful than anything.
The entire power of the IC, is secrecy (Score:2)
Without Secrecy, the Intelligence Community simply can't do what they do.
To truly understand it, we need to return to Return to the training of WWII that was the start of the need for deep intelligence at home and abroad [youtube.com].
After WWI, we had the first Red Scare in the 1920s, when the FBI came into their own, but the United States was the keystone cops of the International Intelligence Community. We had an inkling of how important Intelligence was after the Uboat raids on the convoys during WWI, but we didn't
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Guess it boils down to trust.. but if you can't verify, what good is it?
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I have no trust in anybody.
And it seems verification is less important than political topic.
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And it seems verification is less important than political topic.
Obviously, that's all these people pursue each other around for. The secrecy they desire is for their own benefit and enrichment, not the country as a whole, so we have to pry it open. All these "committees" are perks. We should demand they be randomly chosen from a hat, not assigned by party cronies. Secrecy is important, but it's more important to root out the corruption. *Sacrifices must be made*
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And it seems verification is less important than political topic.
You seem exceptionally choosy about what you want to verify, and in what ways. You've been beating us over the head with how much faith you have in the GOP conspiracies regarding the 2020 election, though notably you have never defined a condition under which you would accept that indeed the elections were fair and the results were legitimate. This of course leaves it wide open for you to keep moving the goalposts until the end of time if you so choose.
Similarly you keep telling us about how you are so
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I have a condition where I will accept that it was a free and fair election:
Trace every vote back to the person who originated it and verify their citizenship.
It's that simple. And it won't be done, because the Republicans have just as much a stake in non-citizens (cough, cuban immigrants) voting as the Democrats do.
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Trace every vote back to the person who originated it and verify their citizenship.
Thank you for declaring a state that you would accept, that is much more than most have done.
That said, would you accept that if it was possible to do without actually knowing who voted for whom in the election? It seems to me that it is a nontrivial matter to have an election that is that traceable without it also being possible to know that Bob Smith voted for A, B, and C.
It's that simple. And it won't be done, because the Republicans have just as much a stake in non-citizens (cough, cuban immigrants) voting as the Democrats do.
I don't believe that either party has any significant number of non-citizens voting in this country. It makes a great boogeyman t
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That said, would you accept that if it was possible to do without actually knowing who voted for whom in the election? It seems to me that it is a nontrivial matter to have an election that is that traceable without it also being possible to know that Bob Smith voted for A, B, and C.
Yes, which oddly enough, leads us right back to my original post in this thread.
Secrecy gives power to those who would abuse power. In this day and age where not only could we know that Bob Smith voted for A, B, and C but that Bob Smith's Bank Account got a $5 deposit from Campaign A, a $10 deposit from Campaign B, and a $25 deposit from Campaign C, I consider society's need to know to be greater than Bob Smith's right to privacy (which is a right that I hold became obsolete around 1987 and is currently im
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Secrecy gives power to those who would abuse power.
The more power people hold the more they can obscure their actions, regardless of how much secrecy is available to the rest of us. A right to secrecy for the masses (in voting in particular) does more to benefit the rest of us than it does to benefit the top echelon.
n this day and age where not only could we know that Bob Smith voted for A, B, and C but that Bob Smith's Bank Account got a $5 deposit from Campaign A, a $10 deposit from Campaign B, and a $25 deposit from Campaign C,
I have never in my life met a voter who received a deposit from a campaign. Does your party do that often?
I consider society's need to know to be greater than Bob Smith's right to privacy
I don't see you laying out a strong argument for "right to know" here.
It would also provide a paper trail in Bob's wrongful termination suit against Employer F, who fired him for that vote.
If someone believes they are being discriminated against on the
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Secrecy gives power to those who would abuse power.
The more power people hold the more they can obscure their actions, regardless of how much secrecy is available to the rest of us. A right to secrecy for the masses (in voting in particular) does more to benefit the rest of us than it does to benefit the top echelon.
Having said that, with no secrecy, nobody can obscure their actions, regardless of how much power they have. Thus, clearly, NO SECRECY for anybody is better than a right to secrecy for select groups.
In this day and age where not only could we know that Bob Smith voted for A, B, and C but that Bob Smith's Bank Account got a $5 deposit from Campaign A, a $10 deposit from Campaign B, and a $25 deposit from Campaign C,
I have never in my life met a voter who received a deposit from a campaign. Does your party do that often?
No, though I have seen it attempted in Portland. Having said that, it's usually the reason given for the secret ballot- that if you retained a receipt of your own vote, that would allow for payment on that receipt for voting a certain way. I say that is an irrational reason.
I consider society's need to know to be greater than Bob Smith's right to privacy
I don't see you laying out a strong argument for "right to know" here.
It would also provide a paper trail in Bob's wrongful termination suit against Employer F, who fired him for that vote.
If someone believes they are being discriminated against on the basis of their political affiliation it shouldn't be necessary to put their voting record on public display to show it. Those who are discriminating against that person almost certainly found out through other channels about this person's affiliation(s).
Without the voting record, how do y
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Having said that, with no secrecy, nobody can obscure their actions, regardless of how much power they have. Thus, clearly, NO SECRECY for anybody is better than a right to secrecy for select groups.
That's naive. The powerful will always obtain secrecy, even when it is denied to the masses.
If someone believes they are being discriminated against on the basis of their political affiliation it shouldn't be necessary to put their voting record on public display to show it. Those who are discriminating against that person almost certainly found out through other channels about this person's affiliation(s).
Without the voting record, how do you know what somebody's political affiliation is?
If someone's politics were public enough for their employer to know them, then their politics could be ascertained from other sources aside from voting records. A lot of people - sometimes knowing it and sometimes not - leave very clear signs of their politics in very public places.
Nobody is suppressing evidence. The conspiracy folks are looking for evidence that doesn't exist, and asking for new non-existent evidence when they can't find the support they previously said they wanted (the bamboo just being one spectacular example of this).
You're claiming that the evidence to prove the POSITIVE that every vote counted, was cast by a citizen, doesn't exist?
Democracy is based on the understanding that voting matters. If you de-anonymize the voting record that will lead many people to no
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Having said that, with no secrecy, nobody can obscure their actions, regardless of how much power they have. Thus, clearly, NO SECRECY for anybody is better than a right to secrecy for select groups.
That's naive. The powerful will always obtain secrecy, even when it is denied to the masses.
With modern technology, privacy is actually rapidly becoming impossible, for anybody. And the rich and the powerful are giving it away faster than anybody else, with their internet of things technology investments in their private life. Therefore, these ideas of keeping "legal fictional privacy" are going away anyway, so why not be 100% transparent instead?
If someone believes they are being discriminated against on the basis of their political affiliation it shouldn't be necessary to put their voting record on public display to show it. Those who are discriminating against that person almost certainly found out through other channels about this person's affiliation(s).
Without the voting record, how do you know what somebody's political affiliation is?
If someone's politics were public enough for their employer to know them, then their politics could be ascertained from other sources aside from voting records. A lot of people - sometimes knowing it and sometimes not - leave very clear signs of their politics in very public places.
So therefore this isn't a reason left to hide somebody's voting record. Thus your argument below about transparent voting systems enabling fascism is
Just more scripture from smitty (Score:2)
Just remember though, just because all religions start as cults while building membership doesn't mean that everyone who gets in on the ground floor gets rich from the endeavor. Some just get trampled.