[cryptome] Re: FW: Cold War Updated
- From: "Douglas Rankine" <douglasrankine2001@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <cryptome@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2015 00:45:52 -0000
Hi Andrew,
I am pleased that you find some of what I say, amusing...our exchange is most
enlightening to me and my feelings are both mutual and reciprocal... J.
Trusting each other, with physical or intellectual property, and the sharing of
information, how much information, what kind of information, is a complicated
business, no doubt about that. And our private thoughts will always be
private, though we may manifest them in actions or thoughts expressed to
others, for some kind of psychological or transactional, or political,
economic, cultural or sociological analysis. The analyser can never really
analyse us to the point of being able to predict our behaviour absolutely. If
only because he/she cannot predict their own behaviour, their own thinking,
intentions, motives and actions...and of course, there are “events, dear
boy,...events...” as Harold MacMillan once said in relation to the Suez crisis.
All we can do, is to predict trends in behaviour. The shape of pears has the
habit of changing, for no apparent reason... J.
These days, most of us in the Western world don’t leave our doors and windows
open, (and I can remember as a boy, where in my village, we did), and most of
us don’t tend to carry lots of money around with us, (well, we never had any,
still don’t as a matter of fact)... J. We lock up our houses and cars at night,
and hide or remove anything of value. Most of us don’t keep any money under the
mattress, although there are some who do. We tend not to go down streets alone
late at night, especially as we get older, more frail, and more vulnerable. We
close our curtains to prevent intruders, unwanted nosey parkers, or the curious
from peering in to survey what we are doing or what goodies we have.
These are common sense personal security precautions, of course...the sensible
and knowledgeable parent, will take even more precautions with their children,
and pass on their learning on the subject. But such activities, such
precautions, won’t stop the determined thief or the druggie, crazy for money
from breaking in, or attacking us in the street, or highjacking our cars and
other transport; or molesting our children. It won’t prevent a corrupt, rotten
and powerful state from abusing our lives, removing our liberty, or our
livelihood, or taking away our wealth, our health and lives, for no apparent
reason...or rhyme. Education, no matter how educated, and punishment, no
matter how harsh (apart from lifelong containment) will not prevent thievery,
violence or molestation, such things are part of human nature...in my view.
Depending on our parents and peers, and the community from which we come and
grow up in, we just and must learn to control our basic urges, instincts and
impulses...and, we even practice a bit of altruism, which is a very difficult
concept to justify in the theory of evolution. See url:
http://www.simplypsychology.org/vygotsky.html
And url: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Vygotsky
Growing from child to adult and treating others with respect is a learned,
social, behaviour, one sees its manifestations in the playground, but,
nevertheless such action is a veneer of civilisation on our basic instincts.
Overcoming those basic instincts, we must do, if we are to survive, both as
individuals, and as a species...in my humble opinion. Though I don’t see the
survival of our species as some kind of immortal or everlasting event.
And yet...through most of my existence, life threatening events have been very
rare, and still are very rare, so rare, that I can count them on the fingers of
my hands. There are perceptions of crime and there is crime which happens in
reality. Of course, the most threatening event comes closer the longer one
lives, and one finds it more and more difficult to keep it at the back of one’s
mind... J.
Most of us don’t leave our keys lying around, though people still hide them
under flower pots next to the front door... J. We just try to keep the
intruder and the thief at bay, keep temptation and the attraction of easy money
out of the reach of those who want to do us harm, steal from us, use violence
against us. In a word, we keep a low profile, and we show good security...We
show publically that we are not an easy lay. That is the philosophy. But it
won’t prevent theft, it won’t prevent violence entirely; but good personal
security, good safe practices, helps minimise ones vulnerability. And yet, for
most of us, we have happy and secure lives, we enjoy life to the full, life has
its ups and downs of course, but if we didn’t have bad times, then how could we
compare them with the good?
In the good old days, the bank manager protected our accounts and finances,
from intrusion by strangers, or those not entitled, or prevented the
purloining of our money or information being made available to outsiders. The
banks guaranteed our savings and accounts from theft and fraud. They took out
insurance, lessons were learnt after the bank crises, the Wall Street
crash...We went on to make even bigger ones... J. And we had laws which
protected people’s rights, so that the state, and no private corporation could
get access without a warrant, or through a court order, and discovery had to
be on the basis of suspicion of a crime, or of some kind of civil fraud.
However, our society wasn’t quite so utopian. There has always been the
secret service, the intelligence service; organisations with other names which
operated underneath, below the political platform, the economic surface...and
surreptitiously in our society. They had special dispensation from the
leadership to operate outside of the law of the land. Access to the Monopoly
card, in event of being caught red handed in acts against legality; the “Get
out of Jail free” ticket. Their functions were always the same, to keep the
leadership of whatever society which existed at the time, family, tribe, race,
feudal fiefdom, kingdom, or the ruling elite of the nation state, informed of
who was doing what to whom, and how many of them there were, what their motives
and intentions were, and how dangerous they were. Often, they were not fit for
purpose and in that supreme act of spies, betrayed their old masters and
replaced them with a new one. Today, in advanced capitalist society, we call it
social democracy. The best democracy in my view, is where one ruling faction
is replaced peacefully by another through regular, fair and just elections by
the majority of those who are over 16 and entitled to vote. Not a lot of them
around... J.
The spies, the goons, the intelligence operatives conduct their work in secret,
their loyalty is to the system, to the status quo, to the preservation of an
imaginary yet real and substantive ruling elite; and they are highly paid,
highly organised and highly trained to keep it so...though that didn’t prevent
some of them from selling themselves to the highest bidder, or giving
themselves away for a mess of potage, or selling themselves to some convenient
state or mythical cause in the name of a shift of political loyalty, of truth,
honesty and decency; or because of some new political or philosophical fashion
they adopted in lieu of guilt or to justify and absolve themselves from the
shame of their betrayals, of their basic humanness.
Whilst the rebel, the revolutionary, the extremist, the purest of the pure, the
vicar, priest and representative of the church of whatever domination and the
terrorists will also do the same, the difference is in the fact that the
rewards aren’t so great and are generally more speculative and difficult to
keep quiet and organise...unless of course, they manage by some luck or fateful
opportunity to take over political and economic and social power, and finish up
at the top of the pile...like Lenin...for a while...and they all use the same
tactics, and strategies. They remind me of the African water buffalo, where
the bulls fight one another over a huge pile of excrement. The winner of this
epic struggle, gains the right to wallow at the top of the pile, where a mix of
chemicals and hormones, turns on the sexual urges and drives of the females and
allows him to conduct his nuptial duties for the continuation and preservation
of the species, until he collapses, exhausted into that by now, steaming pile.
One day...one day...another bull comes along, who is younger and stronger, and
the old bull gets knocked off his titular edifice.
Have you ever noticed how politicians who have been in the game for a number of
years, have the answer to every question which is put to them? They are so
right, so correct, that they become boring and predictable, and the people,
instead of admiring and loving them, and listening to them, eventually tire of
them and may even get out of their apathy and get rid of them...or at least
switch over the channel... J. The really long lasting leaders, the masters of
Machiavellian methods, like Mao, or Hitler, or Franco of Spain, eventually get
carried off by the Grim Reaper, only to be replaced by the next in line.
Law was invented to settle differences peacefully between individuals,
groupings, power structures. We came up with the Magna Carta, it is what makes
us different from the animals, law writ down and followed justly makes us
civilised. Our forebears used brute force to try and bring the biggest feudal
landlord to come to heel, by signing a piece of paper, the words and concepts
with which he did not agree, only to rip it up in less than a week. We created
parliaments, invented rules of law, developed the common and statute law. We
are all equal under the eyes of the law...A written constitution guarantees us
certain rights...another myth, but better law than no law, in my view. We
ignore the law, we ignore justice, we ignore morality and ethics, at our
peril...but we are never far from the law of the jungle
The invention of the internet has exacerbated these trends. Information is
shared in an instant. Secret, classified information, can go viral in seconds.
It is difficult for 5 million people who have signed some kind of Official
Secrets Act to keep a secret. Even Hilary Clinton is very poor at security and
one of the Directors of the C.I.A., David Petraeus got caught out and was
prosecuted. No longer is the secret community so secret. The ubiquity of the
email system have changed all that.
Assange, Wiki leaks, Chelsea Manning, and Snowden and the likes of Intercept
have made a huge hole in the secret world of nations methods of dominance,
particularly the US and Five Eyes. The world’s security experts working in
private industry and in corporations, suddenly woke up to the fact that
internet security was only as strong as the weakest link in the chain, and the
weakest link is the human being. The strongest link, is also the human
being, but the one who works for the state, as part of a team, who uses
monetary power, hard resources and intellectual power and experience to find
that weakest link and exploit it. And the strongest link can also be the
weakest link, such is the contrariness of security and politics.
However, there is another side, the struggle between the hacker and the
corporate, the intermixing of the methods of the hacker with the state. The
exchange and learning from one another, the interchange of experience, the
jobs on offer, the swapping of roles; the defectors from all sides; how
complicated it has all become. Also, confusion techniques, the propaganda,
the manipulation of the perception of reality, the twisting and manipulation of
people and organisations, the twisting of truth, the telling of lies as if they
are truths, makes it very difficult, to tell the difference between the “good “
guys and the “bad” guys. Does anyone come to Equity with clean hands these
days?
So, will the Russian government benefit from the Snowden revelations? Of
course it will, the USSR had one of the best secret services in the world. The
leader of the KGB, is a guy called Putin, is the Prime Minister, completely
outmanoeuvring all the other aspirants for the job, twice. Just as a number of
leaders of the USA have also come from the CIA or the intelligence services.
George Washington and the secret six comes to mind...
see url: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culper_Ring
As well as later editions such as Bush the elder.
Like the rest of us, they, the Russians and the security experts now have more
certainty about the size of the problem, the methods used. They can compare
their own knowledge and experiences and level of development. All sorts of
information will be gained. Will Snowden be able to resist the temptation of
sharing his knowledge with the Russians? I doubt it, the man is not an island.
In an information society what price information? Whether Putin will talk
about it, or whether Snowden will talk about it is up to them, and I dare say
that there will be tactical and strategic considerations. You can bet your
life that Snowden’s every move and communication will be monitored. All that
metadata... J. And anyway, much can be done on a nod and a wink.
Assange too, will have his communications monitored and recorded. The security
services of the world are spending a fortune in tuning in to his every move and
word. He is in just as difficult a position, perhaps more so, living in an
enclosed space, with limited room for manoeuvre, a bed in the bathroom, even
the walls will have ears and eyes.
Do you think he will have done a deal with the Ecuadorians, which says that
in return for saying and doing nothing, they will give him political sanctity
and citizenship, and spend all that money on him, and take all that stick from
the US and UK governments, like cancellation of contracts? Perhaps I am
suffering too much from conspiracy theory? Is it a question of Ecuador using
the information gained from Assange to screw the US, fuck them up on the worlds
stage, so that Ecuador becomes top dog? I didn’t say that! What contacts do
the Ecuadorian secret services have with Assange?
ATB
Dougie.
From: cryptome-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:cryptome-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Andrew Hornback
Sent: 11 March 2015 20:54
To: cryptome@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [cryptome] Re: FW: Cold War Updated
On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 4:00 PM, Douglas Rankine
<douglasrankine2001@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[snip]
It seems to me that security software is a waste of time and money, an illusion.
[snip]
Security software has it's uses... I think it's pretty useful in keeping your
pockets from getting picked while walking down the dark alleys of the 'net.
However, it's pretty much useless (unless used in a serious security strategy)
against corporate or state sponsored intelligence.
To the commoner, what's more important - keeping a few quid in the bank to pay
for a loaf of bread or keeping their personal information secure from the
prying eyes of the state? Sadly, while I feel that both are of equal
importance, the "man on the street" is going to tell you that they'd rather
have quid in the bank.
It is like Snowden gaining political asylum in Russia, or Assange getting
refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. There must be some kind of
exchange of information going on. Government agents don’t give out state money
out of the kindness of their hearts...
So, there's the thought that Ecuador is going to leverage what they get from
Assange to become a global power? Maybe history will tell me how wrong I am,
but I find that somewhat amusing.
As far as Russia draining Snowden for more information - what could they make
out of it? What could he tell them that's going to be of use given the
political situation between the US and Russia? Somehow, I don't see Putin
going on TV and threatening Obama with the release of 100,000 pages of
documentation unless the US and NATO stays out of Ukraine or wherever. Hidden
information gives you leverage if applied properly...
--- A
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