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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
I'd actually be less annoyed to discover that my smart TV is actually listening to me than ensuring I can't access the internet
. If I bothered with buying a smart TV to begin with (how much stuff is mastered in 4K again?).
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I heard this morning that Apple already knew about the CIA's tools for cell phones and had patched for it awhile ago.
Regarding the NYU study where people watched a gender-swapped debate between a female Trump and a male Clinton, I'm noticing that it's mostly right-wing websites reporting on it.
Their slant is "Trump's message is more popular no matter which sex it comes from" and "People hated Clinton for reasons other than sexism, and this proves it". And I have to say, they do have a point if a female Trump with Trump's manchildish behavior and a male Clinton result in people liking the female Trump more.
Worth hearing: What Is Steve Bannon And Jeff Sessions' Shared Vision For Remaking America?
"Journalist Emily Bazelon says the relationship between Bannon and Sessions predates the 2016 campaign, and that their anti-immigration policies come from fears of a growing minority population."
This is apparently a follow-up interview to Bazelon's recent article in the New Yorker magazine.
edited 9th Mar '17 11:25:01 AM by DeMarquis
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.Well, one would probably rather see it coming then be caught unaware when its time to be Released to Elsewhere.
Besides, it could be as mundane as reclassifying "white, hispanic as just "white," which would probably be the crowning irony of this administration.
Forgive me for stepping into the "If y'ain't doin' nothin' wrong" fallacy, but I don't really see the big deal about the CIA having these tools. The thought that somewhere, in some secret black site, a CIA operative has watched me rifle for the TV remote in a towel and may or may not have stolen sneak peaks at my pony romance fanfics fills me with a profound sense of meh.
edited 9th Mar '17 11:52:22 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.Yeah in the end the CIA things boils down to what it always does, yes the CIA can spy on you in a variety of creepy ways, but why on earth do you think they'd want to or bother doing the legal legworked needed to?
Now if your answer is "I live in a South America and it's the CIA" I can't fault you, but for 90% of people there remains the basic fact that the CIA has no reason to even consider using said tools on them.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranWhat bothers me more is that the CIA is discovering all sorts of flaws in our tech, but sits on the information so that they'll have an easy back-door. The thought that the CIA is personally rifling through all my Internet activity is ludicrous, though — I mean, they'd have to sort through a lot of pornography before they even got to the political stuff, and even then, "mainstream center-left" won't raise any alarms.
edited 9th Mar '17 11:55:24 AM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."I have a smart tv, an older one, but I just disconnected it from the internet when it started showing me ads while I was playing a video game.
Granted, I'm vulnerable to the CIA, as I don't live in the US, but again, there's nothing I can do about it, and it's unlikely the Canadian government will do anything about it.
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Until the organization ends up in the hands of a far right demagogue. This kind of stuff sounds harmless until it ends up pointed at you, and there's not very much you can do to preclude these sorts of programs from falling into the wrong hands other than not creating them in the first place.
edited 9th Mar '17 12:00:49 PM by CaptainCapsase
Flipping out at hearing that the CIA has tools to spy on people is like flipping out that the police has facilities designed to detain people against their will. It's literally their job to develop and deploy such tools. I'd be far more concerned if it turned out that they didn't have that capability.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.![]()
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Any tool can be misused. That's not inherently a reason to shy away from developing it. If you don't, then it's guaranteed that other, less scrupulous people will. Right now, our entire government is compromised, and the fact that we have intrusion capabilities, military capabilities, nuclear weapons, and all the other apparatus of state may well be a problem. But that's not a reason to throw them all out.
edited 9th Mar '17 12:08:38 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"That's not really how progress works. You can not make a thing but you can't make a thing unmakeable. It's like claiming that the key to ending shootings is to shut down all gun manufacturers because if nobody is making guns then nobody will have guns. Great logic until you realize that people who want guns can just make their own f*cking guns, because a thing not existing does nothing to preclude the possibility of it existing in the future.
Like, that's literally the reason we all have nuclear weapons pointed at each other in the first place. Because even if we all dismantled all our nukes and promised never to make more nukes, someone would still make nukes. There's no way to create a world where the existence of nukes is a physical impossibility, and so we all wind up having to have nukes as a deterrent against whichever crazy asshole winds up making nukes tomorrow.
Sure, Trump having access to these systems is scary. But even if they didn't exist, there is no way to pass a physical law of reality in which it would be impossible for him to commission them to exist. Since we cannot pass an Act of Physics that declares such technology now and forever impossible to create, then ultimately them existing constitutes a net zero effect on our security.
edited 9th Mar '17 12:12:29 PM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.

Was Colbert, who interviewed the former CIA director.
Frankly, the existence of these hacking tools is pretty much a given by anyone who follows cybersecurity at all and the CIA having a collection of them should come as no surprise. They found the gun but it is not smoking, An actual smoking gun would be evidence (not insinuation) that they used those tools in an illegal or inappropriate matter.