• ☂️-@lemmy.ml
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    5 hours ago

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

    • 小莱卡@lemmygrad.ml
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      4 hours ago

      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.

  • Matt@lemmy.ml
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    5 hours ago

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

  • SoyViking [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    8 hours ago

    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
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      8 hours ago

      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.”

    • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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      8 hours ago

      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.”

    • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      8 hours ago

      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

  • NuraShiny [any]@hexbear.net
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    11 hours ago

    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.

    • Libra00@lemmy.ml
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      9 hours ago

      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.

  • Termight@lemmy.ml
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    11 hours ago

    “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.

    • Libra00@lemmy.ml
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      9 hours ago

      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.

      • jwt@programming.dev
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        6 hours ago

        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.

        • Libra00@lemmy.ml
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          4 hours ago

          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.

        • Libra00@lemmy.ml
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          9 hours ago

          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
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            3 hours ago

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

            • Libra00@lemmy.ml
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              3 hours ago

              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
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                2 hours ago

                “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.