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posted by janrinok on Tuesday March 27 2018, @07:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the legal-but-immoral dept.

Companies learning to flip elections perfected their tactics in smaller or emerging countries, such as Latvia, Trinidad, or Nigeria, before turning to markets involving elections in developed nations. Paul Mason suggests that while at the moment there is a lot of angst from people being reminded of how their harvested data is used, it is really the union of private espionage, cracking, and "black ops" capabilities that should be setting off alarms.

Disturbingly, both CA and SCL have high-level contracts with governments, giving them access to secret intelligence both in the US and the UK. SCL is on List X, which allows it to hold British secret intelligence at its facilities.

It now appears that techniques they used in Ukraine and Eastern Europe to counteract Russian influence, and against Islamist terrorism in the Middle East, were then used to influence elections in the heart of Western democracy itself.

Let's be clear about what we're facing. A mixture of free market dogmatism plus constraints imposed by the rule of law has led, over the past decades, to the creation of an alternative, private, secret state.

When it was only focused on the enemies and rivals of the West, or hapless politicians in the global south, nobody minded. Now it is being used as a weapon to tear apart democracy in Britain and the US we care — and rightly so.

From New Statesman: We need to destroy the election-rigging industry before it destroys us


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  • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 27 2018, @11:34PM (9 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 27 2018, @11:34PM (#659211)

    You call them "censors" with the implication they are bad, but do hold such a dim view of the people who test the food and water supply of lead ?

    Free speech is a fundamental right whereas lead in food and water is not. Your attempted equivalence here is absolutely 100% false.

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  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday March 28 2018, @12:31AM (4 children)

    by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday March 28 2018, @12:31AM (#659249)

    No it's not. Lead is poisonous. Spreading lies to corrupt the American elections, and therefore democracy is treasonous.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @04:16AM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @04:16AM (#659336)

      And spreading truth, such as Hilary Clinton emails, is patriotic even if the patriot is an alien.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @08:00AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @08:00AM (#659400)

        This is one nice recent example of frugal use of truth as a propaganda : where are the trump emails?

        That's why some oath requires telling "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth".

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:27PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:27PM (#659486)

          Is this some of that whadaboutism I constantly hearing the left complain about?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 29 2018, @03:42AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 29 2018, @03:42AM (#659841)

        I hope you meant DNC emails, where real conspiracy to commit fraud was found, and what mass media is still trying to cover up with Russia! Russia! Russia! Hillary's emails are a bullshit issue. And both factions of the corrupt party are still getting full public support. We are not making any progress on this issue, in fact, we are falling backwards, badly.

        If you want an honest media you can use your government to create a public channel. It will be as honest as you demand it to be, just like everything about about your government. When it is run by crooks, it is because you vote for and reelect crooks. don't try to blame 'propaganda'. You believe because you want to believe.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by vux984 on Wednesday March 28 2018, @03:37AM (2 children)

    by vux984 (5045) on Wednesday March 28 2018, @03:37AM (#659327)

    "Free speech is a fundamental right whereas lead in food and water is not. Your attempted equivalence here is absolutely 100% false."

    I'd argue that the equivalence is better than you think. A lot better. I'd agree 'free speech' is a fundamental right. I'd also argue that one should have the right to put whatever one wants into their own body; and the implicit self determination of that is just a much a fundamental right. So the 'attempted equivalence' is 100% accurate.

    Further, the analogy carries -- while i think I should have the fundamental right to put anything into my body I want, I *also* don't want lead poisoning. If someone wants to poison themselves they should seek help, but they are free to procure lead and inject into themselves if they are so inclined. However if they don't want to poison themselves, as collectively most of us do not, we can and should give agency to government to act on our behalf in this matter, to prevent unwanted poison from reaching us.

    With speech, likewise, I think you should be able to say whatever you want. But I don't need or want your un-sourced, unverified, deliberately malicious propaganda nonsense presented to me as news and again would like to give agency to the government to act on my behalf to help me avoid that poisoned information coming to me in my news feed as bona fide news. IF I feel like reading random nonsense, then I'll seek out your conspiracy site (I've amused myself reading moonhoaxers and flat earthers gibberish on more than one occasion). But I don't want that coming at me undistinguished and indistinguishable from real sourced and vetted news. I value well sourced facts presented neutrally with minimal bias. And I value diverse viewpoints in editorial and opinion. But I don't value deliberate misinformation and outright lies presented as news, and I don't value opinions presented as news. There are standards we can have, and news organizations have in the past been reasonably noble in their pursuit of those ideals. The modern news networks aren't too bad, even fox news 'news' is reasonable. But garbage like Sean Hannity, like infowars, the alt-right, the stuff emerging as alt-left... it doesn't belong on the same shelf.

    • (Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday March 28 2018, @03:56AM (1 child)

      by frojack (1554) on Wednesday March 28 2018, @03:56AM (#659331) Journal

      All well and good to call out specific programs you feel are garbage, while you wolf down huge helpings of liberal claptrap without a whimper. But your seemingly calling on government to stand guard over the news exibits a level of naievity that can scarsely be believed.

      Are ye daft Mon?

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: 2) by vux984 on Wednesday March 28 2018, @04:42AM

        by vux984 (5045) on Wednesday March 28 2018, @04:42AM (#659341)

        I said I watched fox news *news*, and that it was fine. And I consume other conservative media as well. If I had a criticism of CNN its that its gone overboard on stormy daniels and that's excessive... but fox is almost burying the story and that's worse. Meanwhile the 'commentators' like hannity and carlson outright speculate and lie to my face.

        I don't dispute there's liberal claptrap, and I'm happy to call it out when i see it. But its not as bad as the conservative claptrap out there. (Although, and I mentioned this in my post, an equally ridiculous alt-left is emerging.)

        I *am* not calling on the government to vet the news. Nor am i calling on government to decide what is newsworthy. But I am calling on government to help be part of the solution to the problem we have now of news and fake-news being given equal billing without any means to differentiate them. Just like truth in labelling laws -- the consumer has a right to know what they are getting. The governement can help regulate this so that shit on facebook isn't competing for credibility with real actual well sourced news on equal footing.

        I shouldn't be allowed to call ground racoon and sawdust '100% grade A beef'. Why should the information equivalent to ground racoon and pulp be allowed to pretend its real news?

  • (Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:49PM

    by FakeBeldin (3360) on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:49PM (#659501) Journal

    Free speech is a fundamental right whereas lead in food and water is not.

    1. No.
    Both are regulated by laws. Local laws vary - free speech in North Korea is not a fundamental right. In the USA, an extension to the country's constitution happens to say something about free speech. That does not make it a fundamental right - except, perhaps, in the USA.
    Then again: the USA is the only country I know that has free speech zones [wikipedia.org], so I very much doubt that free speech is a fundamental right in the USA.

    2. As pointed out already: The right to put whatever you like into your body - food, poisons, lead, bullets - seems at least as fundamental as the right to say whatever you like.
    There are legal restrictions on polluting the pool of fresh air or the pool of potable water. The argument here is that there equally should be restrictions on polluting the news-pool.