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comment by crafty
crafty  ·  3416 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: NSA Collects Millions of Images a Day for Facial Recognition Project

That is very interesting, thank you. I had heard of Watch Dogs, but I hadn't played it or seen it yet. As far as Snowden, he was an easy story to swallow at first in that he confirmed some of the conspiracy crowd's claims and brought awareness to an issue that (I felt like) lacked visibility among the wider public. However, now looking back, it doesn't appear that the NSA was at all weakened, instead it was treated as a media circus for normalizing surveillance. Who cooperated with whom to help the NSA come out smelling like a rose is impossible for me to say from what I've seen, but you do make a good point that Glenn or Snowden as a mole would be an invaluable asset. I think it's important to remember that these are espionage organizations and subterfuge is their specialty; no such revelation would shock me.

Assuming Snowden is a limited hangout (or large parts of the Snowden-Op), with their goal to be the normalization of mass-surveillance and to instill helplessness/passivity among people who might otherwise act out, what does revealing this fact achieve? To me, it reaffirms the notion that propaganda is a significant tool they use; to be aware of their tactics, people have to look closely for PR in our everyday lives. As that one great president said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable," and I think this is just evidence of them tightening that lid just a little more.