
U.S. And U.K. Warn of Cybersecurity Threat from Russia - rbanffy
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/16/world/europe/us-uk-russia-cybersecurity-threat.html
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sebazzz
I must say that by now, it is hard to tell what is the truth.

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ItsMe000001
> by now

I don't think much has changed, it's just that we see a lot more diversity
than 30 years ago. Having grown up in East Germany, if I hadn't lived close
enough to the Western border I could only have viewed East German TV and read
East German newspapers. In the US you were (for the most part) not exposed to
anything from Russia, and vice versa. Now more people get to see that the
world is quite a bit more colorful, for both better and worse.

I don't think it matters all that much, because apart from passive news
consumption, what would you actually _do_ (that is impacted by the
information)?

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IAmEveryone
Note that nobody in West Germany used to watch East German TV during that
time.

Meaning: it’s not all propaganda, with each side being equally bad and the
truth to be found by triangulation.

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gonmf
They have wiretapped the entire world with PRISM and other similar secret
programs. They have seized and vanished a countless number of people to black
site secret prisons.

Who cares about Russia.

~~~
toomanybeersies
А у вас негров линчуют
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes))

The bad actions of the US and their allies does not excuse the same actions of
Russia (or China, or any other country).

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fortythirteen
Excuse, no. But there's nothing wrong with pointing out hypocrisy.

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yesforwhat
Highlighting the crimes of actor B to excuse the crimes of actor A is not
"pointing out hypocrisy", it's an attempt to excuse a crime and confuse the
conversation.

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collyw
I a more worried about the UK government having access to my data as its more
relevant being a citizen of the UK. I think that's the point.

~~~
vixen99
You certainly should be worried if a future UK government turns out to be a
drastically more coercive nature than the present. And that's on the cards.

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yosito
Should we declare an International Factory Reset Your Router Day?

Edit: I know this is not a permanent solution. But it could be effective if
combined with efforts to study the propagation of attacks and with efforts to
educate the public about properly securing their routers.

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fredley
Now that we understand a bit more about the behaviour of the system at scale,
lets iterate and build the internet again, from scratch, but better this time.
Factory resetting routers isn't enough, we need to factory reset the internet.

~~~
yosito
Agreed. <Insert Ideological Post About Blockchain Here>

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jstanley
Meanwhile, propaganda threat from US and UK governments remains high.

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sschueller
Even internally [1]

[1] [http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-
propaganda-b...](http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-
ban-spreads-government-made-news-to-americans/)

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pandasun
Slightly off topic (article mentions routers as prime targets): what do you
guys consider a secure/affordable router these days?

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fortythirteen
Rules for thee, but not for me.

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onetimemanytime
Fair game, IMO. Pretty sure Russia and the West are incompatible, at least for
a long while. If you ask Russia they'll say that NATO violated the verbal
agreement of not coming near Russia via membership, but NATO says that
countries have the right to decide for themselves etc etc. Plus Russia is a
shadow of USSR.

So it's a war, of sorts. Russia says that USA sponsors all these groups it
determines to be anti-Russian and interferes in Russian elections, so it
returns the favors with fake news /Trump election.

But in the end, Russia is bound to lose--again. Money talks and Russia doesn't
have much, the richer world wants /needs to stay in good graces with the
Western world. So we have sanctions, choose between Russians or USA+EU plus
most of the world. This oligarch thing is kinda smart...if they hurt, they
might try to take on Putin. There's a limit on how much a billionaire criminal
who can't buy a villa in Spain anymore can take. But then, if they miss with
the only bullet...

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omegant
Meanwhile business selling defense systems for both NATO countries and Rusia
is better than ever! Sometimes it seems to me they are playing by the WWF
marketing rules, lots of chest thumping around, but mostly are others who are
paying the broken bones(see how the death of 200 russian contractors that
attacked Kurdish-American positions and got smashed, went mostly unnoticed 2
months ago) By others I mean Syrian, Yemenis, etc..

Of course it could go south and the blows become real (like in wrestling), but
by the moment is mostly an useful show for both sides. NATO keeps the
archenemy and the show business running. People in Russia see Putin as Peter
the Great reborn, making Russia punch way above its weight internationally,
recovering the pride lost in the 90s.

Edit a couple typos.

