
Russia to monitor 'all communications' at Winter Olympics in Sochi - Libertatea
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/06/russia-monitor-communications-sochi-winter-olympics
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teddyh
№ 2: It doesn’t matter which _side_ runs the village.

№ 6: It’s run by one side or the other?

№ 2: Oh, certainly. But both sides are becoming _identical_. What, in fact,
has been created, is an _international_ community – a perfect blueprint for
world order. When the sides, facing each other, suddenly realize that they are
looking into a mirror, they will see that _this_ is the pattern for the
future.

№ 6: The whole Earth, as the village?

№ 2: That is my hope. What’s yours?

№ 6: I’d like to be the first man on the moon.

— № 2 & № 6, _The Prisoner_ , _The Chimes of Big Ben_ , 1967

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stratosvoukel
Uhm... you people know that Russia has already been violating a whole bunch of
human rights, quite publicly, right? (eg. LGBT rights, freedom of expression
in general etc). This seems like the tip of a really evil iceberg. Sochi games
deserve to be boycotted because Putin's politics are an antithesis to the
olympic ideals (and this is quite tiny in comparison to what is happening
there ...).

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tptacek
You're sort of missing the point of the Olympic Games if you think countries
should be using boycotts of them as a vehicle for public policy. Part of the
premise of the games is that the participating countries disagree, sometimes
_violently_ , and yet we have the games peacefully anyways.

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yequalsx
Perhaps that is the point of the games from the original organizers'
perspective but it certainly isn't the true goal of the present organizers. I
do not share your view and consider it fine for someone to advocate for a
boycott.

If the games were to be held in North Korea then this would be morally
reprehensible in my view. Such an evil regime should not be rewarded with
hosting them. Russia does not rise to the level of barbarity of North Korea,
clearly. But I think a compelling argument can be made that it is morally
wrong to hold them in Russia (and the U.S. too).

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tptacek
Weren't there games held in Nazi Germany?

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stratosvoukel
When the games got held in Nazi Germany , they were used as PR for the Nazi
regime. This is what Putin is planning to do as well. Maybe we should learn
from our historic mistakes rather than use them as guidelines...

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tptacek
How did that work out for the Nazis? Serious question; I have no idea.

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willvarfar
In Jesse's autobiography he said that Hitler _didn 't_ snub him, but that
Roosevelt _did_. We worth googling.

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tptacek
I just made a todo for myself: "investigate possible moral equivalence between
Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler". You'll understand if it takes me
awhile to get to that one.

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jbapple
Do you view the comment you replied to as suggesting that moral equivalence?

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tptacek
Yep.

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jbapple
I think you may have read too much into it.

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qwerta
So what?

London Olympics were tapped as well. At G20 summit in 2009 GCHQ even spied on
foreign diplomats by hacking their devices and setting up fake internet cafes.

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danenania
I think that as with the latest NSA stuff, it's the ubiquitous and wholesale
nature of it that really changes the game.

Before, everyone knew that spying was happening here and there, but as an
ordinary, politically uninteresting person, you could (perhaps naively) pretty
much assume it wouldn't affect you.

But we are rapidly reaching a stage where intense surveillance is close to
guaranteed on everyone, and the potential for abuse is much greater.
"Ordinary" people going to Russia to watch to the Olympics won't just have to
worry about being targeted for political reasons, they'll have to worry about
their business communications, financial information, having details of their
sexual life leaked and then being confronted by a brutal mob, reaching a
position of power and being blackmailed in the future, etc.

In the past, Western countries could have protested in some way about behavior
such as this and perhaps used their leverage to make changes, but now it
appears that this tyrannical approach to human rights is becoming
standardized.

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qwerta
> "Ordinary" people going to Russia ... having details ... leaked

This is case everywhere. Do you think NSA will just delete their databases? It
is just question when all this data will get connected with Visa Applications,
IRS and others. In 10 years DMV will be sending speeding tickets based on data
-mining.

I can even imagine petabyte leak when all this data will just appear on
bittorrent.

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BonoboBoner
And here we are no longer able to point the finger at the practices of the
'evil communists'.

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tptacek
How does one even respond to a comment like this? Do we say, "of course we can
still point a finger" and accept the premise that the Russians are "evil
communists"? Or do shrug and accept the premise that the US and the Russian
government, which runs a sideline business in murdering inconveniently
critical journalists, are somehow morally equivalent?

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willvarfar
You'll be surprised how many educated Europeans think, what with Gitmo and the
war in Iraq and so on, that the US and Russia _are_ morally equivalent.

I expect the same is true in much of the rest of the world too. But as a
European, I can say the sentiment is widespread here.

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stevo111
Journalist Michael Hastings dead after telling his friends that he has a big
story on CIA director and he needs to lay low for a while as FBI is "onto
him".

How about that western word?

None of those "putin journo killings" has never been proven to have any links
to Putin. All these anti-Russian accusations are moral equivalents of people
claiming that US government killed Michael Hastings.

So please - STFU.

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tptacek
Thankfully, the notion that Hastings was somehow killed by having his car
remote-controlled by the CIA has largely become the province of Infowars.com.

When the Russian government has someone killed, they don't die in a mysterious
accident. They're gunned down, when they're lucky. When they're not, they die
an agonizing death after being subtly and fatally poisoned by radioactive
isotopes.

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hugh4life
I pushed Ctrl + F "Boston" on both the article page and here... found no
results... looked for "Chechen"... aaahhh...

[http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-
permalink/27688647](http://discussion.theguardian.com/comment-
permalink/27688647)

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devx
When you've already built the infrastructure for mass spying, it's very easy
to find excuses and opportunities for using it. It's too irresistible for the
government not to use it.

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guard-of-terra
Pity if it will be blown to pieces by bearded men with dumb phones and no
Internet connection.

~~~
0003
Raskolniks?

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frank_boyd
If our "democracies" were sane, we'd cancel or at least boycott these games.

And there lies the problem now:

Since the US together with the EU have become too corrupt, there is no one
left to guard the moral high ground. The conclusion would be that this misery
is now the new standard - unless we begin to act.

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malandrew
I would love it if the Olympic team issued a statement like so:

"Upon hearing of the Orwellian-like surveillance at the Olympic games in
Russia, the US team has decided to boycott the games. However, we are not
boycotting the games because of Russia's surveillance plans, but because
several major world governments now consider ubiquitous surveillance
acceptable in free and open societies, with out own government, the US
government, leading the way. We will cease our boycott when the US government
sets a moral and ethical example for the Russian government to cease its plans
by canceling its dragnet surveillance programs of both US citizens and our
brothers and sisters from around the world. We are asking our brothers and
sisters in competition from Russia, China, England and any other country
guilty of mass surveillance to join us in this effort. If this demonstration
ends any significance of the Olympic games this year and into the indefinite
future it will have been because our collective governments no longer should
good faith towards the people of this World, and we will no longer see a
reason to continue to compete atheletically on their behalf."

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ktd
To be honest if you think there is any chance at all that this would happen
you are completely disconnected from reality.

The average person doesn't care about NSA surveillance-- just as the average
person didn't care about Lincoln arresting newspaper editors and suspending
habeas corpus, FDR putting Japanese-Americans in concentration camps, J. Edgar
Hoover sending agents to spy on and harass suspected communists (or just
people he didn't like), George W. Bush locking up terrorists in Guantanamo,
etc.

When you get right down to it, historical precedent strongly indicates that
the average person does not care whether the government actually respects the
law in its pursuit of national security.

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malandrew
Never said it would actually happen. Just said I would love it if it did.

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kutakbash
Why on Earth do they need to tap athletes? Mr. Putin heard about NSA and
thought Russia needs some surveillance as well to look cool?

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lttlrck
It's SORM, not Sorm.

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SORM](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SORM)

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return0
They won't be the only ones...

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plg
that's what you think

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bsullivan01
+1 for honesty. It's not it wasn't an open secret anyway

