
‘A Partial Freedom’: What Latvia Found in the KGB Archives - signor_bosco
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/03/05/a-partial-freedom-what-latvia-found-in-the-kgb-archives/
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T3OU-736
A thing to keep in mind: just because there is an "agent" card on someone,
does not mean they were a snitch ("productive agent").

It is entirely possible that at least some cards were there to simply pad the
numbers - to justify a handler's existence.

At least some others are likely based on the KGB agent's noting someone down
as a source as a means of blackmailing them ("I am not a snitch!" \- "Funny, I
have a file on you already. Wonder what your neighbors would think when we
drop you off and thank you. Might as well cooperate..."). Because good luck
proving a negative.

I am a huge fan of transparency, but I would strongly argue that raw data,
without context, in this instance, does not mean proper transparency is
achieved.

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reilly3000
I wish the NSA made their metadata records available to citizens in some form
or another. If I could download my personal history via phone records,
locations, and such it would be a nice tool for me to help me review and
better understand my past. I don’t want to see the analyst’s notes about me,
just a unified set of records. Under a GDPR-in-US legislation this ought to be
on the table. I’m sure people could abuse it to find NSA blind spots, but that
doesn’t mean they haven’t been filled since.

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dmitriy_ko
Google Timeline

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peisistratos
As an American citizen, I wish the amount of surveillance done on me by the
state security forces was as limited as this was.

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DFHippie
The deal here, though, is that these KGB files are full of the names of
Latvians who informed on their neighbors. It's one thing to be spied on by the
NSA (or Google), and another to be spied on by people you regard as friends.

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aivisol
Exactly. And besides that, they used all spectre of technical surveillance
means which were available at that time. That would be far worse than NSA by
now if it was not the collapse of USSR.

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Xelbair
That still dosen't make spying by NSA 'good'.

