[HN Gopher] Dirty Secrets of a Smear Campaign
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Dirty Secrets of a Smear Campaign
Author : tysone
Score : 80 points
Date : 2023-03-27 14:48 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| jongjong wrote:
| I've also been victim of a smear campaign by the leaders of a
| blockchain community which involved maybe a hundred people and it
| may have been one of the reasons why my project fundraising
| failed. I can relate to the point about turning paranoid. For me,
| it happened just before COVID19 lockdowns which exacerbated the
| feeling of paranoia.
| [deleted]
| DJBunnies wrote:
| What were you making?
| [deleted]
| hammock wrote:
| >terabytes of files exposing a covert campaign against him--and
| the culprit wasn't a rival but an entire country
|
| This type of work is much of what the Intelligence Community
| does. It defends American business (favored corporations of
| course) abroad by getting humint and sigint from competitors
| behind closed doors, sabotage operations, etc. It isn't all coups
| and war, although a lot of it does tie back to national security
| in one sense or another
| CSMastermind wrote:
| > This type of work is much of what the Intelligence Community
| does.
|
| France focuses most of their intelligence services on this
| task.
|
| America has traditionally does to a much smaller degree and
| normally focuses on defense rather than offense in the
| corporate space.
| adolph wrote:
| > America has traditionally does to a much smaller degree
|
| How would anyone know? Are we supposed to believe the IC's
| claims?
| throwrqX wrote:
| Well like any subject, you start by studying their history.
| Declassified documents take a while to become declassified
| but are a rich source of history. Then historians write
| books based on those documents and you can get a more
| reasonable idea of how things worked and fit into a broader
| picture. For more recent activities it's obviously more
| difficult but occasionally you get leaks that give you a
| sneak peek of what is happening (eg Snowden).
| throw10920 wrote:
| Yup. I'm eagerly awaiting root comment poster backing up
| their wild claims by pointing to declassified or FOIA'd
| documents that provide concrete evidence of their
| allegations that "This type of work is much of what the
| Intelligence Community does."
|
| Actually, I might even settle for reporting from
| reputable news organizations.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| No one who would talk about it knows anything reliable.
|
| Least of all anyone bloviating on this thread. Including
| me.
|
| Best you'll get here are the comments ok'd by professional
| influence campaigns mounted by the intelligence services of
| various nations. None of which have any interest in you
| being "informed". So take everything with a 10 pound block
| of salt.
|
| Skepticism is warranted.
| knodi123 wrote:
| > So take everything with a 10 pound block of salt.
|
| That's enough salt to kill anyone. I hope everyone takes
| your dietary advice with an appropriate amount of
| skepticism.
| PuppyTailWags wrote:
| Archive.org link:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230327101056/https://www.newyo...
| [deleted]
| kodah wrote:
| I'm all for seeing more justice around smear campaigns, however
| there's a long way to go. This is why I maintain a hefty chunk of
| skepticism around things that seem just a bit too coincidental
| and lack concrete, direct evidence. As the saying goes, a lie
| travels around the world in the time that the truth laces up it's
| boots.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| All the obvious stuff aside, the billions of dollars, the
| Islamic stuff, bankers and bank politics, the ties to
| militaries and the drama... there is just so seemingly a second
| side to this story.
| scythe wrote:
| There is certainly a second side in the broad sense: we know
| that Qatar hired a rival private intelligence firm likely up
| to the same no good. But in the narrow sense it is just
| ridiculous to suggest that third-order connections among the
| upper classes in the Arab world and diaspora describe
| anything other than an endemic culture of class
| stratification and family privilege. Good fences make
| prognathism.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| Sheesh, and he wasn't even running for president or something.
| jacquesm wrote:
| But when you are things can get _really_ ugly. Swift Boat
| Veterans for Truth for instance. What gets me is that such
| things are not dealt with in the same way that you would deal
| with election fraud.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > When the officer left the room for a few minutes, Nada found
| himself alone with the case file. Desperate for answers, he
| riffled through it. The officer had written notes dismissing him
| as paranoid, Nada told me. (The local police and prosecutor
| declined to comment.) But the police had also obtained copies of
| requests for records about Lord Energy and a local mosque. Both
| had been filed by a Geneva-based private intelligence firm, Alp
| Services.
|
| What an amazing stroke of luck! They left the room and "forgot"
| to bring the case file with them. I hope he thanked them
| afterwards.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Okay, but Alex Jones's lawyer sent the other guy incriminating
| docs he didn't mean to. Lots of people are just dumb. And, in
| government I'm sure that number is doubly so because
| governments never fire people.
| burnished wrote:
| I feel like this is a hard one to summarily judge like this -
| people really do make basic and glaring errors all the time
| AlbertCory wrote:
| If you want to believe a cop leaves a witness alone in a room
| with a police file about him, _accidentally_ , I guess you're
| welcome to.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| I've seen cops leave suspects alone in a room with the key
| _evidence_ needed to convict them, accidentally reveal the
| names of confidential informants in conversation, and
| various other case-killing mistakes.
|
| It does not seem like a stretch for a cop to accidentally
| leave his notes in an interview room in a police station.
| Most interviewees aren't bold enough to risk looking.
| knodi123 wrote:
| I once got a phone call from a guy who stole my bike,
| begging me not to press charges. He'd overheard my name
| from the cops, and I was in the phone book. I said I'd
| press charges anyway and I hoped he rotted in jail. Of
| course, joke was on both of us, since there's no such
| thing as "pressing charges" and he just had to pay a
| fine.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Pressing charges is a thing, but it is prosecutor's
| discretion and usually relies on the victim's consent to
| be effective.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained
| by incompetence"
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