Obviously that rings hollow... but, I wonder, what kind of security protocol do high gov officials in RU use, do they follow better security hygiene than the West?

This release coincides with G20 meetings. Intentional or happenstance?

Avoid Tinder

https://galactica.fandom.com/wiki/Galactica

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/russia-reverts...

;)

Hearing your touch: A new acoustic side channel on smartphones (http://arxiv.org/abs/1903.11137)

If I was to use a Typewriter, you could probably put a recording device inside it and work out what I was writing about that way.

Regarding Yandex, they have good talents there so what they say might be true.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/14/dmitry-medvede...

No, not at all. Thankfully we have many people in press, innumerable sources of information, and a lot of public discourse on these things.

Unlike in some regions, where journalists are murdered, sometimes by the state.

That sure helped in Iraq's case. It's not like the press just repeated what the government told it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

So why do you war so much yourself?

How have you come to this conclusion?

The reason I'm asking is not that I hold the opposite opinion. It's that I think that this dilemma is inherently hard as there are very good arguments for both points of view and I cannot see an easy way to find any solution to it.

Luckily passive aggressiveness isn't an act of war at least.

There is a lot of info about crimes comitted by the CIA, but this isn't about any naughtyness competition.

Deploying Weapons of Mass Applicability i.e. nerve agents is a "War Crime" according to Geneva conventions.

Pardon my spelling, not my native tongue, but judging from your answer it must have obfuscated the meaning of my comment.

If you're going to tell someone else to spell right, you should make sure to spell "you're" correctly yourself.

But it absolutely is. Whataboutism is an illogical thing if you're judging actions of some actor on some abstract moral scale, this is true.

But that's not the conversation here here, as we're talking not about ethic, but about public perception and rationality of offensive actions. And in this game, the context of actions of adversaries matters a great deal: if your opponents do something much worse, smaller on your behalf are expected to draw much less scrutiny and therefore, become much "cheaper".

In a legal sense, may be. I don't find this important though.

> cost/benefit-calculation turns against you if it becomes public

It has become public, and I'm yet to see any actual cost.

I can't tell whether the "they" in this sentence is referring to your government or the foreign one.

Espionage against a country that has 1000 nuclear warheads pointed at you, and practices using them, is a very responsible thing to do, and very much sanctioned by government.

A country which so aggresively attacks a person that merely suggests to look into possible breakage of a law cannot have clean hands or be trustworthy.

On the flip side, they are just as intrusive as Google. When I installed their browser or mail app (don't remember which one) it asked for my ios PIN / password (no ios app ever requires a PIN / password for installation - and no, I am not talking about an iCloud password which is required for app installation if you have enabled it for app installation).

we have met the enemy: they is us.

Despite our flaws, there’s a difference in Russia or China hacking and the US. To suggest otherwise is advocating moral relativism in my opinion.

I do, however, support a pardon for Snowden and Assange.

the difference is you identify the US as 'our'.

There is no end to this "ends justify the means" crap. "Well, we're the good guys, so it's ok for us to torture, depose governments, nuke civilians, fix elections, assassinate foreign leaders, spy on our citizens..." Etc.

Given that there will always be conflict, you can choose to do nothing and be out-competed, you can act in the interest of the group to which you belong, or you can act in the interest of the other side.

It's possible to argue that these actions are not, in fact, in the interest of your group, but that has nothing to do with some facile Hollywood conception of international relations as good guys vs. bad guys.

If you think you hold yourself to a higher purpose, then why not behave as such. I'm not sure what "moral relativism" even means.

"there’s a difference in Russia or China hacking and the US" - no, that's bollocks. I'll assert that and stick to it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17061936

Really, it's a lot like the allowable amount of insect parts that the US Govt. Food and Drug Administration allows in food. You're shocked a bit to read it, but the truth is you've been living it (and eating it) for some time.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Food_Defect_Action_Levels for example for what I mean about "allowable amount of insect parts"

No, the West does not claim 'moral superiority' over Russia due to any kind of ostensible 'non participation' in espionage.

There is no 'hoping they don't find out' because it's accepted that it's happening. We only 'hope they don't find out' about specific activities.

It would give US intelligence insights in to operations from China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, etc.

No you haven't. If you had then you would keep it to yourself - I do.

Note that I'm not questioning the existence of intelligence services, I'm asking you to provide basis that directly attacking companies like that is worth it. Also where's the line that makes this "dirty" business worth it?

Or the things it has caught don't make newspaper headlines. Because the plots were defused, and thus can't be used to cause chaos and fear in citizens, something newspapers seem to delight in.

That sounds like conspiracy thinking. The media isn't able to suppress the CIA's good deeds, and I don't believe they'd try. "Big alien invasion averted thanks to heroic CIA agent" is a great headline. So great in fact, that fiction books are written on that premise.

With all the minor and major leaks from the intelligence community, they're supposed to have a super tight and successful conspiracy going to hide the fact that they are actually effective? I have some doubts, both on the technical part (large conspiracies are hard) and the reasoning.

They have a demonstrable history of lies and terrorist-style anti-democratic activities themselves for political and economic purposes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Can you explain the reasoning beyond "yes"?

Information is power and the "right" information, even more so.

lmao

why would Russia need this reason?

Russia does not need this or any other reason, they are already doing this to the extent they can. The public nature of this will provide some political cover, but that's it.

As to 'what it gets' it entirely depends on the kind of information that was obtained, the inherent risks and cost, the targets etc..

Maybe there were specific targets, a specific needs, maybe they were casting a net - who knows.

Unless you want your yoghurt to cost $100 a pot, you have to accept that some insect parts will find their way into some food. The point of regulation is to ensure that the amount is minimized. If the standard was zero parts, food prices would skyrocket, many food suppliers would go out of business, and poor people wouldn't be able to eat. So the standard is some reasonable low level.

These things are always about tradeoffs and not absolutes.