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A comment on The Smears Against Edward Snowden Have Begun. Parent comment

Re:The Smears Against Edward Snowden Have Begun by sillysaurus on Tuesday June 11, 2013 @12:46PM (#5862991)
The 20M figure doesn't necessarily refer to a budget. It likely refers to the cost of making sure the traffic passes through their collection sites. If you re-read the slides, you'll see that it's talking about things like "the data travels along the cheapest path, not the shortest path" etc.
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Re:The Smears Against Edward Snowden Have Begun by pests on Tuesday June 11, 2013 @11:51PM (#5866445)
I feel you might be taking that statement out of context. To me it seems the slide was explaining that most communication traffic travels through the United States (as demonstrated by the graphic) and the statement you quoted is an explanation of why that is true.

Just to make clear my meaning: A communication between two neighboring countries might still pass through the USA because the price is cheaper despite the length of data travel being greater.

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Re:The Smears Against Edward Snowden Have Begun by stinkytaco on Tuesday June 11, 2013 @01:01PM (#5863102)
Reread the, what, 4 slides? That's my point. We don't have nearly enough information to make any sort of judgement here. We should be asking questions.
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Re:The Smears Against Edward Snowden Have Begun by sillysaurus on Tuesday June 11, 2013 @01:03PM (#5863120)
Yes, re-read the 4 slides. If we don't have enough information, then you shouldn't speculate that $20M refers to the total cost of the operation any more than I should speculate that it doesn't.
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Re:The Smears Against Edward Snowden Have Begun by stinkytaco on Tuesday June 11, 2013 @01:10PM (#5863176)
Fair enough.

But it still means that we're lacking so much information about this that referring to speculating on the sources credibility as a "smear campaign" is unfair to citizens who are asking legitimate questions. I don't know enough about this to even know what the numbers mean, but I'm ready to skewer people over it? We need to fill in these gaps before we start shaping public policy on the issue and examining a sources credibility is part of that process.

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Re:The Smears Against Edward Snowden Have Begun by nitrogen on Tuesday June 11, 2013 @06:52PM (#5865252)
See page 18 (section 11) of http://www.slideshare.net/pastinson/u-oss-simple-sabotage-sm
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