This is making the rounds re: Signal being run by activists of the US state dept for regime change


https://www.city-journal.org/article/signals-katherine-maher-problem

@feld

U.S.-supported Color Revolutions abroad.

This is 100% Russian propaganda language and the whole article is built on this narrative 🤮

@kravietz You cannot deny that Signal's funding came from the Open Technology Fund which came out of Radio Free Asia which was operated by the CIA. This is a fact.

@feld

And?

@kravietz this is the response everyone has, and then 25 years later when all the documents go public revealing how deep and nefarious the relationship was everyone goes "how could we have not known?????"

@feld

The problem is that the article does not point to any specific surveillance or backdoor issues in Signal code which, as we all know, is open-source. It does not even point to any specific legal or organisational issues which could lead to tampering the software. And because the author does not have any such arguments, the whole premise of the article is built on top “look, she worked there” and the rest is left to the reader and their personal paranoias 🤷

And these references to “regime changes” and “color revolutions” only confirm author’s own political bias and highly insulting to everyone in these countries where people fought for their own freedom.

Adding Durov’s quote on top of that is rather ironic, as the messenger is known to cooperate with FSB requests and completely opaque as it comes to its operations and server-side code.

@kravietz @feld I wonder if people could fight for their own freedom while also being manipulated by propaganda and acting in a way that benefits foreign interests.

@thatguyoverthere @kravietz @feld
They might be, but in this case it might be simply impossible to tell, what part of it is being manipulated and what comes of acting on their own accord. It might sound absurd, but for people living in non-free regimes, CIA might be way more trustworthy than any domestic entity. CIA (and their friends belonging to other states) might indeed be skilled manipulators, but it doesn't mean that people would do whatever they want.

@m0xee @kravietz @feld yeah to me it seems more sun tzu use the enemies inertia against them than some kind of direct mind control. Pushing someone satisfied with the status quo to weaken it is much harder than using people who are already disgruntled.

@thatguyoverthere @kravietz @feld
When it comes to CIA involvement, on one hand I understand where this is coming from, it's American guilty conscience speaking: "It was us who ruined their country!", on the other — it denies people in other countries their free will. It's like you said — not direct mind control, more like favouring one party over the other, but if tipping the balance of scales can result in collapse, this means that society is already in an unhealthy state.

@thatguyoverthere @kravietz @feld
Were any of these countries that are often attributed to be "ruined by CIA" ever prosperous? There are particularly funny cases, such as Iraq. I've been rewatching Vice recently — not a bad movie of course, very entertaining and well-made, but it's implied throughout the movie: "They did it for the oil!" Now let's take a look into who is mining oil in Iraq: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_industry_in_Iraq#Service_contracts_licensing_results

@thatguyoverthere @kravietz @feld
OMG, European companies are there too, but it's not only them: China, Turkey — those who can't be suspected to be US' lapdog; but there is more — Russia, one of the most vocal critics!
I mean — yep, US involvement didn't bring any good, that is for sure. Debatably, that was a dirty political game and some Americans are willing to take the blame, but if they indeed "did it for the oil", apparently, they did a rather shitty job.

@thatguyoverthere @kravietz @feld
I can keep going about these things forever, but my position is: their intent might be evil, and it's indeed might be there, they might be even imagining themselves as puppeteers running the whole world, but real efficiency of this foreign influence thing is hard to measure and overall questionable.
Besides, we have our case in point — Iran.