Linguistic misperceptions amidst a 'war' on communication

ZNET article: Former NSA deputy director: Snowden leaks caused 'significant disservice' to the Internet

Summary: Edward Snowden caused more damage to the Internet than the U.S. intelligence community did, according to a former deputy director of the NSA. But of course, he would say that. So, now what?

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One can do a disservice to another or to others by acting in a way that undermines integrity, trust of communication and purpose.
One cannot do a disservice to 'the Internet', any more than to 'History'.

The revealing of hidden agendas potentially serves a clearer communication because one is no longer suffering under the illusion of privacy or confidentiality and thereby unwittingly having one's acts and communications used or abused by secret others.

But secret personal agendas are the nature of power struggles, and everyone who subscribes to that mentality engages at some level, personally and collectively in power struggle.

As a result of it becoming more publicized that digitally transmitted information is logged and monitored or surveiled in various ways by powers great or small, one can be more discerning as to what, why and how one acts and expresses themselves.

The 'revelations' could feed into the NSA/GCHQ design by magnifying the fearful belief in an all seeing power that can strike anywhere in the world at will - or put one on a blacklist or indeed an asset list. Thus almost everyone will police themselves in fear and be less and less able to communicate openly if they have to use complex security encoding protections.

As such it is the revealing of uncloaked power, and whatever the reactions or costs to US/UK Tech sector or political reputations globally, it asserts itself under guise of notional security. The notion being that the guise of US interest as defined by its financial and corporate masters is equated with a global influence that extends into the space around our planet.

Power struggles often result in destructive change rather than shifting consciousness more gracefully. The latter is the opportunity to awaken as the Consciousness Responsibility in which mentalities, personas and ideology and beliefs play out as polarites of each other.

The Internet, in its rapidly evolving extension of our own consciousness REFLECTS that consciousness back to us. Humankind has its own inner 'virtual realities' and dislocations from our actual presence, our actual, integrity. We are never lacking faith. We simply choose WHAT to invest it in. If we chase the game of power, we become exclusively identified with our persona/avatar. But as with any inflated bubble of perceived value - it pops to a humiliation that actually serves a true humility.

Discernment is not a strategy so much as an extension of trust. First one has to uncover a basis of trust within one's own consciousness, and that requires releasing the projection and investment of one's own shadow hates and fears on others as a mode of keeping them hidden from one's OWN awareness.

The world as we know it is structured so as to serve the division of consciousness rather than its unified expression. The Internet is being structured likewise by setting up fear. Free sweets make an identification and scarcity holds the control. Nothing new here.

The dependency on externals reflects a lack within. One may shift from fear by recognizing 'external' fulfilments with heartfelt gratitude within, and the extension of such in honour and appreciation into our lives. Whereas the more one fights, the more there is to fight.

A computer maxim is 'garbage in; garbage out'. The thoughts, feeling and beliefs that run in our mind are not really put there by others unless one persists in THAT belief. We choose what to accept into our mind and then act from it and make it our own. This responsibility remains ours no matter how deeply we seem to have given it away. We can never escape it for free will is the nature of our being - as we are created to extend likewise. A virtual layer runs in emulation in which the puppets seem to have cut their strings and be powers unto themselves.
Games are addictive and can persist long after the fun has worn off.
It is all in our Face - as we are willing to see.

Tescams?

(This was written into a Mac - chat forum where I had quoted Joseph Campbell's 'follow your bliss' and was asked if such a mentality doesn't play into the Tesco webcam world of being manipulated - in so many words!)

Tescams?
Oh I suppose to begin with they can be proven and monitored to be anonymized, strictly determining a type that switches the appropriate ads on. But its a step of normalizing - as we already are in GB to being filmed in public. Petrol stations often already have cams that often also check number plates. It seems inevitable that privacy in public is a lost cause - and that privacy anywhere is also disappearing as all sorts of ways of surveillance are already in place if not activated.

Theirs a good film, 'The lives of others', set in East Germany, but that like many films focuses on something horrible by showing a heroic exception.

Terrorism, unfortunately is more often wielded by a state upon its own. This is so unthinkable that most hobbits wont look outside the Shire.

The State today is wedded with and very strongly influenced by Corporate powers under the aegis of the Financial Powers - who most don't even know of and that is an example of what is already in play.

Of course its all making sense - to have targeted ads means more revenue from those who have to pay huge sums to just keep their bit of brand and product mindshare from being usurped by their rivals.

The whole ad culture - whilst giving employment to a few - is an enormous overhead or tax upon business and is becoming the engine of society at ever deeper levels - such as Facebook and Google's model of making profit from selling customer data as well as selling customer mindshare to advertizers.

And while some use lighter more refreshing ways to invite attention most of it is a stark coercive intent with some kind of candy or bogeyman symbols.
And all of it normalises us to live within a coercive intent and be distracted with surfaces of mental implants - because it is not talking to the conscious level - excepting to grab a moment of exposure - even peripherally- they know that doesn't work. And so do politicians. It is talking to the unconscious - using symbols associations and repetition repetition repetition - you get the drift.

So it all points and moves to a herded, managed, underclass who are not required nor allowed to determine their own choices - and thus become ever more dependent on being managed. A very few who are completely above any kind of rule of law and can use anyone and anything at their whim. And a small serving class of those who have skills of a nature that the ruling class need - especially those who can institute the replacement of such a class with automated systems.

I think HG Wells saw it ages ago - though not in all its nuances.
Just as supermarkets are simple logistical solutions to dense populations and road vehicles, so our society is programmed by the factors that are actively operating - some of which is the management of mass populations - but within a mindset that has not been updated or refreshed, so much as mechanized and externalized.

Survival of the fittest means that that which fits its environment and expresses itself as an integral aspect of that environment, is selected.
Man imposes his own thinking upon life and upon the environment in a way that exploits it and undermines his own basis of existence - as well as overriding his own innate function of existing for his own definitions of himself that have been conditioned into his mind so as to make him blind to the Life that he is and that is all around him.

To end on a positive note - did anyone watch the BBC program Metamorphosis?
I felt it offered a real synergy of the arts and sciences in a way that carried a deeper message for us all - and for our times.

The word emergency is pointing to emergence. There are innumerable example in nature where very specific and extreme situations trigger the catalyst or the seed of a transformation.
I feel life is always about the difference between a hollow shell or a vibrant flight - but that sometimes everything comes to somewhat of a singular unavoidable point.

So while advertizers will use the phrases of your highest realisation - they will use it to deliver a coercive intent. It's the Real Thing, Coke Is.
No it's not - Is, Is!
Because you're worth it? Spot on - but your existence gives you worth and not your image - much less a plastic barbie doll who cant keep her head still!

Your highest sense of who you are is worth it - and brings you always into the Is - where there isn't a gnawing sense of lack and where all sorts of things line up naturally - and serendipitously!

But what about all the fears and sense of inadequacy and unworthiness that I have acquired since I cant remember when and which are very uncomfortable when they come into my awareness so I do whatever keeps them away?

This is the driving force of our society; the demand for unconsciousness.
You'll find Steve Jobs uncovered the same thing. It isn't really the evil bastards who take advantage of using power to get more power to get more power - they are just a variant of the same root addiction. It's the power we give away by not accepting and living our own responsibility for our lives. We make ourselves 'automatons' by not living our humanity.

The key to reclaiming it is a true self valueing that is not narcisisstic - but acts from the discernment of joy (One can use any of the inherent qualities of life if joy doesn't fit your vocabulary) - but what really excites and draws your interest and enthusiasm brings you alive in your integrity and connecting in ways that let others meet your actual presence.

Reclaiming one's life is not 'resisting evil' it is being true to oneself - and this is a basis to communicate from with integrity to others who have lost sight of their own rather than from a grievance or hatred.

I appreciate that I only managed to get Steve Jobs in as a sort of token connection to Mac Chat - but if the slide into a Grave New World is as blind and as suckered into a scam as seem from where I stand - I felt to share a bit of a perspective that does not succumb.

hey ho!

Security scams and snooping hacks?

An overwhelming 96 per cent of British businesses fear that their information security functions do not fully meet their needs - making cyber attacks the greatest threat to survival of UK businesses today.

Snowden's released information on snooping - which can hardly be trusted not to be used for economic espionage, and high profile hacks such as the recent Adobe - (many of which are not publicized), as well as schoolboys, criminal gangs and foreign governments - suggest that anything digitally stored and accessible can be in one way or another accessed or leaked if the price is right. The price being the cost of bothering along with the value of the hacked asset.

And on the other hand, security 'experts' are only to ready to promote a fearful confusion in which their services or products are required.

Being so dependant on digital resources is hardly the 'free' website to promote your business to millions that was once touted. Nor is the constantly changing environment of devices and systems and protocols one in which to reap the economic and productivity bonanzas, but yet another monkey on our back that taxes us in not only our cash but in our attention capacity and our time-perspective.

Unless of course one is one of the many who have been disenfranchised by the technology and systems that now emulate it as human 'relationships'.

So much of 'progress' is the default persistence of patterns of thinking that no longer fit.

Our conflicted consciousness creates extensions of itself (the Internet of Things) that perpetrate the ancient conflicts of secret self interest at the expense of the whole.

It would seem that one cannot ultimately guarantee digital secrets, but one could perhaps institute a Net that was transparent such that the caller ID was not secret or able to be hidden regardless of rank, status or function. No one really is attracted to this because they cant conceive of not being hidden or secret in their thought and intent, and have every sense of others abusing or stealing or penalizing them for their acts or assets.

Our own consciousness appears to be able to keep secrets from itself no less than our body politic - as is witnessed by 'psychological defence mechanisms'. These issues are rising up in our new technology whether we like it or not and I don't know that the genie can be put back in the bottle!

Issues of integrity and trust are at the very foundation of our sanity - and society. Especially of course in a context in which deception is everywhere and real communication lost to propaganda or simply drowned in noise.