Suppression/Propaganda in Media

[Belligerent Savant]

How could there be any independent forensic analysis, if the laptop had been in the hands of Rudy Giuliani before handing it to the authorities? It could no longer be considered evidence, because it has been in the hands of a person who has their own agenda regarding it. It is completely tarnished at that point and can no longer be considered evidence of anything -

I'm going to focus only on the above snippet; don't want to prolong this side-bar at length but it's worthwhile to have clarity on the above points.

- how did you determine that it's 'completely tarnished'? Is there formal information available on this? There is indeed a way to determine if the data on the hard drive was spoliated once handled by Guliani and/or those under his purview.

- who currently has custody of the hard drive? Assuming Guliani or those under his direction at some point transferred custody of the hard drive/computer to authorities, procedures would require transfer of custody documentation.

- once transfer of custody is documented and confirmed, the authorities that now have custody should have minimally generated a forensic image of the computer hard drive.
Once that hard drive image is generated, it can then be analyzed to determine if integrity of the data was compromised in any way, e.g., alteration of date metadata associated with electronic records or documents, any deletions or modifications to any documents/artifacts stored on the hard drive and WHEN such modifications alterations occurred (prior to or during Guliani's access, for example), etc. All of this should have been done as part of any formal investigation or legal matter, along with a full inventory listing of all recoverable contents stored on the hard drive -- as preliminary steps prior to any substantive analysis.

Any spoliation or alteration of data by Guliani or his team would constitute tampering of evidence and would generally involve sanctions or other penalties in any legal proceeding.

Unless you have information or knowledge -- via a linked source, etc -- that indicates ANY of the above steps were taken, you have NO way to know if indeed the data on the hard drive was spoliated (to use the legal term), or 'tarnished', as you put it.

Note: I have testified as an expert witness specific to these types of scenarios, so am not merely speculating here on standard procedure.

[stickdog99]

How could there be any independent forensic analysis, if the laptop had been in the hands of Rudy Giuliani before handing it to the authorities? It could no longer be considered evidence, because it has been in the hands of a person who has their own agenda regarding it. It is completely tarnished at that point and can no longer be considered evidence of anything - not to mention that most of the tweets that were taken down were dick pics, which are revenge porn, which is not only a crime to post, but also against Twitter's rules. Also, that it could influence the elections was exactly the reason the story was suppressed, because it had all the marks of election interference, possibly from abroad. Just like the leaked Hillary emails - both the Democrats AND the Republicans had been hacked before the 2016 elections, BUT only the Democratic emails were leaked. Possibly because someone, possibly Russia, wanted Trump to win.

I am sure that Russia has something very damaging on Trump, possibly video or images where he does something really damaging, perhaps sex with underage girls or boys, and hence Trumps total loyalty to Putin is guaranteed. Nothing else explains why Trump was always like Putins personal little bitch. I remember watching when Trump and Putin met here in Helsinki, it was totally bizarre to watch him kowtow to Putin like a good boy.

And let it be said that both of the parties in US are nothing more than two wings of the same system, neither of which has the good of humanity in mind. The Democratic party is just Fascism-lite while Republicans are Full-on-fascists. That is the sordid truth. There is no "Left" in the US, Democratic party is center-right at best, and Repugs are far-right in any real socialist / co-operatist context.

Personally, it looks to me like it is only a matter of how long before the whole US descends into chaos and violence, and rips itself apart.

Same goes for the whole capitalist system of course, because when it attains the limits of growth that are planetary in nature, it has nothing left to devour except itself.

[T]he idea that we could lose our freedom by succumbing to a wave of religious hysteria, I am sorry to say that I consider it possible. I hope that it is not probable. But there is a deep strain of religious fanaticism in this, our culture, it is rooted in our history and it has broken out many times with us in the past. It is with us now; there is has been a sharp rise in evangelical sects in this country in recent year, some of which hold beliefs theocratic in the extreme, anti-intellectual, anti-scientific and anti-libertarian.
It is truism that any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young and by killing, locking up or driving underground all heretics…It is the bounden duty of the faithful to do so. The custodians of the True Faith cannot logically admit tolerance of heresy to be a virtue.

- Robert Heinlein

The whole laptop story is but a stupid diversion that leads to nothing of import.

WTF does any of that have to do with the real story here, which is 100% confirmation that Big Tech suppresses any speech that the US federal government directly requests them to suppress?

Is the First Amendment now a partisan issue?

[stickdog99]

[Gnomad]

WTF does any of that have to do with the real story here, which is 100% confirmation that Big Tech suppresses any speech that the US federal government directly requests them to suppress?

Is the First Amendment now a partisan issue?

Of course they do, and have been doing for a long time - way before Trump even. That is a non-story, and it is telling that only now it is a thing when republicans cry about it.

Some of whom should already be in jail for sedition.

All I am saying is that the data has been looked at by reporters, ex-fbi agent for the media, and its in the hands of the actual FBI as well as Giuliani. So Trump people.

If there was something really damaging on the laptop, dont you think they would have already used that data to bring Biden down?

They have not, so it is a given there isnt much besides drug use, dick pics, and some shady business deals. Which all of the high level politicians do. So at this point the whole laptop story is simply a distraction from the very real crimes of the Trump administration, and Trumps personal attempt to grab power, and a real (shoddy) attempt at a coup at the Capitol.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news ... -fake-data
(like here they list who all has a copy of the hard drive, and say it is genuine)

Thats all Im saying.
And I have no horse in this race anyway, I live all the way around the globe and will never set foot in a US controlled territory. The whole country is on my personal terror black list.

https://money.cnn.com/2016/06/14/media/ ... index.html
A list of media people Trump blocked from all his press events

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/us/t ... rters.html
Trump Administration Secretly Seized Phone Records of Times Reporters - to uncover their sources illegally

You think they did not do the same things to control their narrative?

(Btw, I noticed I made a mistake earlier, Giuliani got a copy of the harddrive contents, not the whole laptop like I mistakenly wrote - my bad)

[Belligerent Savant]

.

https://www.thefp.com/p/how-twitter-rig ... vid-debate

How Twitter Rigged the Covid Debate

The platform suppressed true information from doctors and public-health experts that was at odds with U.S. government policy.

By David Zweig

Monday, Dec 26, 2022

By the time reporter David Zweig got to the 10th floor conference room at Twitter Headquarters on Market Street in San Francisco, the story of the Twitter Files was already international news. Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, Leighton Woodhouse, Abigail Shrier, Lee Fang and I had revealed evidence of hidden blacklists of Twitter users; the way Twitter acted as a kind of FBI subsidiary; and how company executives rewrote the platform’s policies on the fly to accommodate political bias and pressure.

What we had yet to crack was the story of Covid.

David has spent three years reporting on Covid—specifically the underlying science, or lack thereof, behind many of our nation’s policies. For years he had noticed and criticized a bias not only in the mainstream media’s coverage of the pandemic, but also in the way it was presented on platforms like Twitter.

David has spent three years reporting on Covid—specifically the underlying science, or lack thereof, behind many of our nation’s policies. For years he had noticed and criticized a bias not only in the mainstream media’s coverage of the pandemic, but also in the way it was presented on platforms like Twitter.

We couldn’t think of anyone better to tackle this story. — BW


*****************

I had always thought a primary job of the press was to be skeptical of power—especially the power of the government. But during the Covid-19 pandemic, I and so many others found that the legacy media had shown itself to largely operate as a messaging platform for our public health institutions. Those institutions operated in near total lockstep, in part by purging internal dissidents and discrediting outside experts.

Twitter became an essential alternative. It was a place where those with public health expertise and perspectives at odds with official policy could air their views—and where curious citizens could find such information. This often included other countries’ responses to Covid that differed dramatically from our own.

But it quickly became clear that Twitter also seemed to promote content that reinforced the establishment narrative, and to suppress views and even scientific evidence that ran to the contrary.

....

Continued at link.

Musk and the 'new' Twitter -- and wherever these 'reveals' may lead in the months ahead -- are likely/potential limited hangouts, perhaps part of a larger agenda that includes a 'controlled' and incremental systemic collapse, which in turn opens the door for a new system, etc.

There is value in these disclosures to the discerning mind, regardless of motive.

Nothing is known for certain, or guaranteed to occur.
There is cause for optimism.

[stickdog99]

[stickdog99]

[Gnomad]

Musk and his "free speech" at Twitter....

A story about Tesla "Full"Self Driving feature causing a crash - reported here https://theintercept.com/2023/01/10/tes ... autopilot/

Highway surveillance footage from Thanksgiving Day shows a Tesla Model S vehicle changing lanes and then abruptly braking in the far-left lane of the San Francisco Bay Bridge, resulting in an eight-vehicle crash. The crash injured nine people, including a 2-year-old child, and blocked traffic on the bridge for over an hour.

The video and new photographs of the crash, which were obtained by The Intercept via a California Public Records Act request, provides the first direct look at what happened on November 24, confirming witness accounts at the time. The driver told police that he had been using Tesla’s new “Full Self-Driving” feature, the report notes, before the Tesla’s “left signal activated” and its “brakes activated,” and it moved into the left lane, “slowing to a stop directly in [the second vehicle’s] path of travel.”

The reporter tweeted about this story, and soon after it has been suppressed at Twitter.

https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwi ... m_twitter/



Patently ridiculous. "Free speech absolutist" my ass. He uses Twitter to suppress / publish whatever he feels like, and try to manipulate public opinion of himself.

If you search for the original tweet (Use Nitter to not drive traffic to Twitter directly - https://nitter.net/about - Nitter allows you to read without having an account at Twit) the result is "Tweet not found".

[Gnomad]

Noticed that The Intercept has another Musk story -
https://theintercept.com/2022/12/20/elo ... extremism/

...
Unfortunately, Elon Musk now seems grimly determined to walk Henry Ford’s path much further than he should, for after his spectacular early success, Ford turned very dark, very quickly. The consequences of his hateful actions continue to poison the world today.

After he had accumulated massive wealth and achieved global fame, Ford allowed bigotry and paranoia to dominate his life. Deeply anti-union, he created a network of company spies who surveilled his employees and tried to control their lives. He also bought a newspaper that disseminated lies and antisemitic conspiracy theories. He followed that up by publishing a series of antisemitic books that were influential among Nazis and other European fascists between the First and Second World Wars.
...
Musk seems to be on the same trajectory that led Ford into the abyss. Tesla investigators hired by Musk allegedly hacked an employee’s phone and spied on his messages, and the stridently anti-union Musk reportedly hired a public relations firm to investigate an employee Facebook group just as Tesla workers were trying to unionize.

Earlier this year, SpaceX, another firm that Musk controls, fired employees who had written a letter calling on SpaceX to condemn Musk’s tweets, in which he’d ridiculed reports that SpaceX had settled a sexual harassment complaint against him. After Musk acquired Twitter in October, he began slashing the company’s workforce — including firing employees who had dared to criticize him.

Now, like Ford, Musk is going further, enabling right-wing hate on a massive scale.

After buying a social media platform whose reach far exceeds the newspapers of Henry Ford’s era, Musk is rapidly turning Twitter into his personal plaything, making a series of arbitrary moves to showcase his right-wing political agenda. He has unblocked the Twitter accounts of Donald Trump and other right-wing extremists, and ended enforcement of the site’s Covid misinformation policy. QAnon accounts are now returning to Twitter too.

Musk has also looted the platform’s internal files to further his political goals. Last week, he suspended the Twitter accounts of journalists at The Intercept and elsewhere who have criticized him, and then tried to make demands on the journalists in return for lifting the suspensions. Over the weekend, he briefly suspended the account of Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz after she tried to contact him for a story.

“Elon Musk has demonstrated to the entire world in the space of a few weeks that his management of Twitter is a disaster for the right to information,” Reporters Without Borders said in a statement after Musk suspended the reporters’ accounts. Officials from the European Union have also warned that Twitter may face sanctions for failing to live up to the EU’s standards for press freedom.

Musk has embraced Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and in October showed his willingness to become Putin’s de facto messenger to the West by laying out specific pro-Russian terms for a settlement of the war in Ukraine. On Sunday, Musk was photographed at the World Cup in Qatar, standing in what appeared to be a stadium suite with Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

[drstrangelove]

I like the intercept. shameless honeypot but lets some real journalism through to build goodwill. which it burns through all at once in such spectacles as greenwald discovering in his mid to late forties he's an organ grinder's monkey.

[stickdog99]

Here's what I don't understand.

How does anything Musk is, think, does or doesn't do impinge one iota on the real story of the Twitter files he has released, which is clear, unambiguous proof that many US federal agencies were directing state censorship by micromanaging Twitter employees? And, of course, the exact same applies to Google, Youtube, Facebook, Reddit, and every other major online platform.

It's like saying that Assange's supposed untoward sexual proclivities and political allegiances somehow negate everything ever released by Wikileaks.

How does anyone still fall for this shit?

[drstrangelove]

doublethink. the endpoint of semantics. coming at us in nothingburgers like two identical 'mishandling of classified documents scandals' switching minds from offense to defense at the flip of the news cycle. the stakes are so high and the system so corrupt support for it can only be found in opposition to some part of it. western civilization going schizophrenic to survive.

[Gnomad]

Here's what I don't understand.

How does anything Musk is, think, does or doesn't do impinge one iota on the real story of the Twitter files he has released, which is clear, unambiguous proof that many US federal agencies were directing state censorship by micromanaging Twitter employees? And, of course, the exact same applies to Google, Youtube, Facebook, Reddit, and every other major online platform.

It's like saying that Assange's supposed untoward sexual proclivities and political allegiances somehow negate everything ever released by Wikileaks.

How does anyone still fall for this shit?

That is not an either / or thing. That was my whole point.
Of course the government meddling is true.

Now we just have a modern day billionaire emerald miner anti-union Henry Ford also using a large media platform to push his personal agenda while claiming to be a free speech warrior, while he is banning and suppressing anyone he does not like, and allowing doxxing of trans people and minorities and hate against them.
How does anyone fall for that?

And fuck all billionaires. They should not exist at all.
And fuck the US government as well.

Are you seriously comparing Musk to Assange there? That is really something.

[DrEvil]

Musk is having the world's most expensive midlife crisis/meltdown, kicked off by Grimes dumping him for Chelsea Manning.

The good thing is all the other car makers are building decent EVs by now, so him burning Twitter, Tesla and his personal fortune to the ground with his deranged antics is just extra icing on the cake.

[JackRiddler]

Musk is having the world's most expensive midlife crisis/meltdown, kicked off by Grimes dumping him for Chelsea Manning.

Citation required!

...
...







Appears to be true. (How did I not hear of this before?) Reports they've broken up. Chelsea's looking pretty hot btw. Grimes (of whom I hadn't seen pictures before) looks disturbingly 12-ish.