Welcome to 1984

[Balog]

http://m.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1


Excellent, detailed article on the NSA's shiny new data collection center in Utah. And of course, if this much evidence of wrong doing is publicly available I shudder to think how much is actually occurring. The NSA has always been the scariest bit of fed.gov to me, as they seem to actually be somewhat competent.

[TommyGunn]

They are primarily involved in sig/int and elint espionage and it's not like they have an army of secret hitmen around, so they aren't really all that amazingly dangerous.


I would, however, avoid discussing explosives and bombmaking and militia-related stuff over any kind of elctronic medium.


Oh Wait.



 

[MillCreek]

Bye, TommyGunn!  Wave to the black dark green helicopters for us when the fastropes start to hit the ground outside your house!

[longeyes]

Well, fear not, 1984 begets 1985...

[Marnoot]

It was an interesting article, though I found the hyperbolic wording in much of it to be a little tiring (to include the magazine cover: "Deep in the Utah desert..." Bluffdale isn't hidden deep in the desert, it's right on I-15 in the Salt Lake valley surrounded by increasingly dense suburb.) Hyperbole aside, always a good idea to watch the watchers so much as possible.

[RoadKingLarry]

Ironically, 1984 was a pretty good year for me. Spent quite a bit of time at sea that year but "in port" time was good.
I was stationed at San Diego and we had an apartment in El Cajon. Only had one kid then, wasn't in debt and we were still young enough to screw our brains out every night I was home.

[S. Williamson]

Aw, great. I'm not going to be born for another 24 days. 

[AJ Dual]

I wonder what would happen if someone tried some sort of distributed computing project, like Folding @ Home, SETI @ Home etc. on the BIONIC model, but more peer-to-peer instead. So it somehow tried to thwart .gov's domestic spying efforts everywhere on the net through increasing (or maybe more appropriately reducing) the signal to noise ratio to the point of uselessness for the .gov and their big ears.

I think being able to "jam" domestic civilian spying by .govs might be just as important as robust anonymous encrypted digital cash for telling .govs to FOAD in the long run, and ushering in Libertarian minarchies as the default mode of governance for the world.

[Balog]

Huh, when I saw AJ posting I assumed he'd be predicting this would birth the singularity... 

[lee n. field]

I wonder what would happen if someone tried some sort of distributed computing project, like Folding @ Home, SETI @ Home etc. on the BIONIC model, but more peer-to-peer instead. So it somehow tried to thwart .gov's domestic spying efforts everywhere on the net through increasing (or maybe more appropriately reducing) the signal to noise ratio to the point of uselessness for the .gov and their big ears.

I think being able to "jam" domestic civilian spying by .govs might be just as important as robust anonymous encrypted digital cash for telling .govs to FOAD in the long run, and ushering in Libertarian minarchies as the default mode of governance for the world.

You, comrade, will have an unfortunate accident one of these days.

[TommyGunn]

You, comrade, will have an unfortunate accident one of these days.

They will just rebuild him using bionics.

[drewtam]

Wait, isn't this the plot to Terminator 3?

[Jamie B]

I need to research Echelon, as it has been a few years.

[White Horseradish]

I need to research Echelon, as it has been a few years.

No need. Echelon is researching you.

[Jamie B]

No need. Echelon is researching you.

Dayum, that was good! 

[230RN]

I'm frankly a little surprised that Orwell's 1984 hasn't somehow or another been banned from production and sale and distribution.

Under pretext of some obscure law or another buried in things like The Patriot Act.  Or whatever.  I'm sure there's something.

[Ron]

I'm frankly a little surprised that Orwell's 1984 hasn't somehow or another been banned from production and sale and distribution.

Under pretext of some obscure law or another buried in things like The Patriot Act.  Or whatever.  I'm sure there's something.

With government education providing the narrative to a populace who have been taught "stuff" but not critical thinking skills, there is no need to ban subversive literature.

[RevDisk]

meh.

This is about as threatening as building any other data center. In other words, it's not. Folks like to focus on the Jason Bourne or James Bond factor. All the big flashy stuff. Trust me, the most annoying stuff is very publicly available and no one cares. I whined about it in the other thread, about the renewal EO of a 50, 60 year old law.

That said, in the network diagram is kinda cool. Helped run some of that network back in the day.

I always loved and feared working with the NSA folks. Only another government employee would truly understand. Every single NSA employee I met was intelligence, efficient, competent and polite. Let me repeat that. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. It used to creep me out, severely. I once accused one of the cooler NSA guys of being lizard people, because there's no way they could be government employees. I still honestly suspect that to be the case... Completely unnatural. Even with the (completely accurate, IMHO) lizard people belief, there's this NCIS agent I need to beat up. Dude failed to slip me a number for a very attractive crypto lady geek I met in Vegas. Dude KNEW I had a soft spot for ultra hawt geek ladies with similar clearances. Dude tried to bribe me with an extremely nice knife. Hmph! Last I heard, she was off the market in short order, found a nice boyfriend. Gee, like THAT was a surprise.

He laughed and said because technically, they were a "black" agency on paper, they had a lot easier HR process. Basically, no unions and 90% of the normal government HR red tape can be ignored. They tend to promote from within and rarely put outsiders into anything but the highest political slots. You don't have USDA poultry senior executive admins transferring to head of say, Central Asian signal intelligence, so incompetent folks can't just hop ship. There's alsoa culture of merit (and geek cred competition) that lingers even as you climb the office hierarchy. Ultra-nerds do not like office politics and tend not to like administrative folks that are dumb and experts of office politics.

Of all the fed agencies, I trust their professionalism the most. Aside from their uhh, really really black side, they tend to be a lot more passive than any other agency, but they work very hard to project an ultracompetent and all-knowing institutional persona. Even other agencies get creeped out by them.

[Perd Hapley]

I'm frankly a little surprised that Orwell's 1984 hasn't somehow or another been banned from production and sale and distribution.

No need for them to worry about that, unless they make another film adaptation. Or a video game. It's not like people read real literature, or anything.

(Tangentially related: I went to a Barnes & Noble last night, and thought I'd check to see if there was a copy of Hawthorne's Celestial Railroad to peruse while I was there. Major American author, one of his better-known works, huge store - should be a slam dunk, right? Nope. People don't read real lit anymore, so why stock it?)

[230RN]

No need for them to worry about that, unless they make another film adaptation. Or a video game. It's not like people read real literature, or anything.

Twue, twue, vewy twue.  It seems like every time I go into my favorite bookstore (semi-major, two retail outlets) to find a copy of something, I have to order it.

I waited a month to find a copy of "The Blue Lagoon," (the actual book) out of the local library.  They finally located a copy in a University library in Idaho.

Terry, 230RN

AMUSEY:

Cultural impact -- Nineteen Eighty-Four in popular media
 
The effect of Nineteen Eighty-Four on the English language is extensive; the concepts of Big Brother, Room 101, the Thought Police, thoughtcrime, unperson, memory hole (oblivion), doublethink (simultaneously holding and believing contradictory beliefs) and Newspeak (ideological language) have become common phrases for denoting totalitarian authority.

Doublespeak and groupthink are both deliberate elaborations of doublethink, while the adjective "Orwellian" denotes "characteristic and reminiscent of George Orwell's writings" especially Nineteen Eighty-Four. The practice of ending words with "-speak" (e.g. mediaspeak) is drawn from the novel.[61] Orwell is perpetually associated with the year 1984; in July 1984 an asteroid discovered by Antonín Mrkos was named after Orwell.

(From wiki article thereon.)

[kgbsquirrel]

meh.

This is about as threatening as building any other data center. In other words, it's not. Folks like to focus on the Jason Bourne or James Bond factor. All the big flashy stuff. Trust me, the most annoying stuff is very publicly available and no one cares. I whined about it in the other thread, about the renewal EO of a 50, 60 year old law.

That said, in the network diagram is kinda cool. Helped run some of that network back in the day.

I always loved and feared working with the NSA folks. Only another government employee would truly understand. Every single NSA employee I met was intelligence, efficient, competent and polite. Let me repeat that. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. It used to creep me out, severely. I once accused one of the cooler NSA guys of being lizard people, because there's no way they could be government employees. I still honestly suspect that to be the case... Completely unnatural. Even with the (completely accurate, IMHO) lizard people belief, there's this NCIS agent I need to beat up. Dude failed to slip me a number for a very attractive crypto lady geek I met in Vegas. Dude KNEW I had a soft spot for ultra hawt geek ladies with similar clearances. Dude tried to bribe me with an extremely nice knife. Hmph! Last I heard, she was off the market in short order, found a nice boyfriend. Gee, like THAT was a surprise.

He laughed and said because technically, they were a "black" agency on paper, they had a lot easier HR process. Basically, no unions and 90% of the normal government HR red tape can be ignored. They tend to promote from within and rarely put outsiders into anything but the highest political slots. You don't have USDA poultry senior executive admins transferring to head of say, Central Asian signal intelligence, so incompetent folks can't just hop ship. There's alsoa culture of merit (and geek cred competition) that lingers even as you climb the office hierarchy. Ultra-nerds do not like office politics and tend not to like administrative folks that are dumb and experts of office politics.

Of all the fed agencies, I trust their professionalism the most. Aside from their uhh, really really black side, they tend to be a lot more passive than any other agency, but they work very hard to project an ultracompetent and all-knowing institutional persona. Even other agencies get creeped out by them.

We do try. 


Actually, I think I'm gonna kick a resume off to them. It'd be cool to work with them again.

[Balog]

The problem, I think, is that it is fundamentally amoral like all fed.gov bureaucracies. They do what they're told, and as Rev points out do it damn well.

[longeyes]

Ultimately NSA will spy on itself.   Implosion is our friend.

[Nick1911]

Ultimately NSA will spy on itself.   Implosion is our friend.

I'm not following.  Can you elaborate a bit?

[RevDisk]

I'm not following.  Can you elaborate a bit?

Reclusive loop?