Programmer Conned CIA, Pentagon Into Buying Bogus Anti-Terror Code
wired.com
wired.com
That pretty much sums it up perfectly. I think part of the problem that allows things like this to happen is that, to some people, computers are magic. They don't understand how they work and feeding Al Jazeera video feed through a computer program and having it spit out terrorist plots sounds almost feasible.
People fear the unknown and sadly the world of technology and computers are still very much a black box for the vast majority of people on earth.
My dad, ivy educated phd, still thinks that coding is like the movie hackers.
I find it very hard to believe that the DoD (NSA?) do not have sufficient highly talented programmers / analysts to review these programs.
Another issue is that after 9/11, they were evaluating a larger number of possible solutions, In the hope that at least some of them produce viable results.
I don't even think this ever got to the hands of the NSA or people who have the technical proficiency to call bs (this in and of itself is surprising given the sheer stupidity of what this clown was trying to sell).
If anything this fraud was faciliated by petty political and institutional bureaucratic jostling for relevance, power, and funding. Basically some tards, convinced that they're onto something big, hides it from everyone else because they don't want to share in the credit/fame. Not surprising given this is the US govt. Hell most corporations are like this too.
What I find most troubling about all of this is that after 9/11 there was a such a stink about intra-department communication and cooperation. The argument being that if people simply talked more with one another lapses in security and plain dum-dum-ness would be greatly reduced if not eliminated outright. Fuck, Bush even created a whole department to do just this!
This story made me laugh, because it's like a modern re-telling of the Hans Andersen story "The Emperor's New Clothes". The Emperor, in this case played by George Bush and company, are so eager to believe all sorts of paranoid fantasies, such as that evil-doers are broadcasting secret messages via TV, that when a charlatan comes along claiming that he can prove that their darkest nightmares are true they're keen to make sure he gets to work on the tailoring right away, with no expense spared!
I mean can understand the hilarity of the situation, but seriously - this guy should be in jail.
We are willing to believe in change now, becuase we can.
SFW, in theory. And by that I mean there are no nipples until you click the Girls link at the top of the page.
Sounds like this guy was a very productive programmer.
Governments seem to attract a particularly high density of computer-illiterate people. I wish I could understand why, but it truly boggles my mind.
wasn't it around 2004 that Playboy published a pretty high-profile interview with the Google founders right before their IPO, and there was some legal hiccups with the SEC due to what they disclosed in that interview?
Ok, I made one of those up. But just one.
Back in the day, when someone claimed they only read Playboy "for the articles," there was a good chance they weren't lying. It was well worth the 75-cent cover price.
Now that Playboy is a relic instead of the only game in town, they can no longer indulge such expensive tastes. It says nothing about the wider culture except that we've become more accepting of pornography.
When the legal climate improved, the need for all of that expensive content went away, at least in Playboy's mind. Which is unfortunate... if someone published a magazine like that today, I'd subscribe to it.
The fact is, Rand's work was a legitimate reaction to some very real abuses, and it was extremely influential in economic and political circles throughout the second half of the twentieth century. The fact that you don't like her ideas doesn't alter the first fact.