It’s a copy of the NSA ANT Coppermouth cables. That was part of the Snowden leak, so it’s been possible since at least then (the doc itself is circa 2008) if you have a three-letter name and a national security black budget.
The film Enemy of the State (1998) was science fiction except with the parts where the techy operators were just normal nerds like us. That what was most scary part of the film not the (at the time fantastic) surveillance.
Couldn't be me: the private sector pays me waaaaaaaay more.
Also, you can't work for the feds if you ever touch the ganja, which is ridiculous. Everyone I personally know in infosec leads a very... alternative west-coast lifestyle which is not conducive to career progression in an east-coast, button-down-shirt environment.
I believe it is possible to get security clearance after cessation of drugs for multiple years, even drugs like Heroin. I found the full rules[0] while reading an AMA on /r/SecurityClearance.
[0] https://www.dni.gov/files/NCSC/documents/Regulations/SEAD-4-...
I entertained the idea of working in the public sector a while ago, for a brief time, until I learned that pot is fine in my past, but not in my present. "How the heck do you expect me to get the code written?"
Also, I've been told that getting a clearance is more burden than blessing. You have restrictions that an "ordinary person" doesn't have, along with criminal penalties for violating them. Whereas, without a clearance, if they really need you for something, they'll bring you in anyway.
Yes it definitely can be, but depends on your personality and stage of life. You are always cognizant of having a clearance and the need to maintain it, and so you consider that in your every day life. You also have to open your life up in uncomfortable ways, even if your only objection is in principal.
You probably don't sweat it too much later in life since you generally are a more 'boring' person, but I had mine in my mid 20's so was a lot more active in terms of social life. One time I was in downtown SF with a buddy hitting up bars etc and eventually had to cut out early because things were getting more drug oriented. I also used to play a lot of cards before getting a clearance and had contacts who were in some shady stuff. I basically excommunicated them from my life to avoid the clearance hassle.
For him it's been a minor nuisance at worst. He has strong restrictions on travel. I think he needs approval to travel abroad. He has relatives in other countries and visits them often, so it can't be too much of a nuisance.
I believe he told me that he does have to report details of where he went in each country and who he interacted with upon his return. Not sure about the details.
Official website: https://www.dm.usda.gov/ohsec/TravelResource.htm
Anyone who thinks differently is arguing for a shadow gov, i.e. unelected bureaucrats who answer to no one and can make decisions unilaterally without consequence... not exactly democracy.
Lots of countries have an establishment "civil service" comprised of those "unelected bureaucrats" that you mention, and it actually works out quite well for them.
That said, they aren't unaccountable: they answer to departmental heads, MPs, committees, etc. A big advantage of the system is to prevent mad-swings in policy just because the head-of-government changed.
For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Service_(United_Kingdom)
You can frame this another way: it prevents meaningful change even if the electorate demands it.
Sorry, I watched too much Yes Minister to think this is a good thing x)
I recognize I'm basically describing a utopia.
I also never said he had access to everything. Nobody has access to everything. Not arguing for a shadow government--it's already a fact. It happened when classification rules went from "what would harm national security" to "what would cause problems if American citizens found out we were doing this."
The only thing he does not have unrestricted access to is Justice department stuff (e.g. FBI), although there'd better be a damn good reason to deny it to POTUS if he asks, and legislative branch secrets which really infrequently comes into play. That's due to the whole separation-of-powers, checks-and-balances thing. But security clearances for everything in the executive branch stem FROM the president. If he wants to reveal some state secret, he can just tweet it with no consequences, or blurt it out while on the phone with foreign states. As Trump did on multiple occasions.
That said, of course there is a significant deep state bureaucracy which attempts at times to keep certain things hidden, even from the current president. But if the president were to ask about it, they have to tell him.
Does that include regular old things like ADHD meds?
Calling it 'ridiculous' removes the debate concerning the pros and cons on such rule. If you consider someone can become vulnerable if they're addicted (to anything, really) then it makes sense to be wary of a drugs addiction. Especially if the resource the person is addicted to is illegal.
That being said, I'd find it reasonable if they OK'ed medical marihuana usage. I hope my gov (NL) does.
Obviously if someone is _addicted_ to either, that is a security risk. But the extent to which they reject people for recreational marijuana use is laughable.
The unofficial advice I’ve heard is to not even bother with SC if you use weed. Generally, it will be found out. I looked into this as needing an SC was a possibility with my current job.
Like caffeine ?
I'm almost sure they have coffee machines in there.
A lot of what they look for is consistency in accounts of previous behaviors between you and any references / interviews they undertake, trying to assess if you're currently honest.
Another big thing they are trying to decide is if you are blackmailable.
(throwaway because I have the sort of clearance you are not supposed to advertise that you have)
(clearly decades ago, and he's less than reliable, but fun nonetheless!)
It's a problem if you do drugs and are hiding it from someone (say, family). Then you can be blackmailed.
Facebook and Google need the user to use their services and they say (despite the message being in legalese) what they're going to track. There is consent involved in these organisations, it's a voluntary transaction.
The government can (and did) just intrude on everything without consent or penalties.
From a moral point of view, I would be open to work for BigTech, but I wouldn't work for a state actor.
And, also, both Google and Facebook eagerly cooperate with state actors in censorship and other aspects - likely surveillance too. So there's not much difference in that aspect whether you work for the government directly or for somebody who takes marching orders from the government while being formally independent.
A more accessible idea which is quite different but allows some truth to shine in similarly is to consider how many of us are utterly dependent on advertising in our careers but we all adblock personally.
I remember "Spot the Fed" at DEF CON where I thought it was reflecting this deep and kind of intractable antagonism between the hackers and the government. It turned out that the government was regularly recruiting people there and at other hacker conferences, fairly successfully, and still does. (First I thought that all computer nerds would be at least somewhat anti-military or anti-surveillance, and then I thought that at least those who actively associate themselves with computer culture and counterculture would be, and now I don't really think either of those.)
The social distance between people working for spy agencies and people who vocally criticize and oppose the spy agencies is tiny. I worked at EFF and I've known socially, or kind-of-socially, four people I can immediately think of who worked directly for NSA at some point in their careers, and those are, of course, just the ones who chose to mention it. I've also seen someone unsuccessfully try to recruit someone for NSA face-to-face right in front of me, and had a boss whose next job was alongside an NSA alum.
I also think that NSA alums are more likely to mention it because they're less likely to have worked under false pretenses in other countries (compared to, say, CIA alums).
I had a relative who was a super-huge computer nerd (the biggest computer nerd in my whole family, possibly more than myself, and taught me a lot of my early Unix knowledge) who had previously held a clearance and worked in aerospace engineering (I think on radars or something). He didn't work for a spy agency, but did work on military projects. And nobody could hold a candle to his Unix expertise.
It's pretty striking how diverse in our beliefs we all are (not just about surveillance and espionage, but kind of on every issue and question). Maybe we don't notice it because of social pressures to act like we agree more than we do. Being fascinated with surveillance and secrecy is a common trait in our circles, but it seems that might translate into trying to fight it, or into trying to do it.
That sort of makes sense to me? The average member of the public doesn't generally think about what spy agencies do. If you assume that recruitment is based more on topical proximity than positive/negative opinion, that's what you'd expect to see.
Some of us don't agree with the intelligence gathering behaviors of our governments, but they certainly might not view it as an issue.
Of course. And education.
If most people are weak enough to become matrix-like slaves to the machine, so be it. I don't believe in free will and I don't think we need to preserve human life in a certain way (e.g. the way our ancestors lived).
Sure, a lot of people will fail this test, or maybe they prefer to live their life like that. I don't care, that's on them, that's their choice - or, better, the way DNA and the environment shaped this human shell.
If instead you wiretap my device, you're attacking my privacy and I don't have a way to defend myself. You are committing violence.
Please forgive my ramblings. I may have been reading Daniel Dennett too much, most likely with too little understanding.
It is specious to look at entropic consequences, when you should look at the existent will being exercised to predict those consequences.
You can't predict unless you have the will to perform a prediction. Having such a will to act, is free will.
As another example - You are able to freely exercise your will to comment or not to comment.
I’m fairly certain fish can predict the course of future events, to a fairly high degree of accuracy, in relation to seasonal changes in water temp, food density, etc… e.g. spawning salmon
It is not clear at all your claim is true in the general case, which is the point. Humans differ from fish not in kind, but only in degree, a few hundred million years of evolutionary divergence as the biologists would have it. Unless of course special factors such as a ‘soul’ are assigned to humans and so on.
That is a general claim that you wrote that I have shown is not correct unless you have an interpretation of the word ‘will’ that is so broad as to render your other statements somewhat meaningless.
In fact you are the one creating the strawman since you dodged addressing the question. I have made no separate claims about my personal free will, or lack thereof.
It is now obvious you have no point other than wanting to debate words and are being intentionally obtuse. This is not a high school debate class, and I will no longer engage in your foolishness, since you have stated that you are not actually commenting on the subject of the conversation.
I’m not exactly sure why you think I would care so much about your opinions to be ‘the arbiter of truth’ for any topic. You’ve made claims that are clearly erroneous and I’ve been pointing them out to the passing reader, so they are not waylaid. I won’t comment on the correct interpretation of ‘free will’ since I myself don’t know, and decline to pretend to know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Code
See this from the article:
"During WWII, British intelligence was able to glean details of new German technologies simply by considering their code names. For instance, when they began hearing of a new system known as Wotan, Reginald Victor Jones asked around and found that Wotan was a one-eyed god. Based on this, he guessed it was a radio navigation system using a single radio beam. This proved correct, and the Royal Air Force was able to quickly render it useless through jamming."
Read R.V. Jones book "Most secret* war" if this kind of war-engineering interests you.
* Pay attention to "most secret" rather than the ghastly Americanism "top secret"!
If you ask any project team to come up with a project name they will probably pick ‘Project Phoenix’.
Someone should do a study...
...Telstra in Australia called the transition from its 3G network to 4G "Next-G".
Why is this suddenly so depressing lol ._.
Yes, Cottonmouth is correct.
Hey! That's my Windows 10 product key!
(not really, but felt like it could be).
I can't find a link referencing it, sadly.
The NSA implant was a passive retroreflector implant, which when illuminated by powerful radio waves, broadcasted back what was being typed, or what was visible on screen.
This seems to be more of a tiny chip that captures and stores keystrokes etc.
See all the Sandisk U3 drive based badusb payloads that people could cleverly hide into all sorts of form factors.