Can you enlighten me on the truth of what was happening there? (Serious request)
Your write-up of Alexander is spot on. He has been referred to both the most powerful and the most feared man in the world.
Your write-up of Alexander is spot on. He has been referred to both the most powerful and the most feared man in the world.
Again, the truth is simple: it was a press op. The event was corporate enough that nobody was going to throw pies at him, but just countercultural enough that he could be assured that someone would make him look better by heckling.
It was said, which is basically confirmed with this latest revelation, that he has all the information on everyone and can blackmail anyone....
I am trying to recall where I heard that though, originally.
"I’ve been tough on Spitzer, but we can’t forget that the reason he got in trouble was because of the new NSA domestic surveillance apparatus that was so brilliantly depicted in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. Here’s the Lede.
Five years ago, Congress killed an experimental Pentagon
anti-terrorism program meant to vacuum up electronic data
about people in the U.S. to search for suspicious
patterns. Opponents called it too broad an intrusion on
Americans’ privacy, even after the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks.
But the data-sifting effort didn’t disappear. The National
Security Agency, once confined to foreign surveillance,
has been building essentially the same system.
I haven't actually seen the Black Hat talk yet, but I can imagine the audience does not compare favorably to another recent PR event:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fawN4OZEt-Y
This kind of thing helps build up the conscious and unconscious associations in the minds of many that favor the NSA a great deal.
To the extent that this audience has any engagement with public policy, that engagement is likely to take a Ron Paul-ish flavor.
Notice how he wore his uniform this year instead of something more casual like he did at last year's Def Con. I agree, this was very carefully orchestrated to help discredit his detractors.