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Comment by mutagen | Hacker News Reader

Also interesting in that the job description 'leaks' another name for a system, SKIDROWE. Some quick searches only turn up the same or similar positions for open for XKEYSCORE.

Cryptome is already on it: http://cryptome.org/2013/08/nsa-xkeyscore-saic.htm

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It's pretty easy to collect large lists of these types of code names from places like linkedin. Search for code name, find new code names, repeat.

https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Alinkedin.com%2Fpub%2F...

These codenames are great for speculating... FOXTRAIL, TREASUREMAP, WhichHunt, HOBGOBLIN, GLOBALVIEW

Treasure map- you can only imagine the possibilities here..

In theory, codenames are supposed to be random words that are in no way suggestive of the thing that they name. That ideal isn't always upheld, of course - the lure of a cute name can be too strong.

(For example it is suspected that FOGBANK, which is a codeword for a material used in the construction of nuclear physics packages, refers to a silica aerogel)

Yeah, but names like Treadmill and BlackBriar just sound so cool though.

At least they stopped using "Project" and "Operation" prefixes when they got tired.

Reminds me of how Bletchley Park broke some of the Enigma ciphers. The operators were supposed to abide by certain rules when making the 3-letter "keys" -- but they inevitably picked letters next to each other on the keyboard, used the same letters repeatedly ("AAA"), used the same key "pairs", used words, names, etc.

Some rather old perl I wrote to address this problem when naming things internally:

https://github.com/sneak/Generate-Codename/blob/master/lib/G...

Ah, I like the guy who lists his databases knowledge to include Excel & XKeyScore. Either XKeyScore is so slick that it is indistinguishable from Excel or this particular person doesn't know what a database is. Either way, that cannot be good.

Or he's just maximising himself in the hire-by-keyword game that inefficient managers/recruiters use.

At the end of the day, it's evidence of the NSA having low-skills computer users rifling through your calls and internet. Make of that what you will.

The irony of the Internet, just as easy to make an NSA profile as it is for a person tracking.

Just as easily? That would be nice, but it appears to me that the NSA still has the upper hand here.

The cool thing is you can just [A-Z]+ most of these for your regex.

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