Calling the NSA: "I accidentally deleted an e-mail, can you help me recover it?" | Hacker News Reader

Calling the NSA: "I accidentally deleted an e-mail, can you help me recover it?"

dumpert.nl

258 pointsmosselman96 comments

A nice thought and practically the same thing that Google does. You hand in your privacy, but you get services back in return.

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When one of my friends in college landed a math-related internship with the NSA years ago, I was very impressed and proud of her. If a friend were to land a similar job or internship now, my gut reaction would be vert different. As illustrated by this video, the agency's prestige among the public seems to have degraded considerably. I wonder how this has affected its ability to recruit bright young people.

You are obviously saying that because you are pissed. And deep down inside you are hoping that they won't be able to recruit bright young people. But the truth is, economy is a bitch, unemployment rate is high, if they actually pays well, I'm pretty sure bright people will still join them, whether they are young or old.

Young people who earn jobs or internships with the NSA are generally in the tops of their classes. While they aren't immune to the recession, they have more prospects than the average grad, and employers sometimes compete for them.

I couldn't find any publicly available data about NSA recruitment, but there are some interesting anecdotes to show that the NSA is having a harder time recruiting top-notch students:

http://reason.com/blog/2013/07/09/nsa-recruiters-peppered-wi...

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130704/12162223721/nsa-re...

Lets not forget that many NSA "employees" are actually contractors from companies like Booz Allen Hamilton. Also Palantir doesn't seem to be hurting finding people to build surveillance technology.

That's not how it works at the highest levels. Employment of capable hackers is sky high right now and everyones paying top dollar.

I feel horribly cynical for saying this, but: if you like playing the long game, this is actually a great time to join the NSA. Their ability to source talent is probably at an all-time low. One way or another, their reputation will probably rebound within a decade, and you'll have it all.

> their reputation will probably rebound within a decade

Really?

It's perfectly plausible. Such cycles are the way of things.

I'm not going to make predictions for the future because you know as little as me, but I'd be shocked and horrified if they did unless there were sweeping changes that made the NSA and its foreign equivalents more acceptable.

I think your view of history is just as myopic. The NSA has been around since the 50s and the original FISA of 1978 was written specifically because it was revealed that the NSA was spying on domestic targets at the request of Nixon.

Everything old is new again.

Fair point!

Only people with no ethics or morals would take an NSA job now, no matter how bad the economy is.

What about the arms industry? There are more jobs there and those are more directly hurting people.

I think it does hurt the NSA's recruiting position indeed. The NSA naturally hires mostly technical people, and in general I think it is exactly this population that is disgusted most by what the NSA is doing. For me, the issue wouldn't be as much about prestige, but more about morality.

As for the more general public, they're just following the news. The news has devoted a lot of attention to the NSA lately, but will move on to different topics sooner or later, and the general public will forget.

There are plenty of people that desire money more than following their ethics.

And NSA is where the money is? Always thought federal institutions payed less than private initiatives.

I always assumed the NSA was one of the notable exceptions since they would have to attract the smartest people.

That said, how smart can they be if they got way too enamoured of just collecting everything rather than analyzing it properly...

Smart people have plenty of blind spots, just like normal people.

Yes, that's right, they just collect everything and don't analyze it properly. And you know this, how? Of course they do analysis, it's just of the "needle in a haystack" variety because of the sheer volume they collect. The most intelectually demanding type of analysis.

On the basis of that contribution alone, you've proved you're not smart enough to work for the NSA.

Like it or not, there are also plenty of people who have no ethical dilemma with NSA's conduct.

Relevant - https://soundcloud.com/madiha-1/students-question-the-nsa-at

I'm a student at U of I, my major is CS in the Engineering college and I'm fairly certain the NSA isn't even making an appearance this year (at least from what I've seen) at the career fair, though the CIA will be here.

If they did show up I think it would be one of those booths that are neglected for the most part.

While a funny premise, it comes off a bit like someone yelling at a customer service rep at a retail store. They didn't make the rules; they're just underpaid to smile and take it.

I doubt anyone working at the NSA is underpaid...if not overpaid.

You are joking, right? Government jobs seriously underpay.

On the NSA careers website looks like "Computer Scientists" make between $42,209 to $97,333.

I'm sure most of the pay is in the lower range. http://www.nsa.gov/careers/opportunities_4_u/professionals/i...

There are a lot of other perks that typically come with working a government job - vacations, job security, etc.

No one accepts a lower paying job just because.

Not everyone who works for the NSA is on their payroll; many work for contractors such as Booz Allen Hamilton.

You're missing the biggest point of having a government job. It's all the benefits, deductions and discounts you can have.

Government jobs seriously underpay.

This was true in the past, it hasn't been true for a very long time however. It used to be true that government jobs paid less in wages but more than made up for it in greater benefits. Now they are equal in wages and still have the cushy benefits.

http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/31/news/economy/federal_worker_...

http://www.cbo.gov/publication/42921

There are of course studies that contradict this, all of which conducted by unions representing government workers.

Can you point me to any government jobs that will pay you $100k right out of college? That's the sort of salary available in SF/bay area, and the sort of numbers that graduating students are looking at when considering getting a government job.

Also, from a sibling comment:

>No one accepts a lower paying job just because.

Some people accept lower paying jobs because they think the work is more interesting or that it is helping their country. Anecdotally, I've heard a good number of employees are leaving NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) to get (higher paying, faster moving) jobs at Google or SpaceX.

> Can you point me to any government jobs that will pay you $100k right out of college? That's the sort of salary available in SF/bay area, and the sort of numbers that graduating students are looking at when considering getting a government job.

> implying everyone lives in the SF/bay area.

Look, startup culture is nice, but some of us live in the Midwest. Government jobs have to be compared to cost of living and other metrics before they're useful.

I don't have any statistics on this, but I expect the majority of people getting $100k offers in the bay area right out of college don't live in the bay area when they get their offers. The only schools that are really in the bay area are Stanford and Berkeley, and although a lot of bay area tech workers come from those schools, many many workers come from other parts of the country.

My point is that if you're a college student graduating with a CS degree and you're looking for a job all around the country, no government agency will pay you as much as tech companies in in SF/bay area or finance companies in NYC. The salary difference is even large enough to make up for the relatively small cost of a recent grad moving across the country.

Can you point me to any government jobs that will pay you $100k right out of college?

Salaries are high in the San Francisco Bay area. This goes for private as well as public employees. I would think it's obvious that anyone that lives in a high cost of living area would need a high salary if they are to remain employed. Check this out - not hard to find $100k+ government workers living in the San Francisco Bay area. Did I say 100k+ government workers? It's actually not hard to find $300k+ government workers in that area.

http://www.mercurynews.com/salaries/bay-area

Be sure to sort it by descending salary (which it is not sorted thusly by default)

If you're working as a company representative, either in retail or customer service or answering the NSA hotline, then listening to questions and complaints is exactly what you were hired to do. If you take those complaints personal then you should find another line of work.

There's a difference between calling a hotline and lodging a complaint, and generally being a dick for giggles.

Exactly. Calling and being a dick to some low-level person who answers the phones isn't my idea of clever.

She was pretty nice & helpful, all things considered

This is of course not a joke in some countries, and has been done with success. I am very good friends with someone who grew up in one of the central asian dictatorships (stan), and their family had one of the (few) internet lines in the country. One day his family lost an important email, so they walked to the intelligence office, told them the date, and the officials were happy to retrieve it for them from the file drawer. They had been printing out and physically filing every piece of correspondence from each internet user (somewhat doable for the regime given only a small subset of the population). The point is, in this stan, there was no pretense of privacy. They were your helpful backup service.

Reminds me of this old The Daily Show video with Stephen Colbert: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-december-18-2002/so-yo...

For non-usa IPs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gd7P78w8cdA

Actually, it works fine outside the USA, just not from Canada or the UK.

Why doesn't it work from these countries? Just curious.

Probably because they've licensed the show for broadcast here/there and included online rights. It's on TV in the UK at least.

I though it was just the "World Edition" we get in the UK?

Close, they have licensed the show for broadcast on terrestrial networks and often don't allow anyone to broadcast online.

broken for Australia.

Alternatively: http://xtremisreaction.wordpress.com/2011/01/08/how-to-watch...

The good old times when Stephen Colbert was funny and wrote his own jokes.

Did he pull a box of _raisins_ out of that refrigerator?

I was kind of surprised by the operator saying "Are you the NSA?" "uh huh" rather than something more professional like "Yes sir, this is NSA."

And then even more surprised that the operator was actually giving him helpful advice ("you should probably contact your email provider.") That was more helpful than most actual tech support employees I've interacted with, let alone PBX operators.

And, being a dick to low-level pbx operators is kind of stupid, even if you disagree with the organization. Remember the Chick-Fil-A guy? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg-jzlWcc0E) I like gay people a lot, and am an atheist, but this guy does nothing but hurt his cause.

(The only time I've ever called NSA/CSS was to get a full set of the Rainbow Books at age 12. It was weird how they'd only answer with phone extension.)

> "I like gay people a lot"

A little off topic from your post, but this is one of those gross generalizations that just actually portrays you as not getting the gist of the problem with bigotry. "gay people" are not a homogeneous group of like-minded people. Discrimination against sexual orientation or being transgendered is a sad and unfortunate injustice, but these are simply traits shared by a diverse set of people. In this world there is a wide range of many wonderful people and horrible people and everyone in between. The distribution of sexual preference has nothing to do with where they end up in that range. Each person is an individual actor, and not a representative for others who they may share a trait with, but when you say you "like gay people a lot" it is obvious you don't understand that. In fact, it seems kind of a bigoted, ignorant thing to say, even if you didn't mean to say anything mean.

Clumsily said but the point - don't be a dick — is valid. I take it to mean "I have nothing against gay people although I don't really know any". It's funny because the opposite clumsy-ism is "some of my best friends are..." With the idea you can be a total douche towards some group but it's Ok because you're nice to the ones you actually know.

> A little off topic from your post, but this is one of those gross generalizations that just actually portrays you as not getting the gist of the problem with bigotry.

leokun, he never stated that. I think you read too much into his statement.

When people say "I like x a lot," they really mean "I like most of x a lot that I have met." Seeing as you probably don't know the guy/girl, you really can't say if he can legitimately form that opinion. Thought experiment: what if rdl has in fact met many gay people and liked them. Would you still call him a bigot for saying that? rdl was simply stating a fact. He should not be scolded for stating a fact of his personal preference.

Gay people aren't homogeneous, but they do share similar traits (being attracted to men being only one of them). So it's not unlikely someone can like certain things about gay people as a whole. The argument that saying you "like gay people a lot" is bad is almost as inane as saying "I'm not racist—I don't see colors"—you'd be blatantly ignoring the uniqueness and distinctness of human peoples and ignoring the fact that it's not that we're not different, it's that we shouldn't treat each other unfairly because of inconsequential differences.

Finally, "I like gay people a lot" is a subjective generalization. It's not really in your authority to judge what type of opinions he should or should not be forming because it is possible that he has met many many gay people and have liked them all. The statement by itself is not really harmful or insensitive, but I agree it can imply that the person who's saying it is naive about gay people and what they're like. That's probably where you saw the bigotry, but it was merely a projection. However, it's not proof that the he/she is naive about gay people. I think you made a logical mis-leap and inferred his bigotry from statements many actual bigots do make.

The OP could either have been

1) Has not met many gay people. Therefore he is making a subjective generalization. But this doesn't affect anyone else but himself.

2) Has met many gay people and likes them. Therefore he is not really even making a generalization, but simply stating a fact of personal opinion.

In neither of your cases is your scolding really warranted though, but what's even worse is you don't even know which case it is in the first place.

You're also diverting attention from the real issues, and from real bigots by focusing on this, and encouraging people to focus on this.

>rdl said:

>I like gay people a lot

Sure you do, just like how Donald Trump said "I have a great relationship with the blacks"[1]

1. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/14/trump-says-h...

It was specifically in the context of criticizing someone who would be widely perceived as pro-gay. As in "I mostly support the same issues as this guy, but he's hurting his cause."

I'd be just as likely to say "I like black people, but <a notoriously criminal/amoral black guy> hurts the public image of black people and the cause of civil rights", sure.

I'm fine with Trump comparisons except please the 1980s Trump, not the current one.

> I'd be just as likely to say "I like black people, but <a notoriously criminal/amoral black guy> hurts the public image of black people and the cause of civil rights", sure.

Wow, I think you are hurting the cause that is your credibility.

Do you really think a member of a visible group acting badly doesn't hurt the overall image of that group? I agree individuals have every right to act as they please, but if you are the only e.g. Sikh in a Midwestern town, and no one there has ever met a Sikh, and you are a good person, people will generalize and believe Sikhs are good people. (This is why I as a white American in the Middle East would tip really well, be polite to everyone, help people who had broken down cars by the side of the road, etc.)

If you are a political activist campaigning for a cause (which drive through guy was), and you aren't aware that people will make generalizations based on your behavior, you will not be an effective campaigner. This is why e.g. Mormon missionaries dress well, are polite and friendly, etc.

If you are a member of a large group which is well represented in a population, you are less likely to be someone's only contact with that group, and thus generally less influential, but even then. This is why companies and organizations have policies about what members of that organization can do or say in uniform or when identifiable as a member, even when clearly off duty (so it couldn't be taken as an official statement).

There is something very important that you do not understand about people. I don't know why some people can't understand this easily. Maybe someday you'll have that moment when it clicks, and when you do, I think you may find yourself with lots of regret for your past ignorance. In the meantime maybe learn to see things from other people's perspectives instead of thinking what individuals who are different from you should act like.

Did you not look at the Chik-fil-a video?

Do you think that guy looked at things from the drive-through employee's perspective? Perhaps it was the only paying job she could get...

There is in fact a subtle difference between

"I have a great relationship with the blacks"

and "I like gay people a lot"

The difference is that Trump said "the blacks" whereas rdl said "gay people."

There is nothing inherently wrong with the statement "I have great relationships with black people," had Trump said that, and this is because it could be a factual statement. If Trump had 10 black friends, and he had a great relationship with 9/10 of them, then Trump could legitimately state that fact in the form of that sentence. Or who knows, maybe Trump has an ebony fetish that predisposes him to great relationships with the majority of black people he meets.

However, because he said "I have a great relationship with the blacks," Trump is stating that he treats black people as a single entity. He dehumanizes black people, because relationships aren't formed with "a people." They are formed with "a person." Forming many relationships with manual people qualifies you to make the statement "I have great relationships (plural) with blacks (plural)," which is perfectly legitimate. Forming a single relationship with many people is unnatural, so he is doing something wrong there.

The OP's statement is basically the same as the last example I gave ("I have great relationships with black people"). He was simply stating a fact of his overall (generalized, but subjective) opinion of his many experiences with many different gay people. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

EDIT: To whomever downvoted me: feel free to let me know how what I said was wrong

Government bodies that don't have "interacting with the public" in their main objectives tend to react that way. When you call, you don't get routed to a low paid operator, but to a random employee without specific procedures for dealing with calls.

A lot of people have a phone on their desk that can be reached directly from outside by dialing a specific number. Most people are not normally public-facing employees, so why would they waste their time with the whole "Thank you for calling, Smurfco. This is Sally, how may I help you?" I think a standard greeting would be poor OpSec for the NSA, since people could discover their unpublished numbers by dialing all the numbers.

I like white people a lot, and i'm glad most of them aren't like you.

Thought experiment: The OP's statement could be naive white-straight-male ignorance, and hint at background bigotry. But what still be just a hint, not proof. However, the OP could also be gay himself, and be able to legitimately say he likes gay people a lot (and prob not in the way a straight man likes another man).

Would you still say what you just said if the latter is true?

I'm a little bit curious why the operator wanted his contact info, and repeatedly asked for it, knowing full well that it was a ridiculous call. It makes me wonder if taxpayer dollars would have actually been spent investigating him.

I wondered the same thing - my conclusion is that it's an intimidation tactic.

More likely the poor operator couldn't answer his question, so she was going to pass the details up to a supervisor and have the supervisor deal with it.

Later when the supervisor got on the phone, she just hung up on him.

Alternatively, phone operators are instructed as a matter of course to record details about the phone calls they receive...

You came to that conclusion because you knew that the operators don't ask contact info for every caller as standard procedure?

The DoD and I'm sure other organizations are instructed to try and get as much info from the person as possible if it's a suspicious phone call like this. People call up and use all sorts of techniques to get information from these organizations, which it seemed like what was trying to be done here.

He called using SKYPE which belongs to Microsoft. We know of both companies to partner with the NSA.

So they have at least

- all chats and most certainly

- all calls converted to text

at their disposal.

So it looks like an intimidation attempt.

Sometimes those of us so ingrained in the world of HackerNews forget what life of people in other fields of work is like.

I highly doubt this was a jedi-level intimidation tactic from the handbook they provide to the switchboard operator after training them to respond in sophisticated ways to people calling in.

Rather, I'm more convinced this was the train-of-thought: Someone's calling, the call is weird, lets get their name.

I'd like to believe that a phone operator at that level would not have clearance to see that type of information on a whim. I'm not saying its impossible, but if it were that available the Snowden revelations would have occurred much sooner.

how would the call centre operator know it was Skype? I only knew when I heard the particular disconnect sound, and she wouldn't even have heard that.

It goes in a contact log. If we assume that the contact log is in a database, then it goes on the pile with the rest of the stuff. Pen-testers and social engineering hackers' calls may also appear to be ridiculous calls.

edit: In addition to tracking incoming calls in a call log for NSA reasons. An NSA employee needs to keep that log to be able to explain their activities if they are ever audited.

There is an easy answer - the operator is trained to ask for names and contact information on every call; all tech support, operators and customer service representatives do. If she doesn't there is a chance her call will be monitored and points will be destructed from her call score, affecting her employment. No, QA might be cool and ignore this obviously prank cool, but do you think QA at the NSA will be cool, laid-back people when it comes to procedure?

I can't believe how many mistakes I made in this comment. Sleep deprivation isn't healthy, folks! And thanks for upvoting.

I see what he's trying to do, but it seems to me like this amounts to no more than a childish prank, a joke which essentially just uses a receptionist or switchboard person as the butt.

If you really have an issue with what the NSA is doing, playing pranks like this isn't going to get results.

If you could get through the head of the NSA, or somebody who is more obviously in a decision-making position and them questions like this then you'd maybe be doing some good by grilling them like that.

I feel like this actually cheapens the issue a little.

- "Soo you don't keep track of e-mail and internet data?" (A long pause) - "Not the way you're saying. OK?"

He got what he wanted, right there.

Does the NSA have a fax number? I have a flatbed fax-machine that's easy to sit on and a couple of things I want to fax them...

Just fax them to a random number, NSA will get them :D

Up next: he's going to call Viacom about MTV not playing music vidoes! Harass all the 1-800 workers?

"Someone's playing a terrible joke on you."

You got that right, sister.

Not sure if we should be joking about what could easily be (or become) the thing that ends democracy.

I guess it's the end of democracy when you no longer can joke about something.

Big business buying your presidency isnt?

Even in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe there was democracy. There were election held, with very little fraud. I remember my father taking me to the voting booths when I was a kid - there were only red and orange ballots inside (the orange were the Communist party subsidiaries the Farmers Party). Communists won 80% of the votes the farmers 20. We had elections, we had democracy, we could vote. We lacked freedom and choice.

When people say "democracy", they don't actually mean "one party democracy".

Dumpert is the LAST website I expected to see on HN on #1. This is brilliant.

The title should include a Warning - Auto-playing audio on that link.

It would be very worrying if someone on a random phone call managed to recover any information on public email from the NSA. At least now we know that the NSA seems to be safe against very poorly executed social engineering.

Dumpert is one hell of a crazy online community. One more reason to learn Dutch :)

It is mostly a bunch of reposts with a green crown watermark slapped on it. Also, the -not so sophisticated- discussions going on underneath each video... I wouldn't exactly call that a reason to learn Dutch =]

Kind of funny :)

[x] Forgot your password?

Call the NSA.

Dumb.

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