91–100 of 219 posts
This sounds like spy training from Burn Notice. Like, you have to get the source code of this program, from a guy who isn't at home right now and the whole budget of the operation is a just enough to buy a mug from our gift shop. Good luck Dave!
You make it sound like that’s not how it usually is. I have bad news. That’s how it usually is.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sorry but if you think the NSA is the shadiest government agency on the planet, then you live in an information bubble. Do you think the NSA is shadier than the KGB? What about the Iranian Revolutionary Guard? Or even the CIA? I know people are upset about the Snowden revelations but there are much graver sins that have been committed by other agencies.
KGB doesn't exist anymore - you might mean the FSB or GRU? Anyways, plenty of countries have security agencies whose main job is to violently protect the local kleptocrats these days. China might be a better example to point to for even worse behavior, with their balkanized net and mass surveillance being used to carry out the mass internment and repression of ethnic minorities in regions like Xinjiang.
The Russians have definitely gone back to the old ways, I'm not sure the distinction between the old and new matters much any more (The GRU is the same organization, the FSB still reside in the Lubyanka - "the tallest building in Moscow")
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sometimes you don’t even get enough for a nice mug.
Where is the $60B/yr going? It's not all AWS. They could buy a lot of mugs for that.
Oh, and don't forget all the nice paper for the notes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm sorry but if you think the NSA is the shadiest government agency on the planet, then you live in an information bubble. Do you think the NSA is shadier than the KGB? What about the Iranian Revolutionary Guard? Or even the CIA? I know people are upset about the Snowden revelations but there are much graver sins that have been committed by other agencies.
Whataboutism
Interesting story, but wouldn’t be surprised if the real play here was to get his source code so they could get some bad guys to use a modified version that the NSA could crack. Put a back door in and then intercept traffic trying to download the encryption app to download the back-doored version. The fact that the NSA has to call him in the middle of the night to learn that the free version didn’t use strong encrypt…
Rather than fairly justified suspicion of the NSA, we might want to apply Hanlon's razor in this case.
I can't help but feel like the author sounds excessively credulous. I had to stop reading after he wrote "I could tell something big was up and there simply wasn’t time to debate the merits of handing over my source code to the NSA", because at that point my eyes rolled so hard they fell right out the back of my head. After I put them back in, I skipped down to the comments. I have a hard time not agreeing vehemently…
If you read the article (you should - it's a good one and well written), then you should also read the comments. My favorite nugget from the comments: "I hope you’re keeping that mug in an opaque Faraday cage, well grounded."
Not realistic here but it has been done
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can see why that would have been intimidating. With the decades of experience you've had since, do you think he could have gotten your landline terminated? What would be the legal argument?
I can't even imagine there is a valid legal argument. If somebody calls me, I can say whatever I want. If I want to answer the phone by saying "Department of Defense, how can I help you?" the First Amendment guarantees me the right to do that. Now, I certainly could not call other people and claim to be the Department of Defense. That's fraud. The same applies if I had done something like put up flyers claiming my ph…