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The NSA Furby Documents

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Re: The NSA Furby Documents

#121

Post by thaumasiotes »

nickpeterson wrote: post #119
thaumasiotes wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For added context, the plot of the movie Charlie's Angels from the year 2000, was about stopping an evil guy from using some evil software he developed to ... track people using their cellphones. This makes me think we should have a big revival for that movie. On the other hand, essentially the same functionality in a more grandiose presentation was prominently featured in Batman Begins (2005) and the explicit mess…

I believe you’re thinking of the sequel, the dark knight, 2008

You appear to be correct.

Re: The NSA Furby Documents

#122

Post by Shawnj2 »

neilv wrote: post #84

Note that this was several years after performance artists (not even state-level actors) had demonstrated compromising toys retail supply chain with hacked firmware. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/547659/barbie-liberation... So, look of concern at whomever thought it was a good idea to bring an effectively blackbox electronic device with a microphone into a secure area where those were prohibited. Kudos to whome…

Yeah I don’t see why really any non approved electronic device wouldn’t immediately be treated as a tape recorder in a classified environment.

Re: The NSA Furby Documents

#124

Post by HaZeust »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #118
wil421 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enemy of the State came out in 1998. It was only post Snowden leaks that some of the tin-foil hat conspiracy stuff was confirmed.

Welp I’m still waiting for my 360-degree camera tech…

Just bought a dash cam that does this for my Camaro - works wonders!

Re: The NSA Furby Documents

#125

Post by FirmwareBurner »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #118
wil421 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enemy of the State came out in 1998. It was only post Snowden leaks that some of the tin-foil hat conspiracy stuff was confirmed.

Welp I’m still waiting for my 360-degree camera tech…

That wasn't a 360 camera, that was the computer assuming what the other angles could look like, and you could do that now with ML.

Re: The NSA Furby Documents

#126

Post by HaZeust »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #83
1oooqooq wrote: post #67

these are the caliber of the American praetorian guard who owns our politicians.

Eh, I don't see anything inappropriate in these documents. If they seem overly paranoid, it's because some major security breaches have historically involved silly things like this. Where do you draw the line between a Furby and a Casio SK-1 and a Teddy Ruxpin and a Minidisc recorder and any number of other stateful gadgets of the day, especially when the Furby is brand new and nobody really knows what's inside it? T…

> "If there were the slightest truth to that, Trump's headstone would read "1946-2016."

You think if IC had their way, Trump would be in theirs? How so, lol?

Re: The NSA Furby Documents

#127

Post by jki275 »

dmix wrote: post #102
crmd wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emphatically? The director of the NSA is required to be a four star general and concurrently serves as commander of US Cyber Command. Ostensibly non-military, perhaps.

The assistant Secretary of Health is also a commissioned 4 star admiral but they have never seen been the inside of a Navy ship. The last one was a pediatrician before joining. There's a lot of symbolic and tradition based commissions like that through the US gov.

Commissioned in the US Public Health Service, not the US Navy. Their ranks are the same as the Navy's, but they have no connection to the Navy.

Re: The NSA Furby Documents

#128

Post by odyssey7 »

pvg wrote: post #24
odyssey7 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes the two fears fundamentally different?

One is the fear of the possible consequences of something you know - with a voice assistant, you know you are being recorded and the recordings are sent somewhere. 'Is furby spying on me' is a vague suspicion but it's not (for most people with the fear) based on any known facts about the furby.

Unknowns are inconsistent with assurance. It’s rational to reject unknowns if you prefer assurance.

If you’re the NSA and you need your security assured, you’ll absolutely balk at having novel machines with recording equipment and unknown possibilities placed around your office.

Unknowns translate to unknown consequences. For a risk-averse agent, I don’t see a meaningful difference between the unknown consequences of technology you understand and unknown consequences of technology you don’t. Sometimes understanding a technology means the unknown consequences can be bounded more precisely, and you might be okay with those bounds once you have them, but that’s not always true.

Re: The NSA Furby Documents

#129

Post by gregw2 »

pastword wrote: post #57
alistairSH wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In any SCIF or SCIF-like office space, they're all prohibited. You leave your cell phone at the front door of the secured area. Internet access is via SIPRNet (for classified) or NIPRNet (non-classified, but secured). Phones are through dedicated secure switchboards. The above is common in the DC area (lots of DoD contractors).

From a friend who worked in IT work at DIA c. 2000: there were an absurd, non-zero number of researchers with clearances who surfed for porn while on [SN]IPRNet, networks they knew were monitored, and unsurprisingly were caught and lost their careers. Nonzero. I'd posit the reason it continued for so long was the real reasons for termination were kept secret to avoid organizational and political embarrassment but at…

If you haven’t read the story from 2000 of CIA director John Deutch, it matches your description of that time/culture.
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