[Cialug] Complete C source online - chapter two: The PRISMer of Zenda

[Pete Trbovich]

> "I’m determined to find some way to put an end to this surveillance BS"

Oh my fucking God.

I have worked for the government, I have worked security for a government contractor - yes, just like Edward Snowden - and this tin-foil-hat crazy paranoid BULLSHIT NEEDS TO END IMMEDIATELY! ALL OF YOU NEED YOUR ASS KICKED UNTIL YOU GET BACK TO THE REAL WORLD! Time to leave Crazyland, last train boarding, choo choo!

You have no idea what you're talking about. It doesn't matter how much data the government collects, if it doesn't have the eyeballs to READ that data!

No, sit down and really think about it. All of you. There are 313 million Americans. What would it take to watch all 313 million Americans every second of the day, including when they get up at night to go potty or plot mass destruction? That's right, you'd need at least that many people to watch that many people, and then since it's a job you'd need 939 million people in 8-hour shifts, and that's with no days off. Taking more time than that to parse, analyze, and understand every nuance, you'd need an additional team of analysts.

Does the US government hire one-seventh of the world population? No, obviously not. So, logically, we have to conclude that your odds of being watched, right now, are less than 100%.

Is the government superhuman? Is it omnipotent and omniscient? What's been the government experience so far - is it capable of world-spanning centuries-long Byzantine conspiracy plots, or is it trying to assassinate Fidel Castro with an exploding cigar and failing at that? Edward Snowden had about as much clearance as the janitors, and if this doofus got his hands on half the top-secret clearance he claims, doesn't that tell you that the government is incapable of all these Dr. Evil James Bond shenanigans? Or else it could have STOPPED him?

Did you know the Boston bombing guys were already in terrorist databases?

http://abcnews.go.com/US/boston-bombing-suspects-us-terrorism-databases/story?id=19037892#.UXlUmKqGIx0

Did you know Russia was already frantically trying to warn us that these guys were up to no good? We had perfect 100% surveillance of Tsarnaev, and it did nothing! Because the government DOESN'T HAVE THE EYEBALLS TO READ ALL THE DATA IT COLLECTS!

What about those of you in an administrative position? Do you have time to read every line of every access log of every user on your system every day? So whose job is it? What do you think, the people who work as sysadmins for the government are superhuman people who don't sleep? Do they have access to some perfect artificial intelligence HAL 9000 program that can parse it for them that the rest of us aren't privy to?

Here's your anointed Washington Post, one of the two chief antagonist media sources screaming about this bullshit, back a couple years ago interviewing the inside of the US Intel infrastructure:

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/

Study all 7 pages of that report, because that's what it's really like in there! They're swamped, drowning in data, completely powerless to get out of their own way, tripping over their own red tape. If there's any data on any of you in a government warehouse somewhere, you'll be dead fifty years before some third-world intern get a chance to go back and read it.

When you're watching everybody, you're watching nobody.

It doesn't matter how much data you collect, what matters is having the eyeballs to read that data.

Have you seen how massively redundant all the US intel and counter-terror departments are? Here's just the Wikipedia category alone:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:United_States_intelligence_agencies

There's the Office of Intelligence and Analysis, the Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, and the Office of Intelligence Support. There's the National Intelligence Board, the National Intelligence Coordination Center, and the National Intelligence Council.

And the National Counterterrorism Center, the CIA's Counterterrorism Center (yes, they're different), and the CIA's Counterterrorist Intelligence Center. And don't forget the FBI Counterterrorism Division, which is completely different from the FBI National Security Branch, the US Treasury's Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, and the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

And that's before you even scratch the surface of the United States Department of Homeland Security. You could study US intel/counter-terror agencies for the rest of your life and not come to the end of them. All of these redundant bureaucracies generate piles of reports that nobody reads. What's it like in your company? Why should government workers be different? Do you think they're genetically engineered terminators jacked up on Alderal, Ritalin, and Prozac so they never falter their attention for a second?

Every summer, we do this! The world is always going to end! This time it's PRISM, before that it was CISPA, ACTA, PIPA, SOPA, NDAA, DMCA, the PATRIOT act, the CDA, Predator, Carnivore, HAARP, the Federal Reserve, fiat currency, and fluoride in your drinking water corrupting your precious bodily fluids. How has enforcing all these paper-mill laws gone for the government so far? Hey, remember how the Communications Decency Act wiped porn off the Internet back in 1996? Man, it sure is a shame you can't find any more porn on the Internet anymore, isn't it? All because of that all-powerful CDA?

It's always the end of the world, and it never happens and everybody forgets about it in three months and nothing changes! Until the next time when it's THE END OF THE WORLD again!

The Internet is just fine. It will stay just fine. You'll still be able to browse porn and silly cat pictures. You'll still be able to put on your V For Vendetta masks and Occupy Wall Street along with the 99%. There are no spooks hiding in your closet. I assure you!

The government isn't coming to take your data, any more than it's coming to take your guns or make your kids gay Muslims. I'll be willing to put it to a bet.

The government is not omnipotent, omniscient, or staffed by the Borg or dark-side Jedis. The government is not The Matrix. It isn't 1984 or a Brave New World. The government is not the Joker, Hannibal Lecter, or Dr. No. And the revolution will not be blogged.

It doesn't matter how much data you collect, what matters is having the eyeballs to read that data.

When you're watching everybody, you're watching nobody.

Now take a fucking pill!


_____________________________________________________________
Thank you for choosing LinuxQuestions.
http://www.linuxquestions.org