AT&T Invents Surveillance Programming Language

An anonymous reader writes "AT&T has long been associated with advances in the programming arts as well as communications. They've recently brought those disciplines together to create a powerful datamining language called Hancock. Hancock is a C variant developed to mine gigabytes of the company's telephone and internet records for surveillance purposes. 'The manual for the language includes a Hello World variant that shows you how to write a program that will parse logs of IP addresses and record them into permanent hashes. The program for parsing millions of records as they flow into permanent data farms sounds oddly close to the data mining the NSA performed after 9/11 to find targets for its warrantless spying on American citizens calls and emails."

Comments

Hancock.. worst name ever.

[EveryNickIsTaken]

What, was Palmdong taken?

Re:Hancock.. worst name ever.

[djasbestos]

Eh, it looks close enough to C that it can, in the vein of C++ and C#, be referred to as C====>

Re:Hancock.. worst name ever.

[everphilski]

see++ is what Google web clip called it this morning :P

Re:Hancock.. worst name ever.

[DavidHumus]

How about "ICU"?

web server

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I replace php with this? PHP is insecure I heard. Hancock must be secure because it is the government.

Variations

[WED Fan]

We are already working on:

• Hancock++ - Because a single + was not enough
• H# - .NET version of the language
• GNU/Hancock - Returns the results as an open source document and publishes it to the freakin' world
• GoogleHancock - Datamines Chinese citizens and returns the results to party headquarters and the People's 9mm Ammunition Billing System
• HancockScript - Great for client side mining

Re:Variations

[Anonymous Coward]

pCock - Python variant

Re:Variations

[morgan_greywolf]

Don't forget JCock - the J2EE version being promoted by IBM and Sun. IBM has also announced a version of WebSphere optimized for JCock and middleware called CockSphere.

Finally, the Mozilla Foundation has announced a datamining extension for it's popular Web browser called Firecock.

Re:Variations

[Just Some Guy]

Don't forget:

• hancocK - the KDE version
• Data Mining Language - the Gnome version
• Diptheria - Miguel's version of H#
• HerbieHancock - automated music librarian that tags 99% of your music as "pop crap" and deletes it. Also detects audiophile owners and scrubs their drives (to give them "more danceable sound").

Re:Ironic Name

[jhsiao]

Even more ironic that someone so focused on the rights in the Constitution would mistake it for the Declaration of Independence.

Hello world

[$RANDOMLUSER]

update Users set Status = 'suspicious' where Username in (SELECT Username, ipAddress, MissleAddress from IncomingCalls ic, OutgoinCalls oc where Volume = 'whispering' and Username not in (select Username from RepublicanDonors));

Re:Ironic Name

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Even more ironic that someone so focused on the rights in the Constitution would mistake it for the Declaration of Independence. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all documents are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creators with certain identical Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

I sense a new meme!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been Hancocked!

You're almost right

[roystgnr]

But bear in mind, this programming language was invented by people who are so insecure that they're willing to shred the Fourth Amendment to try and assuage their fear of terrorists. I think C=> might be more accurate.