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AT&T Invents Surveillance Programming Language

Posted by Zonk on from the code-breathing-on-the-other-end-of-your-phone dept.

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."

7 of 119 comments (clear)

  1. Hancock.. worst name ever. by EveryNickIsTaken · · Score: 5, Funny

    What, was Palmdong taken?

    1. Re:Hancock.. worst name ever. by djasbestos · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  2. Variations by WED+Fan · · Score: 5, Funny

    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
    --
    Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
    1. Re:Variations by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 3, Funny

      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.

      --
      My blog
  3. Re:Ironic Name by jhsiao · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  4. Hello world by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 4, Funny

    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));

    --
    No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
  5. You're almost right by roystgnr · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.