Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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. Ironic Name by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    One would think that John Hancock would not be pleased to learn that his name is being applied to a project that violates the Constitution he so famously signed.

  2. Re:Hancock.. worst name ever. by ByOhTek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No, they thought Orwell would be too obvious.

    --
    Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
  3. Heard near Massachusetts... by UncleTogie · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "Hey, what's that whirring sound?"

    "It's the founding father this programming language is named after...spinning in his grave..."

    --
    Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
  4. Don't worry! by Peter+Trepan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you haven't done anything wrong, then you have nowhere to hide!

    Whoops - I mean nothing. Nothing to hide.

    --

    Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.

  5. Hello World in Surveillance Language by Lemming+Mark · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The manual for the language includes a Hello World variant

    Never has that program name been so fitting.

  6. Re:John Hancock by IndustrialComplex · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Actually, I would think that by calling it Hancock, they are referring to the fact that people monitored are supplying their own Hancock simply through their actions.

    In other words, there would be no doubt as to who was behind the words coming from the machines. An involuntary Hancock as it were.

    --
    Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
  7. Hancock Written Before 2001 by squidguy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Gee, can you conspiracy theorists take a break for a second and consider that, just perhaps, this was written for commercial telecom management, marketing and fraud detection purposes? It was written and in the public domain before 9-11.
    The US Government uses Linux, so are we to presume that Linus Torvalds is an agent of George Bush and the broad conspiracy to spy on you?