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How a Video Game About Sheep Exposes the FBI's Broken FOIA System (dailydot.com)
blottsie writes from a report via Daily Dot: Earlier this year, the FBI released a free, online video game featuring sheep in its attempts to fight terrorism recruitment efforts. The game is called The Slippery Slope of Violent Extremism, and it is a real thing that exists. You can play it here. After journalists filed a FOIA request to find out more about the game, the FBI said it would take two years to respond -- a staggeringly long wait that helps expose how the Bureau actively avoids responding to open-records requests. The information requested asked for "all documents -- specifically memos, email correspondence, and budgets -- around the development, release, and public reception of the FBI's Slippery Slope game. It's the one with the sheep." There are several reasons why it would take two years to respond. One reason is because of the lack of requests. "If 500 people want to have the FBI file on a famous dead person, that's going to be available, and it's going to be available quickly," J. Pat Brown, an employee at MuckRock, a nonprofit that helps journalists, researchers, good government groups, and interested members of the public make FOIA requests of government agencies, said. "But basic requests about agency activities are pushed into their own pile," adds Daily Dot. Another part of the problem has to do with the outdated technology used by government agencies. "Many of the computers the FBI is using to search for this material are from the 1980s and lack graphical interfaces. Outdated technology being a hurdle to government transparency is common across many federal agencies. The CIA only accepts FOIA request by fax machine, for example," reports Daily Dot. "In 2013, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which oversees the NSA among other agencies, was unable to accept FOIA requests for months because its fax machine broke and it had to wait until the next fiscal year to get it replaced." What's more is that government agencies are often not required to disclose information after long wait times for processing FOIAs. "As Ginger McCall of the Electronic Privacy Information Center told the Daily Dot in 2014, she once waited four years with near total silence on a FOIA request about the TSA's airport body-scanner technology only to get a note out of the blue from TSA saying she had to respond with 30 days if she wanted them to continue processing her request," reports Daily Dot. "When McCall reached out to others who had made FOIA requests to agencies under the Department of Homeland Security umbrella, they reported similar experiences."
It is working exactly as designed, to stonewall.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Lets hear it for the most transparent administration in history!
Because I'm playing the game right now, and it's the funniest thing I've seen in a while. Play a game trying to steer a greased sheep through a Dire Straits music video, all the while being told that the enemy is trying to brainwash me. It feels eerily similar to old-school public service announcements that have a message completely unrelated to the content delivered with it.
"Don't be a puppet!" Hilarious. Who in their right mind would think this would stop terrorists?
The sheep are starting to ask questions.
Have gnu, will travel.
The controls for that game are horrible. If it took more than a day and $500 to create then taxpayers should be ticked.
Better known as 318230.
I made legendary jihadist in 12 rounds! I dare you to beat my high score!
Many of the computers the FBI is using to search for this material are from the 1980s and lack graphical interfaces.
What does a graphical interface have to do with collecting data? What's more important is that the systems is hooked to a network and has a remote way of accessing it.
Vote Trump 2016 to end this madness
...and start a whole new kind of madness?
Disclaimer: I have no plans to vote at this point. Aside from writing in a joke candidate, I can't think of a single option that wouldn't leave me feeling filthy afterwards.
Yeah, but how long has the FOIA been effective? 50 years? At some point, the FBI's e-mail and document management systems need to be updated to handle the use cases that this legislation mandated. SGML or XML databases with entries pre-tagged (by the author) with attributes describing each passages classification level. One query to dump all entries applicable to the request, suitably filtered and redacted based on classification attributes. Job done.
Sure, the FBI doesn't have the budget for this. But look at all the other crap they have bought since 1967. Someone needs to put their (and every other gov't agencies) feet to the fire and spend funds on the first project in the queue before starting another one. Insufficient resources to process FOIA requests in a timely manner? Fine. All the Patriot Act toys will have to wait until the first job is done. We have a government that never had to answer face the childhood lesson: If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding!
Have gnu, will travel.
When is our illustrious government going to stop using the "outdated" technology argument? We all know that when they want something, they usually get it. This is just, "there is nothing to see here" in action.
Disclaimer: I have no plans to vote at this point. Aside from writing in a joke candidate, I can't think of a single option that wouldn't leave me feeling filthy afterwards.
You could follow this example and try: "Robert'); DROP TABLE Candidates;--"
But, I don't know how filthy you'd feel afterwards ... :-)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Sheep in video games have more rights than you do.
And you just lap it up, like sheep at a pond.
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It's hard to pull the wool over your eyes.
Shearly impossible, in fact.
Baaa!
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Yes. Insanity is doing the same thing expecting different results. This is different, doing something different expecting different results.
The problem is, that the results will be exactly the same as previously outlined, because the people running the country, aren't really the ones running the country. They are figureheads using elections to pretend to be in power, all to gain wealth and fame. Nobody but Politicians can take an under 200K job and milk it for hundreds of millions of dollars. If that isn't the sign of corruption, I don't know what would be.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Depends on your definition of budget, actually.
They underfund privacy for you and overfund the PAFFO ignoring your request.
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1: Is there multiplayer?
2: Can I get 60fps on a GeForce 960?
3: Is the sheep a 6 or a 10?
You are welcome on my lawn.
So we need to take the line item budget power away from Congress and the Administration and replace it with a first in/first out queue system. We can't spend money on the toys until the old work is done.
Have gnu, will travel.
Hard to tell, man.
If they have an appropriated budget with $100K for office equipment, legally they cannot buy more if they already spent it all. It doesn't matter if they still have $200K left in their toilet paper budget.
They could repurpose another machine or borrow hardware from elsewhere. The government even maintains a surplus warehouse where they might find a workable machine that is otherwise destined for the landfill.
But maybe none of those options panned out. Or maybe they just don't care about FOIA requests because those requests eat a lot of time and money, and no one has lost their job for being too slow yet.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Slightly offtopic, but our fax line seems to have failed, probably sometime about April last year due to some faulty wiring. I had the other affected lines repaired, but no-one noticed the fax line hasn't worked since then. I don't think I will bother getting the tech back.
Nothing in the world is free. How much time does it take to catalog, classify/redact and publish all the information on a sheep video game?
love is just extroverted narcissism
Maybe we should all file FOIA requests with the FBI for Slippery Slope information. That way they could not use the "not enough requests" excuse.
Playing the game with The Veil by Peter Gabriel playing in the background. Eerily hilarious. Try it.
No, according to the CIA's website, they also accept FOIA requests by snail mail. AFAIK, this has always been the case. However, the only electronic way to submit a FOIA request is by fax (still), AFAIK.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Where's the MOO guy? He'd actually be semi-on-topic for once!!!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
What if trump wins by one vote? In a winner take all state one vote could swing the entire electoral college.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Now that Glen Beck endorsed Hillary Trump looks to be the sane and sensible solution. In an insane situation, total madness is the best solution.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
"The information requested asked for "all documents -- specifically memos, email correspondence, and budgets -- around the development, release, and public reception of the FBI's Slippery Slope game."
This is a lot of information, maybe it would make sense to ask for a budget and a list of developers instead?
FOIA request will be properly responded to, just in time for the release of the Slippery Upwards Slope of Calm Transparency Demands game that is coming as a sequel.
There are two major ways to view your vote:
1) Your tactical token to play in political matters
2) Your free statement of support for something
One of the logical correlaries to #1 is that a third party vote is essentially never a valid vote, since you're throwing away the token you could be using to keep out the greater of the two primary evils.
I don't subscribe to that line of thinking.
I'm firmly in camp #2. I believe that my vote is a statement of support FOR something, not a mere token to be used against something else. I'd vote third party if I thought any of them were fit for the office, but even though I think some of them may be better than the two front runners, I don't think any of them are actually fit. As such, that leaves me with a choice between purposeful abstention or writing in.
It's more important to me to take a stand based on what I believe and to accept the consequences that result from it, than it is for me to compromise my beliefs by supporting someone I find reprehensible.
What if the winner is not clear and the court uses a newspaper article as a source to declare the winner?
We ended up wanting "America to Be Great Again" due the the decline that happened after that.
Just the fax ma'am.
fax machines were an archaic communications technology.
lol. That's what they are now. They weren't archaic when they came out, bud.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
So THAT's why the couldn't answer the FOIA request. They've been looking for the sheep game.
FOIA = required by law
publishing tax returns = political tradition that could lead to identity theft
If you disagree, I propose that you post a link to your tax returns here.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?