At least in my little portion of the government (a huge bloated behemoth if ever there was one), we use Solaris machines for our truly mission-critical work, but Windows has still crushed many other things.
Our truly mission-critical classified LAN is now based on NT, a thought nobody would even have countenanced a mere 3 years ago. In fact, the NSA wouldn't let us connect to them until just a few months ago, due to NT's horrid security problems. They basically re-wrote major portions of the NT kernel just for the intel community.
My point here is that if the federal government was the major market for Enable on X, then MS did what it hoped to with that deal: killed Enable.
It's interesting to see the deals MS made before it had any clout, then marketed the hell out of themselves so those deals became company-killers years later. Very crafty company.
Touche! Naturally, I make the great assumption that nearly everyone has been using a GUI-based system for at least five years. I think this is a natural assumption, given the 1984 release of the Mac, and the 1992 rise of Windows 3.1 to prominence. I would hesitate to marginalize anyone, since I am responding to you via Lynx myself, but has this Unix Programmer truly never seen Netscape or any other GUI-based program?
My opinions are as worthless as anyone else's; feel free to ignore them.
IMHO, most people don't care what program they use, and most don't use half the features of a given program anyway.
One of the good things about Windows' prevalence (who said monopoly?) is that it has given us a GUI convention that people have grown used to. I'm not saying that the convention is the best of all those possible, but it's been established as a de facto standard for a while now.
What this means is that almost any new program available on Windows, MacOS, and X has a similar configuration. Right-click (Unix had it first) is a context-menu, the first option on a menu is File, followed by Edit and so on. With this standardization (forced on programmers years ago but still a standard), we now have the ability to more easily change programs with little learning curve.
If you used WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS, you remember the enormous keyboard overlay you needed to remember what all the keys did. Now, we all know to use CTRL-B for bold and CTRL-X for cut. We expect the ALT key to activate the menu bar, and we expect the mouse to highlight text when the button is held down. All of these are good things, and they make computer use much simpler than in the 8088 days.
The final result of all this GUI-zation of the computer is that I can put someone in front of a computer with StarOffice, WordPerfect, or Word and they would understand how to make, edit, and save a file almost instantly. Virtually zero learning curve for most people on most programs.
The exceptions for this are the programs that are for a niche market, and thus have no other programs of import to standardize with. AutoCAD, TrueSpace, SQL (and friends) all come to mind as programs with unique interfaces.
But, I could give someone a pre-configured machine with StarOffice and they'd be able to read and write the files they needed, edit them, save them, and convert them to HTML without retraining.
First, I'd like to say that I'm not in agreement that we need to make a holy war out of "smartquotes".
The ASCII standard, of which HTML is a superset, does not include a "reverse quote" or "reverse double-quote" option. Most of the fonts that existed in the days that ASCII was created had quote marks that were completely vertical, so there was no danger of having quote marks that looked backward.
I'd certainly think that a reverse quote would be a good addition to the ASCII standard, but it is not a standard.
I'm currently reading this on Netscape via Linux, and the question marks in many posts are distracting, but not nearly as much as the absolutely amazing number of posts from people who think that they actually MATTER a bit.
In summary, use ASCII please, but if you don't, who f**ing cares? Can't we all just grow up a little?
Again, we go back to the basic concept of "neither confirm or deny" that is so precious to spooks. It is a good rule, as it keeps your enemies guessing. We PROBABLY have Echelon. But, are you 100% sure? I'm not. It sure sounds like it exists, though.
Everyone I know that works for the intell community has always acted appropriately with regard to intel oversight and not doing illegal operations. Based on my experience in the small piece of the SIGINT pie that I work with, I would have to assume that the rest of the NSA is also conscientious about not doing anything wrong.
The definition of eavesdropping is where things get interesting. If you take a look at the intelligence oversight information page, you'd see the definition discussed a bit. Basically, if we inadvertantly pick up something non-target, we cannot keep it. The only exception is for things the Attorney General has to approve case-by-case. As I said, everyone I know is honest and follows the rules. I would like to believe the rest of the community is as well. And, honestly, most people are incredibly dull, so who wants to spy on them anyway? (joke, folks)
And, very good point. We (SIGINT geeks) don't give a shit about U.S. persons, nor are we even ALLOWED to spy on our own citizens. The Attorney General authorizes such operations, and usually use the FBI to do it.
For those who are a bit more reactionary, do some research on what the different agencies missions are. You'd be amazed to note that most of our intelligence missions are aimed at FOREIGN nationals, not the U.S.A. Shocking, isn't it? "They" really aren't out to get you; you aren't nearly that important or interesting. Sorry to break it to you.
I thought long and hard about just ignoring this, as it is patently offensive to my beliefs and the beliefs of everyone I know in the Army.
However, the Nuremberg Defense does not work in the modern U.S. military, because we are told to follow the LAWFUL orders of those over us. So, we would not be following the "meta-orders" we swore to uphold (protect the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic) if we did anything which was illegal as we understand the laws of war and of international treaties.
With all that said, I don't personally believe that the Echelon program is evil or illegal. I don't particularly like the idea that it exists and may be watching me, but that's for larger bodies to wrestle with. For example, the U.S. Congress called DIRNSA to testify recently (a couple months ago) on the Echelon program. He refused. Now, THAT, IMO, is illegal. I can't imagine that any appointed bureaucrat can say no to the U.S. Legislature.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I'm sure someone much better versed in Executive-vs-Legislative branch policies will pipe up soon enough.:-)
Anyway, regardless of the DPRK army, the largest threat they have to us (and I don't really worry too much about China, because we can't predict their recent behavior with any accuracy at all) is the missiles. If you had been following the news lately, the DaePoDong II missiles that the DPRK has test fired (remember the "sattelite" launch over Japan?) are capable of hitting Alaska and Hawaii today. They are (according to open press, since I'm not going to get in trouble with classified stuff) working on improved third stage systems, which would allow them to hit California.
Is THAT a big enough threat for you? I'm not an alarmist, and I personally believe we should let South Korea fend for itself, as well as that Yugoslavian morass, but I'm not making policy, I just have to pay attention to my little piece of the pie. Since that piece is Korea, I do tend to notice the problems and dangers there more quickly than elsewhere. Mea Culpa.
Do you have any idea at all how amazingly insipid your comment was?
Try researching something before you attempt to involve yourself in the conversation. North Korea has 1 million men in uniform, 600,000 of them on the border with South Korea. They have a further 5 million reserve forces, armed and trained. And, as someone else mentioned already, we (the U.S. and allies) continue to FEED the NK army, while the NK government pretends to feed their normal citizens. The DPRK government has a great number of missiles available, and the press seems convinced they have nukes.
We exist to protect the United States of America, not any particular government. I happen to think (as an intelligent, skeptical, and cynical person) that we USUALLY do a good job of that. Have you any idea how much of a threat North Korea is? I do. Alas, the requirement to keep secrets from our "enemies" (defined by politicians, since we are merely instruments of policy, not policy-makers), requires that we keep secrets from our own citizens. For that matter, it requires that we keep secrets between individuals and organizations within the intel community itself.
Now, on to my personal opinions. We, as a country, have WAY too much federal government. Look at the original intent of the Constitution, and compare it to the monstrosity we have today. Notice that before 1860, the United States were a plural, and since then, the United States is a singular. Notice the subtle, yet significant, shift in our perceptions as a result of that change. I personally don't believe that we have any reason to spend as much as we do and send our military to as many places as we do. However, as I said before, I am an instrument of policy, not a policy-maker. So, yes sir no sir and away I go.
As far as Echelon and such goes, since it's not my department, nobody will even tell me if it really exists, and I'm working for the NSA. BUT, it seems to be technically possible, and the AU and NZ governments are up in arms about their roles, so it seems to be true. NOW, think for a minute about all the IMPORTANT information that this program should be looking for. (BTW, I think snooping on a public international network is lower than dogshit, but it's not my call) With all the info that the NSA is actually looking for, your personal conversations (esp. the encrypted ones) are pretty safe. The Dictionary system appears to use keyword searches and originating country searches combined. So, unless you're sending messages to China, containing words about nuclear weapons and such, I'd not be remotely concerned.
All that said, read Puzzle Palace for info on the origins of the NSA. Most people on this site have pretty good knowledge of the issues, but since the No Such Agency is so secretive, there is an awful lot of misinformation floating around about it.
Have you heard of Korea, or any of the other places our soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen are deployed to currently? I'd hate to point out the obvious, but we ARE at war constantly.
As a military member, I'm a tool of policy, I don't make it. So, although I don't agree with our policy of engagement in so many theaters (I'm very much a Libertarian Constitutionalist in views), I'm part of it and I'd certainly hate for some important piece of info to fall into Kim Chong-Il's hands and see the North Korean infiltrators do some real damage for a change.
I too believe the military should stay home, but we AREN'T all at home, so we need secrets. We need secrets from our own citizens because American citizens often talk too much to Bad Guys for money. A pitfall of a capitalist society, I suppose, and I'll keep capitalism if you don't mind.
Our classification system REQUIRES disclosure after a certain period of time, depending on the initial classification of the document. So, I believe all the info about JFK (if there is anything to see) should be de-classed in the next 10 years. I'd be curious to see that, myself.
And, I applaud everyone who is skeptical of the U.S. government's ability to follow their own rules. I hope you are just as vocal in venues that matter to the politicians as you all are in Slashdot. If (big if) we are doing illegal or immoral surveillance of our own citizens, nobody that I work with would like to see that continue and we would all be glad if it stopped. I don't think it's really happening, but Echelon does look ominous.
**My opinions are mine, not the U.S. Army's, and they should not be construed as any kind of official statement.**
As for the NSA...im not sure what to make of them. They keep secrets and I don't like that. Government shouldn't be allowed to keep secrets.
If the government did not keep secrets, how could we ever win a war? I don't mean to keep bringing the conversation back to "Us vs. Them" but as an Army man, I can't help but view things that way occasionally.
Just imagine if the Japanese or Germans had known the full details of the Manhattan Project. Would they have not bombed the experiment area into oblivion to keep that weapon from being produced? What would that have done to the war in the Pacific?
Governments need secrets, but citizens need to watch their governments too.
Well, all the VCRs at work have had the recording heads removed, we can't take cassette decks to work because they might have microphones in them, we can't have magnetic media of any type go out once it has come in without special checks by the Special Security Office, so why should a Furby be different? It's a recorder, to some degree.
What is funny is when some folks have told me that CDs are prohibited (in 1991), because they were a recording medium. I was looking for that CD-Recorder for a long time...
No, there is no way the Israelis made any mistake. That ship was a different size, shape and flying a different flag in INTERNATIONAL waters. Over the years, more than enough proof shows that it was a premeditated attack to reduce our intelligence during the war.
The ship they claim to have thought they were attacking was a warship, while the Liberty was a much smaller vessel. If they say that the Liberty was shelling them, how do you explain the complete lack of large-caliber weapons on the Liberty? If it had fired a shell, it would have flipped over; it was not a large ship.
If you'd like to tar everyone who disagrees with you as an anti-Semite, that's your prerogitave, but you'd be wrong. I'm just a military man trying to defend the memory of people killed by our ALLIES, while those men were doing their duty, out of harm's way (they thought).
Due to my position in the current hierarchy, I can tell you that the incident is being hushed up not because it is false, but because we don't want to risk our relationship with Israel.
If you think that we would not participate in a conspiracy of secrecy with people we think are murderers, why did we only release the information that the Soviets were in VietNam two years ago? We knew, they knew, and we kept it secret to avoid a war. We do it all the time.
Yes, there actually are a large number of Crypto-geeks on Slashdot. I know of several just in my own workplace, and we're not a large piece of the puzzle.
I'm not offended, but as one of those "operatives" or "agents" that people are referring to as if we're James Bond (my mother still thinks I have a license to kill), I'm understandably a bit defensive about anything that looks like a diminishment of the military's role in our security.
WHEW! Was that a run-on sentence or what?:-)
Honestly, I'm not able to say much about my job (duh) but if you look at the NSA homepage and look at the DLI homepage you'll find out enough that most folks can put together the rest.
I very much hope that the NSA records are NEVER open to public scrutiny. Secrets save lives, in my line of work. If other countries (read: hostile) find out our capabilities and limitations, they can foil them.
For more on the topic of misdirection and misinformation, read the new non-fiction book "Between Silk and Cyanide" by Leo Marks. Very interesting look at how much SIGINT and codes matter to the military efforts. Oh, and the absolutely awesome Cryptonomicon, of course.
He wasn't POSING as an Air Force SSgt, he WAS an Air Force E-5. As an Army SSG (E6) working with the NSA, I can assure you that the military is a LARGE part of the NSA's efforts to protect our interests in the SIGINT land. The fact that you think that the NSA poses as military members indicates to me that you don't have your facts straight. I have seen the Discovery special (we actually show it to new SIGINT geeks as an orientation) and it mentioned the VN connection, accurately as an AF member. Also, notice that Discovery special showed the NSA memorial to the hundreds of fallen military and civilian workers who are "Always Out Front" (Army SIGINT motto).
For more relatively fact-filled info, read the Puzzle Palace. It's a bit dated, but it provides an interesting historical note to the NSA's beginnings.
"Disappointed by the mistaken souls who describe anything Xing as high quality (it omits whole frequency bands for speed)." Except that it doesn't. It USED TO. For the past 18 months or more, Xing has used a repaired version of the encoder, to allow the higher freqs to be encoded. So, you seem to fall into the mistaken souls category, I'm afraid.
Doesn't copying the images to the hard drive kind of completely destroy the reason that he has a CD-changer in the first place? Cool idea, but not the right problem.
Slashdot Mirror
At least in my little portion of the government (a huge bloated behemoth if ever there was one), we use Solaris machines for our truly mission-critical work, but Windows has still crushed many other things.
Our truly mission-critical classified LAN is now based on NT, a thought nobody would even have countenanced a mere 3 years ago. In fact, the NSA wouldn't let us connect to them until just a few months ago, due to NT's horrid security problems. They basically re-wrote major portions of the NT kernel just for the intel community.
My point here is that if the federal government was the major market for Enable on X, then MS did what it hoped to with that deal: killed Enable.
It's interesting to see the deals MS made before it had any clout, then marketed the hell out of themselves so those deals became company-killers years later. Very crafty company.
Touche!
Naturally, I make the great assumption that nearly everyone has been using a GUI-based system for at least five years.
I think this is a natural assumption, given the 1984 release of the Mac, and the 1992 rise of Windows 3.1 to prominence.
I would hesitate to marginalize anyone, since I am responding to you via Lynx myself, but has this Unix Programmer truly never seen Netscape or any other GUI-based program?
My opinions are as worthless as anyone else's; feel free to ignore them.
IMHO, most people don't care what program they use, and most don't use half the features of a given program anyway.
One of the good things about Windows' prevalence (who said monopoly?) is that it has given us a GUI convention that people have grown used to. I'm not saying that the convention is the best of all those possible, but it's been established as a de facto standard for a while now.
What this means is that almost any new program available on Windows, MacOS, and X has a similar configuration. Right-click (Unix had it first) is a context-menu, the first option on a menu is File, followed by Edit and so on. With this standardization (forced on programmers years ago but still a standard), we now have the ability to more easily change programs with little learning curve.
If you used WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS, you remember the enormous keyboard overlay you needed to remember what all the keys did. Now, we all know to use CTRL-B for bold and CTRL-X for cut. We expect the ALT key to activate the menu bar, and we expect the mouse to highlight text when the button is held down. All of these are good things, and they make computer use much simpler than in the 8088 days.
The final result of all this GUI-zation of the computer is that I can put someone in front of a computer with StarOffice, WordPerfect, or Word and they would understand how to make, edit, and save a file almost instantly. Virtually zero learning curve for most people on most programs.
The exceptions for this are the programs that are for a niche market, and thus have no other programs of import to standardize with. AutoCAD, TrueSpace, SQL (and friends) all come to mind as programs with unique interfaces.
But, I could give someone a pre-configured machine with StarOffice and they'd be able to read and write the files they needed, edit them, save them, and convert them to HTML without retraining.
First, I'd like to say that I'm not in agreement that we need to make a holy war out of "smartquotes".
The ASCII standard, of which HTML is a superset, does not include a "reverse quote" or "reverse double-quote" option. Most of the fonts that existed in the days that ASCII was created had quote marks that were completely vertical, so there was no danger of having quote marks that looked backward.
I'd certainly think that a reverse quote would be a good addition to the ASCII standard, but it is not a standard.
I'm currently reading this on Netscape via Linux, and the question marks in many posts are distracting, but not nearly as much as the absolutely amazing number of posts from people who think that they actually MATTER a bit.
In summary, use ASCII please, but if you don't, who f**ing cares? Can't we all just grow up a little?
Again, we go back to the basic concept of "neither confirm or deny" that is so precious to spooks. It is a good rule, as it keeps your enemies guessing. We PROBABLY have Echelon. But, are you 100% sure? I'm not. It sure sounds like it exists, though.
Everyone I know that works for the intell community has always acted appropriately with regard to intel oversight and not doing illegal operations. Based on my experience in the small piece of the SIGINT pie that I work with, I would have to assume that the rest of the NSA is also conscientious about not doing anything wrong.
The definition of eavesdropping is where things get interesting. If you take a look at the intelligence oversight information page, you'd see the definition discussed a bit. Basically, if we inadvertantly pick up something non-target, we cannot keep it. The only exception is for things the Attorney General has to approve case-by-case. As I said, everyone I know is honest and follows the rules. I would like to believe the rest of the community is as well. And, honestly, most people are incredibly dull, so who wants to spy on them anyway? (joke, folks)
He's an Air Farce General this year, actually. :-)
And, very good point. We (SIGINT geeks) don't give a shit about U.S. persons, nor are we even ALLOWED to spy on our own citizens. The Attorney General authorizes such operations, and usually use the FBI to do it.
For those who are a bit more reactionary, do some research on what the different agencies missions are. You'd be amazed to note that most of our intelligence missions are aimed at FOREIGN nationals, not the U.S.A. Shocking, isn't it? "They" really aren't out to get you; you aren't nearly that important or interesting. Sorry to break it to you.
I thought long and hard about just ignoring this, as it is patently offensive to my beliefs and the beliefs of everyone I know in the Army.
:-)
However, the Nuremberg Defense does not work in the modern U.S. military, because we are told to follow the LAWFUL orders of those over us. So, we would not be following the "meta-orders" we swore to uphold (protect the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic) if we did anything which was illegal as we understand the laws of war and of international treaties.
With all that said, I don't personally believe that the Echelon program is evil or illegal. I don't particularly like the idea that it exists and may be watching me, but that's for larger bodies to wrestle with. For example, the U.S. Congress called DIRNSA to testify recently (a couple months ago) on the Echelon program. He refused. Now, THAT, IMO, is illegal. I can't imagine that any appointed bureaucrat can say no to the U.S. Legislature.
Of course, that's just my opinion. I'm sure someone much better versed in Executive-vs-Legislative branch policies will pipe up soon enough.
Claiming... Let it pass, let it pass.
Anyway, regardless of the DPRK army, the largest threat they have to us (and I don't really worry too much about China, because we can't predict their recent behavior with any accuracy at all) is the missiles. If you had been following the news lately, the DaePoDong II missiles that the DPRK has test fired (remember the "sattelite" launch over Japan?) are capable of hitting Alaska and Hawaii today. They are (according to open press, since I'm not going to get in trouble with classified stuff) working on improved third stage systems, which would allow them to hit California.
Is THAT a big enough threat for you? I'm not an alarmist, and I personally believe we should let South Korea fend for itself, as well as that Yugoslavian morass, but I'm not making policy, I just have to pay attention to my little piece of the pie. Since that piece is Korea, I do tend to notice the problems and dangers there more quickly than elsewhere. Mea Culpa.
Do you have any idea at all how amazingly insipid your comment was?
Try researching something before you attempt to involve yourself in the conversation. North Korea has 1 million men in uniform, 600,000 of them on the border with South Korea. They have a further 5 million reserve forces, armed and trained. And, as someone else mentioned already, we (the U.S. and allies) continue to FEED the NK army, while the NK government pretends to feed their normal citizens. The DPRK government has a great number of missiles available, and the press seems convinced they have nukes.
The following are my opinions, not my employer's.
We exist to protect the United States of America, not any particular government. I happen to think (as an intelligent, skeptical, and cynical person) that we USUALLY do a good job of that. Have you any idea how much of a threat North Korea is? I do. Alas, the requirement to keep secrets from our "enemies" (defined by politicians, since we are merely instruments of policy, not policy-makers), requires that we keep secrets from our own citizens. For that matter, it requires that we keep secrets between individuals and organizations within the intel community itself.
Now, on to my personal opinions. We, as a country, have WAY too much federal government. Look at the original intent of the Constitution, and compare it to the monstrosity we have today. Notice that before 1860, the United States were a plural, and since then, the United States is a singular. Notice the subtle, yet significant, shift in our perceptions as a result of that change. I personally don't believe that we have any reason to spend as much as we do and send our military to as many places as we do. However, as I said before, I am an instrument of policy, not a policy-maker. So, yes sir no sir and away I go.
As far as Echelon and such goes, since it's not my department, nobody will even tell me if it really exists, and I'm working for the NSA. BUT, it seems to be technically possible, and the AU and NZ governments are up in arms about their roles, so it seems to be true. NOW, think for a minute about all the IMPORTANT information that this program should be looking for. (BTW, I think snooping on a public international network is lower than dogshit, but it's not my call) With all the info that the NSA is actually looking for, your personal conversations (esp. the encrypted ones) are pretty safe. The Dictionary system appears to use keyword searches and originating country searches combined. So, unless you're sending messages to China, containing words about nuclear weapons and such, I'd not be remotely concerned.
All that said, read Puzzle Palace for info on the origins of the NSA. Most people on this site have pretty good knowledge of the issues, but since the No Such Agency is so secretive, there is an awful lot of misinformation floating around about it.
Have you heard of Korea, or any of the other places our soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen are deployed to currently? I'd hate to point out the obvious, but we ARE at war constantly.
As a military member, I'm a tool of policy, I don't make it. So, although I don't agree with our policy of engagement in so many theaters (I'm very much a Libertarian Constitutionalist in views), I'm part of it and I'd certainly hate for some important piece of info to fall into Kim Chong-Il's hands and see the North Korean infiltrators do some real damage for a change.
I too believe the military should stay home, but we AREN'T all at home, so we need secrets. We need secrets from our own citizens because American citizens often talk too much to Bad Guys for money. A pitfall of a capitalist society, I suppose, and I'll keep capitalism if you don't mind.
Our classification system REQUIRES disclosure after a certain period of time, depending on the initial classification of the document. So, I believe all the info about JFK (if there is anything to see) should be de-classed in the next 10 years. I'd be curious to see that, myself.
And, I applaud everyone who is skeptical of the U.S. government's ability to follow their own rules. I hope you are just as vocal in venues that matter to the politicians as you all are in Slashdot. If (big if) we are doing illegal or immoral surveillance of our own citizens, nobody that I work with would like to see that continue and we would all be glad if it stopped. I don't think it's really happening, but Echelon does look ominous.
**My opinions are mine, not the U.S. Army's, and they should not be construed as any kind of official statement.**
As for the NSA...im not sure what to make of them. They keep secrets and I don't like that. Government shouldn't be allowed to keep secrets.
If the government did not keep secrets, how could we ever win a war? I don't mean to keep bringing the conversation back to "Us vs. Them" but as an Army man, I can't help but view things that way occasionally.
Just imagine if the Japanese or Germans had known the full details of the Manhattan Project. Would they have not bombed the experiment area into oblivion to keep that weapon from being produced? What would that have done to the war in the Pacific?
Governments need secrets, but citizens need to watch their governments too.
Of course, I could be wrong.
Hey! I'd send you an email, but since your email is not listed...
Anyway, I'm another KP, at GAFB currently. Maybe we have friends in common.
Don't let the bastards get you down.
Well, all the VCRs at work have had the recording heads removed, we can't take cassette decks to work because they might have microphones in them, we can't have magnetic media of any type go out once it has come in without special checks by the Special Security Office, so why should a Furby be different? It's a recorder, to some degree.
What is funny is when some folks have told me that CDs are prohibited (in 1991), because they were a recording medium. I was looking for that CD-Recorder for a long time...
No, there is no way the Israelis made any mistake. That ship was a different size, shape and flying a different flag in INTERNATIONAL waters. Over the years, more than enough proof shows that it was a premeditated attack to reduce our intelligence during the war.
The ship they claim to have thought they were attacking was a warship, while the Liberty was a much smaller vessel. If they say that the Liberty was shelling them, how do you explain the complete lack of large-caliber weapons on the Liberty? If it had fired a shell, it would have flipped over; it was not a large ship.
If you'd like to tar everyone who disagrees with you as an anti-Semite, that's your prerogitave, but you'd be wrong. I'm just a military man trying to defend the memory of people killed by our ALLIES, while those men were doing their duty, out of harm's way (they thought).
Due to my position in the current hierarchy, I can tell you that the incident is being hushed up not because it is false, but because we don't want to risk our relationship with Israel.
If you think that we would not participate in a conspiracy of secrecy with people we think are murderers, why did we only release the information that the Soviets were in VietNam two years ago? We knew, they knew, and we kept it secret to avoid a war. We do it all the time.
SCI: Sensitive Compartmented Intelligence
It's not "above" Top Secret, just a subset of it. There are many compartments, and most people only have access to one or two of them.
And, the "Q" level is a corporate creation, not governmental.
"Grave Damage" is the definition of Top Secret in the U.S. security agencies.
:-)
"Serious Damage" is Secret, and "Can be expected to cause damage in some degree" is the weaselly-worded definition of Confidential.
Seems like we could classify nearly anything as Confidential if we wanted to.
Yes, there actually are a large number of Crypto-geeks on Slashdot. I know of several just in my own workplace, and we're not a large piece of the puzzle.
WHEW! Was that a run-on sentence or what? :-)
Honestly, I'm not able to say much about my job (duh) but if you look at the NSA homepage and look at the DLI homepage you'll find out enough that most folks can put together the rest.
No, LTC North was assigned to the NSC (National Security Council) as a liaison. See, it's just acronym trouble. :-)
I very much hope that the NSA records are NEVER open to public scrutiny. Secrets save lives, in my line of work. If other countries (read: hostile) find out our capabilities and limitations, they can foil them.
For more on the topic of misdirection and misinformation, read the new non-fiction book "Between Silk and Cyanide" by Leo Marks. Very interesting look at how much SIGINT and codes matter to the military efforts. Oh, and the absolutely awesome Cryptonomicon, of course.
NRO is in charge of the platforms, not the intel.
He wasn't POSING as an Air Force SSgt, he WAS an Air Force E-5. As an Army SSG (E6) working with the NSA, I can assure you that the military is a LARGE part of the NSA's efforts to protect our interests in the SIGINT land. The fact that you think that the NSA poses as military members indicates to me that you don't have your facts straight. I have seen the Discovery special (we actually show it to new SIGINT geeks as an orientation) and it mentioned the VN connection, accurately as an AF member. Also, notice that Discovery special showed the NSA memorial to the hundreds of fallen military and civilian workers who are "Always Out Front" (Army SIGINT motto).
For more relatively fact-filled info, read the Puzzle Palace. It's a bit dated, but it provides an interesting historical note to the NSA's beginnings.
"Disappointed by the mistaken souls who describe anything Xing as high quality (it omits whole frequency bands for speed)." Except that it doesn't. It USED TO. For the past 18 months or more, Xing has used a repaired version of the encoder, to allow the higher freqs to be encoded. So, you seem to fall into the mistaken souls category, I'm afraid.
Doesn't copying the images to the hard drive kind of completely destroy the reason that he has a CD-changer in the first place? Cool idea, but not the right problem.