An Arduino? For a military data system? Handled by PFCs and below? On a daily basis?
Fine, a hardened arduino. Standards exist for this. Military enclosures are a solved problem.
"Hey Bob, we just got five new guys transferring in. Go program all the guns." "Hey Bob, Bravo squad was out on a patrol when you did all the guns yesterday for the new guys. Go make sure all the guns are programmed." "Hey Bob, two guys transferred out. Go program all the guns again." "Hey Bob,..." "If you say go program the guns again one more time, I'm going to smack you..."
Yep, that job's gonna suck, I'm not going to deny it. That's why the Sergeant will set up the program, then hand the (hardened!) programmer to the <= E3 for doing the rounds. Possibly multiple times daily. I expect the programmer to get thrown across the room more than once out of frustration and boredom.
In the days when I was issued an M16 on a regular basis, I was handed a weapons card with my name, weapon ID, and signature on it. When I drew my weapon from the armory, I handed the E1 behind the door my card, he went to the rack, picked up the weapon, put my card in its place, and handed me the M16. When I turned it in, the process went in reverse. The armorer had no idea who belonged to what weapon. The company admin did, maybe. Has that system changed in 25 years? Maybe. Maybe not. It worked and was simple.
Nope, that system hasn't changed, thank $diety. I don't think you gave your armorer enough credit, though; he probably had a list of every weapon and whose card it was matched to, I know mine did. Today, if he's good, it's both on paper and in the computer.
Plug in, system doesn't communicate. Look at gun, realize that is it a model 2 trigger lock and go back to the office to find the model 2 programmer that came in yesterday. What do you mean the shipment with the model 2 programmer isn't here yet? We got model 2s on the rack we need to program. Radar, get me General Hammond on the phone.
If the US military adopts this kind of "feature", then we know the game is over and we might as well all learn Korean or Chinese.
And this is where the two of us agree completely. The day the U.S. Army adds something like this to the arsenal I'll know we finally stopped taking combat seriously. There's no way Combat Arms would get talked into adding another point of failure to the M16, it's bad enough already. And fielding a rifle that requires both a clean connector and fresh batteries to operate is a non-starter. My point wasn't that this system would be a good idea.
All I was trying to say is that the logistics of data management isn't as bad as it seems at first glance. Most of the data should already be in place in the Armory; add a fingerprint scanner to the armorer's laptop (Admin's laptop already has one, so the supply chain is in place) and you've got everything you need even if Admin doesn't want to share their toys. A flat file, a folder of data, and a small script give you the data load. All that's missing is a documented procedure and I can easily see this system being logistically manageable. A useless, potentially deadly, worse-than-worthless pain in the third point of contact, but totally manageable.
I cannot imagine what a nightmare it will be to manage weapons access thru fingerprints into a large military unit.
I don't know; with the right equipment (arduino board with a memory card?) all the armorer would have to do is walk down the rack with his interface deck and upload the relevant files. I'd assume that either the entire unit would be authorized for all weapons or that each unit would be keyed to its assigned bearer. The Admin branch has all of the fingerprints on file, and the armorer should have a list matching arms to soldiers. The work to make this job suitable for a private would be fairly minimal, especially if the programming equipment can query the weapon for its serial number - plug in, wait while the program checks the serial and uploads the appropriate print profiles, unplug; lather, rinse, repeat.
That's the exact opposite of my experience; when my U.S. Army armorer issued my weapon it was always the same one. I had a card I'd hand him with the weapon buttstock number and serial number printed on it; we'd both verify that the weapon issued matched my card at check-in and check-out. I also had my serial number memorized, so the card was somewhat redundant.
I rather appreciated being the only one to handle, fire, and care for it; I don't think I'd have the same confidence in a weapon that was subject to the tragedy of the commons. When I'm issued a weapon I'd like to be sure that it's well-maintained and ready to function immediately, not spend the next hour or so cleaning and inspecting it for deficiencies. This is definitely one of those times when if you want something done right you really ought to do it yourself.
Furthermore, rifles ought to be sighted in to the user; you can't pick up a random M-16 and expect to hit a target at 300 yards. I had my own sighting numbers written down as well, should the case arise that I would need to pick up a random rifle and use it; however, changing the front sight on an M16 or M4 is cumbersome without a specialized key, and the person a rifle is assigned to can get huffy if you return it with the sights changed.
tl;dr: I don't know where you served, but if you were not always issued the same weapon then your armorer was lazy and didn't care enough about your welfare. Please tell me what organization that was so I can make sure I never join it.
Oh, is that all you need? Un-jamable near instantaneous communications? Why don't we invent the perpetual motion machine while we're at it? All the fancy new drone toys we have are fine and dandy up to the point someone figures out the man-in-the-middle attack needed to crash them, or worse, take them over. (See: Iran & GPS spoofiing the stealth reconaissance drone.)
You laugh, but it's pretty hard to jam modern military radio. The frequency hopping method used by radios as old as the SINCGARS makes interrupting transmissions very difficult - the jamming signal would need to exceed the transmission's signal strength across the entire possible spectrum simultaneously. BTW, the wiki article is wrong; frequency hopping doesn't prevent eavesdropping, multichannel receivers can be purchased off-the-shelf which will pick up the entire transmission regardless of how many hops per second are made. You need encryption on top of frequency hopping to make the message secure.
The point is that un-jamable high-bandwidh comms already exist, and latency is the only major concern left for remotely piloted fighter planes. Just because the CIA bought drones that trust the GPS more than their own internal maps and terrain recognition doesn't meant the Air Force would do the same, or that a remote pilot would perform a controlled flight into ground because his instruments said he had plenty of altitude.
For the sake of discussion only, let's assume that the U.S. does indeed intend to arrest, publicly humiliate, and then execute Assange for his role in Wikileaks; the Ecuadorean embassy believes this enough to grant asylum, after all. Why him, personally? Why not every member of his organization?
Because his role in the organization is easy to prove, and his involvement with publication of inconvenient facts is undeniable. Attacking the leader was always an accepted practice, in peace time and in war time. It is also the most beneficial practice. What is more humane, to slaughter 100,000 soldiers or to kill one dictator who sent them to war?
<godwin>By that logic the Nuremberg trials were unnecessary, and Hitler's generals should have been pardoned.</godwin> More recently, Slobodan Milosevic was captured and died in prison; despite this, Ratko Mladic is on trial at the Hague for his own crimes.
The work at Wikileaks carries on despite Assange's forced absence. Assange certainly has high-level associates who are carrying on the work and are equally guilty of the espionage charges being levied against him. If the U.S. government were truly interested in pursuing justice then it would also bring similar accusations against the rest of Assange's lieutenants for their involvement.
I'll concede that lack of jurisdiction and the relative anonymity of these lieutenants may make them difficult to reach from the United States. Embarrassing Assange personally may be the only option available to those seeking to punish him for his actions. This does not mean that it should be done. It is hypocritical to engage in a "war on terror" while simultaneously employing terrorists' methods, and engaging in psychological operations against journalists who would receive and publish embarrassing secrets strays too close to that line for my comfort.
I'm replying here instead of to one of the many other responses to this post, many quibbling over definitions. IMHO the arguments surrounding the definition are all pointless and off-the-mark, and I'll throw my support behind girlintraining's position that the UK is wrong to do this. I also agree that it's not terrorism.
Let's try a different definition of terrorism, one used by an actual counter-terrorism organization (U.S. Army intel):
The threat or use of violence intended to influence parties other than the immediate victim.
It's short, easy to understand, and widely applicable. Threaten to kill hostages unless your friends are released from prison? Terrorism. Waging direct war against another sovereign nation's military? Not terrorism. Applying fines of US$1.5million to a single offender for file sharing, to "set an example for others"? Questionable, depending on your definition of "violence", but I'd count it (especially if the "others" are being allowed to settle for < US$10k). It doesn't matter who does it or why by this definition; if you're doing something to one person in order to make someone else do what you want, it's terrorism.
By that standard, the UK threatening the Ecuadorian government with severance of diplomatic ties is not terrorism, just application of an ungodly amount of political leverage. The Ecuadorian embassy and Assange himself are the immediate victims, and the UK is only attempting to influence their actions, not the actions of others. So, no, I don't think this is terrorism. It's simply unconscionable, disproportionate, and wrong.
Unfortunately, the point is moot because the real terrorist in this scenario would be the United States. For the sake of discussion only, let's assume that the U.S. does indeed intend to arrest, publicly humiliate, and then execute Assange for his role in Wikileaks; the Ecuadorean embassy believes this enough to grant asylum, after all. Why him, personally? Why not every member of his organization? Why single Assange out for selective and disproportionate punishment and largely ignore the rest of his staff? If the answer is "to serve as a warning to those who would expose secrets", then the United States is engaging in terrorism, and Ecuador is right to refuse to cooperate with the UK in enabling it.
I'll back up couchslug on the idea that the capes were probably part of an early form of MOPP gear. There are cape-style soviet designs, maybe some of these were captured?
Speaking of missing equipment, there should have been 2PAM-Chloride autoinjectors as well, they ought to have been packaged together (at least, they are today when distributed to soldiers). I hear that that the 2PAM vials get abused by snipers as muscle relaxants, though, so they may have walked away some time before your inspection...
Wow, I didn't intend to make this personal for anybody. Dave, I'll back you up by agreeing that we're both trying our best to tell it like it is. We may have philosophical differences on how it should be, but that's what discussion is for; I'll try to keep name calling out of it.
Just so we're clear, I'm actually OK with how things were pre-USA PATRIOT act. The tools necessary for our intel services to do their jobs were in place, and balanced with judicial oversight. U.S. citizens were protected from prosecution based on illegally obtained information and (in my agency, at least) we understood that if we - by mistake or deliberately - violated the constitution in our investigation that our options became limited (no prosecution), but we still had some tools at our disposal for keeping our nation and its secrets safe.
I'm not OK with the warrantless wiretapping, national security letters issued under gag order with no judicial review, etc. I can just hear Darth Sidious' voice saying "I'll make it legal". There needs to be accountability for the actions of these agencies, and judicial oversight/review gives that. Thanks, too, Dave, for mentioning the Oversight office; most federal intel agencies do have a strong culture of respect for citizens' rights, and where I was a lot of work went into making sure we were doing the right thing.
For what it's worth, I'd like to think that I'd still have made these comments while I was active. I don't think I've disclosed any classified methods or sources here, just philosophy. Talking bad about the sitting president could have gotten me in trouble, though =P Hatta, my philosophy may move me into the "no good spook" category with you; I'm sorry if that's the case. My reading of this thread, though, sounds like three people who all largely agree and are, unfortunately, talking past one another. We all three agree that accountability is needed, Dave and I generally agree on consequences/lack thereof for illegal searches, and Hatta and I seem to agree that the current process isn't transparent enough. let's try to keep it civil.
I'm a few years out of the game myself, and from a different intel branch, but I'll take a stab at answering your questions:
So what you're saying is that an NSA agent must prove that someone is a foreigner before collecting data on them? To whom do they have to prove it? What are the consequences if they fail to do so?
To my understanding the check for whether a subject is a U.S. Person should happen before any intrusions on their privacy occur. In practice, though, the investigating team can do pretty much whatever they want provided that they don't care to press criminal charges. If a court case ever were to occur, the investigators would be asked by the judge to show evidence of their due diligence. There are many other avenues for neutralizing intelligence threats that don't rely on judicial action; neither stripping government employees of security clearance nor deportation of non-citizens requires a judge or compliance with constitutional protections. The main consequence of violating a subject's constitutional rights is that any court case to prosecute will have illegally obtained evidence thrown out and will likely fail.
What actual consequences would an NSA agent face if they did ignore that fact? How would it be discovered? How often has this happened?
So far the only actual safeguard you've offered is "trust us". Can you at least try to understand that that's not good enough?
To the NSA? I don't know. Maybe nothing. I don't know how it would be discovered, especially if the actions taken in response don't involve courts. And there's no way to know (from the outside) how often it happens. For what it's worth, I agree that "trust us" is not good enough, and that it would be better to have a judge sign off on anything questionable as a matter of policy and standard procedure, even if it were after the fact. At least there would be someone capable of reminding them when what they're doing is unconstitutional.
So the president is complicit in the unconstitutional wiretapping of US citizens and that's supposed to make us feel better?
Nope, I don't feel any better about that at all.
Also, as a technical matter, how does one capture the packets of foreigners without also capturing the packets of citizens? At the very least, doesn't the NSA have to store and analyze the packet to determine whether it belongs to a US citizen or not? At that point, hasn't the law prohibiting collecting, storing, and analyzing the communications of US citizens already been broken?
I don't know the answer to that, either. "Advanced filtering" sounds a lot like "trust us". Analysis in RAM without storage to disk I think would be OK, but it doesn't sound like they're doing it like that. I think they're on the wrong side of the line there, but it's the side of the line that lets less data slip away so I can understand how they got there (even if I don't agree with it).
The Director of National Intelligence just recently admitted that some NSA activities had violated the Constitution at least once.
By whom, and what consequences can we expect this criminal to suffer?
See above; probably nothing. Just like cops running a bad investigation don't get fired when they botch it on constitutional grounds, intel agents don't go to jail for violating U.S. citizens' rights.
Is it only demeaning if the beliefs are held by a major segment? There are still people who believe in or honor the Norse gods too, but I have yet to hear anyone get upset about the phrase "North Mythology".
I'll give you your report about Norse mythology getting people upset, then. During my time in the Army I got to spend some time doing joint ops with the Norwegian military. I was given stern warnings by my buddies that the guys wearing hammer tattoos in the bar on base were not safe to taunt regarding their religion. Reason given: it's likely to get a violent response. I'm sure that when they're sober they would take some friendly ribbing just fine, but I felt no desire to see how a drunk Thor worshiper would react to being ridiculed at their base's bar for believing in a myth.
Try "from time eternal." Inflation is a consequence of a perpetually growing economy.
True. I only used 20 years because that's the last time I remember being able to buy something for a penny. I used to be able to buy penny candies at the convenience store; about 20 years ago the price went up to a nickel. Over my lifetime I've watched gumball machines gradually abandon pennies, then nickels, now dimes. Most coin-op vending machines charge at least $0.25 for a gumball, many require $0.50 (two quarters). That's been my metric for the utility of a coin - if I can't buy a gumball with it, it's worthless.
In of itself it's not a good thing or a bad thing. As long as other factors keep up, it just is. The US ditched the useless half-cent 150 years ago and we didn't devolve into an anarchistic Thunderdome... We'd survive losing the penny.
I agree completely. I think you perfectly restated exactly what I wanted to say.
I love this thread; my favorite way to finish an argument is to tell the other person we've got no point of disagreement =)
I think it's time our governments admitted that inflation over the past 20 years has made the penny worthless. We've long since abandoned the half penny, and good riddance. In 100 years it may be time to have $5 be the smallest unit. 3rd world countries deal with this on a regular basis, I think its just 1st world pride that's keeping us from following their example when it's obviously far past time.
When I was deployed to Iraq in '05 the smallest unit of change the PX would give was $0.25, and we all got by with that just fine. When the smallest coin a bubble gum machine will accept is a quarter there's no need for even my children to want any denomination smaller than that. The cost of manufacturing pennies, nickels, and dimes isn't worth the benefit. Add the cost banks and vendors incur in transporting these too-heavy-for-their-worth slabs of metal to the cost of their original manufacture and it's clearly a drain on the economy.
and this is pretty unlikely given that the U.S. doesn't have the sort of cozy, formal overlap of public and private sectors that France, China, or even Great Britain have
That would be why there's never been any suggestion at all of US commercial interests influencing foreign policy, then.
There's a difference between those two cases, which may seem small to you on a practical basis, but is significant from a policy standpoint.
You correctly point out that companies like Halliburton actively lobby the legislature and executive branch to do things like lower taxes on the oil & gas industry or re-authorize the U.S. Export-Import bank. The company's political contributions can be interpreted as bribes, with consequent improper influence over U.S. policy. I agree that's at best questionable, and at worst just plain corrupt. You're probably also aware of problems like regulatory capture, or you wouldn't have made the comment you did.
The French take this to a whole different level, though. Corporate security groups recognize the French National Intelligence services as active threats. In other words, Schlumberger (French competitor to Halliburton for global oilfield services) doesn't need to ask the French equivalent of the CIA to spy on Halliburton, the French spies do it proactively. The French government thinks it's their patriotic duty to help French companies get ahead on the global stage by committing national intelligence resources to corporate espionage. In the U.S.A. that sort of action by agents of the U.S. government on behalf of U.S. industry is illegal (even if the action took place off of U.S. soil).
I don't know where you're from. You may feel that there's nothing wrong with French spies working to help their National industries. You may feel that corporate political contributions are a greater evil than corporate espionage on a national level. As an American, though, I feel that the possibility that individual politicians can be corrupted by corporate bribes is much easier to accept than a national policy of working directly for corporate interests. YMMV.
Recording my movements to use against me in court is very much a search.
Uhhh, no it isn't. You wouldn't consider it a search if they followed you around, would you? That's recording your movements, and they can certainly use that record in court. The courts have spent a great deal of time discussing what is and isn't a search under the fourth, and "recording someone's movements" isn't.
[citation needed]
At the risk of turning this into a "nuh-uh"/"yuh-huh" level argument, my experience as a law enforcement officer is at odds with your statement. I served as a federal agent (U.S. Army jurisdiction) for 8 years, and our policy was that surveillance activities did constitute an intrusive search and required judicial oversight. The barrier for probable cause was lower for overt surveillance, as it is less intrusive of the subject's privacy if he's aware; however both overt and covert surveillance required a judge to sign off on it.
In theory, there's a "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine that makes the second set of evidence you mentioned prohibited as well; if the only reason they know about it is because they violated your rights in collecting the first set then it's all thrown out together. The tricky part for the defense is proving that the doctrine applies; that's what the discovery phase of the trial is supposed to be for, all investigation notes should be shared with the defense.
In practice, though, such notes probably "get lost" the same way that dashcam recordings go missing whenever they would incriminate an officer. In a just world that sort of shenanigan would get the case thrown out. In this one, pray that you got a really good lawyer.
Some of us soldiers refuse to use the coffee or tea for religious reasons, so I'd welcome an alternative wakefulness aid in the MRE.
As far as caffeine goes, though, it's probably being used because it's trusted. I remember reading a while back that any new wakefulness drug needs to be comparable to a 600mg dose of caffeine in order to be acceptable. I couldn't find the reference on that, but I did find a military-published study on effectiveness of caffeine, which seemed to endorse its continued use.
And while I agree with you that the acceptance process for new drugs should be sped up, I'm glad they're not using servicemen as guinea pigs in the process - it's bad enough that amphetamines are still used as "Go pills" routinely. On the other hand, Viagra went unusually quickly from off-schedule to prescription for ED, perhaps we just need to find the right leverage on the FDA admins =)
Actually, regardless of what's in that video, collection of intelligence against US Persons falls under the 4th amendment's "probable cause" umbrella. Unless a Federal judge has granted a warrant for collection of specific evidence of a crime, then this is one of the things that the Constitution tells the government that it specifically cannot do.
The fact that the DOJ wants to take a different interpretation based on the FICA and USAPATRIOT acts doesn't make it better, it makes it an intentionally perpetrated abomination.
Crazy idea: slashdot is a worlwide-reaching site. Why don't you post date/hours in terms of GMT?
Because the only USians who can deduct 6 from times are those with degrees....
Be fair now, those of us involved in invading the rest of the world know how to change our watches for the jump as well. They even taught me to count to 24! Although I did complete my degree the year after I separated from the military, so maybe that time zone thing the Army taught me about really did do the trick =)
Your vehicle is in plain sight. It is being observed in a specific location, just as if a police car drove past it and the officer noted it.
And yet, when I was a federally authorized agent, if I were to post agents on every street corner and have them record when a specific car passed each corner it would require judicial oversight. It's a form of surveillance, and has long been considered an intrusion on the subject's 4th amendment rights. Doing it to everyone all the time doesn't make it better, it makes it an atrocity.
Have you ever heard the joke about how different branches of the U.S. military "secure" a building? The NSA puchline would be "rig the building for demolition, then put the Big Red Button right next to the light switch.
Between my experience with STU-IIIs and being a Dune fan ("He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing") I'm really worried that the NSA has been tasked to create an internet kill switch, and that the "security" efforts they will soon recommend will be a pretext for the kill switch's creation. The NSA is the logical government agency to implement a kill switch, and designing the new security system would give them the access they'd need. Normally I hate conspiracy theories, but this is just creepy to me.
Footnotes: For all you coders out there, I meant "=", not "=="; in my opinion the NSA getting involved assigns the value "kill switch" to "secure".
Joke punchline origin: every piece of NSA designed hardware I've handled has a kill switch built in, and one of my biggest headaches was people asking "what does (PRESS) this do?". Quote from the STU-III handbook:
The STU-III battery backup allows power to be removed, as in a power failure or unplugging the unit to move it, without losing the encryption data. The zeroization button bypasses this backup and erases the encryption data. After zeroization, the STU-III must be rekeyed and the CIKs must be remade. The STU-III is zeroized:
In an Emergency. - If the STU-III is ever in danger of falling into hostile hands, zeroize it to prevent the adversary from obtaining a functional unit. . .
By Accident. - The accident usually follows an employee's curiosity. The employee starts playing with the buttons and zeroizes the unit. Be sure to brief your employees on the importance of not pressing or playing with the zeroization button. Refill the STU-III using a new seed key [or operational key].
I think the editors felt that the clause "Microsoft destroyed credibility" wasn't grammatically correct. I agree with you that the "[sic]" wasn't necessary, though; it may have been clearer if he said "destroyed Microsoft credibility" instead, but I understand it fine either way.
Nobody is going to donate the man-hours to write the software for my insurance agency or hospital.
Your ignorance is staggering. Not only is there a healthy open source health care software community, healthcare is probably one of the best candidates for the "industry that will most benefit from Open Source" award. Every time I hear about a doctor writing his own software to visualize the output from an MRI I cringe thinking about how much that code development cost his organization and patients, and that in all likelihood no other doctor or patient will benefit from that work.
Meanwhile, the public good that is coming from just one of the open medical programs, Open MRS, is incredible. The prospect of a de-facto global standard for medical records, designed by the people most interested in creating and using those records (ie. doctors, nurses, hospitals, etc), gives me warm fuzzies just thinking about it. Imagine being able to take an electronic copy of your medical history anywhere in the world and having a reasonable expectation that it will import cleanly into your new doctor's record system. Imagine global medical relief agencies being able to roll out software for their doctors that is both free and Free, localized into most major world languages, and with a robust user community for support and development.
RMS's vision of the future is already arriving, and I (for one) welcome our new Open-Source supported medical professionals.
I think that the fact we're debating the meaning of "sponsorship" as defined by the ASF's web page shows that there's some ambiguity here. I hope that Microsoft and the ASF came to a clear meeting of the minds on what kind of donation this was to be (one time vs. recurring), as it would reflect very poorly on the ASF if they didn't.
Unfortunately, I don't think that's really the point. While you were (accurately!) pointing out that my first argument was essentially a strawman you were also begging the question. The problem of ASF incompetence is smaller than the problem of Microsoft potentially acting in bad faith.
Let's assume for a moment that the ASF leadership is not incompetent, and they correctly interpreted what Microsoft intended to communicate with regards to continued donations or not. Whether Microsoft told the ASF that it was a one-time thing or a perpetual revenue stream, the money gives similar coercive power over the ASF to Microsoft. If this is supposed to be a perpetual revenue stream, then Microsoft can threaten to terminate their sponsorship if the ASF refuses to prioritize according to Microsoft's agenda. If the donation is one-time only, then Microsoft can tempt the ASF into prioritizing according to Microsoft's agenda by suggesting future donations may follow if Microsoft's desires are fulfilled. In both cases Microsoft has the power to steer the ASF towards Microsoft's own interests because of the money donated and the ASF's dependency on it.
If Microsoft is acting in bad faith here then they have the power to steer the ASF into a vulnerable position and then abandon the ASF financially at a critical time. This is where you get to call me paranoid again (and, again, you'd be right), but I really think that it was a poor decision on the ASF's part to accept money from a competitor who quite obviously has their own interests, which are likely to conflict with the ASF's.
Retarded management is the problem in your scenario, not donations from Microsoft.
I don't share your faith in the infallibility of ASF administrators.
Furthermore, I think you should check out the sponsorship page at the ASF's website. Becoming a sponsor is a commitment to ongoing support, not simply a one-time payment. One-time donations to the ASF are handled through a separate mechanism, without the public fanfare associated with the sponsorship program.
It seems fairly clear that Microsoft's "sponsorship" is, in fact, supposed to be a revenue stream for the ASF.
So, what part of the management's actions here are retarded? Correctly categorizing a promise of ongoing financial support? Hiring new workers, purchasing new equipment, and purchasing bandwidth contracts that are appropriate for the new budget?
It seems to me that the poor decision was to accept sponsorship from an organization whose interests are so obviously not aligned with the ASF and Free software in general.
Slashdot Mirror
An Arduino? For a military data system? Handled by PFCs and below? On a daily basis?
Fine, a hardened arduino. Standards exist for this. Military enclosures are a solved problem.
"Hey Bob, we just got five new guys transferring in. Go program all the guns." "Hey Bob, Bravo squad was out on a patrol when you did all the guns yesterday for the new guys. Go make sure all the guns are programmed." "Hey Bob, two guys transferred out. Go program all the guns again." "Hey Bob, ..." "If you say go program the guns again one more time, I'm going to smack you..."
Yep, that job's gonna suck, I'm not going to deny it. That's why the Sergeant will set up the program, then hand the (hardened!) programmer to the <= E3 for doing the rounds. Possibly multiple times daily. I expect the programmer to get thrown across the room more than once out of frustration and boredom.
In the days when I was issued an M16 on a regular basis, I was handed a weapons card with my name, weapon ID, and signature on it. When I drew my weapon from the armory, I handed the E1 behind the door my card, he went to the rack, picked up the weapon, put my card in its place, and handed me the M16. When I turned it in, the process went in reverse. The armorer had no idea who belonged to what weapon. The company admin did, maybe. Has that system changed in 25 years? Maybe. Maybe not. It worked and was simple.
Nope, that system hasn't changed, thank $diety. I don't think you gave your armorer enough credit, though; he probably had a list of every weapon and whose card it was matched to, I know mine did. Today, if he's good, it's both on paper and in the computer.
Plug in, system doesn't communicate. Look at gun, realize that is it a model 2 trigger lock and go back to the office to find the model 2 programmer that came in yesterday. What do you mean the shipment with the model 2 programmer isn't here yet? We got model 2s on the rack we need to program. Radar, get me General Hammond on the phone.
If the US military adopts this kind of "feature", then we know the game is over and we might as well all learn Korean or Chinese.
And this is where the two of us agree completely. The day the U.S. Army adds something like this to the arsenal I'll know we finally stopped taking combat seriously. There's no way Combat Arms would get talked into adding another point of failure to the M16, it's bad enough already. And fielding a rifle that requires both a clean connector and fresh batteries to operate is a non-starter. My point wasn't that this system would be a good idea.
All I was trying to say is that the logistics of data management isn't as bad as it seems at first glance. Most of the data should already be in place in the Armory; add a fingerprint scanner to the armorer's laptop (Admin's laptop already has one, so the supply chain is in place) and you've got everything you need even if Admin doesn't want to share their toys. A flat file, a folder of data, and a small script give you the data load. All that's missing is a documented procedure and I can easily see this system being logistically manageable. A useless, potentially deadly, worse-than-worthless pain in the third point of contact, but totally manageable.
I cannot imagine what a nightmare it will be to manage weapons access thru fingerprints into a large military unit.
I don't know; with the right equipment (arduino board with a memory card?) all the armorer would have to do is walk down the rack with his interface deck and upload the relevant files. I'd assume that either the entire unit would be authorized for all weapons or that each unit would be keyed to its assigned bearer. The Admin branch has all of the fingerprints on file, and the armorer should have a list matching arms to soldiers. The work to make this job suitable for a private would be fairly minimal, especially if the programming equipment can query the weapon for its serial number - plug in, wait while the program checks the serial and uploads the appropriate print profiles, unplug; lather, rinse, repeat.
That's the exact opposite of my experience; when my U.S. Army armorer issued my weapon it was always the same one. I had a card I'd hand him with the weapon buttstock number and serial number printed on it; we'd both verify that the weapon issued matched my card at check-in and check-out. I also had my serial number memorized, so the card was somewhat redundant.
I rather appreciated being the only one to handle, fire, and care for it; I don't think I'd have the same confidence in a weapon that was subject to the tragedy of the commons. When I'm issued a weapon I'd like to be sure that it's well-maintained and ready to function immediately, not spend the next hour or so cleaning and inspecting it for deficiencies. This is definitely one of those times when if you want something done right you really ought to do it yourself.
Furthermore, rifles ought to be sighted in to the user; you can't pick up a random M-16 and expect to hit a target at 300 yards. I had my own sighting numbers written down as well, should the case arise that I would need to pick up a random rifle and use it; however, changing the front sight on an M16 or M4 is cumbersome without a specialized key, and the person a rifle is assigned to can get huffy if you return it with the sights changed.
tl;dr:
I don't know where you served, but if you were not always issued the same weapon then your armorer was lazy and didn't care enough about your welfare. Please tell me what organization that was so I can make sure I never join it.
Oh, is that all you need? Un-jamable near instantaneous communications? Why don't we invent the perpetual motion machine while we're at it? All the fancy new drone toys we have are fine and dandy up to the point someone figures out the man-in-the-middle attack needed to crash them, or worse, take them over. (See: Iran & GPS spoofiing the stealth reconaissance drone.)
You laugh, but it's pretty hard to jam modern military radio. The frequency hopping method used by radios as old as the SINCGARS makes interrupting transmissions very difficult - the jamming signal would need to exceed the transmission's signal strength across the entire possible spectrum simultaneously. BTW, the wiki article is wrong; frequency hopping doesn't prevent eavesdropping, multichannel receivers can be purchased off-the-shelf which will pick up the entire transmission regardless of how many hops per second are made. You need encryption on top of frequency hopping to make the message secure.
The point is that un-jamable high-bandwidh comms already exist, and latency is the only major concern left for remotely piloted fighter planes. Just because the CIA bought drones that trust the GPS more than their own internal maps and terrain recognition doesn't meant the Air Force would do the same, or that a remote pilot would perform a controlled flight into ground because his instruments said he had plenty of altitude.
We're not as far from this as you might think.
For the sake of discussion only, let's assume that the U.S. does indeed intend to arrest, publicly humiliate, and then execute Assange for his role in Wikileaks; the Ecuadorean embassy believes this enough to grant asylum, after all. Why him, personally? Why not every member of his organization?
Because his role in the organization is easy to prove, and his involvement with publication of inconvenient facts is undeniable. Attacking the leader was always an accepted practice, in peace time and in war time. It is also the most beneficial practice. What is more humane, to slaughter 100,000 soldiers or to kill one dictator who sent them to war?
<godwin>By that logic the Nuremberg trials were unnecessary, and Hitler's generals should have been pardoned.</godwin>
More recently, Slobodan Milosevic was captured and died in prison; despite this, Ratko Mladic is on trial at the Hague for his own crimes.
The work at Wikileaks carries on despite Assange's forced absence. Assange certainly has high-level associates who are carrying on the work and are equally guilty of the espionage charges being levied against him. If the U.S. government were truly interested in pursuing justice then it would also bring similar accusations against the rest of Assange's lieutenants for their involvement.
I'll concede that lack of jurisdiction and the relative anonymity of these lieutenants may make them difficult to reach from the United States. Embarrassing Assange personally may be the only option available to those seeking to punish him for his actions. This does not mean that it should be done. It is hypocritical to engage in a "war on terror" while simultaneously employing terrorists' methods, and engaging in psychological operations against journalists who would receive and publish embarrassing secrets strays too close to that line for my comfort.
I'm replying here instead of to one of the many other responses to this post, many quibbling over definitions. IMHO the arguments surrounding the definition are all pointless and off-the-mark, and I'll throw my support behind girlintraining's position that the UK is wrong to do this. I also agree that it's not terrorism.
Let's try a different definition of terrorism, one used by an actual counter-terrorism organization (U.S. Army intel):
The threat or use of violence intended to influence parties other than the immediate victim.
It's short, easy to understand, and widely applicable. Threaten to kill hostages unless your friends are released from prison? Terrorism. Waging direct war against another sovereign nation's military? Not terrorism. Applying fines of US$1.5million to a single offender for file sharing, to "set an example for others"? Questionable, depending on your definition of "violence", but I'd count it (especially if the "others" are being allowed to settle for < US$10k). It doesn't matter who does it or why by this definition; if you're doing something to one person in order to make someone else do what you want, it's terrorism.
By that standard, the UK threatening the Ecuadorian government with severance of diplomatic ties is not terrorism, just application of an ungodly amount of political leverage. The Ecuadorian embassy and Assange himself are the immediate victims, and the UK is only attempting to influence their actions, not the actions of others. So, no, I don't think this is terrorism. It's simply unconscionable, disproportionate, and wrong.
Unfortunately, the point is moot because the real terrorist in this scenario would be the United States. For the sake of discussion only, let's assume that the U.S. does indeed intend to arrest, publicly humiliate, and then execute Assange for his role in Wikileaks; the Ecuadorean embassy believes this enough to grant asylum, after all. Why him, personally? Why not every member of his organization? Why single Assange out for selective and disproportionate punishment and largely ignore the rest of his staff? If the answer is "to serve as a warning to those who would expose secrets", then the United States is engaging in terrorism, and Ecuador is right to refuse to cooperate with the UK in enabling it.
Bravo Ecuador, indeed.
I'll back up couchslug on the idea that the capes were probably part of an early form of MOPP gear. There are cape-style soviet designs, maybe some of these were captured?
Speaking of missing equipment, there should have been 2PAM-Chloride autoinjectors as well, they ought to have been packaged together (at least, they are today when distributed to soldiers). I hear that that the 2PAM vials get abused by snipers as muscle relaxants, though, so they may have walked away some time before your inspection...
Wow, I didn't intend to make this personal for anybody. Dave, I'll back you up by agreeing that we're both trying our best to tell it like it is. We may have philosophical differences on how it should be, but that's what discussion is for; I'll try to keep name calling out of it.
Just so we're clear, I'm actually OK with how things were pre-USA PATRIOT act. The tools necessary for our intel services to do their jobs were in place, and balanced with judicial oversight. U.S. citizens were protected from prosecution based on illegally obtained information and (in my agency, at least) we understood that if we - by mistake or deliberately - violated the constitution in our investigation that our options became limited (no prosecution), but we still had some tools at our disposal for keeping our nation and its secrets safe.
I'm not OK with the warrantless wiretapping, national security letters issued under gag order with no judicial review, etc. I can just hear Darth Sidious' voice saying "I'll make it legal". There needs to be accountability for the actions of these agencies, and judicial oversight/review gives that. Thanks, too, Dave, for mentioning the Oversight office; most federal intel agencies do have a strong culture of respect for citizens' rights, and where I was a lot of work went into making sure we were doing the right thing.
For what it's worth, I'd like to think that I'd still have made these comments while I was active. I don't think I've disclosed any classified methods or sources here, just philosophy. Talking bad about the sitting president could have gotten me in trouble, though =P Hatta, my philosophy may move me into the "no good spook" category with you; I'm sorry if that's the case. My reading of this thread, though, sounds like three people who all largely agree and are, unfortunately, talking past one another. We all three agree that accountability is needed, Dave and I generally agree on consequences/lack thereof for illegal searches, and Hatta and I seem to agree that the current process isn't transparent enough. let's try to keep it civil.
I'm a few years out of the game myself, and from a different intel branch, but I'll take a stab at answering your questions:
So what you're saying is that an NSA agent must prove that someone is a foreigner before collecting data on them? To whom do they have to prove it? What are the consequences if they fail to do so?
To my understanding the check for whether a subject is a U.S. Person should happen before any intrusions on their privacy occur. In practice, though, the investigating team can do pretty much whatever they want provided that they don't care to press criminal charges. If a court case ever were to occur, the investigators would be asked by the judge to show evidence of their due diligence. There are many other avenues for neutralizing intelligence threats that don't rely on judicial action; neither stripping government employees of security clearance nor deportation of non-citizens requires a judge or compliance with constitutional protections. The main consequence of violating a subject's constitutional rights is that any court case to prosecute will have illegally obtained evidence thrown out and will likely fail.
What actual consequences would an NSA agent face if they did ignore that fact? How would it be discovered? How often has this happened?
So far the only actual safeguard you've offered is "trust us". Can you at least try to understand that that's not good enough?
To the NSA? I don't know. Maybe nothing. I don't know how it would be discovered, especially if the actions taken in response don't involve courts. And there's no way to know (from the outside) how often it happens. For what it's worth, I agree that "trust us" is not good enough, and that it would be better to have a judge sign off on anything questionable as a matter of policy and standard procedure, even if it were after the fact. At least there would be someone capable of reminding them when what they're doing is unconstitutional.
So the president is complicit in the unconstitutional wiretapping of US citizens and that's supposed to make us feel better?
Nope, I don't feel any better about that at all.
Also, as a technical matter, how does one capture the packets of foreigners without also capturing the packets of citizens? At the very least, doesn't the NSA have to store and analyze the packet to determine whether it belongs to a US citizen or not? At that point, hasn't the law prohibiting collecting, storing, and analyzing the communications of US citizens already been broken?
I don't know the answer to that, either. "Advanced filtering" sounds a lot like "trust us". Analysis in RAM without storage to disk I think would be OK, but it doesn't sound like they're doing it like that. I think they're on the wrong side of the line there, but it's the side of the line that lets less data slip away so I can understand how they got there (even if I don't agree with it).
By whom, and what consequences can we expect this criminal to suffer?
See above; probably nothing. Just like cops running a bad investigation don't get fired when they botch it on constitutional grounds, intel agents don't go to jail for violating U.S. citizens' rights.
Is it only demeaning if the beliefs are held by a major segment? There are still people who believe in or honor the Norse gods too, but I have yet to hear anyone get upset about the phrase "North Mythology".
I'll give you your report about Norse mythology getting people upset, then. During my time in the Army I got to spend some time doing joint ops with the Norwegian military. I was given stern warnings by my buddies that the guys wearing hammer tattoos in the bar on base were not safe to taunt regarding their religion. Reason given: it's likely to get a violent response. I'm sure that when they're sober they would take some friendly ribbing just fine, but I felt no desire to see how a drunk Thor worshiper would react to being ridiculed at their base's bar for believing in a myth.
"20 years"?
Try "from time eternal." Inflation is a consequence of a perpetually growing economy.
True. I only used 20 years because that's the last time I remember being able to buy something for a penny. I used to be able to buy penny candies at the convenience store; about 20 years ago the price went up to a nickel. Over my lifetime I've watched gumball machines gradually abandon pennies, then nickels, now dimes. Most coin-op vending machines charge at least $0.25 for a gumball, many require $0.50 (two quarters). That's been my metric for the utility of a coin - if I can't buy a gumball with it, it's worthless.
In of itself it's not a good thing or a bad thing. As long as other factors keep up, it just is. The US ditched the useless half-cent 150 years ago and we didn't devolve into an anarchistic Thunderdome... We'd survive losing the penny.
I agree completely. I think you perfectly restated exactly what I wanted to say.
I love this thread; my favorite way to finish an argument is to tell the other person we've got no point of disagreement =)
I think it's time our governments admitted that inflation over the past 20 years has made the penny worthless. We've long since abandoned the half penny, and good riddance. In 100 years it may be time to have $5 be the smallest unit. 3rd world countries deal with this on a regular basis, I think its just 1st world pride that's keeping us from following their example when it's obviously far past time.
When I was deployed to Iraq in '05 the smallest unit of change the PX would give was $0.25, and we all got by with that just fine. When the smallest coin a bubble gum machine will accept is a quarter there's no need for even my children to want any denomination smaller than that. The cost of manufacturing pennies, nickels, and dimes isn't worth the benefit. Add the cost banks and vendors incur in transporting these too-heavy-for-their-worth slabs of metal to the cost of their original manufacture and it's clearly a drain on the economy.
and this is pretty unlikely given that the U.S. doesn't have the sort of cozy, formal overlap of public and private sectors that France, China, or even Great Britain have
That would be why there's never been any suggestion at all of US commercial interests influencing foreign policy, then.
There's a difference between those two cases, which may seem small to you on a practical basis, but is significant from a policy standpoint.
You correctly point out that companies like Halliburton actively lobby the legislature and executive branch to do things like lower taxes on the oil & gas industry or re-authorize the U.S. Export-Import bank. The company's political contributions can be interpreted as bribes, with consequent improper influence over U.S. policy. I agree that's at best questionable, and at worst just plain corrupt. You're probably also aware of problems like regulatory capture, or you wouldn't have made the comment you did.
The French take this to a whole different level, though. Corporate security groups recognize the French National Intelligence services as active threats. In other words, Schlumberger (French competitor to Halliburton for global oilfield services) doesn't need to ask the French equivalent of the CIA to spy on Halliburton, the French spies do it proactively. The French government thinks it's their patriotic duty to help French companies get ahead on the global stage by committing national intelligence resources to corporate espionage. In the U.S.A. that sort of action by agents of the U.S. government on behalf of U.S. industry is illegal (even if the action took place off of U.S. soil).
I don't know where you're from. You may feel that there's nothing wrong with French spies working to help their National industries. You may feel that corporate political contributions are a greater evil than corporate espionage on a national level. As an American, though, I feel that the possibility that individual politicians can be corrupted by corporate bribes is much easier to accept than a national policy of working directly for corporate interests. YMMV.
Recording my movements to use against me in court is very much a search.
Uhhh, no it isn't. You wouldn't consider it a search if they followed you around, would you? That's recording your movements, and they can certainly use that record in court. The courts have spent a great deal of time discussing what is and isn't a search under the fourth, and "recording someone's movements" isn't.
[citation needed]
At the risk of turning this into a "nuh-uh"/"yuh-huh" level argument, my experience as a law enforcement officer is at odds with your statement. I served as a federal agent (U.S. Army jurisdiction) for 8 years, and our policy was that surveillance activities did constitute an intrusive search and required judicial oversight. The barrier for probable cause was lower for overt surveillance, as it is less intrusive of the subject's privacy if he's aware; however both overt and covert surveillance required a judge to sign off on it.
In theory, there's a "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine that makes the second set of evidence you mentioned prohibited as well; if the only reason they know about it is because they violated your rights in collecting the first set then it's all thrown out together. The tricky part for the defense is proving that the doctrine applies; that's what the discovery phase of the trial is supposed to be for, all investigation notes should be shared with the defense.
In practice, though, such notes probably "get lost" the same way that dashcam recordings go missing whenever they would incriminate an officer. In a just world that sort of shenanigan would get the case thrown out. In this one, pray that you got a really good lawyer.
Some of us soldiers refuse to use the coffee or tea for religious reasons, so I'd welcome an alternative wakefulness aid in the MRE.
As far as caffeine goes, though, it's probably being used because it's trusted. I remember reading a while back that any new wakefulness drug needs to be comparable to a 600mg dose of caffeine in order to be acceptable. I couldn't find the reference on that, but I did find a military-published study on effectiveness of caffeine, which seemed to endorse its continued use.
And while I agree with you that the acceptance process for new drugs should be sped up, I'm glad they're not using servicemen as guinea pigs in the process - it's bad enough that amphetamines are still used as "Go pills" routinely. On the other hand, Viagra went unusually quickly from off-schedule to prescription for ED, perhaps we just need to find the right leverage on the FDA admins =)
Actually, regardless of what's in that video, collection of intelligence against US Persons falls under the 4th amendment's "probable cause" umbrella. Unless a Federal judge has granted a warrant for collection of specific evidence of a crime, then this is one of the things that the Constitution tells the government that it specifically cannot do.
The fact that the DOJ wants to take a different interpretation based on the FICA and USAPATRIOT acts doesn't make it better, it makes it an intentionally perpetrated abomination.
Crazy idea: slashdot is a worlwide-reaching site. Why don't you post date/hours in terms of GMT?
Because the only USians who can deduct 6 from times are those with degrees....
Be fair now, those of us involved in invading the rest of the world know how to change our watches for the jump as well. They even taught me to count to 24! Although I did complete my degree the year after I separated from the military, so maybe that time zone thing the Army taught me about really did do the trick =)
Your vehicle is in plain sight. It is being observed in a specific location, just as if a police car drove past it and the officer noted it.
And yet, when I was a federally authorized agent, if I were to post agents on every street corner and have them record when a specific car passed each corner it would require judicial oversight. It's a form of surveillance, and has long been considered an intrusion on the subject's 4th amendment rights. Doing it to everyone all the time doesn't make it better, it makes it an atrocity.
This press statement makes me really worried. Considering the recent news about Congress wanting a kill switch for the Internet, an NSA announcement that it will "secure" the internet sounds like spin.
Have you ever heard the joke about how different branches of the U.S. military "secure" a building? The NSA puchline would be "rig the building for demolition, then put the Big Red Button right next to the light switch.
Between my experience with STU-IIIs and being a Dune fan ("He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing") I'm really worried that the NSA has been tasked to create an internet kill switch, and that the "security" efforts they will soon recommend will be a pretext for the kill switch's creation. The NSA is the logical government agency to implement a kill switch, and designing the new security system would give them the access they'd need. Normally I hate conspiracy theories, but this is just creepy to me.
Footnotes:
For all you coders out there, I meant "=", not "=="; in my opinion the NSA getting involved assigns the value "kill switch" to "secure".
Joke punchline origin: every piece of NSA designed hardware I've handled has a kill switch built in, and one of my biggest headaches was people asking "what does (PRESS) this do?". Quote from the STU-III handbook:
The STU-III battery backup allows power to be removed, as in a power failure or unplugging the unit to move it, without losing the encryption data. The zeroization button bypasses this backup and erases the encryption data. After zeroization, the STU-III must be rekeyed and the CIKs must be remade. The STU-III is zeroized:
In an Emergency. - If the STU-III is ever in danger of falling into hostile hands, zeroize it to prevent the adversary from obtaining a functional unit. . .
By Accident. - The accident usually follows an employee's curiosity. The employee starts playing with the buttons and zeroizes the unit. Be sure to brief your employees on the importance of not pressing or playing with the zeroization button. Refill the STU-III using a new seed key [or operational key].
I think the editors felt that the clause "Microsoft destroyed credibility" wasn't grammatically correct. I agree with you that the "[sic]" wasn't necessary, though; it may have been clearer if he said "destroyed Microsoft credibility" instead, but I understand it fine either way.
Your ignorance is staggering. Not only is there a healthy open source health care software community, healthcare is probably one of the best candidates for the "industry that will most benefit from Open Source" award. Every time I hear about a doctor writing his own software to visualize the output from an MRI I cringe thinking about how much that code development cost his organization and patients, and that in all likelihood no other doctor or patient will benefit from that work.
Meanwhile, the public good that is coming from just one of the open medical programs, Open MRS, is incredible. The prospect of a de-facto global standard for medical records, designed by the people most interested in creating and using those records (ie. doctors, nurses, hospitals, etc), gives me warm fuzzies just thinking about it. Imagine being able to take an electronic copy of your medical history anywhere in the world and having a reasonable expectation that it will import cleanly into your new doctor's record system. Imagine global medical relief agencies being able to roll out software for their doctors that is both free and Free, localized into most major world languages, and with a robust user community for support and development.
RMS's vision of the future is already arriving, and I (for one) welcome our new Open-Source supported medical professionals.
I think that the fact we're debating the meaning of "sponsorship" as defined by the ASF's web page shows that there's some ambiguity here. I hope that Microsoft and the ASF came to a clear meeting of the minds on what kind of donation this was to be (one time vs. recurring), as it would reflect very poorly on the ASF if they didn't.
Unfortunately, I don't think that's really the point. While you were (accurately!) pointing out that my first argument was essentially a strawman you were also begging the question. The problem of ASF incompetence is smaller than the problem of Microsoft potentially acting in bad faith.
Let's assume for a moment that the ASF leadership is not incompetent, and they correctly interpreted what Microsoft intended to communicate with regards to continued donations or not. Whether Microsoft told the ASF that it was a one-time thing or a perpetual revenue stream, the money gives similar coercive power over the ASF to Microsoft. If this is supposed to be a perpetual revenue stream, then Microsoft can threaten to terminate their sponsorship if the ASF refuses to prioritize according to Microsoft's agenda. If the donation is one-time only, then Microsoft can tempt the ASF into prioritizing according to Microsoft's agenda by suggesting future donations may follow if Microsoft's desires are fulfilled. In both cases Microsoft has the power to steer the ASF towards Microsoft's own interests because of the money donated and the ASF's dependency on it.
If Microsoft is acting in bad faith here then they have the power to steer the ASF into a vulnerable position and then abandon the ASF financially at a critical time. This is where you get to call me paranoid again (and, again, you'd be right), but I really think that it was a poor decision on the ASF's part to accept money from a competitor who quite obviously has their own interests, which are likely to conflict with the ASF's.
I don't share your faith in the infallibility of ASF administrators.
Furthermore, I think you should check out the sponsorship page at the ASF's website. Becoming a sponsor is a commitment to ongoing support, not simply a one-time payment. One-time donations to the ASF are handled through a separate mechanism, without the public fanfare associated with the sponsorship program.
It seems fairly clear that Microsoft's "sponsorship" is, in fact, supposed to be a revenue stream for the ASF.
So, what part of the management's actions here are retarded? Correctly categorizing a promise of ongoing financial support? Hiring new workers, purchasing new equipment, and purchasing bandwidth contracts that are appropriate for the new budget?
It seems to me that the poor decision was to accept sponsorship from an organization whose interests are so obviously not aligned with the ASF and Free software in general.