10 ms·

With all honesty, if you're a programmer or a hacker working for GCHQ (I'm certain there are some of you around here) you should really bury your head in shame.

• rdtsc 11y ago
  A fat paycheck and job security can do wonders in solving those pesky cognitive dissonance issues.
  • pen2l 11y ago
    That's true. Truer than people would think. The funny thing is, I've seen the very people who were passionately against these things join these organizations, because they pay well. I don't entirely fault them -- gotta put food on the plate.
    • forgotpwtomain 11y ago
      I don't excuse them in the least, there is no one working a programming job that can't afford to "put food on the table" -- independent of their employer.
      • pen2l 11y ago
        > there is no one working a programming job that can't afford to "put food on the table" -- independent of their employer. Okay, see, you are just wrong there. I personally know about 5 people who are crazy good programmers (systems programming and all) who have been unable to find jobs. They say they have trouble finding employment because of their age... time commitments (can only put in 40 hours, need to take care of kids), etc. It absolutely is the fact that some of these people take these jobs because they pay competitively and meet with their requirements. I know this because I personally know some of them and they told me exactly this.
        • fit2rule 11y ago
          Tell those people they are contributing to the downfall of modern, civilized society, by participating in a secret state within the state, over which no average citizen has any control. They are creating a neo-feudalistic society which, in just a few generations, may well be the motivation for severe violent uprising and revolt from within. No society that ever perpetuated a "surveillance class" ever survived long. Instead of more repressive technology, give them a dose of history.
        • ericd 11y ago
          I'm sorry, but while I can believe that they may have some hard choices to make (moving somewhere else, accepting a pay cut, having to go back to school, taking out debt), it doesn't excuse the damage they're doing to society. People like the ones you're describing do have options, they may just not be ones they like as much.
  • blibble 11y ago
    there's no fat pay cheques at GCHQ, they're well known for paying 2-3 times less than the private sector: http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2015/05/gchqs-government-sancitoned-hackers-wanted-28000-salary/ http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2015/05/gchqs-government-sancitoned... it really makes you wonder what sort of people their roles appeal to...
    • anonymousDan 11y ago
      I actually know a few people who work there. All well educated (ex-Cambridge), but the one thing they have in common is that they are very religious. I'd be interested to know about the prevalence of strong religious beliefs in their staff in comparison to people with similar levels of education in the general population.
      • blibble 11y ago
        were they Mathematical Tripos graduates out of interest? almost all of the mathmos I knew really thought GCHQ would be an amazing place to work, and about 50% ended up there, with the other 50% at quant funds (more or less correlated with religion). this was of course prior to the Snowden disclosures, I'm not sure it's such a hot place to work these days...
        • anonymousDan 11y ago
          Yes mostly, with those who weren't coming from Physics/NatSci.
      • Theodores 11y ago
        Utah? The NSA hire Mormons because they do as they are told and believe in stupid things. So you might be onto something. I grew up in the shadow of the doughnut (it was sheds then) and they recruited 'second 11' folks from my school, the ones that didn't get A's. The buy in is that they can pay a mortgage, brings some more kids into the world and not have to leave Gloucestershire. They are all kept in little boxes so none know the big picture, except they believe they are protecting the world from Osama/kiddie porn. Although no hard evidence, I believe the doughnut people also have everyone's school reports too. Imagine the lengths or procedures in place to do that. Yep, the spy on kids.
• cryoshon 11y ago
  And yet here in the US where there is similar, the NSA is viewed as a refuge for the "best and brightest" and "most patriotic". People nod approvingly when they learn someone works at the NSA, even in light of the disclosures. Who has the courage to shame these people to their face for collaborating in our oppression? It's easy to wax poetic and spit fire on the internet, but it's much harder to actually shun someone standing in front of you.
  • bufordsharkley 11y ago
    Really? In my circles, anyone working for Palantir (much less the NSA itself) is considered disgusting.
    • branchless 11y ago
      I'd imagine many working on this won't tell you their real job. For example when you apply for MI5 stuff in the UK you cannot tell people your actual job. God knows how many there are doing these jobs.
    • coroxout 11y ago
      It helps that British geeks love James Bond and Alan Turing, and at GCHQ they get to play at being both - although you'd have to hope some of them have wondered if this time round they might not be the unequivocal good guys. Also, if you get a reputation for hiring the brightest and best, you also get people who've spent so long being told they're the brightest and best that they may have little concern for whatever lesser beings get spied on, shamed, discredited, disenfranchised during their fun intellectual challenges. Right, I'm on a list somewhere now! Hi echelon.
      • fit2rule 11y ago
        GCHQ have a brainwashing program that is designed to keep their staff in line with the status quo. If you so much as step into an interview, you have joined their cult. And it IS a cult, make no doubt about it!
      • 11y ago
• nailer 11y ago
  It's a pity they have a hiring booth at jQuery UK, which is otherwise a great conference.
• 3pt14159 11y ago
  Really? Do you really expect intelligence organizations not to do this? This is what we pay them to do. International relations is anarchy. We shouldn't be blaming GCHQ we should be lauding Snowden while building surveillance hardened systems.
  • JosephRedfern 11y ago
    "This is what we pay them to do". Who do you mean by we? Sure, we pay tax, but I don't remember ticking the "I'd like to sign up to pay for GCHQ to monitor people porn habits" box on my tax return. If the government were building a device to blow up the moon, would saying "that's what we pay them to do" (due to us paying tax) be a valid excuse?
    • 3pt14159 11y ago
      This is a very naive viewpoint. States around the world are going to tap communication cables. It is not blowing up the moon, which is a silly comparison. States rely on information to make decisions, and outside of their borders with not restrain themselves. We can ask them to change but they won't. We're better off just encrypting our systems.
  • yarrel 11y ago
    Really? You expect plumbers not to flood tower blocks and drown everyone in them? Plumbing is what they do!!1
  • mikosty 11y ago
    Still somebody makes a decision to contribute to these systems. Most of those people think they do the right thing I believe. It is important to show that this kind of surveillance is clearly wrong and painfully shameful to be part of.
  • dreamfactory2 11y ago
    Yes, I actually do expect them not to be the kind of morons who could decide it's smart to hoover, aggregate, and store a toxic mountain of data which massively undermines personal and state security. There's a reason for external oversight and governance - you don't need malice in a large organisation to get a really shitty outcome, just a bunch of cogs in the machine each chasing local optima.
• Afforess 11y ago
  I completely disagree. GCHQ, NSA, CIA, et al do serve a legitimate purpose. The world is not all roses and sunshine, there are rogue nation-states and rogue actors, and they do want to harm the public. It is the duty of the government to protect its citizens from attackers. These agencies exist to protect the public by identifying threats, and preventing attacks. I know you are upset about the spying on private citizens for deceptive purposes, but lets not throw out the good with the bad. Yes, the agencies are overzealous and have overstepped their mandate, but that does not mean every single person working for them is an evil person out to get you. Real people work there, and nearly all of them probably have nothing to do with this. Reform, not harassing innocent bystanders, should be the aim here.
  • Silhouette 11y ago
    It's sad that some people are downvoting the parent post. It makes a valid point in a reasonable way. There certainly are problems with the excessive government surveillance -- it is also the duty of a government in any civilised, democratic nation to protect its citizens from itself, after all. However, it seems unconstructive to go all gung-ho against people who are probably mostly just trying to do some good from what is inevitably sometimes an awkward position. It's like arguing we'd be better without a police force because sometimes bad people manage to become police officers and sometimes their colleagues can't just flick a switch and shut them off, or arguing that we shouldn't invest in military forces because it gives the government the power to kill people from afar and in any case diplomacy is preferable to violence. Those things may all be true, but that doesn't mean we'd really be better off if the organisations with a degree of corruption or inadequate safeguards were eliminated rather than fixed.
    • fit2rule 11y ago
      Godwin. That is all.
    • vezzy-fnord 11y ago
      At least so far as police forces are concerned, they can't really be reformed. The police is fundamentally a paramilitary unit that serves the interests of a state, not private citizens. You can make the case that such an evil is preferable to abolishing it entirely, but ultimately the odds are stacked against it achieving any positive equilibrium, only trying to keep it as contained as possible.
• fit2rule 11y ago
  I concur. I once knew someone who worked for GCHQ, making hardware devices. Once it was revealed to me the extent to which he was involved in producing these heinous devices, I lost all respect for him - especially when his authoritarian side came out and he justified his continued involvement by implying that the lives of my children were at stake because "secret reasons I can't tell you about". NO! THIS IS NOT HOW A FREE SOCIETY WORKS! The corruption of government begins with its secrets. A truly free people keep no secrets. If you continue to justify this corruption, you are encouraging the downfall of Western society. We did not attain the heights we have through secrecy and class warfare disguised as security theatre. We must discourage involvement in these organizations to the same degree that we discourage teenagers from going on jihad. It is truly the same degree of bigotry and intolerance which allows such machinations to persist in our society - on the one hand, violent extremism. On the other hand: covert extremism. My former GCHQ-supporting associate recently left, to start his own hardware company in an unrelated (non-surveillance-state) field. As much as I appreciate his design and skill at producing appealing devices (synthesizers), I strongly boycott his business. We must punish this "secret clearance class" of society with utter disdain, disrespect, shame and discouragement. We must not let future generations rise to assume that this totalitarian/authoritarian control system is the norm - it may be too late, but nevertheless, civil discouragement must be perpetuated in light of the total failure of our supposed democratic institutions to protect us from this covert violence.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• MichaelGG 11y ago
  Meh, it's fairly inevitable. Systems are only getting bigger and more competent. This kind of stuff requires resources and some solid thinking about algorithms and data structures. No doubt they could publish some amazing papers. But I don't suspect they have revolutionary breakthroughs ala the NSA with crypto. I've written a small-scale system for VoIP calls, to archive and index all network traffic - it's amazingly useful for debugging. Several years back, on a single quad-core machine with 1 disk, I was able to handle 5TB (several billion messages) of signalling data per day - indexing, archiving, searching. I'm nothing amazing. (I went to SF thinking I could somehow turn this indexing system into amazing profit. First guy I showed says "oh yeah I recognize this, go get <some intro db textbook>". Oops, so much for breakthrough ideas.) A team of me-equivalents (with some that _have_ gone to school) and a nice budget could end up designing something like these spy systems. They aren't the Manhattan Project requiring new knowledge no one in the world has. I'm no 3-sigma intellect. There are dozens of millions of people more intelligent than me. Complaining about it and shaming engineers will not work against such critical projects.
  • objclxt 11y ago
    > But I don't suspect they have revolutionary breakthroughs ala the NSA with crypto. I wouldn't be so sure - GCHQ recruits heavily from Cambridge and Oxford, and I once met a Mathematics PhD who told me in the UK his two main options for employment were academia or the service. They have a lot of crypto talent there and they're not working on the big data systems talked about here.
    • MichaelGG 11y ago
      Yes I only meant in context of this program which seems so reprehensible. I don't think anyone has anything against them doing crypto.
  • elchief 11y ago
    > But I don't suspect they have revolutionary breakthroughs ala the NSA with crypto Besides inventing public key cryptography?
• geographomics 11y ago
  Privacy issues aside - after all, these programmes have scant interest in the average citizen - these look like fascinating projects to work on from a technical point of view, compared to most software development jobs. And it's surely a more ethical pursuit than, say, writing control software for missile targeting systems.
• zenocon 11y ago
  Wouldn't it be fantastic if there were a coup in the CIA/NSA/GCHQ, etc. of all tech people who just started deleting data on a massive scale surreptitiously. When the dept. heads were like, "WTF happened to the numbers on all the porn viewers...they just kinda shrugged their shoulders and said...'dunno..guess people got bored with porn'"... Replace porn with '*' and now we're really cooking...
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]