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After just having watched Oliver Stone's "Snowden" last night it's hard to avoid wondering if there are any potential Snowdens in the GCHQ... It's also a sober

After just having watched Oliver Stone's "Snowden" last night it's hard to avoid wondering if there are any potential Snowdens in the GCHQ... It's also a sobering thought that the people who wrote this stuff (seems neat) may be able to uncover my deepest secrets in seconds if they were so inclined. And being geeks, I'm sure they read this. gulp (As far as I can tell, github.com/gchq is from the actual GCHQ.) This is mostly a job ad. Don't go there. It's not moral.

askl56 10y ago
What do you mean by it's a job ad?
- johansch 10y ago
  Why do you think the GCHQ is publishing stuff that appeals the developers/hackers rather than just being secretive? Of course it's similar to a corporate branding exercise. There's a hard fight for tech talent these days.
- duiker101 10y ago
  I think johansch means to say this is something someone should have made only to add to his cv or similar(not even fully sure) rather than something that people should use. No one is telling the user what he should use this for, there's plenty of situations where you might want to convert/encrypt/elaborate data without being launch codes for nuclear missiles and this seems like a pretty good tool, all browser based too, opposite of many other more famous tools that require communication with a server.
  - throwaway2016a 10y ago
    I think he is actually saying it is an effort to get people to say "look at the cool stuff we make" and go work for the organization. In this case that organization appears to be the UK equivalent of the CIA/NSA in the US and he clearly feels their mission erodes people's rights.
  - johansch 10y ago
    I guess I should have been more explicit. I am not talking about the actual encryption/decryption/data-wrangling stuff in this HTML page. All of this is obviously very neat and very usable. The reason I do think this is a job ad is the fact that it's the GCHQ that is publishing it. Seriously, a spook agency is publishing neat open source stuff. I can only think of two reasons for this to happen and both align: a) employee happiness (few people enjoy doing stuff in secrecy, I think) b) using the by now well-established mechanics of corporate branding to make the GCHQ appealing to a larger amount of developers/hackers. I think the latter is the dominant factor, and this is why I called this a job ad.
    - rebuilder 10y ago
      c) helping private companies maintain good security might be a good fit with GCHQ's mandate. d)"Just-your-friendly-security-agency!"
      - johansch 10y ago
        ...right.
yarrel 10y ago
It seeming neat is the point. This is propaganda.
- matt4077 10y ago
  One could argue (although I'm not 100% sure if I actually believe in it) that making institutions such as GCHQ more attractive would actually help. Their pool of applicants must be starkly different in terms of ideology than other applicant pools (say: google), even though the requirements are similar. If they succeed in broadening their pool of applicants, ideological diversity would increase. That may make it more likely that objections such as yours are raised internally. (counterarguments: their productivity may rise quicker than their morals can, making the net effect negative, or the institution is stronger and changes the individual instead of the other way around)
  - johansch 10y ago
    Well, maybe one take-away from the Snowden movie - in case it's actually accurate - is that by recruiting traditional freedom-loving hackers there will be more potential whistleblowers in the future. Another disparate thought: The NSA we've seen so far appears to have been infinite reach, but with very limited analysis capability. E.g. they have have an army of humans trying to make sense of the mountains of data. Just imagine their capabilities when they have applied (already, perhaps) deep learning to this data feed. This is scary shit. Suddenly they will have a very deep profile on every connected individal on earth (like 75% by now?).
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- dimino 10y ago
  Yeah I mean it's totally "propaganda", but so what? Rarely is propaganda actually useful. Are "Swiss" army knives propaganda for the Switzerland military?

askl56 10y ago

What do you mean by it's a job ad?

johansch 10y ago
Why do you think the GCHQ is publishing stuff that appeals the developers/hackers rather than just being secretive? Of course it's similar to a corporate branding exercise. There's a hard fight for tech talent these days.
duiker101 10y ago
I think johansch means to say this is something someone should have made only to add to his cv or similar(not even fully sure) rather than something that people should use. No one is telling the user what he should use this for, there's plenty of situations where you might want to convert/encrypt/elaborate data without being launch codes for nuclear missiles and this seems like a pretty good tool, all browser based too, opposite of many other more famous tools that require communication with a server.
- throwaway2016a 10y ago
  I think he is actually saying it is an effort to get people to say "look at the cool stuff we make" and go work for the organization. In this case that organization appears to be the UK equivalent of the CIA/NSA in the US and he clearly feels their mission erodes people's rights.
- johansch 10y ago
  I guess I should have been more explicit. I am not talking about the actual encryption/decryption/data-wrangling stuff in this HTML page. All of this is obviously very neat and very usable. The reason I do think this is a job ad is the fact that it's the GCHQ that is publishing it. Seriously, a spook agency is publishing neat open source stuff. I can only think of two reasons for this to happen and both align: a) employee happiness (few people enjoy doing stuff in secrecy, I think) b) using the by now well-established mechanics of corporate branding to make the GCHQ appealing to a larger amount of developers/hackers. I think the latter is the dominant factor, and this is why I called this a job ad.
  - rebuilder 10y ago
    c) helping private companies maintain good security might be a good fit with GCHQ's mandate. d)"Just-your-friendly-security-agency!"
    - johansch 10y ago
      ...right.

yarrel 10y ago

It seeming neat is the point. This is propaganda.

matt4077 10y ago
One could argue (although I'm not 100% sure if I actually believe in it) that making institutions such as GCHQ more attractive would actually help. Their pool of applicants must be starkly different in terms of ideology than other applicant pools (say: google), even though the requirements are similar. If they succeed in broadening their pool of applicants, ideological diversity would increase. That may make it more likely that objections such as yours are raised internally. (counterarguments: their productivity may rise quicker than their morals can, making the net effect negative, or the institution is stronger and changes the individual instead of the other way around)
- johansch 10y ago
  Well, maybe one take-away from the Snowden movie - in case it's actually accurate - is that by recruiting traditional freedom-loving hackers there will be more potential whistleblowers in the future. Another disparate thought: The NSA we've seen so far appears to have been infinite reach, but with very limited analysis capability. E.g. they have have an army of humans trying to make sense of the mountains of data. Just imagine their capabilities when they have applied (already, perhaps) deep learning to this data feed. This is scary shit. Suddenly they will have a very deep profile on every connected individal on earth (like 75% by now?).
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
dimino 10y ago
Yeah I mean it's totally "propaganda", but so what? Rarely is propaganda actually useful. Are "Swiss" army knives propaganda for the Switzerland military?