7 ms·

My understanding is that the overwhelming majority of Federal employees on official duty from FBI, DHS, DOD, NSA, etc.. that attend DEFCON (and related conferen

My understanding is that the overwhelming majority of Federal employees on official duty from FBI, DHS, DOD, NSA, etc.. that attend DEFCON (and related conferences) are actually not agents at all, but rather low ranking analysts whose job at the conferences are to assess the material presented and report back. This is opposed to, say, recruiting CIs or surveilling targets. Source: I asked a Fed.

cheez 13y ago
This is more about making a statement than anything else. Will the information still reach the feds? Sure. But the request is deliberately creating a delineation: the government is no longer for the people or part of the people, it exists for it's own sake. Will the government understand and ramp itself down? Whatever you thought about Ron Paul, his politics would have prevented all of this. All of the wars. All the foreign aid. And we would live in paradise ;)
- bittired 13y ago
  > Whatever you thought about Ron Paul, his politics would have prevented all of this. All of the wars. All the foreign aid. And we would live in paradise ;) This made me laugh. Considering how much Republicans and Tea Partiers are ostracized for making cuts, just imagine how much people would come down on a fiscally conservative basically Libertarian candidate in 2016 (even if he runs as a Republican).
  - msandford 13y ago
    Ostracized by who? People in the media or regular working class folk who pay plenty but get little? My parents both work and make money and the only real benefits that they have gotten as a result of trillions spent on war is that they'll continue to pay taxes for the rehabilitation of the soldiers whose bodies and lives have been destroyed. They MIGHT collect on social security, etc but given that they're still at least 10 years from retirement, it's certainly nothing they can count on.
    - wavefunction 13y ago
      And given that there's been talk about raising the general Soc Sec boundary from 65 to 70, it's even more of a question if they will benefit... Both my parents have "retired" in the past year though they continue to work for money, and they were both a little bitter about how low the benefits are. I had to point out that at least they will probably get what they get. For those of us younger?
    - grogenaut 13y ago
      They get sub $5 gas. That's what the money is being spent on.
      - msandford 13y ago
        The average car is driven say 10k miles per year. At 20mpg that's 500 gallons of gas. At $4 per gallon, it's $2k. At $8 per gallon, that's $4k. A difference of only $2k. I'm not sure that the money on wars is well spent (even in a callous, dollars only sense) if it's saving the average household $4k a year in gas money (two cars).
        throwawayDC21 13y ago
        The pump is not the only place that you pay for gas.
        snowwrestler 13y ago
        Yup, there used to be an old ad campaign--"If you have it, a truck brought it." And it's true--although with modern supply chains today we probably should also throw in ships, trains, and airplanes. Transportation costs are embedded in the cost of every physical good.
        msandford 13y ago
        Trains are much less sensitive to fuel prices than trucks are. The capital investment necessary to make trains work at all is really big. But after that the marginal cost of an additional car is very low. In terms of energy efficiency, trains are much better than trucks. What they lack is convenience, at least right now. In terms of cost, trucks often win because the trucking company doesn't bear the burden of building/maintaining the highway system. Yes they pay fuel taxes, but trucks make basically all the wear on roads. Wear seems to be based on the fourth power of weight. Check this: http://facweb.knowlton.ohio-state.edu/pviton/courses2/crp776/776-roads-handout.pdf http://facweb.knowlton.ohio-state.edu/pviton/courses2/crp776... This is a common theme for basically everything having to do with energy efficiency. You can have low up-front cost and larger ongoing costs, or larger up-front costs and lower ongoing costs. In the case of trains the ongoing costs are similar at current fuel prices but once they double again you'll see more train cargo and less truck cargo.
  - asveikau 13y ago
    It's always amusing watching people talk about Ron and Rand Paul on the internet. Usually they haven't quite figured out that they're basically fake libertarians. Ducks
    - bittired 13y ago
      Libertarians != libertarians. The difference is that Libertarians are a party and libertarians like to party. :) The Pauls are fiscally conservative which is only 1/2 of the Libertarian equation. The party stands for social liberalism and fiscal conservatism. Basically this just means less tax, more privatized government services, and to leave people alone if they aren't hurting each other. Small-"l" libertarians are those that believe the liberty of the people is most important, even more important than any social or ethical constraints that have been placed upon them, but they believe that there can be a government that can enforce this, unlike anarchists.
      - jnbiche 13y ago
        First, I agree with many small "l" libertarians are not comfortable with the US Libertarian Party. But how is your paragraph 2 above at odds with paragraph 3? You don't say so explicitly, but are you suggesting that small "l" Libertarians don't believe in fiscal conservatism?
      - asveikau 13y ago
        > The Pauls are ... The Pauls are basically grandstanders. They'll adopt any pseudo-libertarian position that they think makes a good soundbite. They record will show that they haven't actually done much of legislative consequence. Anyone who takes them at face value based on the soundbites IMO needs to develop more of a sense of cynicism when assessing politics.
        cheez 13y ago
        You are confusing popularity with effectiveness. Ron Paul specifically had been talking for what, 20 years about auditing the federal reserve more than they were allowed. They finally got something through under someone else's name, but the victory was his. The reason is that Ron Paul and his like cannot push through something on his own. The entrenched interests are way too powerful.
sbierwagen 13y ago
So what? They still work for law enforcement.
a3n 13y ago
"low ranking analysts whose job at the conferences are to assess the material presented and report back." And maybe those people should go home and rethink their lives.
- mpyne 13y ago
  "Man, I really shouldn't have designed that RFID toolbooth so oppressively.... I'll have to do better than that in the future. :("
  - a3n 13y ago
    Your point is taken, not all security work is oppressive. And my comment was calculated to be over the top. The narrower point being, of course, if you're involved in work that supports Constitutional violations, you should think about what you're doing. Hard. Because if your work supports these things, then you're destroying what you probably signed up to protect. Probably not your fault, the mission was hijacked. But now there's no way to pretend. So think about it, and ideally, act. And if you're just designing tollbooth security, then thanks for your service. :)
    - mpyne 13y ago
      > The narrower point being, of course, if you're involved in work that supports Constitutional violations, you should think about what you're doing. Hard. Well, even things like PRISM have valid Constitutional and national security usages. Things like metadata collection have been allowed for decades as well, under the auspices of valid law enforcement investigations. Holding all Internet traffic in a buffer for 5 years? Collecting all email metadata that passes by? Now that's getting risky, but how many people do you think are actually involved in that? And why is that less dangerous than CALEA (something which DEFCON didn't kick out the Feds for...)? If you flip the concept to instead be "could what I'm working on possibly be used for oppression" then there are a lot more government workers than you might think that would have to be introspective. It has the worse effect of muddying lines of responsibility ("I couldn't have done this bad thing if $FOO hadn't build it!"), which is another path we don't want to go down... the same logic that blames the analyst for creating a process with valid purpose and bad effect could be used to blame the HR rep for hiring the analyst, or the janitor for keeping his workspace clean. And all the while we should be pointing our fingers at the person who actually did something wrong!
BoyWizard 13y ago
>but rather low ranking analysts whose job at the conferences are to assess the material presented and report back So? I work for a private company. I 'report back' on the cool shit I saw, let people know what was around, what was popular, etc. It's a learning experience. Saying they 'report back' is useless. If you go to a con and don't talk with other people about the stuff you saw there it's almost wasteful. I think I know what you meant though - they go and see what all the 'underground hackers' are up to.

cheez 13y ago

This is more about making a statement than anything else. Will the information still reach the feds? Sure. But the request is deliberately creating a delineation: the government is no longer for the people or part of the people, it exists for it's own sake. Will the government understand and ramp itself down? Whatever you thought about Ron Paul, his politics would have prevented all of this. All of the wars. All the foreign aid. And we would live in paradise ;)

bittired 13y ago
> Whatever you thought about Ron Paul, his politics would have prevented all of this. All of the wars. All the foreign aid. And we would live in paradise ;) This made me laugh. Considering how much Republicans and Tea Partiers are ostracized for making cuts, just imagine how much people would come down on a fiscally conservative basically Libertarian candidate in 2016 (even if he runs as a Republican).
- msandford 13y ago
  Ostracized by who? People in the media or regular working class folk who pay plenty but get little? My parents both work and make money and the only real benefits that they have gotten as a result of trillions spent on war is that they'll continue to pay taxes for the rehabilitation of the soldiers whose bodies and lives have been destroyed. They MIGHT collect on social security, etc but given that they're still at least 10 years from retirement, it's certainly nothing they can count on.
  - wavefunction 13y ago
    And given that there's been talk about raising the general Soc Sec boundary from 65 to 70, it's even more of a question if they will benefit... Both my parents have "retired" in the past year though they continue to work for money, and they were both a little bitter about how low the benefits are. I had to point out that at least they will probably get what they get. For those of us younger?
  - grogenaut 13y ago
    They get sub $5 gas. That's what the money is being spent on.
    - msandford 13y ago
      The average car is driven say 10k miles per year. At 20mpg that's 500 gallons of gas. At $4 per gallon, it's $2k. At $8 per gallon, that's $4k. A difference of only $2k. I'm not sure that the money on wars is well spent (even in a callous, dollars only sense) if it's saving the average household $4k a year in gas money (two cars).
      - throwawayDC21 13y ago
        The pump is not the only place that you pay for gas.
        snowwrestler 13y ago
        Yup, there used to be an old ad campaign--"If you have it, a truck brought it." And it's true--although with modern supply chains today we probably should also throw in ships, trains, and airplanes. Transportation costs are embedded in the cost of every physical good.
        msandford 13y ago
        Trains are much less sensitive to fuel prices than trucks are. The capital investment necessary to make trains work at all is really big. But after that the marginal cost of an additional car is very low. In terms of energy efficiency, trains are much better than trucks. What they lack is convenience, at least right now. In terms of cost, trucks often win because the trucking company doesn't bear the burden of building/maintaining the highway system. Yes they pay fuel taxes, but trucks make basically all the wear on roads. Wear seems to be based on the fourth power of weight. Check this: http://facweb.knowlton.ohio-state.edu/pviton/courses2/crp776/776-roads-handout.pdf http://facweb.knowlton.ohio-state.edu/pviton/courses2/crp776... This is a common theme for basically everything having to do with energy efficiency. You can have low up-front cost and larger ongoing costs, or larger up-front costs and lower ongoing costs. In the case of trains the ongoing costs are similar at current fuel prices but once they double again you'll see more train cargo and less truck cargo.
- asveikau 13y ago
  It's always amusing watching people talk about Ron and Rand Paul on the internet. Usually they haven't quite figured out that they're basically fake libertarians. Ducks
  - bittired 13y ago
    Libertarians != libertarians. The difference is that Libertarians are a party and libertarians like to party. :) The Pauls are fiscally conservative which is only 1/2 of the Libertarian equation. The party stands for social liberalism and fiscal conservatism. Basically this just means less tax, more privatized government services, and to leave people alone if they aren't hurting each other. Small-"l" libertarians are those that believe the liberty of the people is most important, even more important than any social or ethical constraints that have been placed upon them, but they believe that there can be a government that can enforce this, unlike anarchists.
    - jnbiche 13y ago
      First, I agree with many small "l" libertarians are not comfortable with the US Libertarian Party. But how is your paragraph 2 above at odds with paragraph 3? You don't say so explicitly, but are you suggesting that small "l" Libertarians don't believe in fiscal conservatism?
    - asveikau 13y ago
      > The Pauls are ... The Pauls are basically grandstanders. They'll adopt any pseudo-libertarian position that they think makes a good soundbite. They record will show that they haven't actually done much of legislative consequence. Anyone who takes them at face value based on the soundbites IMO needs to develop more of a sense of cynicism when assessing politics.
      - cheez 13y ago
        You are confusing popularity with effectiveness. Ron Paul specifically had been talking for what, 20 years about auditing the federal reserve more than they were allowed. They finally got something through under someone else's name, but the victory was his. The reason is that Ron Paul and his like cannot push through something on his own. The entrenched interests are way too powerful.

sbierwagen 13y ago

So what? They still work for law enforcement.

a3n 13y ago

"low ranking analysts whose job at the conferences are to assess the material presented and report back." And maybe those people should go home and rethink their lives.

mpyne 13y ago
"Man, I really shouldn't have designed that RFID toolbooth so oppressively.... I'll have to do better than that in the future. :("
- a3n 13y ago
  Your point is taken, not all security work is oppressive. And my comment was calculated to be over the top. The narrower point being, of course, if you're involved in work that supports Constitutional violations, you should think about what you're doing. Hard. Because if your work supports these things, then you're destroying what you probably signed up to protect. Probably not your fault, the mission was hijacked. But now there's no way to pretend. So think about it, and ideally, act. And if you're just designing tollbooth security, then thanks for your service. :)
  - mpyne 13y ago
    > The narrower point being, of course, if you're involved in work that supports Constitutional violations, you should think about what you're doing. Hard. Well, even things like PRISM have valid Constitutional and national security usages. Things like metadata collection have been allowed for decades as well, under the auspices of valid law enforcement investigations. Holding all Internet traffic in a buffer for 5 years? Collecting all email metadata that passes by? Now that's getting risky, but how many people do you think are actually involved in that? And why is that less dangerous than CALEA (something which DEFCON didn't kick out the Feds for...)? If you flip the concept to instead be "could what I'm working on possibly be used for oppression" then there are a lot more government workers than you might think that would have to be introspective. It has the worse effect of muddying lines of responsibility ("I couldn't have done this bad thing if $FOO hadn't build it!"), which is another path we don't want to go down... the same logic that blames the analyst for creating a process with valid purpose and bad effect could be used to blame the HR rep for hiring the analyst, or the janitor for keeping his workspace clean. And all the while we should be pointing our fingers at the person who actually did something wrong!

BoyWizard 13y ago

>but rather low ranking analysts whose job at the conferences are to assess the material presented and report back So? I work for a private company. I 'report back' on the cool shit I saw, let people know what was around, what was popular, etc. It's a learning experience. Saying they 'report back' is useless. If you go to a con and don't talk with other people about the stuff you saw there it's almost wasteful. I think I know what you meant though - they go and see what all the 'underground hackers' are up to.