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Calling the NSA: "I accidentally deleted an e-mail, can you help me recover it?"
A nice thought and practically the same thing that Google does. You hand in your privacy, but you get services back in return.
- evertonfuller 13y agoDumb.
- jeena 13y agoKind of funny :)
- Svip 13y agoReminds me of this old The Daily Show video with Stephen Colbert: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-december-18-2002/so-you-re-living-in-a-police-state http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-december-18-2002/so-yo...
- Nux 13y agoFor non-usa IPs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gd7P78w8cdA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gd7P78w8cdA
- Svip 13y agoActually, it works fine outside the USA, just not from Canada or the UK.
- nisdec 13y agoWhy doesn't it work from these countries? Just curious.
- vidarh 13y agoProbably because they've licensed the show for broadcast here/there and included online rights. It's on TV in the UK at least.
- alan_cx 13y agoI though it was just the "World Edition" we get in the UK?
- dantiberian 13y agoClose, they have licensed the show for broadcast on terrestrial networks and often don't allow anyone to broadcast online.
- mahmud 13y agobroken for Australia.
- tomtwo 13y agoAlternatively: http://xtremisreaction.wordpress.com/2011/01/08/how-to-watch-the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-in-the-uk/ http://xtremisreaction.wordpress.com/2011/01/08/how-to-watch...
- deletes 13y agoThe good old times when Stephen Colbert was funny and wrote his own jokes.
- ack 13y agoDid he pull a box of _raisins_ out of that refrigerator?
- gkoberger 13y agoWhile a funny premise, it comes off a bit like someone yelling at a customer service rep at a retail store. They didn't make the rules; they're just underpaid to smile and take it.
- ethana 13y agoI doubt anyone working at the NSA is underpaid...if not overpaid.
- timmyelliot 13y agoYou are joking, right? Government jobs seriously underpay. On the NSA careers website looks like "Computer Scientists" make between $42,209 to $97,333. I'm sure most of the pay is in the lower range. http://www.nsa.gov/careers/opportunities_4_u/professionals/ia.shtml http://www.nsa.gov/careers/opportunities_4_u/professionals/i...
- randyrand 13y agoThere are a lot of other perks that typically come with working a government job - vacations, job security, etc. No one accepts a lower paying job just because.
- chongli 13y agoNot everyone who works for the NSA is on their payroll; many work for contractors such as Booz Allen Hamilton.
- Datsundere 13y agoYou're missing the biggest point of having a government job. It's all the benefits, deductions and discounts you can have.
- 300bps 13y agoGovernment jobs seriously underpay. This was true in the past, it hasn't been true for a very long time however. It used to be true that government jobs paid less in wages but more than made up for it in greater benefits. Now they are equal in wages and still have the cushy benefits. http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/31/news/economy/federal_worker_pay/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/31/news/economy/federal_worker_... http://www.cbo.gov/publication/42921 http://www.cbo.gov/publication/42921 There are of course studies that contradict this, all of which conducted by unions representing government workers.
- beloch 13y agoDoes the NSA have a fax number? I have a flatbed fax-machine that's easy to sit on and a couple of things I want to fax them...
- straight_talk_2 13y agoJust fax them to a random number, NSA will get them :D
- AlexanderDhoore 13y agoDumpert is one hell of a crazy online community. One more reason to learn Dutch :)
- jrnkntl 13y agoIt is mostly a bunch of reposts with a green crown watermark slapped on it. Also, the -not so sophisticated- discussions going on underneath each video... I wouldn't exactly call that a reason to learn Dutch =]
- frank_boyd 13y agoNot sure if we should be joking about what could easily be (or become) the thing that ends democracy.
- sampo 13y agoI guess it's the end of democracy when you no longer can joke about something.
- alan_cx 13y agoBig business buying your presidency isnt?
- venomsnake 13y agoEven in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe there was democracy. There were election held, with very little fraud. I remember my father taking me to the voting booths when I was a kid - there were only red and orange ballots inside (the orange were the Communist party subsidiaries the Farmers Party). Communists won 80% of the votes the farmers 20. We had elections, we had democracy, we could vote. We lacked freedom and choice.
- afterburner 13y agoWhen people say "democracy", they don't actually mean "one party democracy".
- hawkharris 13y agoWhen one of my friends in college landed a math-related internship with the NSA years ago, I was very impressed and proud of her. If a friend were to land a similar job or internship now, my gut reaction would be vert different. As illustrated by this video, the agency's prestige among the public seems to have degraded considerably. I wonder how this has affected its ability to recruit bright young people.
- zybler 13y agoYou are obviously saying that because you are pissed. And deep down inside you are hoping that they won't be able to recruit bright young people. But the truth is, economy is a bitch, unemployment rate is high, if they actually pays well, I'm pretty sure bright people will still join them, whether they are young or old.
- hawkharris 13y agoYoung people who earn jobs or internships with the NSA are generally in the tops of their classes. While they aren't immune to the recession, they have more prospects than the average grad, and employers sometimes compete for them. I couldn't find any publicly available data about NSA recruitment, but there are some interesting anecdotes to show that the NSA is having a harder time recruiting top-notch students: http://reason.com/blog/2013/07/09/nsa-recruiters-peppered-with-tough-quest http://reason.com/blog/2013/07/09/nsa-recruiters-peppered-wi... http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130704/12162223721/nsa-recruiters-get-smacked-down-university-wisconsin-students.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130704/12162223721/nsa-re...
- sseveran 13y agoLets not forget that many NSA "employees" are actually contractors from companies like Booz Allen Hamilton. Also Palantir doesn't seem to be hurting finding people to build surveillance technology.
- brador 13y agoThat's not how it works at the highest levels. Employment of capable hackers is sky high right now and everyones paying top dollar.
- officemonkey 13y ago"Someone's playing a terrible joke on you." You got that right, sister.
- otikik 13y agoThe title should include a Warning - Auto-playing audio on that link.
- austinheap 13y agoUp next: he's going to call Viacom about MTV not playing music vidoes! Harass all the 1-800 workers?
- raldu 13y ago- "Soo you don't keep track of e-mail and internet data?" (A long pause) - "Not the way you're saying. OK?"
- hisham_hm 13y agoHe got what he wanted, right there.
- downandout 13y agoI'm a little bit curious why the operator wanted his contact info, and repeatedly asked for it, knowing full well that it was a ridiculous call. It makes me wonder if taxpayer dollars would have actually been spent investigating him.
- httpagent 13y agoI wondered the same thing - my conclusion is that it's an intimidation tactic.
- officemonkey 13y agoMore likely the poor operator couldn't answer his question, so she was going to pass the details up to a supervisor and have the supervisor deal with it. Later when the supervisor got on the phone, she just hung up on him.
- UVB-76 13y agoAlternatively, phone operators are instructed as a matter of course to record details about the phone calls they receive...
- powertower 13y agoYou came to that conclusion because you knew that the operators don't ask contact info for every caller as standard procedure?
- Altaer 13y agoThe DoD and I'm sure other organizations are instructed to try and get as much info from the person as possible if it's a suspicious phone call like this. People call up and use all sorts of techniques to get information from these organizations, which it seemed like what was trying to be done here.
- frank_boyd 13y agoHe called using SKYPE which belongs to Microsoft. We know of both companies to partner with the NSA. So they have at least - all chats and most certainly - all calls converted to text at their disposal. So it looks like an intimidation attempt.
- jimworm 13y agoIt would be very worrying if someone on a random phone call managed to recover any information on public email from the NSA. At least now we know that the NSA seems to be safe against very poorly executed social engineering.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- basicallydan 13y agoI see what he's trying to do, but it seems to me like this amounts to no more than a childish prank, a joke which essentially just uses a receptionist or switchboard person as the butt. If you really have an issue with what the NSA is doing, playing pranks like this isn't going to get results. If you could get through the head of the NSA, or somebody who is more obviously in a decision-making position and them questions like this then you'd maybe be doing some good by grilling them like that. I feel like this actually cheapens the issue a little.
- rdl 13y agoI was kind of surprised by the operator saying "Are you the NSA?" "uh huh" rather than something more professional like "Yes sir, this is NSA." And then even more surprised that the operator was actually giving him helpful advice ("you should probably contact your email provider.") That was more helpful than most actual tech support employees I've interacted with, let alone PBX operators. And, being a dick to low-level pbx operators is kind of stupid, even if you disagree with the organization. Remember the Chick-Fil-A guy? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg-jzlWcc0E http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg-jzlWcc0E) I like gay people a lot, and am an atheist, but this guy does nothing but hurt his cause. (The only time I've ever called NSA/CSS was to get a full set of the Rainbow Books at age 12. It was weird how they'd only answer with phone extension.)
- leokun 13y ago> "I like gay people a lot" A little off topic from your post, but this is one of those gross generalizations that just actually portrays you as not getting the gist of the problem with bigotry. "gay people" are not a homogeneous group of like-minded people. Discrimination against sexual orientation or being transgendered is a sad and unfortunate injustice, but these are simply traits shared by a diverse set of people. In this world there is a wide range of many wonderful people and horrible people and everyone in between. The distribution of sexual preference has nothing to do with where they end up in that range. Each person is an individual actor, and not a representative for others who they may share a trait with, but when you say you "like gay people a lot" it is obvious you don't understand that. In fact, it seems kind of a bigoted, ignorant thing to say, even if you didn't mean to say anything mean.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Tloewald 13y agoClumsily said but the point - don't be a dick — is valid. I take it to mean "I have nothing against gay people although I don't really know any". It's funny because the opposite clumsy-ism is "some of my best friends are..." With the idea you can be a total douche towards some group but it's Ok because you're nice to the ones you actually know.
- cmancini 13y agoThis is of course not a joke in some countries, and has been done with success. I am very good friends with someone who grew up in one of the central asian dictatorships (stan), and their family had one of the (few) internet lines in the country. One day his family lost an important email, so they walked to the intelligence office, told them the date, and the officials were happy to retrieve it for them from the file drawer. They had been printing out and physically filing every piece of correspondence from each internet user (somewhat doable for the regime given only a small subset of the population). The point is, in this stan, there was no pretense of privacy. They were your helpful backup service.
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- lucb1e 13y agoDumpert is the LAST website I expected to see on HN on #1. This is brilliant.
- Thiz 13y ago[x] Forgot your password? Call the NSA.