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No offense to OP, but this reads like propaganda to me. It feels like someone at the Pentagon realized they weren't winning the war of the minds of hackers, so

No offense to OP, but this reads like propaganda to me. It feels like someone at the Pentagon realized they weren't winning the war of the minds of hackers, so they encouraged some of their own to blog about their experiences. I hate to sound like a tin hat wearing conspiracist. I really do. But I wouldn't be surprised if there was some sort of concerted effort by the NSA to encourage a dialogue with hackers on platforms like HN. Sorry for the paranoia OP. Glad you enjoyed your time at the NSA.

lorendsr 13y ago
No offense taken. I was not asked to write this, nor guided in its contents by the government.
- pera 13y ago
  Really? why should anyone trust in anything coming from the NSA when you are systematically lying again and again? why should we listen to anything you say when historically, part of your strategy is to try to influence the PoV of society || specifics groups? Specifically: how are you so sure about what the NSA is doing? in your article you say that the NSA does not do SI on US citizens without a warrant, but how can you really know that if you are just another worker? I don't think you can... but hey, you seem like a smart person so why are you making that kind of statement? > I was not asked to write this, nor guided in its contents by the government. I find this hard to believe, especially coming from someone in your area: if there is no way for us to verify this statement, then how relevant can this comment be for us?
  - csandreasen 13y ago
    why should anyone trust in anything coming from the NSA when you are systematically lying again and again? That's a bold claim - do you have any evidence that lorendsr, who is by his own admission no longer employed by the NSA, has been systematically lying again and again? Or that historically, part of his strategy is to try to influence society or specific groups? Or are you claiming that part of the NSA's employment process is the removal of independent thought and plugging into the collective hive mind?
    - shitlord 13y ago
      > Or are you claiming that part of the NSA's employment process is the removal of independent thought and plugging into the collective hive mind? That is most likely the reason. Even reddit doesn't jerk this hard. The OP's submission is a valuable one, even if you disagree with his views.
      - typon 13y ago
        Of course it's valuable - as evidence of the brainwashing NSA employees must go through to justify their actions to themselves and their families.
    - pera 13y ago
      > That's a bold claim - do you have any evidence that lorendsr I meant "you" the NSA, not lorendsr... I don't know him. But yeah, sorry if my distrust of people who say they worked for a government agency that has as its main PR policy lying and manipulating public opinion sounds harsh... I'm just a bit angry because I'm not a US citizen and I know that my use of pgp,otr,tor,i2p,self-signed certs is enough to make some powerful organization start registering every single move I do on the Internet.
- alfiejohn_ 13y ago
  Did your post have to go through some sort of internal review before you were allowed to publish it? I find it weird that you're allowed to blog, let alone blog about the NSA.
  - cypherpunks01 13y ago
    See bottom of post: This essay was deemed UNCLASSIFIED and approved for public release by the NSA's office of Pre-Publication Review on 11/21/2013 (PP 14-0081).
    - jurjenh 13y ago
      Hmmm... where do we find out about all the CLASSIFIED blog posts? NSA internal forums? Any place where there's a summary of these reviews as metadata, hence leaving the content "CLASSIFIED" ? Who is watching the watchers?
    - alfiejohn_ 13y ago
      Thanks cypherpunks01. I flagged it for my to-read list for after work. I'm an idiot and didn't RTFA.
  - jpatokal 13y ago
    Did you read the friendly article? This essay was deemed UNCLASSIFIED and approved for public release by the NSA's office of Pre-Publication Review on 11/21/2013 (PP 14-0081).
- femto 13y ago
  > nor guided in its contents by the government. Are you sure about this? The government tells you what is classified and what isn't. If you have ever been privy to any classified material, you will have made the decision to self-censor that information, to keep the essay unclassified. In other words, you will have removed information that the government told you it didn't want published. Granted the control wasn't overt, but the government has influenced your writing via your past and the controls that were embedded when you went though your initial security induction. If it works differently to this, please do explain it to me, as I would be interested to know.
  - lorendsr 13y ago
    I just mean that I wasn't told what to write by a USG PR person. The only thing I heard from the NSA about it was that I didn't have to redact anything.
    - femto 13y ago
      Thanks for replying.
- typon 13y ago
  Oh ok then. Stupid of me to think otherwise.
- tripzilch 13y ago
  You came up with all of these points by yourself? I'm quoting m8urn's post from upthread: > m8urn https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6911796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6911796 > It all seems so sincere. Except when you see how closely this matches the talking points the NSA sent home with employees https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/844508/nsas-talking-points-for-holiday-gatherings.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/8445... I don't disbelieve you came up with all those points yourself, btw. Maybe you've never even seen that PDF hand-out. However, you couldn't have reworded this obvious piece of propaganda any better, if you did.
jurjenh 13y ago
How would they encourage "internal" blogs though - asking directly would most likely raise flags, or a flood of insincere blog posts that would counter the desired result. What I'd be more interested in is how much this issue is being discussed internally. If these discussions are allowed, or even surreptitiously encouraged, then I'd take that as a possible internal propaganda push, subtle as it may be. What's in the conscious mind gets written about, hence you'd see these kind of "justification" posts. If there was very little internal discussion, or it was frowned upon, then I would expect much less of these blog posts, as it would potentially undermine your career...
75BCD67 13y ago
I set up an account to reply to this comment; I have an informed opinion. I expect that the blog post is sincere. If the NSA or another government agency wanted to manipulate the discourse on this or a similar site, however, they would (not could, would) do so by setting up a large number of active accounts over a long period of time. These would promote articles without triggering voting ring algorithms. For the last couple of years I have been an active participant in a part of the blogosphere that is inspired by Unqualified Reservations, a contrarian ("(neo)reactionary") blog. I recently discovered that many of the (active and quite long-standing) blogs and commenters in this online community are fraudulent. It is the situation described in Wikipedia's article on COINTELPRO: "pseudo movement groups run by government agents". This includes people with whom I've had email and even a Skype conversation. Since the realisation, I've managed to have a little awkward and plausibly deniable dialogue with these "bloggers" and "commenters". The message seems to be that they view neo-reactionaries as a group of potentially violent dissidents whose memes, if they were to spread, would lead to serious public disorder. So it's a political broken windows theory, in which the NSA or FBI are guardians of public opinion (although I happen to be English). Apparently they have been watching closely and collecting "data" for over a year. So, mtgentry, I don't think you are too paranoid at all. (Although I would have done until quite recently.)
- nkurz 13y ago
  I recently discovered that many of the (active and quite long-standing) blogs and commenters in this online community are fraudulent. Realizing the potential awkwardness of this request from a stranger considering your message, is there anything publicly published about this particular situation?
  - 75BCD67 13y ago
    No. If you want more details, please use the email address on my profile.
- secthrowaway 13y ago
  Did the possibility ever cross your mind that the fake accounts and users are simply an attempt by a very small fringe group to bulk up their numbers and look like a more legitimate political concern?

lorendsr 13y ago

No offense taken. I was not asked to write this, nor guided in its contents by the government.

pera 13y ago
Really? why should anyone trust in anything coming from the NSA when you are systematically lying again and again? why should we listen to anything you say when historically, part of your strategy is to try to influence the PoV of society || specifics groups? Specifically: how are you so sure about what the NSA is doing? in your article you say that the NSA does not do SI on US citizens without a warrant, but how can you really know that if you are just another worker? I don't think you can... but hey, you seem like a smart person so why are you making that kind of statement? > I was not asked to write this, nor guided in its contents by the government. I find this hard to believe, especially coming from someone in your area: if there is no way for us to verify this statement, then how relevant can this comment be for us?
- csandreasen 13y ago
  why should anyone trust in anything coming from the NSA when you are systematically lying again and again? That's a bold claim - do you have any evidence that lorendsr, who is by his own admission no longer employed by the NSA, has been systematically lying again and again? Or that historically, part of his strategy is to try to influence society or specific groups? Or are you claiming that part of the NSA's employment process is the removal of independent thought and plugging into the collective hive mind?
  - shitlord 13y ago
    > Or are you claiming that part of the NSA's employment process is the removal of independent thought and plugging into the collective hive mind? That is most likely the reason. Even reddit doesn't jerk this hard. The OP's submission is a valuable one, even if you disagree with his views.
    - typon 13y ago
      Of course it's valuable - as evidence of the brainwashing NSA employees must go through to justify their actions to themselves and their families.
  - pera 13y ago
    > That's a bold claim - do you have any evidence that lorendsr I meant "you" the NSA, not lorendsr... I don't know him. But yeah, sorry if my distrust of people who say they worked for a government agency that has as its main PR policy lying and manipulating public opinion sounds harsh... I'm just a bit angry because I'm not a US citizen and I know that my use of pgp,otr,tor,i2p,self-signed certs is enough to make some powerful organization start registering every single move I do on the Internet.
alfiejohn_ 13y ago
Did your post have to go through some sort of internal review before you were allowed to publish it? I find it weird that you're allowed to blog, let alone blog about the NSA.
- cypherpunks01 13y ago
  See bottom of post: This essay was deemed UNCLASSIFIED and approved for public release by the NSA's office of Pre-Publication Review on 11/21/2013 (PP 14-0081).
  - jurjenh 13y ago
    Hmmm... where do we find out about all the CLASSIFIED blog posts? NSA internal forums? Any place where there's a summary of these reviews as metadata, hence leaving the content "CLASSIFIED" ? Who is watching the watchers?
  - alfiejohn_ 13y ago
    Thanks cypherpunks01. I flagged it for my to-read list for after work. I'm an idiot and didn't RTFA.
- jpatokal 13y ago
  Did you read the friendly article? This essay was deemed UNCLASSIFIED and approved for public release by the NSA's office of Pre-Publication Review on 11/21/2013 (PP 14-0081).
femto 13y ago
> nor guided in its contents by the government. Are you sure about this? The government tells you what is classified and what isn't. If you have ever been privy to any classified material, you will have made the decision to self-censor that information, to keep the essay unclassified. In other words, you will have removed information that the government told you it didn't want published. Granted the control wasn't overt, but the government has influenced your writing via your past and the controls that were embedded when you went though your initial security induction. If it works differently to this, please do explain it to me, as I would be interested to know.
- lorendsr 13y ago
  I just mean that I wasn't told what to write by a USG PR person. The only thing I heard from the NSA about it was that I didn't have to redact anything.
  - femto 13y ago
    Thanks for replying.
typon 13y ago
Oh ok then. Stupid of me to think otherwise.
tripzilch 13y ago
You came up with all of these points by yourself? I'm quoting m8urn's post from upthread: > m8urn https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6911796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6911796 > It all seems so sincere. Except when you see how closely this matches the talking points the NSA sent home with employees https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/844508/nsas-talking-points-for-holiday-gatherings.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/8445... I don't disbelieve you came up with all those points yourself, btw. Maybe you've never even seen that PDF hand-out. However, you couldn't have reworded this obvious piece of propaganda any better, if you did.

jurjenh 13y ago

How would they encourage "internal" blogs though - asking directly would most likely raise flags, or a flood of insincere blog posts that would counter the desired result. What I'd be more interested in is how much this issue is being discussed internally. If these discussions are allowed, or even surreptitiously encouraged, then I'd take that as a possible internal propaganda push, subtle as it may be. What's in the conscious mind gets written about, hence you'd see these kind of "justification" posts. If there was very little internal discussion, or it was frowned upon, then I would expect much less of these blog posts, as it would potentially undermine your career...

75BCD67 13y ago

I set up an account to reply to this comment; I have an informed opinion. I expect that the blog post is sincere. If the NSA or another government agency wanted to manipulate the discourse on this or a similar site, however, they would (not could, would) do so by setting up a large number of active accounts over a long period of time. These would promote articles without triggering voting ring algorithms. For the last couple of years I have been an active participant in a part of the blogosphere that is inspired by Unqualified Reservations, a contrarian ("(neo)reactionary") blog. I recently discovered that many of the (active and quite long-standing) blogs and commenters in this online community are fraudulent. It is the situation described in Wikipedia's article on COINTELPRO: "pseudo movement groups run by government agents". This includes people with whom I've had email and even a Skype conversation. Since the realisation, I've managed to have a little awkward and plausibly deniable dialogue with these "bloggers" and "commenters". The message seems to be that they view neo-reactionaries as a group of potentially violent dissidents whose memes, if they were to spread, would lead to serious public disorder. So it's a political broken windows theory, in which the NSA or FBI are guardians of public opinion (although I happen to be English). Apparently they have been watching closely and collecting "data" for over a year. So, mtgentry, I don't think you are too paranoid at all. (Although I would have done until quite recently.)

nkurz 13y ago
I recently discovered that many of the (active and quite long-standing) blogs and commenters in this online community are fraudulent. Realizing the potential awkwardness of this request from a stranger considering your message, is there anything publicly published about this particular situation?
- 75BCD67 13y ago
  No. If you want more details, please use the email address on my profile.
secthrowaway 13y ago
Did the possibility ever cross your mind that the fake accounts and users are simply an attempt by a very small fringe group to bulk up their numbers and look like a more legitimate political concern?