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I feel like being siloed would actually increase the probability of dissent happening. Leaving you all by yourself to question the rules you follow. Of course I

by smtddr 12y ago

I feel like being siloed would actually increase the probability of dissent happening. Leaving you all by yourself to question the rules you follow. Of course I suspect a certain IQ and/or education level is needed for this kind of self reflection.

Uhhrrr 12y ago
Keep in mind that siloing increases the influence of management. Also, it means that different people are telling themselves, "I'm making a better search tool!", "I'm making a better scraper!", "I'm making a better optical tap!", without putting it all together (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoT-h0S1gkE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoT-h0S1gkE).
- ivanca 12y ago
  The creators of the atomic bomb regretted having created it. I wonder how long before someone in a spying/miltary agency will regret making a big discovery. Maybe something like an exploit in electricity itself or a way to remotely explote any nuclear plant in the world.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    > Maybe something like an exploit in electricity itself What is that supposed to mean?
    - Thimothy 12y ago
      Gaining root privileges with it, like Tesla did. Duh.
    - tripzilch 12y ago
      I doubt the GP was thinking of this, but there exist some interesting side-channel information attacks using the electricity grid. (disclaimer: I am not very knowledgeable about electricity/electronics, so forgive me if I'm a bit hand-wavy or wrong about the details) The actual electricity output from a wall-socket fluctuates continuously by a tiny bit over time. I suppose this goes for both the exact magnitude of power output (is that voltage or amperes?) and the exact frequency being ever-so-slightly above or below the expected 50Hz. These fluctuations can be measured (or fingerprinted) by carefully measuring the output of electrical appliances, such as the crackles and pops in audio recordings or brightness of light bulbs, and in fact many other things. The other important fact in this trick is that apparently these fluctuations are all the same over the entire grid (or subsections of it, I guess, depending on network layout). They are also pretty much random. This means that if you keep a log of these fluctuations over time, you can timestamp recordings of pretty much anything with extreme accuracy, by matching up the patterns of crackles or power fluctuations in the recordings to your logs. This would then allow one to detect fake call logs, video/audio cuts and splices, stuff like that. It's not a gigantic privacy risk (therefore probably not what the GP was thinking of), at least not from the applications I can think of the top of my head. I do love side-channel attacks like these, though. They're always so clever and out-of-the-box :)
- cryoshon 12y ago
  This is a great observation. One of the facets of the banality of evil lies in people's inability or unwillingness to integrate in their minds the purpose of their day to day production as it relates to the larger picture. In an intelligence agency, the larger picture is obscured by design.
rayiner 12y ago
> Of course I suspect a certain IQ and/or education level is needed for this kind of self reflection. The NSA is full of intelligent people. Keith Alexander went to West Point. Indeed, one of the reasons he became DNI was his extensive education in telecommunications technologies/signals intelligence (he has a number of post-graduate degrees in that area).

by smtddr 12y ago

Uhhrrr 12y ago

Keep in mind that siloing increases the influence of management. Also, it means that different people are telling themselves, "I'm making a better search tool!", "I'm making a better scraper!", "I'm making a better optical tap!", without putting it all together (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoT-h0S1gkE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoT-h0S1gkE).

ivanca 12y ago
The creators of the atomic bomb regretted having created it. I wonder how long before someone in a spying/miltary agency will regret making a big discovery. Maybe something like an exploit in electricity itself or a way to remotely explote any nuclear plant in the world.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  > Maybe something like an exploit in electricity itself What is that supposed to mean?
  - Thimothy 12y ago
    Gaining root privileges with it, like Tesla did. Duh.
  - tripzilch 12y ago
    I doubt the GP was thinking of this, but there exist some interesting side-channel information attacks using the electricity grid. (disclaimer: I am not very knowledgeable about electricity/electronics, so forgive me if I'm a bit hand-wavy or wrong about the details) The actual electricity output from a wall-socket fluctuates continuously by a tiny bit over time. I suppose this goes for both the exact magnitude of power output (is that voltage or amperes?) and the exact frequency being ever-so-slightly above or below the expected 50Hz. These fluctuations can be measured (or fingerprinted) by carefully measuring the output of electrical appliances, such as the crackles and pops in audio recordings or brightness of light bulbs, and in fact many other things. The other important fact in this trick is that apparently these fluctuations are all the same over the entire grid (or subsections of it, I guess, depending on network layout). They are also pretty much random. This means that if you keep a log of these fluctuations over time, you can timestamp recordings of pretty much anything with extreme accuracy, by matching up the patterns of crackles or power fluctuations in the recordings to your logs. This would then allow one to detect fake call logs, video/audio cuts and splices, stuff like that. It's not a gigantic privacy risk (therefore probably not what the GP was thinking of), at least not from the applications I can think of the top of my head. I do love side-channel attacks like these, though. They're always so clever and out-of-the-box :)
cryoshon 12y ago
This is a great observation. One of the facets of the banality of evil lies in people's inability or unwillingness to integrate in their minds the purpose of their day to day production as it relates to the larger picture. In an intelligence agency, the larger picture is obscured by design.

rayiner 12y ago

> Of course I suspect a certain IQ and/or education level is needed for this kind of self reflection. The NSA is full of intelligent people. Keith Alexander went to West Point. Indeed, one of the reasons he became DNI was his extensive education in telecommunications technologies/signals intelligence (he has a number of post-graduate degrees in that area).