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One thing about all of this that really surprises me is the scale of it ... I was genuinely and unhappily surprised to discover just how large a covert programm
by duncan_bayne 11y ago
One thing about all of this that really surprises me is the scale of it ... I was genuinely and unhappily surprised to discover just how large a covert programme can be kept entirely hidden from the general public & most politicians.
I'd always naively assumed that working at this scale would guarantee leaks much, much earlier.
- dimino 11y agoExcept for the minor detail that it literally wasn't kept hidden...
- finnn 11y agoIt was kept hidden for a very long time, considering the size and scope of the operation.
- dimino 11y agoVery long? Not really...
- ObviousScience 11y agoSept of 2001 until Oct 2002? It's just that... you know... literally no one wanted to talk about how a US military department was using capabilities traditionally described as acts of war to subvert US infrastructure and analyze the behaviors of US citizens. There were terrorists! Just like they didn't want to talk about it in the 90s, when the US government tried to claim that encryption was a regulated government technology and while US citizens are technically entitled to munitions, something something 2nd amendment, if you export anything more than 44 bits, you're in serious trouble.
- copperx 11y agoIt certainly makes UFO believers look less crazy.
- MichaelGG 11y agoIs it that large of a scale as far as leak-locations go? Isn't it basically several dozen fibre taps? Also, we knew the FBI was doing this in the 90s so it shouldn't be totally surprising to find the NSA doing it now. The scale is the awesome data processing and operative capabilities. But is that so surprising to remain secret? I'm sure the NSA and other parts of big governments do all sorts of nifty shit and manage to keep it quite much longer than a decade.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]