Cloak and Dagger
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The government does something cool
And I suppose Trump should be credited in some way, and even more if the JFK files actually come out, but the FBI just released their files on Geek Hero Nikola Tesla!
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Saturday night reading
- CIA to Air Decades of Its Dirty Laundry – I’m sure they have some sort of ulterior motive in this but it seems like a positive development.
- A private citizen owns part of a Georgia highway – He’s not putting up toll booths, which is something I would do. Evidently the state tried to condemn it a while back but didn’t do all of the paperwork.
- Robotic farm workers!
- While there is a GTD Outlook plugin, there is not a Vista compatible one, which is a bit ironic.
- Americans still don’t trust the government. Wherefore art thou Barry Goldwater? Oh yes, we call you Ron Paul now…
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More NSA
So now the NSA is under fire in the media for using cookies? Speaking as a web developer it’s difficult to do anything interesting without using them.
On a more troubling note, it seems to have occurred to no one in the punditsphere as to why should the NSA eavesdrop on Americans at all? I recall reading somewhere a while back that there was a reciprocal arrangement with the British version of the NSA that would allow the NSA to eavesdrop on Britons and the Brits would eavesdrop on Americans? It was all nice and legal, and accomplished the same objective.
As I said before, I had just assumed they were already doing this.
Two reasons come to mind as to why not:
- They didn’t want the British to know, which doesn’t really seem that likely
- They’re using, if not a new technology, then a new technique to determine who to wiretap, and they were applying it retroactively to already recorded conversations. Also they’re monitoring patterns more than anything. This would allow them to profile effectively, without actually saying the word profiling, which makes everyone happy.