Comment by autoexec

Comment by autoexec 10 months ago

2 replies

> It's important to remember that the government and even a single agency (like the NSA) is just as chaotic, disconnected, and full of competing entities as any big tech company has (if not worse).

And yet even as early as 2003 they were taking a copy of every single bit that ran over the AT&T backbone (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A). It's amazing how effective these "chaotic, disconnected, and full of competing entities" can be. We're entirely dependent on whistleblowers willing to risk their lives and freedom to learn about what they're doing to us.

godelski 10 months ago

Yes, they can be very effective. There's no denying that. The proof is in the pudding as they say, since we have governments and businesses. But that's tangential to the point I was making.

  • salawat 10 months ago

    ...You must be working for a different government than I've experienced. Government orgs will initially suffer from siloing problems, but once a synergy is uncovered it tends to get leveraged hard after a while. Remember: when it comes down to it, the difference between government reach, and everyone else, is really just who you can communicate with smoothly.

    Now things like SCI are things; but there are ways to handle that too. It's more a slowing force than a stopper.