Hey ... I don't (and didn't) run a massive government agency. Probably never will. (At least, not after writing this sort of specious crap).
That fact gives me a certain degree of latitude to (a) be inconsistent and (b) spout bullshit.
Asymmetric information warfare, (like guerilla warfare) offers the weaker party far more freedom to manoeuvre than the stronger party enjoys. In other words, it does not matter too much if I am rude, if I exaggerate, plain make stuff up, deploy dodgy humour and plainly bitter and twisted sarcasm (the lowest form of wit, to wit). Not that I would want to characterise all this guff as information warfare. I am just writing things down as I see them. Speak truth to power and all that. Plus, I get to be as ugly as I damn well like, whilst the "Elmer Fudd" comments never stop rolling for poor old Michael Hayden.
Indeed, I would be more inclined to see NSA bods as mates than enemies (the low-level techie ones, at least) -- and despite the many many many provocative statements that I have made in the past, I still feel like we are all, fundamentally, on the same team, working towards the same goals. Put me in the same position as Snowden, and I probably would not have made the decision to leak. I may have bitched about it a bit by the coffee machine though.
It is a pity that these leaks have occurred ... in the sense that they should never have had to happen in the first place. Of course the security services are going to spy on people. It is their job. ... but the fact that even one of their number felt anything less than rock-solid certainty in their mission and their methods speaks volumes about the way that they are going about their task.
Secondly, the villain of the piece isn't really the NSA -- or, indeed, any of the agencies from any given nation-state: It is the tidal-wave of technological change that is upsetting the status quo ... not the agencies who suddenly find their powers vastly enhanced by the past half-decade of progress.
When, in the past, I used to worry about that phenomenon of accelerating technological change which we glibly term "the singularity", I focused, along with everybody else, on the economic disruption that would come from the inevitable concentration of wealth
... never for one second did I consider that privacy and surveillance would roll along as a sort of bow wave, heralding the magnitude of the technological shocks still to come.
Ha! I like the whimsical philosophy. Next time a pedant tries to bowl over my point by enumerating my inconsistencies, I think I might just hold up my "poetic justice" card.
That fact gives me a certain degree of latitude to (a) be inconsistent and (b) spout bullshit.
Asymmetric information warfare, (like guerilla warfare) offers the weaker party far more freedom to manoeuvre than the stronger party enjoys. In other words, it does not matter too much if I am rude, if I exaggerate, plain make stuff up, deploy dodgy humour and plainly bitter and twisted sarcasm (the lowest form of wit, to wit). Not that I would want to characterise all this guff as information warfare. I am just writing things down as I see them. Speak truth to power and all that. Plus, I get to be as ugly as I damn well like, whilst the "Elmer Fudd" comments never stop rolling for poor old Michael Hayden.
Indeed, I would be more inclined to see NSA bods as mates than enemies (the low-level techie ones, at least) -- and despite the many many many provocative statements that I have made in the past, I still feel like we are all, fundamentally, on the same team, working towards the same goals. Put me in the same position as Snowden, and I probably would not have made the decision to leak. I may have bitched about it a bit by the coffee machine though.
It is a pity that these leaks have occurred ... in the sense that they should never have had to happen in the first place. Of course the security services are going to spy on people. It is their job. ... but the fact that even one of their number felt anything less than rock-solid certainty in their mission and their methods speaks volumes about the way that they are going about their task.
Secondly, the villain of the piece isn't really the NSA -- or, indeed, any of the agencies from any given nation-state: It is the tidal-wave of technological change that is upsetting the status quo ... not the agencies who suddenly find their powers vastly enhanced by the past half-decade of progress.
This article does the issue better justice than I am able to: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2013/aug/05/nsa-p...
When, in the past, I used to worry about that phenomenon of accelerating technological change which we glibly term "the singularity", I focused, along with everybody else, on the economic disruption that would come from the inevitable concentration of wealth
... never for one second did I consider that privacy and surveillance would roll along as a sort of bow wave, heralding the magnitude of the technological shocks still to come.
[Edited to make it slightly less clumsy]