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{ Category Archives } Rant

lawd amighty, I feel my temperature risin’

Correlation is not… ah, never mind

Washington says Snowden leaks about spying on allies caused tension with allies. Or you know, maybe it was the spying.

2013 10 26 Brent Comments Off on Correlation is not… ah, never mind

Op-sec and blowback, aka good fences make for good neighbors

Given the recent past of US security chiefs committing perjury, and failing to understand operational security, it's not hard to believe that they might also have no concept of diplomacy and blowback. What could possibly go wrong?!? Well, so far, nothing. No events of consequence yet. Except the now inevitable, slow-moving, but inexorable process towards […]

2013 10 25 Brent Comments Off on Op-sec and blowback, aka good fences make for good neighbors

Of course they’re only looking for terrorists

So when the NYC Police put undercover agents/provacateurs in Occupy Sandy, Occupy Wall Street, Critical Mass, political protesters, and anti-war protesters, it’s ok. Just don’t expect the same guy to act like a cop when there’s an actual crime going on. There’s no duty to protect amongst our new professionals.

2013 10 11 Brent Comments Off on Of course they’re only looking for terrorists

Missed it by this much…

NSA didn’t interdict the communications of the Nairobi mall terrorists, despite their Twittering. Defund them. Scatter their ashes to the wind. Their productive operations are illegal, and their legal operations are unproductive.

2013 09 29 Brent Comments Off on Missed it by this much…

What a surprise

NSA illegally spied on MLK, and US senators. If you think that's not going on now, you're an idiot. That's how they stay in power, and out of jail. Disband it. Scatter its ashes to the wind.  

2013 09 26 Brent Comments Off on What a surprise

Jurassic Park?

  Tyrannosaurus rex, or just the air compressor three floors below kicking on again? Yeah, this is supposed to be a scientific work environment.  

2013 09 10 Brent Comments Off on Jurassic Park?

No privacy

Even if you try to use modern methods, you’re fucked. And a contract sysadmin exposed it to the world. Why do you not think that the Russian Mafia/CS13/PLA has it? It’s just good free-market economics. If one guy exposed it because he had morals, some other guy exposed it to the mob because he got […]

2013 09 05 Brent Comments Off on No privacy

Lest you think…

Lest you think that it’s only me thinking such things, that perhaps the dose on my meds ought to be examined, right after I wrote that, I was reading the Atlantic [1]: Clearly there is government, and then there is government. The former is the tip of the iceberg that the public who watches C-SPAN […]

2013 09 03 Brent Comments Off on Lest you think…

Hoovering

How is it not possible to believe that if a lowly contractor sysadmin can access anyone’s email, that the head of an organization with a $52 billion dollar budget does not get a daily summary of subject matter of the private emails of the most powerful people in the nation? Would it not be the […]

2013 09 02 Brent Comments Off on Hoovering

If you thought that the current administration was in any way better than the last

Obama wants warrantless access to your cell phone data. All your contacts, emails, texts, tweets, social networks, and words with friends plays. If you thought you voted for him because he would appoint more liberal Supreme Court members, here he is making a pitch directly to Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas. The fourth amendment takes another […]

2013 08 21 Brent Comments Off on If you thought that the current administration was in any way better than the last

Will destroy ya

I have… let’s say, acquaintances, who, when not on their meds, are certifiably insane. Committable. Seriously. I question my, and others’ safety when they’re off the meds. I would not be surprised if I read headlines. These folks are certain that satellites are watching them (if not actively shooting energy beams and thought control rays […]

2013 08 05 Brent Comments Off on Will destroy ya

“Very specific threat”

It’s so specific, it could happen yesterday. Or next week. Since the closure of 22 embassies has been extended through mid-August. Aside from the specific 22 embassies closed in the specific countries of Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Mauritania, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Yemen, Israel, […]

2013 08 04 Brent Comments Off on “Very specific threat”

Sterling on Snowden, Assange, and what the moral high ground looks like these days

It’s all about Bradley shivering naked in his solitary cage, and Julian diligently typing in his book-lined closet at the embassy, and Ed bagging out behind the plastic seating of some airport, in a jetlag fit of black globalization that went on for a solid month. And, those tiny, confined, somehow united spaces are the […]

2013 08 04 Brent Comments Off on Sterling on Snowden, Assange, and what the moral high ground looks like these days

Dilbert nails it again

One assumes he’s taking ideas from people at my TLA organization. I used to send in ideas that he’d use. But it probably just means that it sucks just as much to work here as anyplace else. Add the guy without an inside voice whose job it is to talk on the phone all day, […]

2013 08 03 Brent Comments Off on Dilbert nails it again

Decline

So I work for a rather well-known private university, which runs a rather well-known research center, funded largely by a government organization with a FLA, rather than the usual TLA. As part of the budget disaster known as “sequestration,” but which is really an ongoing decline over the last several years, this FLA organization decided […]

2013 07 17 Brent Science
Travel Comments Off on Decline