5.56NATO
06-23-2013, 02:07 PM
Everyone has trouble finding things on the internet: A restaurant's address, the date of President McKinley's assassination, minute details about a specific person, hidden confidential files mistakenly put on a public website. Luckily the National Security Agency, that monolithic embodiment of the contemporary surveillance state, has compiled an exhaustive guide on how to find information on the internet. It's a strange document.
The NSA is collecting millions of emails and phone calls from normal Americans, but sometimes they've got to use Google like you and me. The 642-page guidebook Untangling The Web (pdf) was written in 2007 by Robyn Winder and Charlie Speight, according to MuckRock, which obtained the document in a FOIA request. The guide is written in a surprisingly down-to-earth, equivocating style for a book published by an organization whose headquarters looks like something from the Minority Report set, full of literary references and light-hearted asides.
The all-seeing eye of the NSA brings to mind the Greek myth of the Gorgon, but Untangling The Web begins with the myth of Sisyphus, comparing the task of trying to understand the internet to Sisyphus' never-ending trek up the hill behind his boulder. "Sometimes I feel that all I can do is to push the rock to up to the top of that virtual hill, then stand back and watch as it rolls down again… My hope is that Untangling the Web will add to our knowledge of the Internet and the world while recognizing that the rock will always roll back down the hill at the end of the day." No doubt spying on all private communications in the U.S. is a similarly daunting task, but that hasn't kept the NSA from spending billions of dollars in trying.
http://gawker.com/the-nsas-weird-internal-guide-to-finding-information-o-498651292
It wasn't too long ago that I found out that nazi Germany had a very similar organisation that monitored internal comms. Phones, especially those of higher ups, were always monitored. I figure the nsa is pretty much a modern descendant of the FORSCHUNGSAMT, I wonder what juicy conversations the nsa has heard 0bama, Ayers, Hildabeast, Nappy Jan, and Holder engaged in?
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0161-117891852758
The NSA is collecting millions of emails and phone calls from normal Americans, but sometimes they've got to use Google like you and me. The 642-page guidebook Untangling The Web (pdf) was written in 2007 by Robyn Winder and Charlie Speight, according to MuckRock, which obtained the document in a FOIA request. The guide is written in a surprisingly down-to-earth, equivocating style for a book published by an organization whose headquarters looks like something from the Minority Report set, full of literary references and light-hearted asides.
The all-seeing eye of the NSA brings to mind the Greek myth of the Gorgon, but Untangling The Web begins with the myth of Sisyphus, comparing the task of trying to understand the internet to Sisyphus' never-ending trek up the hill behind his boulder. "Sometimes I feel that all I can do is to push the rock to up to the top of that virtual hill, then stand back and watch as it rolls down again… My hope is that Untangling the Web will add to our knowledge of the Internet and the world while recognizing that the rock will always roll back down the hill at the end of the day." No doubt spying on all private communications in the U.S. is a similarly daunting task, but that hasn't kept the NSA from spending billions of dollars in trying.
http://gawker.com/the-nsas-weird-internal-guide-to-finding-information-o-498651292
It wasn't too long ago that I found out that nazi Germany had a very similar organisation that monitored internal comms. Phones, especially those of higher ups, were always monitored. I figure the nsa is pretty much a modern descendant of the FORSCHUNGSAMT, I wonder what juicy conversations the nsa has heard 0bama, Ayers, Hildabeast, Nappy Jan, and Holder engaged in?
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0161-117891852758