How a Team of Geeks Cracked the Spy Trade 187
drunken_boxer777 sends us to The Wall Street Journal for a lengthy article on a small tech company, Palantir Technologies, that is making the CIA, Pentagon, and FBI take notice. The submitter adds, "And yes, their company name is a reference to what you think it is." "One of the latest entrants into the government spy-services marketplace, Palantir Technologies has designed what many intelligence analysts say is the most effective tool to date to investigate terrorist networks. The software's main advance is a user-friendly search tool that can scan multiple data sources at once, something previous search tools couldn't do. That means an analyst who is following a tip about a planned terror attack, for example, can more quickly and easily unearth connections among suspects, money transfers, phone calls and previous attacks around the globe. ... With Palantir's software 'you can actually point to examples where it was pretty clear that lives were saved.'"
Call me dense... (Score:4, Interesting)
But what is the reference?
Re:Call me dense... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Call me dense... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's interesting in the context of this discussion that Tolkien's Palentir were more than just viewing devices. They could also be used to communicate with other stones, and I think for other purposes. Anyway, when one of the stones fell into evil hands, the Dark Lord was able to use his power over it to control anyone foolish enough to try and use one of the remaining stones.
There's a lesson here I think.
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"In the Darkness...
Bind them."
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Let me help you with that:
http://www.google.com/search?q=palentir [google.com]
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Obviously, it refers to Jack Palance. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Palance [wikipedia.org]
Name? (Score:5, Funny)
> ..a small tech company, Palentir Technologies..
> ..Palantir Technologies has..
> The submitter adds, "And yes, their company name is a reference to what you think it is."
A spellcheck company?
Reference to LotR (Score:5, Informative)
It was the seeing stone that Sauron used in Lord of the Rings.
That is the tool the evil guy used to control the world. Sounds appropriate.
Re:Reference to LotR (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks, my internet is down, I was unable to google that myself.
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Thanks, my bookshelf fell down, and I was unable to read it myself.
Re:Reference to LotR (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks, my internet is down, I was unable to google that myself.
So how are you posting this?
Probably using the legendary Posting Stone of Minas Wooshgul
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No, they were a gift from the Valar to the NÃmenÃreans to see other times and places.
Sauron just happened to get a hold of one of them, and used it as an avenue to warp Saruman and Denethor's minds. There is no evidence he used the PalantÃr for their intended purpose.
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And, in other news in the "that's obvious" department, Slashdot still does not have proper Unicode support!
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They were gifts from the Eldar to the Numenoreans. If I remember right, there's a line in The Silmarillion which implies that Feanor might have made them.
There's a good story in Unfinished Tales about the use of the palantiri.
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You are right, it was the Eldar, not the Valar.
Also, unicode fail.
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Technology by itself is not good or evil. It's how one uses it that makes it so. Remember that the Internet came out of a doom-and-gloom project to create a nuclear-war resistant communication network.
Uhh... No. Wrong perspective... (Score:5, Insightful)
Good guys used it too. To defeat Sauron AND to "keep the world safe".
In fact... Good guys made all 7 Palantir mentioned in LotR.
Sauron got his hands on one of those and used it to corrupt Saruman and Denethor.
So... No. It is not "the tool the evil guy used to control the world."
The message would be that "power corrupts". In this case - power in the form of knowledge or information.
What Palantir really lacked was a decent firewall. No protection whatsoever.
Very intuitive user interface though. And they were practically indestructible.
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The dwarves drilled three holes in one of the 7 and used it to bowl the first perfect game in Middle Earth history.
Re:Reference to LotR (Score:4, Informative)
It was the seeing stone that Sauron used in Lord of the Rings.
That is the tool the evil guy used to control the world. Sounds appropriate.
The Palantir themselves were not evil, it was simply put to an evil purpose. The last surviving one was so corrupted by Sauron's influence it could never be used peacefully again but you can no more blame the Palantir for that than you could blame a wrench for becoming radioactive when left sitting next to a leaky reactor. Really, the only bit of truly evil magic in the entire book was the Ring itself and, seeing as it bore a measure of Sauron's own power, I think of it less as an object than as a character with a will and mind of its own.
There is no evil in science, technology, or magic; evil lies not in the tool but the hand that wields it.
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Damn, I hate when that happens. They do bring good money at a garage sale though.
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Mod -1, Unnecessary definition ;)
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The larger role played by a Palantir was the one used by Saruman. He was chief among the wizards sent to oppose Sauron and the forces of evil, but the knowledge granted by the stone corrupted him such that he turned against his order and sought power for himself.
Even more appropriate.
Sounds like trojan spyware to me (Score:4, Insightful)
With a name like Palentir, it sounds like trojan spy program, not a Google like search tool.
Great! (Score:4, Funny)
Palantir Technologies has designed what many intelligence analysts say is the most effective tool to date to investigate terrorist networks
What? a crystal ball to fight the terrorist:
A palantír (sometimes translated as Seeing Stone but actually meaning "Farsighted" or "One that Sees from Afar") is a stone that functions somewhat like a crystal ball. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Great! (Score:5, Insightful)
And creates a great risk of corruption among those who use it.
Re:Great! (Score:4, Funny)
Only if you use it to chat with Ozzie Ozbourne on MSN Messenger.
Technology to translate Ozzy would be huge leap (Score:2)
The only person right now who can make anything out of anything Ozzy is muttering is Sharon. Technology that can translate Ozzybabble would be a huge leap forward.
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Ozzy's Acronym Flurry crits you for 173201 (161454 overkill).
You die.
Re:Great! (Score:4, Funny)
> I just met this guy in the Palantir, he was like, really cool, but shy
> But he wouldn't, like, send me his picture, only a flaming eye
> So I asked "ASL?"
> But he just said: "Build me an army worthy of Mordor"
> and I was like "WTF? KThxBye!"
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These database's come and go, we barely get our people fully trained on the current one, and here comes a new gee whiz database app to save the wo
Bad summary (Score:5, Informative)
The actual product seems MUCH more interesting than the silly summary. It compartamentalizes secret info, so if you are classified for level 5, you can still search and find info that is level 6, even if the file also has level 4 information. It can also tag information so that if your level 5 clearance is not enough to tell you how person A is connected to person B, you can still know that the connection exists.
Re:Bad summary (Score:5, Insightful)
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Time to start staying alert, trusting no one, and keeping my laser handy.
Re:Bad summary (Score:4, Insightful)
It's all about need to know. If you knowing why is necessary to draw a conclusion, you'll eventually be granted this access.
Under the old system, you outright wouldn't even know that a connection exists, nevermind whether you need to know whether that connection is important or not.
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Why not, if it helps them do their job?
I feel like there is an implicit assumption on Slashdot that government agents don't know how to do their jobs properly, even though we know very little about what they do.
And then we complain when lay people assume tech/IT people don't know how to do their jobs correctly.
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The summary seems to be a description of a meta-search engine, which is rather common. (Dogpile).
The actual product seems MUCH more interesting than the silly summary. It compartamentalizes secret info, so if you are classified for level 5, you can still search and find info that is level 6, even if the file also has level 4 information. It can also tag information so that if your level 5 clearance is not enough to tell you how person A is connected to person B, you can still know that the connection exists.
Yeah, but if you are classified for level 5 and look at level 6, which presumably is above your classification, then you are in fact looking at classified work even if it has level 4 work - which means the levels of classification are being broken and the security is compromised. And if person A is a 5 and looking at classification 6 which is connected to person B it in effect blows any security clearances out the door. Of course, person C who is a 4 looking at person B who is a ....I've gone cross-eyed, d
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So CIA and FBI tech enters the 90's. huzzah! (Score:2)
CIA and FBI computer systems are infamously way, way behind. They only got wikis in 2006. Now they can finally google something.
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I think you're describing PL4 security. That's not the trick here. When they say different sources, they mean different TYPES of sources, geospacial, dates, ip addresses, telephone logs, video metadata, random XML, SQL. Dogpile searches multiple sources of unstructured text.
Thanks, but then it brings up a new problem (Score:2)
Fact B can be Top Secret and
Fact C can be confidential
Sometimes taking C and then correlating to something with A+B (with the B removed) will then result in TS (same as B). So, I'd think it's a touchy area. In the 90s a similar "classification by association," was commonly referred to as Elements of Essential Friendly Information (EEFIs), such as a recall roster and leave schedules. If the enemy has the recall roster and suddenly one particular part of a unit gets a 3-ring recall
The Palantir Tool is a Double-Edged Sword (Score:5, Insightful)
What happens when you aim the same tool at ordinary people like Slashdotters? You will discover sexual orientation, adultery, etc.
In other words, the same tool saving us from the terrorists can also defeat the last barriers protecting our privacy. If an intelligence officer in the government hated a particular SlashDotter (due to her articles in this forum), that officer could easily identify her address, her friends, her bank accounts, her adulterous lover, etc. Can you say, "blackmail"?
Re:The Palantir Tool is a Double-Edged Sword (Score:5, Funny)
If an intelligence officer in the government hated a particular SlashDotter... her friends... her adulterous lover
A female SlashDotter with friends and a lover... it would take a top tier spy tool to find that unicorn.
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You don't watch much late night television, do you? Act now, and for the special price of $19.95, not only will we send you the Palantir, but we will throw in your very own Special Agent Koworski and not one, but TWO spy decoder rings!!! Call now! That's 1-800-GUL-IBLE
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No software cannot determine your sexual orientation, nor your hidden adultery. It does not read minds, or hearts. It does not magically know events from the past or the future.
Now, if you went online and posted about your homosexual adulterous relationship on a board that publicly reveals your IP address, then yes, a tool could indeed find it. In that case, who defeated the last barrier of your privacy? Did the tool? Or is it your own darned fault?
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No software cannot determine your sexual orientation, nor your hidden adultery. It does not read minds, or hearts. It does not magically know events from the past or the future.
I do not know that you can definitively say that. What the tool can ferret out is going to depend on what data it has, how much data it has and the quality of that data.
Does the tool have access to credit card data? Does the tool have access to hotel reservation data? Car rental data? Flight reservation data? Phone records? Movie rental data? Other data types too numerous to list that do exist and that the government might get access to?
Given enough data I don't think anyone can say with absolute cer
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That's a comment deserving of a +5 insightful.
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Which is why it's a good idea to use separate identities everywhere and keep them separate and distinct.
It's rather difficult and annoying as hell, but that's if you want to be safe. The paranoid will go as far as to access these separate identities from entirely separate systems. Certainly, their access patterns may be similar or the same, but that's only if they can make that connection.
The other thing to do is to change your speech patterns for each identity. The idea is to try to mimic the general speec
Re:The Palantir Tool is a Double-Edged Sword (Score:4, Funny)
Adultery? You mean like using your other hand?
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Who will babysit the babysitters....?
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Myself and others have talked tons of trash about the U.S. intelligence agencies and leadership on Slashdot and in real-life. The American intelligence agencies would have to be hard-up for funding and job security if they're going to data-mine Slashdot and then go on fishing expeditions to try and find voices of dissent.
I noticed that none of the info in TFA involved plots within the U.S., just "western targets"
Name... (Score:2)
Ok, well thats the first thing that came to my mind...
They were messing with him (Score:2)
"Hi, I'm Alex Karp," Mr. Karp said, offering his hand. No response. "I didn't know you really don't ask their names," he says now.
Real spies have fake names and ids. There's no reason not to give the guy a name, as long as everyone in the room isn't named "Bob".
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But that would run the risk of blowing that fake name's cover. Of course, he should have been able to just make something up on the spot..
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Gee it's almost impressive..... (Score:2)
More likely you're just wasting time and here's why: terrorists don't act or usually exhibit predictable and trackable behavior like normal people. Typically they deal with disposable cell phones, cash and other "untrackables".
These guys have managed to come up with Yet Another Terrorist Tracking Tool®
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but as TFA points out, the people they're looking for often do things that should get them caught, like using the same address and phone number when buying the plane tickets in the case of the 9/11 hijackers. The basic idea is to find a better way to process the data they already have, and to give people the ability to process data that will help them, even when they don't necessarily have access to it (ie the use of data classified at a level higher than the searcher has access to).
The problem generally ha
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Except, despite all of this, they still exist in a trackable world. They live and have stuff delivered to addresses, they access information that leaves a data trail, and use identifiers which do the same. If they share anything, or a field observer notices a meeting then it gets tagged as a meeting and connection; then any activity at all is tracked back to a single node (bank account, address, person, phone number, etc) then you can link ALL connected nodes to that activity. Cash, disposables, and other "
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If you can even USE the word 'Typically' about something, your are implying that they do something often enough to make it traceable. Then you further your anti-argument by giving examples such as disposable cell phones.
Very interesting. You must be a terrorist posting disinformation.
Or maybe I am for pointing it out ;)
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Your post is not only ill-informed, but totally illogical. Which is it, are terrorists unpredictable (which itself is a pattern) or do they exhibit certain typical behaviors?!
Never too late to read TFA, you know...
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Shouldn't it be "Yet Another Terrorist Tracking Apparatus", or "YATTA!" for short? Or is that the Japanese version?
Governmentsss spying on their own citizensss ... (Score:5, Funny)
... we hatesss it, Preciousss, yesss we doesss.
A double edged sword (Score:2)
Splunk! (Score:2)
Cool, so they just invented Splunk! Cool. Is it any cheaper than splunk, because if it is, I'll use it.
TOTALLY NOVEL! (Score:2)
> The software's main advance is a user-friendly search tool that can scan multiple data sources at once, something previous search tools couldn't do
OMG! Did someone finally discover the hidden "UNION" conjunction in SQL?
Starlight! (Score:2)
This sounds similar to Starlight [wikipedia.org], which the NSA uses for all kinds of "connect the dots" type intelligence activities.
Actually It Works Like This... (Score:2)
1: Announce software that will bust terrorist networks.
2: Only terrorists buy software to test out their own network security.
3: Software phones home.
4: PROFIT!
Be careful (Score:2)
Just be careful not to have your name mentioned in the same document with a bad guy's name in it. This technology really is that simple and that dangerous.
Turbo Hearts (Score:2)
There is a particularly entertaining game mentioned in the video called "Turbo Hearts", which rules.
I found this good explanation of how to play:
http://ericanderson.us/2009/09/04/how-to-play-turbo-hearts/ [ericanderson.us]
Re:Palin? (Score:5, Informative)
No, it's a Tolkien reference [wikipedia.org]. IOW, they really are geeks.
They're also disingenuous astroturfers. (Score:3, Interesting)
They've plastered the Pentagon with banners practically claiming they single-handedly brought down GhostNet [wikipedia.org] when they were at best on the periphery of the rather large collection of organizations responsible for it.
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Please turn in your geek card.
You obviously didn't READ the books. I could see you missing it if you only saw the movies, since they almost never, if at all, called it by name.
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Seeing as how the first 3 comments (including mine) are of the form "What's the reference?" and the 4th is of the form "The reference is..." I believe you're requiring %90 of
Either that or kdawson is an epic troll.
Re:Palin? (Score:5, Funny)
Please turn in your geek card.
No, that would be nerd card. Geeks have social skills.
You obviously didn't READ the books.
neither did I. I tried - I really tried.. but they were so horribly boring and long-winded it was impossible for me to make it through even part of the first one.
Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A by Tolkein: The chicken, sunlight coruscating off its radiant yellow-white coat of feathers, approached the dark, sullen asphalt road and scrutinized it intently with its obsidian-black eyes. Every detail of the thoroughfare leapt into blinding focus: the rough texture of the surface, over which countless tires had worked their relentless tread through the ages; the innumerable fragments of stone embedded within the lugubrious mass, perhaps quarried from the great pits where the Sons of Man labored not far from here; the dull black asphalt itself, exuding those waves of heat which distort the sight and bring weakness to the body; the other attributes of the great highway too numerous to give name. And then it crossed it.
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I'm with you, and I love fantasy and sci-fi books (I've read the entire Wheel of Time, Swort of Truth, Hitchhiker, Foundation, Interview w/ the Vampire...but after reading LOTR, I couldn't find the motivation to pick up another one.
PS. "The Name of the Wind" is a good book I just finished.
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Please turn in your geek card.
No, that would be nerd card. Geeks have social skills.
You obviously didn't READ the books.
neither did I. I tried - I really tried.. but they were so horribly boring and long-winded it was impossible for me to make it through even part of the first one.
Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A by Tolkein: The chicken, sunlight coruscating off its radiant yellow-white coat of feathers, approached the dark, sullen asphalt road and scrutinized it intently with its obsidian-black eyes. Every detail of the thoroughfare leapt into blinding focus: the rough texture of the surface, over which countless tires had worked their relentless tread through the ages; the innumerable fragments of stone embedded within the lugubrious mass, perhaps quarried from the great pits where the Sons of Man labored not far from here; the dull black asphalt itself, exuding those waves of heat which distort the sight and bring weakness to the body; the other attributes of the great highway too numerous to give name. And then it crossed it.
You left out the part where the chicken bursts into a song for 5 pages.
Re:Palin? (Score:5, Insightful)
... a badly written child's fantasy world ....
Now now, Tolkien's Middle-earth was a badly-written ADULT'S fantasy world.
badly written? (Score:3, Insightful)
i'm guessing you thing Twilight and Harry Potter are works of genius?
i'm surprised more people haven't taken your flamebait.
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Well, I'm not sure WHY it's a requirement, but it has become one, de facto. You don't have to think it's great, or even like it at all, but just about every 'geek' has read it, regardless of what they thought about it.
And I WOULD say it's a child's fantasy world. It was written with his son in mind partly while he was in the trenches in WW1. Additionally he was a good friend of C.S. Lewis, who also wrote what I would call children's books.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/news/2003/aug29.html [christianitytoday.com]
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It's not like as though the company was named "Rusty Trombones Inc." or something
That would be a Commander Riker reference?
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"Thankfully, engineering was split into military and civilian engineering a loooong time ago."
You are high, right? Smoking something really strange? There is as much separation between military and civilian engineering as there is between military and civilian written languages. That is to say, there is precious little that can't be interchanged.
Trick question: In a group of people including a waitress, a secretary, a construction worker, a doctor, and a professional wrestler, who is likely to know the s
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You mean like Honduras [latimes.com]?
This would be the first time... (Score:2)
This would be the first time that the US would be acting in the interests of a democratic movement in Latin America rather than in direct opposition. I'm highly skeptical of any action taken by the State Department, but it seems that the Organization of American States support reinstatement of Zelaya with conditions before the elections, as well as the citizens of Honduras itself.
That's why there's no good press. Supporting democracy is protecting the monarchy in Saudi Arabia, and overthrowing governments a
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Exactly.
For those in the US who may have not heard about it, the Honduran conservatives the Army and Congress kidnapped the democratically-elect president and deported him to Costa Rica, taking over the goverment and repressing those who dissented.
Everybody, except the US, is calling it a military coup d'etat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Honduran_constitutional_crisis [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_reaction_to_the_2009_Honduran_military_coup [wikipedia.org]
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Except that the president himself violated the constitution, an act that called for his removal from power (even though a means of removal from power was not defined in the constitution). He did this to remove term limits and instill himself as president for life, subverting democracy in the process. Did you know that the referendum he called for had ballots stuffed with winning number of vote? Even though the referendum was never actually voted on? How about that the nations democratically elected congress
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The president's opponents claim he intended to remove reelection limits, but there is no proof at all of this.
The fact that the Honduran constitution had no impeachment procedures is just another proof of the fact that it needed to be revised and rewritten!
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regardless of his intention (and yes there is evidence he was intenting to change term limits, see the ballot boxes stuffed with fake votes), it was illegal for him to have called for any referendum to change the constitution while in office. He had to be removed.
And yes, you are very much right about the constitution needing a provision to remove a criminal president from power. Sometimes even that is not enough, as the first 8 years of this century have shown in the US.
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I thought it went down differently than that. Zelaya was trying to rewrite the constitution to allow him more than two terms as president, a step in the direction of dictatorship.
A judge issued a warrant for his arrest because he had no right to call a vote to rewrite the constitution. The military followed the Judge's order but expelled him from the country instead of arresting him. They later said they did this to prevent his followers from getting access to Zelaya.
The military was never in charge of t
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