Feds Pay Millions For Bogus Spy Software 221
gosuperninja writes "The US Government paid tens of millions of dollars to Dennis Montgomery because he said he had created software that could decode secret Al-Qaeda messages embedded in Al-Jazeera broadcasts. Even though the CIA figured out that his software was fraud in 2003, other defense agencies continued to believe in it. To date, the government has not prosecuted Montgomery, most likely to save itself the embarrassment."
Likely more prevalent an issue than we realize.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Mr. Montgomery is about to go on trial in Las Vegas on unrelated charges of trying to pass $1.8 million in bad checks at casinos.
I'd say he has more than a "penchant" for gambling, it sounds like this guy genuinely has a problem.
Gambling issue aside, the sad thing regarding his behavior is that it's probably more commonplace than we're aware of. After 9/11, government officials were and still are under serious pressure to produce results, and often all too eager to sign a few papers here and there if it would magically solve their problems. The government trying to save face is merely a symptom, and should be treated as such. The only things I can think of that would discourage this behavior is active prevention through transparency and follow-up enforcement when that fails. One way or another, these charades must not be allowed to continue. I'm sure there's a lot more where that came from which fell into the well along the way, and it's going to add up. After all, it is the taxpayer that will shoulder the weight of these transactions.
Re:Likely more prevalent an issue than we realize. (Score:5, Insightful)
It certainly does make them look stupid when they're supposed to be protecting us from a big, determined, ruthless threat like Al-Qaeda and it ends up that they can't even protect themselves from simple fraud. It makes them look unnecessary, too, and that's the part they can't stand. It's the sort of thing that can make the political pressures no longer operate in their favor. Until this event they had the whole "be afraid!" thing working well for them.
In any kind of merit-based organization that would mean firing and replacing every decision-maker who chose to invest in this software. That's how they could regain credibility, by showing that they won't tolerate such gross incompetence within their ranks. Otherwise the question remains valid: how do they propose to protect the entire country from shadowy underground terrorist organizations bent on our destruction if they cannot even protect themselves from a common con-man?
Re:Likely more prevalent an issue than we realize. (Score:4, Informative)
The C.I.A. never did an assessment to determine how a ruse had turned into a full-blown international incident, officials said, nor was anyone held accountable. In fact, agency officials who oversaw the technology directorate — including Donald Kerr, who helped persuade George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, that the software was credible — were promoted, former officials said.
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The reason these individuals were not fired is because it's a merit-based organization. A meritocracy penalizes failure and rewards success. By penalizing honest mistakes the people who end up on top may not be those with the most merit, but those who hide their mistakes the best. This has the added detriment of not allowing the organization to learn from its failures.
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The reason these individuals were not fired is because it's a merit-based organization. A meritocracy penalizes failure and rewards success. By penalizing honest mistakes the people who end up on top may not be those with the most merit, but those who hide their mistakes the best. This has the added detriment of not allowing the organization to learn from its failures.
Two things. One, if the Department of Agriculture made this mistake then I'd say ok, they just got conned, hope they catch the bastard. I wouldn't expect them to be any more difficult to con than any private business or individual. It's different when you have a Department of Homeland Security with all sorts of forensic, investigatory and other law enforcement powers available to it and they're still vulnerable to a common thief. I'm betting that catching the really hardcore terrorists is going to be mu
Re:Likely more prevalent an issue than we realize. (Score:5, Insightful)
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And the previous sentence, "Mr. Montgomery, 57, who is in bankruptcy and living outside Palm Springs, Calif..."
Whatever his cut of the $20 million the government paid, he evidently didn't make good use of.
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Even before 9/11, they were blowing money on thousand dollar toilet seats and quackery like divining rods to locate land mines.
They're children and need close supervision. As much as I hate taxes and government spending, we need to spend more money on oversight. They need to be watched like hawks.
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How about just not giving them so much money to begin with? The US government is a child who spends who entire allowance, and rather than figuring how to spend it more wisely just takes more money from his parents wallets.
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That's not as far from the truth as you jokingly suggest. The original "Food Pyramid" promoted by the US government was based more on industry wants than sound nutritional science.
File suit against the government (Score:2)
If we have this solid evidence, file suit against the government for criminal negligence. Do something that will force them to lay punishment down on the lying son of a bitch.
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If we have this solid evidence, file suit against the government for criminal negligence. Do something that will force them to lay punishment down on the lying son of a bitch.
If they have a mind to prosecute him, then he may just discover that at least some of the time, Uncle Sam will spend ten million dollars to get his five cents back.
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> file suit against the government for criminal negligence
You can only file suit against the government (and win) when they consent to be sued in plain language in the law. The most common case where they do that is section 1983 claims; section 1983 of part of the United States Code lets you sue the government for violating your Constitutional rights. I am unaware of any sovereign immunity waivers that apply in this situation. It's not like you have a Constitutional right to have the government not be
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the thing is, the government belongs to you, the people, so it doesn't make sense to sue yourself.
So I have sole ownership of the federal government as a voting citizen of the US? I'll be sure to send a couple of guys around to give you a wedgie then.
If I don't have sole ownership of the federal government, which happens to be the case, then your argument doesn't make sense. For it is indeed possible for the federal government to act against my wishes and interests, and court is a place where such conflicts often end up.
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(y'know, the ones who scramble to spend all their money at the end of the year because next year's budget will be smaller if it turns out they didn't really need that much).
THAT has been going on for years, at every level of government. One of my jobs as a computer vendor was to find stuff for schools to buy at the end of the year, so as to use literally every single penny of their budget. "Now, what item in your catalog is closest to, but does not exceed, $22.50?"
Re:File suit against the government (Score:5, Insightful)
Blaming a woman for the way she dresses in a rape trial would be attacking her freedom of expression.
Blaming the government for spending millions of our tax dollars on a blatant scam would be attacking the government officials for being abjectly stupid.
The former is not okay. The latter is responsible and should be expected.
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Blaming a woman for the way she dresses in a rape trial would be attacking her freedom of expression.
No, it would be blaming the victim.
The former is not okay. The latter is responsible and should be expected.
Nonsense. You're effectively saying that it's not ok to criticize people - it's only ok to criticize the government. That's idiotic.
Re:File suit against the government (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, of course there are going to be differences. Analogies are always imperfect. However, the original comment stated that the criminal should be "left alone" and the government punished for the failure. If you find that approach to be in any way reasonable, there's something very wrong with you.
(and no, I'm not suggesting that YOU do, I'm only explaining why I responded in the way I did)
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taxes pay for police as well... i think the duty falls on them somewhat.
a person does not have a duty to avoid having crimes perpetrated upon them in order to prevent a burden on the medical and legal system. that's stupid.
crime prevention is a state responsibility.
beyond locking my car doors, i should be able to walk wherever the fuck i want to, should i so choose.
if a park is the shortest path between work and the train station, i reserve the right as a free fucking citizen to walk through that park, no
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taxes pay for police as well... i think the duty falls on them somewhat.
No, it doesn't. Look up Warren vs. District of Columbia. It deals with a case where three women were beaten, raped, and otherwise degraded for a 14 hour stretched, after not just calling the police, but calling them twice and being assured each time that officers were being dispatched. The women sued the district and lost. Here's the relevant part of the court ruling (emphasis added):
"The Court, however, does not agree that defendants owed a specific legal duty to plaintiffs with respect to the allegati
They should have been suspicious (Score:5, Funny)
When the message decoded to "There's a sucker born every minute."
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Drink your Ovaltine.
Embarrassment? (Score:5, Insightful)
This kind of hoaxes happens all the time. Check out Quadro Tracker [wikipedia.org] and friends...
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They will continue to happen unless and until people selling bogus software to the government are prosecuted for sabotage.
The problem is the inequitable justice system fails to inflict enough pain on white collar criminals to deter them, yet inflicts so much on those of lower social class they are often ruined and made worse.
Yet Another duplicate article (Score:4, Informative)
I realize this is winter..but must we go on with the repeats?" [slashdot.org]
Re:Yet Another duplicate article (Score:5, Interesting)
I realize this is winter..but must we go on with the repeats?" [slashdot.org]
It's a bit more interesting than that. This guy had been outed two years ago. The Federal government, instead of just admitting it got screwed, decided to toss the whole incident under the rug and declare it a secret. This is even more outrageous than the initial fraud and incompetence. Using secrecy as an excuse for incompetence is nothing new, however it is such a serious issue that it needs to be brought up every time it's discovered.
I saw something very similar. (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked at one of the 'Agenices' and during my time there (in the last 3 years) I worked with a similar fellow. He was introduced to me as this utter genius. An independant subcontractor who, with his never seen friend, had come up with a software solution that could allow their laptop to snoop on any Internet traffic, anywhere in the world at any time...instantly. "It sees everything, you just look at the part that interests you", he explained to me. Sort of like a machine running Wireshark with the NIC in PROM mode, but for the entire Internet. No one in the Gov questioned him. No a single soul. He was a contractor (like myself) and was being paid so much that he was given two billets to cover the cost. So I sat through his presentation and immediately threw a BS flag. He flipped out, stormed out and no one knew what to do. I did my best to explain the facts that made his claims impossible. I asked the room if they'd ever tested his system in a real world environment. "Call your wife, have her get online and tell her what's going on. Then have Peter look at her traffic". After about a half-hour, they started to realize what had happened, you could see it on their faces. Thing is, this guy had been paid millions in funding a salary. I don't think his business partner ever existed. What did they do about it? Nothing. You see, in order to go after him, they'd look foolish. Not going to happen. Not in the Intel community.
Sooner or later... (Score:2)
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if your story is remotely true, then you are an idiot.
You could have made millions on this - everybody is in on the game, so are you holier than the rest of them?
You should have approached this fella privately and 'sold' him a module to his application that would also provide ability to track all GPS systems installed in all cars/other vehicles with just a few simple clicks.
If/when he would have told you: "BS/impossible", you could have just point back at him and winÐ and said something like - "not les
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By committing fraud against the US government, with the hopes that it wouldn't catch up to him? Yeah, that's brilliant. The guy in the story here is luckily the CIA didn't take care of business properly to cover up this little fuckup. Why would you want to aspire to that? I know it may be hard for you to wrap your brain around, but it's not so hard to make the kind of money you are describing without committing massive fraud, and you actually get to enjoy the fruits of your labor without ending up in ja
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Oh, please, stop the drama.
As long as you do it BIG ENOUGH [salon.com] you not only do not get 'caught' (wtf?) but you get tens or more BILLIONS of dollars and gov't "thank you"s, not jail. Jail is so 'early last century', it doesn't happen for defrauding government anymore.
What's 'defrauding' anyway? Who cares today if you steal some money that the Fed prints? Nobody cares. US is destroying its currency with all that printing - nobody is going to jail for that one, and that will end up taking down the entire econom
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Maybe so, maybe you are right. Halliburton OTOH doesn't have such qualms.
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Some people have ethics.
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Yes, that's why they are poor, while Halliburton and Co are raking in billions.
Re:I saw something very similar. (Score:5, Informative)
Ha ha ha ha! You have just made my day.
ade 651 [wikipedia.org] and the company's website [ade651.co.uk] - they sell them to gov'ts and military at around 60,000USD/pop.
GT200 [wikipedia.org] - these are cheaper I think, about half the price of ADE. They are sold to governments.
Quadro Tracker [wikipedia.org]
Sniffex [wikipedia.org]
hedd1 [hedd1.com]
h3tec [h3tec.com]
etc. all of these are sold to and bought by various government institutions. From schools to military to airports to subway systems, etc.etc.
Makes you so much securer. Or does it? Reliance on these devices KILLS people, who 'use' them and then believe the place is safe.
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Quite. I'm sure the quantity of money was just an exercise in budget redistribution anyway, and it's likely that the public "it's a fake!" warnings many years later by Western agencies were simply ways of adjusting the behaviour of the governments/departments using the tools. (Maybe some unrelated negotiation failed. Maybe someone's trying to sell another solution.)
Intelligence agencies aren't there to publish timely and accurate reports directly for the people. They're merely a branch of government and the
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"It requires a very high level of electric current but without amperage."
Japes aside, calling this and its ilk 'fraud' is criminally underestimating the effect of overreliance (defined as any reliance) on such products.
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Publicised "evidence" for WMDs in Iraq was produced for nothing but political reasons. The intelligence agencies don't care whether you blame them or not. They're not going anywhere, and they will carry on producing accurate reports for people who need to know.
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just in case, some more questions about the intelligence's intelligence [necn.com]
The Arab 'revolutions' caught the 'intelligence' by surprise after all.
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The Arab revolutions did not catch 'intelligence' by surprise. The agencies warned the regimes in the mid-east were fragile for years. The hard part is predicting exactly what-when will set off a revolution. Maybe you have the secret, I'm sure they'd listen to you.
Hell, even Clinton warned the Arabs at a conference in the mid-East in October that they risked being swept aside if they didn't loosen controls. Bush warned them in 2002-3 that the U.S. would support democracy everywhere. Democrats and Republican
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What is your point? I don't know much about how US government works behind the scenes, but in the UK any release by almost every department of government or civil service is designed to effect a particular goal, not to inform. If something is released by government to suggest the impotence of a particular department and grave consequences of that impotence, for example, it is because representative and popular support for increased budget or powers is sought.
For example, all the "CIA/FBI/NSA/etc were cluele
Re:I saw something very similar. (Score:4, Insightful)
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"Our point"? You haven't posted before so maybe I'm missing something.
The point I've made very explicit in other posts is that intelligence agencies don't work for you but for the government, and that their business is the capture, analysis and dissemination of information (true and false), so you cannot judge their performance by taking anything they publish on face value.
I also emphasised that "Air Force buys surveillance software" doesn't mean that an intelligence agency is using particular surveillance
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Re-read. The obviously bungled reports are known not to be true (except, perhaps, by you?), but are created to further a particular goal. Or is propaganda something only the Axis of Naughtiness engages in?
Re:I saw something very similar. (Score:4, Funny)
I'm not sure you're following the game. This conversation all started with an article about U.S. intelligence agencies paying a man US$20,000,000 to detect and decode (presumably) steganographic messages in news broadcasts. That charlatans can weasel their way into the most sensitive parts of the government on this side of the pond is, if not a proven fact, at least a given for the purposes of our little chat here.
The closest I've ever gotten to being in an intelligence agency was taking the tour at the FBI in D.C. about 20 years ago. But I did spend 25 years working for the FAA, which is responsible for ensuring the safety of aviation in the U.S. (presumably without choking off air travel to a trickle), and I saw examples of ignorance and incompetence in positions of authority and consequence that have scarred me for life. Most people don't know anything, and they don't know anything about what they might know if they did know anything, and they don't know any way to figure out the extent of their ignorance if they did want to know (which they don't).
As a humorous aside, here's an example of what passes for "security" in the U.S.: a supervisor of mine (we'll call him Tom, since that's his name) told the story of how, when he had been in the agency for just a couple of years, a friend of his broke up with his wife. The wife got angry and called the ATC center where we worked and told management that her (future ex-)husband and his buddies (including, naturally, Tom) had smoked marijuana in her presence. This, of course, started a witch hunt which ended with Tom being interviewed by his superior. It went something like this:
Tom's Boss: Tom, we hear you've smoked pot. Is that true?
Tom: Yes.
Tom's Boss: We can't fire you for that because we can't prove it, but since you admitted it to me we'll have to fire you for falsifying government documents.
Tom: What documents?
Tom's Boss: Your SF-171 Application for Government Employment. Where it asks if you've used illegal drugs, you said "no."
Tom: No, I didn't. I said yes.
Tom's Boss: Huh?
Tom: When I filled out the SF-171, I said I had used marijuana.
Tom's Boss: You did?
Tom: Yes.
Tom's Boss: Oh.
And that was it. As far as I know (I'm retired now), Tom still works there, 30 years after the PATCO strike opened up a position for him. And that, my friend, is what passes for due diligence in the U.S. government.
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I certainly don't regard the FAA as an intelligence agency. But:
TI saw examples of ignorance and incompetence in positions of authority and consequence that have scarred me for life. Most people don't know anything, and they don't know anything about what they might know if they did know anything, and they don't know any way to figure out the extent of their ignorance if they did want to know (which they don't).
It's fairly typical for geeks to recount times where they felt they were surrounded by clueless idiots controlling everything around them. Yet, oddly enough, the organisations still manage to function and nothing happens to indicate a serious failure of operation. Perhaps you overestimated the extent of incompetence, or were yourself finding something hard to understand and assumed someone else was acting irrationally?
This, of course, started a witch hunt which ended with Tom being interviewed by his superior. It went something like this:
So Tom's boss, who might n
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It's fairly typical for geeks to recount times where they felt they were surrounded by clueless idiots controlling everything around them. Yet, oddly enough, the organisations still manage to function and nothing happens to indicate a serious failure of operation
- really?
nothing [wikipedia.org] happens [cnn.com]?
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The "crisis" is you being on the losing end of a collection of similar financial deals over the past decade which have made other people very rich. Nothing has happened which was not planned. And do you think that debt appeared overnight? It's been building up in the past decade.
Everyone relevant was aware of what Madoff was up to. Since at least 1999 people were warning about his behaviour, but who of relevance would benefit if he were called out so soon? His scheme was simply not sustainable through 2008
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Oh, please.
Madoff didn't set up the biggest ponzi scheme in history.
THIS [federalreserve.gov] is the biggest ponzi scheme in history, followed by this. [youtube.com]
Both are government creations, btw.
As to having those crises described as 'planned'. Well, yeah. Every failure can be described as planned if you use the word 'planned' in a peculiar manner and add a fresh doze conspiracy theories to it, mix it up with the complacency and stupidity... your ideology is not-non-similar to that of a creationist.
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If you want, you can describe 2008 as "inevitable" rather than planned: Now if some ongoing behaviour is unsustainable then it will inevitably eventually fail. Do you regard that the past decade of behaviour was sustainable? If the answer is no then you must accept that what happened in 2008 was inevitable. If the answer is yes then provide evidence.
The whole "social security is a ponzi scheme" is bullshit: everyone takes part in SS whereas a ponzi scheme collapses because there are not enough new investors
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Do you regard that past decade of behaviour was sustainable
- no. And it wasn't sustainable since the Fed and SS were established.
The whole "social security is a ponzi scheme" is bullshit: everyone takes part in SS whereas a ponzi scheme collapses because there are not enough new investors to give profitable returns the older investors.
- you missed the point. There was never 'investment', it was always a ponzi scheme from get go. There was never a fund. Whatever they consider a 'surplus' is US treasury bonds, and those are like checks to yourself - don't make you any richer, but worse, they also have to be sold on bond market, and this means that it's debt that is funding SS, not investments.
If gov't wanted people to have real retirement savings, it would have never t
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- no. And it wasn't sustainable since the Fed and SS were established.
Sorry, what? Are you saying that, if it weren't for the Federal Reserve and Social Security, the last decade of irresponsible spending and investment would not have resulted in the 2008 "crisis"?
- you missed the point. There was never 'investment', it was always a ponzi scheme from get go.
SS could be run as an investment policy, but it isn't, nor does it need to be. As long as the government behaves responsibly, it doesn't need to have everyone's pension money available - just as banks don't have the total value of all deposits in available cash.
Whatever they consider a 'surplus' is US treasury bonds,
Always? Why can't the government have a treasury surplu
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Contrary to government-is-full-of-idiots lore ...
The government is full of idiots (hell, we vote for a good chunk of them). But there are enough non-idiots to keep this type of shit from happening (usually). I'd be worried if there were more non-idiots then idiots though, because with all the malice and plotting they do at the moment we're safer because most of them aren't much smarter than my cat.
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You insult your cat. If cats could talk, they wouldn't; the vanity of man revolts from the serene indifference of the cat; etc.
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You are not safer [huffingtonpost.com] even when they are not necessarily ignorant. [nytimes.com]
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The above does not apply to the rest of government
Why? What is magically different about the intelligence community that they somehow evade the problems which are rife throughout the US government?
My view is that the very story shows you are wrong. The creeping incompetence and corruption which affects every other part of the federal government also infects US intelligence.
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Why? What is magically different about the intelligence community that they somehow evade the problems which are rife throughout the US government?
It is in the interest of relevant parties for an intelligence agency to act efficiently, collecting intelligence, whereas with most other departments it is in the interest of relevant parties for it to act fairly inefficiently, collecting revenue.
My view is that the very story shows you are wrong. The creeping incompetence and corruption which affects every other part of the federal government also infects US intelligence.
You may wish to review your understanding of "military intelligence". Just because a military department purchases some technology which claims to help with intelligence gathering it doesn't mean it's operating through an intelligence agency.
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effective? [sup.org]
no major failures? [guardian.co.uk]
intelligent? [greenchange.org]
useful? [autentico.org]
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For whom do you understand intelligence agencies to work?
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if national agencies do not work for the better of the nation, then they definitely have no place in this world.
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Intelligence agencies do not answer directly to the people in any country.
For whom do they work? IOW, who tells them what to do? To whom do they report?
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Hey, if those they report to have a preference for one 'kind' of intelligence over another, it's easy to see that intelligence agency then becomes not intelligence gathering agency, but just a propaganda machine. For that kind of work you don't need to 'gather intelligence', you just need to put the expected words into the expected reports.
But to have that, you need not a conspiracy, but a massive bureaucracy that is terrible at its job in totality and only cares about funding and job security. In that envi
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Interviews with more than two dozen current and former officials and business associates and a review of documents show that Mr. Montgomery and his associates received more than $20 million in government contracts by claiming that software he had developed could help stop Al Qaedaâ(TM)s next attack on the United States. But the technology appears to have been a hoax, and a series of government agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency and the Air Force, repeatedly missed the warning signs, the records and interviews show.
- this is from the story at hand.
For 8 years CIA missed the warning signs?
I agree, this sounds more effective and intelligent than I gave it credit for. It only took 8 years to understand that this was not a magic piece of software.
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You're not really answering the question. Try again: For whom do they work? IOW, who tells them what to do? To whom do they report?
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CIA reports to the National Intelligence Director and the POTUS.
Now you, try again, this time with a better argument than CIA is intelligent and/or efficient at it. [slashdot.org]
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unlike you, I do not give people that much credit when it comes to the logic, reasoning and intelligence in general. Especially not the people who work for government.
This is not surprising given what the electorate looks like and it has been known for thousands of years. [allanstime.com]
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Athenian democracy is not like modern democracy. We don't just elect all government workers. Much of the civil service is pretty much unelected, in the UK tied into various well-established educational institutions, examinations, old boy networks, etc. To say that the high level civil service in the UK is run by idiots is essentially to say that the top UK universities are full of idiots.
Of course, some high-level instruction comes from elected officials. And sometimes these officials even do what the popul
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It is in the interest of relevant parties for an intelligence agency to act efficiently, collecting intelligence, whereas with most other departments it is in the interest of relevant parties for it to act fairly inefficiently, collecting revenue.
Here's a counterexample which disproves your assertion. Dennis Montgomery, the villain of the story, clearly was both a "relevant party" since he consumed or wasted considerable intelligence resources. And it's blindingly obvious now that he didn't have an interest in an efficient intelligence operation.
My view is that Mr. Montgomery's software was useful, not because it did anything useful, but because it told leadership what they wanted to hear, plus it generated a few politically convenient alerts. Th
AJ (Score:5, Informative)
What's pretty disturbing is that the government is so gullible over such a lie that's ridiculous on its face. Really, secret messages from Al Qaeda in Al Jazeera? Why not hidden messages from Al Qaeda on MTV or CNN? That would be just as plausible.
I'm still mystified by how much neocons despise the channel. No wonder Bush planned to bomb Al Jazeera [harpers.org], he was so quick to jump onto the false notion. Never mind that Al Qaeda hates Al Jazeera [foxnews.com] and has done so for years (AQ supporters call it "Al-Khinzeera," which means The Pig)
Re:AJ (Score:5, Interesting)
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I The Al Jazeera articles are usually well written, don't have sensationalist headlines, and you don't have to sift through all the latest celebrity crap.
all the latest celebrity crap
Add me to the list!
Me, too!
Re:AJ (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the thing, don't you see? That their agenda is not incredibly obvious, that they're not spouting hate and misinformation every 10 microseconds. The US govt can't help but think they're hiding something. Any self-respecting news outlet should be biased and trollish on the edges!
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I've actually found Al Jazeera reporting to be much better than most American news sources. The Al Jazeera articles are usually well written, don't have sensationalist headlines, and you don't have to sift through all the latest celebrity crap.
Then how am I supposed to know which article to click on with headlines like "Charlie Sheen's Porn Stars Save Egypt's Treasures From Lindsey Lohan's 'Shopping Spree' "?
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They were worried about those, too. Even now, and especially back then [schneier.com], there was great reluctance to rebroadcast any terrorist video for fear it would contain hidden signals, such as a "go code" or somesuch (steganography). If you were worried about that, Al Jazeera would be the biggest threat vector simply because they normally get the scoop on terrorist videos.
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Re:AJ (Score:4, Insightful)
They were worried about those, too.
This is because they are goddamn stupid morons. I don't know why we have to pretend that their worry makes any sense.
If all terrorists need is a signal, there are dozens of ways to set that up without bothering with news media.
Stick a specific post on a well-read bboard or something. In fact, have a dozen places that such a thing gets posted.
Or, better, post on usenet...it's utterly impossible to monitor people who read a specific post, as it's on a thousand different servers, and people usually download entire groups at once. I can just imagine how that works: 'Well, we caught one guy, and he says he was instructed to search everyday his usenet client for the string '39457295' in alt.tv.lost, and read codewords in that post as a trigger. We better...uh...check the thousands of servers that carry them for the IPs of tens thousands of people who download that group, and then look up their IPs.' Yeah, that sounds like a workable plan to find the other terrorists.
And this is _without_ any specialized software that can decode messages hidden in files.
Or just run a fricking classified ad, like spies used to do decades ago. (Although pretty soon 'buying a newspaper' will be suspicious in and of itself.)
At some point, we really need to start back up on the whole eugenics thing. People who think 'Recording a message that is blatantly from terrorists is a good way to pass messages _to_ terrorists', as opposed to the literally millions of other ways to get messages to sleeper agents, none of which require them carefully watching obviously terrorist-produced video (Which is somewhat suspicious)...well, they need to be castrated and thus removed from the gene pool. (Or, alternately, if we could somehow figure out how to get them to be, or at least mate with, terrorists...)
Dupe (Score:2)
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/12/25/0019250/Fraudulent-Anti-Terrorist-Software-Led-US-To-Ground-Planes [slashdot.org]
Doesn't this show the need for Open Source? (Score:2, Interesting)
More than ever, especially at the government level?
With closed source, they just get magical black boxes that somehow work (or not, in this case), without actually understanding what it does. Unless they want to spend more money reverse engineering the whole thing.
Sure, we've got the money for that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Wonder why we are so poor?
FTA: "A Pentagon study in January found that it had paid $285 billion in three years to more than 120 contractors accused of fraud or wrongdoing. "
Re: (Score:2)
Why in the world would the government have to subsidize that? Did vitamins become a rare and precious commodity when I wasn't looking?
Here's an idea, just because the government has money, doesn't mean it should be paying for things you can easily pay for yourself,
Re:Sure, we've got the money for that... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nutritional adequacy is cheap, a cognitively dysfunctional underclass is not...
Re: (Score:3)
Let them eat cake?
Some people don't actually have money spraying out of their asses.
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Why in the world would the government have to subsidize that? Did vitamins become a rare and precious commodity when I wasn't looking?
Here's an idea, just because the government has money, doesn't mean it should be paying for things you can easily pay for yourself,
You Sir, are a selfish ignorant. They will die or be handicapped for the rest of their life without it. It is not about just about vitamins, they need food with a high energy content, essential amino acids, essential fatty acids, salts, you name it, and it have to be the right balance, it has to be tasty and when the child become older it must provide a variety of flavours. Low birth weight children usually have an underdeveloped digestive system at birth, they may not even be able to process "cheap" source
Re: (Score:2)
It's a little shocking, given the nature of all the sacrifices the government is forcing on normal people.
It's things like this that make me feel like a schmuck for being an honest guy and paying my taxes. Way to grab the ordinary working guy by the nose and kick him in the ass government, whatever would we do without you?
Reminds me of bogus bomb detector (Score:5, Informative)
Yet another way to waste money in the fight against terror.
This one sunk $85M on a bogus bomb detector used widely in Iraq until its export was banned-- ie demand for it was still present and they wanted to continue importing into Iraq! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8471187.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Airport body imagers, duct tape and plastic wrap... Is there no end?
Twenty mil? (Score:2)
Business Plan (Score:4, Informative)
GSA Schedule? (Score:2)
unfortunately not uncommon (Score:2)
There are a lot of people doing research (defense or anything) who honestly believe their work is real and practical despite fundamental impossibilities. Some of these results end up with glowing reviews here on Slashdot.
In highly technical fields, it's really easy to push BS past just about anyone, even other specialists in your field. The best con artists in science honestly believe their research is real. They run entire companies or research centers. They push their employees extremely hard for posi
Well, the cat's out of bag now. (Score:2)
So if they don't prosecute now, then it has nothing to do with saving themselves embarrassment at all.
It's almost refreshing to think that apathy may still be alive and well and working within today's governing bodies.
More dangerous than it sounds (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
.the CIA and Air Force believed at some point that his software could detect a black blob as a terrorist from a black blob who's not a terrorist, off of a UAV video feed. So did they incorporate this into their Rules of Engagement (ROE) at some point and actually declare anyone hostile based on feedback from his software? Because if this is the case, then this guy is probably guilty of more than just ripping the government off. If the government admits to wrongfully killing someone based on bogus software, then who is liable and at what level?
There is a whole industry of people who sell solutions to determine terrorist blobs from non-terrorist blobs. Most are careful to stay in the gray area of lying by selective emphasis and omission, and "not every line of cutting edge research works out perfectly". Everyone else is doing it so it can't be wrong, right? The guys in the government who provide the money don't even care if the stuff works, because they're just there to climb the GS scale, pad their resumes, and cultivate connections that will
Satisfaction Guaranteed (Score:3, Funny)
Guy passing bogus checks to casinos: One point eight million dollars.
Guy defrauds US government: Tens of millions of dollars.
Seeing Guy hanged for treason alongside idiotic government bureaucrats who helped perpetrate this boondoggle: priceless