DHS Monitors Social Media For 'Political Dissent' 385
OverTheGeicoE writes "Recently, TSA's 'Blogger Bob' Burns posted a rant against a cupcake on the TSA blog. Perhaps it made you wonder if TSA and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, really understand what we're saying about them, especially online. Well, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit from the Electronic Privacy Information Center, we now know a lot more about how they monitor online comments aside from 'Blogger Bob.' EPIC has received hundreds of pages of documents regarding DHS's online surveillance program. These documents reveal that DHS has contracts with General Dynamics for '24/7 media and social network monitoring.' Perhaps it will warm your heart to know that DHS is particularly interested in tracking media stories that 'reflect adversely' on the U.S. government generally and DHS specifically. The documents include a report summary that might be representative of General Dynamics' work. The example includes summaries of comments on blogs and social networking sites, including quotes. Then again, you might remember J. Edgar Hoover's monitoring of antiwar activists during the Vietnam War, which certainly wasn't for the protesters' benefit."
Mission accomplished (Score:5, Insightful)
From the government that brought us flag@whitehouse.gov [politico.com]. "Homeland security" is a tool used by a media-obsessed administration to justify its ever-increasing intrusiveness. This kind of robotic behavior in which common sense isn't allowed to override unreasonable strictness isn't making us safer, but it is making us miserable. Terrorist attacks have the word "terror" in them for a reason. The killing of innocent victims is just a vehicle for the ultimate goal of instilling paranoia and apprehension to influence behavior, and now we're fretting over jarred cupcakes. Mission accomplished.
"You have to make people feel safe" (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a quote from a friend's mother, shortly after 9/11, in response to the absurd increase in airport security procedures. As long as people are willing to trade freedom for security, DHS and its ilk will prosper.
DHS = Ministerium fur Staatssicherheit (Score:5, Insightful)
DHS = STASI. And this is just the beginning. When it comes to the US government you can never be too paranoid. Yet another reason not to use facebook. But it's not just facebook I bet. Forums like this or any forums critical of the TSA are obviously being monitored for dissent. For 'domestic extremists', which really means anyone who would advocates abolishing the TSA or DHS.
Re:DHS = Ministerium fur Staatssicherheit (Score:5, Insightful)
We haven't reached that point yet, but if people in general continue to accept the intrusions as necessary, I'm not sure what short of civil war will stop it.
Re:Mission accomplished (Score:5, Insightful)
All social media sites are now just playgrounds for marketing teams. There are multi billion dollar indusries built around promoting products/slandering competitors while pretending to be part of the onine community. Most of the big tech companies use sockpuppet accounts to "manage discussion" on Slashdot already.
Why would you care if the government joins them?
Re:DHS = Ministerium fur Staatssicherheit (Score:3, Insightful)
Here is a list of the websites to be monitored:
Social approach, go.usa.gov, wikileaks, cryptome, Google Blog Search, Technorati, Foreign Policy Passport, Wired's Danger Room and Threat Level blogs, Homeland Security Today, NTARC, LA Now, NY Times Lede Blog, STRATFOR, Drudge Report, Huffington Post, BNONews, MEMRI, Informed Consent, Homeland Security Watch(listed twice, heh), Borderfire Report, ABCNews blotter, WireUpdate, RSSOwl, and Twitter.
I'd be damn surprised to learn that it won't end there.
Hey DHS (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's some dissent for you: Fuck You. Fuck you and everything related to this systematic destruction of civil liberties in the US.
Monitoring is fine (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd expect them to read postings and keep an eye out for people threatening violence. That's a good thing. If someone stands up in a town square and yells that they're going to go shoot the mayor, I'd expect cops to take note. Where it becomes bad is if they harass or in any way mistreat people who aren't threatening violence. Is there any evidence that they're doing that?
Re:DHS = Ministerium fur Staatssicherheit (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, it is possible (and indeed quite easy!) to be overly paranoid. For example, when you start comparing the DHS to an organization that routinely executed dissidents, that's being too paranoid.
Re:Mission accomplished (Score:5, Insightful)
You're asking me why I care about the government monitoring social media sites because you believe tech companies are paying for sockpuppets on Slashdot? Well, you win the blue ribbon for random rant of the day.
Cupcakegate? (Score:2, Insightful)
That must have passed me by.
I can see why they'd show their reasoning behind it, so I can't really say they're "ranting" about it. Imagine if the TSA had to "rant" about every single one of their decisions they made? Wouldn't that be the transparency behind their decisions that we're hoping for?
The tone of the cupcake blog post seems a bit harsh, but the information conveyed and the link to past events which helped support such thinking is one I wish would come up in every single complaint we have against the TSA. By calling it "ranting", all you're doing is making it so they're even less likely to try to explain themselves after they take a questionable action.
Monitor this motherfuckers. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:DHS = Ministerium fur Staatssicherheit (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a trend here, and that trend is certainly heading towards a Gestapo / Stasi-like situation. Taking into account that trend with the assumption that it will be unchecked, where do you think we'll be in 10 years? 20? 30?
Re:DHS = Ministerium fur Staatssicherheit (Score:5, Insightful)
When the government has created an end run around the Constitiution & habeas corpus, the proper question is, "Are we paranoid enough?"
Gitmo is still in business. Extreme rendition is a fact of life. And what with the US trying to extradite a UK citizen from the UK for trial in the US for something that happened in the UK, when the government of the UK refused to prosecute him for said 'crime', I think we all need to ask that question.
Re:Monitoring is fine (Score:5, Insightful)
Unconstitutional, of course (violated the protestor's right to freedom of assembly at the place they wanted to assembe at), but highly effective. Got the protesters away from the action and away from the camera where they could be ignored and/or beaten into a pulp.
Re:DHS = Ministerium fur Staatssicherheit (Score:2, Insightful)
It doesn't actually help your "cause" , whatever that is, to make false claims about the intentions of the US government.
What you're saying is we are already the STASI. So why fight any step towards it? We're already there. There's nothing anyone can do. Drop out. Don't stick your head off. Get off the radar. Live in a hole. Eat out of a can. You might live to be fifty. If they let you.
This kind of sentiment is first and foremost factually inaccurate. The government is NOT the STASI, does not want to be the STASI and does not possess the motivations you ascribe to them.
Secondly, the beliefs you spread have a deleterious effect on the democratic process and to the extent anyone believes you, our democracy is diminished.
Dropping out of participating is a the best way to create a self fulfilling prophesy, supposing in the first instance that people who think the STASI was just great are assembling somewhere, presumably in Texas.
Whether you believe it or not, there are people who are completely driven by religious and political ideologies who would love nothing more than to kill as many Americans as they can.
Compound this with the fact that increasingly we're living in a time where it takes fewer and fewer such people to inflict greater and greater casualties both in headcount and degree of damage upon a population and you have a situation you need to protect yourself against. These people are not going away and are immune to the charms of reasoned debate and compromise and have nothing but contempt for anything in the way of social progress that happened after the 13th century.
Unless we all begin to discuss the undiscussable- what level of damage are we willing to sustain to the nation and the body politic without changing anything with respect to civil rights?- then we can all sit by and watch as DHS and others try to do teh impossible- protect us absolutely from the machinations of the terrorists.
And when DHS fails, as it must eventually, you can then stand by and watch another round of lawmaking you can't stand happen.
And why does it have to be this way? Because no one wants to quantify exactly how mcuh death and mayhem they're willing to endure and still not pass laws that erode civil rights.
We have to have that discussion. We need to say what we're personally willing to see happen in terms of casualties and economic damage without touching anything in the Bill of Rights.
Let me throw a number out there. I am willing to lose an average of 10,000 a year to terrorism.
The reason I say that is because it's well below what we experience already from things like drunk driving and homicides and because it's a nearly unachievable goal for terrorists to reach, and I want my civil liberties to stay in tact.
After that, let's have a discussion about what needs to be changed and how exactly it's going to provide better security.
If your answer is my question is ZERO ! then you can pretty well expect to be gradually kissing your civil liberties goodbye as the years go by.
If the response on the part of the body politic is hysteria and disbelief and then reactionary paranoia against the government's intentions every time there is a successful terrorist attack of any magnitude, then each of those events will be met with new laws and less liberty and more disunion.
That is what's known as "letting the terrorists win"
But that is the world we live in now- hysteria and cries for that the impossible be done- we all be kept perfectly safe all the time at no cost to privacy and freedom.
We live in a world of car accidents and drunk drivers and disease and homicide and suicide and terrorism. There is not another world available.
Given that fact, for the part of the world you CAN control, what do you want it to look like? Do you want civil liberties or not? I know I do.
The way to retain civil liberties is to counter the hysteria with clear thinking a
Re:"You have to make people feel safe" (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as people are willing to trade freedom for illusion of security, DHS and its ilk will prosper.
There, FTFY.
Re:Mission accomplished (Score:5, Insightful)
Terrorist attacks have the word "terror" in them for a reason. The killing of innocent victims is just a vehicle for the ultimate goal of instilling paranoia and apprehension to influence behavior, and now we're fretting over jarred cupcakes.
Who is fretting? It's plausible that the dimwits at TSA have been brainwashed to be genuinely terrified of the world, but I don't believe the scared masses exist, and if they do it's a result of the paranoia instilled by the US government and not some angry muppets on the other side of the world. NOBODY I've talked to or know of is personally concerned about exploding cupcakes or nail-files being used to break down the cabin door. It's bullshit and it's time to treat it as such.
Re:Mission accomplished (Score:5, Insightful)
To those of you who still have your heads in the sand: Do you at least begin to see now, that the so-called "war on terror" is a bad joke, because the so-called "terrorists" have already won -- and our own government are now the terrorists?
This shit has got to stop. NOW.
Re:DHS = Ministerium fur Staatssicherheit (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh jesus crust.
No. No. no. no no no no no no no no.
First off, the DHS isn't that evil
Second off, STASI isn't that bumbling and stupid.
Re:"You have to make people feel safe" (Score:5, Insightful)
This doesn't make me feel "safe". It makes me feel like a prisoner in my own country.
Re:Mission accomplished (Score:4, Insightful)
Because people trying to market things to me is just the way capitalism works. The government spying on you and monitoring you for political dissent is a TRUE invasion of privacy.
Why people get so bent out of shape because some ads get shown to them will NEVER make sense to me. But the idea that the government spying on you is BETTER? Wow.
Re:Mission accomplished (Score:5, Insightful)
The McCarthy days. That's exactly what came to my mind, when I read the title, and then the summary. Back then, there was a Commie hiding on every corner, now it's a terrorist. And, yes, it's all bullshit.
Re:Mission accomplished (Score:5, Insightful)
Because people trying to market things to me is just the way capitalism works. The government spying on you and monitoring you
Your government has, and will continue to do many disgraceful things which invade your privacy and limit your freedoms, but In this instance, they're just monitoring public information. Your corporations are not only monitoring, they are actively influencing community discussions (using sockpuppet accounts) while pretending to be part of the community. That is decietful, and in many cases has effectively killed the community (ie, Digg).
The point I'm making is that it doesn't matter if your government monitors/interferes in social media, because all social media sites are already infested and untrustworthy.
Re:"You have to make people feel safe" (Score:5, Insightful)
Every time I read one of these stories I think of two things.
One is the full quote from my signature (damn Slashdot's absurdly short truncation):
"The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity made by those responsible for the security of a nation." -- Alan Dershowitz
The second is that the founding fathers of the United States did not fear Terrorism. They feared tyranny. All the famous phrases from the American Revolution are phrases attacking unjust laws, unjust abridgment of rights by the sovereign government with no redress, and general what-the-fuck-King-George-edness. And don't say the early Americans had no knowledge of the evils of Terrorism. I'm sure every one of them could remember, remember the fifth of November [wikipedia.org].
It's getting to the point that the DHS is calling anything the directors of the DHS don't like "Terrorism". The whole problem is the damn word. It's meaningless. It means "something that is intended to cause general fear or panic". Gee, that's as clear as a summer day in San Francisco [wikipedia.org]. You know what we used to call the types of events like Oklahoma City and 9/11 before we called them Terrorism? Because they did happen before, and the word 'terrorism'. If the person committing the act was a citizen, we called it Treason. If the person committing the act was a foreign national, we called it an Act of War. Personally, I find those terms a whole lot easier to manage in my head. It makes it really clear what the problem is. Because "causing fear" is too damn easy to do. Hollywood makes millions of dollars a year "causing fear". We have an entire holiday dedicated to how fun it is to "cause fear". Anthropologists and behaviorists will tell us that fear is one of the most primal and varied motivators. You can't make a law against making someone afraid any more than you can make a law against making someone cry. Not that some asshole isn't trying to do exactly that as we speak, I've no doubt.
Congress, the Presidency (the office, not just the man), the DHS specifically, and the TSA most especially have embraced ambiguous language, ambiguous laws, and inconsistent and ever-changing standards. They are using them as an excuse to police and confuse the citizens of this country in ways which the founding fathers found so onerous that they chose to take up arms against. One of the first acts of which was citizens storming a military fort to steal the cannons [wikipedia.org]. To our founding fathers, treason and acts of war were less distasteful than the continued governance of a tyrant.
Re:Mission accomplished (Score:5, Insightful)
Congratulations, you're the most worthless retarded faggot on the planet for publicly making such a apathetic comment. "Aussie Bob", huh? Go the fuck back to Australia, why don't you? We don't need people like you here in the U.S.
Dear Bonch/SharkLaser/Overly Critical Guy, this is not the US, it's the internet.
Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels who believe that the location their parents fucked in makes them superior.
And that's be "an apathetic" if it was such. Even the timing between your Anonymous Coward shit flinging posts are distinctive. Who ever hired you is an idiot in need of a refund.
Not too worry - you can just work through that old password and username list you pulled off pastebin and grab another Slashdot ID.
Re:DHS = Ministerium fur Staatssicherheit (Score:4, Insightful)
Apparently you haven't heard of Anwar al-Awlaki.
Re:Mission accomplished | Be Afraid (Score:4, Insightful)
Ten years ago, 19 hijackers armed only with box-cutters, took over 4 commercial aircraft and 3 of 4 of them into USA militarily & economically sensitive sites while eluding the entire NORAD defense organization, causing nearly 3 thousand deaths. At least, that is the official conspiracy theory, that through a series of extraordinary coincidences in near-perfect alignment, 9/11/2001 "just happened", "and that no one had any idea that such an event was even possible."
Ignored, discounted, and not investigated were such factors as (1) the USA 'Visa Express' program based in Saudi Arabia was used to bring Islamist fighters to the USA for military training for many years and, (2) the fact that at least 8 of 19 hijackers were still alive in the ME and merely victims of identity theft, (3) that 3 office towers built from concrete, steel, & glass fell symmetrically within their own footprints at very nearly the acceleration of gravity in a vacuum, and (4) that senior Bush regime officials were collaborators & signatories to the PNAC document which called for global military hegemony subsequent to a "new Pearl Harbor".
I don't mean to sound callus about the loss of those 3,000 people on 9/11/2001, but 200,000+ people per year die from tobacco-related illnesses, and 20,000+ people per year die from alcohol-related traffic accidents. We Americans have surrendered our birthright Constitution & Bill of Rights, and have waged "preemptive wars" for the past 10 years in 6+ countries, costing over $1.2 Trillion and over 5,000 servicemen killed & 100,000+ GIs seriously wounded. In all that 10 year period, no additional domestic terrorist attacks by foreign islamic terrorists have ever been consummated, and each serious attack attempted have been thwarted by alert civilians, not the USA police state.
How has this vast expenditure of blood & treasure, of the loss of individual freedoms, liberties, and inalienable rights, been worth the minimal risk of new domestic terrorist attacks? I don't see the value ...
Re:Mission accomplished (Score:5, Insightful)
Why complain about the government?
All social media sites are now just playgrounds for marketing teams. There are multi billion dollar indusries built around promoting products/slandering competitors while pretending to be part of the onine community. Most of the big tech companies use sockpuppet accounts to "manage discussion" on Slashdot already.
Why would you care if the government joins them?
I'll stop caring once I have a proven, valid, and honest answer from the Government as to why they are wasting tax dollars data mining "playgrounds for marketing teams". If it's so "innocent", then why do they care enough to waste a few billion jumping in these discussions? Perhaps that is the more prudent question to ask and focus on.
Re:Mission accomplished (Score:5, Insightful)
Because people trying to market things to me is just the way capitalism works. The government spying on you and monitoring you
Your government has, and will continue to do many disgraceful things which invade your privacy and limit your freedoms, but In this instance, they're just monitoring public information. Your corporations are not only monitoring, they are actively influencing community discussions (using sockpuppet accounts) while pretending to be part of the community. That is decietful, and in many cases has effectively killed the community (ie, Digg).
The point I'm making is that it doesn't matter if your government monitors/interferes in social media, because all social media sites are already infested and untrustworthy.
Yes, and the point the Government is trying to make here (which is clearly working), is that they can easily take small "innocent" baby steps like this, just as they been doing for the last 20 years, and eventually it will lead to the flock of sheep blindly following without question or much resistance. The way things are going, you'll either be a blind and obedient servant, or you'll be behind bars for being anything but, especially after turning incarceration into a profitable business model. And they've already proven that resistance is futile, based on the utter failures (OWS) to even exercise our right to peaceful assembly. Seems we're not even allowed to do that without it turning into a taser-firing, club-throwing, pepper-spraying good time.
It's so damn ironic that we sit back and laugh at other countries massive moves to oppress or control their citizens, smiling under a cloud of illusion and ignorance that a 200-year old document that framed our Rights actually still means something, or that our own Government isn't guilty of attempting to do the exact same thing.
This model has always been along the lines of death by 1,000 cuts. We cannot continue to be so blind to yet another "slip" of the proverbial knife. It won't be the last if the masses continue to ignore it.
Re:Hey DHS (Score:4, Insightful)
So they can attempt to... I don't know... protect civilians from people that don't like the US or it's self loathing people?
They are constructing psychological portraits of millions of people. They are using specialized software that, presumably, can collect posts of users, collate them, and classify their posts based on various criteria (such as the level of literacy, the political orientation, etc.)
Now, why would anyone need that information? Under what circumstances it may become usable? What could possibly trigger the need for the government to sort citizenry into large groups? What would the government do with those groups once they are built?
The answers to that aren't pleasant. Unless you are the government, of course. Currently the government has no power to act on that knowledge. Perhaps they are planning to have that corrected?
Re:History ryhmes (Score:5, Insightful)
Obama was Bush's 3rd term (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup Bush was an idiot. Yup Obama is keeping the same pro-wall street, spend happy policies of Bush. There is not much difference between the spending habits of rank and file Dems and Reps, except for a few drastic differences like Ron Paul. The two parties may want to spend on different things, but they really don't want to cut.
While the Tea Party did start last election cycle with Paul, it's been hijacked by various people trying to lead a grassroots headless organization. Some are bad and get attention in the worse ways. No different than the various occupy movements not having a specific leader.
But the core belief of a small gov that follows the constitution is valid. Yes Bush was a complete and utter idiot sockpuppet. How he was elected twice baffles me. But Obama really blew his hope and change. Senator O was against warrantless wiretaps, was against the Feds being involved with state legal rights for medical marihuana, was going to close Gitmo, was against the war in Iraq, was going to close redundancies in the government. 4 years later he's broken all of those promises. Yes we're out of Iraq, but it was at Bush's timetable and not any sooner. Oh and the money trail hasn't changed, Obama is still in bed with the same big business/big bank people Bush was. Obama's DOJ has even given up on prosecuting anyone responsible for the wall street disasters. [businessinsider.com] Hell even his Obama care was all pro-big business. If it was a mandated government program that's one thing, mandating private companies for health care, and then limiting new hospitals for competition is obvious lobbying by the existing health care insurance system.
So if you're happy with Obama being basically a 3rd term of Bush and want one more, then vote Dem or any of the other Rep candidates. Want a chance for something different, go with Ron Paul
Re:Mission accomplished (Score:4, Insightful)
Why complain about the government?
All social media sites are now just playgrounds for marketing teams. There are multi billion dollar indusries built around promoting products/slandering competitors while pretending to be part of the onine community. Most of the big tech companies use sockpuppet accounts to "manage discussion" on Slashdot already.
Why would you care if the government joins them?
I'll stop caring once I have a proven, valid, and honest answer from the Government as to why they are wasting tax dollars data mining "playgrounds for marketing teams". If it's so "innocent", then why do they care enough to waste a few billion jumping in these discussions? Perhaps that is the more prudent question to ask and focus on.
No shit. "Well it's all public data anyway, no expectation of privacy, so neener!" Yeah, that does explain how they can easily do it. It does not explain why they care to and what they hope to accomplish. The former is not an effective dismissal of the latter no matter how hard you try.
Re:Mission accomplished (Score:4, Insightful)
>The old joke that there were more CIA agents in the Communist Party at one point than communists.
Well, that's perhaps the joke. The simple reality is that there *were* more FBI (NSA, etc-- CIA could not operate on US soil, and most of the actual time period was pre-FBI/NSA etc) paid informants in the Communist Party, than actual non-paid members. Go figure :).
Re:Mission accomplished (Score:4, Insightful)
And yet Americans continue to enjoy the same rights they've had - they travel where they want, work where they want, vote for who they want, worship or not the god of their choice, speak and write as they always have. FOR A WHILE LONGER.
There, fixed that for you.
You seem to be suffering from some willful disbelief yourself, with a nice big dose of denial: Our elected representatives are not representing us anymore, they are representing the banks and corporations who paid to get them elected. Why don't you take a look at the news once in a while? The TSA is not only making everyone miserable at airports (while handily NOT stopping any so-called terrorist threats), but now they're roaming around at bus stations, and cruising the highways. The TSA is part of Homeland Security, which for all intents and purposes don't answer to anyone except the President, and can now detain anyone indefinitely without charge and without legal representation or due process by merely claiming they are a terrorism suspect. The civil rights and civil liberties that were once guaranteed by the Bill of Rights have more or less been abolished with the stroke of a pen, and no one was able to stop it from happening. So I ask you: where are our so-called "freedoms" now? There may still time to stop this shit from becoming permanent, but only if people like you get their heads out of the sand and pay attention to what's going on. Nobody is going to do it FOR you.
Re:Mission accomplished | Be Afraid (Score:5, Insightful)
Shadowy government agent #1: "We need more oil. Let's invade Iraq."
Shadowy government agent #2: "We need an excuse first."
Agent #1: "OK - let's rig the Twin Towers with explosives, making sure none of the thousands of people who work there sees us doing it. Then let's brainwash some Saudis to hijack two planes and fly them into the towers. Then we'll set off the charges and collapse the buildings."
Agent #2: "Why bother with making sure the buildings collapse? Plenty of people will die when they fly planes into them. That should get the world on our side."
Agent #1 "Because there won't be enough people in on the conspiracy with just a simple kamikaze attack. We want to have hundreds of contractors, suppliers, demolition experts, security guards, fire department personnel, building supervisors, etc, etc to bribe to keep quiet for at least ten years."
Agent #2: "Um, OK. Shall we attack another building too?"
Agent #1: "Yes. Let's fire a cruise missile at the Pentagon during morning rush hour."
Agent #2: "Not in the middle of the night when no one would see it?"
Agent #1: "No."
Agent #2: "But there'll be lots of witnesses."
Agent #1: "Don't worry. We'll pay them all to say it was a Boeing 757. And we'll knock down some lampposts on the highway overpass too, because I've just realised a cruise missile doesn't have the same wingspan as a 757. Oh, and we'll confiscate some CCTV footage to make people think we're hiding something."
Agent #2: "But don't we always confiscate CCTV footage when we're investigating something?"
Agent #1: "Yes. But this time, for some reason, it'll be suspicious."
Agent #2: “But if we fire a cruise missile, that would leave a 757 unaccounted for.”
Agent #1: “No problem. We’ll just hijack one ourselves and fly it somewhere like Andrews Air Force Base or Area 51 or somewhere like that, dismantle it, kill all the passengers, burn the luggage and then transport all the wreckage to the Pentagon to scatter around as evidence.”
Agent #2: “I see.”
Agent #1: “Also, because the towers have a lightweight steel tube framework to allow them to sway in the wind, and the Pentagon is made of reinforced concrete, a lot of LiveLeak users will be confused by the different impact shapes. So they’ll be happy to believe in the cruise missile.”
Agent #2: “Um.”
Agent #1: “What’s up?”
Agent #2: “Why don’t we just, er, actually fly another plane into the Pentagon? I mean, by that stage people will already have seen two jumbo jets fly into the Twin Towers, so I don’t see the problem with using a third.”
Agent #1: “For Christ’s sake, how many times do I have to tell you? We want things as complicated as possible so clever people on the internet can spot the holes in our plans.”
Agent #2: “Ah, right.. Sorry. OK, I’ll go get the brainwashing machine and kidnap some Saudis, then we’re good to go.