The tin foil hat conspiracy

webwit · 16 Jun 2017, 23:59

A certain "national" American agency tried to recruit me once for their operations in the Netherlands, in the early noughties. I didn't find out until the interview day, I was headhunted by a job agency (American owned, so you know where your resume goes...) for a "normal" IT company, which, it turned out, was just used to cover up the operation. That was the first time I heard of them actually. Yada yada yada, I gave them the middle finger and turned down the offer.

I shouldn't elaborate here, except that was certainly the craziest job interview day ever. I could write a book about it. Come to think of it, it would be a pretty bad book, because it's just too unbelievable. It's that bad. It's worse than you think. Much worse. And now they're much, much bigger.

Techno Trousers · 17 Jun 2017, 01:53

I for one would love to read that story! I once considered pursuing a career with said three letter agency, back when I thought we were always the good guys, and I could make a difference against [scapegoat menace of the time]. Luckily for my sanity, I never went through with it.

rsbseb · 17 Jun 2017, 01:57

The architecture firm I worked for a eight years ago took on some government work. The GSA agent assigned to oversee our projects shared some information about several other projects he was involved with. I too could write a bad book about some of the conversations we had as well as some of the special requests given during the design phase. I think it's safe to say there is very little privacy based on some of the things he shared. They're profiling everyone.

seebart · 17 Jun 2017, 09:05

rsbseb wrote: The architecture firm I worked for a eight years ago took on some government work. The GSA agent assigned to oversee our projects shared some information about several other projects he was involved with. I too could write a bad book about some of the conversations we had as well as some of the special requests given during the design phase. I think it's safe to say there is very little privacy based on some of the things he shared. They're profiling everyone.

Impressed by your honesty, I don't think most people that worked on a project like that would mention it.

Scarpia · 17 Jun 2017, 11:25

experienced software developers: *talking about their qualms working in telco/government/intelligence/data while on a trivially scrapeable public unencrypted forum*

me: ...maybe move this discussion thread to a more closed setting?

Findecanor · 17 Jun 2017, 12:50

The domestic spying agency/division has been putting up job ads regularly since it was formed nine years ago. I have always had the impression that the people who live there must be either long-term military men, losers who could not get another job or people with very low moral fibre.
I have considered applying only to see if I could get verification for my hypothesis during the job interview.

matt3o · 17 Jun 2017, 13:26

There's another thing to consider.

People are okay at giving away their (or other's) privacy if they have a gain from it (reference). They use facebook to connect with their friends, that's a reason good enough to give away their privacy. It doesn't matter if there are alternatives because the alternatives are all less convenient than facebook and people are lazy.

So the factors in play are:
1) laziness
2) convenience
3) ignorance

webwit wrote: I shouldn't elaborate here, except that was certainly the craziest job interview day ever. I could write a book about it. Come to think of it, it would be a pretty bad book, because it's just too unbelievable. It's that bad. It's worse than you think. Much worse. And now they're much, much bigger.

now I WANT to know more?!

Techno Trousers · 17 Jun 2017, 16:17

There's an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case that's very relevant to our discussion.

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/arti ... vacy-op-ed

micrex22 · 23 Jun 2017, 06:13

Matteo, you hit everything spot on.

People don't take their PRIVACY seriously and cannot identify the REPRIMANDS behind that. In fact, many of the people who are pro-Windows 10 for instance--don't even have the capacity to speak on the subject yet they insist Microsoft raping private data is A-OK.

...nobody would want their thoughts to be public, so why should private conversations and personal information be public?

seebart · 24 Jun 2017, 13:30

matt3o wrote: So the factors in play are:

1) laziness
2) convenience
3) ignorance

Yes that's the summary, but you forgot one major factor: habit(s). Because humans are very habitual beings and these habits play a very important role in their lives, ususally these habits are quite interwoven in the lifestyle / job / personal life. As we all know these "smartphones" and the software play a significant role in peoples daily lives by now. Personally I try to minimize my useage of my "device".