For which databases? If there's an air gap, barring WiFi or other radio or laser transmissions, how would they respond to user requests? Isn't the majority of FB's data like, actually used by Internet users?
It may be coincidence, but both Edgehill and Bull Run are locations in Virginia, where I imagine a lot of the DoD resides. I'm not saying they weren't named after the battles, but it's not like those names are exclusively related to civil wars.
It's just a joke, sorry. I'm well aware humor isn't appreciated around here and actually I understand it because humor is a slippery slope ending in reddit-style banal meme-threads, but every once in a while I can't help myself and karma be damned.
Banthas are the large beasts-of-burden on Tatooine. Bothans are humanoid aliens with cat/dog-like faces. Why do I know that? I play a lot of Star Wars video and card games :)
EDIT: just googled for the quote. The full one is "Many Bothans died to bring us this information."
Oh yes ... but I now have this irresistible vision of Vader and the Emperor walking through the Death Star landing bay, with a 12 foot long haired Bantha tiptoeing behind the massed ranks of Stormtroopers trying to look inconspicuous in a red cloak and disguise
I think it's a US thing though. Obviously I know that in US English the word has both meanings, but in the UK a troll is something that hides under a bridge, and the fishing is trawling.
Took me a while to figure out the humour inherent in the double meaning when I first came across it (in the 90s)
We have reached a point where, no matter how few violations occur and no matter how innocuous they may be, the average person will always believe the NSA is doing things that are much more extreme than what is reported. The secret nature of the NSA (and all intelligence gathering) simply means rational people will always be able to justify fears of conspiracy, tyranny, and Big Brother (now that the Snowden revelations have come to light).
What would it take for people to stop fearing an encroaching surveillance state? The complete dismantling of NSA and the government-intelligence complex? Even then, intelligent people would have reason to doubt that secret facilities did not exist somewhere.
I cannot see how any of this can be resolved.
EDIT: I'd like to add another "meta" remark about NSA discussion on the internet.
Anyone who frequents HN, or reddit's r/technology, or similar boards, will be familiar with the universal bashing of NSA and rampant speculation of what they may be doing. Invariably, snarky and profoundly cynical comments are at the top: these do not help. Instead, they react to the new sensationalist headline about how "NSA has done something else!!" by bashing the NSA, American government, Obama, or all three. In effect, every thread about the NSA is our version of the daily "Two Minutes of Hate", the ritual from Orwell's 1984 where workers get up and scream, releasing their ire and accomplishing nothing but self-pacifying catharsis.
We do not need that. Instead of beating the dead horse to make ourselves feel better and go back to "normal" life, we need to do something productive. Let's say something new and thoughtful, rather than cynical witticisms.
You constantly defend authority and yell at anyone who speculates negatively, and yet here (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5870726) you rather cynically jumped on the "Snowden is a Chinese spy" bandwagon, when really the spying accusations make no logical sense, and of course, there's no evidence of that at all. That makes you a hypocrite.
I'm not sure what else you expect other than blind cynicism - the NSA constantly does pedantic backflips, lies or invokes "national security" to prevent from telling anyone what they're doing, even when it's clear they're violating any sensible ethical guideline. What should we talk about, and what's wrong with speculation?
Also, the idea that we need to "see the good" in the NSA is fallacious. The NSA is a party made of volunteers who work for a government who have chosen to not only exercise authority authority over me, but to abuse it gratuitously, all while the tax dollars of myself and others fund them to do so, when most of us never asked them to. Under what moral philosophy do I have to live to ignore that context to have a peaceful discussion about the merits of a completely-broken system? On a personal note, foreign intelligence is great, which the NSA has clearly not limited themselves to in any capacity, based on the information that we actually do have.
If there's a direction the discussion should move in, perhaps you could start by leading that discussion, instead of sitting on the sidelines and complaining about other people and trying to control their thoughts and minds. As I'm sure you know, actions, intuition and insight are better teachers than whining and exercising authority.
I do agree that more critical thought (and less blind cynicism) is a good thing.
Finally, I can't help but note that your role reversal of the 1984 example is an extremely-ironic case of "Doublethink", since under no circumstance are the masses hating on the government blindly remotely applicable to the novel.
"What would it take for people to stop fearing an encroaching surveillance state?"
A trustworthy government? A government that does not consider secret courts and secret bodies of law to be acceptable? Prosecuting men like James Clapper who lie to Congress (perjury, obstruction of Congress, making false statements -- these are crimes)? There are a lot of reasons people are upset about what the government is doing and it is hardly surprising that people assume the worst.
If the Obama administration has even the most remote interest in restoring the public's trust, they should just come clean, now, about what they have been doing. With each new revelation we discover more lies about the nature and scope of the NSA's work.
> We have reached a point where, no matter how few violations occur and no matter how innocuous they may be, the average person will always believe the NSA is doing things that are much more extreme than what is reported.
This goes both ways: no matter how many violations occur and no matter how harmful they may be, the average NSA defender will always believe the NSA is doing things that are much less extreme than what is reported, often with legalist distractions from the appropriateness of the NSA's actions.
> The secret nature of the NSA (and all intelligence gathering) simply means rational people will always be able to justify fears of conspiracy, tyranny, and Big Brother (now that the Snowden revelations have come to light).
Rational people who happen to have no protection from the USG's overreach—foreigners, journalists, whistleblowers, tech companies, foreigner business owners, and the relatives, friends, coworkers, employees of those people—would like to not have to be afraid of the NSA and the USG. As it stands, it's easy to not be afraid of the NSA when you're not in the line of fire; when you're an unknown American citizen with no practical political influence, who does not run a business, who is not employed by or owns a company targeted for industrial espionage, who is not a relative or acquaintance of someone being investigated, who is not in a NSA employee's bad side, etc.
This is something I would really love to do. Where do you work (in academia, I presume)?
I have the programming background, and a bit of the bio background... but I am weak on statistics. How much of statistics and probability theory would I need (beyond a basic 1st-year college level)?
It's hard to say exactly, but if you can work through all the problems in Barber's Bayesian Reasoning and Machine Learning, and some other standard 'frequentist' stats text, you'd be well placed to get started.
It's unfortunate that biological statisticians have hijacked the term 'computational biology'. There's still a lot of computer science to be done in the area, particularly in genome assembly what with new sequencing technologies appearing every few years.
Certainly new algorithms and data structures are going to be crucial (e.g. Bowtie), but statistical analysis/scoring, even in a heuristic way, is always going to be an essential component just from the nature of the work being mostly about evaluating hypotheses from evidence.
I should have added data structures and algorithms to my list. De-novo assembly, alignment, phylogeny, and pretty much all sequence work rely heavily on advances in maths and comp sci.
Ever since the Snowden leaks HN has seen a massive increase in skepticism, which is healthy, but along with that has come rampant cynicism, unfounded assertions of insidious malign actions that solely cite the fact "we don't know" as evidence. There is a point at which "assuming the worst" goes too far and becomes an echo chamber for conspiracy theory. It did for Michael Hastings, and it does here -- at the very least until we know more.
A man has just died, for crying out loud, and I'm sorry to hear it. Let us use wisdom and reason to assess this, not snarky, dismissive comments.
1) it would draw attention to their collection activities
2) it would draw attention to their data analysis abilities
3) they don't care if people get high
4) they would prefer to have the leverage against everyone involved for use on an individual basis should they ever need it in the future should the need/mission/assignment arise
