Well I think they’re charming. I want to see them on those little valentines that were 30 for a buck when we were little.
To add insult to injury. it isn’t even true.
“Tone deaf”?!? I would contend that they are pitch perfect; a creepy organization runs a social media account. Anything less would just be lazy.
They’re following you, just not on Twitter.
Tomorrow belongs to Becky.
Anyone who expects truth out of the NSA, isn’t clear about what business they’re in.
A playful, cheeky police state. Who would have thought.
At least you get to laugh on your way to Room 101.
Surveillance is privacy.
they should start tweeting advice for people, based on data mining and that person’s profile.
Roses are Red, Violets are Blue
Now this is a knife, get in the van.
Just about as full of the joys of spring…
and here i thought those are parody accounts.
Hey, I’m sure they do love privacy rights. I mean, they love to violate them, and they couldn’t do that if they didn’t exist. And the other one? It’s directly referencing a song about “Big Brother, surveillance and control,” in the words of the songwriter, to refer to themselves. Now that’s honest. Especially since, to the NSA, the meaning of both “foreign” and “adversary” changes based on context, such that a domestic citizen can sometimes be considered “foreign” and an “adversary” is, well anyone they’re investigating.
They should provide compatibility/availability advices. (“X has a boyfriend and has incompatible personality, try Y, who is in a coffeeroom A every thursday at time T; strike conversation about Z.”) Now that would be a useful service.
Many springs ago I tried to mine the company email metadata for such purpose, as I am unable to get to the day-to-day interpersonal gossip (both because I work off-site and because just not being able to remember and understand enough of it). Without much success as people usually used third-party email services for non-work comm, and I was too hesitant to do deep packet inspection. But in principle it would work a little, and much more so if combined with the rich troves of other metadata NSA has access to.
… but we could if we wanted to …
“#HappyValentinesDay from the #NSA. No, we don’t listen to your pillow talk.”
Historically, when countries can listen to “pillow talk”, they do. They use that material for extortion: to control people and to force people to become agents. It is a core spy method.
There is a wide range of lingo that has come from these methods, like “romeo spies” and “honeypotting”.
In the US, when Hoover was in power at the FBI, he did very much listen to pillow talk and heavily relied on it.
He used this to control politicians, for instance.
Even if they were not using and seeking this kind of intelligence today, because it is so core and so valuable, so powerful, they would be bound to do so in the future.
They do share what they spy on with a wide variety of organizations, further it might be noted that these things tend to be well hushed up. Victims do not want to go to the public, usually. Hoover was able to do what he did for many decades, very often under the auspices of “for the country”. Nobody knew about this outside of his victims in Washington where he especially targetted politicians - wiring the entire house and senate and blackmailing Presidents - nobody knew about this because the victims did not come forward or were unaware of who was attacking them.
This only got a bust because of Watergate and because of a small team of liberal minded amateurs who dared to break into an FBI office.
Even still, nobody got much more then a hand slap over any of these activities. Hoover remains a pillared example for the FBI.
