We knew that they knew that we knew that they knew....
January 21, 2016 2:32 PM   Subscribe

Ex NSA Analyst Bill Scannel talks about Teufelsberg, in Berlin. His talk describes the inner workings of an NSA field station in an interesting manner. The talk is 42 minutes, with a Q&A at the end.

[Disclaimer] I worked at this very same place a few years before Bill did. IMHO, he captures the flavor of working there very well, to include the occasional insanity.
posted by pjern (11 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
His story is just interesting enough to tolerate how amused he is by himself.
posted by mrnutty at 3:30 PM on January 21, 2016 [4 favorites]


A job at Devil's Mountain. It's not like HR didn't warn them.
posted by Oyéah at 3:30 PM on January 21, 2016


We know they knew we knew, you know?

And the people who vote, they don't know shit. And that's how we like it.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:41 PM on January 21, 2016


Q&A is quite scathing. Make sure your popcorn is ready for it.
posted by Nanukthedog at 4:13 PM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


Wow, he was insufferable, and nearly content free. His overarching point could have been made much better, and he also comes off as a bit of a shill for the NSA since his shtick about "there were rules in those days" pretty much ignores that they were imposed by Church et alia when they discovered what irresponsible cowboys the intelligence community were being.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 8:03 PM on January 21, 2016


Yeah, he deserved a little push back especially for laughing about the time he nearly caused an international incident by trolling his commanding officer... seemed as bad as what Reagan did when he joked about bombing Russia.

Still, I was surprised at how raw their anger was considering that most of the questioners were born after the fall of the wall. It made me think how much I don't know about living under those circumstances.
posted by maggiemaggie at 8:03 PM on January 21, 2016


That was a lot of blather, and it wildly backfired on him. I don't know how one expects to go to the CCC in Germany and tell about how fun it was being a spy and not think that someone might compare you to the Stasi. Defending that should be like the first half of the talk, not junk about what happened if you missed the bus. What a weird and total misunderstanding of who his audience was.
posted by kiltedtaco at 10:09 PM on January 21, 2016 [1 favorite]


I think he had a point to make about spying, and I think that said concurrent with happy recollections of life in uniform as a young misfit army soldier instead combined into something that gave the impression contrary to his actual point about the evils of a state spying on its own population.

Also, the ghoul pool.
posted by zippy at 10:11 PM on January 21, 2016


Meh. I'd suggest making a good post on 32c3, making this an after note on nobody writing a 31c3 post, and deleting this post as redundant.

In particular, the post-quantum crypto talk by DJB and Tanja Lange absolutely rocked. Anyone who does anything with crypto needs to watch it.
posted by jeffburdges at 10:18 PM on January 21, 2016


He has to explain what carbon paper is.
posted by Obscure Reference at 10:09 AM on January 23, 2016


Good post. The guy has done so little introspection it was interesting to see him realize that the audience didn't think of him the way he thought of himself. I also spent the first 10-15 minutes thinking exactly what the first commenter said, "I really don't trust this guy."
posted by benito.strauss at 2:56 PM on February 2, 2016


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