Dear NSA, let me take care of your slides.

http://fr.slideshare.net/EmilandDC/dear-nsa-let-me-take-care-ou

by EmilandDC • 13 years ago

543 75 13 years ago

fr.slideshare.net

Dear NSA, you can do whatever with my data. But not with my eyes. Those slides are hideous.

So here's a quick revamp of your #PRISM slides.

foxhill• 13 years ago

despite the severity of implications of PRISM, being able to laugh about it is important.

slides were designed excellently, i definitely did not giggle at all..

nicpottier• 13 years ago

Brilliant marketing. Bravo.

EmilandDC2• 13 years ago

Thx !

acoyfellow• 13 years ago

One of the most clever ways I've ever seen to sell yourself.. On par with the Oreo ad during the superbowl I think. You nailed the timing of the issue, and I hope you get some awesome jobs from this. The hair still rose on the back of my neck, and it made it seem even more manipulative. A+ design/presentation skills.

EmilandDC2• 13 years ago

Aha, Thanks ;)

wwwarhawk• 13 years ago

I love the work on your site, OP. Did you use After Effects for that French TED talk or something else?

alieas• 13 years ago

The fact that the slides were so disgusting is just another reason to make me think this "story" was "broke" by design. Controlled opposition.

genwin• 13 years ago

Seems it was EmilandDC's idea all along.

swalsh• 13 years ago

In all honesty, 20M seems like a bargain for that much value.

lessnonymous• 13 years ago

Nice move Mr Presentation Designer.

ShirsenduK• 13 years ago

Flat UI. Was this iOS 7 inspired? :P

Ricapar• 13 years ago

Sheesh. "Flat UI" now goes along with iOS 7?

It's been around much longer than yesterday. iOS 7 is late to the party.

Samuel_Michon• 13 years ago

It was a joke. Also, iOS 7 doesn’t have a flat UI; it’s full of gradients, layers, and translucency.

josefresco• 13 years ago

Imagine the uproar if the NSI hired a graphic designer of sorts to make their slides more attractive. I can see the moaning now "They spent HOW much of my tax money making those slides pretty?!?"

I expect the NSA's slide to be crappy, because you know, they're spies and stuff not graphic UX experts.

danso• 13 years ago

It's not about "attractive" slides, it's about slides that are to the point and don't obfuscate information (unintentionally).

Being an analyst and being able to understand the processing of data into visual display is not an orthogonal skill set. Often, PowerPoint slides are ugly and worthless because whoever designed them thought "Oh shit, I don't understand how to best convey this...time for some clip art" and/or "Faster slide animations!"

Obligatory link to Tufte's criticism of NASA and Powerpoint: http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0...

blantonl2• 13 years ago

Keep in mind that those slides were almost certainly developed by a contractor. Who was paid 150K/year. Who was one of thousands of other similar contractors. With little to no real world experience.

bazillion2• 13 years ago

The average pay of contractors is between 70k-100k. The only ones making more than that are typically program managers for large contracts or other administrative folk who work on winning contracts for their company.

Contractors are typically not busy making powerpoints, but busy actually working on what they're hired to do since they have to do their hours. The busy work is left to the military folk and interns as stated in the other comment.

bazillion2• 13 years ago

There are graphic designers. I went to one to get a logo made for an internal web app I made. It's just that most powerpoints are made by interns and younger military folk.

grumps• 13 years ago

As an ex military & civilian space contractor... there are people perfectly capable of developing slides similar to the ones posted. However - you'd be blasted by the (client) for the lack of the agency logo, program logo, and colors. The usage of colors can even be an issue. Depending on the audience the color red and variations of red will indicate that the line of communication is classified, as does purple depending on the system. For example - the army would hate the use of blue because it's an Air Force color and Navy color.

I use to try to make my slides and diagrams pretty and every time I did I was blasted which led to my disgruntled feelings towards my job. Hence why I'm no longer in this industry.

kevinbluer• 13 years ago

Genius :)

Systemic33• 13 years ago

You should just get in contact with every governmental agency in the world, the amount of bad designed layouts is over 9000.

toyg2• 13 years ago

No, the amount of designed layouts is zero. The amount of hacked-together presentations is over 9000.

In fact, I don't understand why Powerpoint-Design-As-A-Service isn't a thing yet.

samspenc• 13 years ago

For the same reason Web-Design-As-A-Service isn't a thing yet. I deal with non-techie friends who have trouble even with Wix and Weebly on a daily basis.

James_Duval• 13 years ago

It is - that's what the OP offers! Or have I misunderstood you?

suppressingfire• 13 years ago

Hah. I like how the author pluralized "targets'" while keeping all the other facts intact.

logn• 13 years ago

Brilliant! I think, as the public, we should all re-implement an open, ethical, and fun version of this surveillance infrastructure open to the Internet as a whole. Facebook nearly implemented that goal. But we can do better.

sethbannon• 13 years ago

I've been so infuriated with this story that I didn't think someone could make me laugh about PRISM, but this did it.

bhdz• 13 years ago

    "Most of the world's communications
     are flowing through the U.S.
     So is your target's data"

l0c0b0x• 13 years ago

yeah, not so funny.

toyg2• 13 years ago

Nice deck, BUT this is Hacker News, so here's the customary negative feedback:

- the "what's the plan" slide is bad: it doesn't convey the original sense that other providers will join soon or have already joined. the tagline makes it look like it's a future plan, when it's actually describing the past.

- that "$20m" slide makes it look like it's a lot of money. The original clearly wanted to contextualise it and make it look cheap. ("just 20m for all these providers!")

- seriously? I got more data-per-square-inch from the original presentation.

- thin fonts are overdone and hard to read.

- VCs don't care about presentations anymore, I got in YC20xx by <clever social engineering episode>.

Ntrails• 13 years ago

I also object to any slides that cannot be at least readable printed in black and white. Consider the ink costs - do you think the NSA is made of money?!?

robbiep• 13 years ago

I thought most slides these days print to more 'normal colours'? My university always has slides with dark bgs, images and crazy coloured texts but the PDF slides available to accompany them are always only just the text + any images if they have copyright, and print very well in b&w, if people still feel the need to do that

squidi• 13 years ago

+ I like the way each slide it headed with a question. I find that helpful in doing presentations

- On slide 13 I got a bit lost as the green circle for US & Canada stands out a lot so I read it before the text. Maybe the green circle could include the text?

Great marking!

Angostura• 13 years ago

In addition, while using the actual company logos in the presentation may spoil the aethetic, it conveys the information much much quicker.

jeremyjh• 13 years ago

For a government program like this, $20M looks like nothing no matter what the context is.

ExcitedByNoise• 13 years ago

Having been in many DoD related PowerPoints, this is par for the course. Bravo though, made me laugh.

joeblau• 13 years ago

Same. It's funny because after looking at the original slides, I immediately thought... "yeah these are legit"

drchiu• 13 years ago

Nice slides, but I couldn't but laugh at the idea that the next time there's a leak at the NSA it would turn out to be the guy who was in charge of making the slides.

kalms• 13 years ago

This is really great! Fast thinking there.

jacquesm• 13 years ago

The NSA uploading their slides to slideshare would save everybody a lot of bother, I think that's the most brilliant bit in this excellent PR move. No more need to leak anything.

senthilnayagam• 13 years ago

along with 20 Million you could have put combined worth of these companies is over 200 billion dollars, 0.0001%

andyhmltn• 13 years ago

This seems to be an advertising ploy for a slide design service. However, I looked at their website and their stuff is amazing

milhous• 13 years ago

"target(s)" should be replaced with "your fellow American citizens and potential foreign persons of interests" because we're all guilty until proven innocent.

slig• 13 years ago

Direct link to OP's website http://emiland.me/

crocowhile• 13 years ago

Snowden was not in the acknowledgements.

ck2• 13 years ago

BTW have those slides been authenticated somehow?

az• 13 years ago

'We are a one-man agency...' contradictory?

marcgg• 13 years ago

I think that's the point ^^

chmars• 13 years ago

Why are there only four PRISM slides in the presentation?

According to media reports, the total number of slides is much larger …

Fishkins• 13 years ago

Right, there are 25 total (I think), but only 4 have been disclosed to the general public.

downandout• 13 years ago

Have you considered creating something that would help tie the content to the person viewing the slides? Might be really useful for any security sensitive organization. For example, if the color scheme on certain graphics was programmatically modified slightly for each person who viewed the content, then the next leaker could be immediately identified (if they don't decide to voluntarily publish their name). Something like this would survive screenshots/resizing/etc. You could also enable them to put tags where the software can fill in identifying info in the content. For example a link in the slides might be modified to include a number identifying the viewer, and if that link pops up anywhere, it's off to Gitmo.

Can't believe NSA doesn't already do this stuff.

waffle_ss• 13 years ago

Apparently I'm grumpy beyond my years but I find these lighthearted jabs at the NSA counter-productive as they just trivialize what happened. I'd much rather see creations that will help bring about change, like shining a spotlight on the representatives that support these programs.

For instance Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence committee, who said "the authorities need this information in case someone might become a terrorist in the future."

verelo3• 13 years ago

I completely agree and actually would argue that it further pushes the point of why we should be concerned: They cant even make good slides, how can anyone be sure they're keeping the data they collect (legally or not - irrelevant for this point) safe?

I suppose you could also say they spend their time keeping the data safe and not producing quality slides, but i would consider it to be more of an insight into the quality of their overall architecture.

jsmcgd• 13 years ago

I disagree. Satire is a very effective form of political argument. There are probably many people in the politically apathetic masses who will have not followed recent developments. Unlike the regular media, gimmicks like this can effectively penetrate their consciousness.

stevelaz• 13 years ago

I would disagree with what you consider to be an insight. There are plenty of great architectures that don't have well designed slide shows to go with them. Come now, look at some of the old school web sites that hard core *nix hackers kept. An example would be the old Linux kernel website was a single text page. Sure, they've upgraded it in this past year, but it was a simple ugly site many years before that. If your argument about slide show vs arch is true, then Linux would have failed long ago.

advice4u• 13 years ago

They cant even make good slides, how can anyone be sure they're keeping the data they collect...

When I was in university, my professors made and taught from slides of roughly the same quality. Does that mean they cannot do their jobs? Obviously not: they have proved important theorems, published significant papers, worked on interesting patents, and successfully trained their students (all the while updating and reusing shoddy slides for years and years).

I am a little surprised at the surprise/snobbery over the quality of NSA's slides, as if it mattered. In my mind, blustering about colors and fonts in a case of this import only serves to highlight the triviality of designers: they are a luxury.

nulagrithom• 13 years ago

I didn't see it as lighthearted at all, more like a well presented and terrifying idea that obviously came to fruition. This is a bit more "in your face" than the tacky NSA slideshow.

jb17• 13 years ago

You don't like "lighthearted jabs", but you call yourself waffle_ss!?

kwantam• 13 years ago

Excuse me, do you really think now is the right time to trivialize the waffle issue?

newman314• 13 years ago

Next up, pre-crime per Minority Report.

Agreed, this is alarming beyond belief.

chris_mahan• 13 years ago

This morning I heard Pink Floyd's The Wall.

We don't need no education...

We don't need no thought control... (Actually, per the United States Senate Intelligence Committee, you do.)

Stand still laddie!

microcolonel• 13 years ago

All representatives support these programs, they're all part of the state; none of them are striking against it, get your head out of the sand.

Unless you're ready to remove the power structures, you're as much a part of the problem as any other taxpayer.

dustingetz• 13 years ago

i worked Lockheed Martin R&D for a couple years and slides like this are par. they are written by the principal investigator for an audience who doesn't give a shit about glitz and glam. these aren't marketing slides.

glesica• 13 years ago

If they just put all their slides on Slideshare I would certainly never see them...

ivv• 13 years ago

Feedback from the client:

Thanks for sending this over, it looks great. Could you just add a few tweaks?

- Add the seal

- We need the "top secret" stamp on each slide

- We think the grey is too bland. Could you make it pop more?

- Did you get the PRISM logo from us? I am attaching the Word doc in case you missed it

- I am not sure you left enough room for the bullets -- will they go on separate slides? We need to see those.

[edited for line breaks]

muyuu• 13 years ago

Seems like Microsoft was ahead of the game compared to Facebook and Google. Who'd have thought.

simonster• 13 years ago

These slides are certainly prettier and less crowded than the NSA slides, but they are, if anything, less readable. Unless the slides are intentionally informed by the principle that hard to read text is easier to remember (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/19/health/19mind.html?pagewan...), I think these slides are a classic case of form over function.

• The main font is too thin.

• The first few slides are white text on a neutral gray background, which is inexcusably low contrast. Ditto for the green text on the blue background on the following slides, and the gray axis labels on the blue background, which I can barely read even on my computer screen. The white text on blue background is good.

• The text in the graph on the "How can we monitor everything?" slides is too small to be readable from the back row (but this was also a problem in the originals).

ErwannRobin• 13 years ago

very clever ^^ I hope this will bring you good business!

twic• 13 years ago

Next, i want to see a Prezi version.

coherentpony• 13 years ago

Brilliant. Would you like to write some slides for me?

QuantumGuy• 13 years ago

Anybody know what software is used to make those slides?

Dear NSA, let me take care of your slides.

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