Cryptogams and the NSA (fiction)

http://www.warscapes.com/literature/cryptogams-nsa

by alexqgb • 13 years ago

126 47 13 years ago

LoganCale2• 13 years ago

Just to be clear, this is a fictional scenario demonstrating a potential absurd situation that could arise from dragnet surveillance.

avsbst• 13 years ago

Seems like he's claiming it's fact -- https://twitter.com/johnsifton/status/345864867946827777

Do you have any proof it's fictional writing?

sses• 13 years ago

He's joking. From the front page of warscapes.com: "What does the NSA make of James Joyce? The author finds out the hard way in his imagined brush with US intelligence over the PRISM data-mining program..."

A1kmm• 13 years ago

I think it is deliberately written to be a little too absurd to be plausible.

In real life, if you are accused of hiding information in a well known text, you could just show that your version of the text exactly matches the original, and so there is no scope for hiding information.

Instead, the protagonist, with his lawyer's encouragement, study secondary texts on the interpretation of the text and work with the FBI to help them understand a poem someone else wrote?

It is very Kafkaesque, but also plainly obvious that it is fiction (I also started reading it with the expectation of a true story rather than fiction).

aaron6952• 13 years ago

I would certainly agree this would seem to be the case, but the article is not too clear on that.

LoganCale2• 13 years ago

The front page of the site makes it clear, with the word "imagined".

mtraven• 13 years ago

The "Special Agents O’Brien and Bloom" kind of gave it away.

ary• 13 years ago

Spoilers ahead

To be even more clear it appears to draw inspiration from various works of political fiction. Notably the "love" for authority figures towards the end smacks of Winston's transformation in '1984'.

aasarava• 13 years ago

Also, O'Brien is the agent in 1984.

Oculus• 13 years ago

None the less, a really interesting read.

javert2• 13 years ago

I'd always heard that Joyce is utter trash. This hasn't helped change that impression.

scarmig2• 13 years ago

Finnegan's Wake, conceded in a second.

Dubliners, though? Or Portrait of an Artist? Those are readily accessible to anybody and obviously very, very good.

Ulysses I like, but agree it may be too dense to merit the accolades it's given. But "trash" goes way, way over into the opposite direction.

anigbrowl• 13 years ago

You've certainly confirmed my mental stereotypes about objectivists.

javert2• 13 years ago

Hacker News comments are a very low-bandwidth channel, and I bet I'm nothing like you think I am in person.

Anyway, Ayn Rand had a clearly-articulated theory of art (she wrote a whole book about it), so there's really nothing to "confirm" here. But if there were, you couldn't rationally do it from one data point anyway.

tomjen33• 13 years ago

I haven't read it, but if the excepts are anything to go buy, I was right. Books that have as many interpretations as there are readers (as opposed to a good mystery book that has four or five and gives the actual answer in the end) are as useful as the output of /dev/urandom. I freely admit that plenty of people disagree with that (or Lost wouldn't have been as popular as it was), but I still believe Joyce to be a bad writer.

jackcviers3• 13 years ago

Also note the subtle allusions to 1984, Brave New World, and Farenheit 451. I really enjoyed it and would like to read a longer treatment of the theme by this author.

hawkharris• 13 years ago

The author included over-the-top details to make it clear that his story was fictional.

I mean, FBI agents seeking clarification about emails you wrote? Pssht...they'd just read the emails, build their case and send you to a military tribunal.

tptacek• 13 years ago

Anybody have a server in Peshawar we can use? I think a better plan is to use _Gravity's Rainbow_. It's just as hard to understand, but more things explode in it.

scarmig2• 13 years ago

A screaming came across the sky...

ETA--

Have to call that out as inaccurate, though, as GR is very comprehensible, if sprawling. Compare:

GR: A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.

It is too late. The Evacuation still proceeds, but it's all theatre. There are no lights inside the cars. No light anywhere. Above him lift girders old as an iron queen, and glass somewhere far above that would let the light of day through. But it's night. He's afraid of the way the glass will fall--soon--it will be a spectacle: the fall of a crystal palace. But coming down in total blackout, without one glint of light, only great invisible crashing.

FW: riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

Sir Tristram, violer d’amores, fr’over the short sea, had passen-core rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer’s rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County’s gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all’s fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a peck of pa’s malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface.

reeses2• 13 years ago

Gah, no one expects Finnegan's Wake.

Ulysses (sort of) rewards the patient reader. FW abuses her.

danso• 13 years ago

I guess the point of this...is...to separate the Joyce readers from the non-readers? Because doesn't the satire rely in some part on the analyzed content? I haven't read Joyce but if the OP was as unsubtle in referencing him as he was to Orwell I guess I didn't miss much.

The scenario illustrated here is a little absurd. Our nation would be bankrupt well before it had the finances to fund such rabid pursuit of false positives.

clamprecht• 13 years ago

Jesus, as someone who has been interrogated by the US Secret Service, I thought this was real. It's very accurate, especially the psychological part.

I should write a blog post about this, but the short version:

When I was about 19, I was interrogated by the Secret Service for threatening the US president. I hadn't (ever) done this, and I didn't even know what they were talking about. It turns out that I was on an AT&T alliance (conference call, back then) with a bunch of phreakers (which I was). Sometime during the lifetime of the call (which could have been 24 hours or more), someone called the whitehouse and apparently did make some kind of threat.

I, being 19 and stupid, figured "I have no idea what they're talking about, and I have nothing to hide, so I'll just go in for their interview. It'll be fun." After about 5 hours of being grilled, polygraphed, good-cop-bad-cop'ed, I just wanted to get out of that room. Sweat was dripping off me. I wanted to tell them whatever they wanted to hear to get out of there. And they kept saying "look, we know you made the threat, why don't you just tell us?". Somehow I stayed strong enough to not give a false confession. They let me go, and eventually they charged some kid (a minor, it turns out) in Ohio for it.

If you have ever wondered about people recanting confessions, this is how it happens. The police are trained on how to break you down, make you confess, whether you are guilty or not. There are textbooks (for cops) on how to do it. In the US, they are allowed to lie to you. They can threaten to arrest your wife, etc.

If I'm ever questioned for anything again, no matter how innocent I may be, I'll always request an attorney be present.

alexqgb3• 13 years ago

The author works for Human Rights Watch, so this isn't unfamiliar territory for him.

bayesianhorse• 13 years ago

You know spys... bunch of bitchy little girls...

tomjen33• 13 years ago

Were you under arrest? Because if not, you could have walked out of there any minute you wanted to.

Anyway, watch The Lives of Others (or just the beginning, available here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu-NJA4Y1RI) to see it from the other side. It is a very good movie.

achille• 13 years ago

While this story is fiction, the author was actually investigated by Fitzgerald for possibly uncovering CIA operatives.

See: http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2010/07/john-sifton-guanta...

Summarized: http://sidebarforplaintiffs.naomifein.net/?p=14164

deeqkah• 13 years ago

I honestly couldn't get through reading this in it's entirety as i was laughing too hard. I've saved the page so i could finish later.

Clever, utterly insane and timely.

jakejake• 13 years ago

After reading this story it to me that one way way to combat against government illegal spying would be to overload them with useless information. Millions of citizens could install some sort of peer to peer client that sent and received gibberish emails to lots of counties.

Cryptogams and the NSA (fiction)

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