████████ ██████ █████████████
███████ ████ █████████████ ████████ █████████████████████████ █████████ ████████████ ██████. ████ ██████████████████████████████ ████████ ████ ██████.████ █████████ █████ ███████ ██████ or not?
The NSA has revealed for the first time in public how it handles and reports critical unpatched security flaws its snoopers discover in software. It is generally accepted the US taxpayer-funded spy agency has a private stash of exploitable programming blunders that it uses to infect and monitor its intelligence targets' …
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Read Voltaire's Bastards by John Ralston Saul, Chapter 12: The Art of the Secret [pp: 280-299*] for why The State is so obsessed with unnecessary secrecy and why it's so easily able to get away with it.
Chapter 12 begins thus:
'Everything in the West is secret unless there is a conscious decision to the contrary. Our civilization, which never stops declaiming about the inviolability of free speech, operates as if it distrusts nothing more. The taste for the hidden has not played an accidental role in the distortion of practical democracy. ...
[QED - yours truly.]
_
* Pages for my copy of the 1993 Penguin paperback edition.
"The taste for the hidden has not played an accidental role in the distortion of practical democracy."
What a remarkable and true statement. I had to re-read it multiple times to savor it.
Very true when it comes to Irish politics. e.g. Irish Water :), or for evolution in US politics when it comes to how convenient interpretations of the constitution are being enforced....and hidden.
Dear Shadow Systems: Not one bit of text was blacked out. If you read the article, and it is clear that you didn't, the article is simply padded with black lines for humorous effect. Blind people will have no trouble reading the article. When you lose one sense, the others become enhanced. This is why people with no sense of humor have an increased sense of self importance.
We all can see why you didn't get the joke.
Furthermore, it is not theregister.co.uk that is making you listen to screen readers gibbering about BlackRightPointingTriangles, it is your screen reader's manufacturer who made that decision. Either learn to program and offer your blind compadres a superior alternative, or close your arrogant face-vent and hold your helpless frustration inside. It'll fester there, and likely take you to the sweet release of death sooner that way. Good day.
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Why the FU███████████████ ████████ █████████████ ██████ total gibberish, ha ha ha ha. And then we ████████ ██████ the old █████████████ ████████ and he laughed and laffed, but we███ ██ huge mammaries █████ ████████████ he didn't see the funny ██████ █████████████, but of course I was very, very drunk at the time.
I seriously wondered whether his whole offensively scatalogical post was a clever joke intending to echo what the document said pre-redaction (on the assumption that what was redacted were just profanities), then I realised that no-one in USA Government would be intelligent enough to understand such profanities so any joke would be misplaced and misunderstood. If it was a joke, which on reconsideration it probably wasn't.
Just read a few of his previous posts and I too, would like to plead for clemency.
Many of us have stepped precariously over the line at times, but either wisely or out of sheer luck managed to vent it all several pages into the comments and thus avoided being picked up for our delinquent French.
Please, is there any chance you could reconsider his ban, especially as his disability was an obvious factor in the whole damning episode.
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-told El Reg: "███████ ████ █████████████ ████████ █████████████████████████ █████████ ████████████ ██████. ████ ██████████████████████████████ ████████ ████ ██████.████ █████████ █████ ███████ ██████."-
You forgot to note that this part was not redacted for security reasons, but to comply with "Family Safe" values of language usage.
"████ ██████.████ █████████ █████ ███████ ██████"
Hmm, never mind the legality of such an act, is it even physically possible?
Yes, a machine learning algorithm when trained with all the clear bits of text should easily be able to guesstimate what most of the censored stuff is, it would obviously have a hard time on the unique code words "UNLADENSWALLOW" etc
All this crypto stuff is just a mild delay on the road to recovered plaintext
Now we know officially that the NSA and partners have a policy to handle security exploits: Drop those exploits into the black hole of national secrecy where naught a character ever escaped.
This also brings some clarity to the discussion whether the NSA & Co. might be honest partners when addressing computer security issues.
6e382bf46c2d59f548458dddba02df50047cb2834feeb2f2435ee9ec -
47697010756ae67a249b78c9c9450bb61d12c3dac539531474e09712f52912e0 -
de1a6027d6cf72f109728949ec7a00265ca81e1ac86ba9ccf5ad723382d67e5a9586be1d06e412c3c475b470f434e558 -
28d09f6a4afbde74870d9ebd2d9c86121b1e67f0a5215df9540d2790f2d14c08b3dcb964132c6bafc652699ea038b511b0378daa856c067dfe92aaec55e61454 -
c95681d8ad974307e89087bbde580d86 -
P.
Words Create, Command and Control Worlds .... ergo, no words shared, no controlled and/or creative commanding control worlds?
IT is not rocket science.
And in SMARTR IT Systems with Ubiquitous Autonomous Advanced Intelligence Servering of AIMachinery and Virtually Alien Remote Command and Control Centres of Applied Excellence, It is not what is hidden from view and reading and general knowledge which really spooks out and destroys inequitable and oppressive exclusive executive orders and SCADA Operating Systems, it is what you are not fearful of freely sharing to universally empower the masses, rather than just a chosen few which can probably be both ill and ill-chosen too, so compounding the fundamental error, which they can use to terrorise you...... and as you are witnessing, so they do ‽ .
That's the first thing you have written that I have actually understood. Now I am worried, is it because I am also going mental or that you are improving? ;) ... Cavehomme2
I am comfortable in suggesting that it is probably a case of both, Cavehomme2, and certainly nothing for you to be unduly worried about, unless you have something to fear in the whole truth and supporting truths associated with your thoughts and actions predicated upon them.
Welcome to the Register and Creatively Commanded AI in Control Led Worlds.
I would assume that once a known exploit goes wild the ███ release it to the devs.
Otherwise everyone would be ██████ over by the exploit allowing foreign intelligence to use it as well.
I personally think the ███ are a bunch of █████ and the whole situation is a massive ███████████.
If you have nothing to ████ then you are a boring ████.
But seriously███████████████ ████████ █████████████ ██████ we have lots of commitments bound in law ████████ ██████ with certain █████████████ ████████ companies that we cant disclose███ ██ but if memory serves █████ ████████████ these companies start with ██████ █████████████ the letters M, G and A...
Aah shoot i did that wrong didnt I?
Once the zero day is no longer secret,ie. used by others,then maybe they are reported,but that would be the logical thing to do, But I would not be surprised if even then,they kept it in reserve.
Snowden had it right, we should be focused on defense primarily and not offensive capabilities. Our collective reputations would be much better. Even if these spy agencies could get the fixes just pushed to our selective countries to keep their own citizens safe from foreign exploits would be a far cry better than the system they now employ. As it stands now, there needs to be some serious changes in how these outlaws operate. IMHO.