Well, how convenient: NSA incapable of searching its own employees' email - Polidicks

[URL="https://www.propublica.org/article/nsa-says-it-cant-search-own-emails"]NSA Says It Can’t Search Its Own Emails[/URL] [QUOTE]The NSA is a "supercomputing powerhouse" with machines so powerful their speed is measured in thousands of trillions of operations per second. The agency turns its giant machine brains to the task of sifting through unimaginably large troves of data its surveillance programs capture. But ask the NSA, as part of a freedom of information request, to do a seemingly simple search of its own employees' email? The agency says it doesn’t have the technology. "There's no central method to search an email at this time with the way our records are set up, unfortunately," NSA Freedom of Information Act officer Cindy Blacker told me last week.[/QUOTE] The government seems to be betting heavily that choosing to appear incompetent and stupid instead of actively hostile to citizens' privacy will go over better.

Classic america.

because the one place terrorists wouldn't target is the government. especially not the branch of government that if it even worked as the government said it did, would allow other terrorists to avoid detection if damaged

All of a sudden, everything I try and post prompts me for a captcha. Up until trying to post a thread with "NSA" in the title, I didn't have any hassle. I guess I should put something interesting in here. Hey, bored NSA guy, hi.

Can we please just make a damn megathread for this? Its interesting albeit clogging up the forum at this point.

Well that is interesting.

[quote]"There's no central method to search an email at this time with the way our records are set up, unfortunately," NSA Freedom of Information Act officer Cindy Blacker told me last week.[/quote] Why do they focus on that they can't search [I]their own[/I] emails? What Blacker is saying here is that they can't search emails at all. It's like they're going "lol, look at this incompetent agency, they can find whatever they want, but can't find shit in their own emails". The fact that it is their employees' emails doesn't make it any easier.

[QUOTE=elixwhitetail;41584101]All of a sudden, everything I try and post prompts me for a captcha. Up until trying to post a thread with "NSA" in the title, I didn't have any hassle. I guess I should put something interesting in here. Hey, bored NSA guy, hi.[/QUOTE] That's a force far more insidious than the NSA: Cloudflare.

[QUOTE=kazookie;41584267]Why do they focus on that they can't search [I]their own[/I] emails? What Blacker is saying here is that they can't search emails at all. It's like they're going "lol, look at this incompetent agency, they can find whatever they want, but can't find shit in their own emails". The fact that it is their employees' emails doesn't make it any easier.[/QUOTE] Er, no, what they're saying is, "we are unable to comply with Freedom of Information Act requests in any sort of reasonably timely manner because we've intentionally designed our email system to be very difficult to index and investigate." The NSA's internal email system is what Blacker is referring to. It's in the NSA's best interest to design their email system to be as difficult as possible to keep track of. It is in their best interest to keep all of the data they collect from us as searchable and as accessible to them as possible, so they will design [I]those[/I] systems to be very powerful and fast. Making their own email system slow and inconvenient to search means they can discourage FOIA requests and make it very difficult to uncover anything important. Edit: Okay, wtf, Cloudflare, you're being a creepy jerk. I'm not going to joke about pretending to think someone from the NSA's watching, but only this thread is triggering Cloudflare's shit, if I try and edit, preview, or post. Posted a comment in the other NSA thread, about SSL keys, and nothing. Come back here, wham. Thanks, Cloudflare.

why do i have a feeling this is a load of bullshit [quote]NSA Says It Can’t Search Its Own Emails[/quote] [quote]NSA Says It Can’t[/quote] [quote]NSA Says[/quote]

[QUOTE=pfoot;41584465]why do i have a feeling this is a load of bullshit[/QUOTE] I believe it. However, if the story had been, "NSA Says It Can't Design A Searchable Email System" then yes, wall to wall bullshit. They are telling the truth, because they like it that way. Edit: Cloudflare didn't harrass me this time. Keep up the good work, guys.

Uh huh. I doubt the NSA actually retains any of their own emails, regardless of what any transparency laws say. They know they're better off NOT having clear records of how and why they violate American's constitutional rights on a daily basis.

The NSA says it has no way of searching emails, but my old job back at an Education firm had an IT guy who could log in with an administrator's key and open ANYONE'S email box from the server. Yeah. Fucking. Right. NSA.

[quote]thousands of trillions of operations[/quote] Surely that's just quadrillions?

I find it hilarious that I can now trust the Chinese government more than the US one.