On Sun, June 14, 2015 8:03 am, James B. Byrne wrote:
On Sat, June 13, 2015 17:56, Valeri Galtsev wrote:
As I said about these services here (KGB, CIA, MI-6, ...) there is no "ex" for their agents. The only way one retired from these organizations is dead, feet first dead.
A bit hyperbolic. One could with as much justification state that there is no such thing as an ex-marine, an ex-seal, an ex-commissioned officer, or an ex-almost-any-sensitive-position that has to do with the running of a modern industrial state. Various state-secret laws effectively see to that if nothing else.
In any case, all these organizations are based on task-completion and need-to-know principles. Once you are no longer tasked then you are effectively retired, even if still employed, until re-tasked. Once you are more-or-less permanently 'untasked' then the only question is which budget does your paycheck offset.
This is not to say that I disagree with the underlying point, only that it is a bit overly selective in its formulation.
This is up to everybody: to use their brain and avoid sources (of anything: software, "information", "analysis",...) if there is any indication you shouldn't trust the source.
Take Kaspersky. Free antivirus. This is the code you run on your Windows machine from account with highest privileges. And you even know Kaspersky's relation with KGB (who cares: has or had). This, distributing free software (antivirus) which Windows - as MS tells you - can not be safely run without I would rate as more brilliant Intelligence (OK, call it dirty tricks) operation than collection of information by offering free (cloud based) applications and serviced. I know, many people will jump in right here arguing that "google is not like that" even though I didn't even mention google. Google just stands out as the largest best known (and for which closer to its foundation there was the question: where could this huge startup capital come from - if not from uncounted taxpayer's money...).
It all boils down to everybody's own willingness to stay away from anything you quite likely can not trust.
Valeri
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Valeri Galtsev Sr System Administrator Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago Phone: 773-702-4247 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++