WingNews logo WingNews GitHub [2]

geepound's comments

geepound | 3 years ago | on: What happened with the substation attack in North Carolina?

They knew enough to shoot a part that is filled with fluid and hard to replace.

They might have lacked the knowledge of "the grid" to make such an attack go beyond one county, but there was some degree of thought put into that attack.

It's easier to attack than defend.

geepound | 3 years ago | on: What not to write on your security clearance form (1988)

>"Here, fill it out again and don't mention that."

>I had the exact same experience when applying for a clearance while I was in college

Speaking as someone on the autistic spectrum, this is why the entire clearance process is a joke and has been since I had the misfortune of meeting some of these spooks as a child.

They claim that the one thing that will preclude you is lying, but obviously as posts like these demonstrate, that's not the case.

I still remember going on a date with a woman who was recently divorced... she told me about traveling up and down Baja California for RAND (smoking her brains out along the way).

I've met a ton of these people -- they'd have been precluded from federal employment back in the day just for being divorced... or a woman... or a myriad of other things... but somehow they manage to get these cushy roles and cling to them.

I've since quit doing any job interviews... at all. I got the sense folks were treating them like free consulting sessions, so I'm very purposefully showing up in the comments when something comes up in the news and refusing to "stop posting".

At the end of the day, if you "do a clearance", you're helping perpetuate war crimes, and it's been that way since Iraq, arguably as far back as when the draft ended.

(I got the sense they, the royal they, "the feds" were aggrieved I kept applying to the agencies in my hometown, but hey, I was born here, and I'm not required to ignore antisocial behavior. It's not my fault if it begins to look like you're abusing someone you met as a child -- denying them employment in the private sector then overpolicing their applications in the public service)

geepound | 3 years ago | on: Ask HN: Has anyone worked at the US National Labs before?

I'd avoid them at all costs. There is one in my hometown. (Software Engineering Institute)

It's employees love to stroll off onto online dating sites and list of things like drug use, foreign ties, or... other things that would preclude a clearance, then act aggrieved that someone like this poster thinks people who want to weaken the internet under the guise of national security shouldn't also obstruct them from private employment and have done so since the days of "don't ask don't tell".

I interviewed with CERT a couple times... and I got a PA MMJ card after rather than have one more job interview treated like a free consulting session, and I suspect the solarwinds breach happened because so many people who shouldn't have clearances use their positions to obstruct perfectly good candidates because they feel threatened if the tech savvy at risk youth of Appalachia are lifted out of precarity.

Do not work for these people -- stay in the private sector then get a barista gig or something when you have a nest egg.

geepound | 3 years ago | on: The FBI Identified a Tor User

>If becomes widely known that the government can de-cloak Tor users, that will change the behaviour of their targets and so hurt their surveillance, so it's fairly common that the government wants to hide this fact. (same with stingrays, for example).

As was discussed verbally at Defcon, a huge chunk of the exit nodes are either in the US or EU. Same for guards.

(The whole GCHQ vs several EU countries trying to do intel in parallel without a shared intelligence agency thing is perpetually amusing.)

page 1