When recruiting snoops to spy on us, the NSA frequently and slyly brags about its lawlessness: for example, its director told an audience in Silicon Valley last year, “We’re going to give you the opportunity to do some neat stuff you can’t do anywhere else.” Yep, because if you did it anywhere else, you’d go to jail. But then that’s true across the board for the State’s bullies and bureaucrats: they’d cage us serfs were we to murder, boss, kidnap, sexually assault, lie to, or thieve from them as they do us.
The NSA has taken this double standard to a new low. It is now indoctrinating kids via summer camps, where it teaches them to hack other people’s computers. Ah, but don’t worry: before corrupting their morals, “instructors” “prepped” these minors “with a lecture on the ethics of hacking.” Who knew there were any? Hmmm: perhaps the IRS also “preps” new hires on the ethics of stealing.
“In other words,” the story on the Hitlerjugend-sorry, the NSA’s camps continues, “[the students] were effectively told, do not try this at home.” I’m not even a parent, yet I know that prohibition ensures these delinquents will indeed hack, hack, and hack some more. As his avid pupils exclaimed over “John The Ripper, a software tool that helps test and break passwords,” an “instructor” “loudly warned,” “‘Now, I don’t want anybody getting in trouble now that you know how to use this puppy’…”
Yeah, that oughta keep our passwords safe from these junior spooks. Maybe the NSA can teach them to break into liquor stores next but then caution, “Now, we don’t want any underage drinking, so don’t try this at home.”
9:19 pm on July 20, 2015
