tl;dr: I'm betting: "And while the biggest arms dealer in the world is your boss, the President of the United States, who ships more merchandise in a day than I do in a year... sometimes it's embarrassing to have his fingerprints on the guns. Sometimes he needs a freelancer like me to supply forces he can't be seen supplying. So ... you call me evil. But unfortunately for you, I'm a necessary evil."
Context:
>Jack Valentine: Are you crazy? Or just plain delusional? I don't think you fully appreciate the seriousness of your situation! You are gonna spend the next ten years of your life going from a cell to a courtroom before you even start serving your time!
> Yuri Orlov: [Quietly] My family has disowned me. My wife and son have left me. And my brother's dead. I can assure you I appreciate the seriousness of my situation. But I promise you- I won't spend a single second in a courtroom.
> Jack Valentine: [Scoffs] You are delusional.
> Yuri Orlov: I like you, Jack. [Considers] Well, maybe not, but- I understand you. Let me tell you what's gonna happen. This way you can prepare yourself. Okay. Soon there's gonna be a knock on that door and you will be called outside. In the hall there will be a man who outranks you. First, he'll compliment you on the fine job you've done, that you're making the world a safer place, that you're to receive a commendation and a promotion. And then he's going to tell you that I am to be released. You're going to protest... you'll probably threaten to resign. But in the end, I will be released. The reason I'll be released is the same reason you think I'll be convicted. I do rub shoulders with some of the most vile, sadistic men calling themselves leaders today. But some of those men are the enemies of your enemies. And while the biggest arms dealer in the world is your boss, the President of the United States, who ships more merchandise in a day than I do in a year... sometimes it's embarrassing to have his fingerprints on the guns. Sometimes he needs a freelancer like me to supply forces he can't be seen supplying. So ... you call me evil. But unfortunately for you, I'm a necessary evil.
[Valentine now looks very grim, realizing Orlov is right. There is a knock at the door just as Yuri promised.]
> Jack Valentine: [Getting up] I would tell you to go to Hell, but I think you're already there.
The 'Big Brother' thing doesn't shock me, I know about it for some time now. At least you can still believe a modicum they maybe have good intentions... You know, protecting us from bad guys or something...
But the 'MiniTruth' thing... Wow,just wow...
Context: The Ministry Of Truth in the 1984 novel is the service dedicated to propaganda, in which the whole society is drowned. Everything about the society they live in is a lie...
It just blows away any hope of good intention from their part.
The last time I read about something so cynic, suggesting so much contempt for the people they pretend to serve, with such carelessness, is when it was revealed que FTX internal chatroom was called 'Wirefraud'.
> I learned my lesson to not talk about such things because their egoes were too fragile.
At my university in the early 90s I went the white hat route and had tons of fun. I managed to convince the computing center folks to give me a student job in the Unix group, and then spent the next three years hacking their systems and getting a pat on the back when I did it.
> Why should the person committing the crimes be let go?
Because a child calling a helpdesk and pretending to be someone else is a prank. Slap on the wrist, followed by a job offer. It seems on a similar level to ringing a bar and asking for 'Amanda Hugginkiss' or 'Mike Hunt'. At least this kid found the problem before the Russians did.
I don't understand the weird disconnect between HN and the intelligence community. It's almost the perfect job for a 'hacker' type: work with cutting edge technology and thousands of other incredibly intelligent people to try and out-think adversaries to gain access to their resources. You get to build defensive and offensive software to attack computer systems, and actually use it, something that would get you arrested if you did it personally. This was why I loved penetration testing, and an obvious extension of financial security would be working in national security. Yet somehow, these guys are 'evil' now, notwithstanding the IRA and otehrs in the UK, the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks, and so on - those were all perpetrated by _actual_ evil people, who deserved to be investigated and followed and found. And, looking at the leaked documents, there is a huge amount of auditing and checking - don't do this, because it's illegal, don't search for that because it's against the law - not the wild west free-for-all that people seem to imagine.
Anyway, if I could get a clearance, I'm sure I'd love working for GCHQ or SIS in the infosec arena, as would most hackers. The cognitive diasonance is strong in many people!
I’ve had to relay this on to people I train: It’s their job. It’s a business and it’s unreasonable for you to be better at aspects of it than they are.
I think the slide is titled “Someone is going to be the goose, hopefully not you”.
> Could've done something good with his life (like getting into info/cybersec!).
Very likely no, he could not. Being able to harm people does not imply ability to secure systems. Nor ability to learn advance tech while we are at it. Nor ability to obey contractual limits if you are red team.
And it would be pretty idea to employ person with such a bad judgement in any of those positions anyway.
If I could summon Satan all over somebody's hard drive I doubt Uncle Sam would let me remain in the private sector.
> Do you own a possessed violin, by any chance?
No, but this sword here at my side don't act the way it should. It keeps calling me its master when I feel like it's slave. It's hauling me, faster and faster, to an early, early grave.
>which is probably going to cause these people to die.
source? My understanding is that spy stuff is a giant circle jerk where high-IQ bored people sit around taking tax-payer dollars.[1] Why would they kill each other? That just ends the game.
what makes you think anyone kills spies anymore?
[1] you'll literally hear them make statements like "Hey, I thought this was going to be interesting! I'm just sitting around listening to other people's boring conversations all day." Well yeah that's what you signed up for.
no, it means you were successfully trained to be one.
reply