
Government Builds Free Cloud-Based Backup for an Ungrateful Nation - isbn
https://medium.com/surveillance-state/a6e0e5fca935
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cemerick
Medium, a better place to read things…that show up in the bathroom stalls at
the Onion? And, on the HN frontpage, apparently.

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methehack
Awe, dude... I thought it was funny.

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cemerick
Somewhat amusing, maybe. Front page amusing? 74 points amusing? Goodness no,
not when e.g. [http://this-plt-life.tumblr.com](http://this-plt-
life.tumblr.com) has only ever gotten 4.

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ddoolin
Cute, yes. I'm honestly confused on why some others are complaining about the
satirical nature of the piece. Seems just what some people might need at this
point...

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ck2
I've been wondering why hard drive prices haven't gone down to pre-flood
prices.

Apparently the NSA has been buying every platter available via unlimited
taxpayer dollars.

Sounds like a joke but think about it...

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criley2
When I look at the multi-billion dollar NSA datacenter in Utah... I can't help
but realize that the annual IT budget at Google or one of the big financial
companies dwarfs that number, and does so every year.

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lifeisstillgood
Sorry, bit confused - are you saying that NSA is spending more than Google /
CitiBank or the other way round?

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criley2
Sorry, my point is that Google and Goldman Sachs et al spend several times the
NSA's big multi-year project every single year.

As in, that datacenter ran the NSA ~$2 billion to build, but those companies
are spending several times that every year on IT alone.

I'm reminded of the SEC whose yearly budget is several times smaller than even
a single large banks IT budget.

I guess the NSA could have as astronomical black budget and is creating such
an enormous amount of hidden demand that the market is that effected... but
where's the datacenters holding that market-shifting amount of harddrives?

Even the one being built isn't as impressive as some of the Google/Facebook
datacenters popping up, so it seems ridiculous to me that the US Gov is
affecting HDD prices when Google/Facebook/Banks et al are not.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Good point - thank you. I suspect you are right in orders of magnitude - we
will not really know the exact figures, but I suspect that Intel suddenly
building a new plant to cope with demand that no-one can explain would get
noticed by the financial analysts (well, the good ones anyway)

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chiph
I've been using this service for a while now, but haven't been able to get a
restore to work. My data comes back with large parts of it blacked out -- no
idea why. Has anyone else been able to do a successful restore?

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mtgx
> "safely stores all American’s phone and email contacts so that they can be
> retrieved at any time in the future"

Right. I know it's a joke, but this type of joke is starting to get on my
nerves, considering how far from reality it is.

[http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/06/1221694/-NSA-
Reject...](http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/06/1221694/-NSA-Rejecting-
Every-FOIA-Request-Made-by-U-S-Citizens)

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haxxorfreak
Not that I condone the NSA's practices in any way but it's interesting to
think of how some of this data might serve as a historical record of our daily
lives in the future.

Never before have there been such detailed records of public and private
communications, websites, photos and who knows what else the NSA has flagged
for "permanent storage." Archive.org could only dream of having so much
ephemeral data and the capacity to store it.

~~~
krapp
_Archive.org could only dream of having so much ephemeral data and the
capacity to store it._

Jason Scott must have the most awkward boner right now...

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ChrisAntaki
>> A few thousand Americans are currently enrolled in a beta phase version of
the program that would successfully backup all of their data.

That beta program went live in 2006.
[http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2007/05/mark_klein_docu/](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2007/05/mark_klein_docu/)

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cagenut
Interesting example of how not having the title in the url hurts share-ability
(even though that was originally done for seo). I pasted this link to friends,
but had to provide a followup paste of the title.

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pvnick
Thanks Obama!

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mrt0mat0
a lot of my friends knew nothing about the NSA illegalities going on. if they
read this, they probably wouldn't get that it's a joke. They'd start searching
for the sign up page online... i need new friends

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confusedev
* Nations

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bobwaycott
Medium offering up satire?

What's next? "Obama Goes 'All the Way' to Prove to Americans Just How Wrong
the Bush Administration's War on Terror Is: NSA Scandal a Lesson in
Absurdity".

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pivnicek
True satire is very welcome, especially considering the sad state of public
opinion.

~~~
bobwaycott
I enjoy satire that strikes my subjective determinants of _good satire_. But
what exactly is _true satire_? Do you mean satire that actually exposes and
criticizes people's stupidity in the context of contemporary politics and
culture? Cos if so, this post misses that mark.

I was unaware, before this post, that Medium even had the 'Pulling Pranks'
section. This piece, however, strikes as less good than what I'd read in _The
Onion_ \--and even that is more comedy than satire, most times.

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dllthomas
Cute.

