

Dear NSA, let me take care of your slides. - EmilandDC
http://fr.slideshare.net/EmilandDC/dear-nsa-let-me-take-care-ou
Dear NSA, you can do whatever with my data. But not with my eyes. Those slides are hideous.<p>So here&#x27;s a quick revamp of your #PRISM slides.
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waffle_ss
Apparently I'm grumpy beyond my years but I find these lighthearted jabs at
the NSA counter-productive as they just trivialize what happened. I'd much
rather see creations that will help bring about change, like shining a
spotlight on the representatives that support these programs.

For instance Dianne Feinstein, _chair of the Senate Intelligence committee_ ,
who said "the authorities need this information in case someone might become a
terrorist in the future."

~~~
verelo
I completely agree and actually would argue that it further pushes the point
of why we should be concerned: They cant even make good slides, how can anyone
be sure they're keeping the data they collect (legally or not - irrelevant for
this point) safe?

I suppose you could also say they spend their time keeping the data safe and
not producing quality slides, but i would consider it to be more of an insight
into the quality of their overall architecture.

~~~
advice4u
>They cant even make good slides, how can anyone be sure they're keeping the
data they collect...

When I was in university, my professors made and taught from slides of roughly
the same quality. Does that mean they cannot do their jobs? Obviously not:
they have proved important theorems, published significant papers, worked on
interesting patents, and successfully trained their students (all the while
updating and reusing shoddy slides for years and years).

I am a little surprised at the surprise/snobbery over the quality of NSA's
slides, as if it mattered. In my mind, blustering about colors and fonts in a
case of this import only serves to highlight the triviality of designers: they
are a luxury.

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verelo
Clearly a lot of people agree with you (including myself). I should clarify
that I don't think its a hard and fast rule...but if this is something they
consider to be acceptable then my point is simply that it doesn't inspire
confidence in the work they'll put out in other areas of the organization.

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toyg
Nice deck, BUT this is Hacker News, so here's the customary negative feedback:

\- the "what's the plan" slide is bad: it doesn't convey the original sense
that other providers will join soon or have already joined. the tagline makes
it look like it's a future plan, when it's actually describing the past.

\- that "$20m" slide makes it look like it's a lot of money. The original
clearly wanted to contextualise it and make it look cheap. ("just 20m for all
these providers!")

\- seriously? I got more data-per-square-inch from the original presentation.

\- thin fonts are overdone and hard to read.

\- VCs don't care about presentations anymore, I got in YC20xx by <clever
social engineering episode>.

~~~
Ntrails
I also object to any slides that cannot be at least readable printed in black
and white. Consider the ink costs - do you think the NSA is made of money?!?

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robbiep
I thought most slides these days print to more 'normal colours'? My university
always has slides with dark bgs, images and crazy coloured texts but the PDF
slides available to accompany them are always only just the text + any images
if they have copyright, and print very well in b&w, if people still feel the
need to do that

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munger
The need to print in B&W is more about b&w laser vs color ink jets at the
consumer level. Quality and TOC is so much better on a B&W laser than paying
so much for color ink tanks if you do mostly info doc print outs.

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josefresco
Imagine the uproar if the NSI hired a graphic designer of sorts to make their
slides more attractive. I can see the moaning now "They spent HOW much of my
tax money making those slides pretty?!?"

I expect the NSA's slide to be crappy, because you know, they're spies and
stuff not graphic UX experts.

~~~
blantonl
Keep in mind that those slides were almost certainly developed by a
contractor. Who was paid 150K/year. Who was one of thousands of other similar
contractors. With little to no real world experience.

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bazillion
The average pay of contractors is between 70k-100k. The only ones making more
than that are typically program managers for large contracts or other
administrative folk who work on winning contracts for their company.

Contractors are typically not busy making powerpoints, but busy actually
working on what they're hired to do since they have to do their hours. The
busy work is left to the military folk and interns as stated in the other
comment.

~~~
blantonl
Government contractors with active security clearances command far more than
70k-100K - an active TS/SCI clearance can take over a year to process - and
the number of hurdles to clear is daunting for the average person.

An enlisted E-7 just coming out of the military with an active clearance and
some technology experience is going to bank with the contractors out there and
probably do very little real actual hard work.

That security clearance really is the willy wonka golden ticket...

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acoyfellow
One of the most clever ways I've ever seen to sell yourself.. On par with the
Oreo ad during the superbowl I think. You nailed the timing of the issue, and
I hope you get some awesome jobs from this. The hair still rose on the back of
my neck, and it made it seem even more manipulative. A+ design/presentation
skills.

~~~
EmilandDC
Aha, Thanks ;)

~~~
wwwarhawk
I love the work on your site, OP. Did you use After Effects for that French
TED talk or something else?

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sethbannon
I've been so infuriated with this story that I didn't think someone could make
me laugh about PRISM, but this did it.

~~~
bhdz

        "Most of the world's communications
         are flowing through the U.S.
         So is your target's data"

~~~
l0c0b0x
yeah, not so funny.

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ivv
Feedback from the client:

Thanks for sending this over, it looks great. Could you just add a few tweaks?

\- Add the seal

\- We need the "top secret" stamp on each slide

\- We think the grey is too bland. Could you make it pop more?

\- Did you get the PRISM logo from us? I am attaching the Word doc in case you
missed it

\- I am not sure you left enough room for the bullets -- will they go on
separate slides? We need to see those.

[edited for line breaks]

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logn
Brilliant! I think, as the public, we should all re-implement an open,
ethical, and fun version of this surveillance infrastructure open to the
Internet as a whole. Facebook nearly implemented that goal. But we can do
better.

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nicpottier
Brilliant marketing. Bravo.

~~~
EmilandDC
Thx !

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ExcitedByNoise
Having been in many DoD related PowerPoints, this is par for the course. Bravo
though, made me laugh.

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joeblau
Same. It's funny because after looking at the original slides, I immediately
thought... "yeah these are legit"

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simonster
These slides are certainly prettier and less crowded than the NSA slides, but
they are, if anything, less readable. Unless the slides are intentionally
informed by the principle that hard to read text is easier to remember
([http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/19/health/19mind.html?pagewan...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/19/health/19mind.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)),
I think these slides are a classic case of form over function.

• The main font is too thin.

• The first few slides are white text on a neutral gray background, which is
inexcusably low contrast. Ditto for the green text on the blue background on
the following slides, and the gray axis labels on the blue background, which I
can barely read even on my computer screen. The white text on blue background
is good.

• The text in the graph on the "How can we monitor everything?" slides is too
small to be readable from the back row (but this was also a problem in the
originals).

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swalsh
In all honesty, 20M seems like a bargain for that much value.

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jacquesm
The NSA uploading their slides to slideshare would save everybody a lot of
bother, I think that's the most brilliant bit in this excellent PR move. No
more need to leak anything.

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crocowhile
Snowden was not in the acknowledgements.

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suppressingfire
Hah. I like how the author pluralized "targets'" while keeping all the other
facts intact.

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dustingetz
i worked Lockheed Martin R&D for a couple years and slides like this are par.
they are written by the principal investigator for an audience who doesn't
give a shit about glitz and glam. these aren't marketing slides.

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Systemic33
You should just get in contact with every governmental agency in the world,
the amount of bad designed layouts is over 9000.

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toyg
No, the amount of _designed layouts_ is zero. The amount of _hacked-together
presentations_ is over 9000.

In fact, I don't understand why Powerpoint-Design-As-A-Service isn't a thing
yet.

~~~
samspenc
For the same reason Web-Design-As-A-Service isn't a thing yet. I deal with
non-techie friends who have trouble even with Wix and Weebly on a daily basis.

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downandout
Have you considered creating something that would help tie the content to the
person viewing the slides? Might be really useful for any security sensitive
organization. For example, if the color scheme on certain graphics was
programmatically modified slightly for each person who viewed the content,
then the next leaker could be immediately identified (if they don't decide to
voluntarily publish their name). Something like this would survive
screenshots/resizing/etc. You could also enable them to put tags where the
software can fill in identifying info in the content. For example a link in
the slides might be modified to include a number identifying the viewer, and
if that link pops up anywhere, it's off to Gitmo.

Can't believe NSA doesn't already do this stuff.

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drchiu
Nice slides, but I couldn't but laugh at the idea that the next time there's a
leak at the NSA it would turn out to be the guy who was in charge of making
the slides.

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alieas
The fact that the slides were so disgusting is just another reason to make me
think this "story" was "broke" by design. Controlled opposition.

~~~
genwin
Seems it was EmilandDC's idea all along.

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foxhill
despite the severity of implications of PRISM, being able to laugh about it is
important.

slides were designed excellently, i definitely did not giggle at all..

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andyhmltn
This seems to be an advertising ploy for a slide design service. However, I
looked at their website and their stuff is amazing

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milhous
"target(s)" should be replaced with "your fellow American citizens and
potential foreign persons of interests" because we're all guilty until proven
innocent.

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slig
Direct link to OP's website [http://emiland.me/](http://emiland.me/)

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chmars
Why are there only four PRISM slides in the presentation?

According to media reports, the total number of slides is much larger …

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Fishkins
Right, there are 25 total (I think), but only 4 have been disclosed to the
general public.

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muyuu
Seems like Microsoft was ahead of the game compared to Facebook and Google.
Who'd have thought.

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ShirsenduK
Flat UI. Was this iOS 7 inspired? :P

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Ricapar
Sheesh. "Flat UI" now goes along with iOS 7?

It's been around much longer than yesterday. iOS 7 is late to the party.

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Samuel_Michon
It was a joke. Also, iOS 7 doesn’t have a flat UI; it’s full of gradients,
layers, and translucency.

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glesica
If they just put all their slides on Slideshare I would certainly never see
them...

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QuantumGuy
Anybody know what software is used to make those slides?

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coherentpony
Brilliant. Would you like to write some slides for me?

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az
'We are a one-man agency...' contradictory?

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marcgg
I think that's the point ^^

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ck2
BTW have those slides been authenticated somehow?

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kalms
This is really great! Fast thinking there.

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senthilnayagam
along with 20 Million you could have put combined worth of these companies is
over 200 billion dollars, 0.0001%

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twic
Next, i want to see a Prezi version.

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lessnonymous
Nice move Mr Presentation Designer.

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kevinbluer
Genius :)

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ErwannRobin
very clever ^^ I hope this will bring you good business!

