
Programmer Conned CIA, Pentagon Into Buying Bogus Anti-Terror Code - phsr
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/montgomery-2/
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blhack
_This is crazy. This is embarrassing.’. . . I said, ‘Give us the algorithms
that allowed you to come up with this stuff.’ They wouldn’t even do that. And
I was screaming, ‘You gave these people fucking money?’_

That pretty much sums it up perfectly. I think part of the problem that allows
things like this to happen is that, to some people, computers are magic. They
don't understand how they work and feeding Al Jazeera video feed through a
computer program and having it spit out terrorist plots sounds almost
feasible.

~~~
lhuang
Some? Try most.

People fear the unknown and sadly the world of technology and computers are
still very much a black box for the vast majority of people on earth.

My dad, ivy educated phd, still thinks that coding is like the movie hackers.

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beaker
Having worked on many government and DoD contracts, I find this rather
unsurprising. The phrase "tip of the iceberg" comes to mind..

~~~
neurotech1
Part of the problem is a fairly large number of projects are theoretical
research initially. What is more surprising is they didn't seem to apply a
"peer review" to this.

I find it very hard to believe that the DoD (NSA?) do not have sufficient
highly talented programmers / analysts to review these programs.

Another issue is that after 9/11, they were evaluating a larger number of
possible solutions, In the hope that at least some of them produce viable
results.

~~~
lhuang
Not sure if you can really bucket this under "theoretical research."
Theoretical research is at least grounded in logic and paper rationale. This
case seems like a mix of equal parts ponzi scheme showmanship, conspiracy
theory, and tech-illiterate paranoids.

I don't even think this ever got to the hands of the NSA or people who have
the technical proficiency to call bs (this in and of itself is surprising
given the sheer stupidity of what this clown was trying to sell).

If anything this fraud was faciliated by petty political and institutional
bureaucratic jostling for relevance, power, and funding. Basically some tards,
convinced that they're onto something big, hides it from everyone else because
they don't want to share in the credit/fame. Not surprising given this is the
US govt. Hell most corporations are like this too.

What I find most troubling about all of this is that after 9/11 there was a
such a stink about intra-department communication and cooperation. The
argument being that if people simply talked more with one another lapses in
security and plain dum-dum-ness would be greatly reduced if not eliminated
outright. Fuck, Bush even created a whole department to do just this!

~~~
neurotech1
I agree with all 3 of your points.

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motters
A fool and his money are soon parted.

This story made me laugh, because it's like a modern re-telling of the Hans
Andersen story "The Emperor's New Clothes". The Emperor, in this case played
by George Bush and company, are so eager to believe all sorts of paranoid
fantasies, such as that evil-doers are broadcasting secret messages via TV,
that when a charlatan comes along claiming that he can prove that their
darkest nightmares are true they're keen to make sure he gets to work on the
tailoring right away, with no expense spared!

~~~
brown9-2
Do you really think that this kind of willingness-to-believe stops at "George
Bush and company"?

I mean can understand the hilarity of the situation, but seriously - this guy
should be in jail.

~~~
motters
No it doesn't, and that's why the Hans Andersen story is so timeless.
Foolishness in the form of being too quick to believe your own prejudices is,
alas, a common failing.

------
rms
Original article: [http://www.playboy.com/articles/the-man-who-conned-the-
penta...](http://www.playboy.com/articles/the-man-who-conned-the-pentagon-
dennis-montgomery/index.html?page=1)

SFW, in theory. And by that I mean there are no nipples until you click the
Girls link at the top of the page.

------
sli
Great. Now programmers are going to be labeled as terrorists.

~~~
pmorici
Sounds like this guys problem was he was a salesman and not a programmer or
computer scientist.

~~~
raganwald
Hey, remember that whole discussion about measuring the productivity of
programmers through the amount of money someone is willing to pay for their
"output?"

Sounds like this guy was a very productive programmer.

------
zhyder
Among all the mistakes the US govt made due to post-9/11 paranoia (Iraq,
Patriot Act...), this is comparatively a tiny one. Unsurprising.

------
Groxx
There's a remarkable amount of stupidity in the world when it comes to
computers.

Governments seem to attract a particularly high density of computer-illiterate
people. I wish I could understand why, but it truly boggles my mind.

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NathanKP
Now that is a twisted story.... By the way, I hate to say it but why is
_Playboy_ the trusted source in this article?

~~~
pgbovine
i don't want to be _'that guy'_ , but Playboy does publish legitimate articles
(in the style of, say, Rolling Stone or Vanity Fair or GQ). at least in its
early years, it was well-known (in part) for its left-leaning editorials and
investigative articles

wasn't it around 2004 that Playboy published a pretty high-profile interview
with the Google founders right before their IPO, and there was some legal
hiccups with the SEC due to what they disclosed in that interview?

------
joshu
Playboy?

~~~
pvg
Sure. Among interviewed subjects - Bertrand Russel, Jawaharlal Nehru, Albert
Schweitzer, Nabokov, Dali, Martin Luther King, Jean-Paul Sartre, Frederico
Fellini, Fidel Castro, Arnold Toynbee, John Kenneth Galbraith, Ralph Nader,
William Buckley, Jr., Albert Speer, George McGovern, R. Buckminster Fuller,
Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Milton Freedman, Tennessee Williams, Walter Cronkite,
Jimmy Carter, Edward Teller, William Shockley, Lech Walesa, Ansel Adams,
Yasser Arafat, Carl Sagan, William Safire, Bill Gates, Salman Rushdie, Pope
John Paul II.

Ok, I made one of those up. But just one.

~~~
dualogy
Ayn Rand too, back in the 50s or 60s.

~~~
pvg
Right, I was going mostly for 'major importance' or 'intellectual heft',
really.

~~~
CamperBob
I am no fan of Rand, but I reflexively downvote any comments like yours.
Answering faulty reasoning with sheer dumbassery isn't helpful.

The fact is, Rand's work was a legitimate reaction to some very real abuses,
and it was extremely influential in economic and political circles throughout
the second half of the twentieth century. The fact that you don't like her
ideas doesn't alter the first fact.

~~~
pvg
Oh getting all frothy at the mouth in an essentially joke thread is absurd.
And 'reflexively downvoting' is a lot closer to dumbassery than replying to a
comment. Whatever I think of her ideas, I don't think Ayn Rand is remotely in
the caliber of people I put on the list, in terms of importance. That's why I
didn't put her on the list and that's what I was explaining to the responder.

~~~
CamperBob
(shrug) Not getting frothy, just explaining the downvote. Peace.

