Topic: DEA agent discusses Bitcoin in class today - page 2. (Read 8573 times)
If you see him again, get him to verify that silk road is owned and operated by the DEA
I agree with everything except your bitchin' about space.
I think you misunderstood or I wasn't clear. I consider space exploration to be essential to the continued technological evolution of the human race. I was just pointing out NASA awesome track record from 1950s to 1980 and then blundering two decades of mostly failures, project overruns, missteps, and lack of cohesive direction. NASA is an example of how bloating inefficient government programs become never ending blackholes for money with little tangible progress.Now NASA has done some good things post 1980s but it lost its drive, it lost talent to private companies, and it got crushed under never relenting layers of bureaucratic nonsense.
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Space is fucking awesome. It is a frontier. It needs to be conquered. If I wasn't math-tarded, I would have gone into aeronautics to try and see it.
I agree 100%. I just find it sad that the agency who went to the moon on 1960s technology now admits they can't do it today. Somehow instead of advancing they regressed and lost invaluable information. Information that if it had been made open source (a foreign concept in 1960s) would still at least be alive today.
If it were up to me NASA budget would be larger but everything they do would be open sourced. Yeah I know it will never happen.
Gotcha. I am interested to see what comes of the privatized shuttle industry, if it comes to fruition. We need to start another space race for morale.
I agree with everything except your bitchin' about space.
I think you misunderstood or I wasn't clear. I consider space exploration to be essential to the continued technological evolution of the human race. I was just pointing out NASA awesome track record from 1950s to 1980 and then blundering two decades of mostly failures, project overruns, missteps, and lack of cohesive direction. NASA is an example of how bloating inefficient government programs become never ending blackholes for money with little tangible progress.Now NASA has done some good things post 1980s but it lost its drive, it lost talent to private companies, and it got crushed under never relenting layers of bureaucratic nonsense.
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Space is fucking awesome. It is a frontier. It needs to be conquered. If I wasn't math-tarded, I would have gone into aeronautics to try and see it.
I agree 100%. I just find it sad that the agency who went to the moon on 1960s technology now admits they can't do it today. Somehow instead of advancing they regressed and lost invaluable information. Information that if it had been made open source (a foreign concept in 1960s) would still at least be alive today.
If it were up to me NASA budget would be larger but everything they do would be open sourced. Yeah I know it will never happen.
I suppose a speculative analogy would be science -- we can read all about on-the-horizon technologies in magazines like Popular Science, but my guess is the government has brilliant scientists who are well-aware of (or who have already developed) technology 20+ years ahead of our current time...the fun stuff like teleportation of poly-atomic substances or cloaking. I also speculate this is true in the field of intelligence gathering, and I seriously wouldn't be surprised if the government has the ability to listen to and track any conversation had by virtually anybody, anywhere, at anytime.
Yeah except they can't. You are aware the CIA started a venture capital firm to invest in emerging high tech industries. Why? Because the explosion in productivity has caused them to fall further and further behind the private sector. Then you combine the crushing bureaucratic insanity that has become the US federal govt and the complete dominance of the military industrial complex which siphons off obscene profits in bloated over-budget unnecessary systems.
NASA can't even get to the moon anymore. They lost most of that schematics and blueprints because they didn't have the budget or foresight to properly archive them. The Space Shuttle was suppose to be replaced in 1990 and we kept it running until this year with bailing wire and duct tape (killing a dozen astronaughts needlessly in the process). Hell if weren't for the Russians and their 1970 era transfer pod we would have to de-orbit the international space station (another project 15 years behind schedule and who's final cost was 5x the original estimate).
You don't need to fear the US govt seeing through walls, cracking uncrackable encryption, or analyzing your brainwaves. No the reality is more mundane and much scarier. They will simply take your civil liberties away, bust into your house without warrant and hold you without due process as an enemy combatant. Alternatively the President can have you executed without due process regardless of your Constitutional rights.
Who needs fancy science when you simply use a police state to exercise control? Far cheaper and far more effective. Throw a couple surprise twists in American Idol and your neighbors won't even notice it happening.
I agree with everything except your bitchin' about space. The US government is so far behind in technological frontiers that it is embarrassing. For christ's sake, local police can't even get their rape kits processed or their DNA evidence run, and that is barely high school level genetics these days. I was running an experiment with yeast and inducing and mapping double-crossover mutations with UV light this year with friggin seventh graders. I didn't learn that shit until college, and even now, a handful of years later, everything I learned is completely out of date.
Extrapolate that to technology, which is infinitely more expensive and equally complex, and you've got to realize the government can't keep up. It's just like any industry...bigger=bloated. The little corner store might have some kids swipe some candy, but they run a tight ship because they can see the whole thing. Scale that up to Best Buy, and they are dealing with massive credit fraud, employee theft, regular theft, vandalism, liability, low-wage workers driving forklifts and operating dangerous machinery...They are huge so they can absorb it, but they can't keep their ducks in a row. I imagine that there are some guys in the CIA who could track you down through a couple btc addresses and a throwaway gmail account and social engineer you into oblivion, just like there are a brilliant PhDs driving truck for a living. They don't make up the standard of the industry, in this case bloated shitty underfunded bureaucracy.
Space is fucking awesome. It is a frontier. It needs to be conquered. If I wasn't math-tarded, I would have gone into aeronautics to try and see it. Instead, I settled on marine biology, my closer frontier.
That turned into an unintentionally long rant. Apologies.
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Science, but my guess is the government has brilliant scientists who are well-aware of (or who have already developed) technology 20+ years ahead of our current time...the fun stuff like teleportation of poly-atomic substances or cloaking. I also speculate this is true in the field of intelligence gathering, and I seriously wouldn't be surprised if the government has the ability to listen to and track any conversation had by virtually anybody, anywhere, at anytime.
Now, keep in mind I understand the fine line between paranoia/conspiracy theories and simple plausibility. But, seriously guys, tracking Bitcoin transactions can't be harder than much of what the government has already done. If we can blast into space and STAY there or build a plutonium bomb, we can crack cryptographic hash functions.
Yes, and they can also levitate without using fart gases. The space travel and plutionium bomb is engineering and scientifically plausible. The ability to crack SHA256 hash function will ruin the Bitcoin, this is nothing to do with tracing bitcoin transactions to real life identities and transactions.Now, keep in mind I understand the fine line between paranoia/conspiracy theories and simple plausibility. But, seriously guys, tracking Bitcoin transactions can't be harder than much of what the government has already done. If we can blast into space and STAY there or build a plutonium bomb, we can crack cryptographic hash functions.
My guess the reality is more like:
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You don't need to fear the US govt seeing through walls, cracking uncrackable encryption, or analyzing your brainwaves. No the reality is more mundane and much scarier. They will simply take your civil liberties away, bust into your house without warrant and hold you without due process as an enemy combatant. Alternatively the President can have you executed without due process regardless of your Constitutional rights.
Who needs fancy science when you simply use a police state to exercise control? Far cheaper and far more effective. Throw a couple surprise twists in American Idol and your neighbors won't even notice it happening.
Who needs fancy science when you simply use a police state to exercise control? Far cheaper and far more effective. Throw a couple surprise twists in American Idol and your neighbors won't even notice it happening.
I suppose a speculative analogy would be science -- we can read all about on-the-horizon technologies in magazines like Popular Science, but my guess is the government has brilliant scientists who are well-aware of (or who have already developed) technology 20+ years ahead of our current time...the fun stuff like teleportation of poly-atomic substances or cloaking. I also speculate this is true in the field of intelligence gathering, and I seriously wouldn't be surprised if the government has the ability to listen to and track any conversation had by virtually anybody, anywhere, at anytime.
Yeah except they can't. You may not be aware but the CIA started a venture capital firm to invest in emerging high tech industries. Why? Because the explosion in productivity in the private sector has caused them to fall further and further behind in high tech fields like data analysis, distributed computing, crptography, wireless communication, etc. When you combine that with the crushing bureaucratic insanity that has become the US federal govt and the complete dominance of the military industrial complex which siphons off obscene profits in bloated over-budget unnecessary systems you start to see that the federal govt isn't as leet any the Tom Clancy novels portray it.
NASA can't even get to the moon anymore. They lost most of that schematics and blueprints because they didn't have the budget or foresight to properly archive them right. All that knowledge gone. The Space Shuttle was suppose to be replaced in 1990 and we kept it running until this year with bailing wire and duct tape (killing a dozen astronaughts needlessly in the process). Hell if weren't for the Russians and their 1970s era transfer pod we would have no choice but to de-orbit the international space station and watch that $150B project burn up on re-entry.
You don't need to fear the US govt seeing through walls, cracking uncrackable encryption, or analyzing your brainwaves. No the reality is more mundane and scarier. They will simply take your civil liberties away, bust into your house without warrant and hold you indefinitely as an enemy combatant. Alternatively the President can sign your assassination order with no due process regardless of your Constitutional rights. Who needs fancy science when you simply use a police state to exercise control? It is far cheaper and far more effective. Throw a couple surprise twists in American Idol and your neighbors won't even notice it happening.
My guess is that with the resources the US government has at their disposal (both manual and fiscal), not only could they probably find any silk road user if they really wanted to, but they could also probably locate the 1934 s penny that the user lost in a Walgreens parking lot on May 14, 1996.
Having worked as a defense contractor I would say the capabilities of the US govt are often over estimated.
It is more like:
The govt contracts to have a machine that locates pennies built. It takes a couple years and millions of dollars but finally a contract is secured for $128M to have DOD penny locating machines mission ready in 5 years. 4 years into the project the administration will change and the new Secretary of Defense will make significant changes to the scope of the project (they now want it to locate dimes also). Significant work will need to be scrapped and redesigned pushing the timeline back 7 years. A couple years into the new project the CBO will report that prior estimates were invalid and the project cost has exploded to $1.3B. Shortly before the project is completed major components will be completely redesigned and a new contractor will take over because now there is a "need" for penny locating machines to be "stealth". Our enemies might be using stealth so we need to also. Now nobody even knows what this vague requirement for "stealth" means so the project will be put on hold (but still burning $24M in taxpayer funds each year) while a separate project is launched to develop "stealth" technology. Some years later (now two decades after original proposal) the stealth technology will be ready but it is incompatible with existing penny locating components. Since that was outside the original contract it will be an additional cost. A side note contractors are much better at writing contracts than the federal government. The good news is integration will "only" cost $12M and take 18 months. However ironically this is where Congress decides to put their foot down. They end up spending $50M over 3 years in investigations, outside analysis, and contracts for alternative designs before concluding that while mistakes were made no laws were broken.
Finally the penny locating machines are deployed nationwide however 5 years prior the US mint had already stopped minting pennies and they are out of circulation. A final contractor gets a juicy contract to securely remove the penny locating machines, dismantle them, and store the parts in case they are needed at some point in the future. All together the project will take nearly 3 decades, cost $2.2B and never locate a single penny outside of testing.
My speculation is based upon the assumption that there is a lot of top secret stuff that some extremely intelligent people are working on. If they can process the human genome, they can find some dude that leaves definitive traces of his actions through a computer.
I worked in a SCIF with TS SCI in the military and the incompetency and waste I saw daily was astounding. I often had imagery of taxpayers gathering up piles of cash for the government to come pick up and truck to a facility where they paid workers $5/hr to shovel it into a furnace.
I was told it cost $50k to do the background check for my clearance. After about a year or so I was told that administration lost all my paperwork (whoops!) and I got to be a paper shredder / groundskeeper with the seabees for a couple months while the whole thing was re-done. As an experiment, one day I went the whole day without touching my mouse once to see if I could do it.
I'm sure there are groups in the government that are efficient and organized, but I believe that to be the exception and not the rule. Everyone I trained and worked with had TS clearance and most weren't that intelligent.
Let me re-clarify my assumption...
I think that all top-of-the-line governmental agencies/personnel/projects are likely classified. While I think agencies like the DEA are legitimate in the sense that they are given either objective or general goals and are expected to achieve them to a certain degree, I think the true capabilities of the government are kept hidden such that the general population only sees the broad surface rather than the dense underworkings.
I suppose a speculative analogy would be science -- we can read all about on-the-horizon technologies in magazines like Popular Science, but my guess is the government has brilliant scientists who are well-aware of (or who have already developed) technology 20+ years ahead of our current time...the fun stuff like teleportation of poly-atomic substances or cloaking. I also speculate this is true in the field of intelligence gathering, and I seriously wouldn't be surprised if the government has the ability to listen to and track any conversation had by virtually anybody, anywhere, at anytime.
Now, keep in mind I understand the fine line between paranoia/conspiracy theories and simple plausibility. But, seriously guys, tracking Bitcoin transactions can't be harder than much of what the government has already done. If we can blast into space and STAY there or build a plutonium bomb, we can crack cryptographic hash functions.
My guess is that with the resources the US government has at their disposal (both manual and fiscal), not only could they probably find any silk road user if they really wanted to, but they could also probably locate the 1934 s penny that the user lost in a Walgreens parking lot on May 14, 1996.
Having worked as a defense contractor I would say the capabilities of the US govt are often over estimated.
It is more like:
The govt contracts to have a machine that locates pennies built. It takes a couple years and millions of dollars but finally a contract is secured for $128M to have DOD penny locating machines mission ready in 5 years. 4 years into the project the administration will change and the new Secretary of Defense will make significant changes to the scope of the project (they now want it to locate dimes also). Significant work will need to be scrapped and redesigned pushing the timeline back 7 years. A couple years into the new project the CBO will report that prior estimates were invalid and the project cost has exploded to $1.3B. Shortly before the project is completed major components will be completely redesigned and a new contractor will take over because now there is a "need" for penny locating machines to be "stealth". Our enemies might be using stealth so we need to also. Now nobody even knows what this vague requirement for "stealth" means so the project will be put on hold (but still burning $24M in taxpayer funds each year) while a separate project is launched to develop "stealth" technology. Some years later (now two decades after original proposal) the stealth technology will be ready but it is incompatible with existing penny locating components. Since that was outside the original contract it will be an additional cost. A side note contractors are much better at writing contracts than the federal government. The good news is integration will "only" cost $12M and take 18 months. However ironically this is where Congress decides to put their foot down. They end up spending $50M over 3 years in investigations, outside analysis, and contracts for alternative designs before concluding that while mistakes were made no laws were broken.
Finally the penny locating machines are deployed nationwide however 5 years prior the US mint had already stopped minting pennies and they are out of circulation. A final contractor gets a juicy contract to securely remove the penny locating machines, dismantle them, and store the parts in case they are needed at some point in the future. All together the project will take nearly 3 decades, cost $2.2B and never locate a single penny outside of testing.
My speculation is based upon the assumption that there is a lot of top secret stuff that some extremely intelligent people are working on. If they can process the human genome, they can find some dude that leaves definitive traces of his actions through a computer.
I worked in a SCIF with TS SCI in the military and the incompetency and waste I saw daily was astounding. I often had imagery of taxpayers gathering up piles of cash for the government to come pick up and truck to a facility where they paid workers $5/hr to shovel it into a furnace.
I was told it cost $50k to do the background check for my clearance. After about a year or so I was told that administration lost all my paperwork (whoops!) and I got to be a paper shredder / groundskeeper with the seabees for a couple months while the whole thing was re-done. As an experiment, one day I went the whole day without touching my mouse once to see if I could do it.
I'm sure there are groups in the government that are efficient and organized, but I believe that to be the exception and not the rule. Everyone I trained and worked with had TS clearance and most weren't that intelligent.
D.A.R.E. taught that acid and mushrooms were bad because it'd expand our minds and we'd see and hear things that were not there. It wasn't science class, so none experimented.
All I want to know is, WHY in HELL did you CHOOSE to take a government propaganda class?
It's a substance abuse class?
And it's an elective?
And it fits my schedule?
And it's easy?
All I want to know is, WHY in HELL did you CHOOSE to take a government propaganda class?
Probably he didn't choose, he was forced to, even if he doesn't realise it and thinks it was voluntary lol
All I want to know is, WHY in HELL did you CHOOSE to take a government propaganda class?
TOR is not foolproof by any means and if you think the D.E.A. is not all over SilkRoad by now than your just being Naive. Don't forget fellow U.S. citizens about G.W. Bush's Patriot act. We have no rights at all in regards to privacy over the internet, and in this post 911 era being a drug dealer selling drugs online you mine as well be a terrorist because they can blur the lines so easy and turn one into the other.
The funny part is - its most likely safer to be a seller in EU then to be a buyer in the US.
The funny part is - its most likely safer to be a seller in EU then to be a buyer in the US.
I ask half of the people I chat with over PM if they have PGP. Mostly out of curiosity. It's sad that the majority of self-claimed crypto-currency enthusiasts are not prepared to protect their own communication.
That seems strange. 90% of my communication with individuals is encrypted using OTR. even people with no interest in cryptography (but dont like me shouting at them if they dont use it lol)
I ask half of the people I chat with over PM if they have PGP. Mostly out of curiosity. It's sad that the majority of self-claimed crypto-currency enthusiasts are not prepared to protect their own communication.
I'm sure my username is strictly a coincidence.
My guess is that with the resources the US government has at their disposal (both manual and fiscal), not only could they probably find any silk road user if they really wanted to, but they could also probably locate the 1934 s penny that the user lost in a Walgreens parking lot on May 14, 1996.
Having worked as a defense contractor I would say the capabilities of the US govt are often over estimated.
It is more like:
The govt contracts to have a machine that locates pennies built. It takes a couple years and millions of dollars but finally a contract is secured for $128M to have DOD penny locating machines mission ready in 5 years. 4 years into the project the administration will change and the new Secretary of Defense will make significant changes to the scope of the project (they now want it to locate dimes also). Significant work will need to be scrapped and redesigned pushing the timeline back 7 years. A couple years into the new project the CBO will report that prior estimates were invalid and the project cost has exploded to $1.3B. Shortly before the project is completed major components will be completely redesigned and a new contractor will take over because now there is a "need" for penny locating machines to be "stealth". Our enemies might be using stealth so we need to also. Now nobody even knows what this vague requirement for "stealth" means so the project will be put on hold (but still burning $24M in taxpayer funds each year) while a separate project is launched to develop "stealth" technology. Some years later (now two decades after original proposal) the stealth technology will be ready but it is incompatible with existing penny locating components. Since that was outside the original contract it will be an additional cost. A side note contractors are much better at writing contracts than the federal government. The good news is integration will "only" cost $12M and take 18 months. However ironically this is where Congress decides to put their foot down. They end up spending $50M over 3 years in investigations, outside analysis, and contracts for alternative designs before concluding that while mistakes were made no laws were broken.
Finally the penny locating machines are deployed nationwide however 5 years prior the US mint had already stopped minting pennies and they are out of circulation. A final contractor gets a juicy contract to securely remove the penny locating machines, dismantle them, and store the parts in case they are needed at some point in the future. All together the project will take nearly 3 decades, cost $2.2B and never locate a single penny outside of testing.
My speculation is based upon the assumption that there is a lot of top secret stuff that some extremely intelligent people are working on. If they can process the human genome, they can find some dude that leaves definitive traces of his actions through a computer.
The government didn't do a damn thing to process the genome.
DeathAndTaxes, that is the best analogy I have ever heard. You, sir, are a poet.
Quoting extreme OPSEC failure before edit (if true). I really, really hope DoD adjudicators would not clear someone who would do this.
Stating clearance is no violation. It is listed on my resume (when relevant) which "gasp" has my real name on it. Without "a need to know" a clearance can't get you a cup of coffee.
BTW: Investigations are done by the fine folks at Office of Personnel Management (OPM) not the DOD.
I had a TS w/ SCI (well technically still do it just is expired)
Quoting extreme OPSEC failure before edit (if true). I really, really hope DoD adjudicators would not clear someone who would do this.
My speculation is based upon the assumption that there is a lot of top secret stuff that some extremely intelligent people are working on. If they can process the human genome, they can find some dude that leaves definitive traces of his actions through a computer.
I had a TS w/ SCI (well technically still do it just is expired) and worked for one of the largest defense companies in the country/world . No doubt there are smart people in the govt. There are smart people everywhere however the bureaucratic nonsense in the US government crushes innovation. Most govt contractors are more interested in maximizing company profits (because that is what gets you promotions, payraises, and stock options) than delivering the best product to the government.
Human Genome is an interesting project. First of all it was run by a NGO (not the govt) but since it was funded partially by the US govt even there they managed to horribly slow the project down.
It began in 1990 and took 10 years to publish the rough draft at a cost of roughly $3B. In 1998 a private company spent roughly $300M and in 2 years ALMOST passed the public human genome project. The public program barely (by about 42 days) beat the private venture. Now that is a good thing for human race as it put the data on the human genome in public domain but it kinda highlights the inefficiencies of any program the govt is involved in (and remember the govt didn't run the project, they merely provided oversight and funding).
Public program (w/ heft govt bureaucratic interference): $3 billion in funding, ~10 years to complete.
Private program: $300 million in funding, ~2 years to complete.
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