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posted by Woods on Monday April 28 2014, @07:56PM   Printer-friendly
from the john-nash-would-not-be-proud dept.

If you thought you were protecting your country, you may justifiably feel betrayed.

For the past 10 months, a major international scandal has engulfed some of the world's largest employers of mathematicians. These organizations stand accused of law-breaking on an industrial scale and are now the object of widespread outrage. How has the mathematics community responded? Largely by ignoring it.

Those employers-the U.S. National Security Agency and the U.K.'s Government Communications Headquarters-have been systematically monitoring as much of our lives as they can, including our emails, texts, phone and Skype calls, web browsing, bank transactions, and location data. They have tapped Internet trunk cables, bugged charities and political leaders, conducted economic espionage, hacked cloud servers, and disrupted lawful activist groups, all under the banner of national security. The goal, to quote former NSA director Keith Alexander, is to "collect all the signals, all the time."

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Sir Garlon on Monday April 28 2014, @08:10PM

    by Sir Garlon (1264) on Monday April 28 2014, @08:10PM (#37376)

    We have a very odd definition of "obligatory" around here. I have never seen it elsewhere used to say "here is a clever reference to something relevant from pop culture." :-) Well put.

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  • (Score: 2) by davester666 on Tuesday April 29 2014, @07:38AM

    by davester666 (155) on Tuesday April 29 2014, @07:38AM (#37549)

    why is this article only about mathematicians? there are a bunch of professions that the NSA depends on to do it's "work" that all pretty much have said and done little to actually stop it.