Today, the National Security Agency (NSA) is planning a "Big Delete" of websites and internal network content that contain any of 27 banned words, including "privilege," "bias," and "inclusion." The "Big Delete," according to an NSA source and internal correspondence reviewed by Popular Information, is creating unintended consequences.

It’s basically impossible to talk about how to secure a computer system (or how to gain covert access to one) without talking about which account has which privilege, let along things like how to ensure an unbiased random number generator, or do an analysis of who has what without looking at an intersection of sets.

  • WoodScientistEnglish
    20·
    1 day ago

    So you’re telling me the NSA isn’t allowed to archive any communications with those banned words in them? If I’m a terrorist group, can I develop a communications protocol using those words and thus make my communications utterly untraceable by the NSA? 27 banned words. Map 26 of them to letters. Boom. Now you can send untraceable messages!

    • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
      14·
      1 day ago

      Little-known fact: US sanctions are similarly keyword based. So if you call your international terrorist group Exxon, you can cause real problems for the oil company

      • Uruanna@lemmy.world
        2·
        18 hours ago

        Ah yes, the pain of all Ancient Egypt Youtube channels these last couple decades. And the TV show Archer.

      • prettybunnys
        12·
        1 day ago

        There’s already an international terrorist group by that name though.

  • ricecake
    9·
    2 days ago

    Dumb as fuck. I can also guarantee that if any organization is capable of hiding content it’s the NSA. Both via the tricky methods you think of when you think of the NSA hiding data, and the much more boring “having so much data that’s so sensitive that no one is allowed to just run a search over all of it, and if they were allowed to they wouldn’t be capable of actually doing so”.

    It’s probably going to end up being pages from the HR wiki, random pages talking about historical stuff and things like that.
    Dumb, wasteful and pointless, but also not going to actually impact NSA operations, which would really only be a problem if it deleted one of those tidbits of math the NSA figured out and has been sitting on.