ARE YOU AS SMART as cryptographers for one of the world’s most secretive spy agencies? The spymasters at Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ, recently posted a brain teaser for the public, but internally the British eavesdropping agency for years has been testing the mental prowess of its employees with the Kryptos Kristmas Kwiz. This holiday season, The Intercept is posting one of the mind-bending quizzes — normally not available to the public — from the archive of documents provided by Edward Snowden. The winner of GCHQ’s game got a Kryptos mug. The Intercept can only offer bragging rights.
We will post the answers on New Year’s Day.
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Why kkk?
Please remind me why the Intercept has exclusive control the Snowden hoard. The documents should be made public in their entirety.
Oh, did Ed tell you that personally, “Valerie”?
Well, Snowden wanted intelligent, responsible journalists to decide how to publish sensitive materials. It reduces the risk of endangering the lives of spies in the field. Would you just want informants to get tortured and killed? Spies are people too.
Is this like the everyman cryptic crossword, at the guardian. The solutions will be given in a week?
I have been in despair since John Graham (Araucaria) retired.
http://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/crossword-blog/2014/nov/25/unexpected-treat-fans-araucaria-guardian-crossword-setter
Now if one could solve these problems what is the prize? What does one get and does one want it.
What can the real meaning of this article be?
Public interest? No American public could read the instructions let alone find the solutions to be of interest.
Number 30:
c) ing
Number 30:
a) dom
Number 30:
b) fish
What an unfortunate abbreviation. For folk with such an aptitude for puzzles, did nobody actually notice?
Snowden in 2013:
Obviously!!
Why is Glenn Greenwlad being performed by the actor from Star Trek who played Spock in the Snowden movie coming out in May? Is that crypt for Edwards “Can you hear me now?”
I wonder how many of these people end up under psychiatric care and/or taking psychotropics. My boss in our spy unit in Vietnam had previously served in an ASA unit. He related how every once in a while one of the poor ASA guys would flip out after wearing the headphones a mite too long.
These questions are not impossible! I’d even say that number 5 is easy. I am working on these at reddit. I’ve since got a few more answers. If you’d like, help me out!
https://www.reddit.com/r/puzzles/comments/3y7mg0/play_a_british_spy_game/
Number 24: question or kwestion (To be or not to be…)
Yes, I thought of that as well–but why is there the hyphen?
Number 24: question or kwestion (from To be or not to be…)
Number 4:
a) 8
b) 1
c) 4
d) 3
Interesting. I had a, b, and c but couldn’t work out d. Your reasoning?
I could use help with 8c) The question says to pair up twenty initialisms. It turns out to be matching painters with their paintings. So far I have: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec/At The Moulin Rouge; JMW Turner/The Grand Canal; Leonardo da Vinci /Last Supper; Pablo Picasso/Guernica; Andy Warhol/Campbell’s Soup; Hans Holbein/Henry VIII. VVG is clearly Vincent Van Gogh, PP likely Pablo Picasso. CM, FB, and PB could be Monet, Bacon, and Breughel. But I don’t have paintings titles that associate.
Number 4 d) is an endless repeat of 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 3, 6, 6, 2 & 1 correctly making occurrence 2005 a 9 (10 th of the series of 15), thus making 2006 the 3 (11th of the series of 15).
4 d) is actually 9. Reasoning from a, b, and c, and looking closely at how the sequences are written.
Thank you Benito!
Number 1: car sea tramp inn put (any 3-letter word, and tramp in which tap fits into)
Number 9 a) 5 groups of 5 columns/3 rows. Add all those numbers, they make known products:
36, 40, 45 & 56 or 6*6, 5*8, 5*9, 7*8. Now make multiply an add: sums produce 12, 13, 14, 15. The last group should have sum equal to 16, making product likely 8*8=64. Multiple solutions exist to sum all in group 5 to 64. Looking for the missing clue…
On 8c), these would work
Pieter Breughel /The Peasant Dance
Vincent Van Gogh /L’église d’Auvers-sur-Oise
Claude Monet /Rouen Cathedral
Francis Bacon /(Portrait of) Lucian Freud
No … but that’s close!
*also, poise counts … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMJnWrKQeqY
It’s trivial to write up a Python script to see what letter combinations are reused in the names of the planets … but I have no freaking clue how to go about testing the possibilities in any systematic way. Just trying ad hoc I get stuff like
ipluto*
tujtas*
ercurne
m*smytp
*uranus
*hteev*
Which is visibly NOT efficient packing!
(the result I get for the first step is:
mercury venus earth mars jupiter saturn uranus neptune pluto
121131 1332 1311 131 111112 11331 33132 311333 1131
as you see, “jupiter” overlaps only “mercury” at the er, for example)
Yeah, contrary to what another poster wrote, I think the planet and word box question is one of the more difficult ones, and probably beyond me, considering that for me, writing a Python script would certainly not be trivial. I think, though, that the question requires more clever maths likely (using graph theory) than clever coding. I don’t think you could prove a solution to be minimal using brute force.
Some hints for other questions: Question 5, I’d argue, is easy. Just google the definitions and look carefully at the words. For Question 12, don’t get sidetracked by the Christmas Cracker story. Think cryptic crossword instead. Question 21 is another “easy” one. The final cipher is actually much easier than it looks–you don’t need to be an expert in cryptography to solve it!
http://www.wired.com/2013/07/nsa-cracked-kryptos-before-cia/
Documents Reveal How the NSA Cracked the Kryptos Sculpture Years Before the CIA
It took more than eight years for a CIA analyst and a California computer scientist to crack three of the four coded messages on the CIA’s famed Kryptos sculpture in the late ’90s.
Little did either of them know that a small group of cryptanalysts inside the NSA had beat them to it, and deciphered the same three sections of Kryptos years earlier — and they did it in less than a month, according to new documents obtained from the NSA.
These days the NSA is best known for its broad, indiscriminate spying on Americans and foreigners. But the Kryptos crack shows how some of the agency’s smartest geeks once blew off steam in the relatively quiet days between the end of the Cold War and the September 11 attacks.
The popular story of Kryptos has long held that CIA analyst David Stein was the first to crack three of the cryptographic sculpture’s four puzzles in 1998.
Stein decrypted the coded messages after spending some 400 hours’ worth of lunch hours working through the puzzles using only paper and pencil. Many people, on and off the CIA campus in Langley, Virginia, had tried to break the coded puzzle, but only Stein, a member of the agency’s Directorate of Intelligence, succeeded. Stein’s work on the code was kept secret, however. In 1999, he wrote a fascinating account of how he cracked three of the sculpture’s four coded messages, but it was only published in an internal CIA newsletter that remained classified until years later.
The secrecy over Stein’s achievement allowed California computer scientist Jim Gillogly to steal the spotlight a year later in 1999, when he announced that he’d also cracked the same three messages, only he used a Pentium II to do it.
Thank you.
PR Perfection from Kim Zetter. I swear to god before I clicked the link I said “10 to 1 it’s Zetter.”
Yeah, right… because spies are known for telling the truth and all that. I have no way to know, but I have a suspicion that mass interception of our country’s private communications actually stopped for each and every one of those 400 ‘lunch hours’, as Stein and a few minor helpers slightly exceeded their mainframe quotas in the cause of inter-agency one-upmanship. :)
Sorry, but I had to chuckle at the reference to the CIA internal newsletter having been classified. They classify EVERYTHING. I gave the example in another thread that while serving at Camp King in a collection unit that we received the CIA Weekly Intelligence Summary. The summary, which was classified SECRET, became known as the classified Time magazine, as they mirrored each other.
A friend of mine’s brother ended up at Oxbridge doing Maths Chaos Theory for Hydrodynamics to help design stealthier nuclear submarines. He was an odd lad who was insanely super clever beyond our mortal reasoning, but rarely gave that impression as he had absolutely no practical sense and minimal social skills and ended up with a proper harpy for a wife who chased us all away. To paraphrase, he was the kind of guy you wouldn’t trust to shit the right way in a toilet. Bless him. I guess he is either uselessly bonkers now, or some sub-contracting bigwig at GCHQ.
He is the kind of person that can solve these puzzles and ergo representative of the Wizards Behind the Curtain, the Puppet Masters of the Masters of the Universe trawling through everyone’s dirty laundry and stealing their Grand Ideas down at at GCHQ and the NSA.
The funny thing is though is that in this Digital Age who can say what is Real and what is Illusory when it is simply 0s and 1s (or both or neither if you are using a Quantum Computer, I guess) demonstrated as such by the flow of electrons?
What is even funnier is that code breaking is nearly impossible if the process keeps changing. It is probably easier for the spooks to:
a) Get their politician mates to bully everyone into just having no privacy
b) Intercept and understand the code key processes
No matter how Whizz-Bang the hard-crunching computer they have may be it is STILL a bitch with a dangerous degree of uncertainty and error every time.
It is also funny that Alan Turings aren’t thick on the ground, but lots of Wannabes (but without the suicide and hatefully persistent governmental abuse and suspicion) are.
Even these “clever” people are relatively stupid compared to true Genius and lack even a single moment of penetrative insight and inspiration.
We live in a shrinking world rummaged through by Ultra-Uber Hypistoi Nerds reflected and manipulated and stored away in digital code at the behest of neo-fascists, a half-black conman, billionaires fearing death whilst pretending to fear gods, sad old men in toupees and a nasty old woman whose husband got sucked off in a cupboard by a non-entity.
If I made that shit up no one would read it for being too ridiculous. But as I love to say: nowt queer as folk. And also: And so it goes.
Dreaming of my bijou slaughterhouse shelter in Dresden as all around me burns.
2016 I predict will be the Most Fucked Up Year History Has Ever Experienced. Or maybe 2017, once the new White House incumbent starts murdering with abandon.
Merry Atheism to All Good Peoples. Fuck the rest of you, whether you are good at puzzles or not. I like Kakuro best myself; I suggest all you spooky types try it instead of screwing the world up with your silly little games.
“Schlachthof-fünf”
“Lèse majesté”
Why so many bizarre complaints in the comments? This quiz is rather fun to ponder over, especially if you have something of a penchant for cryptic crosswords.
Fun?!? We can’t have any fun.
(seriously, good question — too many comments on Intercept articles remind me of the saying “no good deed goes unpunished.”)
Anonymous: “bizarre complaints” ? I am still searching and researching on the internet for some signs of hope and change.
Just relax.
NEWS DEC 27 2015, 11:16 AM ET
Kentucky’s Mall St. Matthews Shuts Down After Brawls Involving Up to 2,000
by ELISHA FIELDSTADT
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/kentucky-s-mall-st-matthews-shuts-down-after-brawls-involving-n486341?cid=sm_fb
Dec 27, 12:32 AM EST
CHICAGO POLICE: WOMAN ACCIDENTALLY KILLED BY OFFICER FIRE
BY CARYN ROUSSEAU
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CHICAGO_POLICE_FATAL_SHOOTING_ILOL-?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-12-27-00-32-31
Anonymous: “Why so many bizarre complaints in the comments? This quiz is rather fun to ponder over, …”
Carson’s many faces: Doctor, author, speaker – and candidate
BY EILEEN SULLIVAN
DEC. 25, 2015 4:12 AM EST
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/0bfe7da3cbfc422bbd383da2c29a681a/carsons-many-faces-doctor-author-speaker-and-candidate
Anonymous: Wakey, wakey … #FeelTheBern
Donald Trump: Relying on, trying to control free coverage
BY JILL COLVIN
DEC. 26, 2015 3:18 PM EST
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/7362d4d724454338acf0ad4ace648386/donald-trump-relying-trying-control-free-coverage
Because half of them like to pretend they are all George Smiley ex-Intel types and thus knowledgeable about all things 007 and Spooky and this just shows them up to be sad bunch of grumpy old hippies for whom the Drugs no longer Work who struggle with a Beginner level Sudoku puzzle, personal hygiene and marajuana-induced clinical depression.
This is like asking the public to try heart surgery on 20 patients. Or to join in a Symphony performing a 16th century masterpiece as an oboe player who must solo on 18 bars in 5/4, or any number of professions requiring years of education and practice. In essence, they can’t PERIOD. So what is the point, other than proving to themselves that cryptologists can do something most people can’t? Let me see one of them replace a camshaft in their car. Or an alternator. Or a transmission for that matter. Comprende?
meanwhile ask them to suck on this enigma…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFQrsdj7BLs
If they can solve that puzzle, I’m positive either they’ll be eternally rewarded for proving there are traitors at the highest levels of the USG, or Israel will kill them.
Let there be two mistakes in your assessment of Naval history. One we don’t carry war paraphernalia across oceans without a detailed initial war plan and two the statistics to your film are about as King Kong looking as the Krypto Kristmas that you can’t decipher. All in a days work for The Intercept you should start listening more closely. Why did they post a Krypto from 2006 when they said they had several? What happened in 2006 Intercept?
quote”Let there be two mistakes in your assessment of Naval history. ” unquote
My” assessment? I didn’t make the film nor the facts, schmuck. You got a problem with it, take it up with the survivors. Otherwise, eat me. ”
“One we don’t carry war paraphernalia across oceans without a detailed initial war plan”
The US Liberty wasn’t a war ship. It was a surveillance ship. If it were, it would have been able to defend itself or there would have been defense capable ships with it. Now fuck off.
If you are suggesting a ten ton ship is sneaky spy material your head is up your ass. It’s a scout and if you think the junction between crypt and code is a simultaneously happenstance it isn’t and that’s why you can’t figure it out. Code is a message. Crypt is a puzzle to disguise the message. A ten ton navy ship isn’t a spy it’s a scout. There was no war mission in your video and the video is falsely pertraying objectives that were never truly successful containment operatives of war initiatives that didn’t work. It wasn’t a cover up sneaky code for crypt Nazi behavior. Now fuck off.
Chambers Dictionary? New to me. Whatever happened to Funk & Wagnalls? Lol!
WHATEVER…
WHAT WE ARE UP TO…
December 23, 2015
http://www.megduerksen.com/2015/12/23/what-we-are-up-to/
Pictionary Word Generator
bank
[Updated at: April 4, 2015 4:10:23 PM]
How-to play Pictionary – the basics.
You’ll need: a pencil, some paper, a timer, and at least four players…
https://www.randomlists.com/pictionary-words
Forget the word puzzles and teach employees how to escape a locked travel bag.
Unless the CIA stuffed you in there already dead …:D He hacked Climton info he should not have ;)
Pick a card. Any card.
*heads I win, tails you lose.
Question #16 is doable with some amount of patience, though it’s difficult to understand why Pluto was still a planet in 2006. Maybe the GCHQ folks aren’t listening to astronomers or aliens.
@General Hercules:
WHAT? Pluto not a PLANET? Sacrilege!!! Strangely enough I’m with GCHQ on that. I always thought that decision was clearly wrong headed, and with New Horizons and all we’ve learned about Pluto, I just gotta love that PLANET! And btw, if you decide to go on about science, just remember that no less than Alan Stern, PI for New Horizons, has called the offending definition not good scientifically.
You can still call Pluto a moderately good planet, given that lately we have all become quite loose at how we name entities.
Pluto has a moon. I’d like to see one of these European astronomers have a moon.
Only reason Pluto was demoted was because it was the only planet discovered by an American.
I am partially kidding, but I won’t reveal the percentage.
@Vic Perry –
Hi Vic, thanks for the great response…
Actually, some are calling Pluto and Charon a binary planet system, although that’s not universal. There was indeed some speculation that one reason Pluto was demoted was indeed because an American, Mr. Tombaugh, discovered it. There is a book, “The Case for Pluto”, that talked about “The Battle of Prague” (IAU meeting where the infamous definition passed); I could only read part of that chapter online, and I haven’t been to the library to see if they have it and to read the rest of that chapter (don’t think I’ll do the whole book…) And I haven’t verified it, but I heard that a Mr. Mike Brown (key demoter of Pluto) said some disparaging remarks about Mr. Tombaugh. WHY??? Mr. Tombaugh came up by working his way through his education to become an astronomer and teacher. Why disparage someone like that?
But you know what? Reading that Alan Stern says the definition is wrong, and a Philip Metzger says we don’t have to submit to nonsense gave me some reassurance. And of course, it’s what’s in our HEARTS that’s most important. I really hadn’t planned on paying much attention to the New Horizons stuff, but as there was nothing on tv one day, I caught some of it and saw that Heart on Pluto. Well, I was a goner! I’ve been looking and learning about that Planet ever since. And it’s fascinating. And no matter what, it will ALWAYS be a planet in my heart!
And I know I’m rambling on here, but in a way, the flap may have been a good thing. At the time it got at least some folks up in arms where they may have taken our Ninth Planet for granted before. Now with New Horizons giving us more info, more people are tuned in, and some of them are probably receptive to it being a PLANET. Now whether the IAU will listen, who knows, But it doesn’t have power to enforce, and as Metzger says, we don’t have to submit to nonsense!
Wow! Thanks for that. I set a short story on the planet Pluto; Pluto needs to be a planet.
Also we need 9 planets in the solar system, obviously.
@Vic Perry –
WOW back at you; glad to have been of service.
You set a short story on Pluto? Cool? Is there any way we could read it?
“Also we need 9 planets in the solar system obviously.” You know, 9 is quite an interesting number… I thought I read somewhere it represents perfection or completion. There may be some things in feng shui that indicate it represents completion. I read in a couple of places that in Judiasm it represents truth, but I’m not sure about that.
There were 9 Worthies in the Middle Ages. There are the 9 Muses from the ancients.
In the Bible it can sometimes represent completion and also judgement. There are 9 Fruits of the Spirit and 9 Gifts of the Spirit among other nines.
So yeah, a nine planet solar system seems quite appropriate!
No planetary scientists were consulted in determining that Pluto wasn’t a planet. Doesn’t make sense.
You and Pluto will share the same fate once we build the wall.
This quiz is beyond difficult its mind twisting intelligent. The Intercept is not repeating this quiz to its readers for fun, instead they are showing you how to crypt messages and if you pay attention long enough you will see they too use this crypt in headlines and dates and topics as they play games with the United States Government. It’s the INTERCEPT does that slip your mind?
Those who do well with this stuff must have more neuropathways than idiots like myself, “Omni-spherical.” The type of people who could suffer significant damage to their brain, mechanism of trauma is irrelevant, and over time regain, through reprogramming the left over functioning parts, most of the abilities that person had prior to the injury. I wish for more neuropathways……
No, not really. Just a better math background. First off, one needs to take a couple of courses in number theory and become facile at modulo arithmetic. Programming experience also helps; for these I am using Python because of its power and fantastic usability. If you’d like a fun place to start, read Manfred R. Schroeder’s entertaining “Number theory in Science and Communication”, Springer, ISBN 3-540-15800-6. That’s the second edition; I think it may be in its 3rd.
I agree with you about math but is not all about math, I think? I believe an increased power to process the various disciplines is required. More of a balance between the logic and creative parts of the brain. For example, a very close relative was self educated and knew 9 languages among other stuff. Eventually, a stroke severely damaged the left side of the brain. The doctors warned us that the level of damage would lead to death. After about 2 years she was walking, talking and doing most of the things that she did before the stroke. She had to re-teach herself but not like a child. She remembered most of the languages but couldn’t speak them. She had to re-teach herself to speak English but that was as far as she went. It was bizarre, the knowledge was still there. It took time for her brain to establish the new pathways to get her tongue to say words or to get her right limbs to function enough to allow upright mobility. Off the charts intelligence makes off the charts recovery of damaged brains possible, in my humble opinion. I could blow your mind with the stories of what this person did with the amount of functioning brain remaining.
Admittedly, most of the appeal of this is simply to read and play with a Pirated Puzzle Pamphlet. Still… whether you want to call it propaganda or not, I think it would be more prudent to recognize when we are up against an adversary that is more intelligent than we are. There are specific ways to deal with that – ways that we in America have let ourselves forget a long time ago. A five year old child can reach a draw with a world-class chess master, if he kicks the board high in the air and throws away the pieces. And a country like the U.S. can be independent of the bankers and the tech specialists and the crowned heads that own them all, if it pursues a Whig policy of isolationism and protectionism – and it has before. We keep watching so much of society getting ground into the dirt, losing its economic power, not feeling free to sing a song without worrying about some celebrideity’s “rights” to stop them – when do we admit we can’t outfox a fox?
@Wnt –
Very interesting comment, but I’m not sure about our adversaries being more intelligent than we are; some of them may be individually, but ALL of them? I do think there are some highly intelligent folks that aren’t part of TPTB, too. At least I hope there are.
I’m not sure that Whig policies are the way to go. To be honest, I’m not sure WHAT will work. We have a situation now where the deck is so stacked against us: CISA now; an ever shrinking middle class and increasingly trapped working classes and below; a climate of suspicion and fear of “the other.”
For anything to work, we need to have a large enough tipping point of resistance. And sadly, THAT’S what I don’t see happening. We have too many folks still propagandized and lured to sleep; we have many others that are struggling just to make it; we also have many who are concerned about some major issue, but aren’t connecting the dots to a larger picture.
More thoughts? Wnt, anyone? Any suggestions of how we can come together and make an impact?
Remember: “Divided = Conquered, but United = Empowered!”
Honestly, I don’t think disaster is going to be avoided. I think that the ‘anti-terrorist’ policies both encourage terrorism and represent preparation for waves of terrorism expected in the future far more serious than anything seen today. Just because they are preparing for that war against terrorists doesn’t mean they will win it. As people lose freedom of speech, the freedom of violence takes its place; as the judiciary crumbles, gangland justice takes its place. Whole sectors of the economy, like tobacco, prescription drugs, health care, seem ready to fall under the purview of organized crime. I can picture the country collapsing almost entirely, divided up among cartels, occupied by foreign peacekeepers (by request) to secure the nuclear weapons, losing the entire Pacific, etc.
However, great empires don’t fall uniformly and completely. Ideals and successful economics remain and can reassert themselves. Individual warlords might actually long for a past golden age and try to restore it, and be able to do so unhindered by bureaucracy or international expectations. Therefore, I think that, even though the U.S. has a bitter future ahead of it, people’s ideals and expectations for good government are still tremendously relevant. Some future Hilkiah might pull out a complete theory of a just society: the question is, have we left him anything useful to find?
So whether or not real reform seems possible right now, I think we still ought to identify the systemic problems in our society and come up with real solutions. We know that copyright is broken, patents are broken, land claims are broken, full employment as a requirement for economic security is broken, paternalism is broken, free trade is broken, the asylum system is broken, prisons are broken. At some point we have to write down the way to fix our policies in such regards, to make them fair and just, organic aspects of a single theory, with continuity rather than singularity. This is hard, but not impossible to do.
@Wnt –
Very thoughtful comment. Certainly gave me a LOT of food for thought.
You wrote: “However, great empires don’t fall uniformly and completely. Ideals and successful economics remain and can reassert themselves. Individual warlords might actually long for a past golden age and try to restore it…” Very interesting thoughts. That’s one reason, I guess, why we still should keep harping on those ideals we as a society supposedly hold.
I was intrigued by your reference to Hilkiah. Although that name sounded very vaguely familiar… I wasn’t sure where he came from… looked him up and he found, ostensibly, the Book of Deuteronomy. You asked if we would leave a future Hilkiah anything useful to find. Well, I think (assuming they still could be found in the future) that the Declaration of Independence and The Constitution would be useful. And what about Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” Speech? And maybe the works of John Locke, which influenced our Founding Fathers? Also, the VA Statute for Religious Freedom of 1786, and not forgetting us women, the text of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment.
So much is broken indeed: privacy, corporate influence on/”takeover?” of government, economic mobility, the environment and more (I’m getting depressed here). We know some things to be doing, but there just doesn’t seem to be the push to do so. Sigh!
You also wrote: “At some point we have to write down the way to fix our policies in such regards, to make them fair and just, organic aspects of a single theory, with continuity rather than singularity. This is hard, but not impossible to do.” Hmmmmm. I think we have some ideas of what needs to be done: overturn Citizens United; work for fair wages and working hours; stop letting corporations get away with a) not paying a fair share of taxes, and b) selling products dangerous to life or harmful to the environment (unless they’re carefully sold for other necessary purposes…), roll back the surveillance state… Maybe we should even individually (or by groups) do time capsules with some of our basic “philosophical documents” and also suggestions for a better system?
And your idea of a more organic theory… intriguing…
Actually, I think we have to dig much, much deeper. For example, I’m not actually opposed to the Citizens United decision per se – I see campaign finance reform as a forty-year boondoggle that has never really delivered. I don’t want a new constitutional amendment to weaken free speech, even in the fantasyland where Democrats imagine they’ll get it ratified. What I want is the actual economic inequality to be reduced, so that people aren’t trying, after the fact, to say that companies have all the money but they can’t spend it on this particular thing.
I think we have been left a start by the Single Taxer movement. They had the sensible notion that as no human being has ever created land, it is a more valid object of taxation than other human activities. (They went on to some more debatable notions about the effect of improving land, and I won’t actually claim to know the history well enough to have a meaningful opinion on all of that) This introduces the concept that the poor, living on small areas of the Earth’s natural bounty, are entitled to a share of the overall benefits that others wring out of it who control the oil fields and the mines and the large estates; as such it should create a much-needed brake to the capitalist tendency to drive people right off the face of the earth. Simply put, they are entitled to the rent on their land!
Of course, “entitlement” is a dirty word in conservative circles – it is so because they use it only to refer to rights of the poor. When a rich person finds the bridge connecting his seaside island to the mainland in poor repair, the maintenance is not called an entitlement but … infrastructure. If, however, we recognize that all humans are shareholders in the Earth, we should investigate any failure of their dividends to arrive with as much determination as if they were merely shareholders in a corporation whose officers were embezzling the proceeds.
As more and more opportunity for labor falls to mechanization, and as more and more labor is subject to the regulation of quotas and environmental restrictions, it becomes ever more urgent that we recognize that those who possess the special right and ability to do useful work are doing so in trust for the human race, rather than exercising a superiority of character.
@Wnt –
I’m glad you replied, but to be honest I found your reply so far afield I had no idea what you were getting at :-)
What I WOULD be interested in doing is leaving some “resources” for that future Hilkiah to find. I’ve pretty much decided to do that. What I need to determine is just where to leave it/ how to get it so it “might” be found. It needn’t necessarily need to be placed in a sealed time capsule, I guess, but what exactly to do with it to give it a chance of sticking around for a bit is my question. Give it to a young relative and hope they keep handing it down? Give it to a library or something (would they even accept it?)?
Any thoughts on that? Anyone?
We don’t need to be more intelligent we just need to be informed. You don’t have to be a crypto to understand a scam.
http://Www.dunwalke.com
@Deadheded –
Actually, I think you’ve mentioned that site before and I may have even bookmarked it…
But do you or anyone have any “advice” about my upcoming “Project Hilkiah”? The idea of someone in the future finding something that might be useful in rebuilding a society and trying to make it more just the Wnt mentioned struck a chord with me. I could actually do such a reference cache. Will it ever amount to anything? Who knows. But one of my former colleagues once said, “Do something, even if it’s wrong.” Well, this is one thing I actually could do.
So as I asked: anyone have a thought about how to stash this cache?
Kryptos Kristmas Kwiz is—like the Krusty Komedy Klassic from The Simpsons—not a very great acronym.
I hope the author of this article is aware this “puzzle” is just a tiny part of GCHQ’s propaganda machine. It pains me to see The Intercept contributing to this machine.
You may call it propaganda, but this article has altered my opinion of GCHQ one hundred and eighty degrees. I always imagined they wasted a lot of time solving pointless puzzles which yielded no real intelligence information. It seemed self evident they did little more than analyze large volumes of random communications data for messages which weren’t there. But that theory had been disproved and I’m willing to own up and admit I was wrong.
When you solve these puzzles and analyze the results using a simple substitution cipher, it reads, “Hi, an NSA subcontractor named Snowden with access to secret GCHQ documents will give them to the Guardian”. I can only assume that no one actually solved the full puzzle. But it demonstrates the effort might potentially have been worthwhile.
Of course, I may have used the wrong substitution cipher – an alternative cipher yields the rather mundane message, “Hi, you guys are a bunch of losers”.
That’s the problem with cryptography; it’s a bit of an enigma.
The reason this propaganda works is that lazy/stupid “journalists” are too stupid/lazy to write their own twitter bait and will mindlessly reprint what ever dreck they are fed as long as they don’t actually have to do any real work.
This is what has become of the Snowden archive.
Gee, shedding a tear here. If only Snowden had had the sense to leave his cache with babyishness commenters like thelastnamechosen and Anon.
Start your own website you twerps, you obviously have so much to say.
@Vic Perry
Are you actually proud of this article or is this more of a reflexive defensive posture on your part? Since the sum total of your praise is to ‘love it or leave it’, I’m going to say this really isn’t about rational arguments supporting well crafted journalism, but a ‘must protect The Intercept’ emotional response.
Loyalty really is under appreciated. Mostly because it comes as an unthinking emotional outpouring instead of as rational argument, but this is the nature of family.
I’m not criticizing your loyalty–this is a great quality–but let me argue that the Intercept isn’t really your family. You may dream it so–but it is only a dream.
Save your loyalty for blood. If that loyalty is not worth saving–then I will cry for you too.
L O L …. Leonard Nimoy could have hosted an “In Search Of” episode built around the goal of finding a point in your little diatribe.
I figure you will get that joke because your idea of rational is, uh, Mr. Spock.
Hey, Mr. Spock…..you yourself didn’t actually get around to making a “rational” argument against the placement of this article.
In lieu of that, perhaps you could explain to us dopes why The Intercept is forbidden from doing anything fun or entertaining or ironic with the material they cover. Is it just too common for you? Are your sensibilities just impossibly elevated?
@Vic Perry
1) The NSA, the CIA, and GCHQ have been using puzzles and encrypted messages as propaganda, PR and as recruiting tool for decades. If this is really news to you (I have a feeling you aren’t quite as stupid as you pretend), begin your research with the first and only link in this story. This has been obvious for a long time to anyone with even passing interest in the intelligence community.
2) The reason this propaganda works is that lazy/stupid “journalists” are too stupid/lazy to write their own twitter bait and will mindlessly reprint what ever dreck they are fed as long as they don’t actually have to do any real work.
So here we have a situation where a “journalist” somehow managed to use the Snowden archive to unsolicited and uncritically repeat what is essentially a Press Release from the intelligence community. Talk about shit fucking stupid. This is what you are defending. (Again, I have a feeling you aren’t quite as stupid as you pretend.)
Now any journalist worth their shit would smell this PR soft news bullshit as government propaganda from a mile away. Repeating government propaganda is not “fun” or “entertaining”–it is just repeating government propaganda. (But once again, I have a feeling this really isn’t news to you.)
So are you going to keep up the shit stupid routine or are you going to break out the brains and make your case?
You lack perspective.
It is really not worth the time it would take to explain all the ways your posts are stupid, so instead I will ask you another question you probably won’t get around to answering during one of your long-winded, humorless posts:
I will presume that you DO understand that government propaganda is supposed to make us feel better about the government, right? We are in agreement that government propaganda has that function at the very minimum, right?
Great then. It’s up to you NOW to tell us how seeing this puzzle from 2006 on the Intercept makes us feel better about the government that produced it.
Go. It’s all yours. You can do it.
@Vic Perry
Classic. You would kick my ass if only you had the time. The continuing adventures of Mike Tyson works a double shift at Burger King.
And yes, demonizing muslims makes me feel better about the government. Pushing for more war makes me feel better about the government. Blaming terrorism on encryption makes me feel better about the government.
Do you even hear yourself?
Jesus. I’m dropping all sarcasm. You are so out of focus, so lacking in perspective, that it’s a little frightening to read.
This bit from your last post is both over the top & off topic: “And yes, demonizing muslims makes me feel better about the government. Pushing for more war makes me feel better about the government. Blaming terrorism on encryption makes me feel better about the government. ”
Dial it down a bit buddy. It’s as if you imagine you are on some right wing website. How in the world does The Intercept posting this quiz somehow constitute support for: demonizing Muslims, pushing for more war, blaming terrorism on encryption….etc., etc.
HOW? IN? THE? WORLD does posting a fucking quiz from the Snowden archives constitute whatever it is you imagine it constitutes?
You are making a giant deal out of it, as if it is some kind of massive betrayal. It’s weird. Your attitude about this doesn’t make any sense at all.
I didn’t answer your question directly so I will quote two things from this page.
Two of the ways public relations works is:
1) Getting the media to repeat your message by doing their job for them.
2) Bringing positive connotation to your brand or product.
For example, I might write a story about how using sugar cane syrup is all the rage in cooking. I would give a short history of sugar cane, talk about how cane syrup is produced, include a recipe or two, and slide in a witty quote from the chef of the restaurant I am promoting. The article comes pre-written so all a “journalist” has to do is slap their name on it. You read the article and come away with the impression that my client’s restaurant (let’s call them “The Red Spotted Cup”) and their chef is innovative, important, busy (this is where the quote comes in) and trendy.
So you can see how public relations and media management is that one weird trick that gets publications and journalists to print whatever you want.
You are essentially bribing journalists by giving them content, and in return they will spread your message because they are lazy.
So in this case the content is the puzzles and mind teasers, and the message is that spies are smart (especially smarter than you), but fun and human, and that if you are smart enough, there might be a place for you too.
This host/parasite relationship (which is which?) fuels an incredibly large portion of journalism, and the internet has only caused this portion to increase.
If you want a real life example count the number of “news” stories that mention star wars. It really is incredible.
Maybe the Intercept could do a story on how the media is managed and manipulated. Maybe they can get on that after the big expose on web tracking and spying.
Oh now I see it. Of course. Now Intercept readers have a positive impression of the GCHQ. Because of this quiz. Because all of the rest of us have no sense of irony, just as you don’t.
Bye.
@Vic Perry
Irony? Seriously?
So you are now arguing that not only have you understood and agreed with my points the whole time, but you also believe that this understanding and agreement is so universal among the population that this article should be considered ironic?
I don’t have a problem with you supporting my position, but are you sure this is the story you want to stick with?
I knew you were disingenuous, but even you should be embarrassed.
Yes, clueless one, the people here who are enjoying the quiz are capable of both enjoying the quiz AND recognizing that the GCHQ is a fucked organization that does not have the best interests of justice and civilization at heart.
At the same time!!! No, really. It’s like mental juggling. It’s just fucking incredible. Did you know people were capable of carrying multiple attitudes toward the same thing? So shockingly irrational. Why can’t they stay on point, keep fighting the fight earnestly, humorlessly, 24/7? I sense you must ask yourself this all the time.
You somehow conclude that I have “agreed with (your) points the whole time”? Dear fool, no.
Your amazement notwithstanding, yes I DO believe (not “universally” as you put it, since this article will not be read universally, but rather by the general readership of The Intercept) —- the following shocking idea:
that besides you of course, most of the readership of the Intercept considers this to be an ironic post. Part of the irony is enjoying the puzzle and also considering the source. An example of obvious irony here is the way it has been presented, as a Christmas trifle, a “British Spy Game”. In the context of the Intercept, where this is not the normal way that articles are presented, well……….if you can’t figure out that they have NOT gone all spy-crazy on us for real, then you are really lost. You can’t understand language if you don’t understand context, and you appear to have a problem with context.
With your inability to discern irony, I’d call it “painfully” obvious irony. At this point I almost feel like I am ridiculing someone with some kind of brain defect, but only “almost” —- I’m guessing you are just really stubborn and are going to insist that your bizarre reading of this article is defensible no matter what.
Bye, for real this time, have at it with the last word, lastname
@Vic Perry
Shouldn’t you be (ironically) supporting the war on drugs over in that Lee Fang article. People are being mean to the Intercept over there too.
When the best thing you can say about this mess is that it is a parody of bad journalism aimed at an audience of 37 people, then we really aren’t too far apart.
CIA’s Kryptos K5: PEOPLETOCREATEASAFERFREERWORLDANDSURELYTHEREISNOBETTERPLACETHANBERLINTHEMEETINGPLACEOFEASTANDWEST
(K4 BERLINCLOCK=K5 BERLINTHEME)
Merry Christmas!
No wonder those guys start watching dixpix after some time ;-)
This is a soul crushing parody of the Intercept–right?
I think they should try all this in some of the terrorist languages like Saudi or Persian or even Mandarin or Cantonese.
According to Mr Donald Trump the Chinese people will have all the money very soon, and we will need to go there next to bring it all back to build the wall that the people down south were supposed to pay for but probably won’t as they are broke.