[fein]

Page 5: "Terrorist with Tor client installed"

And its a picture of a guy with a bandit mask and an AK-47. I don't know about you guys, but all my Tor activities are performed in my Halloween costume!

I honestly can't believe something this tacky would end up in a presentation. Is this supposed to be propaganda?

[lmm]

It's a powerpoint, doubtless put together by a middle-manager who thought some clipart would spice things up. Internal presentations at pretty much every company I've worked for have been just as tacky.

[balabaster]

and a beard... like terrorists can be stereotyped like that. This is more than just propaganda, this is the mentality of the type of people who put these presentations together. That fact that whoever wrote this presentation has profiled people like this. I would wager that 99% of online "terrorists" are sitting around in jeans and t-shirts, on safe soil, have probably never handled a gun, let alone an AK-47 (or whatever that is on his back), probably don't have a beard. The ones financing them probably spend their life wearing a suit and tie and are either driving a top of the line vehicle or are driven everywhere in a top of the line vehicle.

If you look at the world around us and review the history of terrorism, most of it's been funded behind the scenes by one of the major superpowers, and you can't overlook the fact that a large portion of this has been by backed by the US. It's funny how when the US wants a government toppled, the terrorists are "friendly" and funded and armed by the US government, but when they're counter to US interests, they're suddenly part of the axis of evil and must be destroyed...

Perhaps if they stopped funding this ignorant behaviour and stopped supplying munitions to these terrorist interests, the problem would eventually go away... spend more on education and tolerance towards all points of view, enlightenment, the world would become a more peaceful place.

When will "democratic" governments eventually realize that money and greed is not the best approach to the furthering the human experience on this planet.

Sorry, didn't mean to get off on a rant there, but that one picture triggered a bit of annoyance.

[JackFr]

And banks don't actually keep money in big cloth bags with dollar signs on them. It's just clip art, and to say that it speaks to the mindset of a type of people you probably don't really know much about. I would hasten to say that your stereotypes are probably no more grounded in reality than those of the straw men your attacking.

>"If you look at the world around us and review the history of terrorism, most of it's been funded behind the scenes by one of the major superpowers, and you can't overlook the fact that a large portion of this has been by backed by the US."

While this assertion is not completely baseless, it's simply not correct, but is the kind of empty-headed moral equivalence that gets tossed around to unanimous approval among a certain class who consider a shibboleth of sophistication.

To wit, in the history of terrorism, we see the Irish Republican Army, The Tamil Tigers, the Red Brigade, the Weather Underground, FALN, Baader Meinhof group, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the current Chechen groups, the Hindu and Muslim groups prior to the formation of Pakistan, and frankly many more -- all without super power support. While some national actors have stepped up to support terror groups, superpower, or even great power support has been the exception rather than the rule.

During the cold war, the USSR, the US and China fought a number of proxy wars, and supported opposition groups in various national civil wars, mostly in Asia, Africa and Central America. Additionally, the CIA engaged in specific assassinations of political leaders largely in Latin America but not really what anyone would consider terrorism by the current definition. You're statement that a large portion of terrorism has been backed by the United States would require expansive definitions of 'large portion', 'terrorism' or 'backed' to be true.

[foobarqux]

No, it requires the United States' own definition of terrorism to be applied to the US.

Drone strikes in Pakistan alone have killed thousands of civilians.

Many of the opposition groups you mentioned were backed by the US knowing that they committed and intended to commit terrorism and other war crimes.

[foobarqux]

A more detailed argument is here

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/08/is-america-the-worlds...

[novaleaf]

++ this. this ppt isn't an analysis of terrorist personas, it's about tor.

it's expected to use steriotypical shoe-ins for concepts outside the scope of the presentation.

[smoyer]

You shouldn't be divulging information like this ... now all the terrorists will shave and we'll be toast!

[nudetayne]

It's clearly intended as a joke. It's a slideshow shown to people with technological backgrounds. Most people in computer-based work have seen poorly selected stock photos like these to depict hackers/terrorists/whatever.

[api]

"Terrorist" -- as everyone knew it would become -- is now shorthand for anyone undesirable or anyone targeted for any reason.

[criley2]

It's the new red scare, the new Soviet.

We American's require a boogeyman.

In all fairness, most countries do. Watching South American leaders lately shows the exact same behavior. Find a foreign devil for everyone to rally against to hide domestic issues.

[spindritf]

Soviets were not some bogeyman. They were real, their spies were real, and the international communist movement they sponsored was real.

Rosenbergs and others did spy for the Soviets. They did successfully transfer secrets related to the atomic bomb. And they were ideologically motivated.

[shawn-furyan]

Communist would have been a better word to use than Soviet. Soviet was relatively specific, but broad swaths of the world got labelled communist. While it's true that the Soviets were more than boogeymen, I think that the broader point stands that Americans (and everyone else really) tend to have some convenient, reductionist label to apply to "others" that is broadly taken as a synonym for "evildoer". "Terrorist" is the fashionable label today.

[nzp]

> And they were ideologically motivated.

I may be reading you incorrectly, but I get the sense you consider what the US/West does somehow isn't ideologically motivated or that having any such motivations is inherently sinister? Of course they were, just like the US is ideologically motivated. Defending and furthering capitalist goals is no less ideologically motivated than defending and furthering communist goals.

[quarterto]

Something something McCarthyism.

[noonespecial]

"If the Devil didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him."

[tesseractive]

Recall this line from Blade Runner:

> Replicants are like any other machine. They're either a benefit or a hazard. If they're a benefit, it's not my problem.

These people's job is to fight (their government's definition of) terrorists. It's not automatically in the job description to develop a nuanced view of terrorism, of various categories of hackers, etc. -- except to whatever degree it helps them to understand their enemy and thereby stop them.

People often do this even in jobs where the stakes are lower -- if you're running a struggling grocery store competing with a SuperWalMart, WalMart are the bad guys, even if the people who work at WalMart are perfectly nice people just trying to earn some money to raise a family.

Having said that, yes -- it's obviously particularly dangerous to go around branding anyone you have a problem with a terrorist.

[zeckalpha]

Or for the Navy, since they invented Tor. This whole thing is wacko.

[zalew]

> I don't know about you guys, but all my Tor activities are performed in my Halloween costume!

I don't always hack, but when I do, I wear a balaclava

http://www.buzzfeed.com/copyranter/all-computer-hackers-wear...

[Myrmornis]

Oh, come on, they're humans too, and thus subject to deliberately unfunny jokes in (technical or not) slide presentations like the rest of us.

From a quick look this one seems more plausible than the absurd PRISM presentation.

[deveac]

>From a quick look this one seems more plausible than the absurd PRISM presentation.

Are you suggesting that the leaked PRISM presentations are not authentic?

[Myrmornis]

I'm not sure. You can imagine that presentation in some run-of-the-mill crappy company meeting full of 9-5ers, but it's hard to imagine intelligent people with good educations presenting information to each other like that. I know there are all sorts of contractors, but would they really be discussing such weighty issues?

[gmuslera]

If they built a Star Trek bridge replica to sell the idea of the NSA to the congress, they can do this too

http://americablog.com/2013/09/nsa-outrage-star-trek-bridge....

[ebbv]

Yeah where is the value for my tax dollars? I want top shelf Powerpoint presentations.

[eterm]

This presentation seems very odd.

Page 4: Dumb Users (EPICFAIL)

[Myrmornis]

Isn't EPICFAIL an operation nickname? (Like "GREAT EXPECTATIONS" and the others)

[jamestanderson]

Yeah, is this real?

[captainmuon]

Especially... I can't imagine this is clip art. Someone must have sat down and drawn that to order.

That must be a really wierd job, doing tacky but still sophisticated illustrations for top secret internal presentations.

[swamp40]

It's from some kind of character generator software package.

You pick a 'beard' and drag it onto the person, etc.

This similar looking one is all over the internet:

http://www.iconshock.com/img_jpg/SUPERVISTA/networking/jpg/2...

[jawr]

I thought it was more of a Zorro mask. It's very suspicious that the entire presentation seems to undermine the supposed severity of the issue with very silly names and pictures...

Tor Stinks, ONIONBREATH, EPICFAIL

[matthewmcg]

Can we pleeeeease make this the new default icon for the OnionBrowser Bundle?

(edited to remove broken image link)

[galapago]

I'm getting 404.

[henryaj]

Amazing.

Even better, on page 9: "Analytics: Dumb Users (EPICFAIL)"