Programmer Conned CIA, Pentagon Into Buying Bogus Anti-Terror Code

<i>This is crazy. This is embarrassing.’. . . I said, ‘Give us the algorithms that allowed you to come up with this stuff.’ They wouldn’t even do that. And I was screaming, ‘You gave these people fucking money?’</i><p>That pretty much sums it up perfectly. I think part of the problem that allows things like this to happen is that, to some people, computers are magic. They don't understand how they work and feeding Al Jazeera video feed through a computer program and having it spit out terrorist plots sounds almost feasible.

Having worked on many government and DoD contracts, I find this rather unsurprising. The phrase "tip of the iceberg" comes to mind..

A fool and his money are soon parted.<p>This story made me laugh, because it's like a modern re-telling of the Hans Andersen story "The Emperor's New Clothes". The Emperor, in this case played by George Bush and company, are so eager to believe all sorts of paranoid fantasies, such as that evil-doers are broadcasting secret messages via TV, that when a charlatan comes along claiming that he can prove that their darkest nightmares are true they're keen to make sure he gets to work on the tailoring right away, with no expense spared!

Original article: <a href="http://www.playboy.com/articles/the-man-who-conned-the-pentagon-dennis-montgomery/index.html?page=1" rel="nofollow">http://www.playboy.com/articles/the-man-who-conned-the-penta...</a><p>SFW, in theory. And by that I mean there are no nipples until you click the Girls link at the top of the page.

Great. Now programmers are going to be labeled as terrorists.

Among all the mistakes the US govt made due to post-9/11 paranoia (Iraq, Patriot Act...), this is comparatively a tiny one. Unsurprising.

There's a remarkable amount of stupidity in the world when it comes to computers.<p>Governments seem to attract a particularly high density of computer-illiterate people. I wish I could understand why, but it truly boggles my mind.

Now that is a twisted story.... By the way, I hate to say it but why is <i>Playboy</i> the trusted source in this article?

Playboy?