Reefa Posted May 28, 2016 Share Posted May 28, 2016 Quote The NSA has a well-earned reputation for being one of the tougher agencies to get records out of, making those rare FOIA wins all the sweeter. In the case of Untangling the Web, the agency's 2007 guide to internet research, the fact that the records in question just so happen to be absolutely insane are just icing on the cake - or as the guide would put it, "the nectar on the ambrosia." MuckRock's Michael Morisy initially requested the guide after finding an entry on Google Books. A month later, the NSA responded with a complete release, minus the authors' names ... Which was a bit odd, seeing as Michael had provided them in his initial request. But hey, gift horses and all that. Now, at 650 pages, there's far too much to go into in depth here, but fortunately, as you can see from the table of contents... you don't have to go very far before this takes a hard turn into "Dungeons and Dragons campaign/Classics major's undergraduate thesis" territory. The preface employs a comical number of metaphors to describe what the internet is and isn't - sometimes two a paragraph. But don't take our word for it! According to the NSA, the internet is ... A Persian's personal library: Sisyphus' boulder ... A Freudian psycho-sexual pleasure palace ... A Borgesian world-consuming knowledge-cancer ... A labyrinth (with bonus Mino-Troll): Two quick asides - one, in case your memory needed jogging as to what a clew was, the footnote helpfully provides that information ... and two, before you cry foul that the beast in the center of the labyrinth is clearly a centaur, Ovid technically just describes the Minotaur as "half-man and half-bull" without specifying which half is which, so that interpretation is valid, if a bit needlessly obscure. But while we're on the subject of pedantic footnotes ... A shape-changing sea-god: After that journey of discovery, Untangling the Web ends perhaps the only way it could: with a back cover design that looks cribbed from a ‘90s Christian rock album. Read the full thing on the request page: source Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vibranium Posted May 28, 2016 Share Posted May 28, 2016 Holy Toledo. You mean taxpayers shelled out $$$$$$ for this crap !!!!??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
humble3d Posted May 28, 2016 Share Posted May 28, 2016 Excessive and wasteful spending of taxpayer's $$$$$$$$ must cease and desist... But, I won't be holding my breath... Interesting read... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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