Sceenwriting and the NSA

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  • #16
    Re: Sceenwriting and the NSA

    The upside is - there's a film to made out of this somewhere.

    But who's going to write it first?

    3, 2, 1 -- GO!!

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    • #17
      Re: Sceenwriting and the NSA

      Originally posted by jboffer View Post
      They view the "Just don't have anything to hide" argument as naive. If you have any political opinions, you have something to hide from a government with unchecked ability to spy on all your communications. It gives a small group of elites extra potential for power over opposition/rivals. Many of whom could be susceptible to blackmail, trumped up charges, or possibly the indefinite detention or targeted assassination we are so recently fond of. Doesn't seem likely today, but today's world is by no means indicative of the future. What starts with good intentions is capable of abuse. It could come slowly, not at all, or flip on like a switch.
      Exactly.

      Anyone who had family who lived behind the Iron Curtain has living memory of what a surveillance state is like. "Nightmarish" is an understatement. It's often not the sort of thing that happens overnight; it creeps up on a society, one piece at a time, as the state silently metastasizes in its power, all justified by never-ending conditions of "war" -- war that it, itself, makes sure to perpetuate.

      Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World are not as far distant from us as they once were. In fact, one could argue that many aspects of both dystopias are already with us, in an insidious synthesis of 1984 statism with the narcotizing entertainment and affluence that Huxley posited as leading to a velvet totalitarianism.

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      • #18
        Re: Sceenwriting and the NSA

        Big Brother is watching.

        This certainly isn't something that can be debated in a web forum, I know, but it makes me uneasy as hell, for a number of reasons. Anyway...

        David Simon's (supportive!) take on this matter: http://davidsimon.com/we-are-shocked-shocked/

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        • #19
          Re: Sceenwriting and the NSA

          It's one of those gray areas that allows any sort of government to function. Everybody knows they're doing it (or should) but looks the other way. No harm, no foul. But then some idiot comes along and puts the gray area into solid form. And "Responsible party" takes on real tangible meaning. Did I care that the NSA *could* peek at my phone records? No. Did I know there was a possibility? Absolutely.

          Do I care now? Yes. Because now it's in a defined form and I want that gray area spelled out. The checks and balances were that they could do it as long as it wasn't publicly acknowledged. Because ultimately, whatever they were doing in the shadows could be checked by our constitutional rights. And that check just arrived. All he's done is hurt our government, imho.
          life happens
          despite a few cracked pots-
          and random sunlight

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          • #20
            NSA & Canada's Examination Unit

            Originally posted by sherbetbizarre View Post
            The upside is - there's a film to made out of this somewhere.

            But who's going to write it first?

            3, 2, 1 -- GO!!
            That's one of my screenplay projects, ("X.U."; not yet outlined).

            In 1983, I asked for copies of Canada's records, from 1941, of its decoded messages, intercepted from Nazi Germany, Japan, and Vichy France, along with the reasons for replacing the person heading the Examination Unit, (which did this decoding work). Trouble was no one in the Canadian government had ever declassified this stuff after more than forty years; it was still all "top secret" and had never been acknowledged to exist.

            I was once amused by reading an English translation of the Japanese ambassador's lengthy telegram to the Foreign Minister in Tokyo assessing the situation in Berlin, during the Second World War. A day after it had been sent, it had been intercepted, decoded, and translated by the Canadian government. I had been seeking any trace of the "Winds" message that might have been intercepted by Canadian agencies, before the attacks at Hong Kong and at Pearl Harbor. I didn't find any, but it was clear more stuff was being kept hidden away that had never been reviewed by any historians.

            After launching my prosecution in the Federal Court against the Minister of National Defence and the Secretary of State for External Affairs, I began to get some more information. In an effort to convince the Court that the records that I sought should remain secret, two officers from the Judge Advocate General's Office and a representative from the Justice Department were sent to Fort Meade to get the NSA's opinion, favoring their argument that it needed to be kept secret. Needless to say, they weren't respecting my privacy, as there was no reason to indicate "who" had asked for the information and "who" was prosecuting the federal ministers for the release of this information. It was certainly an effort to flag me as a person that the NSA should be concerned about.

            I had my revenge. I obtained the travel receipts of all the expenses claimed by these Justice and Defence visitors; and, later, the FBI was advised about the failure of the Department of Defence's failure to consult with them, before releasing a confidential FBI memo to me. I play by the rules, and don't mind crying "foul" on my opponents at the CSE. They've lied to a Federal Court judge, in secret testimony where I was not even allowed to attend nor review their testimony. I purposely lost another Federal Court case just to have the Justice and Defence officials deny the existence of a document that I had in my hands throughout the hearing. If I showed it, the judge would have to acknowledge their perjury and legal deceptions but would also have to render the case "moot"; for, if the government handed any copy of it back to me, they'd have satisfied their compliance with the existing laws. Publicly showing that the document does exist and can be found in their possession would illustrate the failures of those Departments, the Information Commissioner, and the Federal Court, to deal with legitimate Access to Information Act requests.

            In 1941, Canada was at war; Nazi spies were sending ship movement information to Germany to be relayed to their submarines; the Canadians broke the Nazi spy codes, without any cooperation from the "neutral" American or any British intelligence agencies; but, the trouble was that the person heading Canada's cryptography unit was an American, who was persona non grata to the American and British intelligence agencies. And, it would really be a "true story" screenplay.
            JEKYLL & CANADA (free .mp4 download @ Vimeo.com)

            Comment


            • #21
              Re: Sceenwriting and the NSA

              Originally posted by Piratepug View Post
              I don't intend to lose sleep over it, I just had one of those "what if" moments and thought I'd toss it out here.
              What's the bet this thread got you on a watch list. They've got your system details, your IP address, your browsing history, your geophysical location, your bank account details, your personal relationships, your movie preferences. Every room in your house now has a microcam, including the john. Look out your window. The van with the funny aerials? Yep.

              Comment


              • #22
                Re: Sceenwriting and the NSA

                Originally posted by dpaterso View Post
                What's the bet this thread got you on a watch list. They've got your system details, your IP address, your browsing history, your geophysical location, your bank account details, your personal relationships, your movie preferences. Every room in your house now has a microcam, including the john. Look out your window. The van with the funny aerials? Yep.
                Surveillance vans? Hahahaha. Did you watch bootlegged MTV music videos on your VCR this morning?

                http://gizmodo.com/the-robo-raven-is...ains-511919948
                "You have idea 1, you're excited. It flops. You have idea 99, you're excited. It flops.
                Only a fool is excited by the 100th idea. Fools keep trying. God rewards fools." --Martin Hellman, paraphrased

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                • #23
                  Re: Sceenwriting and the NSA

                  The original suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks was a virologist named Steven Hatfill.

                  When they searched his computers, they found he was working on a novel about a bioterrorism attack that happens in the United States.

                  Turns out they had the wrong guy, but I remember the press widely reporting about the "novel" and how it seemed very damning to the public at large.

                  Comment


                  • #24
                    Re: Sceenwriting and the NSA

                    Originally posted by Piratepug View Post
                    Could writers communications ever be misinterpreted?
                    THIS. THIS IS WHY THIS IS SO WRONG.

                    "When human beings are scared and feel everything is exposed to the government, we will censor ourselves from free thinking. That's dangerous for human development."

                    It's also the intended goal of those in power, no matter how vehemently they claim otherwise. Free thinkers are enemies of tyranny.

                    Comment


                    • #25
                      Re: Sceenwriting and the NSA

                      Originally posted by hacque View Post
                      The original suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks was a virologist named Steven Hatfill.

                      When they searched his computers, they found he was working on a novel about a bioterrorism attack that happens in the United States.

                      Turns out they had the wrong guy, but I remember the press widely reporting about the "novel" and how it seemed very damning to the public at large.
                      His research trail probably led them to him, eh? That's frightening. I wonder if he ever got his work back, or if he was at all compensated. I imagine probably not.
                      "You have idea 1, you're excited. It flops. You have idea 99, you're excited. It flops.
                      Only a fool is excited by the 100th idea. Fools keep trying. God rewards fools." --Martin Hellman, paraphrased

                      Comment


                      • #26
                        Re: Sceenwriting and the NSA

                        Funny in a "Ha, ha, I wish I were dead" kind of way:

                        http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/ba0...e-announcement

                        Comment


                        • #27
                          Re: Sceenwriting and the NSA

                          Originally posted by Piratepug View Post
                          First post here, but I was curious about a something that crossed my mind the other day. I'm not a conspiracy theorist by any means, but I wonder what would happen if writing partners were emailing and calling back and forth about a story plot that was, say about a terrorist attack? Would these things be flagged and the writers tracked for awhile? And further, unless you had credentials of some kind, how would a writer prove it was just a story?

                          It's just hypothetical, but I'm curious what you guys think? Could writers communications ever be misinterpreted?
                          I suppose it's possible, but of course the biggest defense to a claim that you're just doing research for a screenplay would be that -- in fact, you're really just a screenwriter who's actually writing a screenplay on the subject in question.

                          I've done research on nuclear weapons facilities, Afghanistan, serial killers, -- all sorts of things.

                          I'll tell you something else -- although this was long before the days of the internet.

                          Close to thirty years ago I wrote a treatment for a disaster movie called, "The Big Fall." I may even had still been writing on a typewriter back then, I really don't remember.

                          Anyway, the premise is that a group of terrorists are planting a big bomb in the basement of one the twin towers -- their plan is to set it off so that the one tower falls over and knocks over the other tower -- so that they both fall over and take out a huge piece of lower Manhattan.

                          But the bomb goes off prematurely and the tower starts to fall but stalls so that it's just slightly tipped over toward the other. It's going to fall -- and soon. So the whole story hinges on, first, evacuating the tower before it falls, and second, getting a demo team inside to blow the building so that they can collapse it before it tips over and takes out the second tower.

                          And there were all sorts of various complications so it was just a goofy disaster movie that I never actually got around to writing.

                          On the other hand, it predicted so many weird beats about both of the World Trade Center attacks that God forbid it had actually been circulated anywhere rather than sitting in a file cabinet (or where ever the hell it is).

                          Given that we spend out time thinking about things like crime and terrorist attacks and the sorts of things that maniacs might do if given half a chance, it isn't odd that the sorts of things that we come up with sometimes correspond with things that real criminals, terrorists, and maniacs actually do.

                          NMS

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                          • #28
                            Re: Sceenwriting and the NSA

                            Interesting, interesting.

                            I think the real question is not whether these "dirty matters" go on, but what the ultimate reason for them is. Whatever it is, it is meta-partisan. It goes beyond particular political parties and deals with something more fundamental in government. Moreover, a lot of it appears to have nothing to do with threats (real or pretended) from groups or nations. Instead, it is about maintaining a social status quo. And the credo seems to be: "Never admit that any of it is true. Just deny repeatedly."

                            "The fact that you have seen professionals write poorly is no reason for you to imitate them." - ComicBent.

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                            • #29
                              Re: Sceenwriting and the NSA

                              Originally posted by ComicBent View Post
                              "Never admit that any of it is true. Just deny repeatedly."
                              Which works wonders; you can deny for as long as it is working, yet maintain an apology once fully unearthed at a latter time.

                              It's kind of like keeping up the facade of your past script being a winner (we all have one), only admitting to it's failings later.

                              Sometimes it pays off. Other times it blows up in your face. This NSA thing is kind of blowing up, but it's to stoked to die, the fuse already lit and igniting down the mining wall.
                              "...it is the thousandth forgetting of a dream dreamt a thousand times and forgotten a thousand times."
                              --Franz Kafka "Investigations Of A Dog"

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                              • #30
                                Re: Sceenwriting and the NSA

                                Anybody who remembers some of my past work will know that research is a tricky one for me given that everything we search for is monitored.

                                I understand it yet it's massively flawed. Google will flag people searching for child porn, bomb making and all the other horrible things in the world but it lets you find this stuff easily. At least that's supposd to be changing soon.

                                To the OP you'll probably be fine researching terrorism. If you're white that is.

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