Worst intel gig ever

Following yesterday’s sudden interest in the Mouse, our discussions with colleagues raised a number of very cynical but very interesting observations regarding the surveillance society, corporate control, and the webstate / online Balkanization debate.

(By the way, there is apparently now an informal design contest to photoshop the best set of Disney style “credentials” for interagency liaison meeting purposes making the rounds at least one shop… We were thinking something along the lines of a nice brass mouse head outline etched with perhaps the Epcot ball, but lack any artistic skills whatsoever. We shall simply have to watch from the sidelines to see what comes out of this.)

Those discussions of the potentially darker side of such a world, considered as an emerging indicator in a futures scenario projection, also brought to mind a very real example of perhaps the worst intelligence job we have ever become aware of.

Curt Herzstark was an Austrian inventor who was imprisoned in the Buchenwald concentration camp from 1943 to 1945. He survived the camp, and the war, based solely on his role in developing the Curta mechanical calculator, intended originally as a gift for Hitler after a Nazi victory. His title throughout this experience was “intelligence slave”. His invention would later go on to acquire nearly cult status among the digerati of the dot com era.

The levels of evil and banality simultaneously compressed into this account are staggering. No matter how much we may criticize our community, or how dark our musings, there is simply no comparison even possible.

Never forget. Never again.