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Donald Trump vs. the Blob Part 2 : Electric Boogaloo
Ladies and gentlemen, it's been 4 years since our last bout. In one corner, we have the undisputed champ, the greatest of all time, the BADDEST man on planet Earth, the king, the DC blllooob! And in the other corner, the challenger, the next Hitler, the orange man, the Donald himself, Donaaallld Trump.
Let's.. get... ready.. to... rumble!
Holy shit it's been a crazy week for the current members of the Federal bureaucracy. Let's review:
Trump issued an Executive Order that almost all federal workers will have to return to office five days a week
All federal workers also received an offer to resign immediately. If they accept, they will get their current salary and benefits until September (an incredibly generous 8 month severance package). All they have to do is reply with the word "resign".
But also, workers will have to prove that they haven't been working a second or third job (in Reddit parlance, a J2, J3, etc..) It turns out this is actually a crime punishable by prison.
On the other hand side, we have the Reddit hivemind.
There is a Reddit for federal workers called /r/fednews. It's a revealing glimpse into an entitled and mentally ill slice of our federal workforce. Much like every other website, and especially themotte.org, they post almost exclusively during working hours.
These "workers" also may be violating federal law by explicitly campaigning on the behalf of one political party over another. Even posting on Reddit may be illegal.
So who wins?
It's a tough call. On one hand, in theory, Trump controls the executive branch. On the other hand, he doesn't control the judiciary who will ultimately decide the outcome. Already, many lawsuits have been filed on behalf of aggrieved federal employees.
Furthermore, not counting the military, there are 2 million federal employees. This is a massive army of people who, though already 95% anti-Trump, are now galvanized into action to prevent the erasure of their generous pay and benefits.
Has Trump bitten off more than he can chew? Will the champion remain undefeated? Or will the challenger land enough blows to sway the judges. You decide! Respond in the comments below.
From /r/fednews: "Supervisor told us to stop posting on Reddit: We just had a meeting about employees posting memos and meeting topics on Reddit and were told to stop “leaking” information. DONT STOP, the people deserve to know the information." With 69k net upvotes.
It's an incredible bubble that federal employees live in. A big hurdle for the right is that there was plausible deniability, and the Deep State was considered a conspiracy theory. /r/fednews is directly showing that it's worse than even the conspiracy. "Yes, the Deep State is real, and it's a bunch of anti-American commies undermining everything." Keep resisting kids!
Send out memos to your employees, but each one has a small unique change. Immediately know which one of them put it on reddit.
There are (unfounded?) rumors that my employer adds digital watermarks to some internal documents and they'll know you leaked if a journalist has your document. I'm rather skeptical but it doesn't matter because I'm not going to violate my NDA.
To me, the workaround generally seems to be to compare your version of the document with that of a colleague. If it is identical, then there is nothing to indicate which of you leaked it. Otherwise, one might create two lossy versions which are indistinguishable.
(In general, you could add more complex watermarks, where any k copies would have bits which are the same for all of them, but used for watermarking outside their group. That would enable you to tell "Bob, Alice and Eve conspired to scramble all the bits which were different in their respective copies." However, once the conspirators know what kind of features you are using for watermarks, they could just use a technique which adds enough noise to the document to generally smear out the watermarks everywhere.)
Not breaking NDAs (unless you feel you have a strong civic obligation to do otherwise) is probably wise.
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Yeah, I just don’t understand the mindset that “my boss told me to stop posting private information on social media, so I’m doubling down.” No business im aware of would not fire you instantly if you get caught. Hell Walmart employees got fired for pointing out how hard it is for someone to get accidentally locked in an oven. But of course they see themselves as above laws and rules and so they have a right to break any laws they please. They see themselves as untouchable priests of the global order, and they seem to honestly believe that there are no consequences to those actions.
You’re right, but the federal government is not a business. It has special rules and laws it has to follow that private businesses don’t. The key sections of law here are 5 U.S.C. §2301-§2306 and 5 U.S.C. §7511-§7515 if you want to get a feel for what the administration is going up against, but there are reams and reams of rules like this.
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