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NSA, The Technology Future, and Where It Is
cowmix writes "It was weird watching 60
Minutes II last week when the head of the NSA was complaining that
his organization was totally behind in technology. Further, he told of stories
of the organization's horrible inefficiencies and even went into how at
the first of January 2000 all the computers in the NSA were down for three
days. The thing that really shocked me was seeing pictures of the inside
of one of the NSA headquarters and also SEEING people decoding telephone
conversations.
I didn't know what to make of it."
It's not the first time we've heard of the Y2k incident... read Body of Secrets by James Bamford. It's an excellent book detailing the entire history of the NSA.
Here's a three page article which appeared in the Washington Post Magazine about a month ago. More in-depth then the 60 mins one and goes into the some details about the problems facing The Agency in the coming years... Washington Post NSA article
If citizens aren't allowed to know what the government does, how can citizens help govern?
This is what being in a representative democracy is all about. You don't necessarily know what the gov't is doing. You have to trust your elected officials. If you don't like what they're doing (did) you just don't vote for them next time. It seems like a haphazard way to run things, but it has worked this far.
Remember that the NSA, CIA, and what have you do need to justify themselves to commitees of the officials you elect. So you are indirectly controlling how your tax dollars are spent.
No sig for you.
> Aw.. poor NSA only gets $26 Billion dollars
Read your citation again. The NSA is *one segment* of the intelligence funding group. From the same page:
There are 13 federal organizations in the Intelligence Community. They
are:
National Security Agency/Central Security Service (NSA/CSS);
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA);
National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA);
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI);
Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA);
National Reconnaissance Office (NRO);
Department of Energy (DoE);
Army Intelligence;
Air Force Intelligence;
Navy Intelligence;
Marine Corps Intelligence;
Department of Treasury;
The $26 billion would have been split among the intelligence activities of all 13 of these groups.
Visit the
The interview on 60 Minutes was not with the Director of NSA - it was with the ex-director of NSA. How else do you think he got on 60 Minutes?
The current director, General Hayden, has made leaps and bounds in overcoming the beaucracy in the NSA in the recent years.
Things are getting better. It's difficult to create a government organization that's dynamic, flexible and responsive to changing trends in the technological sector. The NSA was at one time, and perhaps will be again.
The NSA has an essentially unlimited amount of money. Citizens of the U.S. are not allowed to know the amount.
This is simply no longer the case. It was true of the NSA and other intel agencies during the cold war, especially during the Reagan years. However, with Congressional interest in a balanced budget, these agencies have been scrutinized fairly intensely and now have to operate their programs within budgets.
That is actually one reason that they are 'behind' in some ways. They used to have all the money they wanted to build anything they needed from the ground up. Now they are shifting from that model to needing to use prebuilt components ('COTS' - Consumer Off The Shelf). There is not as much expertise with using these types of components, and in many cases they engineer systems in sort of strange ways because the COTS products are treated as if they were developed internally in regard to testing and design.