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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."
Now, we're supposed to believe that the NSA when they go on national TV and complain about their lack of money? Bullshit! Perhaps if their budget was not classified to begin with, this would warrant looking into. As it stands, I'll take any info from the NSA as the FUD it is.
If you have a problem with my views, REPLY, don't moderate!
It would seem to me that the NSA may benifit from being perceived as behind in technology on several fronts. First it may cause those they monitor to let their guard down, though I cna't imagine anyone with any smarts really falling for that old trick.
Second, and more importantly, it gives them an edge in seeking additional funding. Now I don't know how their funding is approved (does anyone) but I wouldn't be surprised if it has become an issue.
Can we really trust that there is any validity to these statements and what was shown. How would you verify this information.
Be careful about anything said about the NSA. The NSA is one of the departments of hidden activity of the U.S. government.
The NSA has an essentially unlimited amount of money. Citizens of the U.S. are not allowed to know the amount.
Would the NSA spend millions of dollars to engineer an elaborate lie? Yes, it might. We have no way of knowing whether it did.
Hidden activities are anti-democratic. If citizens aren't allowed to know what the government does, how can citizens help govern? Are your tax dollars being spent wisely? You are not allowed to know.
Bush's education improvements were
The NSA probably is behind... way behind. I've worked on several government projects (none classified or anything though) and they've all been way behind the times. Why do you think there was such a big call for legacy programmers a few years back? And why do you think there isn't anymore? Did they just all of a sudden get everything up to date? No... They quit.
Also, the NSA has been really trying hard to get new young faces in their information security departments. They've even gone so far as offering dot-com competitive salaries and benefits to their programmers and systems people.
Besides, they're not gods. They're just people like you or me, and it's just a 'company' like any other. Why couldn't they be having some financial difficulties? Sure, we pay tons of taxes, but the government is more interested in feeding bums and helping other nations than protecting our country.
Oh, yes and it gets way better.. from the FAQ..
Aw.. poor NSA only gets $26 Billion dollars. It's only the equivalent to a Fortune 50 company. Yeah.. I'm sure its technology is _ancient_.
You know.. we don't actually know jack about our defense capablities I don't think. Of course, if we did then our enemies would also, and they wouldn't be nearly as effective. For example, living in St. Louis, I was talking to someone from Boeing and mentioned how they must not too happy that their missile tests failed. He just laughed and said he couldn't talk about it's classified. Makes you wonder if maybe he was inferring that those public tests don't totally represent the actually success of the projects...
Pal, you need to do some reading. The Chinese military took over Tibet, pretty routinely has attacked India and North Vietnam every few years over border disputes, and last but not least killed thousands of Americans in the Korean War. All of this is nothing compared to what the Chinese military did to its own people during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s - literally millions died in what was effectively a civil war where the Maoists consolidated their power. And remember who drove the tanks over the students in Tienneman Square?
As for the US, we do not specifically target civilians in any of the countries you mentioned although I agree civilians do unfortunately die in American attacks. Nevertheless, the US attacks have stopped the governments of those countries from wholescale slaughter of Kurds and Muslims. I am sorry that scattered civilians are killed by US bombs but that is peanuts compared to the mass graves of hundreds of minority civilians killed by the armies of those countries.
Yes, I do believe the US are the Good Guys. We conquered Japan and Germany and gave it back. We conquered a dozen little countries over the past fifty years - Honduras, Congo, Lebanon, Grenada -others - and gave them all back. We kept a Cold War from going hot and gave our beated opponents tens of billions in IMF aid that was squandered by corruption. We conquered a trillion dollar reservoir of oil and had a half million troops in a land totally unable to resist militarily, and we gave it all back. No other country in the world or all of history has conquered so much and walked away from the spoils the way America did in the 20th century. Only the Good Guys do that.
Now, is the US perfect? Worthy of unquestioned loyalty? Guarenteed to always be the Good Guys in the future just because they have been in the past? Hell, no. We have bad people that can make bad decisions at the drop of a hat. The citizens of the US must ALWAYS stay on their toes and strive to act responsibly. We will often fail. Nevertheless, if we become so cynical that we no longer recognize or acknowledge just how amazing America has been on the world stage, we do something worse than making mistakes of judgement - we will kill hope that ANYBODY is going to try to make the world better from the madness raging in the Congo and Zaire and Cambodia and Kosovo and Bosnia and Iraq and a dozen other flashpoints. That would be a tragedy of epic proportions. Resist it.