It's Time To Split Up NSA Between Spooks and Geeks

Hugh Pickens writes "Noah Shachtman writes in Wired that most of us know the National Security Agency as the supersecret spook shop that allegedly slurped up our email and phone calls after the September 11 attacks, but not so many know that the NSA is actually home to two different agencies under one roof: the signals-intelligence directorate, who can tap into any electronic communication, and the information-assurance directorate, the cybersecurity nerds who make sure our government's computers and telecommunications systems are hacker- and eavesdropper-free. 'The problem is, their goals are often in opposition,' writes Shachtman. 'One team wants to exploit software holes; the other wants to repair them.' Users want to know that Google is safeguarding their data and privacy. The trouble is that when Google calls the NSA, everyone watching sees it as a package deal. Google wants geeks, but it runs the risk of getting spies, too."

Comments

Nonsensical ...

[krou]

Okay, so TFA is arguing that creating a new agency 'that didn’t include the spooks would' avoid conflict and bring about 'acceptance across the government and the private sector'.

But right in the beginning, it says '[Google] wants geeks, but it runs the risk of getting spies' when it contacts the NSA.

If there is no guarantee that Google doesn't end up getting spooks from the NSA, who can say this new agency won't have spooks in there from the NSA?

Am I missing something here, or is there some magical reason why this new agency won't have spooks embedded there, and it should be trusted any more than the NSA?

Re:Nonsensical ...

[jumpinp]

Oh, so you want a government/agency you can trust. Sorry, all out of that.

Hell No

[DesScorp]

We do not need yet another federal agency. Splitting them in two will only result in two bigger agencies with an ever ravenous appetite for more tax funds.

One of the worst things Bush did post 9/11 was creating the spate of new federal agencies. Can anyone say that their flying experience is actually better after TSA was created? Anyone?

How much good did creating yet another layer of intelligence bureaucracy do us? Did intelligence get any better after we made the Director of Central Intelligence obsolete by creating a Director of National Intelligence? Not one damn whit. It just grew the federal payroll some more, and added more bloat and bureaucracy.

Vital intelligence work needs to be done, but we need to be trimming down these agencies, not creating new ones.

Two sides of the same coin

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Keeping our systems secure, and breaking into the other guys' systems, are damn near the same job. It is a good thing to have the people responsible for both working together, and maybe trading jobs occasionally. There is no American computer security and Russian computer security and Chinese computer security: there is only computer security, and systems which are more or less secure. The NSA has historically been about the only government agency that really seems to get this, and it would be a real mistake to break it up.

Re:Why does Google need to 'partner' with the NSA?

[jeff4747]

Because besides having the best "hackers" on the planet, the NSA also has the best sysadmins on the planet. Because the aforementioned 'hackers' practice against them.

This, btw, is why the author's idea is terrible. You want both offense and defense in the same agency so that they can share techniques.

Re:Smarts

[dgatwood]

Someone good in math is far more likely than average to have or be able to develop expertise in any given use of computers.

Careful there. Being good at math---being capable of learning higher level math concepts---is not the same as having taken the time to do so. A lot of very people don't bother going beyond a certain point simply because their primary interests lie elsewhere. And to some degree, being too analytical can actually hurt your ability to write good software.

Writing software is not an entirely analytical process. It has some analytical components, particularly in understanding how the parts fit into the whole. However, creating the code itself is also an artistic process in many ways. You must consider all the different ways of doing something and choose the best one, based not just on the current needs, but also on a general feeling about what you might want to do with the code in the future without going overboard.

• Overly analytical people often over-plan and over-design, resulting in code that is too complex to maintain, is too slow, or takes too long to finish. Getting everything perfect the first time is too important, so nothing ever gets done.
• Overly artistic people tend to not plan enough, painting themselves into a corner. The result is that the entire project gets thrown out and redesigned every couple of years because they need to add a new feature and the design can't readily accommodate it.

Thus, good programming requires a very delicate balance between analytical abilities and creative/artistic abilities. Analytical skills are necessary, but not sufficient.

I would actually argue that programming skills tend to be more strongly correlated with musical ability than math education. Good musicians are generally good at analytical tasks, including math, but also have the artistic ability needed to take that critical step back and pay attention to the system design, the UI, etc.

I've always found it staggering how many of my coworkers are musicians. In my department alone, it's at least one in three, and many of the people who aren't musicians have kids who are. Whenever we have a department party, we usually get together a group of people and jam. And my previous employer was the same way.