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How Does the CIA Keep Its IT Staff Honest?
Tootech points out this story for anyone who's been curious about getting that top-secret clearance and the promise of a cushy pension from the CIA, as a reward for decades of blood-curdling, heart-pounding, knuckle-whitening IT service: "Be prepared to go through a lot of scrutiny if you want to work in the Central Intelligence Agency's IT department, says chief information officer Al Tarasiuk. And it doesn't stop after you get your top secret clearance. 'Once you're in, there are frequent reinvestigations, but it's just part of process here,' says Tarasiuk, who also gets polygraphed regularly, though he won't be more specific. For those senior IT managers who are the 'privileged users,' meaning system administrators, 'there is certainly more scrutiny on you,' Tarasiuk says. 'It's interesting: there's so much scrutiny that a normal person might not want to put up with that. But it's part of the mission.'"
What use would the CIA have for honest staff?
By only employing people who are willing to work for money, and paying them well?
I am John Hurt.
"Cushy pension"? Federal Employees get 1% for each year of service i.e. work 30 years and get 30% of your annual salary as a pension. They also get a 4% contribution to a 401(k). Better than nothing, but not really "cushy". Employees who are required to carry guns get a better deal, but TFA had to do with "IT" employees.
But 2008 wants its stories back.
And that's why we trust the CIA.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
They're spies, aka liars, thieves and criminals.
Yes, but they are our liars, thieves and criminals. As opposed to the other guys liars, thieves and criminals.
Fuck, if they're already putting the nation's security into the hands of a pseudoscientific carnival trick, why not also use an E-meter?
>> they are our liars, thieves and criminals
Well, they're our government's liars, thieves and criminals at least.
"Cushy pension"? Federal Employees get 1% for each year of service i.e. work 30 years and get 30% of your annual salary as a pension. They also get a 4% contribution to a 401(k). Better than nothing, but not really "cushy". Employees who are required to carry guns get a better deal, but TFA had to do with "IT" employees.
$150K salary at retirement, 30% = $45K / year guaranteed. That's more than the average working household, so it is pretty cushy. It may even be more than the new IT guy fresh out of college. So each retiree is like a currently employee on the staff.
Plus keep in mind that these people have paid off their house, put their kids through college, etc. So the 30% of your final salary goes a lot farther than you may think.
If you read about the actual history and accuracy of polygraphs, you will find that they are not "lie detectors" at all, but merely tools of intimidation. (I could cite many, many sources. While not authoritative, the Penn & Teller show "Bullshit" has a very informative episode on the matter. And yes, the show is called "Bullshit" for a reason. Polygraphs are bullshit.)
Polygraphs are used as tools for intimidation in order to interrogate. By themselves, they are worthless. They are security theater, much like the TSA. I really hate to see our country run by people who believe in (or pull) this kind of BS.
"By only employing people selfish and/or stupid enough to want to work for the CIA."
I can assure you they do not hire stupid people.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
I would have more respect for them if they did not rely on an instrument that is easily fooled and has no scientific basis for its use -- the polygraph.
The polygraph is the security industry's equivalent of chiropratic to the medical industry.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
All others we polygraph.
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$45K salary at retirement, 30% = $15K / year guaranteed. That's more than a two person, poverty-level working household, so it is pretty cushy. It may even be more than the new Walmart stocker drop out. So each retiree is like a currently employee on the staff.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Plenty of people who don't take drugs have original ideas.
Also, I saw a sign at the Rally to Restore Sanity that read "Retired CIA Analysts for a Sensible Drug Policy"
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
Darling: So you see, Blackadder, Field Marshal Haig is most anxious to eliminate all these German spies. ...has discovered that the leak is coming from the Field Hospital.
Melchett: Filthy Hun weasels fighting their dirty underhand war!
Darling: And, fortunately, one of *our* spies--
Melchett: Splendid fellows, brave heroes, risking life and limb for Blighty!
Darling:
Michael Reed, freelance tech writer.
The open source folks have continued to struggled with closed Microsoft office formats with little or no progress in some areas. Are employees subjected to the same treatment?
Having read the Microsoft "Open XML" specification, I'm pretty sure Microsoft doesn't really understand all the details of the classic Office file format, either. Seriously. I'd bet good money there's a lot of old, poorly documented that nobody really understands anymore. It was prolly written by programmers in 1995 who have long since moved on.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
They're spies, aka liars, thieves and criminals.
You do realize that the National Clandestine Service (the actual "spies") is only one of 4 departments in the CIA, as well as the smallest department. Most of CIA is comprised of analysts, communications and support staff, and researchers/scientists. And even within the NCS, not every person is an officer, posted overseas and actively engaged in espionage. A lot of them are going to work at headquarters, working on the take brought in by the field officers.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I don't think most of what the CIA does would qualify as "honest". They're spies, aka liars, thieves and criminals.
While that's certainly true of the CIA's operational aspects, their IT guys are mostly just IT guys, just like any other organization -- just with higher value IT assets than most orgs. File storage, printing, word processing, spreadsheets, databases, etc., don't change just because the data is classified. Communications (phones, networks, email, etc.) get rather more complicated, due to security, but ultimately they're after things the corporate world is, too -- they just have rather higher security standards than most orgs. But ultimately an Exchange server is still just an Exchange server.
You need a lot of support personnel for every actual spy, or even intelligence analysis. IT, accounting, HR, purchasing, engineers, doc control, etc. Even PR (marketing).
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I don't think most of what the CIA does would qualify as "honest". They're spies, aka liars, thieves and criminals.
You want them lying to the bad guys, not to you.
I've attended FBI, CIA, NSA ... uh ... events.
Straight and narrow-fests. Usually boring people. Often from small towns.
They make it clear that your job will usually suck and have nothing to do with what you see on TV or read in books 99% of the time.
You generally do not get to say what you do. Sure, the boring stuff isn't classified, but I've learned it is easier just to never talk about anything. Ever.
The FBI guys who I've met were all boy scouts.
The CIA sends out pretty people. Even the men tended to be pretty. In the back office are regular people.
The NSA ... I can't say.
Low government pay when compared to non-startup corporate jobs. EMC employees would laugh at CIA pay. You can look up the government pay scales. http://www.fedjobs.com/pay/pay.html A G-12 makes less than $80K! The only way to be well paid in the government is to stay there for 30 yrs. I'd call that an IQ test failure. Guess I'm not government employee material. I was earning over G-15 rates at age 35 in the private sector.
I saw an actual questionnaire for a similar service position. It said, "Have you ever had sex with an animal?" Honest, it said that.
It's better to ask before you hire than to find the office maskot molested on a lunch break.
Those communications staff are there to recieve reports from the spies, and the analysts to analyse them. The CIA is a spy agency - that is its purpose. Everything it does is either spying, or in support of its spying operations.
And yes, it's shady, secretive, often underhanded and manipulative, and it uses every dirty trick in the book. That's a good thing, because you can be sure that every other country including those with interests hostile to the US is doing exactly the same. Trying to play honestly in a dishonest game is just a sure way to lose.
Just think of a payoff: They'll pay you a million dollars for X information. You get caught, go to prison for 20 years at least. That's only $50,000 a year. You could have made a lot more than that as a cleared admin, and avoided a romantic relationship with Bubba.
In reality, they don't usually pay that much for a run-of-the-mill information passer. Jonathan Pollard got $1,500 a month from the Israelis, and got life in prison. Robert Hanssen was a very high level spy, not just an admin, so he got $1.4 million over 22 years, and the rest of his life in prison (where he will die).
And if you think you're so smart that you have a very low chance of getting caught, then you're an idiot. Hanssen himself was a counterintelligence agent, and that helped him go for as long as he did, but he still got caught.
BTW, one of the things they check is unaccounted indicators of wealth, and they do ask friends and neighbors, and check your financials. I remember a new soldier was investigated back in the 80s because he showed up one day with a new BMW 7-series. This wasn't even caught during a reinvestigation, they just noticed. Turns out dad was rich and gave him the car as a reward for joining the Army. With such a clear reason he was okay, but had he not been able to show a solid source for the money he would have been in a whole heap of trouble.
Every organization has its people who just run things.
Even the CIA needs admins, desktop jockeys, janitors and window washers who have nothing to do with spying.
There is some kind of standardization of ID cards.
They *might* have some generic code, you might get "DOD", "DOE" but also a common one is "U.S. Government" for the entire Intelligence Community (which is a term of art referring to quite a number of agencies). I've seen business cards on them with little more than a "U.S. government" identifier and some generic identifiers for email or phone number.
What is indicated pretty clearly by some kind of color & pattern code is (a) authorization level (b) bool isContractor
The most striking thing about the CIA (and many other cards), is that they don't even have the person's *NAME*.
Yes, I have some first hand knowledge, as I was inside the CIA HQ building about 10 years ago and my escort mentioned how the ID cards don't have any names on them, intentionally.
Most of CIA is comprised of analysts, communications and support staff, and researchers/scientists.
AKA liars, thieves and criminals. By all accounts, the CIA's analysts have a habit of either telling politicians what they want to hear or what the CIA wants them to hear, and even when they're not intentionally lying they tend to get a lot of important things badly wrong.
Generally, working for the federal govt in the U.S., for skilled or highly skilled people, means accepting a ~30-year commitment to public service, during which time you get low pay, reasonable insurance, reasonable vacation time, and (theoretically) reasonable treatment from management during your working years. It also means a fair (not guaranteed unless you hired on before about 1983 when the rules changed) shot at a decent retirement package.
Note in the "inb4" category, just so we don't get sidetracked - people who tell you feds are overpaid have an axe to grind and are misusing statistics to prove their point. The fed pays an almost-living wage to bottom end employees, something that inflates the overall payment stats. They also provide decent health insurance with a similar impact on overall per-person compensation stats. For highly skilled or highly educated employees, though, federal pay is generally lousy. As a Unix SA, for example, I turned down multiple offers of employment over the years. I don't think I ever got an offer that would not have, at minimum, tripled my pay. I didn't take any of them because I liked the idea of working for an employer who I felt reasonably sure would still be around to pay me the pension that (among other factors) persuaded me to take the job in the first place.
In return for stability and a shot at a decent retirement, you have to work till you're old enough to retire. Everybody knows it and accepts it when they sign on.
I wouldn't really call that "dog eat dog". What is the retirement like for public employees in your country? How is it so much better that you think of ours as "dog eat dog"?