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NSA Firing 90% of Its Sysadmins
sl4shd0rk writes "NSA Director Keith Alexander has decided that the best way to prevent illegal data leaks is to reduce the number of ears and eyes involved. During a talk at a cybersecurity conference in New York this week, Alexander revealed his plans to cut 90% of the System Administration workforce at the NSA. 'What we're in the process of doing — not fast enough — is reducing our system administrators by about 90 percent,' he said. Alluding to an issue of mistrust, Alexander further clarified: 'At the end of the day it's about people and trust ... if they misuse that trust they can cause huge damage.' Apparently, breaking the law and lying about it leaves one without a sense of irony when speaking in public."
and pissing them all off, giving them no job to lose, is going to somehow *prevent* further leaks? Brilliant!!!!
Can we fire 90% of the NSA?
Is he saying that sysadmins are particularly untrustworthy? Why not reduce the entire workforce by 90% to reduce the number of ears and eyes involved. Reducing 90% of just the sysadmins won't reduce the total "population" by much (unless I am mistaken in my assumption that NSA is not just a data center). Also, you could try reducing the number of people who know too much - i.e. could do most damage. If the sysadmins fit that category and not, say, the directors or management then you are doing it wrong...
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Great, now NSA will have mismanaged IT systems prone to failures and easier to compromise. As a result thier snooping will be available not only to US government, but to any other entity that would bother to hack their way into under-managed IT system run by remaining 10% of overworked sysadmins.
So firing 90% of their admins and pissing them all off, giving them no job to lose, is going to somehow *prevent* further leaks?
I'm pretty sure the threat of life imprisonment for revealing "secrets" was and is a bit more of a deterrent than the loss of wages ever could hope to be. If someone kicks you while holding a gun to your face are you worried about their foot or the gun?
How do you know Snowden got everything worth spilling? He was only one low level guy.
Dear de facto Dictator for Life Putin,
May I suggest you hang out a big "Welcome former NSA sysadmins" sign on your country. Tell 'em the weather is cold but the girls are hot (and something for the women sysadmins too - we Yanks frown on sexism). Your country may be a sewer due to its government, but as an American I'd be very grateful for anything you can do to help expose the use of our Constitution as toilet paper.
I'm surprised that Keith's head didn't explode when he said "people who have access to data as part of their missions, if they misuse that trust they can cause huge damage.”
He is sort of Public Enemy #1 on that score right about now, with any lackeys who have nontrivial authority right behind him.
If they don't need 90% of their sysadmins, they should have fired them long ago.
But I suspect that they aren't all redundant, so how are they going to maintain their systems? It would be interesting to see their server-to-sysadmin ratio and compare to other companies.
Without the sysadmins to maintain and secure their systems, they may be making their data even easier for hackers to access, so the NSA may end up being a huge liability to the security of the country. I don't see why no lawmaker understands this - data breaches happen every day, even to large companies that follow best practices to secure their data. Why do they think that the NSA's vast data warehouse is not going to be breached when it's such a huge target to non-friendly governments and hackers throughout the world - even governments of countries where most computer hardware is made that have the resources to hide backdoors in that hardware.
The thing is, see, that Skyne.., er, Colossus.., er, the NSA's system has already reached that point, and it's the one telling Alexander to fire most of the people who might be able to turn it off...
It's already too late.
"I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you..."
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
He makes America look like a foolish and ineffectual power mad state.
I thought the label was there since the WWII? You know, overthrowing legitimate governments and installing puppet regimes that soon turn against you over and over again sounds like an insane, ineffectual power trip to me...
Perhaps that's the point. They aren't actually going to fire 90%, just wanting to fish out the ones who are willing to steal classified documents at the first sign of trouble. Seems like a solid honeypot to me, just mention layoffs and then crank up the logging, sit back and find the "enemies of the state".
The last that I knew, the oldest still-classified records were from the Spanish-American War. Don't know it that's still true as I encountered that during the Clinton years, but it really made me wonder what the heck needed to still be hidden after over a century.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin