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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."
So having a huge amount of very disgruntled people with at least previous access to large amounts of classified data isn't a security risk?
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
"At the end of the day it's about people and trust"
I... it's.... but...
*pop*
and pissing them all off, giving them no job to lose, is going to somehow *prevent* further leaks? Brilliant!!!!
You fire all the people who are responsible for the security of your systems. Wait, what?
Can we fire 90% of the NSA?
and then replace them with intelligent robots who continue to spy for you.
Don't worry, they've already got subcontractors in Hong Kong lined up for the job.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
The NSA is moving all of their infrastructure to a managed cloud service overseas to save money.
They could just pay them well, give them a fair amount of responsibility and respect, and, perhaps... not break the law or violate the constitution.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
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...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Am I reading this right? The NSA think that the issue of mistrust around PRISM is that we worry some whistleblower will leak our information, and not that it's being harvested in the first place? They're deep into cognitive dissonance land over there I see.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
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.
He is going to increase the work of each sysadmin by 10x... ->
Making what is perpetually an overworked position 10x worse ->
Making it not worth the stress for the amount of pay ->
Making every sysadmin in the NSA a ripe target for various bribes...
BRILLIANT!
The people in leadership positions in the USA (government and corporate) are all idiots.
What precisely would a system administrator do with his administrative priviledges revoked?
I'll let you supply your own punchline.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
No, it's simple, you subcontract it out to Google!
When you're the one illegally spying on your citizens I think you've lost all credibility on the trust issue. The NSA needs to look up the word hypocrisy in the dictionary.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Now they just need to gut the rest of the NSA.
Seriously though, if they feel the need for such a mass firing of sysadmins due to a lack of trust, then the top brass know very well that they are doing serious wrong. They have discovered that people have morals and care about their country and the world at large, and based on those morals they cannot be trusted. Once again, thank you Snowden, thank you very much! I do wonder how many sysadmins this equals, which I'm sure is classified.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
so if the NSA is firing people they don't trust... and fewer than 30% of americans trust the NSA... can we fire them? (and the TSA? please?)
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Is a leak at the very top? Sounds like Alexander is the problem.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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?
Don't worry, they've already got subcontractors in Hong Kong lined up for the job.
I think he's in Russia now...
Astounding decision. Piss off a bunch of SysAdmins.
Does the BOFH have a security clearance?
'What we're in the process of doing â" not fast enough â" is reducing our system administrators by about 90 percent,'
Why risk keeping 10% of them, too dangerous, fire them all.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
My personal experience seems to back up my belief that most of these "leaders" see techs as non-human robots, or, at best, "the other" in every equation.
I don't see techs as any bigger of a hole than any other person. Most people in executive positions seem to have a large amount of magical thinking in this area, though. Somehow the "analyst" is more human than the guy that is making sure the actual infrastructure is safe.
If you want your business data to be safe, treat your sysadmin like a human being. They are a key person whether you want to admit it or not.
How about REDUCING 90% of the ILLEGAL data tapping instead?
Silence is a state of mime.
P.H.B. overcaffeinated reaction to bad press back-firing in 3...2...1...
Table-ized A.I.
Be paid to play counter strike all day. The NSA sure can afford it.
Reminds me of a bad employer I worked fo once. The tech company had endless big dreams and always pushed for a new product idea almost every month. They hired lots of talent to get products to market.. Engineers and software people got hired one month to watch another group get axed the next because of budget crunches. It reminded me of a fucken revolving door. Funds shifted endlessly from one group to the next. Show a fancy screen, you got more funds, take a break and you might get chopped. Maybe one product made it to market each year, mostly rushed and in need of rework. The best reduction of staff would be starting from the top, let's say the director should go first replaced with someone with a clue.
Hmm seems to me there is a bigger issue - the MIS-TRUST of the NSA entirely! They don't trust their people - but NO ONE trusts the NSA - so I say lets FIRE 100% of the NSA and shut it down!
The Truth is a Virus!!!
"We don't need this many sysadmins, we'll just outsource to China and Russia."
Table-ized A.I.
but but but but.... the PRODUCTIVE class!
and pissing them all off, giving them no job to lose, is going to somehow *prevent* further leaks? Brilliant!!!!
Yes, I think they need to re-read 1984. The inner party used the outer party to keep the world the way they wanted. This worked against the best interests of the people, but the outer party complied because, while they weren't the main beneficiaries of their efforts, the likely alternative was to be on the losing end of the deal, one of the lower-class citizens. So by being complicit in fucking over the lower class to the benefit of the upper class, they were permitted to maintain middle-class status. So they didn't like what they were doing, but they liked the alternative even less, and so they continued to do it.
The NSA has now decided to kick them out of the middle class. I suspect this isn't going to go the way they've imagined.
Could be just an opportunity to re-label positions to manager or technician, then they save face by stating that they removed 90% of SysAdmins. Systems will always need attention by folks. Even if they are dumb terminals.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
NSA does huge favor for 90% of it's SysAdmins.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
Hey that's fine, I'm sure the Russians and Chinese p0wn'd the NSA computers long ago.
they already have their back-doors.
I take no responsibility for what I say. Even though I'm never wrong
An organization that have no respect for other people having no respect for their workers too? Working for them is no magic shield, only gives them more tools to hit you harder when comes your turn.
That they fire 90% of them from the NSA, then hire them over at the newly created NTA ( we have to increment one...), then state the NSA isn't doing anything wrong anymore?
Personally, instead of BOFH, I thought about xkcd....
Well, I sure as hell wouldn't want to be the guy to deny him one . . .
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Please do call them 'Quislings' for me.
The days where the root password was the key to every kingdom are long gone.
Really, the NSA can't figure out how to encrypt databases without the passwords being accessible to their sysadmins? They can't figure out how to log sensitive information without putting it in clear text? They can't create a system where their security is based on better controls than just trusting the BOFH not to do the wrong thing?
The NSA could use some lessons from the best practices in health care and credit card processing. If the issue is "we're afraid of our sysadmins," you have a bigger issue than your sysadmins.
Was it not a document written by old white slaveholders?
And does it not conflict with the Holy Will of our Lord and Master, Barack Obama?
It is inconvenient, and therefore null, void and obsolete.
So instead of workers who haven't leaked data for years, they're going to replace them with ohhhh let's say me for example. I'd leak the shit out of everything offensive and wrong except I'd do it completely anonymously and mega stealthy so they'd never catch me. Then there's the other thousand people who would do the same that are applying for jobs there to replace them. Then, to top it all off, a bunch of people who currently have access to basically everything are now really pissed off. Yay, time for more leaks followed soon after by more leaks.
More weapons. More Ammo.
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.
During a talk at a cybersecurity conference in New York this week, Alexander revealed his plans to cut 90% of the System Administration workforce
DERP
holy shit, why not give them a warning that you're going to kick their ass to the curb before security comes to their desk with a brown cardboard box. Yeah, that's not gonna piss any of them off before you cut off access. At least the private sector has that one figured out.
Alexander needs to go, yesterday. He's more inept than Ballmer.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
What the Reuters report doesn't really say is if these system admins are current employees or contractors. If they're employees, this is all too convenient. If they're contractors, well, they'll be hired back as soon as this high-profile news event dies down a little. About time for fall sports to start again, and a new TV season.
"If you're doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about." Does that sound familiar, Mr. Alexander?
Obviously, you are very worried.
Get a whole bunch more temps, and more weapons.
Oh this is going to be hysterical. Pass the popcorn.
Sorry General, AI isn't that good yet, regardless of what some software company sales rep has told you about its magic pixie dust administration automation software.
If I were in the remaining 10%, I'd quit no matter how much they paid me. Doing the work of 9 people? That's burn out in less than a month.
The NSA, Congress, Executive, and Judiciary represent a clear and present danger to the People and Constitution of the United States of America. They are violating our god-given rights on a daily basis, lying to us about it, and there is no branch of government that is checking that overreach. If there was, we'd be seeing top officials at the NSA perp-walked to supermax cells and the President of the USA would have been impeached by a unanimous vote weeks ago when he admitted knowing about it and doing nothing about it.
So, dear friends, it is the duty of every patriotic American who still loves freedom to resist the government in every way they can, large and small. If you run a business, refuse to serve anyone from the Congress, Judiciary, or Executive branches. Don't let your kids play with their kids. Ostracize them. If you know how to design systems that resist surveillance, do so and then send them off to live autonomously so no one can compel to you compromise them. If you have the know-how, track & publish the whereabouts of every government agent who thinks spying only goes one-way; send everyone in the Starbucks a text alert every time one of those goons enters the establishment, so you know just who to 'accidentally' spill hot coffee on.
If those kinds of actions are too small fry for you, do something else. Knock yourself out. Do what you can, do what you feel comfortable doing, but don't do nothing. Being quiet about this stuff, letting them get away with it, is the very worst you can do if you don't want to see this country slide completely off the cliff into totalitarianism.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
So who other than sysadmins sets that database server up?
Who backs it up?
Who tests the backups?
Im a DBA, not an SA, but we work in the same production like environments. My take.
The government is going to fire lots of people in order to appear like it is doing something. If the SAs can keep their top secret clearances getting a new job should be easy (even if they suck). As long as the NSA clearance is transferable to another agency. There is a shortage of cleared people. In part because pimps (contract companies) do not want to spend the money to clear enough people and prefer to try to steal them from other companies). Odds are in a top secret environment there is a ton of bloat. Contract companies generally hire anyone who doesn't smell for a high paying job if they already have a clearance (paying to get a qualified person cleared hurts profit margins). So odds are a vast number of these SAs are totally useless. There are also probably too many of them because contract companies make money off of bodies.
That being said, there is almost certainly a vast amount of bloat in the agency and the process that keeps most of the SAs extremely busy doing bullshit. The contract companies are ok with this (and most don't understand the difference) because more bodies means more money. With all the finger pointing that goes in the government, the government drones are just playing CYA and again don't grasp the difference (many of them do work hard to be fair).
Improving efficiencies with automation... This can work if implemented slowly. However, this is clearly a typical government 'oh my god people are looking at me, lets appear to do something' reaction. They will spend a vast amount of money and waste it. Contract companies will happily bid on these projects and tell the government what they want to hear. When you win a contract you are paid per body/ per hour so unless you are a complete idiot you are guaranteed to turn a profit. If the project goes over budget it means more profit for the contract company. Even if they get fired (see IBM's recently firings) they still make money and its better to do a crap job and get fired then to not do the job at all because you can't lose money. Google FBI Case book project to see the case in point about a post 9/11 boondoggle where the vendors made lots of money.
If I was an SA at NSA I would be wondering if this will cost me my top secret clearance. This is guaranteed job security because there is always another job for you if you have one. Companies are far less willing to pay the government to clear people (its not as expensive as you think) so there is a big demand for my skills. I would be looking for another job immediately. I would not want to deal with the hassle. If this jackass cost me my clearance, I am liable to be on a flight to Russia to extract his ass back to the US free of charge. Guy cost me money.
As an IT person, when I do work for the government in my opinion, I do work for the taxpayer. I don't care what vendor's name is on my check. Now vendors don't want me to see it that way (so I don't tell them). It really doesn't matter to me who wins a contract, they are then putting out advertisements in the same pool of applicants. The longer I do this, the more I get annoyed. Vendors try to extract as much money as possible from the taxpayer (none of it goes to me, I am paid a salary based on my rate and how much I can squeeze their profits). They give the impression of trying to do a good job, but the real goal is to bill as many hours as possible. As the person paid to implement these contracts there is not a lot I can do about it. Trust me, the government bureaucrats don't care what I think. The mere act of me trying to tell them could get me fired (and black list me from ever getting a clearance again).
I do not have sympathy for Snowden. I am also totally creeped out by the NSA and would avoid working there unless I absolutely had to have a job. There are plenty of other ways to report this material to congress without stealing. I believe you cannot be prosecuted for telling congressman something. If not there are ot
Seems as though the shoe is actually on the other foot. With the exodus of secure email services now up to two, and I expect that will grow, it would seem it is the people that do not trust the NSA. I would not work for the NSA, their actions in combination with being a batch of corporate bitches will result in the death of I.T. in the US. The problem will be self rectifying, when they have killed the economy, even their paychecks won't cash.
This isn't so much about the content of the article, rather than the links the author provided.
"Apparently, breaking the law and lying about it leaves one without a sense of irony when speaking in public." links to an article on globalresearch, where the author mostly just rants about his opinion, and does not cite any evidence to support his claims- the article does not say anything about where he lied about breaking the law. I'm not here to argue whether this topic is right or wrong, just want to expose what I feel is a very poor citation supposedly backing your claim.
When you state "breaking the law and lying about it", I'd like to know what law was actually broken? The go-to on this is 4th amendment rights, etc etc, and while you may feel your rights were violated, the law was not in fact broken. The author of the linked article breathlessly exclaims, "He’s in charge of lawlessly spying. He directs illegal hacking." with no evidence to supporting what is actually illegal, and quickly moves to the next topic, adding more and more sensationalist vocab to the article.
Everything NSA has done, whether you agree with it or not, is lawful. Congress passed laws allowing this to happen. Executive Branch ordered this to happen. Judicial Branch ruled it constitutional, in so much that this program and every one of these requests for targeting a US person all go before the FISA court. The constitution, and subsequently the laws written, has been interpreted by the Justice System to allow this.The system of checks and balances is in place.
When making claims on slashdot, I would hope the authors would cite more scholarly articles to support their claims, rather than an author who has an average sentence length of about 5 words, and ends the article predicting because of things like this, "thermonuclear warfare is possible" (and seriously, who says "thermo" anymore?) Please read the article, it is quite... out there?
So does that mean 90% of them were never needed in the first place and you were just wasting taxpayers money?
Or possibly they are needed and you'll now outsource the jobs to the Chinese?
I'd say go with the Russians. They know a lot about security, and have at least one person who can teach about how the NSA operates.
My guess is that something got lost in translation from the grunts up to the boss. The idea, and it's a good one, is to reduce privileged access. It's a solid, time-tested tenet of IT security (just google "principle of least privilege"). If people don't have access, they can't do bad things. A company I was associated with back some years ago did a complete audit of all privileged access and revoked over half of all privileged accounts. Automating functions so that it doesn't require someone to manually perform an action isn't exactly rocket science either. We've only been doing that in IT since forever. My guess is that very few of these people will actually lose their jobs. They'll just move on to something else within the NSA.
You shitbird progressives are just loaded up with all this incomplete and incorrect thinking. Let me guess, you don't have a job (or much of one) and haven't filed many tax returns yet, no?
Aside from all the other relevant topics around this issue, no, the NSA CANNOT AFFORD IT.
Nothing the federal or state government is doing nowadays can be described as something they can afford. They have already spent us nearly 17 trillion dollars into the red.
Oh, and by the way, the government can never afford anything anyway, they are spending citizens money, they don't have anything they do not steal from us.
And we are getting fucking tired of it.
anyway you look at it, it is a very bad sign.
Can't we use FOIL to recover lost files? I have a couple of directories I would like to recover.
At least people would see some value from their tax dollars...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
is all I would leave them.
This is likely causing a panic in Provo. But Mormons are good honest people, the very salt of the earth (that is, the ones that aren't politicians) and I know they'll find better more productive work in the end. Probably will strike up an economic recovery in Utah.
...hmmm... didn't the NSA start out as a secret agency??
Actually, so many of these leader's decisions are both suboptimal in reasoning and results that it's hard to argue they're human. They refuse to acquire useful metrics to validate data, they care more about how healthy a company looks than how healthy it is, and their insistence on being the final decision maker when they refuse to perform any research of their own is frankly annoying.
We all want to feel important...which is more easily achieved by becoming important than by mandate.
I am John Hurt.
Bonus points for whoever added the entry for
Americans who spied on Americans -
NSA
Does the BOFH have a security clearance?
I think we can safely assume that he has already provided himself with Top Secret clearance long ago...
Until the American public actually demands a solution and holds all of the pols accountable, the only thing that will happen is projects like this go deeper. Which probably means the projects become even more radical and intrusive because there will be no check or balance against them.
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
The last report I read said they were switching to two-man tandem teams for Sys Admin's.
So did they double the Sys Admin count and then cut it by 90%?
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9240151/Expanded_2_person_rule_could_help_plug_NSA_leaks
You need better friends who actually care about their families. Some things are more important that hot pockets and mortgages.
Actually I have.
Here is reality:
The DBA's have no idea how to do that.
Application Support is headed by a dev who has no idea how to do that.
The backup team are just another group of sysadmins. Since the DBAs nor the App team have time for it they need to be able to decrypt the db dumps to make sure the backups work.
The "lying about it" link comes from a website run by an anti-american consipracy theorist who writes nonsense like this
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
Alluding to an issue of mistrust
Now you know how it feels, NSA. Can we fire 90% of you? Please?
Good luck with that.
'At the end of the day it's about people and trust ... if they misuse the trust that they won't be honest with the American people about all of the ways the NSA is COMPLETELY IGNORING THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION, they can cause huge damage. To me. Look at my furrows of worry! I have a lot invested in this ride! Shut them up!'
*facepalm* Oh Bill Hicks, I miss you.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Naturally, the NSA doesn't trust their enemies, and so it spies on those who oppose them. Then, they start to worry about their allies, and so they spy on their allies. Next, they start to worry about the citizens they serve, and so they spy on their own citizens. Then, they begin to worry about their own employees, and since they don't trust anyone to spy on their employees, they must eliminate them. Finally, their computer doesn't trust the organization which owns it, and so it begins to spy on the NSA.
The NSA, one organization, under surveillance, with privacy invasion for all.
Everyone here is misreading this. It is very common for organizations like this to grant sys ad priviledges to folks who don't need it to do some function rather than just give them limited priviledges that allow them to just do their assigned job (this is a whole 'nother issue of bad practices). They are going to reduce the number of personnel with root sys ad access and either automate their function or give them limited priviledges. They are not reducing the work force.
They just told a large number of sysadmins they are going to be discarded like used tissue for no fault of their own. I wonder how many will hold a grudge.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
AC's head just imploded over a joke. I guess a republican with a sense of humor would be too much to ask for.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Yeah, but it isn't as sensational when you think reasonably about this. Firing them and warning them that they are going to be fired is stupid, which fits the narrative here.
Four star general in the United States Army and head of U.S. National Security Agency discovers after 62 years that there are some humans that can not be trusted. After an intense investigation, it was uncovered that director of the NSA Keith Alexander in fact changed his name from Adam Weber shortly after crawling out of a bomb shelter he was sequestered in to by his father and mother at the tender age of 10. Famous actor Brendan Fraser is well known for portraying Keith Alexander a.k.a. Adam Weber in the lesser known 1999 documentary A Blast from the Past that follows the real life of Keith Alexander, his father, and his mother during their self imposed quarantine and the emergence of Keith Alexander in to a modern and morally questionable society.
How can anyone still think rag-tag terrorists are worse than these systemically-destructive fucksticks?
yeah... say that to your children and your spouse when you're facing an empty refrigerator and pantry, or a whole lot of heating and utility bills. You're essentially telling your loved ones that an ideal is more important than their safety and well-being. Understand that saying and following through on noble ideas, and standing up for your beliefs bears a high cost. Not just to you, but to your loved ones because they have to share the same burden through no fault of their own. That's a _hard_ thing to do, friend. It's the primary reason why so few people actually do stand up for their ideals-the thought of having to go home to their families and tell them that eating and keeping a roof over their heads just got a lot harder is frightening. Especially considering that many spouses won't stick around long for that.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
... of the executive branch. Can we start at the top?
Move on to the head of the TSA.
Step 1: To increase security, fire 90% of sysadmins
Step 2: Make the remaining 10% do the jobs of the fired 90%. Plus their own jobs. Plus the additional work of any new projects/expansions.
Step 3: Profit! (For foreign hackers who break into the under-secured servers and for overworked sysadmins who turn leakers ala Snowden.)
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
When I was in the armed forces, we were issued Top Secret clearances but they were compartmentalized clearances. One unit didn't know what the other was up to unless we were tasked with the same mission. If you get rid of 90% of the sys admins, this leaves only 10% to split access to the data they're trying to protect. This seems like less people would have greater access to more data, and would leave you with limited ability to keep data restricted to individual compartments within the security structure. Also, the leak didn't come from within the NSA itself so why are they culling their own staff? Doing this will make them more reliant on outside contracting firms, which was the problem in the first place if I recall. This just demonstrates the real problems are at the top of the management structure. Outside contractors should have zero access to any of this data period. This move just flies in the face of common sense.
So this is their solution? I'm pretty sure those sys admins were there for a reason. Sort of like chopping off your head to cure headaches. Technically, yes, you got rid of the headaches.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Bummer. Where else are the high school dropouts going to pull in $120K+ for IT work in paradise.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Insane. The amount of power sysadmins have can reach the scale of full information from any organization they work for. What permits guarantee of control is a consequence mechanism, a law regime, if there is no consequence, either firing or keeping like it is will not avoid people to cross that line of non-ethical behaviour, Russia has not understood that they giving shelter to Mr. Snowden has opened a door for a karma effect soon by people doing the same against Russia, and sheltering in US, thats definitely not the way to address this topics. Information is virtually impossible to be controlled, its human factor that can change, and this topic should always be addressed from the human perspective and not the process perspective, you need to manage your people, there is no 100% secure information system in the world. Because there is not also 100% ethical or non-ethical information, a country can indeed commit non-ethical actions by their intelligence to protect their people. The rights of people are after the rights of the state, no one has ever understood that, not even the American people who wrote the first amendemnt and which agree that having a gun is the right to defend themselves from their government, what they dont realize is that that is the right to defend from the Regime not from the country, and a intelligence system defends the people by first, I repeat, first, I repeat, first, defending the integrity of its country. By default a country dont trust anyone, full stop. The several human mechanisms of check-points for everyone working with direct access to information, has centuries of refining, and adjustment, and its the best it can be done, if someone breaks this trust must face consequence. The solution to those who do not agree or are not able to see this pragmatic perspective, but realistic, is to build a space ship with capacity to reach out of Planet Earth and either stay in orbit living from sun energy and a self recycle food production from own faeces, or create a army and implement a world dictatorship, or implement a world anarchy where no trust and security must be guarantee by any country or similar organization.
"Email has been very slow and now I can't get to it at all"
"You said you wanted to make sure no unauthorized personnel had physical access, so I encased the server in quickcrete... I imagine it is probably overheating"
Booz Allen Hamilton
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
So, I was researching to comment/argue with a previous post and typed into google "goal of the nsa"- and the first link was: http://www.nsa.gov/about/strategic_plan/
Coincidentally that returned "Internal Server Error...unable to complete your request."
HAH!
Ah, yes, the difference between how the world is supposed to work, and how it DOES work.
The place where I'm working now really does do it the way they're supposed to (for the most part), and they cut tickets for everything and document the living crap out of all of it. After 17 years of working mostly alone with god-like access to almost anything I touched it's driving me insane.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
... than a bunch of BOFH that used to work for the NSA.
They can take my LifeAlert pendant when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
This is how Skynet is born.
ungggghhhh
They have 1000. So they want to downscale to 100. Of course that means they either have to downscale their data, too (won't happen) or upscale how much each sysadmin has access to.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Here's a clue for the clueless. When the NSA pronounces ANYTHING in public, it is lying. Even the dumbest sheeple should be able to work out why. So what kind of idiots would even discuss such a statement? Ah- now we get to the real reason Slashdot (and similar forums) exists, and it certainly isn't enlightenment.
The NSA is expanding faster than at any previous time. This is driven by TWO factors. The absolute rise of insanely cheap computing power, and the systems to use it. And the desires of the elites that rule the USA and other nations in the West.
The people that really control the NSA have but one policy- "if it can be done, DO IT, and don't worry about how we might use all the new intelligence we gather". Although very few sheeple know it, we have been at this point before. Real modern full surveillance concepts began in the early 20th century, when it became apparent that the ENTIRE population of a nation was of some degree of interest to the rulers. Before political emancipation, the greatest part of a population was the tedious and uninteresting "serf" class- lacking votes or any real influence.
So, a number of nations employed psychopaths who started to create full surveillance projects, with the intent of spying on everyone. In each case, when the implications of such an ambition became obvious to senior forces within the government, the projects were closed down in horror. But these happened long before the age of the computer.
Now times are very different. No-one stands on the side of privacy, or an expectation of reasonable limits on government powers. The opposite logic is in play, encouraged by much grooming of the sheeple by the mainstream media. So the NSA can work with Microsoft to put a camera, microphone, and movement sensor system into the homes of millions of Americans, and no-one even raises an eyebrow. You are too boring for the NSA to monitor, the shills scream, even as the sheeple learn of the amazing extent of previous full surveillance NSA operations.
The NSA gathers information for the use of others- and you should never forget this. The elite want to know, in real-time, what the sheeple are thinking, and how effective the latest mainstream media propaganda campaigns are proving to be. A blind man without a sheep dog cannot control a flock of sheep. The NSA are the eyes and ears of those that really control the USA.
And then the NSA provides the ultimate leverage information for 'persuading' people who prove key to choose the 'right' courses of actions. Most people with power or influence are easily blackmailed. And the blackmail usually promises to reduce that power or influence, so it is almost always very effective. BTW why do you think it is that American politicians can legally engage in insider-trading? American politics is the dirtiest on the planet.
As the NSA grows, there is a terrible consequence. The elites DEMAND that all barriers to such growth be exterminated. So, legal rights to privacy must be eliminated. Sheeple even THINKING such rights are a good idea must be changed by mainstream media propaganda campaigns. The sheeple must be converted into willing supporters of police state abuses. This creates an obvious vicious circle- or positive feedback, accelerating the abuses.
So Mr. Pot is worried about privacy? LOLOL.
Call me when there's something noteworthy.
I've seen overreactions before but this beats it all - get rid of 90% of those who know how it works and expect it to still work?
Just... what a frickin moron.
You're essentially telling your loved ones that an ideal is more important than their safety and well-being
I'm not essentially telling them that, I'm explicitly telling them that, except replace "safety" and "well-being" with "privilege" and "class-status." You have no idea what safety and well-being actually mean.
Especially considering that many spouses won't stick around long for that.
Other people's poor marriage choices are not my problem.
http://thisisnthappiness.com/post/57775093467/tricky
Who else remembers the graffiti?
"Flush twice, it's a long way to Watergate"
and
"Nixon: The Only Dope Worth Shooting"
Pity. He now - despite paranoia and megalomania - seem innocuous after what came to us at the start of the following decade - and persisted ever since.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
We are actively looking for 90% of you to let go. Best keep your ducks in a row and play by the rules or you'll be on the short list, Sport.
People think that the ones they see and talk to are more human and more important than the others. That's everybody.
The problem is that those managers aren't interest in know the people they are managing. So, they see and talk with a minimum number of people, specialized in talking to them. As a consequence, anybody specialized in doing real work is trated as less human, and not important.
I have no idea on how to make big organizations work.
Rethinking email
And the DBA team is always there when a computer starts to type the encryption key password. You do plan to encrypt the key, right? And how do you make sure the admins didn't install a keylogger?
At the real life, you trust whoever made your hardware, whoever wrote your softwares, whoever have physical access to your computers and whoever installs software on them. There is no way out.
Rethinking email
Read facebook and slashdot all work day.
Shouldn't they go full [180?] and hire 9x as many people and compartmentalize? You're in charge of this server, you're in charge of this server.
This is what I was thinking. Fewer eyes on large swathes of data, and limited responsibilities. Furthermore, if something leaks, it's easier to pinpoint the sysadmin that might have done it (although the analysts working with the server's data would be more likely).
That's hard core millitary logic right there. "lets not fix the real problem, lets just fire people who could point them out"
Good leaders run toward problems, bad leaders hide from them.
First it was basically technology and development, where corporations (most from Silicon Valley, just program managed by the big DoD firms), abused the arrangement by just delivering vaporware and overpriced consultants. Of course the tech eventually got there (at least by 2006) with the aftermath...
And now with Snowden, it's shows the failure (?) of Eagle Alliance (EA was created to make IT into a COTS like effort, in the end to reduce IT costs and keep the agency 'current' in skillset); where it appears you had a group of competent IT admins, but regardless of right OR wrong, the bottomline truth is these admins had the same ethics as any IT guy in a Fortune 500 company. And we all know fortune 500 IT admins think with their convictions than follow the rules.
Trust is one of the biggest things in the intel community, hence why it's a tight knit group and honestly a bunch of really nice folks. It's the orders they get from the politicians that make things messy, but you take an oath to trust and execute.
It is my experience that if you reduce the number of people involved in an activity it's easier for one person to subvert the whole system.
Instead of having fewer eyes they should have enough cross checking eyes to prevent one person going rouge (without being detected at least).
Fewer people = more possible abuses of power.
So the answer to a disgruntled employee blowing the whistle is a lot more disgruntled ex-employees?
This should be interesting to watch. I'd better stock up on popcorn.
Snowden was a contractor. It turns out the NSA is a sprawling outsourced mess possibly designed mostly to funnel money into the pockets of people that are to be "rewarded". It's a depressingly third world way of doing things. Expect a lot of social and family connections between those who chose the contracting companies and those running them.
I bet he'd be playing on a connection with ultra-low latency and killer bandwidth too.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
C) The person making the announcement pulled an impressive number out of their arse without actually having a clue what is done let alone what can be trimmed.
Cloud computing could be the culprit
Casteism
Isn't the NSA all about promoting data leaks in others?
So who other than sysadmins sets that database server up?
Who backs it up? Who tests the backups?
Who watches the watchers? (I can't be arsed looking up the fancy latin for it)
He has a clearance of "no-one"
Recall that old joke - no-one has a clearance higher than the boss.
"if they misuse that trust they can cause huge damage"
Odd the NSA didn't take that to heart themselves...
Please help metamoderate.
Competent != (moral || lawful)
You can be "moral" without being lawful (See: moral crusaders, given the elasticity of the definition of moral (I.E. Westbro Baptists and Islamic extremists both see themselves as moral) you can do some highly illegal stuff and still be "moral").
Also, you can be lawful without being moral.
You should have used the && operator, whilst you can be both moral and lawful without being a complete tosser it is very, very difficult.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
People who use "progressive" as a pejorative amuse me. Not progress! Anything but progress!
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
JP4 + lots of paper + lots of wood dust + lots of oxgyen rushing in faster and faster as the fire grew. Then the steel frame softened in the heat (I'm sure you've seen a blacksmith in the movies so can grasp that idea), the burning building could not support the weight and the whole thing came crashing down so hard that it ground a lot of that aluminium, steel and wood to powder - which added to the inferno. Big surface area, big reaction - stuff burns.
Your denial of this disgusted me especially since the tinfoil hat black helicopter 9/11 was a government bomb idiots could point to someone labelling themselves as an engineer to back them up.
Firing SysAdmins because... "At the end of the day it's about people and trust ... if they misuse that trust they can cause huge damage.'
The most ironic thing is the sheer idiocy in their implied position that we, the people, are "ok with the NSA spying on us - as long as they have less people doing the spying."
They really need to hire a very good PR firm if they want to foist such nonsense on us. Or perhaps they can just stop their spying program. I kinda have a feeling that doing so will cause the trust issues will diminish significantly. ;-)
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!