Why the NSA Can't Replace 90% of Its System Administrators

An anonymous reader writes "Curious about the recently purposed NSA cuts, Courtney Nash explores a few myths about systems automation 'In the aftermath of Edward Snowden's revelations about NSA's domestic surveillance activities, the NSA has recently announced that they plan to get rid of 90% of their system administrators via software automation in order to "improve security." So far, I've mostly seen this piece of news reported and commented on straightforwardly. But it simply doesn't add up. Either the NSA has a monumental (yet not necessarily surprising) level of bureaucratic bloat that they could feasibly cut that amount of staff regardless of automation, or they are simply going to be less effective once they've reduced their staff.'"

Comments

the bright side

[roc97007]

> or they are simply going to be less effective once they've reduced their staff.

Which wouldn't be such a terrible thing.

I'd be far more worried....

[Anonymous Coward]

The worst thing you can do with a person in a privileged access position is tell that person substantially in advance that they have a 90% chance of being made redundant. The overwhelming majority of people are reasonable, rational and won't do anything - but when you have such a large set of people - some won't be so amenable to being pushed out the door.

In short, I'd be surprised if they haven't created a small army of potential Edward Snowden's through this. Wherever I've worked, if we made a system administrator redundant we'd have disabled their account before they were told and then broke it to them - even if it was under consideration, we'd send them home with pay for the duration - it's just common sense.

-SG

Only one thing is for sure...

[bill_mcgonigle]

... 100% of potential leakers are now 90% sure that they're going to lose their job anyway.

Carry on, NSA.

Re:outsource to F*** Up and give up control of dat

[Zontar The Mindless]

Hello? Have you have your sarcasm detector surgically removed?

And please don't do that fucking boneheaded bit with the fucking asterisks. If you're really fucking old enough to say "fuck" and that's what you fucking mean, then fucking say "fuck", already. Otherwise, just fucking use a different fucking word.