The NSA Is Looking For a Few Good Geeks

itwbennett writes "Dan Tynan noticed something curious when he was reading a TechCrunch story (about Google's mystery barges, as it happens). There was a banner ad promoting careers at the NSA — and this was no ad-serving network fluke. Tynan visited the TechCrunch site on three different machines, and saw an NSA ad every time. In one version of the ad, a male voice says, 'There are activities that I've worked on that make, you know, front page headlines. And I can say, I know all about that, I had a hand in that. The things that happen here at NSA really have national and world ramifications.'"

Comments

world ramifications...

[arthurpaliden]

"The things that happen here at NSA really have national and world ramifications."

Like making the rest of the world distrust and hate the USA.

Re:world ramifications...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Nazi war machine contributed to a several engineering accomplishments in history. Does that make World War 2 any less bad?

Not being evil (or not 100% evil) is not an excuse for allowing evil people to take advantage of a seemingly unstoppable tool.

Re:world ramifications...

[number11]

I am probably going to get modded and/or flamed to oblivion for saying this, but listening to that podcast made me believe that not everything the NSA does is bad.

Of course not. Very few things in life are all black or all white. The NSA is like the neighbor who poisons any dog that comes onto his property, and you're pretty sure he shoplifts, but if you need a hand hoisting an engine or a ride to the store, he's always willing to help.

That doesn't mean he shouldn't be locked up, though.

Re:world ramifications...

[WWJohnBrowningDo]

The choice isn't between having the NSA or flushing that $10 billion down the toilet every year. The choice is between having the NSA or increasing the NASA budget by 50%. The choice is between having the NSA or better endowing social security. The choice is between having the NSA or paying down the national debt.

You're right, not everything they do is bad, but what little good they have done is trivial compared to what $10 billion should have contributed to our society each year.

Re:world ramifications...

[interkin3tic]

I feel like you could apply this as a meta argument: not every godwin instance is bad.

Good geeks?

[jez9999]

At this point, no "good" geek would work for the NSA.

Re:Good geeks?

[Fwipp]

I like this post, because I can't tell if it means
"No honorable person would work for the NSA"
or
"Anyone applying to the NSA is out to betray them."

Re:Good geeks?

[gstoddart]

At this point, no "good" geek would work for the NSA.

Define 'good' and define 'geek'.

If you think there aren't people who work in the tech field who will say "I'm totally in favor of this, because it protects us from the terrorists", you're likely sadly mistaken.

Geeks aren't some uniform group of people who all believe the same things. Reading Slashdot should show you that quite readily in about 2 minutes.

Many of us might say "yeah, not on your life", but I bet almost as many might say "sure, I'm in, sounds fun".

Re:Good geeks?

[metlin]

You're an idiot.

That was von Braun, for one. For another, Oppenheimer was aghast at the destruction caused by the atomic bomb (he quoted the Bhagvad Gita, "I am become Death -- the destroyer of worlds." after the Trinity Test) and actively campaigned for non-proliferation.

If anything, his sympathies towards the other sides caused him to be a martyr to McCarthyism. Hell, even von Braun commented that, "In England, Oppenheimer would have been knighted."

Oppenheimer is the poster child for how scientists have little control over the political consequences and use of their discoveries, and how the political institutions would happily discard them once they're wrung dry.

Not worth my time.

[Anon-Admin]

I looked into the NSA and the CIA. neither pay anywhere near what the private sector pays. Both want to pump you up on "Doing your national duty", "Serving your country", and/or "Protecting your fellow Americans"

If they want IT talent, they need to pony up the cash.

Give me a break.

[Anonymous Coward]

They actually do quite a lot of other things as well there, like research into improving cryptography for example.

Seriously? Improving it as in finding holes that they can exploit and tell no one else about? Or spending millions on research into how to create holes they can hope to get included as encryption standards?

From the link above:

The N.S.A.'s Sigint Enabling Project is a $250 million-a-year program that works with Internet companies to weaken privacy by inserting back doors into encryption products. This excerpt from a 2013 budget proposal outlines some methods the agency uses to undermine encryption used by the public.

Re:Give me a break.

[lgw]

President Carter make a rule that the CIA can't employ unsavory characters as local operatives (e.g., we can't have an actual terrorist as a mole in a terrorist organization). Our human intelligence took a nosedive and never really recovered. Maybe it's time to fix that (if we haven't already), and just live without the NSA for a while.

I've said it before but: defund the NSA, fire everyone, bulldoze the buildings, and let it serve as an example to other agencies about overreach. Sure, loss of SIGINT will be a problem, but the NSA has become a bigger problem. End it, and start over once you're sure it's really gone.

Re:America

[icebike]

Enough advertising overcomes any negative consequences of your actions.

Pretty much this.!

By "owning" it in advertising and public speeches and press releases, they hope to pull a "Toyota" maneuver.

(When Toyota was facing run-away vehicles and brake problems with spectacular crashes, they began an ad campaign touting their safety. They are still at it today with a drumbeat of ads telling how safe their cars are and totally ignoring the massive recalls they were forced into. I suspect Toyota learned the technique from Iomega which did the same thing in the face of their Famous Click of Death drive series).

I predicted this some months ago. I suspect going forward they will just start saying in effect: "Yeah, we read your mail. Get over it." Now that its out in the open, they will become bolder and brasher, and no mere legal barriers will stand in their way, (not that they ever did). There are just enough useful idiots out there that believe this is a "good thing" that the NSA will probably get away with this tactic.

Technical solutions are going to have to be devised, better encryption, multi-path routing, etc. And instead of welcoming their contributions, crypto developers are going to have to understand that they can't be trusted.