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FOIA: NSA Contracts Stored In Paper Files, Unsearchable, Unindexed
v3rgEz writes "Wish you were a little more organized? Have trouble finding that archived contract when you actually need it? Don't feel too bad: The National Security Agency has the same problem, claiming that its contract database is stored manually and impossible to search by topic, category, or even by vendor in most cases."
... there don't want to be vulnerable to others agencies like them !
On the upside, for the NSA, that makes a Snowden-like leak pretty much impossible.
It's called a Hollerith card tabulating machine. I can make you a good price!
Ezekiel 23:20
Kind of strange reading this as I always assumed that's how it would be, obfuscated.
Still it's weirdly titillating to see it confirmed.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
The National Security Agency has the same problem, claiming that its contract database is stored manually and impossible to search by topic, category, or even by vendor in most cases."
That's supposed to be a bug? In view of the NSA's own success in compromising other people's digital data I'd have thought that a mess like this could actually be a feature.
Much harder to leak that way.
A search for overly broad keywords such as "CNO" and "computer network attack" would be tantamount to conducting a manual search through thousands of folders and then reading each document in order to determine whether the document pertains to a contract.
(emphasis mine)
That could be network folders (ie: directories) and Word documents, they never said anything was on "paper". The way I read that quote was that they've got heaps of contracts, stored in lots of directories, and even if they did a search they'd have to read each document returned to see if it was a contract pertaining to the FOI request. They're trying to say that's too burdensome, which in theory gives them a way of not supplying the information. In practice, a judge might decide they should be able to do the search in a reasonable amount of time, and force them to comply.
A recursive sig
Can impart wisdom and truth
Call proc signature()
Perhaps they do this as they know they can easily retrieve the copies of the contracts from the vendors' own systems if they ever need to access them.
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
And if you believe that, I have some healthcare to sell you.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
This is either incompetence or malice on a grand scale.
Neither is acceptable. Not for what these dipshits cost us ever year.
Why do these people still have jobs again? No really. I'm having a hard time finding a good reason to give them our tax money year after year.
The author of that "article" needs to open a fucking dictionary and look up the meaning of some words...
Old idea. My financial records are all on paper. In an unheated storage space. When the IRS wants to audit me, they are welcome to sit in there and go through whatever they want.
Have gnu, will travel.
The NSA is evil, not stupid, and this would be very smart.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You should have stopped there. Prefixing sentences by "I'm no fan of X, but ..." or "I'm not a(n) X, but..." never helps.
It's legally safer for them to say that they're incompetent.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
There are government regulations regarding on how to process that kind of stuff. And probably they are breaking a few of them.
The Contractors need to be paid in a timely manner, so their accounting department would need to be able to search these documents on a regular basis. I think their claims regarding their abilities to search for these documents are dubious at best.
Pray you get the underpaid monkeys. If they really want to get you they'll send in a group of very much overpaid monkeys that will read and cross-correlate every line on every page. They will find whatever you tried to hide. All. Of. It. Yes, you'd best hope for the underpaid monkeys...
Unauditable. A simple match enables them to deny everything.
It should be expected. The NSA has very little technical savvy, nor any sizable budget for computer equipment. They're too busy doing their jobs, to worry about extracting useful information out of data.
It's legally safer for them to say that they're incompetent.
And just as accurate.
Perhaps it might be fun to bury them in an storm of small invoices so they spend all their time invalidating them.
If only they had a massive budget and an alarmlingly large team of data analysis and signals intelligence experts to cope with this problem.... Poor guys, suffering like that.
They don't want to be bothered for any information. Therefore, they can't be searched, can't find squat on anything at all. Except if they themselves want data, in which case it is instantly accessible.
It's legally safer for them to say that they're incompetent.
Why should they bother saying anything? They can simply stonewall everything/everyone. You think anyone in the DoJ will prosecute them or act to carry out or enforce any rulings, subpoenas, or warrants from Congress or even the SCOTUS (John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it." - Andrew Jackson)?
Laws don't apply to those who rule and not govern. That's why Congress gave itself a pass on participating in the ACA and from insider-trading laws & regulations They view themselves as rulers, and so they feel they can violate laws with impunity.
And, why shouldn't they? They can and do because fuck you, what are *you* gonna do about it? Hell, half the country is so caught up in the class-warfare, racial-victimhood, (R) vs (D), Progressive/Conservative, "terrists", think-of-the-children, anti-gun/pro-helpless-victim, divide-and-conquer propaganda, that they're busy actually cheering them on and trying to give them even more power.
This NSA surveillance and "above the law" mindset & behavior is part of the natural progression that occurs when governments get too big and powerful, and is to be expected.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Ask whoever writes NSA's checks (probably DFAS, Defense Finance and Accounting Center) for all contract numbers between NSA and (list of interesting companies). Then ask NSA for copies of those specific contracts.
It would not surprise me at all to find out that whichever payment agency, and you may rest assured they are automated, also has copies of the contracts themselves, so while you are at it with the request above, ask for existant copies of the target contracts.
You could always start with asking NSA to tell you in detail who does their accounting, and more specifically, handles accounts payable for contracts.
Their well-known acronym could also stand for "Never Search Anything (for outsiders)".
The computer agency has no computer records.
I contract with the IC and do so strictly as a sub-k through bigger primes for precisely this reason. The contracts portion (the actual writing, editing, reviewing, execution of) is a nightmare. As a sub-k, I'm still subject to FAR (regulations) and such, but my contracts can be much simpler. As an example, the contract my prime has with the Gov numbers in the thousands of pages, and this is not because the prime wants it that way. The Gov has created a self licking ice cream cone keeping thousands of otherwise (and one could argue none the less) needless bodies employed. It's a complete disaster. The consequences to this are very far reaching and in the end wasted billions of tax payer dollars.
Couldn't they just use their backdoor access to Google to scan them using googles book scanning magic and be done in about 20 minutes? Oh, that's right, they're lieing . For a moment I thought this was just their clever way of storing their contracts so they couldn't be searched. Then I remembered, they don't give a fuck.
Congress didn't give themselves a pass on ACA. A few Senators spoke of it but it wasn't in the final bill. Congress isn't immune from insider trading laws and regulations.
They have to say something because Snowden, that's why. Deep Throat, that's why. Samuel Shaw, Ed Morel, Smedley Butler, John Vann, Peter Buxtun, Dan Ellsberg, Bradley Manning....the list really goes on and on. Maybe someday you will be on that list of those who spoke up and ultimately refused to be silenced. Maybe Manning was silenced by prison by his message got out.
Half the country is *always* caught up in something else. But half is not. As usual, the Revolution is led by a small few as it is always the few who are willing to stick their necks out before the rest.
The above the law mindset isn't a function of large government. The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 signed into law by John Adams was certainly done by a federal government that thought it above the law (or criticism, as it were) and that government couldn't be considered large by anyone's stretch of imagination.
Other than that, Spot On Mate :)
There's little doubt this is intentional.
The primary 'hackers' that the NSA is worried about is Congressional oversight and the Government Accountability Office, or any kind of auditors.
Inability to find relevant information is precisely the goal.
A search for overly broad keywords such as "CNO" and "computer network attack" would be tantamount to conducting a manual search through thousands of folders and then reading each document in order to determine whether the document pertains to a contract.
Going from that to "ZOMG! NSA has contracts only on paperz!" seems a bit of a stretch.
http://search.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4497283&cid=45550699
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Congress didn't give themselves a pass on ACA. A few Senators spoke of it but it wasn't in the final bill.
Well, there is dispute over this.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/10/09/fact-check-did-president-obama-exempt-members-of-congress-from-obamacare/
"Like most large employers, the federal government contributes a portion to the premiums of its employees. In fact, like many employers, the federal government pays most of the premiums for its workers; an average of 72 percent on Capitol Hill.
The new provision didnâ(TM)t account for the continued employer contribution for these federal workers who would now be buying their insurance on the exchanges. The exchanges were designed to help people without health insurance and people with overly expensive health insurance. It became clear that without their employer contribution, members and their staffers would essentially be getting a cut in pay and benefits equal to thousands of dollars. Even Grassley, the provisionâ(TM)s author, had tried to amend to law in order to allow the government to continue to contribute to lawmakersâ(TM) and staffersâ(TM) premiums.
What the Obama administration has done is rule that the lawmakers and their staffs will continue to receive the employer contribution to help them buy their insurance on the exchange.
Originally we declared Vitterâ(TM)s assertion to be wrong since any company can decide to help pay for policies that its workers purchase on the exchange so allowing representatives and staff to do so would not be an âoeexemption.â That notion has been challenged by conservative critics of Obamacare who argue that under existing federal statutes Congress had to specifically pass legislation authorizing the premium subsidies for any insurance program other than FEHBP. Since congress did not do this, the administration, at the behest of Congressional Democrats, and, according to Politico, Speaker John Boehner, unilaterally extended premium contributions. By doing this, the critics argue, the administration âoeexemptedâ Congress from the law. "
Congress isn't immune from insider trading laws and regulations.
Again, technically correct, but Congress made it so that it's extremely difficult to enforce.
http://www.rollcall.com/news/congressional_insider_trading_revisited_but_dont_tell_anyone_commentary-224674-1.html?pg=2
Make no mistake: The STOCK Act is still in effect and congressional insider trading still is banned. But it has now become extraordinarily difficult to ensure compliance with the law.
The above the law mindset isn't a function of large government.
I would strongly disagree here, as it is the tendency of any large bureaucracy, especially governments, because of the relative power-with-anonymity that individuals enjoy in such a large group, for natural human failings to become an increasing part of the culture.
Just look at Rome, or the EU, AU, & UK, or China and the former USSR. No matter the particular form of government, once it grows so large & powerful, the people making up that government become increasingly aloof and immune from the laws that punish regular citizens for things those in positions of power within that government get a pass on.
It's simply basic human behavior regarding power relationships that has been studied and confirmed in many experiments over decades.
The above the law mindset isn't a function of large government. The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 signed into law by John Adams was certainly done by a federal government that thought it above th
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
easily vanishes, no traces, no searchable, physical security as is controlled access and so forth... in terms of security it is great.
This isn't a bug; it's a feature.
If you don't want to be spied on, or digitally robbed (or have digitized voting results and elections changed with laughable ease), go manual and physical. At least then they have to break into your house, or hire someone to friend you up to get into your home or business or doctor's office. Makes 'em work hard. At least make them take a personal interest, rather than just vacuuming up everyone's life indiscriminately and sorting through the mess at will later to nail people they don't like. And if they go hands-on in Watergating your life, you possibly can catch them, flashlights in hand, and crack them upside the head with a baseball bat. As they deserve, being liars, thieves, backstabbing enemies and potential blackmailers. Reference the story today about a Canadian woman being denied access to the US because they've read her private medical records and found she was clinically depressed. Thieves. Bastards.
How then do they report on them for tax purposes otherwise?