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Employee Morale Is Suffering At the NSA
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Ellen Nakashima reports at the Washington Post that morale has taken a hit at the National Security Agency in the wake of controversy over the agency's surveillance activities and officials are dismayed that President Obama has not visited the agency to show his support. 'It is not clear whether or when Obama might travel the 23 miles up the Baltimore-Washington Parkway to visit Fort Meade, the NSA's headquarters in Maryland,' writes Nakashima, 'but agency employees are privately voicing frustration at what they perceive as White House ambivalence amid the pounding the agency has taken from critics.' Though Obama has asserted that the NSA's collection of virtually all Americans' phone records is lawful and has saved lives, the administration has not endorsed legislation that would codify it. And his recent statements suggest Obama thinks some of the NSA's activities should be constrained. 'The agency, from top to bottom, leadership to rank and file, feels that it is had no support from the White House even though it's been carrying out publicly approved intelligence missions,' says Joel Brenner, NSA inspector general from 2002 to 2006. 'They feel they've been hung out to dry, and they're right.' Former officials note how President George W. Bush paid a visit to the NSA in January 2006, in the wake of revelations by the New York Times that the agency engaged in a counterterrorism program of warrantless surveillance on U.S. soil beginning after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. 'Bush came out and spoke to the workforce, and the effect on morale was tremendous,' Brenner said. 'There's been nothing like that from this White House.' Morale is 'bad overall' says another former NSA official. 'It's become very public and very personal. Literally, neighbors are asking people, 'Why are you spying on Grandma?'"
I retired a couple of years ago from a near-30 year career with the Internal Revenue Service.
People tried to kill me on more than one occasion. Dogs were set on me more times than I can remember. A man once openly threatened to kill me, in front of witnesses, while we were standing in a courthouse hallway, on a break, during a jury selection.
People comitted suicide from dealing with us even when doing so made no sense; they simply let their ignorant fears of the Big Bad put them in a bad place, mentally.
When a parade of kooks and idiots testified to Congress in 1998 that we were all baby-eating monsters, NO ONE stood up for us. Horrific legislation that left the agency permanently hamstrung resulted.
Over the last 3 decades, the IRS has actually deserved about 1% of the vitriol poured out on it. Morale is a thing of the past.
Yet, still, no one stands up for the IRS. Those of us who worked there had to adapt. It's possible.
To those at the NSA who are just awakening to the new reality that people are, now and forevermore, going to hate you whether you deserve it or not, I can only say "Welcome to my world. Learn to deal with it. It'll drive you nuts if you don't."
That Snowden got all the attention, maybe others were planing on blowing some whistles
They've been upset for a long time, about doing secret, unapproved missions. It's a snowden LEAK that make their discontent ... public knowledge.
At least, that had better be the story. Because anything else is just a bunch of rich kids whining that they've been outed (and treated poorly). They weren't slaves, prisoners or compelled to remain.
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
Washington Post:
"Last month, we reported on LOVEINT, the facetious term used to describe NSA analysts who misuse their surveillance powers to spy on romantic interests instead of terrorists. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) asked the NSA to get more specific about the misconduct the NSA had uncovered. So the NSA sent Grassley a letter with details of the 12 LOVEINT incidents it has uncovered since 2003.
The incidents have a number of things in common. Almost all of them involved spying on foreigners outside of the United States (one man targeted his American girlfriend, and a few others spied on communications involving both Americans and foreigners). In seven of the 12 cases, the misbehaving employee resigned while the disciplinary process was ongoing. The rest received letters of reprimand, got demoted, lost pay, were denied security clearances or faced other punishments. None of the individuals were prosecuted for their actions."
"Not prosecuted"? No wonder they're not getting any support. (amongst many, many, many other reasons)
While I know there are some crazies out there, I think more than 1% of the scorn heaped on you guys is deserved. I don't know about you personally, but the IRS is responsible for ruining people's lives and lacking proper accountability and due process for the individual taxpayer.
Here's an amusing anecdote about power-tripping IRS agents that luckily didn't end up ruining anyone financially:
I have a friend who got audited one time; the IRS found a minor problem and my friend simply offered to pay the penalty on the spot (it was very minor, like a couple hundred dollars for an improper deduction or something). The IRS auditor told him to sit down and shut up so that he could berate him. My friend wasn't going to have any of that and simply left the IRS office. He never heard from them again about the supposed improper deduction and wasn't asked to pay.
You know what this sounds like? "Aw shucks, people don't like me because they caught me peeping in their windows and jerking off. Don't they know I'm helping to keep them safe? What's wrong with them?"
It sounds like a lot of them are sad people don't like them, not that they were unwittingly helping to ruin America. They need a big ol' whack across the head with a cluebat.
However maybe some of them actually have souls. I'd feel like crap too if I was a party to trampling all over the constitution and promoting a police state. Maybe we'll see another one with a brain and a conscience grow a pair and do something about it. It's hard to do when you have people you love who depend on you but that's life. Life isn't fair. Shit needs to get better and it requires sacrifice. If you can't handle that then you're a crappy patriot.
I don't know about the Gestapo. But I watched interviews with ex-Stasi who continued to believe that they did what needed to be done and hence were patriotic. No second thoughts.
dare I say it: working at _commercial_ spying places should also be met with the same hatred.
I'm looking at you, google. and others, but google is the current poster child of unwanted tracking and spying and is the definition of 'power, out of control'. and yet, people are still lining up to go work there. even full well knowing what they are doing.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I know this isn't a popular belief, but I actually am willing to buy into the idea that most of them had no idea this sort of stuff was going on. You gotta figure that with it being a compartmentalized intelligence agency, the right hand may not know what the left is doing in many cases, particularly for the rank-and-file employees. And by all indications, most of the things we're hearing about really were the result of initiatives being pushed through by top people who had a couple of small teams of developers willing to do their dirty work.
For instance, one of PRISM's selling points was that it was low-budget on account of it only having a few developers. Considering the budget the agency has, I'm guessing they employ a LOT of people, yet we're mostly hearing about programs that only need a handful of people at most. Seems to me that it's entirely plausible that the vast majority of NSA workers actually are decent people doing legitimate (and legal) work, and for them, it's a shame what's happened. By no means am I excusing the ones directly responsible for this stuff, nor the ones who had awareness of it, but I'm willing to bet that quite a few of the rank-and-file are just as outraged as we are, but know that abandoning their mission would only make things worse, since the work that those people are doing is still necessary.
But if acknowledging such a thing is too difficult for most of us here, let's go ahead and believe that every last one of them is irredeemable scum who deserve to die a slow death. Because none of us here have ever been in a situation where people we were associated with did bad, perhaps even unconscionable, things without us having a say in it. Right?
Indeed. Snowden already said that morale there had been terrible for a long time, and people were being kept in line through a toxic combination of fear and false patriotism. He was talking about before he left, of course.
I noticed something else from the articles. The number of CV's being submitted for clearance is higher than any previous time. That implies a brain drain from the NSA, which is good - one of the few things that will really hurt them is when their brightest people suddenly don't want to work there anymore. And it's worth remembering stuff is so compartmentalized there, probably most of the employees had little clue what was really going on. Maybe they suspected but didn't know for sure. They were allowed to see their small part of the picture and nothing else. I bet the NSA folks have learned more about their employer in the last few months than the rest of their careers combined. So not really a surprise many of them are now leaving.
captcha: unhappy
Posting anonymously for obvious reasons...
They knew what was going on. My grad school was funded by the NSA. I never had clearance, but did visit Ft. Meade a few times. Based in the public stuff they were funding (*cough* GNU Radio *cough*) and the types of projects we did, it was very obvious what the applications were.
Everyone I met there was very smart (way smarter than me). If I could figure it out 8 years ago from some funding and vague conversations, they definitely could.
I turned down the offer to work there for ethical reasons. Too creepy even without knowing everything.
...won't visit the NSA to show support, because doing so would show acknowledgement that he is in charge of their actions. He prefers to remain at a distance, so he can politically separate himself from their actions to the maximum extent possible. Judging how few comments there are here blaming him for their activities, it appears to be working well.