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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 would say these are exactly the sorts of questions we should be asking, and they should be able to answer.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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Literally, neighbors are asking people, 'Why are you spying on Grandma?'
So, they're hoping that the public approval of the president will keep them from having to come up with an answer to that question?
I guess nothing alleviates the need for thoughtful introspection like a big pat on the head from the master.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
The problem is, no one has a clue what the NSA is doing. Even if they are the kind of people who would normally support spying for defense purposes, it's not even clear what defensive purposes the NSA is serving.
When Obama defends the NSA spying programs, he says, "If we're gonna do a good job preventing a terrorist attack in this country, a weapon of mass destruction getting on the New York subway system, et cetera, we do want to keep eyes on some bad actors."
OK, but that's not very convincing, especially when a few months ago Obama was saying the war on terror is over.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Violating the constitution SHOULD make you feel like shit.
Hint to NSA minions who want to redeem themselves: there is no apology more sincere than hara-kiri. Spill your guts, and we might forgive you.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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."
Sure, Obama should take the heat, and certainly he is standing up for them in my experience.
But it's hard to buy the narrative of NSA employees and leadership as innocent victims. They are following poilcy, but Obama doesn't personally design and approve all activities of the million person, trillion dollar executive branch. Much of their activity is of their own design and initiative.
They may be unhappy but they need to stop targeting it at someone else. They are responsible. Perhaps they should feel a little guilty that Snowdon was the only one with the nerve to act responsibly.
That Obama would condemn and stop being ambivalent
Obama is not being ambivalent at all, he approves the NSA program. You could know this before he was elected the first time, because he went out of his way to vote in favor of the program.
The reason he sounds 'ambivalent' is because, like all politicians, he tries to confuse the gullible by saying things to appease both sides on an issue.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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)
'It's become very public and very personal. Literally, neighbors are asking people, 'Why are you spying on Grandma?'"
Were they my neighbors, I would be asking the same thing.
Were they my friends, I would shun them.
Were they my significant other, I would leave them.
The notion in the USA that the minions are innocent and "just following orders" is ridiculous. Unless conscripted (which these people are not), they are as complicit as their masters. These people are damaging the USA in profound ways. They deserve it to be uncomfortable every step of the way.
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 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.
They are just biding their time until the penalties compound enough for them to simultaneously garnish his wages and seize his house.
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.
Don't do bad shit, so you don't have to feel bad about it.
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."
The problem is that Secret Santa is impossible during the holidays there.
The bastards got caught, and the poor little dears are upset..
Fuck 'em.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
I took an english class in college on the "rhetoric of intimidation". that is, how to write in order to intimidate. Not surprisingly, example #1 was the IRS. the professor had spent years studying with them and working with them. One of her favorite stories was when she learned that the majority of the time, an audit occurred because the IRS's records on you didn't match, and rather than figure it out they audit you to make you figure it out.
My best friend works with a lot of self-employed people. One of them had several (3 or 4) years in a row where his tax refund would have been miniscule, something like $10 or $20 in the black, so he didn't even bother sending in the forms. He figured he'd just let the government keep the money. The IRS responded by sending him a bill for roughly $10,000 owed, because they figured that was a nice round number to make up.
I'm sure everybody here has anecdotes like this. That "1%" of bad eggs you talk about must have been terribly terribly busy.
He said 'Hara-kiri', not sure if that's specifically 'Seppaku'.
I think we'd all be better off if they pulled a wood chipper up in front of the NSA building. Feet first for the big cheeses, head first for the foot soldiers.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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
You really think this is down to Obama. That if there was another suit in the Whitehouse things would be any different.
You really don't get it do you? You must have some strange notion that democracies are run on behalf of the people or something. In fact all political systems are an elite fucking over every one else. The different flavours of political system just define how the people choose who does the fucking over. And the intensity of the fucking over defines how often that choice is made.
The problem that the world faces is that the media conspires to hide the extent of the fucking over, and modern technology seeks to limit the peoples ability to make a choice.
They've been upset for a long time, about doing secret, unapproved missions. It's a snowden LEAK that make their discontent ... public knowledge.
Meh. I disagree - I think most NSA employees love that they get to do something really james-bond-ish, get a blank-check budget, and have essentially unlimited power over everyone else. There is no doubt a strong voyeuristic angle to the whole thing. They're also, by and large, getting paid obscene amounts of money.
I've met a number of people who work government jobs with clearances and they all act so goddamn smug about it, I've wanted to punch them in the mouth.
I think they were all quite happy nobody knew the power they had; they were "getting away with it." Now that we do, they're demoralized because they don't get to lord over us with the mystique. Plus, robbing the cookie jar isn't fun when everyone sees you do it.
Fuck 'em. I hope the place becomes a miserable place to work and the whole thing falls apart at the seams.
Please help metamoderate.
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.
Senator Obama spent of all of 2007 lying his ass off. He has taken every single one of GWB's radical policies, and cemented them as the new normal. It is shocking to realize that we could have a president more cynical and abusive to American values than GWB was, but Obama proves we are just beginning to plumb those depths.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I was there for an interview, I turned it down.. Say I'm working at N.S.A. Somebody puts a code on my desk, something nobody else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it. And I'm real happy with myself, 'cause I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East. Once they have that location, they bomb the village where the rebels were hiding and fifteen hundred people I never met, never had no problem with, get killed.
Now the politicians are sayin', "Oh, send in the Marines to secure the area" 'cause they don't give a shit. It won't be their kid over there, gettin' shot. Just like it wasn't them when their number got called, 'cause they were pullin' a tour in the National Guard. It'll be some kid from Southie takin' shrapnel in the ass. And he comes back to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from. And the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job, 'cause he'll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks. Meanwhile, he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price. And, of course, the oil companies used the skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices. A cute little ancillary benefit for them, but it ain't helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon.
And they're takin' their sweet time bringin' the oil back, of course, and maybe even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fuckin' play slalom with the icebergs, and it ain't too long 'til he hits one, spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic. So now my buddy's out of work and he can't afford to drive, so he's got to walk to the fuckin' job interviews, which sucks 'cause the shrapnel in his ass is givin' him chronic hemorrhoids.
And meanwhile he's starvin', 'cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat, the only blue plate special they're servin' is North Atlantic scrod with Quaker State. So what did I think? I'm holdin' out for somethin' better. I figure fuck it, while I'm at it why not just shoot my buddy, take his job, give it to his sworn enemy, hike up gas prices, bomb a village, club a baby seal, hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard? I could be elected president.
Before 1913 the Federal government collected duties on good entering the country and tariffs on certain goods. However the amount of collected is very small and easily avoided by any person choosing to vote against Federal policies by not buying dutiable goods.
The nation had few taxes in its early history. From 1791 to 1802, the United States government was supported by internal taxes on distilled spirits, carriages, refined sugar, tobacco and snuff, property sold at auction, corporate bonds, and slaves. The high cost of the War of 1812 brought about the nation's first sales taxes on gold, silverware, jewelry, and watches. In 1817, however, Congress did away with all internal taxes, relying on tariffs on imported goods to provide sufficient funds for running the government.
Read more: History of the Income Tax in the United States | Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005921.html#ixzz2mwDj6t23
Under some circumstances the Federal income was collected from the individual States, such as:
The direct tax of 1798 imposed taxes on “lands, houses and slaves” totaling $2 million over the next two years, apportioned to states in amounts according to representation (as measured in the U.S. census).
http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/history/item/14268-before-the-income-tax
States placed taxes on real property some of this money was apportioned to the Federal government based on the population of State, hence the need for the census. Along with the money collected each State was represented by two seats in the US Senate. It is important to note that before 1913 these Senators were chosen by each States elected body not necessarily by general election. While congress has always been directly elected and always the origination of bills of appropriations.
The people are taxed and in return the people ask for stuff. The State which took the money with difficulty attempts to limit spending via the Senate which can only approve or deny an appropriations bill. Hence money collected with difficultly and spent with difficultly designed to naturally limit unnecessary spending.
Before 1913 taxes on Income (or any direct tax) was seen as unconstitutional because the Founders felt it was important for people to have a way to protest a government in the only meaningful way: deprive the government of income.
In addition the Founders were distinctly against a privately held central bank such as the Federal Reserve which was also approved in 1913. This has additionally provided the Federal government an essentially unlimited supply of money with which it can enforce any position without any realistic opposition of the individual States.
Post 1913 we can clearly see what happens in a democracy with the effective restraint on spending removed.
Don't do bad shit, so you don't have to feel bad about it.
Disclaimer: I am writing this as someone who believes that the current US scope of electronic snooping is improperly controlled, far out of bounds, and wholly counterproductive.
From reading the comments here so far, I have come to realize that there is a major "culture gap" between the people who comment on Slashdot and those who work in places like the NSA, the US military, the police or other "authority" organizations. Being (apparently) one of the few people in the former category who also knows and admires friends in the latter category, I thought it might be useful to attempt to explain the cultural gap that otherwise prevents the two groups from understanding each other.
Most employed Americans - including nearly all Slashdotters - have a job. They may like it or hate it, but they fundamentally view themselves as free agents within an economy where their employer wants to get the most work out of them for the least money, and they want to get the most happiness for the least work. Employer/employee loyalty is not particularly important (except where it is grudgingly mandated through unions, which dulls the "free agent" concept as well). Work is what they do to provide for themselves and not their "calling."
Some employed Americans believe themselves instead to have a calling of national service, such as military personnel, or employees of other national-security related agencies. (A similar argument for a "calling" as employment could be made for teachers, firemen, police, community volunteers, etc.) They forego monetary or other opportunity in the belief that the work they are doing to serve their country is a "higher calling" that makes the trade-offs worthwhile. An important difference between "national service" callings vs. some others is an implicit understanding of a military-style discipline - the military does not work if the captain says "let's attack hill X" and the private decides to shoot at hill Y instead.
This is not an attempt to absolve "but I vas only taking orders, herr prosecutor!" behavior. These people still maintain an individual conscience and are willing to exercise it. But by and large, there is a trust that individual employees have (necessarily) only a limited view of the big picture, and the responsibility for figuring out what's right or wrong to do is being shouldered by the executive-level ranks who do actually have the big picture. (For example, you wouldn't want an individual CIA analyst to say "I won't put surveillance on this address" because it's a US address when they don't have the full picture that it's being used by a foreign agent.)
Far too long story short - NSA employees don't feel like their work is spying on Grandma. They think their work is very valuable, and it's spying on potential terrorists or otherwise giving the US political leadership all the data it needs about what is going on anywhere else in the world.. They are not going to spend their time reading up on every secret court ruling about what is or isn't kosher spying - most of them don't have access to all the information anyway! They feel hung out to dry because the senior government officials who they trusted to answer "is this OK?" said "yes" and then didn't back them up when an angry US and world public said, 'WTF?'"
You may agree, you may not agree. Apologies for any misrepresentations to the people I am speaking on behalf of. But I thought it might be useful for most Slashdotters to at least hear the thinking of the people on the "other side" and why it may not be a cut-and-dried issue.
"95% of all Slashdot
I hope you can also see the problem. Sure the best (those with honesty, integrity and loyalty to their country and fellow citizens and fortunately the brightest) but that will basically leave behind the sick perverts, psychopaths and the politically corrupt. Those are the ass hats that took the NSA down that route and they will be the only ones left. Now that is going to be a huge problem and pretty much the exact same problem that manifested at the CIA, where the best left leaving behind the corrupt who then privatised and contracted out intelligence services as retirement plans for themselves, billions blown on make believe for profit misinformation.
This directly fuelled a war with misinformation, where billions of dollars was siphoned off to ex-CIA now private contractors and major military industrial complex corporations. It is easy to guess what they new CIA will become, a blatant corporate intelligence service. With out honest people, it will become as bad as you can imagine.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen