Born In the NSA: These Former Spies Are Starting Companies of Their Own

First time accepted submitter ElyKahn (3637855) writes "The diaspora of startups with an NSA pedigree is rapidly growing. These startups, such as Sqrrl, Virtru, and Synack, are typically security-focused and often are commercializing technology projects from the NSA. However, coming from the NSA is a dual-edged sword... the technology is world-class and cutting-edge, but they must also fight the viewpoint of some that the startups are merely a front for the NSA."

Comments

Re:Nice try NSA!

[Chrisq]

It reminds me of when the BNFL changed the name of its nuclear generating and reprocessing plant from Windscale to Sellafield to lose the association with radiation leaks, fires, etc.

Shouldn't that be BORED in the NSA?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was BORED in the NSA
I was BORED in the NSA

Born down in a dead man's town
The first door kick I took down hit the ground
End up like a dog that's been beat too much
Till you spend half your life just covering up

Got in a little public network jam
So they put a rifle in my hand
Sent me off to my own land
To go and kill the geeky man

Come back home to commercial land
Hiring man said "son if it was up to me"
Went down to see my P.I. man
He said "son, don't you understand"

These days I think it's safe to assume

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

The NSA has its grubby little paws everywhere. Whether the company is in bed with them willingly is another matter.

I know a many European business owners who think twice or more before doing business with *any* US company, just because the US surveillance state isn't far behind.

Re:These days I think it's safe to assume

[Trepidity]

Unfortunately, we're increasingly discovering that the European intelligence agencies are pretty strongly in bed with the US surveillance state, too. It's not 100% clear if the situation is quite as bad, but there is substantial evidence that the German, French, Danish, Swedish, etc. intelligence services are routinely helping each other out. There's some suspicion that they're even doing some jurisdiction-laundering through these arrangements: the NSA can spy on Germans because they're foreigners, and then shares data with German intelligence that German intelligence wouldn't be able to legally collect on their own citizens. And vice versa, e.g. Swedish intelligence has apparently been spying on Americans and sharing the info back with American intelligence.

Re:These days I think it's safe to assume

[JaredOfEuropa]

Not sure if the situation is quite as bad here, but it's getting pretty bizarre. Apparently, British Intelligence gave (secret) advise to the Dutch intelligence services on how to circumvent legal objections to perform wiretaps, as evidenced by communication leaked by Snowden. When such practises were questioned in parliament, concern was expressed that limiting the amount of spying by Dutch intelligence services would mean that they'd have fewer data to trade with the NSA. Apparently these agencies have a tit-for-tat policy... By the way, the body that expressed that concern was not the intelligence agency, nor was it parliament, but the oversight committee that is supposed to keep an eye on intelligence agencies. Somehow, that doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling that my rights are assured...

Re:These days I think it's safe to assume

[jc42]

It's an interesting conundrum. We can at least try to pass laws to prevent our governments from spying us, ...

While you're at it, you should also pass a law saying that government agencies must obey the laws of your country.

Good luck with that.

Re:These days I think it's safe to assume

[Jane Q. Public]

The NSA has its grubby little paws everywhere.

What bothers me is that they're doing it at our expense.

Hey, folks:

The NSA is a taxpayer-funded, government organization. Any technology that comes out of it belongs to the public, not some corporation.

Oh no...

[Parker Lewis]

Now I'll never be able to sing again the Bruce Springsteen song without remember this news title!

Re:Should become a lot easier

[NotDrWho]

They only need one customer. Uncle Sam will throw pallets of cash at any company that says the magic words "We can help you with national security" (non-bullshit translation: "We can help you spy on your citizens and other county's citizens").

Re:Guaranteed business

[NotDrWho]

The ideal business:

"So, tell us about your product and/or services"
"That's classified."

"Well, does it at least work?"
"That's classified."

"Was it successful?"
"That's classified."

"And how much did it cost the taxpayer?"
"That's classified."

"Well, is it even fucking legal??"
"That's classified."

No such thing

[Charliemopps]

There is no such thing as a former KGB man.

Vladimir Putin - May 2000

Re:Grubby little paws

[bradley13]

why don't we also stop using the term "congress critters"

It's just a euphemism, we all know what we mean. Anyway, "corrupt sociopath" doesn't have the same cachet...

Re:Who else has their grubby pays in the NSA?

[TheCarp]

I think you have it wrong.

Every time I look at an org like this I remember, its government....they do funding in the same model as academic institutions and hospitals. They are a cash cow....but employes can't get at those teats directly, they can only influence who externally gets to suck.

Clearly the smart move is to leave, and become a service provider. Start a security focused business, start something the NSA themselves will have trouble getting into, and you provide incentive for them to buy their way in when your security focus attracts someone they find interesting.

Its not a new idea, it happens all the time in places with a lot of money and beauracracy where insiders see outside contractors bringing home the bacon. Sure, not everybody likes bacon that much but, there are always a few who do....and it isn't unheard of for managagement to find such arrangements lucrative themselves. (what is a little kick back between such long time friends and former co-workers)

Then again, that is likely not all of them. Who knows how many left because they were disgusted by the whole thing? That definitely happens too.

  But where there is beauracracy... funding gets turned into a political games. Political funding games are lucrative for outsiders....hence this particular design pattern emerging in so many places.

Re:Should become a lot easier

[NotDrWho]

"Hey, why not trust a civilian with full access to our defense system?" said the Caprican Defense Ministry, regarding Gaius Baltar.

Distributed Meshes of Neurons: Discover Themselves

[VortexCortex]

Sneaker Net: Decentralized peer to peer data exchanges using paper, punched cards, scrolls, stone tablets, bits of knotted string and other primitive methods such as the Postals Services get humans to the personal computing explosion.

Prior to mid 1980's: Software doesn't have patents yet, no innovation could have happened before this point.

Software Patents: Due to government restriction on innovation in the 1980's Personal Computers instantly appear. Some say it is a conspiracy, involving E.T.s

ARPANET: After millions of years of primitive communication, humans finally test peer to peer data routing on machines, and one day this becomes the Internet. Semaphores and Radios remain a CIA Hoax!

FIDONET: The Internet (being designed by committee) takes too damn long so the citizenry say, "Well, fuck that let's do it our selves", because of long distance fees and the FCC the Internet wins over a more decentralized approach.

The WWW: A centralized approach to digital file sharing. In ignorance of all prior human history (including such one-to-many landmark designs such as Hollering, Signal Fires and Television), HTML and DNS fails to leverage the Internet's capabilities fully, creates lots of needless bottlenecks at the data silohs it erects, enables censorship, and spying on data consumption for the first time. (Librarians shudder, and eventually the state takes away the right to privacy in dead-tree reading material too, because "Turrist!").

Distributed File Sharing: Online decentralized information transfers, tries to make the data storage work the way the Internet, and every-"bloody"-thing else does. Fine upstanding citizens understand such technologies can only be used for, evil (I mean, just look at rumors, gossip, repeating camp-fire stories, and brains).

Tor: Online Anonymity to fight the dumb-ass "features" of the centralized web's design. This centralized approach to anonymity fails because it's fucking laggy and it bounces data between endpoints instead of placing the technology in the IP routers.

Anonymous P2P: Anonymous (somewhat) Distributed File Sharing, lays the groundwork for what will replace the WWW.

Dead Drops: Offline decentralized digital information transfers, because "Oh yeah!", the FIDONET approach and packet routing doesn't actually need wires; Sneakernet v2.0 don't even need broadcast radios -- as if such things had ever existed.

DTN: NASA tries to figure out how Disruption Tolerant Networking would work, but completely ignores that DHT infohashes deduplicate the fucking data. Meanwhile, users of napster, Bittorrent, WoW game installers, and dark-age-couriers scratch their heads vigorously and realize since "information conveyance isn't rocket science" space agencies pretty much suck at it.

Web 4.2.0: Finally mirroring, life, the universe and everything, the web becomes decentralized too, because caches should talk to each other Derp! You mostly pull from neighbors so tracking your online habits has exponential cost. There is no more "fast lane", everything essentially has free collocation, and the more popular content is the more available and faster it comes in. The world's surviving sysops give a collective shrug and say, "well, that finally happed." (Marijuana is also universally legalized, purely by coincidence).

Terrestrial DTN: A NASA engineer, once fined for using Bittorrent, takes a break from rolling out the DTN and realizes it would cost a lot less if everyone just owned their own software defined short-wave radio to operate the