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NSA To Scientists: We Won't Tell You What We've Told You; That's Classified
MojoKid writes One of the downsides to the news cycle is that no matter how big or hot a story is, something else inevitably comes along. The advent of ISIS and Ebola, combined with the passing of time, have pushed national security concerns out of the limelight — until, that is, someone at the NSA helps out by reminding us that yes, the agency still exists and yes, it still has some insane policies and restrictions. Earlier this year, the Federation of American Scientists filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the NSA. The group was seeking information it thought would be relatively low-key — what authorized information had been leaked to the media over the past 12 months? The NSA's response reads as follows: "The document responsive to your request has been reviewed by this Agency as required by the FOIA and has been found to be currently and properly classified in accordance with Executive Order 13526. The document is classified because its disclosure could reasonably be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security." The NSA is insisting that it has the right to keep its lawful compliance and public disclosures secret not because the NSA is made of evil people but because the NSA has a knee-jerk preference and demand for secrecy. In a spy organization, that's understandable and admirable but it's precisely the opposite of what's needed to rebuild American's faith in the institution and its judgment.
The US Government is now allowed to use propaganda against its own people due to the NDAA. They don't want us to know what propaganda they are using against us.
Why confirm what is true instead of leaving people wondering what might be speculation?
If they leaked information to the press about stuff to shape opinion that would be domestic propaganda, that would be illegal.
Then of course, if they leak information to the press it legitimizes leaks. Why should *they* be the ones to choose which info to leak and which to not leak, and how can they then justify threatening the press over leaks, if they do the leaking.
So of course they'd want to keep what they'd leaked secret.
What they're confirming with this is that the leak info deliberately which is now something you can challenge.
Screw "American's Faith." You need to start worrying about the world's opinion about your intrusive spies.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
First, there are the knee-jerk responses of an "Intelligence" organisation never wanting to let anything truthful be known about it, and particularly detesting FIOA requests. Traitors. Then there is the bureaucratic response of never saying anything lest you be accused of inaccuracy.
But there also is a real security concern for the agency involved -- in answering "what did you release", they burn clandestine "leakers" as stooges. I do not think Snowden was a deliberate leak, but unless proven otherwise I assume about half the leaks are plants.
Let's see if a judge agrees.
It would take significant time and effort the accumulate all the leaked information into one response.
Easier to say "classified", then to actually spend hundreds of hours going over everything and finding all leaked information.
Besides, classified information doesn't become unclassified just because it has been leaked. It is STILL classified according to the government, and anyone releasing it in the NSA would be very quickly removed from the NSA for doing so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhZk8ronces
get rid of it. That's what I'd do. America was doing fine before these douchebag agencies were ever dreamed up.
*cue scumbag Democrat/Republican politician shouting "National security! We need them to protect our freedoms!"
Bullshit, America was far safer and freer without NSA CIA and the rest of the military-industrial-congress complex.
*cue coolaid-drinking sheeple parroting, "Times have changed and the world is a more dangerous place. Gov't needs more power to protect us!"
Yeah the world is more dangerous now because you douchebags made it more dangerous. Meddling in the affairs of Middle East and other places all over the world, playing God, creating enemies where there were none.
Note the level of hatred for America that existed in the Middle East prior to the creation of Israel (by US/UK). That would be zero.
Telling people (including 'enemies') which 'leaks' were authorized and which ones were really leaks could give people all sorts of interesting information -- including which disinformation^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H leaks to trust and which ones not to.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
The president can fire the head honchos at NSA and put Ron Paul or even somebody sane in charge if he wanted to.
Somebody who reads too many blogs will reply "civil service act". The civil service act forbids firing a covered employee because they didn't donate to your campaign. He can fire them for any other reason. The act is only about one page, read it if you like.
> NSA has a knee-jerk preference and demand for secrecy. In a spy organization, that's understandable and admirable but it's precisely the opposite of what's needed to rebuild American's faith in the institution and its judgment.
Very well said. In the security arena, and I think intelligence as well, the default position is "need to know". You only give information to people who have an operational need to know that specific piece of information. See also "loose lips sink ships". That makes perfect sense from an operational security perspective. HOWEVER, the US is supposed to be a representative republic, where the government os accountable to the people. These two facts do create a natural tension, and finding exactly the right balance is difficult.
I'm reminded of just after 9-11 there was criticism that the CIA, FBI, and NSA hadn't coordinated well, sharing information. Had they shared information with each other freely and effectively , 9-11 might not have happened. However, we are now being reminded that there's a good reason you don't want your spy agencies getting too close with your domestic law enforcement. You don't want the resources and tactics of the NSA to be used for domestic law enforcement. There are some tactics that might be good to use for spying on the Russians and China, but shouldn't be used to investigate Tommy Chong. We forgot that in our calls for more inter-agency cooperation after 9-11. Some of these things require just the right balance.
The president does not have the power to fire the head of the NSA. He can influence, he can appoint others that may, but he can't. It is the same principle with shareholders of a company. Even if you own 99% of all open shares in a company, you still can't fire the janitor. At best you can get rid of the entire board when the next election rolls around to do your singular bidding. Problem is, all the good board members, new and old, like clean toilets and wont listen to what you have to say.
And thanks for amusing me with this logical gem:
The president can fire the head honchos at NSA and put Ron Paul or even somebody sane in charge
Democracy is tyranny... that is why we tried to have a Republic, for a while.
Ben Franklin - on the day the Republic was declared, opined that we had "A republic, if you can keep it."
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Doesn't matter. The long term bureaucrats will just work around whoever gets appointed until the next president appoints someone else. The head honcho can dictate policy, but they don't actually implement it and don't really have a way to ensure that it does get implemented.
"precisely the opposite of what's needed to rebuild American's faith in the institution and its judgment" is exactly the sort of behavior I want to see from the NSA - right up until its disbanded.
Like most positions at a similar level, the director is nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. I just double checked that to make sure I wasn't remembering incorrectly. He's supposed to get recommendations from DOD first. Of course, he appoints the head of DOD, the Secretary of Defense, and he appoints someone who is very loyal to him as Sec D.
> The head honcho can dictate policy, but they don't actually implement it and don't really have a way to ensure that it does get implemented.
See subject line. Firing federal employees is little different from firing in the private sector, but it's doable. You can also assign somebody to the outpost in the Mojave desert. Within the executive branch (only), if the president cares that something gets done, it gets done. Done poorly and over budget perhaps, but at high levels you get ahead (and stick around) by doing what your boss needs done, and the president is most definitely the big boss. Congress and the courts are separate beasts, of course.
Ahh, now there are two things that are just made for each other. If only the two could meet!
Speak for yourself, who's we?
If the CIA, NSA and other secret agencies were actually effective at their job and did what they profess to do efficiently and the oversight could just tamper with that efficiency, I might, ... might... buy your argument. But they do not. They are wasting resources, producing no significant results and still want their secrecy. Maybe it is time we tried it differently.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
And your point about board members not wanting to fire the janitor at the behest of a 99% shareholder because the board members want clean toilets? Are you on glue?
Join the IParty!
"exceptionally grave damage to the national security"
For fucks sake. Get rid of the toy soldiers and replace them with real ones.
The president can fire the head honchos at NSA and put Ron Paul or even somebody sane in charge if he wanted to.
You assume that the people at NSA isn't completely paranoid/batshit insane. They look at absolutely everything as conspiracies and power games and everything is allowed in the name of national security.
I wouldn't put it above them to assassinate a president if they think that he is acting in a way that puts the nation at risk, for example by dismantling organizations that they think are vital to national security. After all, protecting the US against terrorist are more important than a president that can be replaced anyway.
By not releasing the list they passed on a golden opportunity of spreading more disinformation, which is their bread and butter.
In good old times, secret services were not so damn lazy.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
The president can fire the head honchos at NSA and put Ron Paul or even somebody sane in charge if he wanted to.
Yes, its not like NSA has means to find dirt on people they dont like
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
The NSA just needs to be abolished. Its existence is incompatible with democracy, should Americans ever seek to replace their current military/corporate dictatorship with one. The constant violations of citizens rights in the name of 'national security' is just tiresome. Why does America suffer from this crazy 'national security' paranoia. No other countries need these huge fascist spy agencies. Nobody is going to attack America - there is nothing in America worth having. It has the worst health care system of any industrialised country, massive poverty, and a massive social divide. America should change its political system and foreign policy, and stop being a crazed rogue state, if it really cares about its national security.
Did you really say Ron Paul and sane in the same sentence, I suspect even many Ron Paul supporters would take issue with that.
Make no mistake about it, when a politico talks about national security... they are talking about THEIR security not YOURS.
They dont give two shits about YOUR security. Never have & never will.
Indeed their security is impossible to obtain without first destroying yours.
that's the propoganda they don't want you to learn and that obama would have and was arming them until leaks got out about how awful the are.
" just after 9-11 there was criticism that the CIA, FBI, and NSA hadn't coordinated well, sharing information."
And our response was to make 2 more secret gestapo agencies that dont share information.
HOW THE FUCK DOES THAT HELP ANYTHING??!?!
The reasoning at the time was that by creating the Department of Homeland Security, the relevant agencies would be under one umbrella and therefore it would be easier for them to cooperate.
But again, having the foreign surveillance agency cooperating with the domestic law enforcement might not be a good thing. The balance went to far toward cooperation, in my opinion, but the reasoning made sense to chief of staff and others at the time. (Chief of staff Andrew Card was partly responsible for developing a reorganization plan without getting mired in the "corporate politics " of each agency head wanting their agency to be top dog. )
"We" meaning most officials and most voters, including those on Slashdot. If you look back at old posts, you'll see criticism that while the government knew this and the government knew that, the government didn't put the two together because the right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing.
In this case, we probably actually want to keep the left hand and the right hand apart. I don't want the CIA involved in drug enforcement.
"Ron Paul OR even somebody sane". Read it whichever way you wish -
Either Paul or somebody sane
Either Paul or somebody else sane
Two choices on how you want to read that.
Right, but power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. You can fire the people, have people set up to take their positions, but due to the actual need for the NSA to some extent, and the need for them to have some of the powers that they do have, will always provide a way for whoever takes over to become corrupt by the same mechanics that corrupted the original folks.
The problem is in the people, not the NSA. Looking at it this way, you can compare having the NSA to having nuclear weaponry. We need it (in the current configuration of the human mindset), but the world would be so much better if we didn't.
I'm not defending the NSA, or it's tactics, but to think that by replacing the people that run the NSA, or the people that press the button to launch the nukes, is going to fix the actual problem, then you need to think over things.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
Where the hell is Cold Fjord, this thread has too many people more or less agreeing with each other and not enough NSA shills to make it fun..
Seems to be an exclusive or. "Ron Paul" or "somebody sane", which implies Ron Paul isn't in the sane set.
Program Intellivision!
Nope, I disagree. We don't know how effective they are, literally because success in these agencies is routinely classified.
Also we must be on guard for normal agency blindness, bias and institutional weakness. This can be neatly captured, with a definite cynical air, as 'of course we are effective, why do you ask? Can we have more money and power?'
not if you speak English, the placement of the word "even" makes all the difference