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NSA Worried About Recruitment, Post-Snowden

Posted by Soulskill on from the should-have-thought-of-that-before-being-jerks dept.

An anonymous reader writes: The NSA employs tens of thousands of people, and they're constantly recruiting more. They're looking for 1,600 new workers this year alone. Now that their reputation has taken a major hit with the revelations of whistleblower Edward Snowden, they aren't sure they'll be able to meet that goal. Not only that, but the NSA has to compete with other companies, and they Snowden leaks made many of them more competitive: "Ever since the Snowden leaks, cybersecurity has been hot in Silicon Valley. In part that's because the industry no longer trusts the government as much as it once did. Companies want to develop their own security, and they're willing to pay top dollar to get the same people the NSA is trying to recruit." If academia's relationship with the NSA continues to cool, the agency could find itself struggling within a few years.

247 comments

  1. Yeah , well ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yeah, well it's not like people became disillusioned and angry after the lies started being shoveled wholesale down our throats after 9/11.

    And no, I don't mean conspiracy-nutjob-wacko theories, I mean the kind of stuff that is being lorded over the average joe and I feel like I can only talk smack about because I don't have a security clearance to be revoked.

    Call me crazy, but last time I looked in the help wanteds I started to get the feeling our society is divided into two halves: Those with above secret clearance, who live normal lives, and those without it, who are lied to and treated like animals.

    As a human being living in the US without such clearance all I can say is, you should be f***ing ashamed.

    1. Re:Yeah , well ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      I left my security clearance job because of the Snowden revelations.

    2. Re:Yeah , well ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      I believe you've got it wrong. In the US there are two kinds of people, those who belong to the 1% of the richest who control 35% of the wealth of the country, and the rest who are divided into one fifth who are still well off and the large rest, the vast majority, who can barely make ends meet, have no power, and are constantly being screwed over. NSA employees are just some more poor government clerks who are at the whim of corrupt politicians and filthy rich oligarchs, like the vast majority of people.

    3. Re:Yeah , well ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The very model of a Bananna Republic:

      1. The small group with the money and power

      2. The thugs employed by that group to ensure that they keep their money and power and are not accosted by the unwashed masses.

      3. The unwashed masses.

    4. Re:Yeah , well ... by gatkinso · · Score: 5, Informative

      Oh really? Having held such a clearance for years (I left that work about 5 years ago) I can tell you that the situation is in many ways reversed. Your very behavior is held hostage just so you keep your job. Want to try some weed while in Colorado? Want to go see the Great Wall of China (actually, you might get this approved)? Three beers at happy hour and get pulled over for speeding? Buy a house at the height of the housing boom and your spouse lose her job so it is foreclosed upon, or she gets sick and the medical bills pile up...

      All of these things can lead to your ticket being clipped.

      Besides - people act like a clearance is some magical thing that they have earned. Nothing is further from the truth. It simply means you have a clean police and financial record, and don't hang out with militants. All of the investigations and polygraphs boil down to determining that. You fill out the forms honestly, and wait for investigators to determine that indeed you did not lie on your application. Sometimes you sit in a silly little room over by BWI with weird cloud scenes on the florescent lights and answer the same questions while some polygraph examiner tries to upset you. Again, nothing that you have earned through hard work or being special, just that you waited out the process and didn't lie.

      --
      I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
    5. Re:Yeah , well ... by gatkinso · · Score: 1

      Well, this should make the unwashed masses sneaking in from banana republics feel right at home!

      --
      I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
    6. Re:Yeah , well ... by kilfarsnar · · Score: 2

      Call me crazy, but last time I looked in the help wanteds I started to get the feeling our society is divided into two halves: Those with above secret clearance, who live normal lives, and those without it, who are lied to and treated like animals.

      Those with clearance, especially above secret, can live normal lives as long as they live conventional, ordinary lives. When you have clearance the government watches you. Not too closely perhaps, depending on what level clearance you hold and what you're working on. But if anything of any import happens in your life you must let your security officer know. And rest assured, people with clearance are lied to as well. That's partly how compartmentalization works.

      --
      "What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
    7. Re:Yeah , well ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I believe you've got it wrong. In the US there are two kinds of people, 1) those who belong to the 1% of the richest who control 35% of the wealth of the country, and the rest who are divided into 2) one fifth who are still well off and 3) the large rest, the vast majority, who can barely make ends meet, have no power, and are constantly being screwed over.

      Is this another one of those "10 kinds of people" things?

    8. Re:Yeah , well ... by kilfarsnar · · Score: 1

      Oh really? Having held such a clearance for years (I left that work about 5 years ago) I can tell you that the situation is in many ways reversed. Your very behavior is held hostage just so you keep your job. Want to try some weed while in Colorado? Want to go see the Great Wall of China (actually, you might get this approved)? Three beers at happy hour and get pulled over for speeding? Buy a house at the height of the housing boom and your spouse lose her job so it is foreclosed upon, or she gets sick and the medical bills pile up...

      All of these things can lead to your ticket being clipped.

      Besides - people act like a clearance is some magical thing that they have earned. Nothing is further from the truth. It simply means you have a clean police and financial record, and don't hang out with militants. All of the investigations and polygraphs boil down to determining that. You fill out the forms honestly, and wait for investigators to determine that indeed you did not lie on your application. Sometimes you sit in a silly little room over by BWI with weird cloud scenes on the florescent lights and answer the same questions while some polygraph examiner tries to upset you. Again, nothing that you have earned through hard work or being special, just that you waited out the process and didn't lie.

      This is basically my impression. I have a number of friends and coworkers with clearance. I was up for it, but was honest on my application, so I was rejected. Apparently they don't clear unrepentant pot smokers. Who knew?

      --
      "What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
    9. Re:Yeah , well ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You both have it wrong. There are three kinds of people:

      1) those who belong to the 1% of the richest who control 35% of the wealth of the country, and the rest who are divided into
      2) one fifth who are still well off and
      3) the large rest, the vast majority, who can barely make ends meet, have no power, and are constantly being screwed over,
      4) and those with an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.

    10. Re:Yeah , well ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh really? Having held such a clearance for years (I left that work about 5 years ago) I can tell you that the situation is in many ways reversed. Your very behavior is held hostage just so you keep your job. Want to try some weed while in Colorado? Want to go see the Great Wall of China (actually, you might get this approved)? Three beers at happy hour and get pulled over for speeding? Buy a house at the height of the housing boom and your spouse lose her job so it is foreclosed upon, or she gets sick and the medical bills pile up...

      All of these things can lead to your ticket being clipped.

      As somebody who has worked in that world, I say shut the fuck up and go find an honest job and leave.

      All of the investigations and polygraphs boil down to determining that. You fill out the forms honestly, and wait for investigators to determine that indeed you did not lie on your application. Sometimes you sit in a silly little room over by BWI with weird cloud scenes on the florescent lights and answer the same questions while some polygraph examiner tries to upset you. Again, nothing that you have earned through hard work or being special, just that you waited out the process and didn't lie.

      Yeah, the whole polygraph thing you gloss over is just peachy.

      From the aforementioned link:

      "Others don’t. The CIA applicant who says she was asked in 2005 about her rape recalled being pressed to reveal everything because the test showed that she was hiding something. At one point, she revealed she was bothered by a claim by another polygrapher that the agency hires alcoholics but not homosexuals. The polygrapher leaned in and asked, “Why? Are you a homosexual?” She said she wasn’t.

      McClatchy was able to confirm the CIA’s interest in her reported rape and miscarriage by reviewing her heavily redacted security-clearance records, which were released under open records laws. The records show that she revealed before the polygraph that she’d smoked pot three times to deal with the pain of her miscarriage, records show. She also told them the miscarriage was the result of a rape.

      The applicant wonders whether her state of mind at the time made her seem as if she were lying when she had nothing to hide. As the agency itself notes in records McClatchy obtained, the woman had been preliminarily diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder."

      Marvelous.

      Something I think some of the polygraph interrogators share with snipers: you have to be a special kind of fucked in the head to do the job.

    11. Re:Yeah , well ... by blue9steel · · Score: 1

      Banana Republics? How about every society we've ever had. Some times we dress it up in fancier clothing (Republics) and sometimes not so much (Feudalism). I'm no sure it's even possible to design a society that doesn't start out or end up this way shortly thereafter without altering the human genome.

    12. Re:Yeah , well ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Same, that and my employer at the time, Northrop Grumman, was letting people without the proper clearences work on a highly classified project. When I asked my supervisor about it I just told it wasn't an issue and to let it go. Because of this, Snowden, and ethic issues with the project itself, I left and haven't looked back.

    13. Re:Yeah , well ... by tnk1 · · Score: 1

      They do clear unrepentant pot smokers. But only if you are absolutely necessary to employ. If you're just a normal IT person who needs a clearance, you're done on the drug questions if you don't make it absolutely clear that you don't do that anymore.

    14. Re:Yeah , well ... by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      Re "Those with above secret clearance, who live normal lives, and those without it, who are lied to and treated like "
      Thats the new security boondoggle that gets funding and contracts flowing. The seduction of needing a new security clearance.
      People in the gov, mil and contractors have seen a huge expansion of their bureaucratic access under a "collect it all" system.
      What has changed? The US domestic legal system has now seen more interest by the public asking basic privacy questions since the Church Committee/report days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
      A person looking to work for the gov/mil or as a contractor now fully understands that they will be working on domestic generational trap doors, back doors, in collaboration with the big domestic computer brands and with foreign powers.
      Collect it all, sort it all. The domestic jobs are waiting... who did you spy on today?

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
    15. Re:Yeah , well ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You have a strange idea of what constitutes "normal".

      Newsflash, being lied to is normal. I can't even count the number of people who lie to me on a daily basis, even discounting paid-for advertising. And it happens to people who have that clearance as well, it's just that they have one - yes, one - source of information that you don't. That source itself is not, inherently, much more or less reliable than the New York Times, and it certainly doesn't make their lives any easier - quite the opposite in many cases.

    16. Re: Yeah , well ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Funny stuff, even with a ts none of us knows what the hell is going on either.

    17. Re:Yeah , well ... by gatkinso · · Score: 1

      >> As somebody who has worked in that world, I say shut the fuck up and go find an honest job and leave.

      As somebody with decent reading skills, I say shut the fuck up and reread my post, specifically the "(I left that work about 5 years ago)" part.

      Jesus wept you are a moron. Uninformed, and incapable of understanding even if it is written clearly for you. While I think everybody's opinion counts, in your case I am not so sure. Had you actually sat for a FSP rather than quoting Googled articles - you would know that my description was pretty much spot on: sit there very still, answer the questions, examiner tries to upset you. That. Is. It.

      --
      I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
    18. Re:Yeah , well ... by gatkinso · · Score: 1

      Well, I am yet to hear of an instance of that.

      What I have seen is a very few special cases where the smoker who pisses hot (and admits it) is given the opportunity to sign a form stating that they will indeed quit while in the employment thereof, and is subject to a few random pee tests for the next couple of years.

      --
      I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
    19. Re: Yeah , well ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your mathematical prowess astounds me.

  2. Well, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    I tried a few times to make a good comment, but the guys in the black van outside made me change my mind.

  3. doesnt matter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    secret court orders will force companies to give over their encryption keys anyway so it doesnt really matter in most cases.

    1. Re: doesnt matter by karmatic · · Score: 1

      That makes what they do known.

      Additionally, that only works if the company has the keys and they aren't locked in a HSM.

  4. Why Shouldn't I Work for the NSA? by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 5, Informative

    Unpopular even pre-9/11.

    --
    My God, it's Full of Source!
    OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    1. Re:Why Shouldn't I Work for the NSA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah, there were a few major predictions missed with that scene.

      1. The government that was supposed to be selling us oil at a cheap price has been a farce, leaving the door wide open for a terrorist organization much, much worse than the ones we even imagined back in '97 to take over. The people we were pretending to liberate are now screwed at a whole new level.
      2. The politicians who were supposed to be protecting our democracy from threats domestic and abroad have turned out to be so cowardly and corrupt that they can't be bothered to press charges when our secret agencies lie to them about such basic concepts as torturing people or killing American citizens.
      3. Said politicians can't muster the courage to back up their so-called liberation efforts with boots on the ground when we're faced with real opposition instead of a puppet that started to bore them.
      4. And of course, per your argument, they didn't even address the fact that an unpopular secret agency that consistently disregards the legal and constitutional framework of the government funding it pretty much defeats the entire purpose of a democracy, doesn't it?

    2. Re:Why Shouldn't I Work for the NSA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You know what frightens me?

      I am an American by birth and residence, and for a flash moment I hesitated to (a) click on your link and (b) make this comment, because of what unseen long-term effects doing so might have on me personally and those I love.

    3. Re:Why Shouldn't I Work for the NSA? by aralin · · Score: 0

      You should work for NSA, because the alternative to NSA is worse. Totalitarian governments like USSR, East Germany or North Korea will do anything to have a total information control of their population in order to ensure stability. We have a well established history that if they cannot get this information technologically, they will lie, cheat, extort, kidnap, bully or worse, just to get to this information. USA now falls into this category and they will do anything to have full domestic surveillance. If you don't help them achieve this goal technologically, it will have enormous human cost. The alternative of not getting this information is not acceptable to them so they will get it and you can only help to affect how they get it and how many people and lives are harmed in the process.

      If you want to avoid the Gulags, the political prisoners, children not getting in universities because sins of their parents, neighbors spying on each other, informers and snitches everywhere, home searches, not being able to trust anyone, being afraid what your kids say in school that gets back to you, feeling helpless and afraid to report crime to police in fear they would instead investigate you. If you want to avoid all those things, you just have to go and help the NSA to get the information electronically, because the alternative is just too awful.

      --
      If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
    4. Re:Why Shouldn't I Work for the NSA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There's a difference between their existence being secret, and their operations being secret. But a nuanced distinction like that is lost on the blunt intellect of cold fjord.

    5. Re:Why Shouldn't I Work for the NSA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How about violent revolution forever?

    6. Re:Why Shouldn't I Work for the NSA? by Bonzoli · · Score: 1

      Actually with real oversight and viability most of these problems go away. That is the key people keep forgetting. You shine a bright light into the dark of the NSA, everyone of them will fix it. Right now, we have no oversight and hidden courts. There is 0 accountability to anyone outside and the organization spends a lot of its time attacking its opponents inside the US. I do not think most of the NSA signed up for that, but there they are anyway. If a new president comes in and declares a group inside the US the enemy, they fall in line behind him, 0 oversight.

    7. Re:Why Shouldn't I Work for the NSA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Excellent! It's been a long time since I watched GWH. Time for a revisit I think. I believe I have a DVD of it somewhere in my archives... :-)

    8. Re:Why Shouldn't I Work for the NSA? by aralin · · Score: 1

      You are simply deluded. You know what was NSA called before it was widely know it exists. No Such Agency. Shining a light on it will only drive the real efforts into more secrecy. Once NSA is exposed a new secret agency we won't know about will be created. I would not be surprised if the efforts were already underway.

      YOU CANNOT PREVENT THIS! The state has too much power, too little to fear. You can only mitigate the worst excesses of abuse of power, which I described above. Once you force the government into accepting the above described abuses as price of getting the information it thinks it needs, there is no way back.

      The Eastern Europe behind its Iron Curtain had a hope of the West breaking through and helping them overthrow the government and clean the house, but you have NO ONE. There is nobody more powerful than the US government. There is no hope for you to get any sort of external help once the repression starts. NONE. So you better not speed it up. It has already started in Guantanamo it will spread, but fighting NSA will make it spread even faster.

      There is slight chance of this country collapsing economically before it can defeat Russia and China, but that would be a very small hope to look forward to. Most likely Russia will fall soon and China soon after and that will solve any economic issues US might have had, since all of the world resources will be available for the taking.

      --
      If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
    9. Re:Why Shouldn't I Work for the NSA? by kilfarsnar · · Score: 1

      You know what frightens me?

      I am an American by birth and residence, and for a flash moment I hesitated to (a) click on your link and (b) make this comment, because of what unseen long-term effects doing so might have on me personally and those I love.

      And yet people will tell you that you live in a free country.

      --
      "What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
    10. Re: Why Shouldn't I Work for the NSA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The tree of liberty...

    11. Re:Why Shouldn't I Work for the NSA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ah yes, the "NSA" scene from Good Will Hunting. Overall it is a great movie, but that scene in nothing but polemic. The narrative is based on rubbish that most anyone with critical thinking skills should be able to identify.

      Now, I've never seen the movie, so I cannot comment on its authenticity, and by extension, I am not saying that you are definitely wrong. But the problem is, anyone who could counter you, who has the facts to counter you.. basically can't.

    12. Re:Why Shouldn't I Work for the NSA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Causing yourself to live in fear via overreaction doesn't mean that this isn't a free country, it just means you're overreacting.

    13. Re:Why Shouldn't I Work for the NSA? by trippin_efnet · · Score: 1

      Chilling effect is a real thing. Even if you don't believe things are bad.

      Whether or not someone is actually going to receive retribution for speaking their minds is not the point.

      A real problem exists when people start to question whether or not they should say X against Y for fear of having negative consequences.

    14. Re:Why Shouldn't I Work for the NSA? by cold+fjord · · Score: 1

      You don't know what you are talking about. Lets go through it.

      1. The government that was supposed to be selling us oil at a cheap price has been a farce, leaving the door wide open for a terrorist organization much, much worse than the ones we even imagined back in '97 to take over. The people we were pretending to liberate are now screwed at a whole new level.

      If you are referring to Iraq, that is pretty much pure rubbish. Iraq has been a functioning if troubled democracy since soverignty was restored to its government. There have been a number of elections, and the head of government has changed peacefully. Iraq still controls the majority of its territory, and the region controlled by ISIS is an extention of the territory it controls in Syria. ISIS is not all that different from the Taliban and al Qaida, and it is in essence an offshoot of al Qaida. Al Qaida was active in the 1990s, so your claim there is rubbish as well. The people of Iraq are far better off than they were under Saddam. You're piling rubbish to a whole new level.

      2. The politicians who were supposed to be protecting our democracy from threats domestic and abroad have turned out to be so cowardly and corrupt that they can't be bothered to press charges when our secret agencies lie to them about such basic concepts as torturing people or killing American citizens.

      Yet more rubbish. The proper members of Congress were briefed regarding enhanced interrogation, and legally those techniques did not constitute torture despite your opinion. American citizens that take up arms with the enemy to make war on the United States can be killed like any other combatant. Maybe you could examine all the trials and warrant serving that occurred on US Civil War battlefields. Hint: that didn't happen. Confederate soldiers were shot down without warrant, arrest, trail, or conviction. That's because it's war, not an action of the criminal justice system. Your confusion on this point results in more rubbish.

      3. Said politicians can't muster the courage to back up their so-called liberation efforts with boots on the ground when we're faced with real opposition instead of a puppet that started to bore them.

      No "boots on the ground," .... you mean like the 170,000 soldiers that were in Iraq, and around 100,000 in Afghanistan? You're confused again.

      4. And of course, per your argument, they didn't even address the fact that an unpopular secret agency that consistently disregards the legal and constitutional framework of the government funding it pretty much defeats the entire purpose of a democracy, doesn't it?

      Unfortuantely you've got it wrong again. The Congress has passed multple laws authorizing NSA activity, and the President has his own Article II powers that don't rely on Congress. The NSA's actions have been authorized, they apparently are within the limits of the Constitution. Since there have been several elections during this period it would seem that democracy in the US continues unimpaired. So, in short, more rubbish.

      --
      much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
  5. Won't meet their goal? by mariox19 · · Score: 3, Funny

    So, now they'll be the next ones crying that they need H-1B's!

    --

    quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.

    1. Re:Won't meet their goal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Yes, but what is that goal?

      NSA has the cooperation of all hardware software and firmware vendors, plus a big budget to spend, so they are doing well from a solid base.

      Now you will see bright sparks harden 'wide-open' sites with some probability that snooping is detected, not to mention non-standard setups popping up everywhere. Some of this may even go open source.

      The problem reduces to good people doing good jobs for people with money who demand their privacy, and that trend catching on.
      Supply and demand will sort it out, and hopefully wages and career paths will start getting better too.

    2. Re:Won't meet their goal? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Different AC and devil's advocate here:

      The problem is that, truth be told, businesses don't give a shit about security in general. I have heard the droning mantra, "security has no ROI" so many times, it is not even funny. At best, something tossed on at the last minute is used.

      At last the NSA does give a shit about security when not many other organizations do. SELinux for example. It isn't perfect, but it keeps a root exploit contained for the most part. NIST has a bunch of useful guidelines (most obvious), but it is wise to look at their checklists, as one might miss something. Things like having log alerts. Had this in place, the brute-force of AD passwords would have not led to a breach at Sony.

      We are not going to see companies give an eye to security much. No income to be made there because security is considered a cost center, and like I've heard in the past, "if we get breached, we can always call Geek Squad" for smaller companies or "if we get breached, we can always call Infosys to un-hack us" for the bigger enterprises.

  6. Boo hoo by dcollins117 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you lack morals to the extent you would consider working for the NSA you'll find it much more lucrative to sell your soul to Wall Street instead.

    1. Re:Boo hoo by DoofusOfDeath · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If you lack morals to the extent you would consider working for the NSA you'll find it much more lucrative to sell your soul to Wall Street instead.

      Wall Street is peopled with thieves, but the NSA is peopled with traitors. A person of marginal morality could work in Wall Street while turning down the NSA on moral grounds.

    2. Re:Boo hoo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Working on wall street puts you at very high risk of being stolen from, and crushed by the other thieves.

      Working for the NSA puts you at very high risk of being spied on (which is no change, apparently), but otherwise doesn't put you at higher risk of financial ruin.

      Being a traitor, it seems, is the safer route to financial security.

    3. Re:Boo hoo by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 1, Troll

      whores makes lots of money.

      if you want to whore yourself out and turn the clock back on privacy and individual rights, sure, go right ahead.

      I consider google workers to be whores, too. and facebook. people who can convince themselves that they are doing good work, but really, they are turning back the clock on progress and freedom.

      if you work for the surveillance state, you deserve your own private hell. I firmly believe that. I hope I am not ever forced to decide between caving in and working for evil companies vs putting bread on the table. I've seen MORE than my share of being out of work, but so far, I have not had to work for truly evil places. those that willingly choose that, those are the traitors among us.

      --

      --
      "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
    4. Re:Boo hoo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You have to have a strong stomach to work for Wall Street (notice I didn't say a strong backbone).

      You're surrounded by very smart, very motivated people, many of whom lack the social skills of even the average eleven year old, who basically have one goal.... to make as much money over the next few months that they can.

    5. Re:Boo hoo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fuck the NSA, and their risk to our democracy.

    6. Re:Boo hoo by dcollins117 · · Score: 1

      Different levels of Hell, at least according to Dante, but I suspect we're pretty much in agreement :)

    7. Re:Boo hoo by DoofusOfDeath · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Different levels of Hell, at least according to Dante, but I suspect we're pretty much in agreement :)

      Good call. The eigth circle was for fraudsters (Wall Street), but the ninth circle was for traitors (NSA, CIA, Congress, POTUS).

    8. Re:Boo hoo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >>The fuckin NSA makes th SS look like a bunch of balerinas waltzing down a street in msterdam.

      Hyperbole much?

      Pretty sure that the NSA doesn't have any internment camps, and I know for a fact that the only internment camps in the US were not run by the NSA. (Japanese internment camps during WWII. And even those didn't even ritualistic style mass executions)

      So while there are issues with the NSA as a whole, they certainly don't equate to the level of the Nazi SS.

    9. Re:Boo hoo by rtb61 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The reality is, the initial premise is a total lie. The NSA is a failed organisation and they are not looking for the same kind of people. They are looking for 2nd raters, people who specialise in breaking stuff and not in making stuff. The reality is securing stuff in computers is an order of magnitude harder than breaking security. The breakers are always second rate compared to makers, it is inherent in their cerebral makeup and the 2nd rate breakers know it to the core of their being, hence instead of making, their jealousy drives them to breaking.

      The NSA were not particularly skilled at hacking, their targets were not focused enough on security and were easy to break into. Now of course the NSA script kiddie perverts are finding life much more difficult as companies become much more focused on security and are hiring the most skilled makers to make better security. The NSA stuck is now failing and that failure is far worse on the securing things side because of their chosen focus on breaking stuff on employing egoistic perverse script kiddies, incapable of securing stuff.

      The US government was warned again and again and again, that in order to effectively secure their systems they must completely separate defensive operations from offensive operations but they were locked into arrogance mode and only listen to their own bullshit and now they are stuck.

      If you are bright and interested in security, the real skill and challenge is in defensive operations, 24/7/365 operation of skills, abilities and knowledge, real investigatory skills on any exposed breaks or weaknesses and preventing them from happening again and creating a defence in depth system, giving greater opportunity to catch hacks are earlier less damaging levels. The people do not play well with breakers, not at all, the whole psychology is different.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    10. Re:Boo hoo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      When the prison is in your mind, you are already interned.

    11. Re:Boo hoo by OhPlz · · Score: 0

      The moralistic unemployed. Time to become a whore darling, you can't mooch forever.

    12. Re:Boo hoo by Luckyo · · Score: 1

      Depends on your personal ethics.

      If you find that pursuit of personal wealth (many refer to this as "pursuit of happiness") is the most important aspect, Wall Street is the better option.
      If you find that pursuit of hegemony of your state (many refer to this as "patriotism") is the most important aspect, NSA is the better option.
      And if you find that things like human rights actually mean something, you find both to be unacceptable options.

      Unfortunate reality however is that all three aforementioned aspects are in fact idealistic. World is anything but, and we find ourselves balancing between different aspects of those things among many others to find our paths in life. As a result, I would not straight up make the claims as extreme as yours. They're far too hyperbolic. While many people working at wall street to end up as thieves, many do not start as such. Same goes for people working for NSA.

      That is the other side of this coin. The less good people join these structures of power, the more power those who are corrupt gain within them.

    13. Re:Boo hoo by Marginal+Coward · · Score: 1

      A person of marginal morality

      I resemble that remark.

    14. Re:Boo hoo by Marginal+Coward · · Score: 1

      whores makes lots of money

      Bah! What street do you walk, Sister? It's the pimps that make all the money - as any good whore or pimp knows. Clearly, you're not either...

      (sorry, couldn't resist :-)

    15. Re:Boo hoo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think there's a fundamental difference in people who become, to use the outmoded parlance, crackers versus those who become hackers. From the perspective of the hacker, there are ways the world could be improved and the highest service to humanity is to give away solutions to problems without strings. Sometimes you need to eat, but when you can, it's in your best interest to share with others. From the perspective of the cracker, there are things that people should have secured better, and fuck 'em, that'll show them, won't it? Lovely people they are.

    16. Re:Boo hoo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If an action would lead you down a path that would turn you into a thief or a traitor (our two options in this discussion), then, if you had to foresight to know this, you should be smart enough to avoid them or at least know the consequences and accept them (which is why those places are full of sociopaths).

    17. Re:Boo hoo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sadly, some of us find that we have more backbone than stomach. You couldn't pay me enough money to screw over people like that. Sure, I'll never be filthy rich, but I'll also be able to sleep at night.

    18. Re:Boo hoo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      Your premisses are plain wrong. In information security, the people breaking are always also people building thing. You can't a random guy in the street give him a hammer and hope that it will work. The people breaking protocol, apps, security related algorithms must have a deep understanding of those. A far better understanding than the random guy from the street but also than the average programmer, dev., ... The necessary skills are very broad. The skills are those of a scientific researcher, not an engineer nor a guy with a master.

    19. Re:Boo hoo by f3rret · · Score: 1

      The reality is, the initial premise is a total lie. The NSA is a failed organisation and they are not looking for the same kind of people. They are looking for 2nd raters, people who specialise in breaking stuff and not in making stuff. The reality is securing stuff in computers is an order of magnitude harder than breaking security. The breakers are always second rate compared to makers, it is inherent in their cerebral makeup and the 2nd rate breakers know it to the core of their being, hence instead of making, their jealousy drives them to breaking.

      The NSA were not particularly skilled at hacking, their targets were not focused enough on security and were easy to break into. Now of course the NSA script kiddie perverts are finding life much more difficult as companies become much more focused on security and are hiring the most skilled makers to make better security. The NSA stuck is now failing and that failure is far worse on the securing things side because of their chosen focus on breaking stuff on employing egoistic perverse script kiddies, incapable of securing stuff.

      The US government was warned again and again and again, that in order to effectively secure their systems they must completely separate defensive operations from offensive operations but they were locked into arrogance mode and only listen to their own bullshit and now they are stuck.

      If you are bright and interested in security, the real skill and challenge is in defensive operations, 24/7/365 operation of skills, abilities and knowledge, real investigatory skills on any exposed breaks or weaknesses and preventing them from happening again and creating a defence in depth system, giving greater opportunity to catch hacks are earlier less damaging levels. The people do not play well with breakers, not at all, the whole psychology is different.

      Yes The Equation Group really seemed "2nd rate" and they sure didn't "make" anything.

      --
      Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
    20. Re:Boo hoo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      After what they did to Google, I'd want to join.

    21. Re:Boo hoo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Compared to the things they broke and the effort going into those things, the tools created where tiny and the effort miniscule.

    22. Re:Boo hoo by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yes The Equation Group [arstechnica.com] really seemed "2nd rate" and they sure didn't "make" anything.

      TAO is what you would expect to see given a sufficiently large budget spent exclusively on hacking everything possible. The hacks are impressive in the sense that they take a lot of resources and time to develop and it wasn't previously obvious to what extent governments were committing resources to infrastructure subversion. They are not especially impressive from a technical perspective: it's basically a more professional and larger scale version of the types of malware produced by Russian banking fraudsters. Working from that down into BIOS hacks and the like is the inevitable result of spending billions on hackers year after year - they need to keep finding new things to exploit. Interesting, but only because it reinforces the idea that everything seems to be hackable.

      But, what kind of people find this work interesting? I can imagine it would be interesting for a few years, especially if you're young and trapped inside a heavily propaganda controlled environment where you're told daily you're the Forces of Good in an epochal struggle against the Axis of Evil. But the amount of technical design work involved is minimal. The level of new technology is minimal. The "research" is simply finding ordinary bugs and flaws in other people's code. People oooh and aaah about the fact that these state malware platforms use a plugin architecture, whilst simultaneously finding the same thing in Photoshop entirely mundane.

      Even the data analytics stuff is essentially just an A-B-C application of big data tech originally developed elsewhere, like at Google.

      And the advanced maths the NSA is supposed to be famous for hardly shows up in the Snowden documents. It's pretty clear that their success against even crappy crypto is fragile at best (RC4), probably non-existent at worst (AES/strong RSA or anything past it). Their botched attempt to back door Dual-EC DRBG smells of desperation. They wouldn't build huge infrastructures for storing and obtaining stolen private keys if they had the mathematical tools to undo modern ciphers. So I suspect there are a lot of mathematicians at the NSA feeling kind of obsolete these days and wondering what they can contribute.

      I'd say the only genuinely technically interesting work the FVEY guys are doing is the way they've been combining passive intercept with active, automated exploitation. QUANTUM is a pretty interesting thing and I'm not aware of anyone discussing anything like it before Snowden's leaks. However, it's also now a done deal. Beyond incremental improvements, there don't seem to be any obvious further directions for that project.

      So as a programmer, developing hacks and malware can be entertaining for some years, but eventually I think most skilled people will want to flex their muscles in other ways. They will want to build something instead of break something. The best people will have a broad span of interests. In an organisation like Google or Facebook that's OK - you can work security for a few years, do some exploit research, then go on and transfer to some other project. Or leave but keep your work on your resume. At the NSA? There it's more limited. You can't easily leave the classified world because your work experience is a gaping void. They don't do product development. You will never make something that your family uses. You will never even develop the skills needed to do that.

      Stories like this give me some hope that despite it's apparently bottomless budget, the NSA can still be beaten technically. They discard most of the qualified people because they aren't US citizens and the ones that are left would be well advised to take a career at a Silicon Valley firm where they can do very similar sorts of work, but for things that are unquestionably useful. If you go do big data analytics or security work in order to fight spam on Gmail (like I did), you don't have to worry about the moral impac

    23. Re:Boo hoo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is taking it too far, due to personal aggravation against being lied and spied against. Your _feelings_ about that fact doesn't make your argument right, however much the the populace have to pay for the lies, corporate social welfare and their inevitable consequences.

      How else is it that the #1 source of real security break-in attempts in most companies are ordered from the inside, namely from the security department? Any decent security department will have expertise at both adding value to the company and breaking security, both physically and electronically. In fact, if you can't perform a real attack yourself, you're not really competent in security. That's why many external companies are hired to lend their expertise.

      That's not to say it is easy for a security department to add value. It's somewhat of an impossible balance to make (builder vs breaker). Nobody likes breakers, but they're essential for the security of every organization on the planet, and is why so many script-kiddies gets hired.

    24. Re:Boo hoo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Citing the biggest underachievers online in arstechnica doesn't help your case here.

    25. Re:Boo hoo by f3rret · · Score: 2

      Many, many words

      Yes, and the Apollo program was just fireworks with an unlimited budget.

      I realize you, and many others, have a lot of axes to grind with the NSA, but they are an organization of skilled people who actually know what they are doing.
      If it is so easy to do this, why haven't the Russian internet criminals rolled anything out on this scale? It seems to me that a platform like this would be all kinds of ideal for criminal purposes.

      And saying that you cannot put any of your work on a resume is just a boldfaced lie, yes it is true you cannot write on your resume: "I developed the HDD firmware hack that EQUATIONDRUG used" or "I was heavily involved in wiretapping of Burmese embassies in the period from (x) to (y)", but there is nothing stopping you from putting in "I worked extensively with hardware programming and device security" or "I worked extensively with telecommunications infrastructure and security in the South East Asia area".
      You cannot say that they don't do product development, yes it is true they probably wont ever make any software you can find on the Android or Apple App stores, but that is not the same as saying that they don't do development, it is just that a lot of the software that the NSA (or more likely, NSA subcontractors) develop are developed for a very limited and specialized audience, anything that does come out of NSA development projects is likely to be quite specialized and obscure.

      That said - there is a not insignificant chance that a lot of the advancement in speech-to-text and other speech-recognition projects we have seen over the last years, has code in it that was developed by people who started out doing work on those subjects for the NSA (ECHELON supposed relied heavily on the ability to recognize keywords in recordings), likewise it is also quite likely that a lot of people who worked with and for the NSA are now out in the civilian sector designing datacenters and supercomputers.
      It is easy to see the NSA as this big, evil organization that does only one thing: spy on people. And while that is certainly one of their main objectives, you have to remember they are also a large IT business and as such have a large IT infrastructure, and because of the work they do and the requirements that work puts on their infrastructure they were probably into the whole "big data" mindset several years before mainstream commercial, civilian IT companies got there.
      Add to this that there is a large section of the NSA that isn't really an intelligence agency at all, they're a Security and Compliance agency that makes sure that DoD, Military and Diplomatic networks meet whatever security standards the NSA specify.

      --
      Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
    26. Re:Boo hoo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is no time for logic, dammit!

    27. Re:Boo hoo by GlobalEcho · · Score: 1

      a lot of the software that the NSA (or more likely, NSA subcontractors) develop are developed for a very limited and specialized audience

      ...and they give it to the users free of charge, with complimentary installation and tech support. ;-)


      (I agree completely with your post, BTW)

    28. Re:Boo hoo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      why is this +5 insightful?

    29. Re:Boo hoo by f3rret · · Score: 1

      Citing the biggest underachievers online in arstechnica doesn't help your case here.

      I could cite Kasparsky Labs if you'd rather.

      --
      Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
    30. Re:Boo hoo by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If it is so easy to do this, why haven't the Russian internet criminals rolled anything out on this scale? It seems to me that a platform like this would be all kinds of ideal for criminal purposes.

      They have. That is exactly what I just said - Zeus is also a modular, plugin based malware platform that is developed by Russian/east European fraud gangs. It bears a lot of similarities to the NSA/GCHQ malware platforms in terms of how it gets onto people's systems, general design, etc.

      because of the work they do and the requirements that work puts on their infrastructure they were probably into the whole "big data" mindset several years before mainstream commercial, civilian IT companies got there

      It's not the case. For instance the NSA scalable data store (Accumulo) is basically a reimplementation of Google's BigTable, and they don't try to hide it. They adopted tech from the civilian space for their own requirements but it wasn't invented there.

      With respect to your other points, I never said they don't know what they're doing, only that what they're doing is not particularly interesting and I don't think it will keep the best people interested for more than a few years before they find it becomes humdrum routine. And by "product" you knew perfectly well what I meant - not some crappy in house web app used by a few hundred people who have no other choice, I mean a product that's available in the marketplace which competes for end users, probably consumers or professionals. Something where quality matters.

    31. Re:Boo hoo by Crimey+McBiggles · · Score: 1

      At that point it's kind of like "eh... what's one more circle now that I'm down to number eight?"

      --
      Crimey
    32. Re:Boo hoo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The ad hominem is strong with this one.

    33. Re:Boo hoo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the ones that are left would be well advised to take a career at a Silicon Valley firm where they can do very similar sorts of work, but for things that are unquestionably useful.

      Like sexting apps and dogfood.com

    34. Re:Boo hoo by I+Read+Good · · Score: 1

      I have no idea how you've been modded "5, Insightful". /. has turned into some new kind of circlejerk. The NSA is tasked with BOTH offensive and defensive roles, and they have a history of (under great scrutiny and suspicion) actually helping to improve security/encryption. The idea that offensive security professionals are motivated by their jealousy of "the makers" is fucking laughable. Characterizing the entire agency as "script kiddie perverts" shows that you lack a fundamental understanding of what the agency does, how it does it, and why it does it. Also, keep in mind that the NSA is an intelligence agency. They are not a police force or defense force of any type. There are other agencies charged with ensuring and assisting with the implementation of security measures.

    35. Re:Boo hoo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "If you go do big data analytics or security work in order to fight spam on Gmail (like I did), you don't have to worry about the moral impact of your work - spammers and hackers are unquestionably bad, so booting them off the platform is unquestionably good. "

      No different from drinking the kool aid of a company to that of a gov't.

      Stopping spammers/hackers? More like saving bandwidth, customer experience to continue using their product... so you can mine their emails for more $$$ and exploitation.

      Offering a moral high ground for a company service (many here would easily stop using email technology if the system allowed it) is not an arguement.

      Again, really, there's no difference.

    36. Re:Boo hoo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They are looking for 2nd raters, people who specialise in breaking stuff and not in making stuff.

      Joke's on you shitlord. The NSA and GCHQ routinely snoop Slashdot packets, snooping for edgelord programmers and sysadmins like yourself, whose systems are already vunerable to zero day exploits. This place is one giant honeypot for fools like yourself.

      And enjoy getting shat on whenever the SJWs decide to decalre a Jihad on your hobby. This site will not stand by you.

    37. Re:Boo hoo by sethstorm · · Score: 1

      No, the 9th circle is reserved for Snowden.

      Those who defend him would probably be in a lesser circle, if unrepentant.

      --
      Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
    38. Re:Boo hoo by sethstorm · · Score: 1

      The Equation Group

      Unfounded accusations that don't hold up under independent scrutiny (read: they rely on unauthorized disclosures by Snowden).

      --
      Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
    39. Re:Boo hoo by DoofusOfDeath · · Score: 1

      No, the 9th circle is reserved for Snowden.

      Those who defend him would probably be in a lesser circle, if unrepentant.

      So our government betrays us and the Constitution, and the person who lets us know is a traitor? Odd reasoning.

    40. Re:Boo hoo by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      So how would US law enforcement work, being both the defensive and the offensive, the police and organised crime, hmm, as it happens, the proof is in the pudding, not really all that fucking well. How about public defenders and public prosecutors working out of the same office, think of the administrative costs saved but seriously are you foolish enough to think it would work, well, apparently so.

      Once the NSA wanted to break other countries laws they should immediately have been kicked out of the role of protecting US laws and that task should have been handed to a combination of the FBI and the FCC, the FCC providing computer expertise (so they could have pot heads) and the FBI providing legal authority, supervision and field agents. With both working to contain the inevitable criminal breaches of the NSA (which has been proven did occur upon a massive scale). This would also ensure that the FBI and the FCC could work with foreign governments and not be treated with downright suspicion and be considered a security threat. American arrogance fuelled by American exceptionalism, resulting in system wide medium and long term failure.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  7. sign up to be a traitor! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    burn the constitution! betray your own people and work for the unaccountable shadow government!

    1. Re:sign up to be a traitor! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This guy gets it!

    2. Re:sign up to be a traitor! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sorry, but the Obama administration is all full, and the next Clinton administration can't use you.

  8. Screw the bastards by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    There's good news today. "Americans no longer trust their government"? Wow! When have I heard that before? About 1968, I think. Ed Snowden is my hero; he can sleep on my floor any time.

    (Andy Canfield, Thailand, www.andycanfield.com)

    1. Re:Screw the bastards by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ed Snowden is my hero; he can sleep on my floor any time.

      Thank you but I prefer sleeping on a bed.
      -- Ed

  9. Good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Fuck them. It's a shame there aren't more talented and smart who aren't willing to work for these monsters. Any legitimate work they do is eclipsed by the massive spying apparatus they've helped to create, and hopefully more people will refuse to lend their talents to such an organization.

    1. Re: Good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Fuck you and your grandizement boatload of straight up fucking BS. People are what make the world go round. Not some dumbfuck dipshit acronym loser pos 'nsa'.

      There are so many things this country could have done "for the betterment" of the world that I could quite easily (but will not) make a list. Instead we have corruption to the core from the top down pretending like they are somehow better off in their pathetic lies and secret knowledge, whilst they hide behind their corrupt monies.
      Those idiots are neither leaders nor bastions of a goddamn thing unless it pampers their whore assess. They and everything they pretend to represent can literally go straight to hell.

    2. Re:Good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's a shame you can't identify who the real monsters are. The real monsters are putting truck bombs in crowded city streets, crucifying children, and stealing women by the thousands for rape, forced marriages, or to be sex slaves. Some US citizens agree with those ideas, and even go overseas to help the monsters. Those monsters believe it is their duty to force their "civilization" on you. On top of that are several countries that would love to cripple or destroy the US. The NSA is part of why the real monsters and evil countries are held in check.

      ...and the jug-eared muslem in the white house is helping them do all of that. The US is being crippled from the inside already.

      The US, absolutely WOULD gain over the long run by eliminating corruption by using the tools that have been built to seek it out. It would take a while for those that don't break the laws or ethics to get to the top, but they would if everything else was exposed.

    3. Re:Good by kilfarsnar · · Score: 1

      It's a shame you can't identify who the real monsters are. The real monsters are putting truck bombs in crowded city streets, crucifying children, and stealing women by the thousands for rape, forced marriages, or to be sex slaves. Some US citizens agree with those ideas, and even go overseas to help the monsters. Those monsters believe it is their duty to force their "civilization" on you. On top of that are several countries that would love to cripple or destroy the US. The NSA is part of why the real monsters and evil countries are held in check.

      Oh, don't worry. There are monsters on all sides. No one has a monopoly on inhuman behavior. And the atrocities of others do not excuse our own.

      --
      "What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
  10. Well what did they expect? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They are a company owned by the US government. They are allowed to do things that would put us citizens in jail. That's their right because of who owns them.

    They are visible as an entity, and suspected of unpopular things.

    They need employees and must compete to get them.

    Evidence, proven or not, gives them a lot of bad press.

    This was inevitable and if they didn't foresee it I'd be really surprised.

  11. Glad to Hear it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm glad more people are choosing to work for companies instead of for the NSA. Not saying I think big companies never do evil, but at least if I don't approve of a company I can choose not to support it with my money. The NSA takes my money to pay for its "services" whether I like it or not, kind of like Tony Soprano might.

  12. Worried? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If they would accumulate data that was appropriately focused and legally gotten, they'd probably have plenty of manpower, given the tech they already have. They only need more "analysts" to sift through all the excess data they are accumulating.

    blunders

  13. Snow fjord is waiting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Hey NSA

    Don't worry about no one wants to join you

    In /. we have our Snow Fjord, always ready to join ya !

    1. Re:Snow fjord is waiting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He's already head of their disinformation campaign.

    2. Re:Snow fjord is waiting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      MyCleanPC also added it to his ever-growing hosts file.....

      Kinda like Castile Soaps his hosts product comes littered with hippie writings.

    3. Re:Snow fjord is waiting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey lay off my hosts files and hippie writings. I took a shower anyways.

    4. Re:Snow fjord is waiting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Putin, is that you?

    5. Re:Snow fjord is waiting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, you're yet another butt hurt troll APK got the best of obviously.

    6. Re: Snow fjord is waiting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Another AC here (because posting as myself would lead to a horrible troll campaign from APK). I personally have never interacted with him but I make sure to direct anyone who needs ad blocking as far away from his product as possible because of his conduct here.

    7. Re: Snow fjord is waiting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yet another trolling coward unidentifiable ac that apk's spanked pops outta the woodwork!

    8. Re: Snow fjord is waiting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Apk's conduct on trolls vs hosts is clean easy knockouts of you imbeciles. Just how many times has he utterly annihilated you then? It's obvious he has and all you have now is hiding by unidentifiable ac trolling since he would simply post when and where he showed everyone on slashdot what a technically incompetent cretin you are.

    9. Re: Snow fjord is waiting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Indeed. Apk's reduced 'em to skulking about gossiping like bitches hahahahaha.

    10. Re: Snow fjord is waiting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      R O T F L M A O! Truer words were never spoken!

    11. Re:Snow fjord is waiting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh, please: You wish you were apk. You're too inferior on any level to even speak his name.

    12. Re:Snow fjord is waiting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You know, I bet they do wish they were apk. Jealous wannabes are like that.

    13. Re: Snow fjord is waiting by mSparks43 · · Score: 1

      personally only ever seen him loose. so no ac fear here.

    14. Re: Snow fjord is waiting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You say that but you always act an ass and troll apk first constantly.

    15. Re: Snow fjord is waiting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Drink another one and post why don't you? Wtf was that??

    16. Re: Snow fjord is waiting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's the result of him drinking "APK's 'Golden-Wine' for Trolls" http://science.slashdot.org/co...

    17. Re: Snow fjord is waiting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      HohoHOhoHohoho !

  14. I'd sign up. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I like the math.

  15. Hiring Will Not Stop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There are enough people out there who enjoy being voyeurs.

  16. NSA can recruit Patriots! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Patriots... N.S.A. will recruit patriots that accept lower (compared to private sector's) payment - why, instead of that real reason (as even the article states), "Edward Snowden" is deceivingly presented as a (major) reason (when it is minor actually) for that recruitement problem?
    I am Greek -so i have no predetermined love or hate for USA-, but i am really tired from this (Slashdot's) "traitors are heros" propaganda - Snowden is a traitor (even if you agree with his actions - while i disagree, i can understand some of those arguments), so it is better for N.S.A. (and any nation's security agency) to choose... patriots!

    1. Re:NSA can recruit Patriots! by HiThere · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If you actually ARE a Greek, then this sense.

      If you believe in the values of the US Constitution, then Snowden is NOT a traitor (which is explicitly defined). And also his acts were in support of the Constitution, which is supposed to be the entire basis of the Federal government. That he revealed the current officeholders to be liars and oathbreakers is *not* a strike against him. I won't go into just how unconstitutional I believe the actions of the current and immediately prior government to be, but the only way they've been able to justify their actions are by requiring you to believe, essentially, that blue was yellow.

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    2. Re:NSA can recruit Patriots! by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 2

      absolutely correct.

      in ALL cases - ALL of them - its ALWAYS ok to 'do the right thing' above all else.

      there are local laws and rules and so on. transient stuff that changes over time.

      but 'do the right thing' is kind of universal. we all know, to some degree or another, what that means. some call it 'sense of right and wrong'.

      snowden broke US laws, but he Did The Right Thing, and for that, he is a hero.

      history has many examples of those who dared to break rules and DTRT. its too bad that they are often, only appreciated decades later, after the fact.

      --

      --
      "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
    3. Re:NSA can recruit Patriots! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If recognition is your motivation for DTRT, then you're doing it wrong. You should not desire fame for that; DTRT is its own reward.

    4. Re:NSA can recruit Patriots! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, i am a Greek - greetings from Athens!
      I like the US Constitution (though i can't claim i know it very good), and i believe its values (many/most/all of its values are... Greek!). As i wrote, i understand (and even accept some/all of) your arguments, but... Snowden IS a traitor: (at least) of N.S.A., and his oath to them, exclusively, and also of U.S.A. inclusively - i am sure that the N.S.A. (as any nation's security agency) makes sure that it is understood from its agents/stuff that what they do is... what they do (!), AND that who ever disagrees either quits or (try to) change the agency acting INTERNALY... but never, never, never, EXTERNALY.
      I understand Snowden's dilemmas, but i also think that i understand his "narcissism" - but even if i am wrong about his character, revealing national secrets (so many and so important) as he did is unpatriotic... you don't treat a tooth pain by cutting off the head!
      Please excuse my English.

    5. Re:NSA can recruit Patriots! by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      DTRT isn't universal at all. If it seems universal, then you are not considering a broad enough array of cultures.

    6. Re:NSA can recruit Patriots! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      However the NSA is acting outside of its own charter, meaning that the NSA was acting as a traitor to itself and the U.S.A.
      Snowden was not a traitor to the NSA, he was maybe a traitor against his bosses who where acting against the NSA charter.

    7. Re:NSA can recruit Patriots! by RabidReindeer · · Score: 2

      DTRT isn't universal at all. If it seems universal, then you are not considering a broad enough array of cultures.

      True. After all, most of the abuses and attacks on the American concepts of liberty and freedom over the last few decades have been done by people "Doing the Right Thing" - as they saw it.

    8. Re:NSA can recruit Patriots! by dissy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Snowden IS a traitor: (at least) of N.S.A., and his oath to them, exclusively, and also of U.S.A. inclusively

      How? Please be detailed.

      He upheld the laws of the USA, upheld his oath to the US government and the NSA.
      He violated no conditions of his oath what so ever.

      The NSA can not require someone to swear an oath to break the law and betray the US constitution in any legal sense - yet that's exactly what they tried to do.

      Breaking a promise to be a criminal does not make you a criminal.

      The oaths required from the DOE, DOD, and DOJ all explicitly demand you do not follow illegal orders, do not break laws without explicit exception, and to report to the higher authorities any illegal orders given - all of which Snowden did to the letter of the law and his oath.

      In short, if you demand I follow an order of yours, do not bitch and claim I'm a traitor to you when I do exactly as you demanded from me, because then everyone will see your demand and accusation as the bullshit it is.

    9. Re:NSA can recruit Patriots! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      "Just following orders"

    10. Re:NSA can recruit Patriots! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ahaa, you are pulling the "Nurenberg trial card" with the mr. Snowden and nsa.

      So, you are saying that the ordinary german soldier, camp guard and so one, did not and was in position to "decide what is and is not an illegal order. It is the job of his superiors". So you are saying that the NSDAP party (US government) had (has) all the right and might to order people to do warcrimes, and the people do not have the right to complain?

    11. Re:NSA can recruit Patriots! by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      Works historically, too. You don't have to compare just cultures of today, but cultures of the past too. There were periods in both England and America where 'the right thing' was to kill witches. They were not only intrinsically evil, they were a threat to the welfare of others and of the community.

    12. Re:NSA can recruit Patriots! by HiThere · · Score: 1

      Traitor is defined explicitly in the constitution. They betrayed their oath of office, they violated the law, they ignored the constitution. All that is true, and it doesn't constitute treason as defined by the constitution.

      Mind you, I feel that they should all be given a decade of extreme solitary confinement. (I.e. *NOBODY* gets in to see them or talk to them except once a month a doctor & their lawyer in a combined visit (the doctor leaves first). And nobody includes guards. I'm thinking of a steel box with a garden lit be grow-lights and food delivered by bellamy tube. If the toilet breaks down they're in trouble...the doctor can order them moved to another cube on his next visit.)

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    13. Re:NSA can recruit Patriots! by HiThere · · Score: 1

      Heraclitus might agree with you, but I do not.

      The US Constitution has some of it's roots in Greek philosophy, but many of them are more directly derived from British Common Law and "The Rights of Englishmen". If you want to understand the purpose behind the Constitution, read Locke. (The Federalist Papers are too focused on the politics of the time to give you a good perspective.)

      OTOH, there were disagreements among the "founding fathers", and I think the branch lead by Alexander Hamilton would agree with you. I have scant sympathy for that view however, preferring the branch lead by Thomas Jefferson (in his polemics, if not always in his actions).

      --

      I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
    14. Re:NSA can recruit Patriots! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Bu...but ...Muh Constitutions!

      STFU nerd. US Governments have wiped their asses with the constitution since its inception. All men created equal (SLAVES!). Freedom of speech? (LOL LOYALISTS!) Speedy Trial? No curel or unusual? (ON WHAT PLANET?!) Right to bear arms? (LOLOLOLOLOL!!111!1)

      Snowden is a painfully cringeworthy moralfag. The only mistake the NSA ever made was not screening for moralfags. Now he's off in Russia and the coffee-chair-generals in Maryland are laughing their asses off while the next round of domestic stazi funding, with associated pension bonuses, rolls the fuck in.

      Stop caring about the internet. It's ogre already.

      Captcha: pillory (lol)

    15. Re:NSA can recruit Patriots! by cavreader · · Score: 1

      Had he kept his data dump focused on US domestic concerns he would not be a traitor. However, all the information released about Foreign intelligence programs does make him a traitor although I think traitor is to strong of a word. His real crime was believing he alone knew what information was dangerous to release and what information was relatively benign in nature. He and his supporters want to paint a picture of some heroic fighter for truth and justice when in reality he is just the best propagandist every country hostile to the US could ever hope for. It's fitting that he is holed up in Russia with the FSB watching his every move and intercepting all his electronic communications. Of course the FSB is just protecting him from being snatched up by the evil US. .

  17. My experience working for the NSA... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Technically I didn't work for the NSA, but I worked for a government contractor that did a lot of classified work for the NSA. If you can name a clearance level, I probably had it.

    Contrary to popular belief, the vast majority of the work the NSA does is concerned with foreign intelligence and surveillance. The part of the NSA that does domestic surveillance is relatively small and not nearly as intrusive as the tinfoil hatters want to believe.

    Still, all of the controversy recently made me think a lot about it and realize I'm not really comfortable being involved even in foreign surveillance. I don't want to be responsible for creating technology that will be used to track down and kill people, even if those people are enemies of the USA. Yes, I know foreign countries are spying on us just as much, but that isn't an excuse.

    So I quit that job, and I'll never again work on classified material. I've been much happier with my work lately.

    1. Re:My experience working for the NSA... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Uh dude, the actual specifics of the programs were laid bare to the public in excruciating detail. It's not about believing anyone, it's about reading the damn primary source documents.

      And why should anyone's morality stop at domestic surveillance? Does the rest of humanity not matter?

    2. Re:My experience working for the NSA... by randalware · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I was in about the same boat, working for a sub contractor helping make things.

      The thing I was concerned about was, all the technology the we are/were using against foreign countries and terrorists are now being used against the population of the US.

      The NSA and CIA and it's immediate peers have a little common sense, but the Patriot act started a pipline of this intel to the FBI, State Police, Local police.

      Our local police have problem pepper spraying handicapped elderly people issuing a parking ticket and exessive use of tasers whil issuing regular traffic tickets
      Look at Ferguson MO, etc...

      Do we want morons like these with anymore information and power, the public needs to watch them, not the other way around.

      --
      This is my opinion based on what little I know and understand of the rumors and lies Thanks, Randal
    3. Re:My experience working for the NSA... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Uh dude, the actual specifics of the programs were laid bare to the public in excruciating detail.

      I think you misunderstand. Even if all of those documents were true (not all of them are), the amount of foreign surveillance the NSA does dwarfs their domestic surveillance. The amount of intelligence they gather on foreign countries is staggering. There is not a single wave on the RF spectrum over in North Korea that we don't have on a hard drive somewhere. Their domestic surveillance programs are just offshoots of that.

      And why should anyone's morality stop at domestic surveillance? Does the rest of humanity not matter?

      I'm not sure why you're taking such an argumentative tone when I obviously agree with you.

      But to answer your question, to a lot of people, yes, morality stops at the country's border. Anybody living in a foreign country is a potential enemy. Foreign governments are doing their best to spy on us as much as they can, and so the natural response is for us to do the same to them (but better, because we're America). People who are not natural-born US citizens do not have rights.

      I'm not saying that's the way it should be, or that I agree with it, but that's the way it is to the majority of people who work for the US government. Ask any of your friends who've ever been in the armed forces how much they care about the rights of enemy combatants when they're on the battlefield.

    4. Re:My experience working for the NSA... by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 4, Insightful

      > The part of the NSA that does domestic surveillance is relatively small and not nearly as intrusive as the tinfoil hatters want to believe

      That claim seems to be nonsensical, given the existence of the Echelon program, and the immunity granted to AT&T for its infamous fiber optic monitoring room (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A), Whether it is "relatively small" is also fairly meaningless, since it could mean "epsilon less than a majority of the budget".

      I'm glad for your moral standing and peace of mind that you've withdrawn from such work. But let's be very clear that much of what the NSA is illegal, unconstitutional, and against various international treaties.

    5. Re:My experience working for the NSA... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You feel disdain in that position because you're right, government has a monopoly of force against all peoples worldwide, against their families, against their freedoms. When you work for government long enough you start to realize that what you're doing is actually pointless, wasteful, harmful and without love. Yeah, sure, collect some tax money for roads and bridges and fire trucks, some nice directed science and medical research to benefit the planet. But really... entire fucking entrenched legal and state appratuses??? Corporations with more voice than a person, solely for the purpose of taking from people? PRISON STATE?!?! WAR??!?!? MURDER?!?!?
      Yeah, i feel for ya bro. Downsize your own government...... just quit and never look back.
      Raise your family, grow tomatoes, start a business, help people, live a good clean life free of the immoral murder monopoly.

    6. Re:My experience working for the NSA... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually I have very little issue with what they do. It's the fact that they hire idiots like Snowden to absolutely destroy their public image, and countless thousands of others who - by being subtle and completely asinine - give away the fact that they are spying on US citizens TO said citizens. It's one thing to have a system in place that offers a nice feedback loop for a stable society, but it's quite another to have a system staffed by fratboys having j***off competitions with people's lives that they were sworn to protect.

    7. Re:My experience working for the NSA... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, it's all Snowden's fault their public image is destroyed, not the fact that they've been lying to and abusing the people and their rights. Sure, buddy, keep telling yourself that.

      I don't even know how one could be so disillusioned, and yet I see this lie all too often.

    8. Re:My experience working for the NSA... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, it's just hard for me to believe that they were ever up-front about much of anything. I just think it's a simpler explanation that we all started complaining more when we got internet and people like Snowden started blabbering.

      Have they lied, abused people, and violated constitutional rights? That's not for me to answer, unfortunately. But do I think they ALWAYS have? Yes, I believe every government always has and always will. If you think that's disillusionment then, well, you're right. Illusions are troublesome.

    9. Re:My experience working for the NSA... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ask any of your friends who've ever been in the armed forces how much they care about the rights of enemy combatants when they're on the battlefield.

      They don't give a flying fuck about enemy combatants when they're on the battlefield.

      Some of them care about trials when the combatants are captured alive.

      Probably most of them care about the casual or incidental murder or death of civilians.

    10. Re:My experience working for the NSA... by cold+fjord · · Score: 0, Troll

      But let's be very clear that much of what the NSA is illegal, unconstitutional, and against various international treaties.

      Let's be very clear that the real situation is that you wish that much of what NSA does is illegal and unconstituional. Unfortunately the law, courts, and Congress are against you. Your wish is just that, a wish, and it isn't coming true any time soon.

      --
      much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
    11. Re:My experience working for the NSA... by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 1

      > Let's be very clear that the real situation is that you wish that much of what NSA does is illegal and unconstituional

      Much of it is is clearly illegal. Take a careful look at the "retroactive immunity" granted AT&T for their collaboration in the "Rooom 641A" surveillance center, the fiber tap on one of the backbones of both digital and voice communications for the entire Western United States, and of long distance communications both foreign and domestic. Now multiply that by the similar facilities in other telecommunications facility, and couple that with the cavalier segregation of domestic and foreign communications evidenced by Edward Snowden's documents. These show the existence of broad programs that make no coherent, or legality aware, distinction between domestic and foreign surveillance.

    12. Re:My experience working for the NSA... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >People who are not natural-born US citizens do not have rights.

      Are you a native American? No? Then shut the fuck up!

    13. Re:My experience working for the NSA... by kuzb · · Score: 1

      "The part of the NSA that does domestic surveillance is relatively small and not nearly as intrusive as the tinfoil hatters want to believe."

      There's this guy named Snowden who showed us just how much complete bullshit this really is. Their domestic surveillance may not be as hardcore as their foreign, but it's still pretty damn hardcore. We don't really need tinfoil hats for this one - the evidence was provided.

      --
      BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
    14. Re:My experience working for the NSA... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You don't need to answer you dumb fucking moron. We know they did because all the evidence one would ever need to see that was provided by the very man you're attempting to decry. You know, the guy who saw something seriously wrong with what the NSA was doing, and attempted to do something about it.

      Snowden sacrificed his US citizenship, and for most intents and purpose, a normal life in order to try to protect your rights and freedoms you ungrateful sack of shit. If anything, we need more people like Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning. People who had the fucking sense to not just see how intensely wrong government actions are, but to have the balls to do something about it.

    15. Re:My experience working for the NSA... by gsslay · · Score: 1

      Contrary to popular belief, the vast majority of the work the NSA does is concerned with foreign intelligence and surveillance.

      The rest of the world has no problem believing this. And they don't like it.

    16. Re:My experience working for the NSA... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Contrary to popular belief, the vast majority of the work the NSA does is concerned with foreign intelligence and surveillance. The part of the NSA that does domestic surveillance is relatively small and not nearly as intrusive as the tinfoil hatters want to believe.

      If you think anyone is going to believe you, well, I got a bridge for sale that you may be interested....

    17. Re:My experience working for the NSA... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > The part of the NSA that does domestic surveillance is relatively small and not nearly as intrusive as the tinfoil hatters want to believe

      That claim seems to be nonsensical, given the existence of the Echelon program [...]

      It has been NSA's MO so far - keep repeating lies, over and over. Someone might believe it.

      And it has worked quite well so far.

    18. Re:My experience working for the NSA... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the vast majority of the work the NSA does is concerned with foreign intelligence and surveillance

      Yeah, except that "foreign intelligence and surveillance" happens to include spying on people in other Five Eyes countries and sharing it with their own intelligence agencies to circumvent laws against spying on their own citizens - and those agencies then reciprocating by sharing data they collect about Americans.

      The whole thing is fucked.

    19. Re:My experience working for the NSA... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you don't think that is true then you should hold on to that bridge for a while since you are obviously have an issue. You either aren't that bright, have mental health issues, or both, and will need somewhere to live in the coming years. Living under a bridge isn't nice, but that may be the best you'll do.

    20. Re:My experience working for the NSA... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      All the FIVE EYES countries get other countries to spy on their own citizens when they can't, so even if what you say is true it just means that the NSA does likewise and asks GCHQ for intel on US citizens that it isn't allowed to gather. It ignores security laws to allow GCHQ to do that on its behalf.

      The NSA also helps GCHQ and other national crime^H^H^H^H^Hspy agencies subvert and pervert the laws of their own countries through its foreign spying programmes.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    21. Re:My experience working for the NSA... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Look at Ferguson MO

      Have you ever been to Ferguson, MO? I have. I have friends that had to temporarily move out of their house during all of the violence there last summer and fall. It's not a good neighborhood. And it's surrounded by other un-good neighborhoods, like Wellston (worse), Jennings (not as bad), and the City of St. Louis itself (hellhole).

      I just heard on the news yesterday that 9 children (under 10 years of age) have been shot in St. Louis in the past month. That statistic says nothing about the number of adults that have been shot. That statistic also is separate from the teenagers that have been shot. Murders are pretty much a daily occurrence in certain parts of the St. Louis area. A few weeks ago, on a very cold night, there were 7 shootings, with 6 resulting in death. And it always gets worse when the weather gets hot.

      While I don't think that the NSA needs to be spying on people and I don't exactly trust the cops, I also don't think that it's a totally unwarranted concern for a cop to be afraid for his own safety during pretty much any encounter. Dumb people do dumb shit and end up getting in trouble with the law. Then, when the law is about to plant a boot in their ass for doing dumb things, they make it worse by attacking a cop. Now that boot in the ass becomes a full-on curbstomp and public sympathy evaporates. Meanwhile, the cop gets hailed as a "hero" for doing the job he signed up for.

      The situation is unbalanced at every level. Everyone's pushing to get their way, to make it easier to get what they want, and to make it harder to stop them from taking what they want. This is the opposite of society and civilization. It's anti-social and uncivilized. And pretty much everyone is guilty of it, from the little guys shooting each other in urban hellholes, all the way up to the big-time crooks in national politics and law enforcement. The system is broken and needs to be replaced, but that would end up making a lot of "winners" very resentful.

      And it's not just in the US, it's everywhere. Humanity needs a global social enema.

    22. Re:My experience working for the NSA... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      First Nations peoples come from Asia.

      They are not Native Americans - there is no such thing.

    23. Re:My experience working for the NSA... by kilfarsnar · · Score: 1

      But let's be very clear that much of what the NSA is illegal, unconstitutional, and against various international treaties.

      Let's be very clear that the real situation is that you wish that much of what NSA does is illegal and unconstituional. Unfortunately the law, courts, and Congress are against you. Your wish is just that, a wish, and it isn't coming true any time soon.

      ORLY? http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/16/...

      That was literally the first hit on Google for 'Judge Rules NSA Illegal'. Do you even Internet?

      --
      "What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
    24. Re:My experience working for the NSA... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the amount of foreign surveillance the NSA does dwarfs their domestic surveillance

      Last I heard any communication with a chance of leaving the US or with a person with foreign associates counted as foreign surveillance. That covers most "domestic" communications and most of the internet.

    25. Re:My experience working for the NSA... by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

      But to answer your question, to a lot of people, yes, morality stops at the country's border.

      Only if you're an international douche bag of the highest order. Occupying the lowest stratum of moral behavior is what damns organisations to fighting themselves as much as they fight real enemies.

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    26. Re:My experience working for the NSA... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've held a similar position in the past. However I never really worked on any surveillance technology, just giant mirrors and lasers...

    27. Re:My experience working for the NSA... by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Wasn't it a guy at Google who said that, if you don't want people to know you're doing something, maybe you shouldn't be doing it? The US people have a right to know what, in general, the NSA does. Not the specific techniques or operational details, but the goals and general actions. The NSA has been spying on US citizens en masse and lying about it.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    28. Re:My experience working for the NSA... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Contrary to popular belief, the vast majority of the work the NSA does is concerned with foreign intelligence and surveillance.

      Hurr Durr! We can has classify breaking into domestic companeez as foreign be-cause all dem frrrgn terrists be using da Googles!!

    29. Re:My experience working for the NSA... by cold+fjord · · Score: 1

      Apparently you don't understand what is going on there. If you did you would realize how little that means. A preliminary injunction that is limited in scope to the individuals involved which is then put on hold is not a great victory. That is particularly true since even if the plaintifs ultimately "win" at the trial court they are almost certain to lose on appeal. These matters have been ruled on before and the judge in this case is not in line with existing precedent. The judge's reasoning is not in line with what the Supreme Court has already ruled. That means if he ultimately decides for the plaintifs it is highly likely his decision will be overturned. Also, if you bothered to look past the first return you would have seen that about a week later another judge ruled the program was legal.

      So to answer your question, yes I "internet," but for various reasons I happen to have a better understanding of what can found regarding certain topics.

      --
      much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
    30. Re:My experience working for the NSA... by cold+fjord · · Score: 1

      Much of it is is clearly illegal.

      NSA makes its saving throw and produces scrolls of law and court decisions. Your incantation fails.

      It's interesting that you use the word "clearly" however. That is a lot like using "obviously," as in "obviously illegal." Many laymen have gone wrong on "obvious" questions of law, and even lawyers are cautioned that the lawyer that has himself as a client is a fool. I'd be curious to know if you even know what Article II of the Constitution is and its reach in law?

      Take a careful look at the "retroactive immunity" ...

      The main effect of the "retroactive immunity" was to shield telecom companies against lawsuits from activists. You know the type - they would file lawsuits to block the 1944 Normandy D-Day invasion because it might harm the endangered Normandy black-spotted clam. Free Europe from Nazi tyranny and end the Holocaust or save the clam? They'll save the clam.

      Surely you've noticed the many posts on Slashdot over the last several years in which people have in essence declared that they don't care how many Americans are killed like lambs at slaughter (and they should die "bravely") just so long as their uninformed minimalist and purist fringe views about the Consitution are followed without taking note of any legal developments since 1789 (or even earlier). For them the Constitution is a suicide pact. I have little doubt that the signers of the Constitution would find those views mad.

      Foreign phone calls are generally going to have foreign phone numbers. I'm reasonably certain they can be distinguished with little difficulty.

      --
      much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
    31. Re:My experience working for the NSA... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nah, don't tell me! YOU RAN OUT OF AMERICAS FOR THE JOB!!! All you have are Africans and Arabs and Indians (ubiquituous) and the other Indians or Chinese and other Orientals... isn't it true? You sent all Americans to war! And the ones you did not come from other countries where they were living so you place them in the same category and unsuitable! I thought the problem was privy to Cornell and the FBI but does look like you will only find crazies, leftovers and whatever is substituting Americans for... Americans. No wonder.

  18. WTF?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They were spooks then. They're spooks now. Perhaps the only difference is that they've been caught? They perform a valid national security function, and are probably staffed with a dash of scoundrels, some critical people and gobs of paper pushers. Hell, they were looking for gobs of computational linguistics people back in the early 80's.

    The people who could do the job then are still available to hire. The people who couldn't then can't now. Tom Clancy made it all look sexy, but nothing's changed.

    Why do people want to command tanks, or drop bombs, or take pictures, ...?

    1. Re:WTF?! by gatkinso · · Score: 1

      >> Perhaps the only difference is that they've been caught?

      That's pretty much it.

      --
      I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
  19. Boo-hoo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They don't seem to have issues with funding... I'm sure Congress could come up with an extra few hundred million (classified, of course) for better salaries to attract top talent.

    1. Re: Boo-hoo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      At this point I do not honestly believe they are above arresting individuals and promptly pitching them a get out of jail and into the NSA card.

  20. Misdirection by nicoleb_x · · Score: 1

    With pull quotes like this: "You know we have good health benefits, and we're government, right? So we have a huge scope of insurance to choose from," he says.

    You just know they, NPR, are full of it. If I had to guess, the NSA is flooded with qualified candidates.

  21. I feel so bad for them. by ckatko · · Score: 1

    It's so terrible that people don't want to work for a company with a proven track record of exploiting the very citizens it says it serves. All of us iPhone zombies are truly empathatic to your cause.

  22. I could have been in the NSA... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    but they found out my parents were married.

  23. No surprise by sjames · · Score: 1

    Looks like the tribbles^W chickens have come home to roost.

  24. Don't worry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    People have been conditioned to abhor vulnerability and are exploited by an otherwise rational argument that their existence, and most importantly advancement, is dependent upon siding with power. Gaining power should never be easy to gain. However all too often people want to shortcut to power at all costs. It only leads to betrayal in the end. There are all too many people who feel themselves too important and qualified, that there is this new shiny title that gives an illusion of privilege. The NSA isn't the problem, all the talking points aren't the problem. We are the problem, the more that this is ignored, the more that everything else is neglected. If no one can recognize the problem, how can anything be solved?

  25. Thugs / &source=autorefresh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They might be able to attract more thugs though.

    And FUCK AUTOREFRESH.

  26. Precedents by Livius · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How much has ethical questions hurt recruitment at Diebold, Monsanto, Goldman-Sachs, Verizon, Microsoft, Oracle, etc.?

    1. Re:Precedents by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You forgot McDonald's.

    2. Re:Precedents by Livius · · Score: 1

      I meant to put Bell Canada and Rogers at the top of the list.

  27. The problem's never been reputation by rsilvergun · · Score: 2

    it's been money. I know a few guys who hire comp-sci for gov't jobs and they're always complaining they can't get good candidates while offering 1/3 the pay of private sector. It'd be one thing if it was a stable career path but with our right wing taking a hatchet to anything they don't like it's not even that.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:The problem's never been reputation by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      If there's one thing that you don't need to worry about taking the hatchet from the right wingers, it's the NSA (and the military-industrial-police state complex in general).

    2. Re:The problem's never been reputation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      it's been money. I know a few guys who hire comp-sci for gov't jobs and they're always complaining they can't get good candidates while offering 1/3 the pay of private sector.

      Bingo, that's their real problem. If they paid even just at market rates, they'd have to call in the Army to keep the mob of candidates out.

    3. Re: The problem's never been reputation by Steve+B · · Score: 2

      Yep. Government salaries are just hopelessly uncompetitive for any position requiring high-level skills. They try to paper over the problem with flag-pin symbolism, but that doesn't work now that the mystique has been replaced by stench.
       

      --
      /. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
    4. Re:The problem's never been reputation by OhPlz · · Score: 1

      Were the right wingers the ones that had the feds saying that possessing a Gadsden flag was a sign of domestic terrorism? The real right wingers want to shut down most of the federal government, or did you miss that part? The right does generally support a strong military, but the NSA isn't supposed to be military.

      The supposed right wing politicians are the ones that support this crap, along with the left wing politicians who renewed the "Patriot" Act. I would bet you the actual people of the right detest the federal police state just as much as the crackpots on the left. The trouble is, the assholes we vote for do whatever the heck they want once in office. The campaign rhetoric is the only thing different amongst politicians. Stop supporting a strong federal government and return the majority of the power back to the states and local governments. That's the only place the people can be heard, it's the only place where we can possibly have consent of the governed and a say in our government. Federal power corrupts, always.

    5. Re:The problem's never been reputation by steelfood · · Score: 1

      There's a bit of that. If they paid well, I'm sure there'd be more candidates.

      But working for the government has always been about patriotism and patriotic duty. Nerd types aren't really going to go establish a beachhead, but those among them who wish to protect their country will elect to do so in ways that they can. This is especially true for bright, starry-eyed college grads.

      Now, the NSA has lost even that candidate pool.

      --
      "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
    6. Re:The problem's never been reputation by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      I don't know who the 'real right wingers' are, but I suspect it's a specimen of the same sort as the True Scotsman. What I know is that the people whom most everybody, including themselves, and who number in the millions, worship the military and the police.

    7. Re:The problem's never been reputation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I tried to apply for an NSA job after I graduated, just a basic entry-level programming position. They had outsourced recruitment to some group that was totally uninterested in recruiting, did not seem to know how to recruit, would not return emails, etc. Finally, after weeks of cajoling, they invited me in for an interview. This seemed quite forward at this point in the process, so I pulled more information out of them. It turns out they were inviting me to a scheduled *career fair*, the in-person equivalent of a website listing what careers are available. They wanted me to take the trouble of flying across the country to see some bored recruiters pitch a table and hand out flyers with information I could get off the internet. The event would be run solely by the recruiters and no hiring personnel would be present. They had told me it was an interview for that programming position I had been seeking, before admitting that they made that up to try to get me to go. I decided not to waste any more of my time with them.

      That was about five years ago. It's possible that things have changed.

    8. Re:The problem's never been reputation by OhPlz · · Score: 1

      I don't know anyone that worships either. Hyperbole much?

    9. Re:The problem's never been reputation by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      I find that worship is a perfectly accurate word to describe the "support the troops" cult, for example. So no.

    10. Re:The problem's never been reputation by OhPlz · · Score: 1

      I'm not surprised you don't understand a person willing to sacrifice their life for someone else or why those that do deserve respect.

      Got your reservation for the new iWatch yet?

    11. Re:The problem's never been reputation by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      I'm not surprised you don't understand a person willing to sacrifice their life for someone else or why those that do deserve respect.

      I hope you do pay due respect to the fallen Waffen SS troops.

    12. Re:The problem's never been reputation by OhPlz · · Score: 1

      Didn't take long to Godwin. Not surprised.

    13. Re:The problem's never been reputation by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      Would you prefer the Red Guard as an easy way to make the point?

      Of note is that you didn't actually have a meaningful answer.

  28. How about the damage of having the NSA on a resume by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I would never hire someone who was employed by the NSA. Its not the old farts that ruined our country, it was the 20 something techs that made it possible. They sat in front of the screens damaging our constitution and did it for a paycheck.

  29. You sh*t the bed... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Now lay in it.

    1. Re:You sh*t the bed... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This guy gets it.

  30. since they already vacuum all communications by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    should they not already know the personal details of who's inclined to join them? first employment filter is already active..

    1. Re:since they already vacuum all communications by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I for one am glad it's just a massive case of "someone else's problem".

  31. Struggling Means Fellowship by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    NSA will be forced into Heinous Criminal activity in order to Save itself.

    So far NSA has engaged in petty crimes against the citizen of the USA and World. In the months ahead NSA must step up and do Felony Crimes to be Legit!

    Time to MAN-UP NSA, or be eaten by your predators.

    Ha ha Fuck U, U Deserv It and Require It.

    "How to MAN-UP" Launch a thermo nuclear detonation 1 km above NY City; use the Empire State Building as G-ZERO.

    Ha ha U Fuckers don't have any balls!

    Ha ha

    Can't Even Fuck U'r own MOTHERS! Ha ha Their DEAD!

    Ha ha

  32. In summary... by _Shad0w_ · · Score: 2

    I think "You reap what you sow" sums it up.

    --

    Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.

  33. The NSA can do what all major corporations do - by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Get some H1B indentured serfs :)

  34. Lottery by s.petry · · Score: 1, Informative

    One pays well, and has the potential to make you a multimillionaire. The other is a GSA employee making middle class income, and assuming you can stomach the work for 30 years a mediocre retirement check. Both jobs require a high degree of psychopathy, both result in a high suicide/mortality rate, both can result in you being disposed of if you are deemed a liability (I'm not referring to being fired, check the stats on "suicides" by things like 5 gunshot wounds to the head), and both receive tremendous public shame (rightfully so).

    As the person above stated, if you are going to sell your soul you will try to get the highest price. Wall Street/Lobby agency, or "Consultant".

    30 years ago people worked for the NSA because we were stupid enough as a society to believe what the media told us. Today there are too many sources of media for that to be working any longer.

    If the NSA wants to really start recruiting talent here is a novel idea. Start providing enough information to the "good" law enforcement (the NSA knows who they are) agencies to prosecute all the crooks holding government offices (appointed or voted in). If they started cleaning house, and given enough time clean.. people would believe they rehabilitated and were once again looking out for the average citizens best interests. The reputation as the Stasi is too well known for them to attract anything but the scum of the US for a very long time.

    --

    -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

    1. Re:Lottery by John.Banister · · Score: 2

      And, if the government becomes full of honest politicians, what happens to the NSA's budget?

    2. Re:Lottery by cold+fjord · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If the NSA wants to really start recruiting talent here is a novel idea. Start providing enough information to the "good" law enforcement (the NSA knows who they are) agencies to prosecute all the crooks holding government offices (appointed or voted in). If they started cleaning house, and given enough time clean.. people would believe they rehabilitated and were once again looking out for the average citizens best interests. The reputation as the Stasi is too well known for them to attract anything but the scum of the US for a very long time.

      So you openly advocate having the national intelligence agencies spy on politicians to find incriminating evidence that makes them vulnerable, but you disparage the Stasi? Hmmmmm......

      --
      much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
    3. Re:Lottery by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      There's nothing wrong with an accountability system in principle - we want politicians to follow the law and avoid corruption, after all. The problem is bias in enforcement. If you get the NSA to spy on politicians, they are sure to find more than a few who are taking bribes (Or as we put it today, violating what few rules on campaign finance remain). That much is fine - but you can also expect them to take a much longer, harder look at any politicians who propose cutting the NSA budget, and deliberately not investigating too hard those that seek to increase the agency's influence. The personal political views of the agency management would also be an influence on who gets the most enforcement effort.

    4. Re:Lottery by cold+fjord · · Score: 1

      Although you are quit bright, at times you express some really bad ideas. This is one of them. Politicians are accountable to their constituents, and ordinary law enforcement will do fine, thank you. Keeping the military and intelligence agencies apolitical in a democracy is a good thing unless you have a taste for coups.

      --
      much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
    5. Re:Lottery by cold+fjord · · Score: 1

      Nothing. The NSA exists because nations like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union existed, China, Russia, and North Korea still publicly threaten the US and other nations with nuclear weapons (and Iran hoping to join the club), and terrorist groups exist. If you think NSA exists because of "dishonest" politicains in the US you competely misunderstand the issues.

      --
      much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
    6. Re: Lottery by Steve+B · · Score: 1

      Heck, they could earn some goodwill by using all those resources to shut down the whole "Rachel from Card Services" operation.

      --
      /. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
    7. Re:Lottery by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Infowars called, they really miss you.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    8. Re:Lottery by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As a proven treasonous traitor, you aren't qualified to be the arbiter of who "completely misunderstands the issues."

    9. Re:Lottery by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      China, Russia, and North Korea still publicly threaten the US and other nations with nuclear weapons

      Good thing the US has never done that right?

    10. Re:Lottery by s.petry · · Score: 1

      Are you trying to suggest that Politicians are above the treatment everyone else in society receives? Do you somehow believe that even though every cable and communication you send to grandma gets archived and sifted through, people like Hillary Clinton should be exempt? Evidence provided to law enforcement agencies by the NSA can not include those "special" class of people?

      No, you must have something else in mind and simply failed so state your case properly.

      --

      -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

    11. Re:Lottery by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      I don't think we are in disagreement. I explained that accountability is a good thing in practice, but that it creates serious problems with corruption when the organisation supposed to enforce accountability is itsself unaccountable and subject to both corruption and political bias.

    12. Re:Lottery by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you think the engineers and software developers working for the NSA work on a GSA pay scale you are woefully misinformed. The tolerance of past deeds marring your background security check is directly proportional to your skillset and level of expertise. If you are smart enough you can bring your bong to work as long as you stay in the designated smoking area. As it stands Snowden has only guaranteed that the merely competent are going to get put through the ringer even harder than before when it comes to getting a clearance. Even though all the "Secret" projects revealed by Snowden were actually listed by the same acronym's on several job sites along with the needed skillsets before Snowden took over the publicity duties. I find it strange that there has been no detailed technical analysis or discussions on exactly what resources and technical capabilities it would take for the NSA to accomplish even a small portion of the activities they are accused of running. There is a remarkable silence from even the mediocre technologists when asked to explain the technical details that would make Snowden's PowerPoint Presentation slides look like more than project proposals used to secure funding instead of the blue prints of some diabolical scheme to read the entire world's e-mail. All the complaints seem to revolve around what the NSA COULD DO not what they HAVE DONE with the capabilities that are attributed to them. I am more worried about Google tracking my information than the government. Google actually is interested in everyone where the NSA is only interested in a very small minority of folks who seem overly fond of C-4 and airline schedules. The 4th amendment is a wonderful right but never forget the 2nd amendment is there to make sure the government doesn't stray to far off the beaten path. If you were planning an armed revolution I could understand some of the anger of having to change all your plans because the NSA is watching you but 99.9999% of people do not ever show up on the NSA's radar.It's the 0.0001% they are scrambling to keep track of in an often futile attempt to stave off the next atrocity. And lets be clear the NSA mandate basically means they can do anything they want outside the borders of the US. Every country with indoor plumbing and a broadband internet connection conduct foreign espionage as well and as long as that is the case then I am afraid the NSA will continue to exist even if it does offend your precious sensibilities. If the NSA is so watchful and intrusive how did Snowden do what he did? He is not some technical guru. He was a recovering Republican system admin who used his own passwords and in some instances stolen co-worker passwords. If he didn't want to become a rock star and used just a tiny portion of his brain he could have released all the stolen data anonymously but now he is fucked and he continues to dig himself into a deeper hole with each piece of foreign intelligence data he releases. Wonder how he likes his FSB detail? He is without a doubt wired 24/7 by the kindly FSB folks all in the name of making sure the evil Americans are not about to do a quick snatch and grab. If Snowden had been a citizen of China he would have been sent pieces of his relatives in a box every so often to encourage his quick return to face the renown Chinese justice system.

    13. Re:Lottery by cold+fjord · · Score: 1

      Just over a week ago the Russian ambassador to Denmark threatened Denmark with nuclear weapons. Please find me a comparable example of the US making a similar open threat involving nuclear weaopns anytime recent.

      Russia threatens to aim nuclear missiles at Denmark ships if it joins NATO shield

      In an interview in the newspaper Jyllands-Posten, the Russian ambassador to Denmark, Mikhail Vanin, said he did not think Danes fully understood the consequences of joining the program.

      "If that happens, Danish warships will be targets for Russian nuclear missiles," Vanin told the newspaper.

      --
      much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
    14. Re:Lottery by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      you sound like an old nigger, the nasty old porchmonkey types

  35. Some Premises Need to be Questioned by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I am still having a little trouble with "we don't need our spies to spy". Maybe we do.

    I am also having trouble believing that the kind of encryption we use on the Internet actually stops the U.S. Government from finding out whatever it wishes although IETF and sysadmins might be kidding themselves that it can. Government can get to the end systems. They can subborn your staff. Etc.

    --
    Bruce Perens.
    1. Re:Some Premises Need to be Questioned by Marginal+Coward · · Score: 1

      I am still having a little trouble with "we don't need our spies to spy". Maybe we do.

      Agreed. I thought the old idea of "gentlemen don't read other gentlemen's mail" had gone out of style decades ago.

      Like many other questionable things that governments do, I think the basic calculus of spying still holds: the other guys are going to spy, so we'll be at a severe disadvantage if we don't do the same. To do otherwise would be admirable but quite naive.

      In that vein, the recurring self-righteous outrage at NSA that we see here following the Snowden revelations actually seems kindda cute. Aren't those kids just adorable?

    2. Re:Some Premises Need to be Questioned by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I am still having a little trouble with "we don't need our spies to spy". Maybe we do.

      False premise. The actual question is "do we need our spies to spy on ourselves?"

      Do you think you need your government's spies to spy on yourself?

    3. Re:Some Premises Need to be Questioned by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Re: "... encryption we use on the Internet actually stops the U.S. Government..."

      You see, this is the problem with binary thinking. Anyone with some knowledge and brains knows that it cannot stop them, as in Full Stop. If they are interested enough and determined enough, they are going to get you. Somehow.

      However this is a false dicotomy. Most of the time, they are not interested enough, nor determined enough. Decent encryption stops all casual fishing expeditions, casual spying. Also, the government is like any other large organization. Small branches, sometimes involving just one or two people, can become determined to break into some private conversation. If they cannot get any help however, and particularly if their boss doesn't agree with this particular obsession, then good ecryption actually has an excellent chance at stopping them.

      Now broaden this out to the World At Large. What if we all begin using decent encryption? Suddenly the exceptional, unusual encrypted traffic which was much easier to target, just because the volume was small, becomes a gigantic problem. Give them a decryption target that is huge and undifferentiated, then the Three Letter Agencies are going to back off somewhat on spying on innocent civilians, just trying to live their lives with some privacy, without the burden of knowing that Big Brother is, or can, listen in on every little domestic matter.

      Knowing that the TLA's can focus exceptional resources on exceptional problems is not the same thing as knowing that the TLA's can breach any private communication, encrypted or not. The resources required for the former are within reach. The resources required for the latter are not. That indeed is the greatest power of the citizenry. Resistance to tyranny is not futile.

  36. Shouldn't they be good at pretending by John.Banister · · Score: 2

    that they're not the NSA? Perhaps they could contract people to do individual projects anonymously. And, for positions where the people have to have a security clearance, there's always sub-contractors. I reckon they'll need to be better at keeping the jobs done by the sub-contractors compartmentalized than once they were, though. You never know when a sub-contractor will accidentally hire someone with a conscience.

  37. Edward Snowden by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere, Eddie Eddie Eddie.... :)

  38. Two types of people replying to this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    4-digit user IDs and ACs. OK, a few don't fit that; and maybe it's because of April Fools; but this sticks out to me. 4-digits don't care. ACs with insight are young and have something to protect. "So. It has come to this".

  39. Good. by kuzb · · Score: 2

    People didn't trust the government before Snowden either. The only difference here is that Snowden offered us definitive evidence that what we all suspected was going on really was going on. Fuck the NSA. It has strayed so far from its actual purpose I hope it drowns in its lack of educated help. At this point, even tech companies with a strict profit motive are more trustworthy than the US government.

    --
    BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
  40. Trust... by kupekhaize · · Score: 2

    Anyone who still trusted the NSA before the Snowden revelations just wasn't paying attention to begin with. The stories about room 641A in San Francisco told me pretty much everything I needed to know. This is just one of many similar rooms across the country. They are sitting on major backbones, T'ing everything off to special carnivore / aka DCS-1000 (whatever the latest variant is) rack(s) that save whatever they tell it to, or pass it along somewhere else. It's unlikely they are saving all due to the sheer amount of data but I'd be insanely surprised if the vast, vast majority aren't saved at least for a short time while some kind of rudementary analysis is done.

    What kind of analysis could be done on that volume of data? It's not hard to picture when you think about it. Think SpamAssassin scores. Encrypted anything gets a bonus, data from a "known source" gets a major bonus, data from a mandated target is an immediate +1000 to cross any threshold that is set. Key words, in the right amounts etc etc can all be programmed in to tell the system what to save for further analysis. Headers are tracked, countires of origins, time of day, prior call history (caller +2 data everyone made such a big deal about a while back) -- all of this is metadata that some kind of SpamAssassin clone program can take into account in order to decide whether to score the data as "interesting" (aka spam normally) or ignore it and let it expire after a few days and disappear off the drives to make room for something else. This is all technology we had in place 20 years ago that was unclassified even then. Does anyone really have any doubts on what is being done today?

    Just saying...

    --
    One of these days i'm going to find this 'peer' guy and reset HIS connection!
  41. Money or the background check exclusions? by swb · · Score: 1

    Is it really the money or is it the background check nonsense that scares people away?

    I would think the latter would be a big influence. Even if you had no serious skeletons in your closet (no arrests, not a drug user, etc) there's still a certain paranoia that the FBI is asking a lot of people a lot of questions. And who knows what some asshole that doesn't like you might say?

    And MOST people have some kind of skeleton in their closet (smoke/smoked pot, some kind of sex thing, whatever).

    It'd be curious to compare Goldman Sachs policies with the NSAs for technology. Both want the best and brightest, both deal with sensitive areas (sure, maybe National Security is higher but so is program trading with billions of dollars), but is Goldman going to turn down some eccentric with a PhD in math with a deep knowledge of modeling because he smokes pot?

  42. The primary question by anarkhos · · Score: 1

    What is peace of mind worth?

    --
    >80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
    >life
  43. What happened? by Needs2BeSaid · · Score: 0

    When did "news for nerds" become so vile? Has the term "nerd" been co-opted by anti-American, anti-Corporation, homosexuality embracing sociopaths?

    --
    Some things need to be said...
  44. The Stasi had no problems recruiting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't think the NSA will have problems recruiting, hell, their sister agency ISIS does just fine! Now, top tech-talent may be another story. I'm sure real hackers have ethics and the intelligence to know whats really going on.

  45. Your non-existent product has no bugs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We'll give you that. Of course it doesn't do anything worthy either just like you "ne'er-do-well".

    1. Re:Your non-existent product has no bugs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hahahahaha (no lines of code = no bugs = does zero like "trollio" there).

  46. "Inquiring minds want to know" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Question. What's it like being reduced to a troll wuss by apk's massive superiority to you?

  47. Bwaahahahaha by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hahaha he's won't answer that. Please stop. He's cryin' and I'm R O T F L M A O!

  48. It's apk's hosts file not yours by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Only shower you took was apk pissing on you. I think you like it.

  49. All natural ingredients straight from apk's tap! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hahaha no question of that. He's back for more even! Golden shower time. I can sense his anticipation for the warm fluid he loves!

  50. Re:All natural ingredients straight from apk's tap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    LMAO! I bet he drinks it since "you are what you eat" so he might become more like his secret idol apk!

  51. APK's sweet "golden wine" for trolls by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Naw, he just likes the taste so he's back for more is all!

    1. Re:APK's sweet "golden wine" for trolls by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      LOL! Classic: He enjoys the smooth nutty finish with earthy tones!

  52. Poor students of history here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    SIGINT was the largest single factor in the allied victory in WWII. The US and British governments take SIGINT very seriously and the NSA is just one expression of that seriousness.

  53. Your /. registered acct = "the projectionist" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You've never interacted with apk? You project you have n' he smoked ya hence you ac posting now.

  54. ...which rely solely on unauthorized disclosures. by sethstorm · · Score: 1

    Both secondary sources rely on material that is unverifiable - the unauthorized disclosures.

    --
    Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
  55. Walked Away by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I walked away from the Black World because the overhead of having these clearances and the BS you have to go through to get them are not worth it. If I was a college engineering or Computer Science type about to graduate, the Government would be the last place I would turn for a job. The best and brightest don't work for the Government.

  56. They let the genie out of the bottle... by MoarSauce123 · · Score: 1

    ....and now complain they cannot get it back in. What the NSA is majorly lacking is being trustworthy and be seen as operating legally. In order to get back to safer waters the NSA needs to end all illegal programs, stop mass surveillance, and above all demonstrate that they produce results. So far the NSA blew billions of tax Dollars, ignored constitutional rights, and has absolutely nothing to show for. Even the bridge to nowhere would have accomplished more!