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NSA Worried About Recruitment, Post-Snowden
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.
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.
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.
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
How much has ethical questions hurt recruitment at Diebold, Monsanto, Goldman-Sachs, Verizon, Microsoft, Oracle, etc.?
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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
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?
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.
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.