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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.
I tried a few times to make a good comment, but the guys in the black van outside made me change my mind.
secret court orders will force companies to give over their encryption keys anyway so it doesnt really matter in most cases.
Unpopular even pre-9/11.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
So, now they'll be the next ones crying that they need H-1B's!
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
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.
burn the constitution! betray your own people and work for the unaccountable shadow government!
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)
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
Hey NSA
Don't worry about no one wants to join you
In /. we have our Snow Fjord, always ready to join ya !
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.
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.
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.
Looks like the tribbles^W chickens have come home to roost.
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.
How much has ethical questions hurt recruitment at Diebold, Monsanto, Goldman-Sachs, Verizon, Microsoft, Oracle, etc.?
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/
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.
Now lay in it.
should they not already know the personal details of who's inclined to join them? first employment filter is already active..
I think "You reap what you sow" sums it up.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
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."
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.
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.
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.
DTRT isn't universal at all. If it seems universal, then you are not considering a broad enough array of cultures.
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".
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.
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!
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?
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.
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.
What is peace of mind worth?
>80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
>life
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.
>> Perhaps the only difference is that they've been caught?
That's pretty much it.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
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)
"Just following orders"
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.
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.
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.
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. .
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.
....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!