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NSA's Former General Council Talks Privacy, Security, and Snowden's 'Betrayal'
blottsie writes: In his first interview since retiring as general council to the NSA, Rajesh De offers detailed insights into the spy agency's efforts to find balance between security and privacy, why the NSA often has trouble defending itself in public, the culture of "No Such Agency," and what it was like on the inside when the Snowden bombshell went off. He describes the mood after the leaks: "My sense of it was that there were two overriding emotions among the workforce. The first was a deep, deep [feeling] of betrayal. Someone who was sitting next to them—being part of the team helping keep people safe, which is really what people at the agency think they are doing—could turn around and do something so self-aggrandizing and reckless. There was also a deep sense of hurt that a lot of what was in the media was not entirely accurate. Questioning the motives and legality of what NSA employees were being asked to do to keep Americans safe—all within the legal policy construct that we've been given—that was difficult for the NSA workforce."
So as long as my boss tells me it's okay to torture people and routinely violate the Consittution, it's okay?
Fuck you, cowardly anti-democratic traitor.
I don't want to hear about how things are inside the NSA so much as what Congress is doing to fix these laws that can be "misinterpreted" so badly. It's easy and low-friction to just accuse the NSA but the blame belongs on the shoulders of congress, both those members doubtlessly complying due to the availability of blackmail material and those complying because they want to be the top dogs in a 1984 universe.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
What aren't you in prison, rotting right next to all the other NSA leaders who betrayed their country and its Constitution?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
There was also a deep sense of hurt that a lot of what was in the media was not entirely accurate. Questioning the motives and legality of what NSA employees were being asked to do to keep Americans safe.
People who confuse or purposely use law as a synonym for morality are not to be trusted... The focus could not be more clearly on morality in this case.
If you read the article, he talks about how they have "policies" against indiscriminate snooping. But it's all a lot of talk. For example, he says the FISA court "can be quite harsh" in their written opinions -- as if this were a real consequence. Maybe it's a big deal for a lawyer, but there's an extremely large cultural divide between lawyers and non-lawyers.
No one will be reassured by any of these statements. Nor should they be, if this is the best story the NSA can tell.
As explained in the article, the staff of the NSA does not have carte blanche to just spy on people. They operate based on requirements. Now, those requirements might cause information to be collected in a way that is unconstitutional, let's face it, they're doing a job. The feeling that they are doing something earth shatteringly wrong is not one that you get in a bureaucracy like the NSA because they're generally only privy to a compartmentalized section of it. Similar sorts of things happen all the time with regimes where large bureaucracies support activities such as intelligence gathering, or "special activities".
That means that any particular person working there believes that their little bit of the work is helping their country. Without a full insight into the project, they will not feel that the criticisms leveled at the Agency are leveled at them personally. Instead, they believe that Snowden is making their job more difficult, which honestly, he is. It's a matter of perspective. Easy for those of us with no involvement or investment in the NSA to take a strong view against their employer, but for those who earnestly work to do their job there to aid their country, they're going to feel like they're being betrayed. Some of them might, like Snowden, have a larger view and rebel against it, but do would not have his access.
Your first and absolute responsibility is to the Constitution.
The NSA has failed miserably in that role.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
... Lucifer complained about God's betrayal and claimed that Hell has got to be hot, which is fully within the framework he is supposed to operate in and there is really nothing he can do about it.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
The rhetorics and practices of "keeping our people safe" and "fighting the enemy" are well polished. The 3rd Reich did not invent them, they merely perfected them. The books by Goebbels are still used to train people in that business. The NSA employees that cannot see what they are part of are just more useful idiots. There is an endless supply of useful idiots that are willing to believe without verification or question if the propaganda just comes from some authority. These people make the building blocks of any totalitarian, fascist or otherwise extremist state or organization.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
1) The NSA is aware of computer software vulnerabilities and exploits by other unscrupulous entities, yet they hoard this information rather share with the public (they are mandated to protect). Imagine how much safer American computers would be from say, phishing and ransomeware that affects even public institutions like schools should the NSA actually try to help them. 2) A lot of NSA espionage resources are dedicated to industrial espionage of foreign entities to maintain economic hegemony for a handful of corporate interests rather than American business at large. 3) Retroactive punishment. Web activity is stored and mined should future laws be broken to retroactively punish a populace or build profiles. For instance, someone takes part in a protest such as the occupy movement. That person's web life becomes an opportunity to search and find anything incriminating, no matter how trivial. 4) Mandated sharing of raw intelligence gathering with Israel, without reciprocity. Rather than empowerment, the NSA seems more of a repressive regime tool.
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
No, fuck all that crying. It SHOULD be difficult for them. Anyone with as much power as the NSA should have to account for every damn thing they do on domestic and friendly soil. Fuck the delusional workers who think they're doing the public a great service. It's time for them to wake up and understand that they're goddamn pawns in the game of circumventing democracy so the rich and powerful can stay rich and powerful.
The NSA broke the public trust in a major way, and they deserve all the criticism and skepticism they get.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Even if their daily grind gives them no personal access to the objectionable work being done; only stupidity or willful ignorance would prevent them from learning about and thinking about what the NSA does in the same way the rest of us did.
Somebody who just pushes buttons or spies on North Korea or whatever wouldn't have any reason to develop an on-the-job sense that they were doing the wrong thing; but when you can't open a newspaper without seeing reports on 'NSA basically spies on all the stuff, all the time, at home and abroad; FISA is a sad joke, massive domestic dragnet, etc, etc.'; the fact that you don't feel like you do bad things at work is irrelevant to your consideration of whether your employer does some deeply troubling work.
In fact, if they do feel 'betrayed'; it's hard to argue that they aren't explicitly identifying with the actions of the agency; even if their job is unrelated to the ones that caught the public eye. Given that those programs were effectively certain to operate with impunity for as long as they wanted if they went undiscovered(even with public knowledge, they've been substantially resistant to any real change); there is very little room for a "Well, those programs are wrong but Snowden should have opposed them more responsibly!" position that isn't bullshit. Filling out a form and dropping it in the suggestion box or sending his boss a worried email or something would have been indistinguishable from doing nothing, in terms of effect.
It's also a nicely crafted piece of doublespeak: 'carte blanche to just spy on people' suggests a right to just chose somebody for whatever reason you feel like and just start spying on them, for whatever reason. As far as we know, unsystematic picking of random targets isn't something that the NSA does a lot of, and it may well be something they don't have legal authority to do.
However, pretty much the whole point of public displeasure over what the NSA has been doing is that its programs are sufficiently broad, and the inclusion criteria sufficiently trivial, that essentially everyone, everywhere, all the time, is probably covered. They don't need the right to pick you out of a hat for personal attention, because they act like they have a mandate to get what they can on everyone, just daily course of business.
It's well done. Deny that you do something largely irrelevant to what you are actually accused of; but in a way that sounds similar to denying the occurrence of the consequences of what you actually do.
serpico was also shunned by his peers and bosses...
you just have to wait a while for history to realize who was really a good guy and who was not.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
You apparently didn't comprehend much of what you read, or understand it in context. So called "LOVEINT" constitutes about 12 cases in 10 years. That isn't "common" in any meaningful way for an organization of over 10,000 people. Losing a security clearance means you aren't going to be able to handle classified information which means you can't work at an intelligence agency. People certainly were punished. How did you miss this?
One "received a reduction in grade, 45 days restriction, 45 days extra duty, and half pay for two months. It was recommended that the subject not be given a security clearance."
One "received a reduction in rank, 45 days extra duty, and half pay for two months. The member's access to classified information was revoked."
One's "database access and access to classified information were suspended."
One "received a written reprimand."
Would you like to give up a months' pay?
The "seven times per day" incidents weren't LOVEINT, and as noted were "mainly inadvertent." That is things like making a typo in name or phone number queries resulting in bringing up the wrong information. (You don't make 7 typos per day, do you?)
Die in a fire, please, and leave the world a better place.
You can help make the world a better place by trying to improve your poor character, giving to charity, and improving your reading comprehension. In the meantime I'll continue to try to provide good information and correct the ignorance and misconceptions of people like you.
Have a great day.
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