Slashdot Mirror
NSA's Best Are 'Leaving In Big Numbers,' Insiders Say (cyberscoop.com)
schwit1 quotes CyberScoop: Low morale at the National Security Agency is causing some of the agency's most talented people to leave in favor of private sector jobs, former NSA Director Keith Alexander told a room full of journalism students, professors and cybersecurity executives Tuesday. The retired general and other insiders say a combination of economic and social factors including negative press coverage -- have played a part... "I am honestly surprised that some of these people in cyber companies make up to seven figures. That's five times what the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff makes. Right? And these are people that are 32 years old. Do the math. [The NSA] has great competition," he said.
The rate at which these cyber-tacticians are exiting public service has increased over the last several years and has gotten considerably worse over the last 12 months, multiple former NSA officials and D.C. area-based cybersecurity employers have told CyberScoop in recent weeks... In large part, Alexander blamed the press for propagating an image of the NSA that causes people to believe they are being spied on at all times by the U.S. government regardless of their independent actions.
"What really bothers me is that the people of NSA, these folks who take paltry government salaries to protect this nation, are made to look like they are doing something wrong," the former NSA Director added. "They are doing exactly what our nation has asked them to do to protect us. They are the heroes."
The rate at which these cyber-tacticians are exiting public service has increased over the last several years and has gotten considerably worse over the last 12 months, multiple former NSA officials and D.C. area-based cybersecurity employers have told CyberScoop in recent weeks... In large part, Alexander blamed the press for propagating an image of the NSA that causes people to believe they are being spied on at all times by the U.S. government regardless of their independent actions.
"What really bothers me is that the people of NSA, these folks who take paltry government salaries to protect this nation, are made to look like they are doing something wrong," the former NSA Director added. "They are doing exactly what our nation has asked them to do to protect us. They are the heroes."
..."What really bothers me is that the people of NSA, these folks who take paltry government salaries to protect this nation, are made to look like they are doing something wrong," the former NSA Director added. "They are doing exactly what our nation has asked them to do to protect us. They are the heroes."...
I am sure that many, even most, in the NSA are the heroes he asserts. On the other hand there are instances such as NSA Officers Spy on Love Interests that cast a pall upon the agency.
.
Maybe it is time to stop blaming the media for reporting what is happening.
Some, perhaps much, of what you say may be true, but I think you're painting with too wide a brush. I think Van Jones said it better on the Dec 5th episode of The Daily Show:
“You have a core of people who were actually delighted by some of those inflammatory comments,” Jones said of Trump supporters. “Those people, I would call bigots. But then there were the people who found Trump’s words distasteful, but not disqualifying, because they had so much other economic pain and problems that were not being talked to, and those were the people that cost us the election.”
On those who “felt that the elite had sold them down the river in both parties,” Jones admitted, “They weren’t wrong. We did not give them an opportunity to come to our side the way we should have.”
“Everybody that voted for Trump was not voting for every crazy thing he said,” Jones added, saying that many voters were “holding their noses” when they cast their ballots on both sides of the aisle. Because of that, he said he has faith that they will stand up to Trump if and when he tries to enact some of his more outrageous policies.
“Listen, Trump is much worse than anybody in this country is willing to accept,” he said, “but a lot of his voters are much better and I don’t want to give them away.”
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
When is the President going tell the NSA to start playing with the full legal deck! This is the National Security Agency not the CIA which is another bed of garbage!!! National clearly indicates country or origin not the world! I'm getting sick of this!
> that for most of them, this was entirely about putting food on the table
Eh, cut it out with the economic insecurity canard.
Trump lost the portion of the vote coming from people making under $50K/yr.
Furthermore, at the county level - children earning more than their parents was correlated with larger trump gains.
The idea of the NSA secretly giving spy evidence to the DEA and FBI to use in prosecuting domestic crimes was something anticipated, but still unconstitutional and illegal --- yet this corrupt rogue "lawmen" using their threat powers to force compliance with their unlawful actions.
The DEA is currently harassing all legal users of prescription pain medications in California with regular urine testing and threats to doctors of suspension if they don't comply with these non-legal requirements.
They are totally out of control and need to be stopped. Organizations like the DEA who grew out of prohibition enforcement need to be retired -- not allowed to find new frontiers to make illegal and prosecute.
Complete nonsequitur.
Furthermore, if there were anything even hinting at a flaw in Trump's tax returns, the already-established-as-corrupt IRS would have "leaked" it.
Remember, Trump does business through corporations he controls. His personal tax returns could easily show nothing but salaries from dozens of corporations. Of course, then you'd be screaming that the tax forms of those corporations must be publicized also.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Trump ran businesses; he didn't set US trade policy and he didn't pass free trade agreements. Did he outsource jobs himself? Absolutely, though his response to that has been that he acted as any businessman would - reacting to changes in the marketplace which occurred (at least in part) because of US trade policy and free trade agreements. Did Trump ship some blue collar jobs overseas? Certainly. Was he "instrumental" in the process? No, just one of many business leaders who did it to save a buck. Does that make him a saint? Of course not.
As for the rust belt workers getting that they were being lied to, there's two pieces there. First, Trump was the only candidate in the general election even talking to them. Whether he was feeding them lies or not, the other candidate was arrogantly explaining to other audiences how great free trade (and all the outsourcing that comes with it) was for America even as blue collar rust belt workers were losing jobs in droves and scared shitless that they (and the families depending on them) were going to be out in the street any day now. Trump may have fed them a lie about saving their jobs, but at least he talked to them and didn't try to "elite-splain" to them why losing the only jobs they've ever known and that put food on their tables was a good thing.
Second, none of us can yet say for certain that Trump was telling them lies. We can assert that even if he reverses US trade policy, there's enough inertia in play to continue bleeding blue collar jobs and the jobs that left won't come back. We can further assert that even if outsourcing were somehow halted that automation would still put a sizable portion of those rust belt workers out of the job all the same. But the fact is that we won't know for sure until a) we see what he even does (and what Congress is willing to go along with) and b) what impact those actions actually have.
And I'm not saying you must or even should "give Trump a chance"; I'm simply commenting on what got us here. And if Democrats want to have any hope whatsoever of retaking much of anything in 2020, they better stop painting the rust belt with a broad brush of racism and sexism accusations and start figuring out what they're going to offer those voters on the economics front to win them back. If this election should have taught the Democratic party anything, it's that a large part of their critical core voters is made up of people who don't vote blindly for "D", but rather who vote for whomever they think will help them keep putting food on the table. And that whomever can include a real asshole if it's their only option, as evidenced by all the lifelong Democrats who showed up at the polls in November and cast a vote for Trump.
Democrats/liberals/progressives need to stop calling them stupid, naive, racist, sexist, and all the other crap flying around and start coming up with a way to address their needs. These are hard-working people watching their entire way of life crumble before their eyes. Help them or lose them, along with every election until they're all dead generations from now.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
NSA = domestic surveillance CIA = foreign surveillance The NSA has no reason to exist other than to spy on US citizens, for all other things (actual investigations) there is the FBI, police etc.
Off course now it's all under the umbrella of DHS so it doesn't actually matter who is in charge, the spying will continue. Reply to This
Sorry, but pretty much exactly wrong.
The NSA is authorized to collect signals intelligence only on foreign citizens. Hence the uproar over domestics being caught up in the surveillance nets and not being redacted immediately as they are supposed to be. This isn't an arbitrary distinction, but because under US law, American citizens are entitled to the protection of the 4th amendment against unwarranted search or seizure, whereas foreign citizens are not. So the setup was that the NSA could warrant-less-ly wiretap the rest of the world, but needed to scrub out the information of Americans that got caught in the haul.
I don't know how closely those rules were followed for most of the NSA's history (and neither do you). But that was/is the NSA's charter. Oh, and the NSA also has a secondary mission of Information Assurance, which is how the government is supposed to protect its own classified information.
Probably the foreign/domestic split you're thinking of is the way that the FBI and CIA are structured. The CIA cannot surveil/investigate/spy on/shoot American citizens, and the FBI can only surveil/investigate/spy on/shoot people inside the US.
Also, while we're at it, neither the NSA nor the CIA is part of the "umbrella of DHS." The CIA rolls up to the Director of National Intelligence as the head of the nation's "intelligence community," whereas the NSA is part of the Department of Defense. DHS itself has a law enforcement role but no "spying" mandate at all other than activities directly involved in fulfilling that law enforcement mandate.
"95% of all Slashdot