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."
While nobody wants a huge abusive spy agency tracking Americans at all times, there are going to be plenty of people on here jumping up and down hoping for the destruction of the NSA... while simultaneously running around like chickens with their heads cut off claiming that Russian Hackers are the sole reason that Trump is president.
You can't have it both ways.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Given that Trump is about to use the NSA to get back at people who have argued with him over the years it is hardly surprising that people are getting out before he gets inaugurated.
I, for one, look forward to the WikiLeaks dump of Rosie O'Donnel's e-mails.
> You can't have it both ways.
That's only if you are unaware that the NSA has two mandates:
(1) Spy
(2) Protect
Most of us who complain about the NSA believe that they have over-emphasized (1) at the expense of (2).
We've all heard about how the NSA hordes zero-days to enable their ability to spy which leaves everyone vulnerable to anyone else who also has those zero-days. That became explicitly clear with the Shadow Brokers fiasco.
I am happy to support the NSA in their mandate to protect. But as long as they follow a policy of keeping the US weak because it helps them spy, then they don't deserve the support of americans.
I'm surprised that they even go there in the first place.
The kind of people who can do software security audits, tap into hardware designs and suchlike can command just about any salary they like.
The problem I have is understanding why such people would ever end up at places like the NSA/GCHQ in the first place. It's no longer a "cracking open the enigma" kind of place and hasn't been in a very long time, and now they are spying on their own, including themselves and their families, and putting deliberate holes into things, and doing all kinds of stupid shit.
I'm amazed anyone goes there at all.
I'm a maths and computer science graduate. I have a keen interest in coding theory and graph theory especially, both borne of an interest in codes, ciphers and such concepts. I'm a tinkerer and play with electronics and radios in my spare time, not to mention programming and other kinds of gadgets. I don't claim to be anywhere near the top of the class but, surely, I'm at least the type of person who they should be looking at.
The problem is that because of the above, I'm inherently buried in reasons that freedom, privacy and security need to be preserved by means other than trust in the government.
They are quite literally the last places I'd want to work and, even as a pacifist, if we were to go to war (a proper war, not some undeclared concept-war), and I was drafted in and told to do something, I'd refuse to the utmost of my being but even if forced at gunpoint every morning, I'd end up making bullet casings or delivering food rather than touch those kinds of organisation. Some activity for which I'm just another pair of hands.
Turing is my hero, Bletchley is my nativity manger, and "brains over brawn" are my commandments . But I couldn't ever do what he did, or work where he did, because of what it was and, even worse now, because of what it's become.
It's why I don't give credence to the "acres of supercomputers tapping all your calls" crap. I don't believe it's impossible, it's just expensive. And you can find an acre of supercomputers in any country if you rearrange things. I just don't believe they have the talent to make it do anything useful, and that much of it is wasted in isolated brute-force and hope rather than working out how to utilise it effectively.
Whenever I hear "the next stage" - more surveillance, laws protecting those agencies when they break the law, etc. - I find it even more ludicrous that what they have are a bunch of highly-skilled, educated, dedicated codebreakers, engineers and undetectable spies. It doesn't fit. These agencies are so good and yet Manning and Snowden can just copy embarrassing things to a USB stick and make them look like fools (not that I particularly think either of them got anything of value out of the venture, even if they believe so... they may have made the agencies look foolish and showed things weren't as they should be but literally NOTHING has changed because of them that I can see).
I don't buy it. I certainly don't buy that highly educated people who could walk out tomorrow and get a job in a computer security company (even of their own making) and sell products never seen before, ala Zimmerman, and they just sit there tapping people's emails and letting their agency's reputation go to shit in the press when they are all about secrecy.
The good ones probably left a long time ago. And no Times crossword is going to bring them back, even if we go to war, while those agency's agendas aren't compatible with the precept that they are they to "protect" their peoples.
People over here in Europa defended the NSA spying on the basis that it isn't a dictatorship, but a democracy doing it. So it's all good. To which Snowden replied that the surveillance state has become a "Turnkey Tyranny".
Will Trump be the one that turns that key? Find out after the commercial break, when "The Apprentice" returns.
Snowden did not work for the NSA, he workde briefly for the CIA but took a private sector job for Booz Allen, and was then contracted to the NSA
Private contractings a whole different kettle of fish. And I suspect a lot of these leaving govt jobs are leaving to go work at private contractors wherein they'll just end up back at the agency they where at before albeit as a contractor, and costing the govt 3x as much, and none of the accountability required of federal employees.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
All well and good. The NSA possibly protects us from our enemies. But who protects us from the NSA? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
This is exactly the issue. If you've met people in these circles, you know there are a couple of basic types (although everyone has their own characteristics too, obviously). There are amazing people, there are very nice people, there are real jerks, there are psychopaths, and there are people who will just kind of go along with whatever everyone else is doing. You can't rely on individuals alone to protect us from unethical institutional mission creep. That's why we have laws, and that's why we create systems of oversight.
The only way to prevent corruption and abuse of our federal system in the long run is institutionally. No matter how good someone is, if you give them the power to operate in secret forever and without effective oversight, they will eventually be corrupted by it, but even if they are not the next person will be. We NEED good oversight with as much transparency as is possible under the circumstances, oversight that includes independent inspector generals and a good committee with privacy advocates as well as former NSA and others on it that takes a meaningful response to Constitutional and privacy issues rather than seeing them as a hindrance. So long as we don't have that, we should assume the system will be abused for illegal and unethical purposes.
The work the NSA does is incredibly important--but so is protecting democracy from what the NSA could become.
Since the beginning there has been a struggle with those in power trying to suppress inconvient truth. (Maybe with the exception of Thomas Jefferson's presidency.) The grandson of Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin Bache was a newsman who criticized George Washington and John Adams and the government passed the 'Alien and Sedition Acts' of 1798 and had him arrested. From the wikipedia article on Bache:
The law [Alien and Sedition Acts] may have been written to suppress opponents such as Bache. The persistent theme of Republican journalism of the 1790s was that the federal government had fallen into the hands of an aristocratic party aligned with Britain, and that the Federalists (particularly Washington and Alexander Hamilton) were hostile to the interests of the general public while promoting corporate interests
Another quote from abolitionist Wendell Phillips in 1852:
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
"They are doing exactly what our nation has asked them to do to protect us. They are the heroes."...
I also think this misunderstands the word "hero." Normally we don't equate the word "hero" with "doing exactly what we ask" of someone. A hero is generally somebody who goes beyond what the normal person would do -- who aspires to nobler intentions, greater achievements, unusual bravery, courage in the face of overwhelming odds, etc.
I don't mean to take anything away from those who do public service -- whether military, police, firefighters, paramedics, teachers, etc. Most of them are admirable people, but does just "showing up for work" qualify them to be "heroes"? I think there's some modern slippage in meaning that tends to say "yes," but that's not what the word "hero" has traditionally meant.
I'm sure there are some NSA people who are legitimate "heroes" in the traditional sense -- people who go far beyond what an average person might do, or what we'd ask a reasonable person to do, in service of the U.S. And I laud their efforts.
But just because "our nation asked" a number of NSA folks to spy on people in unconstitutional or illegal ways doesn't make their actions right, let alone "noble," and certainly not "heroic." Even in the service of "protecting us." And even IF you agree with the spying, it STILL doesn't make most people who just do their job "heroes," especially if they aren't doing anything particularly courageous, etc.
Shame on this NSA Director for co-opting the language of heroism to try to legitimize his own bad actions and decisions. It is a nefarious distortion and appropriation of the term that detracts from the legitimate heroes who serve us in all sorts of ways.
Irrational people like you won't see them as rational. You made up your mind before he did.
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.