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NSA Opens GitHub Account, Lists 32 Projects Developed By the Agency (thehackernews.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hacker News: The National Security Agency (NSA) -- the United States intelligence agency which is known for its secrecy and working in the dark -- has finally joined GitHub and launched an official GitHub page. GitHub is an online service designed for sharing code amongst programmers and open source community, and so far, the NSA is sharing 32 different projects as part of the NSA Technology Transfer Program (TTP), while some of these are "coming soon." "The NSA Technology Transfer Program (TTP) works with agency innovators who wish to use this collaborative model for transferring their technology to the commercial marketplace," the agency wrote on the program's page. "OSS invites the cooperative development of technology, encouraging broad use and adoption. The public benefits by adopting, enhancing, adapting, or commercializing the software. The government benefits from the open source community's enhancements to the technology." Many of the projects the agency listed are years old that have been available on the Internet for some time. For example, SELinux (Security-Enhanced Linux) has been part of the Linux kernel for years.
I don't think you can question the NSA's competency unless you have full access to every thing they have done. The documents Snowden released did not contain any information that was truly a secret. There are classified security levels above the classification of any information he stole. His information basically boiled down to proving that the covert intelligence agencies actually spy.
One thing they do need to do is shoot the next fucker who thinks releasing classified information concerning the nations Intelligence and counter Intelligence programs is a good idea. That should give anyone else thinking of doing the same thing pause. For extra protection they should also shoot the person or persons who were asleep at the wheel when classified information was being carted out the front door. This should make sure their replacements do a better job.