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NSA Deletes 'Honesty' and 'Openness' From Core Values (theintercept.com)
An anonymous shares a report: The National Security Agency maintains a page on its website that outlines its mission statement. But earlier this month, the agency made a discreet change: It removed "honesty" as its top priority. Since at least May 2016, the surveillance agency had featured honesty as the first of four "core values" listed on NSA.gov, alongside "respect for the law," "integrity," and "transparency." The agency vowed on the site to "be truthful with each other." On January 12, however, the NSA removed the mission statement page -- which can still be viewed through the Internet Archive -- and replaced it with a new version. Now, the parts about honesty and the pledge to be truthful have been deleted. The agency's new top value is "commitment to service," which it says means "excellence in the pursuit of our critical mission." Those are not the only striking alterations. In its old core values, the NSA explained that it would strive to be deserving of the "great trust" placed in it by national leaders and American citizens. It said that it would "honor the public's need for openness." But those phrases are now gone; all references to "trust," "honor," and "openness" have disappeared.
They never cared about any of that shit before...they're just now being open about the fact the only thing they care about is fucking the american public and violating our foruth admendment rights.
this government is invalid.
There's nothing "open" about a spying agency, and to be effective spies they need to be dishonest (at least in the field).
I just hope "respect for (US) law" is really still a thing over there. Things don't look so good over at other agencies...
So, now their mission as a surreptitious spy agency dealing with lots of information they can't talk about is no longer being lied about on a PR page. Good. That earlier silliness is especially ironic, given its presence during the previous administration, which appears to have been using that agency's tools against domestic political rivals. Yeah, that was all warm-and-fuzzy "being honest with one another" and "completely transparent" behavior. Unless the agency's executive branch bosses didn't like you, in which case it was the exact opposite. Not that that's the NSA's fault, as an agency - that's entirely on their then-management in the White House, and those in the White House granted the power to troll through signal intelligence and the ability to unmask citizens from their collected communications. Here's looking at you, Susan Rice.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Please tell me how an agency which violates the constitution and spies on Americans can be allowed to exist? They're worse then the sexual assaults the TSA illegal does daily.
At least they're being honest about it now.
Maybe these things should simply be assumed and don't need to appear in every mission statement know to man?
I know folks will make this into "See They don't CARE about being honest! They took it out of their mission statement!" but I think that's a bit of overreach. Maybe they just assume that honest and ethical activity is always required and they want to highlight what the organization actually does in its mission statement, not how they do it.
And if you think about their activity... Openness and transparency might not be a good thing to put in a mission statement where it could be misconstrued by individuals in the organization dedicated to the clandestine collection of information.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
We already know that they don't respect the law, nor does the FBI, congress, President, courts, governors, police, mayors, and other elected officials / bureaucrats. Hell, I would like to meet an honest drain commissioner.
They're a spy organization for god's sake.
But, "honesty"? I guess in the Trump White House it doesn't matter, which is unfortunate because the information is going to be used to place Americans in harm's way and would be critical in negotiating with other countries (trade, arms reduction, etc.).
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As per subject.
Since at least May 2016 (whoa... that long!), the surveillance agency had featured honesty as the first of four "core values" listed on NSA.gov. They're being more honest now by not attempting to deceive people into believing that they'll open about their work above other values, such as "commitment to service." Just because they removed the feel-good language doesn't mean they'll not continue to be working in the nation's best interests and within the law. But, publications need page views, and this is certainly click-bait worthy.
It's much more dishonest to speak about honesty and transparency when they aren't actually embraced to achieve your mission.
By removing honesty and truthfulness from their mission statement, they are being honest and truthful - perhaps more so that ever!
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
It's not a change in protocol, it's just admitting what has been reality for a long time.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
... of what we all knew long ago.
You can tell that NSA is inhabited by a lot of super-nerds. It's actually a quiet little in-joke. They are virtue signalling by honestly admitting that, not only are they not honest, it isn't even on their "to-do" list.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Sorry, that is not in their mission statement.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
The ENTIRE department of Justice and PLENTY of intelligence agencies run without any oversight from ELECTED officials.
Chuck Schumer himself mentioned the week Trump was elected the intelligence community has six ways past sunday to fight anyone they don't like.
That includes voters.
That includes the American people.
The president will get held accountable based on what he can pull off, but he has NO control over these organizations that are supposed to operate in his branch of government.
The DoJ and the intel orgs see it as their job to attack anyone in the party they don't like. This is why there are all these removed text messages among the high ranks of the FBI. They are trying to cover up the Russia style corruption going on.
That means these are POLITICAL offices now and need to be scrapped with every change in office.
Trump should be able to do with all these guys what Clinton did with the US attorneys when he took office: fire them all!
If there is any conflict between what the FBI wants and what the voters want, the FBI MUST LOSE. Voters know better!
It seems like having done that they are now more open and honest about their core values.
Technically, by removing those items, maybe the are in fact being more 'honest' in the sense that they are letting everyone know they are not or can not be.
The NSA had to remove it because they were threatened to be sued for False Advertising.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
They're not being honest... they're just "truing up" according to their contractual obligations.
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
...wow.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
These things may appear to be cosmetic (and laughable, given that it is a spy agency), but these things actually matter.
Under Reagan, we stopped aspiring to be a thoughtful, fair, humane, secular and kind society, and replaced those values with social Darwinism, greed, and self-serving behavior at all levels. This has eroded everything our nation has aspired to become for over 200 years in the space of a generation, and left us without a moral compass, with the country being run into the ground by a group of bigoted religious zealots and sociopathic 1%ers who are only to happy to rob the US treasury blind (c.f. the most recent tax law, the misuse of public funds for private trips by leading administration officials, tarrif, tax, and contract favors to companies owned by political supporters, etc).
It matters that we fall short of ideals, but it matters much, much more that we've stopped even aspiring to those ideals, and this move by the NSA is just the latest symptom of the underlying rot that has come to infect most of our institions. And therein lie the seeds of our downfall, helped along by a big dose of institutional treason by the Murdochs, Mercers, De Voses, and other extreme-right (and some outright fascist) 1%ers and many Republican leaders, coupled with a whole lot of outside interference.
Seriously... is there anyone who thought that slogan was anything but self-aggrandizing P.R. that goes on everywhere?
"NSA Deletes 'Honesty' and 'Openness' From Core Values"
Which is ironically more honest.
Then you know they are just directly and shamelessly lying to you anyways. Scum stays scum, even (or often specifically) when they go into government jobs.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
This is a surprise? The NSA is a weapon, not a charity, so that's ironically the most honest thing they've done. They don't exist to make friends, they exist to dominate.
In a world where it takes months to find it about any news item that doesnâ(TM)t include a press release or news conference to quote from... does it really matter if someone honestly puts out information openly?
Back in the day, it was joked that "NSA" stood for "No Such Agency," because even the name of the agency was secret. It's silly for an agency whose entire mission is secret to put in their purported mission statement that "honesty", "openness", and "transparency" are their objectives; that would be a contradiction, and the only thing it would do would be to make the people who work for the agency understand that they are required to ignore the mission statement to do their jobs.
So, I applaud their honesty and openness in removing honesty and openness from their mission statement. This is, in fact, not their mission statement.
I think the phrase "Masada shall not fall again" shows that maybe they learned something from the holocaust.
How would you know now that Trump's political operatives have taken over?
Has the time for 10 trillion bit cryptography now arrived?
Ad hominem attacks are not valid logic...
You may think they make you look good, but in reality they just expose your lack of thought on the subject in question. Maybe you just don't have a valid argument? Maybe you just want to throw mud? I don't know. But it's apparent you have nothing substantive to add...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
A series of middle eastern wars since the Balfour Decrlation created a "jewish homeland", proves that Jews are preety much like everyone else when it comes to pacifism and warmongering. The trick is to find away out of the cycle of violence and put such animosity and hostility behind us, so that we can focus on bigger problems, like keeping planet Earth habitable in the latter half of the 21st century and the 22nd century. Unless this is done, humanity is very unlikely to experience a 23rd century.
Judaism teaches pacifism above all else.
Are you joking? And eye for an eye is the Jewish precept which Christ tried to moderate with "let the one without sin throw the 1st stone." Which makes Christianity a moderation (in the pacifist direction) of Judaism.
If you thought any of them were fighting back, your world view is horribly warped.
Ha? Right. Israel was formed because Jews, who lived in Palestine and were British subjects, who fought in WWII for Britain weren't in a mood to take orders from the British anymore. They were perfectly ok to turn around and fight the British until they left them alone.
What allowed Holocause to happen was that Jews, who were citizens of european countries, did not think their loyalty as citizens would be betrayed by the host countries -- the countries which allowed Germans to project their madness at post-WWI treatment on european Jewish citizens. It was not pacifism to think that the civil society, of which they were full-fledged citizens, which treated them as members of society, would all-of-a-sudden go coocoo. But it was shortsighted to think that it could never happen.
Screw me once, as the saying goes shame on you. If they were pacifist, they would have allowed to get screwed again by the British in Israel. They did not.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Hi Mr. Putin!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
They should have gone the other way and elevated their honesty, even putting it in their name.
Like: Department of Honesty.
Or: Ministry of Honesty
Or: Ministry of Truth
Or: Minitrue, for short.
...everyone is so untrue
"Evangelical Christian moron". I'm not sure if that is a double or triple redundancy. Maybe a doubleplus redundancy?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Nobody thinks you are competent enough to work for the FBI. Seriously.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
So we'll look forward to your "why would you credit Trump?" comments soon, when someone credits him with things he didn't do himself, right?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Comment removed based on user account deletion
so that we can focus on bigger problems, like keeping planet Earth habitable in the latter half of the 21st century and the 22nd century. Unless this is done, humanity is very unlikely to experience a 23rd century.
Oh, don't be ridiculous. Humanity will surely live to experience the 23rd century. It's really hard to completely wipe out a whole species with this many members, and which has intelligence and technological capability.
Now, of course, the 23rd century will probably look a lot like "Max Max II: The Road Warrior" or "28 Days Later" or "The Walking Dead", but I'm sure there'll be at least a few humans still running around.
Don't worry; humanity has had setbacks before, and recovered from them. The Roman Empire fell, for instance, causing Europeans to live in darkness and squalor for 1000 years before the Renaissance. So we'll probably have to wait until the 33rd century before we build a base on the Moon or Mars, but we'll get there eventually, after conquering the zombies and rediscovering antibiotics.
I, for one, welcome our new fascist overlords!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Right... they just decided to be completely open and honest about their lack of honesty and openness!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Back in the day, it was joked that "NSA" stood for "No Such Agency," ...
Initially, that was actually their name, but they found it difficult to get funding, so they switched it "National Secrecy Agency", then finally to "National Security Agency" as the previous was too on the nose - as they say.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Yet we are supposed to believe that powerful agencies with no oversight aren't? The NSA's first concern is to make NSA operators rich and dominant over the peasantry.
I will use every means I have, even beyond the line of duty, to restrain my Army comrades from actions disgraceful to themselves and to the uniform.
So I guess now you are now supposed to support your Army and comrades in committing actions disgraceful to themselves and to the uniform.
So quickly we forget the lessons of history.
"Fake News" and honesty are mutually exclusive... Don't want to embarrass anyone... Now that's settled, let's get back to making America Great Again.
There's always low-level employees with any huge organization. He could work anywhere.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
When it became a matter of immediate self defence of course. That's the only time it is justifiable for an individual human acting on their own to take the life of another.
The NSA has two roles. One is to find out what other countries and people in other countries are doing and thinking. This role does require secrecy.
Another role is to assist in information security for the US, and that works best by being transparent and honest, so people know as much as possible where the recommendations are coming from and why. (And, no, they can't be completely transparent. One NSA recommendation to DES was found out publicly later to make it more resistant to methods the NSA had, but not civilian experts in the field. There was no way to explain why without losing an advantage.)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
However, we developed civilization and industry by using massive amounts of nonrenewable resources. Currently, our technology and industrial capabilities are allowing us to move towards renewables to keep civilization going. Given a collapse of technology and industry, the survivors are going to find it much harder to build a new civilization.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Well some of those resources at least can be recycled, even if that's more difficult than mining. But yeah, they're not going to have all the convenient fossil fuels we do. Oh well, I guess we'll have to tack on an addition 10k or 20k years.
As long as honesty was one of their core values, they had to remove "Honesty", because they're so often dishonest.
Now that "Honesty" has been removed, they can add it back in.
Wait a sec!
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.