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North Korea also has a three-person rule for its soldiers at the DMZ to make it harder for any one to defect. A better solution is to stop making your country

by spodek 13y ago

North Korea also has a three-person rule for its soldiers at the DMZ to make it harder for any one to defect. A better solution is to stop making your country one people want to escape from. Or in the NSA's case, stop violating the Constitution, lying to Congress, etc so people don't feel compelled to blow the whistle. Is it that hard to follow the Constitution?

smokeyj 13y ago
This could be a new freedom index: How many bodies are required to stop the truth from getting out?
thufry 13y ago
That may solve the whistle-blower problem, but it doesn't solve the spy problem. There are actual spies, paid in cash, who traffic government secrets, who need to be stopped regardless of your opinion on whistleblowers.
- drivebyacct2 13y ago
  Does "having a second person" even really lend itself to prevent spy-leaks though? I'm imagining an embedded spy with access to this data wouldn't have to work too hard to circumvent such seemingly honor-based access systems.
  - vidarh 13y ago
    There's plenty of ways to make it physically difficult to copy out data onto portable storage without following protocol, so that it is not "honor-based": For starters, disable all USB ports other than on dedicated systems that are closely monitored. Then you can physically (with a guard at the door), verify that no data is copied out without a second person signing in with the person doing the copying, and signing out the data being copied. Add on electronic restrictions requiring acknowledgement from a second person, and regular audits of who takes out what, and it'd be a lot harder to get data out without finding someone to help you, knowingly or not. There will always be workarounds, but you can at least make people put in more efforts into doing things that increases the chance they'll be noticed.
cpursley 13y ago
"A better solution is to stop making your country one people want to escape from." Damn right. What an insane situation. My (Soviet) Russian-born wife keeps saying, 'yeah, that's what they did in the USSR'
quesera 13y ago
I wonder if NSA really comprehends the breadth of what's going on here. I don't think Snowden was a singularly disgruntled guy who happened to have clearance. His former coworkers are going to be smart, American, and patriotic too. Some percentage of that class of people will have strong opinions about being complicit in borderline-Constitutional activities. Snowden was the first to come forward, but do you really think there isn't a significant pool of sympathizers still at NSA considering making a similar move? Requiring cooperation between two analysts does raise the bar somewhat. But I think NSA would be making a mistake to assume that this is an isolated problem, with a tactical solution. I hope that the next guy (or pair) to come forward is as circumspect as Snowden seems to have been. Thank goodness Bradley Manning didn't work at NSA -- that scenario would have real consequences for the world, instead of the noisy internal (and important and necessary) squabbling we'll be doing for the next several months.
- harryf 13y ago
  > His former coworkers are going to be smart, American, and patriotic too. So the NSA needs to offshore that work to China in future
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- antimagic 13y ago
  Yeah. The worst of it is the corollary - you need to fire people that are ideologically impure. If people openly start talking about how they consider the Constitution to be an important document that needs to be protected by individual actions, then they can easily find an ally to make up the second person. To make the two person rule effective, you have to eliminate anyone that openly admits that they may very well break the organisation's rules in favour of the Constitution. That will be the NSA's finest hour - firing people for stating that they support the US Constitution...
mpyne 13y ago
NSA really should have had better internal controls in place for decades, if this leak is anything to go by. They got lucky, nothing more, that Snowden is a concerned citizen and not an actual spy. No single person should be able to do what Snowden did even if you assume all NSA analysts are 100% comfortable with the mission. In nuclear weapons two-person concept is a huge, huge, huge deal. NSA's stuff might not be to the exact same level of seriousness but at the same time "TOP SECRET" implies grave risk to national security if leaked and their internal controls should have been equal to the risk implied by that.
- jpatokal 13y ago
  Not really -- there are 1.4 million people in the US with "TOP SECRET" clearance, which means that most stuff flagged as such is far from it. http://au.businessinsider.com/edward-snowden-top-secret-clearance-nsa-whistleblower-2013-6 http://au.businessinsider.com/edward-snowden-top-secret-clea...
  - mpyne 13y ago
    Clearance does not equate to access, or with "need to know". It simply means someone has been screened to a certain degree of trustworthiness to properly handle classified material.
  - FreakLegion 13y ago
    TS/SCI is relatively common because it doesn't give you access to much. It just means you've been vetted. Actual secrets are still organized by code word, and you can only access them if you're explicitly read in (i.e. given "code word clearance"). Some more details: http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/clearance_fever/ http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/clearance_fever/
- Daniel_Newby 13y ago
  Indeed. They need to come up with some sort of criteria for evaluating trusted computer systems.
- a3n 13y ago
  "They got lucky, nothing more, that Snowden is a concerned citizen and not an actual spy." Actually Snowden may have been the NSA's lucky break. Doesn't it seem likely that there are poeple selling secrets to enemies within NSA/Booz Hamilton? This forces them to deal with a system that probably makes that relatively easy. Cherish your bugs.
SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago
The East German Stazi were similar: "the fierce surveillance within the Stasi of its own men, of how in a case ... there might have be a dozen agents: everything was checked and cross-checked." http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/may/05/featuresreviews.guardianreview12 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/may/05/featuresreviews....

by spodek 13y ago

smokeyj 13y ago

This could be a new freedom index: How many bodies are required to stop the truth from getting out?

thufry 13y ago

That may solve the whistle-blower problem, but it doesn't solve the spy problem. There are actual spies, paid in cash, who traffic government secrets, who need to be stopped regardless of your opinion on whistleblowers.

drivebyacct2 13y ago
Does "having a second person" even really lend itself to prevent spy-leaks though? I'm imagining an embedded spy with access to this data wouldn't have to work too hard to circumvent such seemingly honor-based access systems.
- vidarh 13y ago
  There's plenty of ways to make it physically difficult to copy out data onto portable storage without following protocol, so that it is not "honor-based": For starters, disable all USB ports other than on dedicated systems that are closely monitored. Then you can physically (with a guard at the door), verify that no data is copied out without a second person signing in with the person doing the copying, and signing out the data being copied. Add on electronic restrictions requiring acknowledgement from a second person, and regular audits of who takes out what, and it'd be a lot harder to get data out without finding someone to help you, knowingly or not. There will always be workarounds, but you can at least make people put in more efforts into doing things that increases the chance they'll be noticed.

cpursley 13y ago

"A better solution is to stop making your country one people want to escape from." Damn right. What an insane situation. My (Soviet) Russian-born wife keeps saying, 'yeah, that's what they did in the USSR'

quesera 13y ago

I wonder if NSA really comprehends the breadth of what's going on here. I don't think Snowden was a singularly disgruntled guy who happened to have clearance. His former coworkers are going to be smart, American, and patriotic too. Some percentage of that class of people will have strong opinions about being complicit in borderline-Constitutional activities. Snowden was the first to come forward, but do you really think there isn't a significant pool of sympathizers still at NSA considering making a similar move? Requiring cooperation between two analysts does raise the bar somewhat. But I think NSA would be making a mistake to assume that this is an isolated problem, with a tactical solution. I hope that the next guy (or pair) to come forward is as circumspect as Snowden seems to have been. Thank goodness Bradley Manning didn't work at NSA -- that scenario would have real consequences for the world, instead of the noisy internal (and important and necessary) squabbling we'll be doing for the next several months.

harryf 13y ago
> His former coworkers are going to be smart, American, and patriotic too. So the NSA needs to offshore that work to China in future
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
antimagic 13y ago
Yeah. The worst of it is the corollary - you need to fire people that are ideologically impure. If people openly start talking about how they consider the Constitution to be an important document that needs to be protected by individual actions, then they can easily find an ally to make up the second person. To make the two person rule effective, you have to eliminate anyone that openly admits that they may very well break the organisation's rules in favour of the Constitution. That will be the NSA's finest hour - firing people for stating that they support the US Constitution...

mpyne 13y ago

NSA really should have had better internal controls in place for decades, if this leak is anything to go by. They got lucky, nothing more, that Snowden is a concerned citizen and not an actual spy. No single person should be able to do what Snowden did even if you assume all NSA analysts are 100% comfortable with the mission. In nuclear weapons two-person concept is a huge, huge, huge deal. NSA's stuff might not be to the exact same level of seriousness but at the same time "TOP SECRET" implies grave risk to national security if leaked and their internal controls should have been equal to the risk implied by that.

jpatokal 13y ago
Not really -- there are 1.4 million people in the US with "TOP SECRET" clearance, which means that most stuff flagged as such is far from it. http://au.businessinsider.com/edward-snowden-top-secret-clearance-nsa-whistleblower-2013-6 http://au.businessinsider.com/edward-snowden-top-secret-clea...
- mpyne 13y ago
  Clearance does not equate to access, or with "need to know". It simply means someone has been screened to a certain degree of trustworthiness to properly handle classified material.
- FreakLegion 13y ago
  TS/SCI is relatively common because it doesn't give you access to much. It just means you've been vetted. Actual secrets are still organized by code word, and you can only access them if you're explicitly read in (i.e. given "code word clearance"). Some more details: http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/clearance_fever/ http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/clearance_fever/
Daniel_Newby 13y ago
Indeed. They need to come up with some sort of criteria for evaluating trusted computer systems.
a3n 13y ago
"They got lucky, nothing more, that Snowden is a concerned citizen and not an actual spy." Actually Snowden may have been the NSA's lucky break. Doesn't it seem likely that there are poeple selling secrets to enemies within NSA/Booz Hamilton? This forces them to deal with a system that probably makes that relatively easy. Cherish your bugs.

SideburnsOfDoom 13y ago

The East German Stazi were similar: "the fierce surveillance within the Stasi of its own men, of how in a case ... there might have be a dozen agents: everything was checked and cross-checked." http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/may/05/featuresreviews.guardianreview12 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/may/05/featuresreviews....