4 ms·

NSA can't trust 'brilliant' people, will automate sysadmins

83 points by detcader 13y ago

clicks 13y ago
The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive "secrecy tax") and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption. Julian Assange is seeming more and more prescient every other day.
- monsterix 13y ago
  > Julian Assange is seeming more and more prescient every other day. Quite true. He was considered quite bold and respectable for all his work until the cables happened. As long as his leaks did not have anything to do with back home you know. At least that's how it all seems to me.
  - antihero 13y ago
    Also the alleged rape really hasn't helped.
  - pekk 13y ago
    The cables are what created the celebrity. Relatively very few knew or cared about Assange before that point.
  - rhizome 13y ago
    Another way of saying the character assassination didn't start until the cables were published.
ronaldx 13y ago
I rather read this to be a worrying signal that sysadmins are now expendable, and the NSA is happy to have an excuse to shed them.
consonants 13y ago
Machines are predictable and trustworthy; humans are shifty, fickle, and expect things like 'rights' and 'livable wages'. First they came for the computer janitors, and I did not speak for I was not a computer janitor.
steve19 13y ago
Their "problem" is easily solvable by pairing sysadmins up. Make sure every command or windows click is seen an authorized by another, maybe even an anonymous sysadmin at a different location. If one sysadmin "steals" secrets, the other sysadmin would be implicated, so they have a lot of reason to pay attention. Costs will increase, of course.
- marcamillion 13y ago
  Costs will either increase, or collusion or both. Imagine they double their headcount - just to get more leaks, because they have more people looking at the data.
  - eck 13y ago
    You pair them randomly so as two co-conspirators can't arrange to work together. You make sure the ones who are paired don't trust each other. You tell them that they are expected to report any suspicious behavior -- like someone mentioning the constitution -- and that they will be tested. You do test them. They get paired with an incognito auditor whose job is to offhandedly mention that what they're doing is violating someone's rights. If they don't report him, they're disciplined. Of course, all these things also make it hard to convince them that they're the good guys.
    - cinquemb 13y ago
      Makes me wonder if the NSA will routinely use entrapment as a technique to catch would-be conspirators. Sounds like the best environment to serve ones country…
    - vwinsyee 13y ago
      Sounds like a secret police within a secret (kind of) police.
    - oldmanjoe 13y ago
      Welcome to NSA - proud users of the tactics of the East German Stasi
marcamillion 13y ago
This is either a good thing, that the NSA will not be able to attract the type of talent to continue doing these types of activities forever. Or it is a bad thing, that incompetent people will still be doing these activities - thereby making it more likely that their systems will be more easily compromised and the data end up in the wrong hands easier.
- jka 13y ago
  It is slightly boggling to imagine what the new sysadmin hiring criteria might be after these statements.
ck2 13y ago
The NSA like the military relies on people to not question authority and blindly follow orders. Unfortunately for them, as society becomes a bit more self-aware every decade, it's harder to find such people and they also throw away their best talent when questioning orders is unacceptable. This is why I find it horribly ironic that there are military people now who are anonymously posting that they "didn't sign up to bomb syria" (and punish the chemical murder of 1000s of civilians). What exactly did they think they were signing up for? To pick and choose what orders they would follow? Does the person who sits at a desk in the military think they have better morals for not actually pushing the button that literally fires the missiles? Imagine how moral the US would be if every government agency like the military, the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, the TSA had a draft instead of volunteers. They would actually have a consciousness instead of scandal after scandal because people would not just accept the system blindly.
- gph 13y ago
  >They would actually have a consciousness instead of scandal after scandal because people would not just accept the system blindly Well let's not get too high on the general populations' ability for independent moral authority. We know the results of the Milgram experiments. And we also know about the massacres of Vietnam, caused by units of mostly drafted soldiers. The ability to break from authority is not as strong as we like to think. And I include myself in that group as well, I know my primate psychology.
- brador 13y ago
  Blind acceptance leads to reliability, which is a core feature of a military force.
- coopdog 13y ago
  Actually 'I was just following orders' is not a defence. It's every soldiers obligation to question the moral standing of their orders. An illegal order, such as being told to bomb a church/mosque/hospital is invalid and shouldn't be obeyed. Obviously it's very hard to have the moral courage to accept being bradley manninged (because some orders come all the way from the top), but the obligation to question orders has definitely been established.
marcamillion 13y ago
By the way...this NBC admission of Snowden creating new profiles and impersonating high-ranking intelligence officials is proof positive that Snowden wasn't lying. If he could create any profile and impersonate say Gen. Alexander...then it is easily conceivable that he could access anyone's records. Not that we didn't know this already...
banachtarski 13y ago
This is hilarious? What's harder, doing things manually, or automating things in a way that the automation itself doesn't break, is self-healing, etc? The kind of people that need to automate these sort of systems need to be even stronger systems programmers and administrators than the incumbent batch. Automation can be backdoored as well.
- nraynaud 13y ago
  I'm just imagining the NSA sending an NSL to Amazon to get engineers to do their magic...
- visakanv 13y ago
  "We'll just build God" "But who's going to build the God-Builder?" IT'S TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN
- rhizome 13y ago
  I'm sure those stronger systems people won't mind also being on call when the automation breaks down at 3am on Labor Day morning.
- bigiain 13y ago
  And this explains what's _really_ going to happen. The 90% of their sys-admins who've already morphed into dev-ops staff, are going to get officially re-classified as "not sys-admins" – and will continue to have unfettered access to the VMs, hypervisors, storage pools, hadoop clusters, and password databases that the analysts and management at the NSA use. (Only they'll invent some new rules, so it'll probably become a _double_ capital offense to embarrass the US government, the next Snowden-scale whistleblower will face getting assassinated _twice_…)
aspensmonster 13y ago
What could possibly go wrong?
wyck 13y ago
if anyone has not seen Brazil, I recommend watching it. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/
smutticus 13y ago
> computer automated sysadmins. Who will administer these 'computer automated sysadmins'? The entire matter reeks of nothing but bluster by a control freak overseeing a witch hunt. Further evidence that we should not assume the competence of intelligence agencies.
- antocv 13y ago
  Fewer sysadmins compared to previously. And sysadmins with lesser political capability.
  - banachtarski 13y ago
    Yes but these sysadmins need to be stronger. The rationale given was not to have fewer sysadmins but dumber ones.
nraynaud 13y ago
I have 2 remarks : 1) I'm pretty sure either they are lying or they are going "blind", because an IT infrastructure project this big always fail on the first trial. 2) They are just borrowing time, with such a complex system to manage, the "computer" will get smarter and smarter. When it integrates Plato, the Snowden case will just be a footnote, the computer will directly kill the agency director for being so far from moral values.
beedogs 13y ago
> Before the change, "what we've done is we've put people in the loop of transferring data, securing networks and doing things that machines are probably better at doing," Alexander said. Proving once again that the NSA has absolutely no fucking idea what it's doing at the absolute highest levels.
- narag 13y ago
  Maybe they could start automating those levels. It should be easier.
  - bebna 13y ago
    You thinking about bugzilla?
- duaneb 13y ago
  Maybe their systems are so poorly run backups are a sys admin swapping tapes.
ethanazir 13y ago
brilliant: bright and radiant. Not a part of the dark side.
scotty79 13y ago
Hammer dropped on a toe. Instead of investigating process and even validity of hammer use, promptly removing all toes.
hack_edu 13y ago
And who said the 'NoOps' fad was over? :)
gnoway 13y ago
I've seen the brilliant comment repeated in 2-3 articles now. The assertion is that Snowden basically used su to become other (more privileged) users. One level of misdirection. How is this brilliant?
- u2328 13y ago
  It's all relative. Ever seen Idiocracy?
DigitalSea 13y ago
There is one flaw in the plan though. How are they going to automate the automation of the servers? If they can't trust people any more, they're going to have to find a way to automate a system administrator without the help of a system administrator (presumably another automated process). The ridiculousness of this proves that no matter how many billions of dollars and expensive infrastructure you have at your fingertips, the people in charge aren't very smart. Automate a system administrator? Good luck replicating a bearded Unix loving man with a penchant for energy drinks who gets angry every time something breaks. As someone who works alongside sys admins, I feel as though I am allowed to say that. Amaze us, NSA.
- cynwoody 13y ago
  On the one hand, fewer sysadmins means fewer chances for a Snowden to turn up among them. On the other hand, it means, should a Snowden turn up among the residual personnel needed to implement the automation, he/she can do even more damage. However, this is neither here nor there, since automation is hard, and Alexander the Geek can't make it happen simply by giving an order, despite his four stars. But promising it is a way for him to explain himself after getting caught with his pants down. See, Congress! We recognize we have a problem. But trust us, we have a plan! We have a solution! Not.
  - DigitalSea 13y ago
    Exactly this. General Keith Alexander is basically saving his own skin here by publicly showing he has a plan because I can only assume those in higher places are not all too happy about the Snowden breach and as usual in Government, looking for someone to blame. Sure, certain aspects can definitely be automated. But it's kind of the equivalent of using robots in your factor that run on batteries. If the battery goes dead in a robot, how does the robot replace its own battery if it's not even on? Presumably another robot, but it proves automation is very hard, There will always be human error though. Humans will be programming whatever automation Alexander has planned and that automation will take years to refine and perfect before it's close to flawless.
- madaxe 13y ago
pyalot2 13y ago
"Twitter announced that they need to hire less talented people that are less productive. A spokeswoman said, that though they have the necessary funds to hire the best talent they can get, they just couldn't deal with that much productivity. They are kindly asking that good programmers and sysadmins stop sending in applications. A new interviewing process will be established specifically designed to identify competent and talented applicants in order to deny their application." Aaaaand that wouldn't happen ever, unless that "company" is funded by your tax dollars. Enjoy.
- antocv 13y ago
  The money that Twitter makes is the tax dollars. All productivity and excellence is used now to fuel an organization which punishes those who are productive and excellent.
Mordor 13y ago
Idea: Yeah, let's just keep the top 10% and make them work 10x harder. Reality: The most loyal are the least productive resulting in widespread dissatisfaction and even more leaks.
ankushnarula 13y ago
It is very difficult to manipulate, misinform, and indoctrinate intelligent/skilled people who work with information and information systems.
- pekk 13y ago
  How do you know this? If it is true, then why did it take so long to get the big leaks?
eparra 13y ago
The start of Skynet. </sarcasm>
- qbrass 13y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_%28role-playing_game%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_%28role-playing_game%2... The Computer serves as the game's principal antagonist, and fears a number of threats to its 'perfect' society, such as The Outdoors, mutants, and secret societies (especially Communists). To deal with these threats, The Computer employs Troubleshooters, whose job is to go out, find trouble, and shoot it.
dasil003 13y ago
If the Snowden leaks were a 12 on the damage scale of 1-10. What's it going to be when they flip the switch on the sysadmin factory factory and find themselves locked out of everything because of an off-by-one error?
u2328 13y ago
The NSA can't trust 'brilliant' people huh? Worried that they might be acting against the NSA's best interest? Weird! I can't possibly imagine how they feel! Nope, not at all! It's not like I have a secretive government agency stockpiling of much of communications as they can get their hands on that could one day be taken out of context and used against me or something. Crazy!
madaxe 13y ago
"Smart people realise we're doing bad shit, so will resist it. Therefore, we can only hire unquestioning idiots." This is why the government is now entirely run by unquestioning idiots.

83 points by detcader 13y ago

The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive "secrecy tax") and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption. Julian Assange is seeming more and more prescient every other day.

monsterix 13y ago
> Julian Assange is seeming more and more prescient every other day. Quite true. He was considered quite bold and respectable for all his work until the cables happened. As long as his leaks did not have anything to do with back home you know. At least that's how it all seems to me.
- antihero 13y ago
  Also the alleged rape really hasn't helped.
- pekk 13y ago
  The cables are what created the celebrity. Relatively very few knew or cared about Assange before that point.
- rhizome 13y ago
  Another way of saying the character assassination didn't start until the cables were published.

ronaldx 13y ago

I rather read this to be a worrying signal that sysadmins are now expendable, and the NSA is happy to have an excuse to shed them.

consonants 13y ago

Machines are predictable and trustworthy; humans are shifty, fickle, and expect things like 'rights' and 'livable wages'. First they came for the computer janitors, and I did not speak for I was not a computer janitor.

steve19 13y ago

Their "problem" is easily solvable by pairing sysadmins up. Make sure every command or windows click is seen an authorized by another, maybe even an anonymous sysadmin at a different location. If one sysadmin "steals" secrets, the other sysadmin would be implicated, so they have a lot of reason to pay attention. Costs will increase, of course.

marcamillion 13y ago
Costs will either increase, or collusion or both. Imagine they double their headcount - just to get more leaks, because they have more people looking at the data.
- eck 13y ago
  You pair them randomly so as two co-conspirators can't arrange to work together. You make sure the ones who are paired don't trust each other. You tell them that they are expected to report any suspicious behavior -- like someone mentioning the constitution -- and that they will be tested. You do test them. They get paired with an incognito auditor whose job is to offhandedly mention that what they're doing is violating someone's rights. If they don't report him, they're disciplined. Of course, all these things also make it hard to convince them that they're the good guys.
  - cinquemb 13y ago
    Makes me wonder if the NSA will routinely use entrapment as a technique to catch would-be conspirators. Sounds like the best environment to serve ones country…
  - vwinsyee 13y ago
    Sounds like a secret police within a secret (kind of) police.
  - oldmanjoe 13y ago
    Welcome to NSA - proud users of the tactics of the East German Stasi

marcamillion 13y ago

This is either a good thing, that the NSA will not be able to attract the type of talent to continue doing these types of activities forever. Or it is a bad thing, that incompetent people will still be doing these activities - thereby making it more likely that their systems will be more easily compromised and the data end up in the wrong hands easier.

jka 13y ago
It is slightly boggling to imagine what the new sysadmin hiring criteria might be after these statements.

ck2 13y ago

The NSA like the military relies on people to not question authority and blindly follow orders. Unfortunately for them, as society becomes a bit more self-aware every decade, it's harder to find such people and they also throw away their best talent when questioning orders is unacceptable. This is why I find it horribly ironic that there are military people now who are anonymously posting that they "didn't sign up to bomb syria" (and punish the chemical murder of 1000s of civilians). What exactly did they think they were signing up for? To pick and choose what orders they would follow? Does the person who sits at a desk in the military think they have better morals for not actually pushing the button that literally fires the missiles? Imagine how moral the US would be if every government agency like the military, the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, the TSA had a draft instead of volunteers. They would actually have a consciousness instead of scandal after scandal because people would not just accept the system blindly.

gph 13y ago
>They would actually have a consciousness instead of scandal after scandal because people would not just accept the system blindly Well let's not get too high on the general populations' ability for independent moral authority. We know the results of the Milgram experiments. And we also know about the massacres of Vietnam, caused by units of mostly drafted soldiers. The ability to break from authority is not as strong as we like to think. And I include myself in that group as well, I know my primate psychology.
brador 13y ago
Blind acceptance leads to reliability, which is a core feature of a military force.
coopdog 13y ago
Actually 'I was just following orders' is not a defence. It's every soldiers obligation to question the moral standing of their orders. An illegal order, such as being told to bomb a church/mosque/hospital is invalid and shouldn't be obeyed. Obviously it's very hard to have the moral courage to accept being bradley manninged (because some orders come all the way from the top), but the obligation to question orders has definitely been established.

marcamillion 13y ago

By the way...this NBC admission of Snowden creating new profiles and impersonating high-ranking intelligence officials is proof positive that Snowden wasn't lying. If he could create any profile and impersonate say Gen. Alexander...then it is easily conceivable that he could access anyone's records. Not that we didn't know this already...

banachtarski 13y ago

This is hilarious? What's harder, doing things manually, or automating things in a way that the automation itself doesn't break, is self-healing, etc? The kind of people that need to automate these sort of systems need to be even stronger systems programmers and administrators than the incumbent batch. Automation can be backdoored as well.

nraynaud 13y ago
I'm just imagining the NSA sending an NSL to Amazon to get engineers to do their magic...
visakanv 13y ago
"We'll just build God" "But who's going to build the God-Builder?" IT'S TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN
rhizome 13y ago
I'm sure those stronger systems people won't mind also being on call when the automation breaks down at 3am on Labor Day morning.
bigiain 13y ago
And this explains what's _really_ going to happen. The 90% of their sys-admins who've already morphed into dev-ops staff, are going to get officially re-classified as "not sys-admins" – and will continue to have unfettered access to the VMs, hypervisors, storage pools, hadoop clusters, and password databases that the analysts and management at the NSA use. (Only they'll invent some new rules, so it'll probably become a _double_ capital offense to embarrass the US government, the next Snowden-scale whistleblower will face getting assassinated _twice_…)

aspensmonster 13y ago

What could possibly go wrong?

wyck 13y ago

if anyone has not seen Brazil, I recommend watching it. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/

smutticus 13y ago

> computer automated sysadmins. Who will administer these 'computer automated sysadmins'? The entire matter reeks of nothing but bluster by a control freak overseeing a witch hunt. Further evidence that we should not assume the competence of intelligence agencies.

antocv 13y ago
Fewer sysadmins compared to previously. And sysadmins with lesser political capability.
- banachtarski 13y ago
  Yes but these sysadmins need to be stronger. The rationale given was not to have fewer sysadmins but dumber ones.

nraynaud 13y ago

I have 2 remarks : 1) I'm pretty sure either they are lying or they are going "blind", because an IT infrastructure project this big always fail on the first trial. 2) They are just borrowing time, with such a complex system to manage, the "computer" will get smarter and smarter. When it integrates Plato, the Snowden case will just be a footnote, the computer will directly kill the agency director for being so far from moral values.

beedogs 13y ago

> Before the change, "what we've done is we've put people in the loop of transferring data, securing networks and doing things that machines are probably better at doing," Alexander said. Proving once again that the NSA has absolutely no fucking idea what it's doing at the absolute highest levels.

narag 13y ago
Maybe they could start automating those levels. It should be easier.
- bebna 13y ago
  You thinking about bugzilla?
duaneb 13y ago
Maybe their systems are so poorly run backups are a sys admin swapping tapes.

ethanazir 13y ago

brilliant: bright and radiant. Not a part of the dark side.

scotty79 13y ago

Hammer dropped on a toe. Instead of investigating process and even validity of hammer use, promptly removing all toes.

hack_edu 13y ago

And who said the 'NoOps' fad was over? :)

gnoway 13y ago

I've seen the brilliant comment repeated in 2-3 articles now. The assertion is that Snowden basically used su to become other (more privileged) users. One level of misdirection. How is this brilliant?

u2328 13y ago
It's all relative. Ever seen Idiocracy?

DigitalSea 13y ago

There is one flaw in the plan though. How are they going to automate the automation of the servers? If they can't trust people any more, they're going to have to find a way to automate a system administrator without the help of a system administrator (presumably another automated process). The ridiculousness of this proves that no matter how many billions of dollars and expensive infrastructure you have at your fingertips, the people in charge aren't very smart. Automate a system administrator? Good luck replicating a bearded Unix loving man with a penchant for energy drinks who gets angry every time something breaks. As someone who works alongside sys admins, I feel as though I am allowed to say that. Amaze us, NSA.

cynwoody 13y ago
On the one hand, fewer sysadmins means fewer chances for a Snowden to turn up among them. On the other hand, it means, should a Snowden turn up among the residual personnel needed to implement the automation, he/she can do even more damage. However, this is neither here nor there, since automation is hard, and Alexander the Geek can't make it happen simply by giving an order, despite his four stars. But promising it is a way for him to explain himself after getting caught with his pants down. See, Congress! We recognize we have a problem. But trust us, we have a plan! We have a solution! Not.
- DigitalSea 13y ago
  Exactly this. General Keith Alexander is basically saving his own skin here by publicly showing he has a plan because I can only assume those in higher places are not all too happy about the Snowden breach and as usual in Government, looking for someone to blame. Sure, certain aspects can definitely be automated. But it's kind of the equivalent of using robots in your factor that run on batteries. If the battery goes dead in a robot, how does the robot replace its own battery if it's not even on? Presumably another robot, but it proves automation is very hard, There will always be human error though. Humans will be programming whatever automation Alexander has planned and that automation will take years to refine and perfect before it's close to flawless.
madaxe 13y ago

pyalot2 13y ago

"Twitter announced that they need to hire less talented people that are less productive. A spokeswoman said, that though they have the necessary funds to hire the best talent they can get, they just couldn't deal with that much productivity. They are kindly asking that good programmers and sysadmins stop sending in applications. A new interviewing process will be established specifically designed to identify competent and talented applicants in order to deny their application." Aaaaand that wouldn't happen ever, unless that "company" is funded by your tax dollars. Enjoy.

antocv 13y ago
The money that Twitter makes is the tax dollars. All productivity and excellence is used now to fuel an organization which punishes those who are productive and excellent.

Mordor 13y ago

Idea: Yeah, let's just keep the top 10% and make them work 10x harder. Reality: The most loyal are the least productive resulting in widespread dissatisfaction and even more leaks.

ankushnarula 13y ago

It is very difficult to manipulate, misinform, and indoctrinate intelligent/skilled people who work with information and information systems.

pekk 13y ago
How do you know this? If it is true, then why did it take so long to get the big leaks?

eparra 13y ago

The start of Skynet. </sarcasm>

qbrass 13y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_%28role-playing_game%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_%28role-playing_game%2... The Computer serves as the game's principal antagonist, and fears a number of threats to its 'perfect' society, such as The Outdoors, mutants, and secret societies (especially Communists). To deal with these threats, The Computer employs Troubleshooters, whose job is to go out, find trouble, and shoot it.

dasil003 13y ago

If the Snowden leaks were a 12 on the damage scale of 1-10. What's it going to be when they flip the switch on the sysadmin factory factory and find themselves locked out of everything because of an off-by-one error?

u2328 13y ago

The NSA can't trust 'brilliant' people huh? Worried that they might be acting against the NSA's best interest? Weird! I can't possibly imagine how they feel! Nope, not at all! It's not like I have a secretive government agency stockpiling of much of communications as they can get their hands on that could one day be taken out of context and used against me or something. Crazy!

madaxe 13y ago

"Smart people realise we're doing bad shit, so will resist it. Therefore, we can only hire unquestioning idiots." This is why the government is now entirely run by unquestioning idiots.