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I was in a Hadoop course with a person who had just left the NSA in mid-June (right when the Snowden bomb dropped). She was in complete denial about his allega

• wcummings 13y ago
  >"Do you really think they just let people access these systems without rules? You really believe that?" Saying this while discussing material leaked from the NSA is beyond ironic
  • ceejayoz 13y ago
    Especially when the NSA has admitted they don't know which documents were taken.
    • bediger4000 13y ago
      Wait, should I believe that the NSA doesn't know what documents were taken? Because I hold the belief that they do know, down to the PowerPoint slide, what resides in Snowden's Cache. I believe that the NSA is either incapable of telling the truth, or believes that lying about what they know is an advantage somehow. Is there some way to decide this quandry logically?
      • nl 13y ago
        Because I hold the belief that they do know, down to the PowerPoint slide, what resides in Snowden's Cache. Why? When it happened, they almost certainly didn't. By now they may have restored all their backups to that point of time, and recreated their network to see exactly what he could have possibly taken, but beyond that it seems likely they don't know.. I'd imagine they are slowly working out what documents he has. Everytime a new one appears they go "oh, shit" and look at what other docs were nearby. They have probably checked multiple times a few critical documents to see if he had access to them.
  • walshemj 13y ago
    and even post employment saying that you had worked for the NSA you can see the crap attitude to protective security that let snowden happen.
    • keithpeter 13y ago
      Thankyou. Should be complete silence.
      • chris_wot 13y ago
        It depends where you worked.
• neuralk 13y ago
  >Hence the guy who spied on his ex for years without being caught. Can I get a link to that story?
  • andrewcooke 13y ago
    http://lmgtfy.com/?q=nsa+employee+spying+on+ex http://lmgtfy.com/?q=nsa+employee+spying+on+ex
    • neuralk 13y ago
      Funny, that doesn't answer my question. I was already aware of the letter released by Senator Grassley[1] and none of the stories in that letter match those referenced by the GP. So, again, can I get a link to that story? [1] http://www.grassley.senate.gov/judiciary/upload/NSA-Surveillance-09-11-13-response-from-IG-to-intentional-misuse-of-NSA-authority.pdf http://www.grassley.senate.gov/judiciary/upload/NSA-Surveill...
      • andrewcooke 13y ago
        so you're linking to a letter with TWELVE different cases of NSA employees spying on people for "romantic" reasons and that doesn't answer your question? are you playing some kind of semantic game where you narrowly select the meanings of words to exclude the piles and piles of evidence and so "win" some pointless argument? because if so, i'm thinking you might be keith alexander?
        • neuralk 13y ago
          I just thought he was referencing something I was not familiar with, not paraphrasing something I was. > are you playing some kind of semantic game ... because if so, i'm thinking you might be keith alexander? You are reading too much into my question. Sometimes a question is just a question and there's no need to pitch a battle over it.
        • philwelch 13y ago
          Is it really necessary for you to be so nasty?
• alextingle 13y ago
  Furthermore, whatever safeguards they might put on the data are completely irrelevant. They shouldn't be mass collecting data without a warrant in any case. You were just arguing about whether their lawbreaking was competently executed or not.
  • growupkids 13y ago
    Let's not be naive. Spying doesn't involve warrants. It's called spying because that's what it is, spying, not building a legal case to take to court. Warrants aren't ever going to figure into spying. You can bound the scope of what spy agencies spy on, but expecting them to spy and to get a warrant to spy before they do it, that's not going to happen. If you truly want warrant based searches for everyone, everywhere, then you have to ban spy agencies world wide and make this all a law enforcement function.
    • sanderjd 13y ago
      There's this nice dividing line - you don't spy on your own citizens which means you need warrants to gather information on them.
      • marvin 13y ago
        Actually, warrantless surveillance goes beyond that. I'm a Norwegian citizen, and I take issue with the NSA having instant access to all the homemade porn me and my girlfriend exchange. So this concern really goes beyond the borders of the US. Saying that this would be all fine and dandy if it was restricted to the 95% of the people who are not in the US is a very good way to piss off all your allies and trading partners.
        • sanderjd 13y ago
          Interesting, are you using the word "warrantless" as a synonym for "baseless" or as meaning "without a warrant granted by a court of law"? If it's the first, I agree wholeheartedly - it's both unethical and just plain stupid for my government to spend time, money, political capital, and the ability to look itself in the mirror without cringing on being able to access the pornography of private citizens of ally countries. If it's the latter, I disagree - I don't think countries (the U.S., Norway, whoever) should be required or require themselves to get warrants to surveil citizens of other countries. You should be pissed, and it pisses me off that my government is pissing you off, but that doesn't mean I think it needs to get warrants to spy on other countries.
• ams6110 13y ago
  She was probably right about the systems she used. I clearly remember be stunned, and initially not believing, that any one person, even a sysadmin, would have such broad access to systems at the NSA. It goes against everything that intelligence agencies have learned about compartmentalization of information and "need to know" access controls.
  • CamperBob2 13y ago
    "Need to know" apparently is no longer in fashion in either the civil or military intelligence communities, in any way whatsoever. Bradley Manning convinced me of that. As a low-level private, he was able to download megabytes of sensitive material completely unrelated to his job, and that he couldn't possibly have had any need to access. Regardless of whether you think he (she) did the right thing, it's just insane that it was even possible. It speaks of outrageous incompetence at the highest levels of the organization, incompetence that's likely to be a greater security threat than anything else under discussion. Same story with Snowden, a low-level contractor who was apparently able to walk away with the whole store. Love him or hate him, he's not the Agency's real problem.
    • jfoutz 13y ago
      Much much more amusing to see how random college drop outs can so deeply compromise national security. Imagine what trouble we'd be in if a motivated nation state tried to get the USA's secrets?
      • Peaker 13y ago
        He sounds like quite a competent, intelligent "college dropout". Do you think him being a "dropout" means much?
        • jfoutz 13y ago
          Yeah, it's hyperbolic. I was trying to emphasize the difference between a random guy and nation state. Dropout was also convenient because it applied to both Manning and Snowden.
• mariuolo 13y ago
  > "Do you really think they just let people access these systems without rules? You really believe that?" Perhaps she was still doing damage control for them?
• brown9-2 13y ago
  My argument to her was that my experience dealing with intelligence agencies Just curious - what experience is that?
• niels_olson 13y ago
  One tends to realize only in retrospect that it's a very curious experience to go from normal life to the military before having any other real responsibilities in life. One very much gets the feeling of being a Platonic "guardian" and the access to information only heightens that experience. It is likely quite similar to the way some folks in IT talk perceive "sheeple" and doctors sometimes perceive patients, and even the UPS guy perceives your package as he congratulates himself for the hard work even as he drop kicks your computer into your screen door. Couldn't I fairly easily replace "military" with "profession"? I think going to medical school and being indoctrinated into a second professional culture is what gave me an opportunity to see the experience for what it is. The striving, the late nights, the urgency, the aspirations, the sense of responsibility, they all play in to a larger story of self where one paradoxically may not appreciate their own larger role at the time. I also submit your immediate seniors also may not appreciate their own roles. I submit any differences you saw in her were side effects of the history of the institutions, the policies that govern them, the nature of the work, and the point in time at which your paths crossed. Look at General Petraeus, compare him to Lincoln's string of generals, or just the number of military officers who will never make general, fired one after the other, and consider, how many months or years of conflict did Petreaus save after the civilian leadership made the decision to go to war? How many soldiers and civilians were killed or saved? How many lives has his work touched? Look at Drew Houston. Compare him to the many careers burned out in failed startups, the customer data lost in security breaches. How many lives has his work touched? Look at Paul Farmer. Compare him to the many careers burned out in medicine, the patients who died in clinical trials while they took sugar pills, the failure of relief agencies to effectively coordinate supply chains. How may lives has his work touched? Look at Fred Smith. Compare him to the many careers burned out in aviation and business. The pilots of passengers who have died in flight, or been affected by the failure of a supply chain to deliver the right item to the right place. How many lives has his work touched? Now think about the soldiers, the code monkeys, the nurse's aids, the FedEx delivery drivers, living in the shadows of these names. What cultural influences are the same? If you started on any one of these paths at 18 or 22, are you so certain that you would be mentally and emotionally prepared to resist the onslaught of cultural decisions you would be expected to participate in on a daily basis? Are you so sure that you so reliably see the forest for the trees?
• ridgeguy 13y ago
  As a matter of interest about whether and how people change their views in light of revealed facts, have you any means of following up with her to see how she new views the matters on which she opined then? I would find this exercise informative and interesting. Tnx.