NSA to cut system administrators by 90 percent to limit data access

http://preview.reuters.com/2013/8/9/nsa-to-cut-system-administrators-by-90-percent-to

by kjhughes • 13 years ago

108 76 13 years ago

preview.reuters.com

jared314• 13 years ago

Using technology to automate much of the work now done by employees and contractors

This sounds like they are just trimming a bloated IT department, and just using security as an excuse.

a2tech• 13 years ago

Sounds like an excuse to bring in a different huge company with another huge contract to 'automate' tasks.

cinquemb• 13 years ago

As long as they are in the Carlyle Groups portfolio to offset the loss from their company BAH.

e3pi3• 13 years ago

I hope none of them read The Mythical Man Month.

thejosh• 13 years ago

ah yes, let's cut down on the amount of people who will dob on us.

beedogs• 13 years ago

Hopefully the 90 percent all become Snowdens and the other 10 percent quit.

Sauer_Kraut6• 13 years ago

Since Edward Snowden was considered an administrator and he was employed by Booz Allen Hamilton, this means a supposed large cut in contracts to external legally immune corporations.

First off I doubt much of a cut on spending or a hindrance to the vast expansion of the world's surveillance state.

But if this does mean a cut in those employed it implies less targets to battle back judicially, legislatively, socially. Less 'independent' opinions (dismissing a probable increase of automated bots) attempting to justify their salary. Plus automation is king only to a point, how do most hacker seminars end? "Its always about the people."

With a clearer trail of monetary remuneration to follow that gives those in the dissenting camp a better chance to isolate and make examples of the collaborators who seek to route around justice to enforce their vision of law while hiding in the legal shadows collecting cash.

edit: Be on the look-out for a large increase in marketing of surveillance state tools to nations like Saudi Arabia, or torture loving UAE, typical nations that companies that Booz Allen Hamilton and others whore themselves out to for monies.

gojomo• 13 years ago

According to a source speaking off the record, most of the reduction-in-force will be achieved through mysterious auto accidents.

Raticide• 13 years ago

Just need to get the other 10% and we're good.

helloNSA_• 13 years ago

You read my mind.

benjaminRRR• 13 years ago

I was going to write something and then thought why would I bother sticking my neck out and getting on somebody's list and be hassled for no other reason than needing to spend some bloated budget... Self-censorship sucks.

quantumpotato_• 13 years ago

Afraid to voice your opinions? The terrorist government has already won.

mathattack• 13 years ago

Somehow I just can't see this ending well either.

chrismealy• 13 years ago

Good luck, guys! I'll know the singularity is here when computers don't need sysadmins.

3pt14159• 13 years ago

Honestly this is a terrible idea. Say what you will about their programs, what they don't need to do is CUT DOWN on the Sys Admins, what they need to do is distribute access more cleanly so that no one person can take out a big chuck of classified data.

shabble2• 13 years ago

There's already a good chunk of effort gone into solving the problem of access to Scary Things for nukes & master crypto keying material, such as the Two Man/No Lone Zone[1] rules.

I'm not sure how well it would translate to things like sysadmin tasks which can't all be pre-scripted checklists, but something like a pair-programming model, combined with a full audit log of actions taken, along with actual independent auditors randomly pulling logs and checking for naughtiness could work.

I dread to think of the bureaucracy overhead involved though - I suspect it would probably end up increasing staff headcount several-fold.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-man_rule

revelation• 13 years ago

With the two-man rule, the two man are the users. They are not the people building and maintaining the hardware switch that implements the two-man rule. Now thats obviously a silly distinction because it was a simple electric circuit, but nowadays everything runs on Linux and real operating systems, and you need people to maintain them continuously.

ohazi• 13 years ago

What could possibly go wrong?

discodave• 13 years ago

OK guys we've had a security breach. Let's fire all the guys who look after security!

Oh and everybody has to work with a partner so the work output of our remaining workforce is halved.

Idiots.

sage_joch• 13 years ago

I take it you're not a fan of pair programming. ;-)

Sauer_Kraut6• 13 years ago

Those second set of eyes, always judging(helping) and meddling(contributing). Damn(bless) them.

u23282• 13 years ago

Don't get me wrong. I think Snowden is a patriot, but read between the lines here. Security breaks at the interface, and for the NSA, it broke at the interface between itself and it's contractors. Snowden was a Booz Allen Hamilton employee, so just like a diseased appendage threatening the rest of the body, I think the NSA is going to start cutting Booz off. Cronyism between the government and private business only extends so far. Booz has become a liability for the NSA, and they're not going to let that relationship, no matter how cozy, threaten the whole thing.

Sauer_Kraut6• 13 years ago

What indicates they will be cut off?

Amadou• 13 years ago

If that's what's going on, then it is pure CYA. There is no practical difference between a contractor and a direct employee. Yes it seems like security clearance vetting has been outsourced (for contractors only?) in recent years. But assuming everybody did their job right an employee is no more trustworthy than a contractor.

I'm entirely willing to believe it is CYA - based on my experience working classified programs practically all security procedures are CYA: Provably follow the checklist and you won't get fired if something goes wrong. Don't worry that the checklist is full of holes like swiss cheese, the checklist is more important than actual security.

bas• 13 years ago

I don't see them cutting Booz off. I do see them enforcing stricter standards for employing contractors. Prospects lacking either an elite degree or distinguished military service are likely to encounter significant resistance to employment within the National Business Park and its environs.

wmeredith• 13 years ago

Seriously. At this point the only thing really keeping the gov't in check is their own ineptitude.

tedivm2• 13 years ago

How does partners help anything? Snowden knew he was going to get caught, so increasing the chances of him getting caught would have done very little.

wmf2• 13 years ago

Presumably the two-man rule would have caught him before he could leak anything.

e12e• 13 years ago

If he got caught before he could leak any data, that would've been a win for the forces that want to keep this stuff under wraps (I hesitate to say a win for the NSA, because I actually believe there might be a few people there still that want to try to fulfil the original mission, as opposed to commit as many criminal acts as possible).

It's a little like pairing up soldiers when you order them to commit a war crime: refusal to obey orders will get you shot -- it raises the bar of refusal by having to convince someone else to risk their life by not taking yours.

wmf2• 13 years ago

Alternate interpretation: Hey guys, let's try this DevOps thing I read about in InfoWorld; it says you can reduce the number of sysadmins by 90%.

oroup• 13 years ago

"First rule of government spending: why buy one when you can have two for twice the price?"

monsterix• 13 years ago

I'll be happier if the administrators cut NSA's current data-sets down by 90%. Just leave the 10% data that points to communications of the Government and their secret agents.

Parsing that data will help us figure out moles and real traitors.

/sarcasm. I prefer they shut down NSA completely.

berkezerker• 13 years ago

Whoa, the NSA finally cares about privacy!

mullingitover• 13 years ago

Once again the Wikileaks plan succeeding. In order to maintain their dirty secret, they have to take more and more drastic measures that weaken their ability to operate their illegal enterprise in an efficient manner.

angersock• 13 years ago

I guess it's a good year to be writing and selling books on puppet and chef?

greendata• 13 years ago

love it! Hey NSA how does it feel to have your privacy violated. If you have nothing to hide, you should care

darwinGod• 13 years ago

Alright,so how long does it take for disgruntled soon-to-be-ex-system-administrator of the 90% of sysadmins to do the next leak?

woah• 13 years ago

Whoever does it will be a hero!

qq66• 13 years ago

Is there any literature on whether a rules/laws violation is more or less likely in a paired environment than in a single-user environment? The thinking is that the next Snowden will be stopped by his partner. But I can also see a possibility where the next Snowden has some misgivings, but doesn't have the confidence to go through with action until he voices his misgivings to his partner, and they give each other the courage to proceed.

Which is more likely?

e3pi3• 13 years ago

WRONG:

"Other security measures that Alexander has previously discussed include requiring at least two people to be present before certain data can be accessed on the agency's computer systems."

CORRECT:

Before admins or analysts view native text, a preprocessor regex substitutes innocuous synonym barium canaries for parts of speech, puncuation, possibly with Google capable proper noun recognition, places and people too. These substitution events are hashed with each specific tractable viewers, and the viewers, so informed of this preprocessor, know it, so they don't rat.

This is also `panopticonable', say this occurs only 10% of the time.

tedivm2• 13 years ago

None of that helps for someone like Snowden, who prepared to get caught.

e3pi3• 13 years ago

Agreed, the rogue suicide in the wild is a problem.

and...with theguardian.com currently:

Breaking news: US orders non-essential staff to leave consulate in Lahore, Pakistan, citing terrorist threat. More details to follow ...

you suppose whatever intercepted intel causing all these embassy closures are `tainted' with `barium' so the threat is scanning NSA's global surveillance to see what activates a hwall alert and what does not? Eg, peaking traffic volume, how to do this with a machine generated sustained random crypto-noise spike?

Vivtek• 13 years ago

Or, you know, they could have and enforce data access rules to limit data access.

bengrunfeld• 13 years ago

This is just plain wrong. Instead of admitting that what they did was immoral and attempting to repair faith with the tech community and the country, they're now trying to automate IT so that they don't have to worry about SysAdmins with a conscience.

So their big plan is, "if our agents can use a UI to get all the info they need, we won't need to worry about those pesky left-leaning IT types."

The amount of stupid here is unbearable!! Good luck to them when they need another feature developed.

fixxer• 13 years ago

Looks like there are going to be 900 disenfranchised sysadmins out in the wild.... I wonder what information they'll have...

jayfuerstenberg2• 13 years ago

So long as the power to spy on people exists it will be abused. It already has been and it will only get worse.

The only recourse is better cryptography.

Sauer_Kraut6• 13 years ago

This is absolutely wrong.

Encryption is now a means of making yourself a suspect. Referencing or communicating with suspects is means to make yourself a suspect.

There is no technical solution away from this.

edit: What, no rebuttal? No eloquent summary on how crypto can lead people out of this? My assertion of no technical solution has no more or no less merit than the one above. But in addition I provided reason on how crypto makes one a suspect, how associating with suspects makes one a suspect as well, a refutation of the above comment.

Let's further discussion.

zxcdw• 13 years ago

Steganography.

jayfuerstenberg2• 13 years ago

We're already suspects, we might as well have the encryption too.

Privacy is a basic human right and cannot be granted or taken away. But you need to defend it all the same.

FrankenPC• 13 years ago

"No one has willfully or knowingly disobeyed the law or tried to invade your civil liberties or privacies," he said. "There were no mistakes like that at all."

LOL!!! In their eyes, we are total morons.

spin• 13 years ago

From the article:

"No one has willfully or knowingly disobeyed the law or tried to invade your civil liberties or privacies," he said. "There were no mistakes like that at all."

... then why did they lie about it to congress?

smsm422• 13 years ago

Because they are the good guys, so it's ok for them to lie to the congress. For you it is a felony, but for them it's not even a mistake.

hobs• 13 years ago

Does anyone else hate when a website tries not to let you read it when you have javascript disabled? This one is so lame I had to view the source.

zaroth• 13 years ago

But who will manage the systems that are managing the systems? I'm sure this will work out brilliantly for them when systems crash, or hackers start exfiltrating their data, and there's no one left to analyze the logs and discover and fix the holes.

The problem at the NSA isn't that there are too many sysadmins, although apparently that plays well with tech illiterate politicians. The problem is too many morally unconscionable programs which lead to a growing revulsion in the ranks.

Mr. Alexander defends his agency's conduct and claims the press is distorting the facts. "No one has willfully or knowingly disobeyed the law or tried to invade your civil liberties or privacies," he said. "There were no mistakes like that at all." Except we know that even FISA says that's not true, in a report so damning apparently even elected members of congress can't read it.

I have news for you Keith, blanket collection of the "meta-data" of every call on Verizon's network is ex vi termini, invasion of privacy and civil liberty. DEA's SOD (Special Operations Division) handing off your clandestine intercepts to civilian law enforcement is just the latest, but not the last, sickening revelation. The leaks won't stop until you stop, and I hope your hubris continues to blind you to how close the political tides are to turning against you. It seems to me that your 'ends justify the means' mentality conflicts with your sworn oath to uphold the Constitution, and I can only hope history will look back on this whole endeavor as a dark stain in American history, and view you like a McCarthy of our time. Machiavelli would be proud of you, sir.

CamperBob22• 13 years ago

You might as well try to shame J. Edgar Hoover.

rhizome• 13 years ago

The problem is too many morally unconscionable programs which lead to a growing revulsion in the ranks.

Au contraire, it's extremely morally conscionable to people who see law enforcement as a noble profession empowered to rid the nation (and beyond) of people they see as the scum of the earth. These programs are run by people who, I can guarantee you, do not wake up in the morning wondering what morals and ethics they can ignore that day.

However.

"No one has willfully or knowingly disobeyed the law or tried to invade your civil liberties or privacies," he said.

And he's right. And that's the problem: these things are likely not against the law. The law has both been perverted inch by inch and the agencies have been allowed to operate under looser legal interpretations than you and I receive for parking tickets. This means that to the degree that laws exist that permit their behavior (PATRIOT Act, FISAA), those who would constrain them to even the loose boundaries do not (and by all accounts refuse to) do so. This goes for the FISC as much as Dianne Feinstein and Eric Holder. This means they can say it's legal for them to do pretty much whatever they want. So now what?

acqq• 13 years ago

You say now what? Now exactly what Snowden did: if it's "legal" only because secret court makes secret decisions which are against the Constitution, inform the people. You are sworn to protect the Constitution not to just say "I've got an order, I'm just doing it" like some guys managed to kill millions without losing sleep, thinking "the superiors say it's legal it's not my thing to even think about it".

otakucode3• 13 years ago

I've noticed all along that the NSA is relying VERY heavily on the idea that an automated system collecting, analyzing, and drawing conclusions from spied data is entirely legal so long as no humans are involved. This was the legal defense that whistleblowers claimed they were using (but which has never been tested in court, and they would like to avoid that testing of course) years ago. And for some reason I can't guess, everyone seems to just be going along with it.

"Oh, agents don't have easy access to our personal information? You've just got it all recorded on your servers and you constantly datamine it, but the analysts only look at outputs from the mining and not the specific data? Well OK then" seems to be the response of the press at least.

jimworm• 13 years ago

1. Increase efficiency.

2. Reduce leak surface area.

3. Would-be whistleblowers might be more tempted to exchange information for money, ie become spies, at which point you could nail them and nobody bats an eyelid.

4. At least spies sell their information in secret instead of blurting it out all over the place.

5. Dead people/prisoners don't count in unemployment statistics.

It's a win-win-win-win-win situation. Brilliant move.

smsm422• 13 years ago

I seriously hope the NSA actually means to eliminate 90% of sysadmin rights by reducing the access rights of most of the people to minimal necessary, not 90% of actual sysadmin positions. Because either NSA is grossly, unbelievably overstaffed (and for some weird reason with, from all possible positions, sysadmins) or, if they staffed like any normal organization, firing 90% of sysadmins would cause unbelievable chaos in all IT systems. Something sounds very weird here.

wisty• 13 years ago

either NSA is grossly, unbelievably overstaffed

Can you tell me the last time a President said the military had gotten bloated, and needed to go on a diet? Not counting screwing over veterans, of course.

rdl• 13 years ago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY

President Dwight D. Eisenhower's famous exit speech of 17 JAN 1961 warning of the dangers of the "military-industrial complex."

wereHamster• 13 years ago

"No one has willfully or knowingly disobeyed the law or tried to invade your civil liberties or privacies," he said. "There were no mistakes like that at all."

"Not at all" is such a strong statement. Like Iraq had no WMD at all, right? The US is really bad at admitting its own mistakes.

avty• 13 years ago

We are legion!

smegel• 13 years ago

All while bribing sysadmins overseas to install NSA listening devices. What's good for the goose...

btbuilder• 13 years ago

It's difficult to say, from this article, whether they are actually laying off these admins or whether they are reducing the number of people with administrator access.

I don't see many downsides to reducing the number of people with administrator access. The more administrators there are the more possibility there is for abuse as it is normally very easy for administrators to bypass audit controls as well as, obviously, access controls. The rule of least privilege should apply.

Call me cynical of the human race but I worry more about rogue admins selling information to criminal elements than cutting off would-be whistleblowers.

antihero• 13 years ago

Good luck.

NSA to cut system administrators by 90 percent to limit data access

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