Before Snowden, a debate inside NSA

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/acc54fc0c64c4c3eae29b8ac380cc065/ap-exclusive-snowden-debate-inside-nsa

by cgtyoder • 12 years ago

135 37 12 years ago

bigstory.ap.org

larakerns• 12 years ago

NSA employees are so siloed from each other that it limits dissent and self auditing

smtddr• 12 years ago

I feel like being siloed would actually increase the probability of dissent happening. Leaving you all by yourself to question the rules you follow. Of course I suspect a certain IQ and/or education level is needed for this kind of self reflection.

Uhhrrr• 12 years ago

Keep in mind that siloing increases the influence of management.

Also, it means that different people are telling themselves, "I'm making a better search tool!", "I'm making a better scraper!", "I'm making a better optical tap!", without putting it all together (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoT-h0S1gkE).

rayiner• 12 years ago

Of course I suspect a certain IQ and/or education level is needed for this kind of self reflection.

The NSA is full of intelligent people. Keith Alexander went to West Point. Indeed, one of the reasons he became DNI was his extensive education in telecommunications technologies/signals intelligence (he has a number of post-graduate degrees in that area).

logicallee• 12 years ago

NSA employees are so siloed from each other

A chance encounter in the canteen:

"Oh, hey Bob! You don't know who I am, hi, I'm Steve McDougal here, from the OPHELIA project. Don't take this the wrong way but I've been reading your diary and I can't help but tell you that I feel the EXACT same way about our organization's spying on ordinary Americans as you do."

"Are you kidding, Steve! I know exactly who you are - I've been reading your diary for months, too!! The one you keep in : C:\Users\Steve\Documents\steves private thoughts.doc? You were writing in there just this morning about how even in Orwell's 1984 he could at least turn away from the monitoring TV!!"

"Oh wow Bob. Or that entry you wrote the other day about Quis custodiet ipsos custodes - I think this was where you were writing about your wife Sue getting banged by the FedEx guy"

"Yeah well ha-ha Steve, I could tell you never bothered to look at your wife's work Blackberry number!"

"What? You're kidding!"

"No, check it out. You got something to note this down with, I know it by heart: it's 505-234-9918. Didn't you ever hear Sue and I reading excerpts? That is some hot stuff."

"What - no, I only listen to you guys when you're actually fucking, and that hasn't happened for months. If you want to really hear something, try your home around 2 PM tomorrow, since your wife ordered something from Amazon again."

"Fedex?"

"Yep :). But so anyway, what were we talking about again?"

"Oh the diary stuff. Yeah your thoughts are like a mirror image of mine."

"Yeah I don't know how we never met before, I've been reading your diary ever since you filed a complaint about the lunchmeat. But what did you think about my thoughts on Director Alexander?"

"Well to be perfectly honest with you I think you should have kept them to yourself."

(LOL)

dTal• 12 years ago

This is completely hilarious. Very Fry and Laurie.

lylebarrere• 12 years ago

This only shows that Snowden was correct that internal channels were not effective at providing real oversight.

acqq2• 12 years ago

Speaking of internal channels, even the external channels don't necessarily care more than Keith Alexander:

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/18/usa-freedom-a...

"Senate Republicans block USA Freedom Act surveillance reform bill"

"Senators, mostly Republicans warning of leaving the country exposed to terrorist threat, voted to beat back the USA Freedom Act"

dantheman• 12 years ago

The actual bill was quite bad and should not have been passed.

For a decent write up: http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2014/nov/19/how-usa...

contingencies• 12 years ago

We know from previous whistleblowers the most likely response to raising concerns is being sidelined or punished.

bobsil1• 12 years ago

    Resolved by K. Alexander

    Status: Won't fix — by design

notastartup• 12 years ago

    K. Alexander has revoked read and write permissions.

laurencei• 12 years ago

"The now-retired NSA official...says he argued to then-NSA Director Keith Alexander"

"The former official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because he didn't have permission to discuss a classified matter"

and then

"An individual did bring us these questions, and he had some great points," Alexander told the AP."

So they know who it is. Isnt he going to get in trouble regardless?

bediger40002• 12 years ago

CAREFULLY NOTE THE AUTHOR OF THIS PIECE: Ken Dilanian.

Ken Dilanian is at the very least, "friendly" with the CIA: http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/09/ken-dilanian-sen... At least in the past, he's run drafts of stories past CIA PR people.

It's at least reasonable to consider the idea that this is a PR Hit for the NSA itself, therefore nobody will get in trouble. I concede that the "I argued with Keith and got ignored" angle is problematic if this is a PR Hit, but still, you've got to give the idea some credit.

sflicht2• 12 years ago

Very good point.

tomohawk• 12 years ago

How would having the phone companies store the records be better than having the government store them? If a warrant is required in either case, it seems like it would be best to go with the most secure storage option.

The various parts of government are usually better able to say no to each other, while a company may not be able to say no. What's Verizon going to do when some part of the government demands some records? How much time and money are they going to spend protecting those records?

Who's going to be held responsible when a phone company gets hacked and makes off with the motherload of records?

It just seems like having the phone companies store the records will make them less secure and more vulnerable to more requests from more agencies.

offmycloud• 12 years ago

The phone companies store the records for at least some period of time already, why make unnecessary copies?

zz1• 12 years ago

Nope. At all.

Lavabit was able to challenge the government. Even Yahoo! was able to try. And privacy protection can become a feature for which to choose which phone company to pick. Government agencies will cooperate.

ghshephard• 12 years ago

Only two hops allowed, court order required each time, only 30 intelligence employees permitted access to the database, and only 300 searches a year - that sounds almost reasonable. It seems to me that the only thing left to make this totally clean is to take the database out of the hands of Government, put it in the hands of a private clearing house, and then require a ( necessarily confidential) court order to search the database. Just like any other court order. That would take the NSA out of the "Collecting American Phone Records" business.

Under a process known as "contact chaining," analysts examine the numbers that had been in contact with the "dirty number" and then the numbers in contact with those. Until this year the circle had sometimes been expanded to a "third hop" — a process that could include analysis of millions of American phone calls. Obama in January restricted it to two hops, and required a court order each time the database is searched.

Only 30 intelligence employees are permitted to access the database, officials have said, and it is done about 300 times a year.

jobu• 12 years ago

"then require a ( necessarily confidential) court order to search the database"

This is where I have the biggest problem with our current government antics. They should be required to disclose all warrants and phone searches within 5 years by default. If there is an ongoing investigation then a second court order could keep it sealed for longer.

Without transparency there is too much wiggle room for bad behavior: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/27/us-usa-surveillanc...

cryoshon2• 12 years ago

You are forgetting one critical fact: the NSA's language is entirely different from the language that you and I agree upon and understand.

If they are saying "only 30 intelligence employees are permitted access to the database, and only 300 searches a year", they could really mean "only 30 employees (and a multitude of contractors and military personnel) are permitted access to the database (of which they can make a copy of all remotely relevant information and then distribute to whoever), and only 300 searches a year (under our atomically narrow Byzantine definition of "searches" which completely misrepresents the real number of database queries)".

Additionally, people are really placing way too much faith in the warrant/court approval system. These courts are in the pockets of the people requesting authorization for searches; after all, the people with real information (power) can twist the arm of any judge to suit their needs.

We need to clean house from the bottom up and rebuild a system which does not permit for human corruption or human error.

Before Snowden, a debate inside NSA

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