It's Time To Split Up NSA Between Spooks and Geeks 122
Hugh Pickens writes "Noah Shachtman writes in Wired that most of us know the National Security Agency as the supersecret spook shop that allegedly slurped up our email and phone calls after the September 11 attacks, but not so many know that the NSA is actually home to two different agencies under one roof: the signals-intelligence directorate, who can tap into any electronic communication, and the information-assurance directorate, the cybersecurity nerds who make sure our government's computers and telecommunications systems are hacker- and eavesdropper-free. 'The problem is, their goals are often in opposition,' writes Shachtman. 'One team wants to exploit software holes; the other wants to repair them.' Users want to know that Google is safeguarding their data and privacy. The trouble is that when Google calls the NSA, everyone watching sees it as a package deal. Google wants geeks, but it runs the risk of getting spies, too."
Why does Google need to 'partner' with the NSA? (Score:5, Interesting)
Aren't they smart enough and rich enough to hire their own geeks? SIGINT is the main job of NSA, period. If you want to hire the wolf to guard the hen house, you take the consequences.
Re:And??? (Score:2, Interesting)
The government is not a monolithic mind. Bureaucratic distance famously hindered information sharing between various agencies pre-9/11, and that was when it was largely in both agencies' interest to cooperate. That wasn't an isolated instance--it's how bureaucracy works. Someone with control over both agencies could force one agency to subjugate its goals to the others', but it's much more complicated, much more controversial, will receive much more resistance, and is over-all much less likely to be attempted than when it's an intra-agency conflict.
Re:Two sides of the same coin (Score:4, Interesting)
I've read the article twice and it doesn't support it's own conclusion, if you except as a given that the NSA is bad, a loose cannon in regards to real American's rights it follows logically, if you don't think the NSA is inherently bad the article just panders to the tinfoil hat crowd. Google, an American Corp, and many other Corporations were attacked by an entity that appears was either the Chinese Government, a proxy of the Chinese Government or an entity specifically trying to make it look like the Chinese Government for their own nefarious purposes. Getting the "big guns" involved to help sort out the mess is the only reasonable response, it's what they are supposed to do and what they do.
Moral Responsibility (Score:3, Interesting)
It all depends (Score:3, Interesting)
It all depends on what level of Common Criteria evaluation you are talking about. At the higher levels, there is a lab authorized to conduct a product inspection and, once you pass that test, you get a medium level NIAP certificate. If you wish a higher level of CC approval in the US, after this original process NSA itself takes control and does its tests. So the process is still a two step process with NSA involvement...or was about 4 years ago when I was involved in taking an "Orange Book" product through CC evaluation.
Re:And??? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:They already did, and it made things worse (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd always assumed the idea of "NSA agents" was a myth, too. But if you visit the National Cryptologic Museum, there's a memorial there - apparently a duplicate of the one at Fort Meade - honoring fallen cryptologists. I seem to remember that a bunch of the names were actually just stars, because their identities were still secret. From the museum's website:
"The Memorial Wall was designed by an NSA employee and is 12 feet wide and eight feet high, centered with a triangle. The words "They Served in Silence," etched into the polished stone at the cap of the triangle, recognize that cryptologic service has always been a silent service - secretive by its very nature. Below these words, the NSA seal and the names of 153 military and civilian cryptologists who have given their lives in service to their country are engraved in the granite. The names are at the base of the triangle because these cryptologists and their ideals - dedication to mission, dedication to workmate, and dedication to country - form the foundation for cryptologic service."
I have to say that 153 sounds like an awfully high death toll if we're talking about desk workers.
Re:Hell No (Score:3, Interesting)
The TSA is supposed to herd air travelers in ever larger targets for terrorists in front of machines they use to find shampoo bottles in.
Seriously, how long is it going to take for some terrorist to walk into an airport with a suitcase bomb, sit in line for the TSA till he is in the middle of 100's or even 1000's of people during the holiday season and blow himself up ?
Close and shut down the NSA (Score:1, Interesting)
The NSA has no business existing. Shut down the agency. Secret government agencies have no place operating in an open, free democracy.
Re:Smarts (Score:3, Interesting)
What Google is doing is business intelligence--learning stuff about people, relationships, web pages and then using that information to sell products, in the current case, Advertising. Walmart does the same thing but they collect data about products and people and sell merchandise. There are dozens of other examples. But what they are doing in parallel is forming huge databases of anonymous (hopefully) people data.
For an agency like the NSA, and what they are tasked to do, this is a huge goldmine of info. Information is everything, always has been. In any given market the person making the profit is the one with the best information on the conditions of the market so they can make the best choice. It's the hidden side of economics which has always assumed everyone makes the best possible decision. It turns out it's possible to make better decisions if you have a more perfect model.
Then, and taking it a step further, it's even easier to make a decision if you force the situation by doing something or faking information that the other side wrongly uses. This is done every day in the media to get the masses believing the wrong thing so they do what they will predictably do and the rich people profit on it. Not to say they aren't involved in their own games at the top, but that's the general gist that keeps wealth and power flowing up and out of the masses' hands.
If you're dealing with a hostile enemy (which still exists but probably won't for much longer as the elites move up beyond mere country borders), the same situation is true. The more information you have, the better your decisions will be. And even better to feed misinformation to the enemy so they make an even more wrong decision.
At the end of the day, this is the natural order of things, of civilization. The people at the NSA are people just like anyone else. I would assume that eventually people blow the whistle. And don't forget that there's other NSA agencies in other countries. China, Japan, Russia, England, France, Germany, India, Iran, Israel, Turkey; The thing that's most interesting about NOW is that something like Google, or Walmart, or other global conglomerations is that they trancend countries, borders, political systems. This is only the beginning, I don't think Google is really so much the end-all as the harbringer of things to come. I'd be really surprised if the people at the NSA aren't aware of this and want to hitch a ride up and out of "america" as it is and into what might be termed the "New World Order", in which there is a higher governmental power that goes beyond nations to those concerns that affect the world. Beyond the global warming and pollution stuff, you have very real and important problems around currencies, information exchange and security, etc. It does seem scary because it's so different, but it really is enevitable and for the best of humanity.
The UN is supposed to be that, somewhat, but I think it's not political enough. I think we should elect our UN representatives like we elect our presidents. The big corporations are really trying to get a leg up on traditional democracies by pushing global agendas and there's really no clear leadership helping the people's voice be heard. In fact, it seems our governments are doing their best to insulate us from the world affairs (at least it's felt like that in the U.S. for the past decade or two). But I think now more than ever a world democracy is possible, probable, and probably not that far away. But it may take wresting it away from the corporations, who would love more than anything to have a fascist world government. But that leads to corruption very quickly, as we've seen in history, and that will lead to conflict and hopefully resolution. Hopefully we won't have to go through it, but really we stand on the doorstep to opportunity to really build the future system of the world that will last until the sun burns out.