NSA Deletes “Honesty” and “Openness” from Core Values • Hacker News Board

Re: NSA Deletes “Honesty” and “Openness” from Core Values

#141

Post by dopamean » Wed, Jan 24, 2018, 7:24 PM UTC

gizmo385 wrote: post #121

merpnderp wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was testifying in front of Congress. Perjury is what he did. He later waffled about not being able to answer truthfully because of the surveillance being classified - yet he answered.

I'm legitimately curious here: Is it possible that he submitted additional testimony after the fact to the committee that he was testifying before? Or discussed the issue in a closed setting where classified material could be discussed?

I'm wondering the same thing. It seems to me that people who have classified information that shouldn't be released to the public shouldn't be put in a position to have to lie about it under oath.

Re: NSA Deletes “Honesty” and “Openness” from Core Values

#142

Post by Kalium » Wed, Jan 24, 2018, 8:02 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #104

Kalium wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed! You're absolutely right. And documents on this whole boring process could almost certainly be FOIA'd by anyone with a desire to be bored to death. But a spokesperson isn't likely to know the details of a minor verbiage update.

I think the point was we're not talking about a "minor verbiage update." This isn't a wording correction on some TPS report fifty links deep within the Accessibility section. This is the public-facing expression of a major government agency's core values statement.

You're right! This is a change to a major government agency's core values statement.

I don't think I've ever been a place where public-facing statements about core values are considered important or major. They're generally treated as on par with mission statements or mottos - something nice to have but not particularly significant. I've even done government contracting, including for the NSA. Core values don't generally get checked on a regular basis much of anywhere.

You're absolutely right. This is a change to the small public face of a major intelligence agency. Yet, I believe this is a minor verbiage update of no particular import.

Re: NSA Deletes “Honesty” and “Openness” from Core Values

#143

Post by yters » Wed, Jan 24, 2018, 9:25 PM UTC

wambotron wrote: post #137

yters wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because it is voluntary does not mean the possibility of abuse is lower. It is higher since people consider the implications less.

I'm not saying it's lower, but you know the risks when you use the software.

I'm sure most people give nary a thought to the risk of using Google.

Re: NSA Deletes “Honesty” and “Openness” from Core Values

#144

Post by PopsiclePete » Wed, Jan 24, 2018, 10:11 PM UTC

jackhack wrote: post #106

dfsegoat wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If history is any judge, as I recall from several recent reads on NSA post-Snowden / Stuxnet etc: Even the most outspoken critic of the NSA (I want to say it was a State attorney or something) was quick to reverse his critiques when he was granted control of an oversight investigation - he was actually shocked at the amount of integrity and openness that he found WITHIN the organization. Doesn't mean it is visible to…

I wonder how much blackmail material he was shown just before he dramatically reversed his opinion. I am very cynical. But then a long chain of recorded history rewards my point of view.

After Trump won, I desperately wanted the "grassy knoll video" and "shadow government" stuff to actually be real.

Maybe they've just been really effective at making people think that they're all-powerful entities that make people disappear on a whim.

Re: NSA Deletes “Honesty” and “Openness” from Core Values

#145

Post by musage » Wed, Jan 24, 2018, 10:29 PM UTC

moftz wrote: post #124

not_kurt_godel wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how many PR bots the NSA has on sites like Hacker News.

They are a government agency with a nearly endless supply of money granted to them by Congress every year without fail . They don't need to do PR for anyone except to gain more employees.

They don't need to be crooks, either, doesn't seem to stop them. They don't need to come up with childish logos combined with super cereal latin text, but they're still doing it; something like "Total Information Awareness" isn't the expression of a need, it's the symptom of serious issues. If they knew what they needed they wouldn't be doing what they're doing, and wouldn't need to circle the wagons of the "Intelligence Community" for emotional support.

Do companies that pollute the environment and obsess about environmental activists so much that their undercover people outnumber the undercover agents of intelligence agencies NEED to be so very pathetic? I'd say they "just" need to stop whatever they think they are doing and be grateful towards those giving them a hint, but nope -- they can't eat what's on their plate, so they shit in our food. And anyone even dreaming of suggesting putting first things first probably wouldn't make it past apprentice in most such orgs.

Re: NSA Deletes “Honesty” and “Openness” from Core Values

#146

Post by PeterisP » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 12:25 AM UTC

volkk wrote: post #51

iambateman wrote: post #50

I, as a taxpayer, pay the NSA to be effective in defending national interests, to act with integrity, and to submit themselves to the oversight of my representatives in Congress. I have no expectation that they will be honest or open with me. Being closed is integral to their work. However they damn well better submit to oversight and respect my constitutional rights as a citizen.

Sort of a catch 22 there, right? You expect integrity, but without honesty/openness, how do you hold them to it?

You'd expect them to be open and honest to the officials who are managing and reviewing them, but opaque and occasionally intentionally misleading to the wider general public.

Re: NSA Deletes “Honesty” and “Openness” from Core Values

#147

Post by PeterisP » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 12:27 AM UTC

NegativeLatency wrote: post #56

volkk wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of a catch 22 there, right? You expect integrity, but without honesty/openness, how do you hold them to it?

Ideally congress would provide oversight. Unfortunately in today's world members of congress seem to be ok with the continued overreach of surveillance.

Isn't congress the set of people who are literally given the right (and responsibility) to define, by passing laws, what is ok and what's not? If they consider that it's ok, then it's ok; that's how the democratically elected representatives have decided.

Re: NSA Deletes “Honesty” and “Openness” from Core Values

#148

Post by PeterisP » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 12:36 AM UTC

jancsika wrote: post #73

neosavvy wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man I was thinking the exact same thing. By nature these folks at the NSA CAN'T be open nor honest.

"We put a splitter on the internet so that we can keep our own copy in locations A, B, C, and coming soon, D. We use an automated selector-based filter to find nodes of interest in realtime, as well as tools for querying the enormous amount of data we keep in the storage facilities at said locations." That would count as both open and honest. What could the implications possibly be? Congress isn't going to investigat…

For a few (IMHO realistic) examples:

* the "splitter" as you call it (an useful simplification for this discussion) might be on devices of public companies without their consent against their wishes - IIRC that was part of Snowden's revelations.

* the "splitter" might have been secretly placed on an undersea cable in foreign waters, and there's a clear national security interest not to reveal that fact - the key job of NSA is to listen in to other nations and ensure that they don't know if/how it's succeeding.

* the "splitter" might include cooperation from friendly governments that's not public knowledge to their populations. Again, there's a clear foreign policy interest not to disclose that.

* the "splitter" might have been made possible by a vulnerability in something that everyone believes is secure (e.g. RSA cryptosystem), and revealing what kind of data is captured will reveal that it's possible to capture that kind of data, which (if it's a surprise) by itself might lead to it becoming useless as people worldwide deduce what component needs to be replaced.

There's obviously more. NSA can reveal that their job includes spying on everyone outside USA; but any more details would generally be harmful to that mission.

Re: NSA Deletes “Honesty” and “Openness” from Core Values

#149

Post by randcraw » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 1:51 AM UTC

cmurf wrote: post #136

randcraw wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unlikely they were feigning. Even the members of the house & senate intelligence committees do not get thorough and uniform access to intel. In the past, those members of the political party that is out of power have been routinely excluded from agency briefings and documents. In practice, the fraction of these two committees that is well informed about the agency's current activities is likely to be very small.…

This is silly. The DNI takes an oath to keep state secrets a secret. He then takes an oath to tell the truth to Congress in an open session, which is itself an oxymoron when discussing a huge bulk of the national intelligence apparatus because we demand so much secrecy around every damn thing. How do you have an open session and not pretty much immediately invite some sort oath violation? It's the dumbest fucking thi…

It's common practice for anyone called to testify before congress to request a closed session if they believe their testimony will violate their oath of secrecy. Clapper did not. Instead he testified before open congress and lied, which was unnecessary, unless he was guilty of the charges in question -- knowingly directing NSA staff to spy on Americans, which the NSA's charter explicitly disallows.

Therefore Clapper deliberately misled authorities in order to escape prosecution for a crime.

That is the very definition of perjury.

Re: NSA Deletes “Honesty” and “Openness” from Core Values

#150

Post by mvkel » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 3:10 AM UTC

jackhack wrote: post #106

dfsegoat wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If history is any judge, as I recall from several recent reads on NSA post-Snowden / Stuxnet etc: Even the most outspoken critic of the NSA (I want to say it was a State attorney or something) was quick to reverse his critiques when he was granted control of an oversight investigation - he was actually shocked at the amount of integrity and openness that he found WITHIN the organization. Doesn't mean it is visible to…

I wonder how much blackmail material he was shown just before he dramatically reversed his opinion. I am very cynical. But then a long chain of recorded history rewards my point of view.

You should really meet someone who works at NSA. Snowden worked there before he left. It’s generally a group of ridiculously smart people. Policy is where stuff gets bungled.