Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

NSA veterans speak out on whistle-blower [video]

usatoday.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 85 posts

Re: NSA veterans speak out on whistle-blower [video]

#31

Post by rdl »

dfc wrote: post #25
rdl wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, everything I've been seeing seems to be that they seriously threw out everything about being competent in the 1990s, and then blew up into something huge (and incompetent) in the post-9/11. Hayden does not seem to have been a good director at all, at either NSA or CIA, and was responsible for the big push toward contractors as well.

Right? What happened to "No read up and no write down" and all the other gnarly things from the orange book and its colorful friends.

Probably in the 1990s when they moved operational systems from timeshare/unix/etc. multiuser to a bunch of networked Windows desktops for all use, not just office automation (which is how they brought them in originally).

Re: NSA veterans speak out on whistle-blower [video]

#32

Post by miles »

dfc wrote: post #29
miles wrote: post #27

Somehow this quote from the interview by Thomas Drake, a former senior executive of the NSA and a decorated Air Force and Navy veteran[1], carries a bit more weight for me than the widely trumpeted blatherings of Dick Cheney[2], winner of five draft deferments[3]: I actually salute him. I will say it right here. I actually salute him, given my experience over many, many years both inside and outside the system. Remem…

I agree with the overwhelming majority of your post but I have to say the draft dodging/deferring comment was a little odd. I think its really tough for us (people who have grown up under an all volunteer service) to pass judgement on how a previous generation dealt with the draft, even more so if we pass those judgements as civilians.

Thanks for your reply, dfc. Sorry if the draft deferral comment was inappropriate. I mainly wanted to contrast their experience and expertise in the field. BTW, thanks for the recommendation on your profile page to use dfcdfc as the topcolor; I stumbled onto it over a year ago and have been using it ever since.

Re: NSA veterans speak out on whistle-blower [video]

#35

Post by dfc »

miles wrote: post #32
dfc wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the overwhelming majority of your post but I have to say the draft dodging/deferring comment was a little odd. I think its really tough for us (people who have grown up under an all volunteer service) to pass judgement on how a previous generation dealt with the draft, even more so if we pass those judgements as civilians.

Thanks for your reply, dfc. Sorry if the draft deferral comment was inappropriate. I mainly wanted to contrast their experience and expertise in the field. BTW, thanks for the recommendation on your profile page to use dfcdfc as the topcolor; I stumbled onto it over a year ago and have been using it ever since.

No worries, more than anything the draft thing was distracting. It was superfluous and it took something away from the clearly reasoned point you were making.

Added:

I just saw bit about topcolor=dfcdfc. That brought some much needed levity to the discussion. You are good people miles.

Re: NSA veterans speak out on whistle-blower [video]

#36

Post by jeremyflores »

dfc wrote: post #29
miles wrote: post #27

Somehow this quote from the interview by Thomas Drake, a former senior executive of the NSA and a decorated Air Force and Navy veteran[1], carries a bit more weight for me than the widely trumpeted blatherings of Dick Cheney[2], winner of five draft deferments[3]: I actually salute him. I will say it right here. I actually salute him, given my experience over many, many years both inside and outside the system. Remem…

I agree with the overwhelming majority of your post but I have to say the draft dodging/deferring comment was a little odd. I think its really tough for us (people who have grown up under an all volunteer service) to pass judgement on how a previous generation dealt with the draft, even more so if we pass those judgements as civilians.

I think Cheney's draft dodging status is fair game. He did, after all, co-architect our erroneous invasion and continued occupation of a country that did not actually attack us, so he has no problem sending others to war. Something other draft dodgers were not as directly responsible for.

Re: NSA veterans speak out on whistle-blower [video]

#37

Post by glurgh »

cgshaw wrote: post #26
glurgh wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If developed countries can't trust each other not to spy on their diplomats where does that leave us? It leaves us precisely where we are - developed countries have been spying on each others' diplomats and using their diplomats for spying for, well, just about ever. US Secretary of State Henry Simpson famously said "Gentlemen don't read each other's mail" some 80 odd years ago. A quaint attitude, even back then.

There's a difference in knowing how the sausage is made. I'm certainly not naive enough to think that governments aren't always spying on each other's diplomats, however the appearance that the UK and US went to pretty crazy lengths to keylog and tricks G20 diplomats into giving up intel out in the public could have some pretty negative implications for diplomatic discourse down the road.

Oh, agreed that it's quite unhelpful and Snowden revealing details about such activities is a pretty terrible idea. On the other hand, such revelations in general aren't all that new or rare - the most recent one probably being about US spying on UN diplomats just a couple of years ago. Beside light spattering of egg on some faces and a bit of ritualized indignant posturing, though, this sort of thing doesn't seem to cause much lasting damage to the global system of international diplomacy, probably because everyone knows everyone is doing it.

Re: NSA veterans speak out on whistle-blower [video]

#38

Post by jrockway »

laurentoget wrote: post #13

off topic. who knew usa today has such a nice website?

Agreed. I mostly consider USA Today as "that newspaper dumb people read" so never checked out their website. The design is pleasing and the linked roundtable discussion was quite good. No controversy, no professional talking heads, just some folks having a chat on camera. I am impressed.

Re: NSA veterans speak out on whistle-blower [video]

#39

Post by krek »

nikcub wrote: post #28

I feel bad for Drake, he was facing federal charges and nobody seemed to notice. 89% of federal cases are plead before trial and of those that go to trial 90%+ are found guilty, that is how much the odds were stacked against him. He got nowhere near the attention that he deserves[1[] William Binney is an absolute hero. I have absorbed everything this guy has ever said or done[2]. He was not only employed at the NSA,…

Binney didn't design the system that's currently being used, and that's his whole point. He designed a cheap way to do what the current program does but that would protect people's privacy (in part by not storing all the data that it filters). His point is that the NSA spent billions on a dragnet system that violates privacy and isn't even able to catch terrorists as well as the privacy-respecting system he designed internally for dirt cheap.

Re: NSA veterans speak out on whistle-blower [video]

#40

Post by nikcub »

krek wrote: post #39
nikcub wrote: post #28

I feel bad for Drake, he was facing federal charges and nobody seemed to notice. 89% of federal cases are plead before trial and of those that go to trial 90%+ are found guilty, that is how much the odds were stacked against him. He got nowhere near the attention that he deserves[1[] William Binney is an absolute hero. I have absorbed everything this guy has ever said or done[2]. He was not only employed at the NSA,…

Binney didn't design the system that's currently being used, and that's his whole point. He designed a cheap way to do what the current program does but that would protect people's privacy (in part by not storing all the data that it filters). His point is that the NSA spent billions on a dragnet system that violates privacy and isn't even able to catch terrorists as well as the privacy-respecting system he designed…

In one of his interviews[1] he mentions that after he left and TrailBlazer was abandoned the NSA took what he built in ThinThread but removed the privacy shields he had in place that would encrypt US communications.

The rest of the platform is ThinThread (which was a lot cheaper than the failed TrailBlazer project).

Also interesting that a lot of the NSA platform is open source. OpenCloud for server management and Hadoop for distributed computing.

[1] I can't recall which one, in his keynote at HOPE he does make another reference to the crypto privacy shield being removed

Post reply on HN