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The NSA's Cyber-King Goes Corporate

foreignpolicy.com

51–60 of 77 posts

Re: The NSA's Cyber-King Goes Corporate

#51
post #13
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a little more than an endorsement deal. He knows deep inside information into what surveillance programs the NSA operates. I read it as follows: "we guarantee your company's IT infrastructure will no longer be seen as a low hanging fruit to the NSA"

He's not a clueless career bureaucrat. He's been in the cybersecurity business for a very long time (from his Wiki page): > Alexander worked on signals intelligence at a number of secret National Security Agency bases in the United States and Germany. He earned an MS in business administration in 1978 from Boston University, an MS in systems technology (electronic warfare) and an MS in physics in 1983 from the Naval…

I remember watching as a kid a History Channel documentary on the NSA, or maybe encryption in general, with the name or theme at least "The Code Breakers and the Code Makers." Essentially, it ended with the observation that the NSA was in trouble: as advantage by the end of the 20th centry shifted from code breaker to code marker, and non-commerical and free encryption tools of higher quality than ever made government-sponsored code breaking many orders of magnitude harder than before.

As a budding nerd, I was thankful for this. HC painted the NSA as being painted into a corner, and even then I wondered for a moment what this would mean for them. Little did I know a decade later how angry the result would make me, and perhaps the exposure of the Clipper Chip was just some ironic leak so they could laugh at later successes.

Re: The NSA's Cyber-King Goes Corporate

#52
> Alexander is believed to be the first ex-director of the NSA to file patents on technology that's directly related to the job he had in government.

I wish purely out of spite this schmuck could be the source of a whole class of new lawsuit by which certain government employees, like projects they work on, are legally required to do public domain work only. Like, their employment at a company becomes caustic so people who works at orgs like the NSA who have access to state secrets dedicate themselves to the cause for life and there is no chance for profit.

In short, this is disgusting and I dislike him more than even before.

Re: The NSA's Cyber-King Goes Corporate

#53
Government agencies about to be inundated with sales pitches from General Alexander's company in 3...2...1...

Same thing happened when Admiral Fallon retired and suddenly discovered his long hidden cyber security talent at NeuralIQ.

This is a way for these guys to use influence to sell things to agencies they used to run.

Re: The NSA's Cyber-King Goes Corporate

#54
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I call up the NSA and obtain a license for say... XKeyScore? Probably not... so this is egregious.

Not everything developed by the government is automatically supposed to be available to the public so I guess I don't understand your point.

The point is how is it acceptable that a previously-public-servant can have insider knowledge about "secret" government patents and he can obtain a license to use the technology but I cannot? That's absurd and an abuse of power and privilege.

Re: The NSA's Cyber-King Goes Corporate

#55

>"It was those kinds of hackers who Alexander, when he was running the NSA, said were responsible for "the greatest transfer of wealth in American history" because they were routinely stealing trade secrets and competitive information from U.S. companies and giving it to their competitors, often in China." Oh, and here I thought the greatest transfer of wealth in American history was the massive rise in disparity ove…

> Oh, and here I thought the greatest transfer of wealth in American history was the massive rise in disparity over the last thirty years between the nation's top 0.1% and everyone else.

Not all changes in economic status are transfers of wealth. Consider two cases:

1) I physically steal a CD from the record store and sell it. That's a transfer because the store can't sell what they no longer posses. Instead I have sold it. Nothing new is created.

2) I create an album and sell CDs of it. That's not a transfer. I created something new of value and introduced it to the world. I may get wealthy, but the people who buy my CD don't lose value. They exchange one thing of value (money) for another of equivalent value to them (my CD).

Re: The NSA's Cyber-King Goes Corporate

#56

I'm sure he'd charge them even more if it weren't for Snowden devaluing some of the information he knows.

Without Snowden no one would take him seriously Id venture to say.

are you seriously claiming that nobody would take the former head of the NSA seriously if it were not for the snowden leaks?

jesus christ, I know HN is a huge circlejerk when it comes to the NSA/surveillance but this is absolutely off the charts.

he's the former chair of the most advanced SIGINT agency in the world, which operates under the jurisdiction of the most powerful and politically aggressive country in the world. we're not talking most advanced by a little margin too, it's more like a gaping chasm. are you seriously so out of whack that you think all that counts for nothing?

Re: The NSA's Cyber-King Goes Corporate

#57
i just read several paragraphs of absolutely nothing.

really. how this person considers himself a journalist? or even a blogger?

the central argument appears to be patents, yet not even the titles are mentioned.

Re: The NSA's Cyber-King Goes Corporate

#58

I wouldn't hire a security company run by the former head of the NSA. Is there any question in anyone's mind that if he was approached by the government to put a backdoor in your company's product or infrastructure, he wouldn't hesitate for a second to say yes?

The government never paid him a million dollars.

How would you know? The US intelligence budget clocks in around $52 billion. You don't think a few million could be allocated if it was the most-expedient way of making something happen?

Re: The NSA's Cyber-King Goes Corporate

#59
post #53

Government agencies about to be inundated with sales pitches from General Alexander's company in 3...2...1... Same thing happened when Admiral Fallon retired and suddenly discovered his long hidden cyber security talent at NeuralIQ. This is a way for these guys to use influence to sell things to agencies they used to run.

How can we forget Chertoff, and his lobbying/fear mongering on behalf of body scanner manufacturers. He very transparently used his credentials as former Secretary of Homeland Security to get his client's devices installed in every airport in the country.

Re: The NSA's Cyber-King Goes Corporate

#60

"Alexander said that if he determines that he needs to use technology or methods that the NSA has patented, he will pay for a license". Why can the NSA patent anything at all, preventing the public from using the technology it generated with taxpayers' money?

It allows the government to prove that they invented it before someone else. It protects them from patent trolls.
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