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

theintercept.com

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

#41

Post by pweissbrod »

Kalium wrote: post #39
pweissbrod wrote: post #9

> In response to questions from The Intercept on Tuesday, the NSA played down the alterations. Thomas Groves, a spokesperson for the agency, said: “It’s nothing more than a website update, that’s all it is.” ^^ Updating the wordage on the website was a task placed on the queue of a website administrator which was requested by the manager as a takeaway from an internal meeting reviewing core values. This explanation i…

How interesting would you find an article detailing all the ways a reporter was told "No comment."? What kind of more lucid explanation would you consider acceptable? The NSA is, in many ways, a bureaucracy like many others. Odds are very good that the more lucid explanation is that some internal bureaucrat decided to convene a committee to review the Core Values, and after a multi-year review process the primary res…

transparent government is boring but highly desirable. you could dismiss sytem logs or open source kernels are boring but youre greatful for them when unexpected things start happening

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

#42

Post by brndnmtthws »

throwaway76025 wrote: post #38
brndnmtthws wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mostly anecdotes and personal experience. I think that data on salaries, etc, is mostly public too, so you can probably see for yourself that they aren't competitive with SV or Wall St.

Discussed here recently, there’s a path from public to private sector that does serve the need to retain talent, to some degree. Also, to say they are mostly corrupt or incompetent seems possibly too much of a broad stroke that is based on anecdotes. I don’t believe Snowden, for instance, ever suggested either of those are true — did he? Finally, if this is your assessment, your standard may be unusually high. Maybe…

Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Any person or organization which contributes, aids, or abets in spying on individuals for political reasons is entirely corrupt in my opinion.

Aside from some research that the NSA has contributed to humanity, they have done little good based on the evidence I've seen.

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

#43

Post by rusk »

jsjohnst wrote: post #36
Y_Y wrote: post #3

As if "core values" meant anything for colossal organisations.

Response I got from telling someone they were violating the core values “core values are what you strive to do, not necessarily what you are always doing”. I disagreed and still disagree, but it is maybe what more than just that one person thinks.

I would have thought "core values are always something you're striving to do" - accepting human fallibility it's acceptable to not always live up to these but it doesn't excuse violating them as a matter of policy.

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

#44

Post by Kalium »

pweissbrod wrote: post #41
Kalium wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How interesting would you find an article detailing all the ways a reporter was told "No comment."? What kind of more lucid explanation would you consider acceptable? The NSA is, in many ways, a bureaucracy like many others. Odds are very good that the more lucid explanation is that some internal bureaucrat decided to convene a committee to review the Core Values, and after a multi-year review process the primary res…

transparent government is boring but highly desirable. you could dismiss sytem logs or open source kernels are boring but youre greatful for them when unexpected things start happening

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.

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

#45

Post by brndnmtthws »

jsjohnst wrote: post #37
brndnmtthws wrote: post #24

Fortunately these government agencies are mostly corrupt, dysfunctional, and unable to recruit talent, so we probably don't have much to worry about.

> so we probably don't have much to worry about. While you had me nodding my head until this point, I think your conclusion is ultimately wrong. We have lots to worry about because of those very reasons you list. When you can’t recruit good talent, you get at best partial incompetence, at worst bad actors. When things are dysfunctional, you don’t have proper checks and balances. When an organization is corrupt, very…

I'm partly in agreement with you, but my point of view is that the 'good guys', so to speak, are working at Google, Apple, Facebook, etc, and are incentivized to protect their customers rather than assist the government (except, y'know, in cases where they got caught working with the gov).

If most of the talented folks are working in the private sector, it seems logical to conclude that no corrupt organization can 'hack' the privacy protections that are in place. Or at the very least, they're a lot less capable of doing so.

The pen is mightier than the sword, and corrupt political organizations will be left with nothing but a sword in the end. And that may eventually become useless, too.

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

#46

Post by altcognito »

acct1771 wrote: post #30
tw1010 wrote: post #16

Those words are associated to non-costly virtue signalling anyway, so who cares. The NSA can't win. If they let them stay, they're accused of lying, if the remove it, they get this response. I'm kind of neutral on the issue, but I do get bothered with societal dynamics where no matter what an actor does, they lose.

That's what happens when an actor is, by definition, in opposition of the very fiber of an organization (the US). Read Amendment IV, and tell me how they fit in.

Seriously? They do a lot more than collecting information on private individuals. If you spent just 15 minutes researching those things honestly, you would find they have a VERY important job to do.

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

#47

Post by panzagl »

brndnmtthws wrote: post #29
throwaway76025 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any objective source for your claims? If your basis is the attitude for such agencies here on hacker news, it’s understandable why you might believe those to be true, but they aren’t.

I've worked directly with people in the IC, and I have friends who've worked (or currently work) at various government agencies.

How does SF keep from drowning in all the special snowflakes there?

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

#48

Post by YCode »

While ironic, if you pay any attention to mission and vision statements in general for government/military organizations it's quite commonplace for such statements to change in opaque and confusing ways, especially so after any change in leadership.

Most of the time it isn't some dark conspiracy but rather someone with enough stars on their shoulder said "Why is this even in the mission statement? Every organization should do that so it's implied, what the mission statement really needs is..."

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

#49

Post by Someone1234 »

altcognito wrote: post #46
acct1771 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what happens when an actor is, by definition, in opposition of the very fiber of an organization (the US). Read Amendment IV, and tell me how they fit in.

Seriously? They do a lot more than collecting information on private individuals. If you spent just 15 minutes researching those things honestly, you would find they have a VERY important job to do.

Problem is one part of their mission (protecting US infrastructure) often conflicts with another (foreign intelligence gathering). If you patch a Cisco edge router, both friends and enemies benefit.

Honestly the NSA should be broken up into two organisations, one geared towards defense and another offense. Or just merge the foreign intelligence gathering parts into the CIA.

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

#50

Post by iambateman »

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.

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