NSA cutting sysadmins
2013-08-09 16:15:19.637336+00 by
Dan Lyke
5 comments
NSA to cut 90% of sysadmins. Because you know what makes me trust an organization even more? Concentrating the power into the hands of a few. Via /., which notes:
Alluding to an issue of mistrust, Alexander further clarified: 'At the end of the day it's about people and trust ... if they misuse that trust they can cause huge damage.' Apparently, breaking the law and lying about it leaves one without a sense of irony when speaking in public."
Snerk.
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#Comment Re: made: 2013-08-09 18:49:58.195132+00 by:
Dan Lyke
chaosys in the MeFi thread:
So they've gone from using 1984 as an instruction manual to using the Paranoia sourcebooks?
Can we at least get extra clones first?
#Comment Re: made: 2013-08-12 00:53:02.780156+00 by:
meuon
Short decent fluff piece from the "other side"
#Comment Re: made: 2013-08-12 14:06:48.983195+00 by:
Dan Lyke
The problem I have is that's the same "yes, we've been repeatedly lying to you and telling you that no, that's what we're doing, but trust us, this is for your own good" line that we've been hearing for years.
And either they're doing a tremendously effective job at back-patching evidence, or the terrorists that the NSA is claiming all were really captured by actual legwork from actual feet on the ground evidence, and the terrorists that the FBI is claiming are all actually developmentally disabled adults who were convinced by FBI agents posing as terrorist leaders to consent to participating in such activities.
Meanwhile, we're seeing that the DEA is actively abusing the surveillance data.
Further, we're supposed to accept this level of competence from a set of organizations that didn't have leak plans in place.
Aaaand, we discover that in the great "be afraid, be very afraid" "cyber-war" bogeyman scare, that we are, in fact, the primary aggressor. Against foreign civilian targets.
Mr. Liepman and his cronies simply have no credibility left with me. And I'd even be willing to accept that there's sufficient oversight from our legislators, if I'd seen any evidence that our legislators had actually gotten the information they needed to make such decisions, but we're seeing that the information they have gotten has been manipulated so that that isn't the case.
Further, the "don't worry, we know what's best for you" is exactly what drove J. Edgar Hoover and his ilk.
#Comment Re: made: 2013-08-12 15:09:03.190349+00 by:
Larry Burton
Mr. Liepman lost me with his premise, "if security is the goal." I don't think
security should be the goal. The goal should be a free country. That requires a
certain level of security but security isn't the goal, freedom is.
#Comment Re: made: 2013-08-12 15:57:06.342531+00 by:
Dan Lyke
Adam Curtis nails it in the BBC talking about MI5:
But the strange fact is that often when you look into the history of spies what you discover is something very different.
It is not the story of men and women who have a better and deeper understanding of the world than we do. In fact in many cases it is the story of weirdos who have created a completely mad version of the world that they then impose on the rest of us.