Rather Than Not Spying On Everyone, NSA Is Getting Rid Of 90% Of Its Sysadmins

from the you're-doing-it-wrong dept

Fri, Aug 9th 2013 11:21am — Mike Masnick

The latest NSA plan to stop the next Ed Snowden is to get rid of 90% of their sysadmins and automating many of their jobs. I would imagine that more than a few sysadmins might have an opinion or two about the ability of the NSA to really automate away their jobs, but that's an interesting move nonetheless. Here's NSA boss Keith Alexander:

"What we're in the process of doing - not fast enough - is reducing our system administrators by about 90 percent."

Considering that sophisticated techies aren't very interested in working for the NSA these days, perhaps it all works out for them. But, really, another option for avoiding an Ed Snowden like situation might be -- and I'm just tossing this out for suggestion -- is to not spy on everyone and then not lie to Congress and the American public about it. Just a little tiny suggestion.

Also, this more or less confirms what was fairly obvious (due to the NSA leaks by Snowden) that sysadmins have near universal access in the NSA's system, and the recent claims that "only 35 analysts" had access to key information was -- as James Clapper liked to say -- one of those "least untruthful" claims coming out of the intelligence community.

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Filed Under: ed snowden, nsa, nsa surveillance, sys admins

46 Comments

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arcan, 9 Aug 2013 @ 11:23am

watch, they outsource all their tech support to the chinese.
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- Rikuo (profile), 9 Aug 2013 @ 11:26am
  
  Re:
  Ya mean like the UK did with their porn filters?
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- Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2013 @ 11:26am
  
  Re:
  They would never outsource tech support to the Chinese. They'll outsource it to India just like everyone else.
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  - That One Guy (profile), 9 Aug 2013 @ 12:01pm
    
    'In short, we pay ourselves to hose ourselves'.
    Who will then outsource it to china, who will outsource it to a company in the US.
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    - Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2013 @ 12:42pm
      
      Re: 'In short, we pay ourselves to hose ourselves'.
      nah, nobody is outsourcing to US companies any more, can't trust 'em.
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      - That One Guy (profile), 9 Aug 2013 @ 7:15pm
        
        Re: Re: 'In short, we pay ourselves to hose ourselves'.
        Good point, though it does rather ruin the joke.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2013 @ 11:26am

Not just them
All large enterprises are moving this way, using new automated technologies combined with virtualization to eliminate admin and engineering positions. Its the next step in the technological revolution. The jobs they are able to replace with automation at this point are a step or two higher then the last 20 years. Cant wait to see what happens next.
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- John Fenderson (profile), 9 Aug 2013 @ 11:30am
  
  Re: Not just them
  Its the next step in the technological revolution
  
  Yeah, that's what the cloud providers keep telling us, but it's far from clear that it's actually true. We'll see.
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- Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2013 @ 1:16pm
  
  Re: Not just them
  I've been saying this for a long time, tools like Puppet https://puppetlabs.com/ and Chef http://www.opscode.com/chef/ WILL reduce the need for system administrators.
  
  Facebook uses chef, they have teams of 2-4 people that manage each cluster of ~10k servers. source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYZ2GzYAw_Q
  
  Now that we have tools that allow four people to manage 10k machines where will all the unneeded sysadmins work? I guess we will still need people working minimum wage to swap broken parts at the datacenter.
  
  Of course the NSA is automating, all large orgs and many small ones are doing the same thing. The sysadmins who do not learn these new automation technologies are the ones who will be looking for jobs.
  
  In response to John Fenderson these automation tools work just as good on physical servers as they do virtual servers in the "cloud"
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  - John Fenderson (profile), 9 Aug 2013 @ 1:31pm
    
    Re: Re: Not just them
    Yes, but the NSA says it is laying off sysadmins because they're moving to the cloud, not because they're using these tools in-house.
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John Fenderson (profile), 9 Aug 2013 @ 11:32am

Scapegoats
So, they're implying that the sysadmins are the problem? The sysadmins under their employ should take grave exception to this. Here's hoping against hope that they'll leave the NSA en mass.
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- LivingInNavarre (profile), 9 Aug 2013 @ 1:10pm
  
  Re: Scapegoats
  It was my thought that there's a 90% chance that more info will be leaked. Nothing like having a soon to be terminated sysop looking for revenge. My guess is every one of them are loading up thumb drives as we speak.
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Chris-Mouse (profile), 9 Aug 2013 @ 11:35am

So at the same time as they are building up the world's biggest database of private information, they are also pissing off hackers around the world, and getting rid of 90% of the people who maintain their computer security. What could possibly go wrong with that.
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- CK20XX, 9 Aug 2013 @ 12:58pm
  
  Re:
  �We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.� �Carl Sagan
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2013 @ 11:49am

The end is on the horizon...
Automation is fine and all but who's going to fix the automation when it screws up? I think we are witnessing beginnings of the actual end to the NSA's programs. It will eventually eat itself and no one will be around that can fix it when it does.
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- DCX2, 9 Aug 2013 @ 11:52am
  
  Re: The end is on the horizon...
  Correction - the people who can fix it will have been laid off. Whether they would take their old job back once it became apparent that they are necessary is a good question.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2013 @ 11:57am
    
    Re: Re: The end is on the horizon...
    That is exactly what I meant. Furthermore, they will have effectively alienated 90% of the pool of new talent that they can hire from to replace them when they realize they need them again.
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out_of_the_blue, 9 Aug 2013 @ 11:52am

More propaganda that NSA is supposedly changing,
hurt, and disgraced. But IF anyone read the original -- instead of the intended take as Mike parrots it -- then it's plausibly planned long before. -- Oh, and surveillance is NOT being reduced, just turned over to more computers. Happy day, indeed.
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- Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2013 @ 12:02pm
  
  Re: More propaganda that NSA is supposedly changing,
  What are you even responding to? Can you even be called a troll at this point?
  
  I know senile grandparents that sound like you.
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  - Alt0, 9 Aug 2013 @ 12:20pm
    
    Re: Re: I know senile grandparents that sound like you.
    **Touches nose with finger**
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2013 @ 11:53am

This is another admission that the NSA lied
If they don't -- which is what the NSA has repeatedly claimed -- there is no increase in security by laying off 90% of them.
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Michael, 9 Aug 2013 @ 11:56am

Admin automation
Either:

1) The NSA has thrown out a percentage of a certain type of job they would like to automate with very little plan

or

2) They have been employing people in positions with a great deal of information access that they did not have to have and they are just now deciding that it would be a good idea to stop doing that
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- PlagueSD (profile), 9 Aug 2013 @ 12:10pm
  
  Re: Admin automation
  Or
  
  3.) The sysadmins they hired are the "hackers" that are leaving en masse because of all the spying that's going on.
  
  http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130805/02354124062/us-government-war-hackers-backfires-n ow-hackers-wont-work-us-government.shtml
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2013 @ 12:00pm

So, the NSA is announcing it's going to blame 90% of the people with the same job as Edward Snowden for what Snowden did by firing them for Snowden's actions.

Well, what could POSSIBLY go wrong there? Surely none of those 90% will get pissed off enough to say, leak more documents. And surely none of the 10% will decide to do so either when they see the NSA decide punishing 90% of the people with the same job wasn't good enough.
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- Michael, 9 Aug 2013 @ 12:08pm
  
  Re:
  This has nothing to do with stopping additional leaks.
  
  The actions by the NSA and the executive branch right now are about making enough noise to distract the people from removing Obama from office and forcing a change to the laws that are allowing them to continue these programs.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2013 @ 12:09pm

i would have thought an even better option would have been to get rid of 100% of the sysadmins, after getting rid of everyone else in the NSA starting from the top and working down. after all, if we started at the bottom and worked up, we might be lied to and told that the top brass have gone when they are really still there, hidden behind a false FISC report or a 'secret interpretation of a spying law'!
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2013 @ 12:13pm

Moving to the cloud
In the ArsTechnica article, they said they could do this because they're going to "move everything to the cloud."

I think someone should tell this uninformed douche-canoe that the "cloud" ALSO consists of servers (that likely have sysadmins; at least one would think).

For fuck's sake...is there ANYONE in that agency who has something of a clue?
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- John Fenderson (profile), 9 Aug 2013 @ 12:24pm
  
  Re: Moving to the cloud
  Sure, the cloudy servers has sysadmins -- but those aren't sysadmins the NSA has to hire. The entire point of going to the cloud is to save cash by being able to get rid of your in-house IT staff.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2013 @ 12:29pm
    
    Re: Re: Moving to the cloud
    That makes PERFECT sense, then!
    
    Per the Ars article:
    http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/08/nsa-directors-answer-to-security-fir st-lay-off-sysadmins/
    
    "Moving to an automated cloud provisioning system, he explained, would cut the number of hands that touch the NSA's internal systems and address vulnerabilities�such as a sysadmin loading data onto a thumb drive and walking out with it."
    
    So now instead of NSA sysadmins having the ability to walk away with vital data, you've now outsourced that responsibility to a cloud provider!
    
    MUCH, MUCH safer.
    
    I think I've answered my original question about anyone there having a clue. It's clearly "no."
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  - Wally (profile), 10 Aug 2013 @ 10:48am
    
    Re: Re: Moving to the cloud
    Given that...I am beginning to wonder what sort of damage the Smith-Amash Amendment would have done considering part of it was shaving the NSA's budget.
    
    The company my mother works for (the one that audits hospital Medicare and Medicaid insurance forms and bills) recently cut all the nursing staff under her that manually do the systematic reviews of the audits...this was done in favor of saving money and automation. In her line of work, the states that contract the company and this contract require human eyes to do the review work sent over to the auditor's database by law for a specific reason...in an automated systems environment for auditing, there is no way to tell if someone accessed the information to alter what to look for. The main issue is that humans are not as calculated and are better suited towards handing statistical anomalies.. We don't crash.
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- Chris Brand, 9 Aug 2013 @ 12:31pm
  
  Re: Moving to the cloud
  The good news is that the cloud providers have plenty of spare capacity now that the NSA has driven all their non-US customers away.
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kenichi tanaka (profile), 9 Aug 2013 @ 12:26pm

The NSA isn't all that bright. By automating those jobs they leave themselves wide open to renegade hackers and other potential problems. At the end of the day, you need actual people monitoring those systems not to mention the rabid fervor that this is going to cause with American voters.
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Rikuo (profile), 9 Aug 2013 @ 12:30pm

Oh god no. Anyone with even the slightest hint of intelligence in a managerial position knows that you NEVER piss off the guys maintaining your computer systems. NEVER!!! How long until one of the guys being laid off "accidentally" fucks up the entire system?
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assemblerhead (profile), 9 Aug 2013 @ 12:36pm

What could go wrong?
( Warning : Sarcasm Alert! )

Anyone think about those wonderful DMCA takedown systems used by ( MPAA / RIAA ) to name a few?

Do they ever get anything wrong?
Never a false accusation, right?
Always target the right person, correct?
Never once have ID'd content wrong, have they?
So perfect that Error Correction was never implemented or needed.

What could possibly go wrong?
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- Anonymous Coward, 10 Aug 2013 @ 5:30am
  
  Re: What could go wrong?
  "What could possibly go wrong?"
  
  Time for an oldy-but-goody movie reference: "Westworld"
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  - Wally (profile), 10 Aug 2013 @ 10:37am
    
    Re: Re: What could go wrong?
    1984..
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TDR, 9 Aug 2013 @ 1:31pm

What those sysops could do, aside from leaking more data, is to wipe out the whole database before they leave and put in some code to make the system unable to be restored. In other words, cause a complete system failure. And craft the code so it can spread to all the backups and wipe them out too.
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- Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2013 @ 1:41pm
  
  Re:
  1) That'd be a great way to get arrested on a variety of charges, and you'd actually be guilty of them, and have little moral high ground to work with.
  
  2) Proper disaster recovery and back up procedures should preclude anything resembling "spread to all the backups". Worst case they lose like a week of data, tops.
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- John Fenderson (profile), 9 Aug 2013 @ 1:54pm
  
  Re:
  It's really hard to imagine sysops that would be willing to do such a thing aside from the single wacko here and there. It goes against the grain of what it means to be a sysop -- a bit like expecting a doctor to intentionally kill a patient because the patient is a bad guy.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2013 @ 1:36pm

Crazy but to me this sounds like an evolution of the thinking.. "if we just get rid of those evil protocols..."

You can make improvements in sysadmin load, but you can't fix stupid.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2013 @ 2:23pm

PRAGMA writable_schema = 1;
delete from USDatabase where type = 'table';
PRAGMA writable_schema = 0;
VACUUM;
PRAGMA INTEGRITY_CHECK;
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2013 @ 2:40pm

Crackers start your Engines
That is the exact opposite of security. Wouldn't leaving less sys-admins mean that is easier to exploit your way in with far less eyes watching things? That's not even getting into the whole anonymous tips from disgruntled ex-sysadmins of "The IP address is vvv.xxx.yyy.zzz and the access is based on foo version a.b port number is cccc, good luck". Suddenly a world record breaking in traffic and size torrent is out there to everyone.
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- Wally (profile), 9 Aug 2013 @ 2:51pm
  
  Re: Crackers start your Engines
  You could just exploit the leaving SysAdmin's too.
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Wally (profile), 9 Aug 2013 @ 2:49pm

The ability of automation...
"The latest NSA plan to stop the next Ed Snowden is to get rid of 90% of their sysadmins and automating many of their jobs. I would imagine that more than a few sysadmins might have an opinion or two about the ability of the NSA to really automate away their jobs, but that's an interesting move nonetheless."

The most disturbing part of this is not whether they are capable of it...but the simple fact they are doing it. To quote Denis Nedry...

"You think that this type of automation is easy to come by? Or Cheap? Because if you can find a cheaper guy than me John, I would like to see you try..I really would"

Jurassic Park automation is easily muddied up and clogged.

I'm also reminded of the methods used by the IRS to target Conservative groups filing for non-profit status....using key word searches...imagine that type of targeting on all US citizens...then automate it!

When this system is finally in place I'm half tempted to repeatedly copy and paste the word "bomb" to see what happens to it as a comment to one of these threads.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Aug 2013 @ 5:05pm

I work on a team of 20 sysadmins at a govt agency, and we were discussing this and just started laughing. So if they cut 90% of our staff they would be left with 2 sysadmins. We wondered how anything would get done at all, I mean from the daily putting out "fires", to the patching and remediation of systems to all the other bs that comes up regularly, not to mention projects, upgrades, testing etc etc. We figured whoever the 2 left were would quit within a week.
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Anonymous Coward, 12 Aug 2013 @ 6:32am

Another Possible Interpretation
They gave a lot of people sysadmin privileges, so they've decided to look at who really should be a sysadmin. In this version, the whole automation thing is a red herring to avoid admitting their system security is lax.
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