Would You Trust Any Organization That Doesn't Trust 4,000 Of Its Employees? What If It's The NSA?
from the something-wrong-here dept
It's becoming increasingly clear that one of the reasons Edward Snowden was able to access so much secret information -- and walk out of the door with it -- is that the NSA is an organizational mess. A fascinating post by David Ignatius in the Washington Post underlines another way in which the NSA is deeply dysfunctional by any normal standard:
the NSA planned to investigate at least 4,000 of its employees and contractors in 2013, thanks in part to new software that could detect "anomalous" behavior by the workforce.
He goes on to ask an extremely important question:
How do you run an organization where 4,000 of your employees are suspect? I fear that if the NSA tries to impose ever-more stringent controls, this will create even more disgruntled workers and a larger pool of anomalies. A new "Red Scare" may well follow the Snowden revelations, but making every employee a suspect is likely to backfire.
Even the most anodyne of organizations that can't fully trust 4000 of its employees is in big trouble; if it's one that handles some of the most sensitive information in the world, with the potential to save or cost many lives, that lack of trust is a recipe for disaster on a massive scale. And as Ignatius notes, the more the NSA tries to clamp down on people, the more likely it is to create further Edward Snowdens.
Ignatius also points out that the solution is not to close down, but to open up. By reducing drastically the number of things that are deemed secret in the first place, it would be possible to concentrate on protecting just those that really matter:
The beneficiaries in a no-secrets world will be relatively open societies, such as the United States, that are slowly developing a culture of accountability and disclosure for their intelligence agencies, however painful the process may be. The fewer secrets, the less to protect.
Although it's arguable to what extent the US has developed that "culture of accountability and disclosure" for the NSA yet, as President Obama inches towards admitting the scale of the problem here, the rest of the analysis in Ignatius' piece is well-worth reading.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: clearance, contractors, ed snowden, nsa, nsa surveillance, review, top secret
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I had to smile at this.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Sheesh. This clown thinks SPYING can be made warm and fuzzy?
At least try to remember that the hundreds of thousands people employed by NSA are still every minute of every day stealing your privacy and with it, your liberty.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Sheesh. This clown thinks SPYING can be made warm and fuzzy?
He's not talking about "workplace conditions" so much as the fact that we keep to goddamn much stuff secret and, we do too goddamn much spying on our own people.
David Ignatius is one of the guys in the mainstream media who gets the scope of the problem. Show at least enough self-respect to read what he says before you go off on him.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Don't employ people you cannot trust
I answered:
1. When their work is not done on time.
2. Why are you employing people you do not trust?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Don't employ people you cannot trust
Really, any employer should only care about one thing: that the work is being done correctly and on time. You don't need to spy on people to determine if that's happening. It's self-evident.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Spying
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Arthur Dent
Basically it a seems that the NSA is set up in a way where the whole organization has plausible denial of itself. The less you know the less you actually have to lie at those pesky oversight hearings
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Disband the NSA
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Spying
Surely they should be able to use their database to check out people that they give security clearances to? It is not like they don't know who to check out, they will have name and phone number etc. right in front of them.
Even that is not a certainty. Today the NSA and all others... are creating fake idendities to be used by their spies. Even if you were to verify these identities on line, you you only get what the NSA and others want you se see. A lot of these spies that infiltrate companies are trained at the NSA Spy schools on how to act and learn their role perfectly. There's just no way around.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Security through Obscurity
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Here's the snag though...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I read this and this quote popped to mind. . .
―Princess Leia to Grand Moff Tarkin
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Tarkin_Doctrine
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Apples and Oranges
How the management works to prevent loss, and what they do when it's discovered, are quite different stories than the mere fact they are working to prevent it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]