from Hacker News

NSA and the Pandora’s box of surveillance

by ewheeler on 6/25/13, 3:36 PM with 22 comments

  • by unreal37 on 6/25/13, 4:48 PM

    A pretty good article on the response of the NSA.

    "We've changed the passwords." Excellent job boys, you deserve a raise. And two-person requirements to access the data? Yeah, that will take 5 years to develop, cost $2 billion, and never really work.

    There must be thousands of people who knew this system existed. You can't keep that secret forever, Top Secret clearance or not.

    What if the next "national traitor" uses his Top Secret clearance to use that data stream to his own financial benefit? Blackmailing senators on their affairs, or exacting revenge on targets given to him by outside crime bosses.

    Maybe I watch too many movies... But for every good guy like Snowden, is a bad guy.

  • by pkill17 on 6/25/13, 4:50 PM

    Briefly interned (two weeks) for Booz Allen this Summer. While the people I met and interacted with for that short amount of time were excellent and of good spirit, the general opinion I got was that people did not enjoy their day. Much like a traitor of a country is usually disgruntled with their homeland, I can't imagine more leaks aren't right around the corner. Tech consulting firms do not share in the amazing atmosphere of tech consumer-facing companies, and as such may be the last place for loyalty.

  • by skwirl on 6/25/13, 4:30 PM

    How do we know that they haven't been?

    His supervisors, by the way, are at Booz Allen, not the NSA. Although certainly the NSA has to take responsibility for the contractors it does business with.

  • by basseq on 6/25/13, 4:32 PM

    Other BAH personnel and BAH corporate liability are dependent on whether there was either process negligence (e.g., Snowden's team members didn't enforce policy) or inadequate measures. One man acting alone, even within a corporate structure, doesn't implicate his co-workers or the company as a whole. (Of course, this isn't always the case in court. See also: Arthur Anderson.)

  • by wiredfool on 6/25/13, 4:15 PM

    I wonder if this means that the NSA is going to fail it's annual PCI audit?

  • by nickodell on 6/25/13, 4:42 PM

    Note that the host never asks the general if anyone was fired. Perhaps someone was fired, and it didn't come up.

    After all, if somebody asks why this couldn't happen again, you don't say, "We fired the guy who designed this system." You say, "We changed this, this, and this."

    He talks about implementing a two-man rule, which is an excellent idea. I'm not sure how that's going to work in practice, though. Is there a way to make the linux root password composed of two passwords?

  • by codex on 6/25/13, 4:22 PM

    Likely nobody has been fired because the investigation is still underway.

  • by fnordfnordfnord on 6/25/13, 4:39 PM

    Finally, someone other than Greenwald starts asking critical questions.