NSA Deletes “Honesty” and “Openness” from Core Values | Hacker News Reader

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

theintercept.com

462 pointsetiam152 comments

Ironically taking a step towards 'honesty'.

Man I was thinking the exact same thing. By nature these folks at the NSA CAN'T be open nor honest.

"We put a splitter on the internet so that we can keep our own copy in locations A, B, C, and coming soon, D. We use an automated selector-based filter to find nodes of interest in realtime, as well as tools for querying the enormous amount of data we keep in the storage facilities at said locations."

That would count as both open and honest. What could the implications possibly be? Congress isn't going to investigate them based on those statements, and if you try to enter those locations you'd get denied entry just like you would today.

So what exactly is this "nature" that prevents the NSA from publishing the paragraph I wrote above?

For a few (IMHO realistic) examples:

* the "splitter" as you call it (an useful simplification for this discussion) might be on devices of public companies without their consent against their wishes - IIRC that was part of Snowden's revelations.

* the "splitter" might have been secretly placed on an undersea cable in foreign waters, and there's a clear national security interest not to reveal that fact - the key job of NSA is to listen in to other nations and ensure that they don't know if/how it's succeeding.

* the "splitter" might include cooperation from friendly governments that's not public knowledge to their populations. Again, there's a clear foreign policy interest not to disclose that.

* the "splitter" might have been made possible by a vulnerability in something that everyone believes is secure (e.g. RSA cryptosystem), and revealing what kind of data is captured will reveal that it's possible to capture that kind of data, which (if it's a surprise) by itself might lead to it becoming useless as people worldwide deduce what component needs to be replaced.

There's obviously more. NSA can reveal that their job includes spying on everyone outside USA; but any more details would generally be harmful to that mission.

Actually I think they can be either one, just not simultaneously.

For what it's worth I would prefer honesty.

One last time.

> Since at least May 2016, the surveillance agency had featured honesty as the first of four “core values” listed on NSA.gov, alongside “respect for the law,” “integrity,” and “transparency.” The agency vowed on the site to “be truthful with each other.”

Also, I'm thinking they should probably remove all of these, if they were truly honest with us. Respect for the law? Come on. They've been constantly misinterpreting what the surveillance laws actually allow them to do. And there's certainly no respect for the Constitution, because I don't think the Fourth Amendment means much to them anymore - even to the FBI, considering they can now get Americans's communications content without a warrant.

Logically they only have to remove "honesty"

Logically, if they removed "honesty" from their core values, there would be no need to delete it from their statement of core values.

Is “honest” even enough or is the proper claim “literally honest”?

I feel like removing it completely would fail to capture the partial truth. Perhaps replace "respect for law" with "respect for authority"?

They have removed honesty. After that point it doesn't really matter what's written - it all lacks honesty.

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.

If history is any judge, as I recall from several recent reads on NSA post-Snowden / Stuxnet etc: Even the most outspoken critic of the NSA (I want to say it was a State attorney or something) was quick to reverse his critiques when he was granted control of an oversight investigation - he was actually shocked at the amount of integrity and openness that he found WITHIN the organization. Doesn't mean it is visible to others.

I'll try to find the references.

I wonder how much blackmail material he was shown just before he dramatically reversed his opinion.

I am very cynical. But then a long chain of recorded history rewards my point of view.

I wonder how many PR bots the NSA has on sites like Hacker News.

They are a government agency with a nearly endless supply of money granted to them by Congress every year without fail. They don't need to do PR for anyone except to gain more employees.

> They don't need to do PR for anyone except to gain more employees.

Which is exactly why I implied they would be primarily doing PR on sites with high concentrations of people with the skillsets they need...such as Hacker News. This would help them both directly - individuals seeing good PR and thinking "hey, I could work there" - and indirectly by way of combating the general negative perceptions of the NSA in the tech community since the Snowden leaks.

There was an article recently on HN about how they're losing talent.

Not now, but buying a little insurance on that seems prudent.

They don't need to be crooks, either, doesn't seem to stop them. They don't need to come up with childish logos combined with super cereal latin text, but they're still doing it; something like "Total Information Awareness" isn't the expression of a need, it's the symptom of serious issues. If they knew what they needed they wouldn't be doing what they're doing, and wouldn't need to circle the wagons of the "Intelligence Community" for emotional support.

Do companies that pollute the environment and obsess about environmental activists so much that their undercover people outnumber the undercover agents of intelligence agencies NEED to be so very pathetic? I'd say they "just" need to stop whatever they think they are doing and be grateful towards those giving them a hint, but nope -- they can't eat what's on their plate, so they shit in our food. And anyone even dreaming of suggesting putting first things first probably wouldn't make it past apprentice in most such orgs.

After Trump won, I desperately wanted the "grassy knoll video" and "shadow government" stuff to actually be real.

Maybe they've just been really effective at making people think that they're all-powerful entities that make people disappear on a whim.

You should really meet someone who works at NSA. Snowden worked there before he left. It’s generally a group of ridiculously smart people. Policy is where stuff gets bungled.

But this doesn't change the fact that the Snowden revelations were just as shocking to many members of Congress.

Although who knows, they might also be feigning surprise.

But after a certain point, if you think everyone is lying about everything, then what kind of existence is that?

It's unlikely they were feigning. Even the members of the house & senate intelligence committees do not get thorough and uniform access to intel.

In the past, those members of the political party that is out of power have been routinely excluded from agency briefings and documents. In practice, the fraction of these two committees that is well informed about the agency's current activities is likely to be very small.

And after the undeniable perjured testimony of Clapper before congress denying all NSA spying on civilians, and subsequent failure by Justice to prosecute or even investigate Clapper et al, the likelihood that anyone will know what NSA or CIA actually does (unless they live at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, that is) is effectively nil.

This is silly.

The DNI takes an oath to keep state secrets a secret. He then takes an oath to tell the truth to Congress in an open session, which is itself an oxymoron when discussing a huge bulk of the national intelligence apparatus because we demand so much secrecy around every damn thing. How do you have an open session and not pretty much immediately invite some sort oath violation? It's the dumbest fucking thing in the first place but we like to play pretend to be open while simultaneously having metric f tons of state secrets.

There's a very long list of people who have appeared before Congress and lied under oath, and not referred for undeniable perjury charges. And they do not have the president of the United States giving them a defacto pass by saying Clapper was caught between a rock and a hard place. There is no f'n goddamn way Clapper was ever going to be charged with perjury. It's the dumbest line of logic, you need to go backwards in time to have this argument. It has nothing to do with Clapper. Go point a finger at people like Cheney and Feinstein if you want to whine about the massively neurotic security state.

And the idea you're going to find out jack shit about what's going on at CIA or NSA by charging Clapper with perjury is pure stupidity. If you want to know what happens at NSA and CIA, you need a society, in large numbers, who aren't paranoid and servile, and won't elect paranoid and servile representatives, who then accept the creation of a paranoid control freak surveillance state. We have what we have as a reflection of who we are, in particular those who do not participate. That's exactly how you get this kind of result.

It's common practice for anyone called to testify before congress to request a closed session if they believe their testimony will violate their oath of secrecy. Clapper did not. Instead he testified before open congress and lied, which was unnecessary, unless he was guilty of the charges in question -- knowingly directing NSA staff to spy on Americans, which the NSA's charter explicitly disallows.

Therefore Clapper deliberately misled authorities in order to escape prosecution for a crime.

That is the very definition of perjury.

[flagged]

This degree of incivility is a bannable offence on Hacker News regardless of how wrong someone else is. Please don't do this again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It is uncivil to try to gaslight one person for the sins of society, and I would consider it unethical to not call someone out for having done so.

which is even more concerning considering reports of how the current resident of 1600 assesses intelligence.

That is called existence in the world of espionage / counter-espionage. It doesn't really track with the existence of everyday people, or legislative bodies.

It should with legislative bodies because they have direct oversight.

Sort of a catch 22 there, right? You expect integrity, but without honesty/openness, how do you hold them to it?

You elect representatives and executives who are given security clearances and the right to great transparency and openness. When or if those elected officials are found to have abused the public trust, you punish them, their associates and their successors at the ballot box and in the court of public opinion.

It's not a great process but I don't see a better way for a democracy to have an internationally competitive intelligence apparatus. And without such an apparatus we are exposed to attacks on our democratic integrity, military effectiveness, deliberative privacy and much more.

We are currently paying the costs (both monetary and otherwise) for the apparatus you describe, but looking at the last decade, the benefits appear to be absent. Perhaps we need to consider the possibility that an organization like the NSA just isn't worth having?

Your comment shows why some more open-ness would be great for everyone. Working in secret means nobody will know of the genuine successes, only the allegedly problematic aspects which leak out.

It might not be simple, but I am sure that it would be possible to remove classified details from certain “wins” (whether counterterror, counterproliferation, or other) and let the public know what their tax dollars are going toward.

Why are they "genuine successes", but only "alleged problems"? I think you're giving them credit for alleged successes and ignoring the genuine problems.

I used this phrase:

> allegedly problematic aspects which leak out

Due to the problematic aspects being judged solely by the journalists publishing the leak.

For example, the business records collection on Verizon metadata was something The Guardian saw as problematic and worth exposing, and I agree on it being problematic, so I was glad to see it fixed in 2015 (They now must ask the ISP for information in a more targeted manner instead of getting it all and self-regulating targets).

On the other hand, Spiegel alleged that TAO and CNE-related activities are problematic. I disagree with that and did not see any point in those releases.

Hopefully that makes more sense, I did not mean to imply anything with my phrasing.

In fact organizations like the CIA and NSA are more of a threat to the American people than the people they are supposedly protecting us from.

I suspect it's like inoculation: some people die from inoculations, but on the whole the herd gains valuable protection.

The TLA may be terrible for particular individuals, or small groups with a shared characteristic, but politicians should nonetheless advocate for them to protect the "way of life of citizens".

It's a "do you keep a guard dog that you know might maul a child" type of question.

Not necessarily disagreeing but: facts? numbers? source?

By nature of the secrecy required by how the NSA operates, many of the benefits would likewise not be made public (to avoid sharing unnecessary information on how they operate), so I'm not entirely sure it's fair for any of us out of the know to weigh the benefits versus the costs in this way.

Our elected members privy to the actual costs and the actual benefits should be the ones making the decision on whether the NSA is worth having or not.

You could change NSA to CIA and your comment would still be just as invalid. We aren't supposed to know much of the work they do. We know that ultimately their data helps law enforcement agencies do their jobs, and helps the DoD / Executive branch make more informed decisions about our adversaries. It is infinitely difficult to quantify the value provided by the NSA's international surveillance apparatus.

James Clapper lies to senate intelligence committee and is outed only days later. On March 13th the statue of limitations runs out on prosecuting this crime.

This data is misused and no one is punished, even for the overtly blatant crimes.

This is specious, and exposes deep naiveté about the law as well as protocol at hearings. The director was put into the position of either lying to Congress or disclosing state secrets. Insofar as the law is concerned, exposing state secrets is a far worse offense. That's just the way it works, and if you don't like it, this particular instance isn't the moment to get into a pissing contest about what public policies you don't like, and all the dumb secrets the government keeps from us, but insists we keep on paying for. You should have been more proactive a long time before this, because this moment was being set up over a decade before it happened in public.

Clapper lying is an inevitable outcome of a hyper-survellience state, which is an inevitable outcome of a servile and paranoid society. The senator should not have asked the question in an open session if the idea was to get an honest answer. If you're a senator on the intel committee, you ask this sort of question in an open session if you're trying to make a public case that we have too many secrets.

And that's exactly what that whole sequence exposes, but per usual, someone from the ignorant mass wants to hang a single person out to dry for the decisions society has made.

Ignorant? You mean like the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is supposed to have classified oversight of America's spy agencies?

Maybe you should bone up on the details yourself, before slandering others as ignorant. Never mind Clapper could have simply refused to answer the question. But yes, please continue to cover for spies dodging their legal responsibility to comply with full Congressional oversight.

Sure, that's sort of what I meant in terms of openness. I don't expect them to leak their secrets in some public memorandum, but I expect them to be fully transparent with the representatives that we elect. However, the question is--are the representatives doing the best job representing us given this sensitive information they're privy to? Who's to say the NSA isn't asking, "just write that we're doing well in this report, its for the better of this country long term." And how do we catch/stop this?

This may be the most extreme version of the principle-agent problem.

Without leaking or sharing at least some information, it's impossible for the public to hold them accountable. This seems like a fundamental impossibility; not just a matter of the 'wrong' people being privy to the same secrets. For one reason, there's no way we can know if our representatives are even privy to all the information to which they're entitled.

Hell, even with a lot of information being leaked it still seems basically impossible to hold them accountable!

The HPSCI and SSCI do seem like reasonable checks. Ron Wyden especially has a good track record of calling out things he sees as problematic.

Another option is, in addition to trustworthy elected officials, you can have some sort of independent oversight that isn't partisan and is independent of whoever is in charge of the executive. The UK has something like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Reviewer_of_Terror...

That'd work in an ideal world, not here. In a 2 party system which are increasingly polarizing you'd have the pressure to stick to the party line.

Even in our current world, some issues' importance outweighs sticking to the party line. Luckily, we have more than two parties to vote for, so it's not quite as black and white as that.

>Luckily, we have more than two parties to vote for

Not to most americans--especially when it comes time to vote.

There's a real catch-22: the multiple other parties we (in the US) are capable of voting for will never have a chance at winning if we don't treat them as real alternatives to the entrenched two.

There's a reason both D's and R's repeat the lines "voting for a third party is a wasted vote" and play the polarizing "if you vote third party, you're voting for <opposite party>" card each election season. It may be partially true at the time, but also implies there are only two parties that can actually win -- which is something that can easily change, especially as D's and R's both move further towards the end of their respective spectrums.

I think the key is to vote third (alternative?) party in smaller elections (mayor, state senate), and then work up.

Voting third party for congress is mostly a waste of time for now, and it doesn't seem likely that we're going to see a massive enough shift in voter participation to change that all in one go, but I think with enough effort to build up non-D/R party support at the local level that could change a lot faster than most people think.

I'm less optimistic about the presidency, really. I doubt the reigning parties will let that slip out of their hands.

I expect the oversight they are subject to that is also privy to their private actions to hold them to it. I'm curious about what all they do, but at best all I could do is complain on social media about it (which some people actually think is the best approach here). I mean, what else can someone actually do?

There can easily be honesty and integrity without openness to everyone.

You'd expect them to be open and honest to the officials who are managing and reviewing them, but opaque and occasionally intentionally misleading to the wider general public.

Ideally congress would provide oversight. Unfortunately in today's world members of congress seem to be ok with the continued overreach of surveillance.

Isn't congress the set of people who are literally given the right (and responsibility) to define, by passing laws, what is ok and what's not? If they consider that it's ok, then it's ok; that's how the democratically elected representatives have decided.

>However they damn well better submit to oversight

James Clapper lied to the Senate intelligence committee about the existence of NSA bulk data collection. Infuriating.

I'm normally not in the business of defending government agencies but wasn't that interview done in an open forum? Perhaps he would have been more honest if the information wasn't going to be immediately reported on in the media.

He was testifying in front of Congress. Perjury is what he did. He later waffled about not being able to answer truthfully because of the surveillance being classified - yet he answered.

I'm legitimately curious here: Is it possible that he submitted additional testimony after the fact to the committee that he was testifying before? Or discussed the issue in a closed setting where classified material could be discussed?

I'm wondering the same thing. It seems to me that people who have classified information that shouldn't be released to the public shouldn't be put in a position to have to lie about it under oath.

How do you know they are acting with integrity without them being honest or open? It looks like a free ticket to do whatever they like and play the "trust us to be defending national interests" card whenever they see fit.

That's the importance of a free press. If they are violating our constitutional rights, the press should (ethically) be reporting on those violations. See: Edward Snowden.

Now, it is our representatives jobs to protect whistle blowers like Snowden, and unfortunately the general public either doesn't care, or doesn't want to take the time to truly understand what it means to have our privacy violated.

This is correct. Honesty would entail being honest with congress or with those who have been authorized to have appropriate clearance. So removing it as a core value reveals that the agency views its mission as having situations where it would reasonably veer away from such honesty.

From the NSA, and my admittedly-limited understanding of their duties, I'd expect honesty but not full openness. I'd rather you never tell me anything than be mislead.

It's a trust thing. Lying might boost trust temporarily but when I realize it's a lie, it's gonna be lower than before.

> However they damn well better submit to oversight and respect my constitutional rights as a citizen.

And which watchdog is ensuring this exactly? hint: It's not the politicians...

That argument works better for openness than honesty. How often do they need to outright lie to citizens to protect national security?

> 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 is nowhere near acceptable to me as a taxpayer. I'd love to see the reporter push for a more lucid explanation than this.

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 result was a minor website update.

Honestly, I'm bored just typing that. Do you think it would be interesting reading?

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.

I think the point was we're not talking about a "minor verbiage update." This isn't a wording correction on some TPS report fifty links deep within the Accessibility section. This is the public-facing expression of a major government agency's core values statement.

You're right! This is a change to a major government agency's core values statement.

I don't think I've ever been a place where public-facing statements about core values are considered important or major. They're generally treated as on par with mission statements or mottos - something nice to have but not particularly significant. I've even done government contracting, including for the NSA. Core values don't generally get checked on a regular basis much of anywhere.

You're absolutely right. This is a change to the small public face of a major intelligence agency. Yet, I believe this is a minor verbiage update of no particular import.

I think the preferred phrase is actually "I can neither confirm nor deny that."

My very first startup hired an ex-NSA sysadmin, and no joke, he was very good at deflecting jokey questions from a snarky 20 year-old me. He pointed out that "No comment" sounds slightly more like a denial to people, but "I can neither confirm nor deny that" seems more neutral and non-committal.

Radiolab did a really interesting podcast about that.

http://www.radiolab.org/story/confirm-nor-deny/

As a taxpayer, I find the entire idea that the NSA pretended to be for honesty and openness to be funny.

What's next, the CIA is about hope and change?

As a taxpayer I accept that the NSA is the SIGINT side of America's spyforce, while the CIA is more of the HUMINT side of our spyforce.

The entire idea that the techie side of our spyforce claimed to care about "openness and honesty" is rather absurd and hilarious in the first place.

As a side note: the kind of journalism being requested here appears not to be the "hard hitting, fact filled, context-aware" news we should desire, but some kind of biased political hackjob attacking America's spies for engaging in the nature of spies?

Where are the journalists pointing out that spycraft, by definition, is dishonest and closed!

Spycraft employed on innocent americans is where I start to have the problem.

Maybe you're right that I'm being silly to hope this, but I aim to have more transparency on what level of surveillance I as an american citizen not (aware) subject of any investigation I can expect. Or in other words some clarity around my rights to privacy as an innocent tax-paying citizen.

In many countries your right to privacy is legally stated in clear facts and law enforcement is required to notify you if you are the subject of an investigation and your privacy rights change.

Keep in mind, the concern does not apply if you are a US Person. It is not possible to query for your calls or traffic.

You're going to have to qualify that claim.

How would you like the comment to be qualified? Most direct public confirmation I can think of would be the IG report regarding violations, I believe it was one of the Snowden documents, in which multiple people who tried to “test” search themselves or others and it failed to allow the query (They were disciplined either way, of course).

I don’t think there was a claim to the contrary, unless you’re thinking of targeted / secret FISA by FBI, which is a different issue yet a possibly valid point (due to lack of normal search warrant).

As a taxpayer, I'd like to see HUMINT continued and supported. However, SIGINT deserves nothing less than a full (and orderly) shutdown.

Lesson from the downvotes: Silly Unix jokes are not necessarily welcome in discussions about national security. :P

I guess the spokesperson is already implementing the new policy by not being honest.

Wait, they are saying that "website administrators" get to write their "core values" statement?

OK, I guess we know how much that "core values" statement matters.

That's like an assassin claiming what they did was no more than move their trigger finger.

Doubt you will find many such reporters in America remaining

There are lots of great reporters in the USA with integrity. I am sad to see this general sentiment that quality journalism is dead.

Seems lame to downvote and move on - you said yourself there are lots of great reporters I'm interested in any of them!

[1] Here is the International Consortium of Investigative Journalism (ICIJ), which worked on the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers. It is based in Washington, DC and works closely with news organizations in the US and around the world.

[2] Here is a specific story that came to mind, where a Washington Post journalist would not release a scandal story because there was not enough evidence. In fact, they even investigated the source and discovered that it was sting operation trying to prove the the Post has low integrity.

[1] https://www.icij.org/

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/a-woman-approa...

Can't downvote replies to ones own comment. Your comment was downvoted by others due to the "A lot of them get a big hit then disappear or become complacent in “news journalism”" remark and your accusing comment above is just inviting further downvoting.

Any good names? A lot of them get a big hit then disappear or become complacent in “news journalism”

The journalist reporting it is French, his boss lives in Brasil.

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..."

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

> Enron intends to conduct itself in accord with four [capital-V ]Values: Respect, Integrity, Communication and Excellence.

> Respect, Integrity, Communication and Excellence

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omert%C3%A0

Amazingly they went against all 4 at the same time

They are excellent in integrating respect in communication. Fortune named Enron "America's Most Innovative Company" for six consecutive years.

They mean "things we've been caught (not) doing before"

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.

The NSA is being honest about not being honest and open about not being open. Deception is the core value.

:) but now someone who is really honest cannot even raise a finger.

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.

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.

> two organisations, one geared towards defense and another offense

Oftentimes, the best defense is a good offense. Or vice versa. You can't realistically separate one from the other.

Notably they also added this line, to join in on the 'inclusive' and 'diversity' corporatespeak trend:

> Respect for People - We are committed to ensuring that all NSA personnel are respected, included and valued for their diverse backgrounds, experiences, skills and contributions to our mission and culture.

Sure, we don't value honesty, but look at all these ni--bla-frican Americans we have on our team!

They added 'Transparency'.

2010 Values: https://cryptome.org/2013/08/nsa-strategy-values.htm

2018 Values: https://www.nsa.gov/about/mission-values/

...how well do we use our freedom to choose the illusions we create? -Timbuk 3

Oscar Wilde says: Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

Does the soul change?

It is a vast organization with vast bureaucratic momentum and organizational inertia. Can leadership change those? Not even a little. Intel can't change. Emerson can't change. And they have huger and more existential force pushing for change against a smaller mass.

Is the soul any different today than yesterday? Nope.

In ten years you can ask again, and the answer might be maybe.

So the question behind the question is "what is the real soul of the NSA?". Look at their deeds. Words and actions over time tell truth. Look at the trend of their deeds over time.

Well, they weren't using them anyway.

Who knows, maybe they were. But they could interpret them differently. A kind of "alternative honesty" and "alternative openness".

At least they're being honest

I see this as just another way the administration wants to demoralize public service employees, and increase distrust by the public in those institutions.

Far more troubling than some values changes, is the administration wants to have a spy slush fund of its own that is not at all subject to Congressional oversight. https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/shutdown/card/1516648991

Why should they be honest and open? Sometimes complete honesty and openness is counterproductive to a purpose or a mission. Are you always honest? With your friends and family? With your colleagues? With your employer?

If you aren't, is it because you want to do harm, or because complete honesty would actually be harmful and unnecessary for both parties?

As this is the case for individuals, it is also the case for groups of people and institutions.

>Respect for People - We are committed to ensuring that all NSA personnel are respected, included and valued for their diverse backgrounds, experiences, skills and contributions to our mission and culture.

All NSA personnel are respected, anyone else having a weird feeling reading that that it does not say all persons or something that says they respect everyone?

Integrity and Transparency are listed.

Non-story, move along.

Surprisingly, they are being honest and open about not being honest and open.

Ironically, the new document is now more honest, if not more open.

Well, at least they're honest and open about that

Aren't they just being honest by doing that?

At least they are being honest about it... ;)

What an amazing story. A web page was updated and The Intercept is on it!

If only the Intercept would be honest and open about the Russia investigation we're facing in this country.

Mitigating hippcracy I see.

A lot of complaints against three letter agencies, who have elected officials with oversight and only hire from American citizens. Few complaints against Microgoogfacebook to whom we give all our most private electronic correspondence, have no oversight, and hire many foreign nationals who have little stake in whether the companies abuse the info they've been given. This strikes me as a bit odd.

Well this thread is about the NSA.

If you go to a thread about abuses by Microgoogfacebook I'm sure you'll find lots of complaints about them and relatively few about the NSA (other than the extent to which they are harming people by co-operating with the NSA).

More broadly I mostly see articles like this posted regarding NSA, not tech giants. The latter have a better PR machine.

You choose to give your data to Microsoft/Google/Facebook/whatever other private company you're complaining about. There is no agreement to give things to the NSA.

Not in the real sense of 'choose'.

I use a computer. I have to use Windows to access certain common or industry standard software packages.

I have friends. I have to use Facebook or miss out on events or similar. Alternatively, I have to put more effort into bridging the gap. Facebook also build a shadow profile on me whether I use their services or not.

I search the web with a non-google search engine, I have moved my email to a non-gmail service, my browser is not google, my phone is not Android. Yet Google will still collect data about me for advertising purposes.

The fact that they have no official oversight should be terrifying.

> You choose to give your data to Microsoft/Google/Facebook

If only that were so.

Facebook gathers data on you whether you give it to them or not. See https://www.dailydot.com/news/facebook-shadow-profiles-priva... for example, but this is generally well-known.

As far as I know Google likewise gathers all sorts of information without asking for it, just from their ads and analytics running on various websites.

Microsoft is a slightly different story.

Just because it is voluntary does not mean the possibility of abuse is lower. It is higher since people consider the implications less.

I'm not saying it's lower, but you know the risks when you use the software.

I'm sure most people give nary a thought to the risk of using Google.

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 bad things tend to happen as nobody cares.

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.

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.

unable to recruit talent seems true at least

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16057449

Thomas Drake, Edward Snowden, Wikileaks, etc

Snowden & Wikileads have revealed themselves as operations run by the NSA's rightful targets.

Change your news sources. Fast.

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

Did they convey those summaries to you? If so, is it accurate to say that shtf post-Snowden, and hasn’t recovered?

You could be right, so I take it back, but I’ve heard there is some degree of strife and paranoia, but not general chaos as may be perceived.

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 your peers, many not quite as good as you, are actually quite skilled? Just a hunch, could be wrong.

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.

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