Facebook's Former Security Chief Now Works for the NSA
theatlanticwire.com
theatlanticwire.com
edit: here's the obligatory "but this is blogspam" note...Kelly's employment with the NSA was first reported by the the Times here a few days ago (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/technology/silicon-valley-...)...but yeah, here's a classic case of newspaperism vs. sexy-SEO-headlines...I didn't read "Web's Reach Binds N.S.A. and Silicon Valley Leaders" because it sounded no different than other recent stories...but a Facebook exec going to work for N.S.A. is definitely a headline-worthy fact.
However, Kelly isn't the stereotypical young Bay Area millionaire ex-Facebooker...he previously worked as an FBI analyst before joining Facebook (https://twitter.com/wrox/status/1699420309)...So going from FBI to Facebook to NSA isn't as strange as, well, going from college to Facebook to NSA, unless the catered lunch at NSA is classified and delicious. Not knowing why he left Facebook...but after doing so, it's not out of left field to go back into federal security, especially if he had a NDA with Facebook not to go to other competing services, such as Google.
That's the kind of discussion I'd rather have anyway. I don't have any particular reason to believe any specific person is compromised or dishonest. But I am skeptical of the stability and reliability of an employment structure that has regular back-and-forth personnel moves between the private sector and the state-security sector.
If I had to pick specific places to start, I'll admit, ex-Facebook staff would be much lower on my list than a whole host of private-sector (tempted to say "nominally private-sector") defense contractors.
Perhaps it does raise the likelihood of defections, as this case indicates, which is one possible safety valve. But those are not supposed to be part of the planned-for strategy.
I have a similar viewpoint on using private military contractors like Blackwater, rather than regular career military staff. I think once you start outsourcing these kinds of security jobs, you are just weakening oversight, both formal oversight and any attempt to develop a culture of rule-following. Not to mention the ethical problems that come from having people who are literally mercenaries working for your armed forces.
IMHO the government far overstepped those lines during Bush and have failed to come back under Obama, as that would mean taking on civil servant headcount to replace the contractors leaving, which is politically a hot potato.
Unfortunately the people only rarely expect and demand less service from the government; instead they want the government to stop all the stuff that they don't personally use. So of course this means that the government rarely stops with a given function entirely.
The military ended up with the same problem. The draft would not be politically feasible and you only get to go to war with "the Army you've got, not the Army you'd wished you had". What the Army did have was money, and so they farmed out everything they could make even a half-hearted case as being a "generic business function" (e.g. building security) off on private contractors.
And that's even with the Navy drawing down on its already-undermanned force to send sailors to Iraq and Afghanistan to free up even more soldiers to do Army-type things.
1) No regulation. I.e. the moneyed corporations do whatever they want.
2) Regulation, staffed by professional bureaucrats. Less conflict of interest, but that results in a bureaucracy that has no idea what industry needs. This describes a lot of European countries before the liberalizations of the 1980's and 1990's.
3) Regulation, staffed by people from industry. Creates conflicts of interest, but you have people who actually know what they're doing.
Meanwhile, I have absolutely no confidence that the people from industry "actually know what they're doing", especially in a broad sense of knowing how to balance all those interests, rather than just maximize profits. The purpose of government is not just to make Maersk or Carlsberg richer, but to make the country as a whole prosper, which includes thinking about things like income inequality and scientific progress. Do the people in industry think about those? Usually, no. I tend to think of them (perhaps unfairly) as mostly being comprised of opportunists trying to line their pockets, while telling us all that they're acting in "our" interests (i.e. the stock-market's interests). I have much more confidence in the civil service than in the idea that we should just put all the Maersk managers in charge of the country.
Clarification Edit: "They" = SV & government, not FB specifically.
I don't believe there is a secret group trying to build the IT infrastructure to subvert democracy and throw us into re-education camps a la Pol Pot version 2013.
However, the bureaucracy is essentially building that very same system regardless of which administration is "in charge".
Conspiracy is a way to draw attention to those bureaucratic failings, otherwise ignored as too hard, or too boring to think about. Which might mean "conspiracy" itself is an important process deserving more respect if it's the only way to shine a light on imperfect bureaucracy.
Sarcasm?
There are people from all walks of life from all sorts of industries who end up at the NSA. It doesn't mean they're all setting up systems and bringing back intel for spying. This is just a coincidence.
So I'm glad you brought this up but still think everyone is still going to play right into this article's trap. After all, conspiracy theories are much more satisfying to our egos than mundane reality.
Just because readers join the dots to reveal a conspiracy picture, doesn't mean the picture isn't convincing or removed from reality or designed to satisfy egos.
Just a coincidence you say?
The fact is, Kelly said "There isn't enough information shared". Okay... so he clearly believes more information should be shared between Facebook and the NSA. Now he has gone to work for the NSA. 1 + 1 = 2.
It's gone beyond "theory" and is now simply playing out like a documentary in real time.
Grab yourself some popcorn.
Let me guess - NSA couldn't find anyone else who knew how to manage Hadoop.
It's not really a coincidence that political influence in the security department at FaceBook is going to be seen as an asset by an organization interested in gaining access to FaceBook's data.
At this point, as has long been suspected, the word of FB cannot be believed in any respect with relation to any users' personal privacy.
Even seeing the supposed interface between FB and the USG - the station of the employees within/without are highly in question.
The relationship between these groups is very obvious.
(yes, I know I just invoked Godwin's law by comparing the NSA controversy with WW2, but it was tongue-in-cheek)
His reasons for leaving Facebook and joining NSA may be completely orthogonal to each other...but in terms of likeliness, I think it's safe to argue that Kelly was wanted for his experience in security implementations in modern day networks, rather than him having a mid-life crisis and deciding to quit tech management work to try his hand at code cracking.
That said, this doesn't mean he joined out of nefarious motives. His work at the FBI could mean that he honestly believes he is doing God's work in helping government and private tech companies become partners for the good of all. His use at the NSA may be as someone who smooths out any hurdles that are encountered during perfectly legal processes between the two institutions...it doesn't have to be that he's Chief-Backdoor-Installer at the NSA.
On the other hand, just because you have great intentions doesn't mean the result is ideal...many government officials who become lobbyists may sincerely believe in their cause, but their access and power leads to unintended consequences.
In other words, the job transition could be entirely good natured, but it still could result in some people's worst fears being realized. So more transparency in this example would be nice...though I wonder how much Kelly can say without encroaching upon what the government thinks of as being top-secret-classified.
Maybe there isn't a plan to infiltrate existing big-data companies, but it seems like an awful coincidence that we see things like the above link and the headlines of today.
Facebook received $12.7 million in venture capital from Accel, whose manager, James Breyer, now sits on the In-Q-Tel board. He was formerly the chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, whose board included Gilman Louie, then the CEO of In-Q-Tel.
One of the main managers of the facebook investors "Greylock partners", Howard Cox, sits also in the management board of In-Q-Tel. The offices of Greylock and In-Q-Tel are direclty next to each other at Sandhill Road in Menlo Park.