I like how they say he "cheated" on the entrance exam to the NSA by stealing the questions and answers from their servers, as if that doesn't just make him more qualified for the job..
Maybe. Maybe not. Do we want the NSA to be rule-breaking cowboys that get the job done, or do we want them to have a rigid code of ethics?
I honestly don't know. Rigid ethics impair their effectiveness; cowboyism gives us what we have now.
Does it? How, specifically?
> cowboyism gives us what we have now.
Which also impairs effectiveness at doing anything that is legitimate role of any component of the US government, which necessary includes adhering to rather than subverting the Constitution of the United States.
As I do not work for the NSA, I hope you will understand my lack of real-life NSA examples. But surely you have experienced the ways bureaucracy can drag down a good project.
Surely I have -- and all of those have been about personal empire building, which wasn't the issue being discussed.
I know it's fiction, but you want examples and those are some of the first that come to mind.
No, I don't want fictional examples of something posited as a loose analogy. I want an explanation of how rigid ethics would impair the effectiveness of the United States National Security Agency in fulfilling its duties under the laws and Constitution of the United States.
Predecessor to the NSA-
Despite the American Black Chamber's initial success, however, it was shut down in 1929 by U.S. Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson, who defended his decision by stating that "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Agency#Black_...
The NSA's core goal is the global monitoring, collection, decoding, translation and analysis of information and data for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes. Achieving these things runs afoul of at least some people's ethical systems. For example, how does someone with an unshakeable belief in the sanctity of life work to bring in a double-agent (traitor) to his country (who will be executed) without facing some ethical dilemmas?
For example, think how much the president could get done if we got rid of congress, the senate, the supreme court and the constitution and we just had an all-powerful dictator. None of this mucking about with government shutdowns and filibusters and pork and vetos and negotiating. No excuses for "I just couldn't get it done due to washington politics". It would be so agile. Probably save a lot of money as well.
Of course they are hard to come by, but that isn't the question here.