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If the NSA Trusted Edward Snowden With Our Data, Why Should We Trust the NSA?

232 points by reaganing 13y ago

tzs 13y ago
> He was accorded the NSA’s top security clearance, which allowed him to see and to download the agency’s most sensitive documents. Document control works on two dimensions: clearance level and need to know. You need to both have the requisite clearance level and a need to know to be approved for access to a given document. Having a top clearance doesn't mean you get to freely look at whatever you want, although the press and general public seems to think it does.
ccarter84 13y ago
But...but they're helping us secure our home networks! "The Information Assurance Directorate (IAD) at NSA recently released a new technical guide entitled Best Practices for Securing a Home Network." - http://www.nsa.gov/ia/index.shtml http://www.nsa.gov/ia/index.shtml
- mehmehshoe 13y ago
  ok...I will bite. TOR power initiate...7 proxies now!
  - mehmehshoe 13y ago
    OK..I am back from that link. The verbage was worse than sitting next to an insurance salesman before a flight.
    - ccarter84 13y ago
      Yea sorry about that - In retrospect I shouldn't have included a brain-deadening link
thret 13y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if the #1 criteria for NSA grunt employees is patriotism. If he's prepared to sacrifice everything for his country than he seems to be the perfect candidate to me.
- nijk 13y ago
  The criteria is loyalty to government, not country.
- rdtsc 13y ago
  It is for CIA at least. Their tactic is that "we can teach you technical stuff in class after we hire you, we can't teach you patriotism if you already aren't". They like to hire ex-Marines. Someone was saying they also like to hire Mormons. The kink is that many patriots do actually understand and love the Constitution and if forced to routinely go against it in their line of works, a few will pull a Manning. That is expected. They can't have it both ways.
  - reeses 13y ago
    It's not really that important for the CIA. They're pretty pragmatic, mainly because they have a huge hammer for minor offenses. They also believe in their ability to compartmentalize information. Most of the time, when you go through the lifestyle clearance rigamarole, they're looking for any leverage someone might be able to use to coerce you to act against the employer's interests. Obviously, anti-government sentiment would be a flag, but you can get clearance by being truthful about the dishonest/illegal/etc. things you have done in the past, despite having done those things. In fact, willingness to disclose is a big trust builder. It's about managing risk, which is why it's easy for me to believe that Marines and members of the LDS community would be given special consideration.
  - btilly 13y ago
    I have heard from multiple sources that the CIA loves Mormons. Language skills. No drugs. No alcohol. Does well in a hierarchical environment. Check, check, check and check. It would be against the law to ask about the underwear.
mikejholly 13y ago
I'm not sure that the author understands what a sysadmin is. Even a junior sysadmin could cripple most services based on their level of access.
- MaulingMonkey 13y ago
  More security conscientious setups use things like automatic password vaults requiring multiple admins to access. Sysadmin also doesn't mean defacto data access without forcing them to patch the software maliciously (you don't want your admins accidentally or intentionally accessing data covered under HIPAA!) Which isn't to say you're incorrect when you say how much damage a junior sysadmin could do in most places. It is to say that there are options that make this kind of thing a lot harder, to limit the scope and damage rogue admins can cause, and to raise the bar in terms of knowledge required. One would hope the NSA would be employing some of them.
  - nknighthb 13y ago
    One might hope the NSA audits their contractors' security, but I'm not sure I'd bet on it. And somewhere along the way you have to accept that your most senior admins aren't always going to be the ones schlepping gear around, which means physical access. I'm also not entirely convinced of the practicality of building a system where there isn't at least one person who can bypass everything, especially if they're prepared to go into exile as this guy was. Given adequate resources, I'm sure it's possible, but there's gonna be a shitton of money and ridiculously careful planning involved. I expect the operational overhead to be similarly huge.
dnautics 13y ago
EXACTLY. Not just this guy, but a contracting firm (BAH) in general? How did they get that bid?
- dpeck 13y ago
  employees of BAH and other companies like them run the day to day operations of a very significant portion of the government and have for quite some time.
- flyt 13y ago
  Is this a joke? Much of the Top Secret work performed for the government is done by private companies under contract with full clearances. i.e. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunk_Works http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunk_Works
  - markdown 13y ago
    It's like capitalism gone mad, isn't it? I believe the UK is heading in this direction as well. Thatcher started it, but it's really gone up a few notches since then. It's a sorry state of affairs when the schools, the fire service, the police, the prisons, the hospitals, the soldiers of war, and even the spies are all controlled by for-profit corporations.
- mehmehshoe 13y ago
  Agreed. Why isn't anyone talking about the contractor?
- lawnchair_larry 13y ago
  There's a reason that over 900,000 security clearances are processed every year. The "defense" contracting industry is booming. FYI, CISPA is specifically for an NSA program intended to expand collection and give immunity to everyone. The lobbying for it as well as the politicans who proposed it, are heavily funded by these defense contractors.
- gridmaths 13y ago
  Follow the Money. This is a big part of the problem, the massive .mil budgets go to commercial contractors, who in turn support party candidates by donation. Its an incestuous positive feedback loop. see Lessigs video talk on "LesterLand".
codex 13y ago
Having access to a PowerPoint about a system ("metadata") is not exactly the same as having access to the data itself.
- BCM43 13y ago
  Listen to the interview with him, he says he had access to the data.
SeanDav 13y ago
So now lack of a degree means you cannot be trusted with sensitive data - wtf? I understand the guy is emphasizing these things to make his point but still, wtf. What about his morals? What about his courage? I would most definitely trust my data to a guy that was and is prepared to go to jail for his beliefs that my data should be treated with respect and within the law.
- untog 13y ago
  What about his morals? What about his courage? I don't think the NSA would be using the same words you are. The more legitimate point is that he was a contractor- just how much clearance do contractors get? That seems like the bigger worry to me.
  - dkrich 13y ago
    A lot. But first they have to go through extremely invasive and intense background checks that in some cases take years to complete. It all depends on the agency and the role. Some are "Public Trust" which is the barely-above civilian clearance which takes less than a month. On the other end of the spectrum are your top-secret clearances which take months to years to complete. If I had to place a wager I would bet heavily that he has held a top-secret clearance for a long time. The NSA isn't going to let anybody off the street roam its halls.
adventured 13y ago
And so it begins, the assault on Snowden, his character, his qualifications, etc.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- gridmaths 13y ago
  Indeed.. and this guy will be crucified, for basically doing the right thing. Such is the projection of American military power that his credit card and bank account will already be locked down, on grounds that he is a 'terrorist', regardless of which country he flees to.
- gyardley 13y ago
  Sure, simultaneously with his canonization. It's perfectly possible for Snowden to have done what he did and still have negative qualities - for example, by going public he's making the entire conversation about him instead of the programs he leaked.
  - adventured 13y ago
    He had no choice but to go public. His only shot at not being disappeared, killed, tortured, etc was to go public. By going public, he's also encouraging others to do the same. Even if it's just the smallest amount, it matters.
    - gyardley 13y ago
      This is total fantasy. The government has and follows an established procedure for dealing with whistleblowers, including anonymous ones they manage to uncover - they'll conduct an investigation, file a complaint, arrest him, and then get an indictment.
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
jongraehl 13y ago
The author is full of stupid snark. Clearly Snowden is an exceptional individual; learning that he used to be a janitor, or whatever, shouldn't cause us to throw away all the evidence we have about him and double-take "they promoted a janitor?". Perhaps the quality of his work matched his obviously high character, regardless of his initial lack of formal credential. This is IT we're talking about - classes are a joke.
- saosebastiao 13y ago
  This was the revulsion I felt as I read this as well. I used to be a truck driver. I am no longer a truck driver. Absolutely nothing about where I was says anything about who I am, how qualified I am to be who I am, nor where I am going. Lets not forget a previous owner of Slate, MSN...founded by the richest college dropout in the world.
- krakensden 13y ago
  Note the author- essentially everything he writes is like this.
  - mieses 13y ago
    Not surprising at all coming from Slate and this author.
    - lurker14 13y ago
      I don't know why Slate gets to HN so frequently. Slate doesn't publish news, they publish commentary, and the commentary is generally lower quality than what HN commenters post about the news stories. Slate is enjoyed by people who don't have any smart friends to talk to (hence their slogan: "Procrastinate better"); it doesn't fit on a community of thinkers like HN.
- Terretta 13y ago
  The janitor making good, solving the famous math conjecture on the blackboard, is a Hollywood trope. Not sure why Slate is so adamant that the guy's story is a disqualifier. We don't know his story yet but this much is certain: he is by definition an exceptional individual.
gridmaths 13y ago
Wrong Question. A better Question is : If the Government trusted the NSA with our every phone call and email, why should we trust the Government?
- freepipi 13y ago
  Is it really harmful if government get your call and email?
  - ksherlock 13y ago
    If you don't have anything to hide... oh, why was the government doing it secretly?
    - mpyne 13y ago
      "Oh, hey Ahman, hold up real quick, the government just announced that they're tapping my phone. We'll talk again later".
      - nsp 13y ago
        I'm pretty sure if you were involved with terrorist groups, you became aware of this sort of thing well before it made the front page of the New York Times. The idea that keeping it out of the press prevents the targets from knowing is naive.
        mpyne 13y ago
        Just sayin', at the operational level it pretty much always has to be a secret, at least while the monitoring is going on.
        pyvpx 13y ago
        bin laden & co. knew the NSA process took 72 hours and adjusted their communications accordingly. the operational aspects (read: deficiencies) of many "important" monitoring functions is widely known by those who "need" to know.
georgemcbay 13y ago
Not a big fan of the reasons we are supposedly not supposed to trust Snowden specifically, but the question remains a powerful one in the sense that if you can't ensure that the data and systems you're using for something this powerful can remain secure from the actions of any single person, then you have a huge problem. I've worked at companies where the secrets behind our app signing key are held to a higher standard than being entrusted to the care of any single entity. Even ignoring how you feel about whether the PRISM system is good or bad, shouldn't we expect the NSA to have better security policies, given the huge scope of abuse these systems could allow?
- mpyne 13y ago
  I didn't get the impression that Snowden actually has access to PRISM itself. If all he's doing is IT support then it could be as simple as that he ran across the "management briefing" for it on the share drive without ever having access to the system itself. Certainly I would hope that NSA is not dumb enough to farm out credentialing for a system like PRISM to one of their contractors, but who knows?
gkoberger 13y ago
I don't think Slate is trying to crucify Edward Snowden. I think it was more "If a high school dropout with basic computer skills can win this contract, imagine what a talented hacker with malicious intentions could do", and just happened to attack Snowden a bit too much.
- obstacle1 13y ago
  Even Slate admits, though, that they have no idea what level his computer skills are at or how good a fit he was for the job: >Yes, he could be a computing savant anyway—many well-known techies dropped out of school They're basically bemoaning his lack of official credentials.
  - gkoberger 13y ago
    On the contrary, I think that's their point ("we don't know!").
  - arthulia 13y ago
    I think the real thing to take home here is that they trusted him and he broke that trust. Who else are they trusting that they shouldn't be?
    - frankacter 13y ago
      I though the real issue was that we trusted the American government and they broke that trust?
  - lurker14 13y ago
    This appears to be a rare case where the headline is a meaningful statement (If an NSA contractor violates NSA's infosec, how can we trust the NSA with ours?) while the article is sensationalist tripe, focusing on an irrelevant angle.
  - eightyone 13y ago
    Which is rather humorous considering how articulate he was in the video of him being interviewed by Glenn Greenwald. You can tell immediately he's not your stereotypical drop out.
malandrew 13y ago
I expect this from some news sources such as CNN, but not from Slate and definitely not from Farhad Manjoo. Why can't we celebrate him for having the moral character to have done the right thing instead of assault his character. A college dropout that did the right thing by whistleblowing is 1000x better to have in this World than an MIT, Stanford or Harvard graduate who is working at the NSA or CIA being enabling or at least complicit in programs.
ritchiea 13y ago
All of the comments taking umbrage that the article isn't celebrating Snowden's character are missing the point. While it is entirely possible that he was qualified or even overqualified for the position he had at Booz Allen Hamilton, nothing in his resume suggests that which raises the question who else has access to sensitive data and secrets? The answer could be that Snowden was an exceptional individual and that's how he got to where he was, but it could also be that the government is terrible at hiring and granting security clearance and there are a lot of terrible individuals with access to secrets & sensitive data and Snowden just happened to be a standout.
- mpyne 13y ago
  As I understand it security clearance screening is done by blacklisting, not whitelisting. That's what would make sense for a nation with due process, but it does lead to increased risk of leaks from people with no obvious red flags that come up during the background check or in-person interviews.
  - rdl 13y ago
    Even "better", there are things which are highly correlated with "likely to be a security problem" which are NOT allowed to be included, or which get adjudicated away. Generally IMO the security clearance process is not up to the task in a world with more than one threat. It worked ok against USSR when we largely could use full spectrum of information AND could assume most people without black marks were anti-USSR (due to existential threat from nuclear weapons and essentially an undeclared state of war). Doesn't work so well now when 1) IC really had no mission in the 1990s and 2) IC today is grossly oversized and overresourced for the anti-Islamism mission. The "anti-China, anti-Russia" stuff is much more like a real peacetime intelligence service, i.e. the <<500 people we had before WW2.
    - mpyne 13y ago
      Yeah, though I can't give specifics we had an admin issue where I worked that got briefed to the level of a "Presidental appointee confirmed by the Senate" that was related to screening requirements (or rather, the lack thereof).
brady747 13y ago
'If Slate trusts Farhad Manjoo with their Op/Ed writing and critical thinking, why should we trust Slate with their journalism?' //insert crappy article I mean, why should we give interviews at all? Obviously someone's resume and a class they didn't complete is all we need to know about them.
freepipi 13y ago
Great article, the awareness of security is terribly bad
codezero 13y ago
It seems like hiring someone who isn't a tech genius (assuming Snowden isn't one, but it doesn't matter) is exactly what the NSA should want, the less technically advanced their employees, the less likely they are to be aware of the wrongness of what they are doing, especially if they are given simple tools that do all the work for them and mask the technical guts behind a point and click interface that "anyone" can operate.
Zak 13y ago
http://paulgraham.com/credentials.html http://paulgraham.com/credentials.html It seems unlikely Snowden was in a high-paid and important position without having demonstrated some kind of aptitude. I have the impression he was highly skilled.
thehar 13y ago
Obviously slate.com's journalist doesn't understand how most of Silicon Valley works with recruiting these days and those "top companies" contributing to PRISM's dataset.
randomfool 13y ago
He comes off as a fairly intelligent person in the interview. The tech community should be the most understanding when it comes to overlooked people who kick ass on the job. Too many tech companies today are focusing on university names, this isn't the way it always was. Is being nice to Edward Snowden considered aiding a terrorist? The NSA probably just fired off a warrant for the rest of my communications.
burnstek 13y ago
In my university, we had a computer security program where computer scientists were heavily recruited to work for the DoD for a few years in exchange for a scholarship. One of the students I knew who ended up at the NSA was a standout, but the many others I knew were of average intellect and in many cases were below average computer scientists. These are not the level of people you want involved in mass surveillance programs. What matters most to the NSA is your ability to pass a polygraph - not your engineering skills.
mtgx 13y ago
Has the destroying of his credibility already started? What's next? An uncovered rape case from his past?
soup10 13y ago
The very fact that Edward has the integrity to risk his life in the name of public interest means that he's exactly the kind of person the NSA should be trusting with our data. It's probably his combination of integrity and competence that let him get the access he did in the first place.
cdooh 13y ago
Please. This is not about can we trust them because someone leaked, any civic-minded person would have done what he did if they had big enough balls. Are we trying to say that out of the thousands of employees the NSA has no one else but this one guy felt there was something wrong with this program?
benjamincburns 13y ago
If we trusted Verizon with our data, why should we trust ourselves?

232 points by reaganing 13y ago

tzs 13y ago

> He was accorded the NSA’s top security clearance, which allowed him to see and to download the agency’s most sensitive documents. Document control works on two dimensions: clearance level and need to know. You need to both have the requisite clearance level and a need to know to be approved for access to a given document. Having a top clearance doesn't mean you get to freely look at whatever you want, although the press and general public seems to think it does.

ccarter84 13y ago

But...but they're helping us secure our home networks! "The Information Assurance Directorate (IAD) at NSA recently released a new technical guide entitled Best Practices for Securing a Home Network." - http://www.nsa.gov/ia/index.shtml http://www.nsa.gov/ia/index.shtml

mehmehshoe 13y ago
ok...I will bite. TOR power initiate...7 proxies now!
- mehmehshoe 13y ago
  OK..I am back from that link. The verbage was worse than sitting next to an insurance salesman before a flight.
  - ccarter84 13y ago
    Yea sorry about that - In retrospect I shouldn't have included a brain-deadening link

thret 13y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if the #1 criteria for NSA grunt employees is patriotism. If he's prepared to sacrifice everything for his country than he seems to be the perfect candidate to me.

nijk 13y ago
The criteria is loyalty to government, not country.
rdtsc 13y ago
It is for CIA at least. Their tactic is that "we can teach you technical stuff in class after we hire you, we can't teach you patriotism if you already aren't". They like to hire ex-Marines. Someone was saying they also like to hire Mormons. The kink is that many patriots do actually understand and love the Constitution and if forced to routinely go against it in their line of works, a few will pull a Manning. That is expected. They can't have it both ways.
- reeses 13y ago
  It's not really that important for the CIA. They're pretty pragmatic, mainly because they have a huge hammer for minor offenses. They also believe in their ability to compartmentalize information. Most of the time, when you go through the lifestyle clearance rigamarole, they're looking for any leverage someone might be able to use to coerce you to act against the employer's interests. Obviously, anti-government sentiment would be a flag, but you can get clearance by being truthful about the dishonest/illegal/etc. things you have done in the past, despite having done those things. In fact, willingness to disclose is a big trust builder. It's about managing risk, which is why it's easy for me to believe that Marines and members of the LDS community would be given special consideration.
- btilly 13y ago
  I have heard from multiple sources that the CIA loves Mormons. Language skills. No drugs. No alcohol. Does well in a hierarchical environment. Check, check, check and check. It would be against the law to ask about the underwear.

mikejholly 13y ago

I'm not sure that the author understands what a sysadmin is. Even a junior sysadmin could cripple most services based on their level of access.

MaulingMonkey 13y ago
More security conscientious setups use things like automatic password vaults requiring multiple admins to access. Sysadmin also doesn't mean defacto data access without forcing them to patch the software maliciously (you don't want your admins accidentally or intentionally accessing data covered under HIPAA!) Which isn't to say you're incorrect when you say how much damage a junior sysadmin could do in most places. It is to say that there are options that make this kind of thing a lot harder, to limit the scope and damage rogue admins can cause, and to raise the bar in terms of knowledge required. One would hope the NSA would be employing some of them.
- nknighthb 13y ago
  One might hope the NSA audits their contractors' security, but I'm not sure I'd bet on it. And somewhere along the way you have to accept that your most senior admins aren't always going to be the ones schlepping gear around, which means physical access. I'm also not entirely convinced of the practicality of building a system where there isn't at least one person who can bypass everything, especially if they're prepared to go into exile as this guy was. Given adequate resources, I'm sure it's possible, but there's gonna be a shitton of money and ridiculously careful planning involved. I expect the operational overhead to be similarly huge.

dnautics 13y ago

EXACTLY. Not just this guy, but a contracting firm (BAH) in general? How did they get that bid?

dpeck 13y ago
employees of BAH and other companies like them run the day to day operations of a very significant portion of the government and have for quite some time.
flyt 13y ago
Is this a joke? Much of the Top Secret work performed for the government is done by private companies under contract with full clearances. i.e. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunk_Works http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunk_Works
- markdown 13y ago
  It's like capitalism gone mad, isn't it? I believe the UK is heading in this direction as well. Thatcher started it, but it's really gone up a few notches since then. It's a sorry state of affairs when the schools, the fire service, the police, the prisons, the hospitals, the soldiers of war, and even the spies are all controlled by for-profit corporations.
mehmehshoe 13y ago
Agreed. Why isn't anyone talking about the contractor?
lawnchair_larry 13y ago
There's a reason that over 900,000 security clearances are processed every year. The "defense" contracting industry is booming. FYI, CISPA is specifically for an NSA program intended to expand collection and give immunity to everyone. The lobbying for it as well as the politicans who proposed it, are heavily funded by these defense contractors.
gridmaths 13y ago
Follow the Money. This is a big part of the problem, the massive .mil budgets go to commercial contractors, who in turn support party candidates by donation. Its an incestuous positive feedback loop. see Lessigs video talk on "LesterLand".

codex 13y ago

Having access to a PowerPoint about a system ("metadata") is not exactly the same as having access to the data itself.

BCM43 13y ago
Listen to the interview with him, he says he had access to the data.

SeanDav 13y ago

So now lack of a degree means you cannot be trusted with sensitive data - wtf? I understand the guy is emphasizing these things to make his point but still, wtf. What about his morals? What about his courage? I would most definitely trust my data to a guy that was and is prepared to go to jail for his beliefs that my data should be treated with respect and within the law.

untog 13y ago
What about his morals? What about his courage? I don't think the NSA would be using the same words you are. The more legitimate point is that he was a contractor- just how much clearance do contractors get? That seems like the bigger worry to me.
- dkrich 13y ago
  A lot. But first they have to go through extremely invasive and intense background checks that in some cases take years to complete. It all depends on the agency and the role. Some are "Public Trust" which is the barely-above civilian clearance which takes less than a month. On the other end of the spectrum are your top-secret clearances which take months to years to complete. If I had to place a wager I would bet heavily that he has held a top-secret clearance for a long time. The NSA isn't going to let anybody off the street roam its halls.

adventured 13y ago

And so it begins, the assault on Snowden, his character, his qualifications, etc.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
gridmaths 13y ago
Indeed.. and this guy will be crucified, for basically doing the right thing. Such is the projection of American military power that his credit card and bank account will already be locked down, on grounds that he is a 'terrorist', regardless of which country he flees to.
gyardley 13y ago
Sure, simultaneously with his canonization. It's perfectly possible for Snowden to have done what he did and still have negative qualities - for example, by going public he's making the entire conversation about him instead of the programs he leaked.
- adventured 13y ago
  He had no choice but to go public. His only shot at not being disappeared, killed, tortured, etc was to go public. By going public, he's also encouraging others to do the same. Even if it's just the smallest amount, it matters.
  - gyardley 13y ago
    This is total fantasy. The government has and follows an established procedure for dealing with whistleblowers, including anonymous ones they manage to uncover - they'll conduct an investigation, file a complaint, arrest him, and then get an indictment.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]

jongraehl 13y ago

The author is full of stupid snark. Clearly Snowden is an exceptional individual; learning that he used to be a janitor, or whatever, shouldn't cause us to throw away all the evidence we have about him and double-take "they promoted a janitor?". Perhaps the quality of his work matched his obviously high character, regardless of his initial lack of formal credential. This is IT we're talking about - classes are a joke.

saosebastiao 13y ago
This was the revulsion I felt as I read this as well. I used to be a truck driver. I am no longer a truck driver. Absolutely nothing about where I was says anything about who I am, how qualified I am to be who I am, nor where I am going. Lets not forget a previous owner of Slate, MSN...founded by the richest college dropout in the world.
krakensden 13y ago
Note the author- essentially everything he writes is like this.
- mieses 13y ago
  Not surprising at all coming from Slate and this author.
  - lurker14 13y ago
    I don't know why Slate gets to HN so frequently. Slate doesn't publish news, they publish commentary, and the commentary is generally lower quality than what HN commenters post about the news stories. Slate is enjoyed by people who don't have any smart friends to talk to (hence their slogan: "Procrastinate better"); it doesn't fit on a community of thinkers like HN.
Terretta 13y ago
The janitor making good, solving the famous math conjecture on the blackboard, is a Hollywood trope. Not sure why Slate is so adamant that the guy's story is a disqualifier. We don't know his story yet but this much is certain: he is by definition an exceptional individual.

gridmaths 13y ago

Wrong Question. A better Question is : If the Government trusted the NSA with our every phone call and email, why should we trust the Government?

freepipi 13y ago
Is it really harmful if government get your call and email?
- ksherlock 13y ago
  If you don't have anything to hide... oh, why was the government doing it secretly?
  - mpyne 13y ago
    "Oh, hey Ahman, hold up real quick, the government just announced that they're tapping my phone. We'll talk again later".
    - nsp 13y ago
      I'm pretty sure if you were involved with terrorist groups, you became aware of this sort of thing well before it made the front page of the New York Times. The idea that keeping it out of the press prevents the targets from knowing is naive.
      - mpyne 13y ago
        Just sayin', at the operational level it pretty much always has to be a secret, at least while the monitoring is going on.
        pyvpx 13y ago
        bin laden & co. knew the NSA process took 72 hours and adjusted their communications accordingly. the operational aspects (read: deficiencies) of many "important" monitoring functions is widely known by those who "need" to know.

georgemcbay 13y ago

Not a big fan of the reasons we are supposedly not supposed to trust Snowden specifically, but the question remains a powerful one in the sense that if you can't ensure that the data and systems you're using for something this powerful can remain secure from the actions of any single person, then you have a huge problem. I've worked at companies where the secrets behind our app signing key are held to a higher standard than being entrusted to the care of any single entity. Even ignoring how you feel about whether the PRISM system is good or bad, shouldn't we expect the NSA to have better security policies, given the huge scope of abuse these systems could allow?

mpyne 13y ago
I didn't get the impression that Snowden actually has access to PRISM itself. If all he's doing is IT support then it could be as simple as that he ran across the "management briefing" for it on the share drive without ever having access to the system itself. Certainly I would hope that NSA is not dumb enough to farm out credentialing for a system like PRISM to one of their contractors, but who knows?

gkoberger 13y ago

I don't think Slate is trying to crucify Edward Snowden. I think it was more "If a high school dropout with basic computer skills can win this contract, imagine what a talented hacker with malicious intentions could do", and just happened to attack Snowden a bit too much.

obstacle1 13y ago
Even Slate admits, though, that they have no idea what level his computer skills are at or how good a fit he was for the job: >Yes, he could be a computing savant anyway—many well-known techies dropped out of school They're basically bemoaning his lack of official credentials.
- gkoberger 13y ago
  On the contrary, I think that's their point ("we don't know!").
- arthulia 13y ago
  I think the real thing to take home here is that they trusted him and he broke that trust. Who else are they trusting that they shouldn't be?
  - frankacter 13y ago
    I though the real issue was that we trusted the American government and they broke that trust?
- lurker14 13y ago
  This appears to be a rare case where the headline is a meaningful statement (If an NSA contractor violates NSA's infosec, how can we trust the NSA with ours?) while the article is sensationalist tripe, focusing on an irrelevant angle.
- eightyone 13y ago
  Which is rather humorous considering how articulate he was in the video of him being interviewed by Glenn Greenwald. You can tell immediately he's not your stereotypical drop out.

malandrew 13y ago

I expect this from some news sources such as CNN, but not from Slate and definitely not from Farhad Manjoo. Why can't we celebrate him for having the moral character to have done the right thing instead of assault his character. A college dropout that did the right thing by whistleblowing is 1000x better to have in this World than an MIT, Stanford or Harvard graduate who is working at the NSA or CIA being enabling or at least complicit in programs.

ritchiea 13y ago

All of the comments taking umbrage that the article isn't celebrating Snowden's character are missing the point. While it is entirely possible that he was qualified or even overqualified for the position he had at Booz Allen Hamilton, nothing in his resume suggests that which raises the question who else has access to sensitive data and secrets? The answer could be that Snowden was an exceptional individual and that's how he got to where he was, but it could also be that the government is terrible at hiring and granting security clearance and there are a lot of terrible individuals with access to secrets & sensitive data and Snowden just happened to be a standout.

mpyne 13y ago
As I understand it security clearance screening is done by blacklisting, not whitelisting. That's what would make sense for a nation with due process, but it does lead to increased risk of leaks from people with no obvious red flags that come up during the background check or in-person interviews.
- rdl 13y ago
  Even "better", there are things which are highly correlated with "likely to be a security problem" which are NOT allowed to be included, or which get adjudicated away. Generally IMO the security clearance process is not up to the task in a world with more than one threat. It worked ok against USSR when we largely could use full spectrum of information AND could assume most people without black marks were anti-USSR (due to existential threat from nuclear weapons and essentially an undeclared state of war). Doesn't work so well now when 1) IC really had no mission in the 1990s and 2) IC today is grossly oversized and overresourced for the anti-Islamism mission. The "anti-China, anti-Russia" stuff is much more like a real peacetime intelligence service, i.e. the <<500 people we had before WW2.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    Yeah, though I can't give specifics we had an admin issue where I worked that got briefed to the level of a "Presidental appointee confirmed by the Senate" that was related to screening requirements (or rather, the lack thereof).

brady747 13y ago

'If Slate trusts Farhad Manjoo with their Op/Ed writing and critical thinking, why should we trust Slate with their journalism?' //insert crappy article I mean, why should we give interviews at all? Obviously someone's resume and a class they didn't complete is all we need to know about them.

freepipi 13y ago

Great article, the awareness of security is terribly bad

codezero 13y ago

It seems like hiring someone who isn't a tech genius (assuming Snowden isn't one, but it doesn't matter) is exactly what the NSA should want, the less technically advanced their employees, the less likely they are to be aware of the wrongness of what they are doing, especially if they are given simple tools that do all the work for them and mask the technical guts behind a point and click interface that "anyone" can operate.

Zak 13y ago

http://paulgraham.com/credentials.html http://paulgraham.com/credentials.html It seems unlikely Snowden was in a high-paid and important position without having demonstrated some kind of aptitude. I have the impression he was highly skilled.

thehar 13y ago

Obviously slate.com's journalist doesn't understand how most of Silicon Valley works with recruiting these days and those "top companies" contributing to PRISM's dataset.

randomfool 13y ago

He comes off as a fairly intelligent person in the interview. The tech community should be the most understanding when it comes to overlooked people who kick ass on the job. Too many tech companies today are focusing on university names, this isn't the way it always was. Is being nice to Edward Snowden considered aiding a terrorist? The NSA probably just fired off a warrant for the rest of my communications.

burnstek 13y ago

In my university, we had a computer security program where computer scientists were heavily recruited to work for the DoD for a few years in exchange for a scholarship. One of the students I knew who ended up at the NSA was a standout, but the many others I knew were of average intellect and in many cases were below average computer scientists. These are not the level of people you want involved in mass surveillance programs. What matters most to the NSA is your ability to pass a polygraph - not your engineering skills.

mtgx 13y ago

Has the destroying of his credibility already started? What's next? An uncovered rape case from his past?

soup10 13y ago

The very fact that Edward has the integrity to risk his life in the name of public interest means that he's exactly the kind of person the NSA should be trusting with our data. It's probably his combination of integrity and competence that let him get the access he did in the first place.

cdooh 13y ago

Please. This is not about can we trust them because someone leaked, any civic-minded person would have done what he did if they had big enough balls. Are we trying to say that out of the thousands of employees the NSA has no one else but this one guy felt there was something wrong with this program?

benjamincburns 13y ago

If we trusted Verizon with our data, why should we trust ourselves?