I'd hope that most hackers would see the NSA as what it is: just one more head of the Medusa that is the US government, in all it's civil liberty infringing, experimenting on it's own citizens program, illegal wiretapping, constitution ignoring glory.
The NSA does some questionable stuff, but it also does some awesome stuff. The first thing that comes to mind is SELinux.
On a tangent, don't forget that we need an organization like the NSA (or at least like what the NSA should be). The more ubiquitous computing becomes, the more important that role will become. So, don't advocate chopping off a head of the Medusa; advocate fixing what you see as wrong.
> don't forget that we need an organization like the NSA
For those of us who have already forgotten or have never known the reason for its necessity, could you explain why?
Internationally and historically, similar levels of state communications monitoring are correlated with the need for self-preservation by authoritarian regimes. There are also many modern day states which do not possess an agency directly analogous to the NSA.
One of the big problems with NSA is their dual mission of defense and offense. Dual mandates are really dangerous for bureaucracies -- the federal reserve has a similarly conflicted dual mandate of price stability and employment, no as a result it behaves a bit like a highly medicated insane person at times. NSA does the same thing -- releasing SELinux and trying to prevent the spread of encryption in protocols and operating systems simultaneously.
I believe that cyber-warfare, while fanciful-sounding in name, is going to be a part of the future whether we like it or not. In which case, the NSA seems the best positioned to conduct the USA's end of it.
If this is a justified belief rather than a faith-based belief, you'll need to offer a refutation of Thomas Rid's "Cyber War Will Not Take Place", which holds that cyber-war is contradictory because acts of cyber-war do not fulfill the definition of acts of war: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01402390.2011.608...
If you mean to suggest that the reason for the NSA is for the US government to act as an authoritarian regime (presumably meaning something like a totalitarian state or dictatorship or tyranny), why don't you just say so? And if you don't mean to suggest it, then what is the meaning of your purported correlation?
I don't; to negate the position that the existence of communication surveillance agencies can be considered both beneficial and necessary for an arbitrary population by assumption.
Who even uses SELinux besides government/defense contractors? Do you remember the Clipper chip? The list of horrible things the NSA has been involved with is long.
We absolutely need defense for government IT. That should still be smaller than what the government devotes to that task now, but at the NSA level, I get the feeling that most dollars and head count is not going to defense.
I think it is a legitimate question how much of an offensive information warfare standing capability a country needs when not at war, and what level of dirty tricks intelligence agencies should pull in peacetime to monitor adversaries. Particularly due to the non financial costs of this monitoring -- losing our moral standing as a free and fair country, incidentally monitoring citizens or those present in the USA, in violation of the constitution (especially due to the tortured "five eyes" sharing agreements, which, if they weren't governments, would be viewed as a conspiracy and some kind of constructive crime), etc. I judge all of this stuff by "does it make us safer", and at some point, it clearly goes the other way. I think that point is several hundred billion dollars a year less spending than what we have now (well in excess of a trillion). Maybe 50-75% less spending.
The real problem and danger to us, from the very demons that guard our country, is that they are not being properly restrained by a Congress controlled by primitivists, idiots, mentally deranged, corporate agents, the unprincipled, and psychopaths not suited for today's world and allow the security state instruments to operate extra-constitutionally with impunity.
Simply put; affection and trusting the NSA (or any other security state instrument) is trusting and making a deal with the devil. I wish you understood the gravity.
Comments
I'd hope that most hackers would see the NSA as what it is: just one more head of the Medusa that is the US government, in all it's civil liberty infringing, experimenting on it's own citizens program, illegal wiretapping, constitution ignoring glory.
The NSA does some questionable stuff, but it also does some awesome stuff. The first thing that comes to mind is SELinux.
On a tangent, don't forget that we need an organization like the NSA (or at least like what the NSA should be). The more ubiquitous computing becomes, the more important that role will become. So, don't advocate chopping off a head of the Medusa; advocate fixing what you see as wrong.
> don't forget that we need an organization like the NSA
For those of us who have already forgotten or have never known the reason for its necessity, could you explain why? Internationally and historically, similar levels of state communications monitoring are correlated with the need for self-preservation by authoritarian regimes. There are also many modern day states which do not possess an agency directly analogous to the NSA.
One of the big problems with NSA is their dual mission of defense and offense. Dual mandates are really dangerous for bureaucracies -- the federal reserve has a similarly conflicted dual mandate of price stability and employment, no as a result it behaves a bit like a highly medicated insane person at times. NSA does the same thing -- releasing SELinux and trying to prevent the spread of encryption in protocols and operating systems simultaneously.
I believe that cyber-warfare, while fanciful-sounding in name, is going to be a part of the future whether we like it or not. In which case, the NSA seems the best positioned to conduct the USA's end of it.
If this is a justified belief rather than a faith-based belief, you'll need to offer a refutation of Thomas Rid's "Cyber War Will Not Take Place", which holds that cyber-war is contradictory because acts of cyber-war do not fulfill the definition of acts of war: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01402390.2011.608...
Ok, so cyber-warfare is a shitty word. I know that, but people understand what it refers to, which is why I used it.
Would you be happier if I said I expect cyber-sabotage, cyber-espionage, and cyber-subversion to be important parts of future conflicts?
If you mean to suggest that the reason for the NSA is for the US government to act as an authoritarian regime (presumably meaning something like a totalitarian state or dictatorship or tyranny), why don't you just say so? And if you don't mean to suggest it, then what is the meaning of your purported correlation?
I don't; to negate the position that the existence of communication surveillance agencies can be considered both beneficial and necessary for an arbitrary population by assumption.
Who even uses SELinux besides government/defense contractors? Do you remember the Clipper chip? The list of horrible things the NSA has been involved with is long.
These days, most people who use Fedora...
It's part of the RHCE exam, to be honest i always disabled it before then. These days though i always use it (in targetted mode).
I'd imagine there are others like me.
We need it? Who is 'we'? The government? To what degree is that need necessary, and not merely contingent?
We absolutely need defense for government IT. That should still be smaller than what the government devotes to that task now, but at the NSA level, I get the feeling that most dollars and head count is not going to defense.
I think it is a legitimate question how much of an offensive information warfare standing capability a country needs when not at war, and what level of dirty tricks intelligence agencies should pull in peacetime to monitor adversaries. Particularly due to the non financial costs of this monitoring -- losing our moral standing as a free and fair country, incidentally monitoring citizens or those present in the USA, in violation of the constitution (especially due to the tortured "five eyes" sharing agreements, which, if they weren't governments, would be viewed as a conspiracy and some kind of constructive crime), etc. I judge all of this stuff by "does it make us safer", and at some point, it clearly goes the other way. I think that point is several hundred billion dollars a year less spending than what we have now (well in excess of a trillion). Maybe 50-75% less spending.
The real problem and danger to us, from the very demons that guard our country, is that they are not being properly restrained by a Congress controlled by primitivists, idiots, mentally deranged, corporate agents, the unprincipled, and psychopaths not suited for today's world and allow the security state instruments to operate extra-constitutionally with impunity.
Simply put; affection and trusting the NSA (or any other security state instrument) is trusting and making a deal with the devil. I wish you understood the gravity.