
NSA Official Warned About Threat 17 Years Before Snowden - T-A
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-21/nsa-official-warned-about-threat-17-years-before-snowden.html
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joe_the_user
Oh Gawd...

It's not "NSA Official Warned About ... the threat to freedom that is the NSA"

It's "NSA Official Warned ... that a low level employee might warn the world
_about_ the threat to freedom that is the NSA"

~~~
meowface
It's still an interesting point he makes. One sysadmin in any powerful
organization can likely gain access to that organization's deepest, darkest
secrets, and abuse that access for anything they like, whether good or bad.

~~~
dllthomas
Unless you have good processes involving mandatory access controls (like the
NSA added to Linux), multiple eyes on everything, and audit. Crazy overkill
for most situations, but more or less what I'd _expected_ from the NSA. Key
management is comparatively easy inside a military style hierarchy.

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pmorici
This article is silly. The title suggests that if they had only listened to
some guy stating the obvious 17 years ago all this could have been prevented
as if "don't let your sys admin steal all your sensitive files" is some deep
insight. The problem is more likely that their IT staff is woefully inept and
either weren't bothering to look or didn't notice what was going on right
under their noses.

~~~
XorNot
Not even that. If the problem didn't eventuate for 17 years, then it was
hardly an insipient problem. _A lot_ changed for the internal structure of
these organizations over 17 years, particularly due to 9/11.

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at-fates-hands
Agreed.

It was the same thing with 9/11\. There was a senator (Alan J. Dixon) in 1986
who wrote an article in Playboy called, "The Terror Next Time. The cochairman
of the senate antiterrorism caucus argues that a major attack in the U.S. is
inevitable."

Although he points out the lack of information sharing between intelligence
agencies, he was sure it would be a US based group like the KKK or Aryan
Nation then some terrorist group from the Middle East. It's an interesting
article either way as hindsight is always 20/20, right?

~~~
rangibaby
He was right about domestic terrorists in a way.

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_City_bombing)

[1]
[http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/crime/terrorists/timothy-m...](http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/crime/terrorists/timothy-
mcveigh/)

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PythonicAlpha
Sometimes laziness beneficial for the world. Maybe not for the agency.

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vinceguidry
Features will always be prioritized over security.

~~~
tantalor
For an agency with "Security" in their name, they really prioritized security
very low.

I loved the part about printers. They have printers?!

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zeeed
in other news: Some random official warned about threat decades before
Fukushima, Chernobyl.

Government agencies, by their very nature, might have never entered the realm
of common sense and proper risk management. There are a lot of good hypotheses
for reasons for that.

One better realized the fact and dealt with it instead of crying "I/He told
you so".

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glasz
i'm with you, nsa. very sad indeed.

