

Four-star general in eye of U.S. cyber storm - forgotAgain
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/26/us-cybersecurity-nsa-alexander-idUSBRE94P06S20130526

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will_brown
>"He's lasted as long as he has because he's focused and he's persistent. I've
never heard him yell,"

I beg to differ, it is like J. Edgar Hover, who could not be removed from his
post as FBI director simply because he had files on everyone who might attempt
such an ill fated move, including Presidents - especially Presidents. Only
imagine if J. Edgar Hover also had every electronic communication ever sent or
received...scary stuff.

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ck2
Here's the thing - all this and they've announced ZERO arrests.

Whatever the heck they are doing, they are spending a fortune, eroding
everyone's privacy forever, and accomplishing nothing.

Can't wait for a few years when they get hacked and a foreign government
steals all the data. Of course we will never know because whomever leaks that
it happened will end up in gitmo or be Bradley Manning'd.

This country has lost its freaking mind since 9/11

~~~
ajross
Not to argue with the core of your point, but the "arrests" bit is missing the
point. The NSA mission isn't law enforcement. Their job is purely to better
inform executive decisions. And from that perspective they're equally
successful if they prevent a terrorist event (or more broadly any harm
national security) via putting someone in jail, killing them with a drone,
blackmailing them, or just snitching on them to their family such that they're
forced to give up their plan.

It's not inappropriate to view this as a huge overreach. But neither is it
correct to treat them like the FBI.

~~~
darkarmani
> Not to argue with the core of your point, but the "arrests" bit is missing
> the point. The NSA mission isn't law enforcement.

Exactly, right. They should be banned from operating inside the US by the
Posse Comitatus Act and by their founding act The National Security Act of
1947. Why are we so eager to turn them into the KGB?

~~~
anigbrowl
_Posse Comitatus Act_

Dubious.

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blhack
We hear a lot about how behind the rest of the world the US is in regards to
cyber security (although maybe those claims are incorrect?)

How many of you would go work for the defense department? What would it take
for you to do that?

Because the smartest people I know wouldn't do it for all of the money in the
world. They won't even take defense department grants for our hackerspace (to
buy tools, etc.)

I really think that the US Justice Department's treatment of "hackers" over
the last 20-30 years has _completely_ soiled any possibility that the
government has of attracting talent.

Maybe I'm wrong, but at least in my bubble, _nobody_ wants to work for the
government, and no reasonable amount of money would change their mind.

~~~
brigade
Grow up / go to school in Maryland or Virginia (probably most of Pennsylvania
and New England too.) Personal experience suggests that most of the brightest
CS/CE/EE/math majors there wind up either in three-letter agencies or (more
likely) doing similar work as defense contractors.

I probably would have wound up as a defense contractor too, had the companies
I applied to not been strict on their GPA requirements (or if I had taken
college more seriously...)

A large reason is because these defense jobs are among the most interesting
jobs in the area, and there's always openings. If your bubble is California,
Texas, or New York, I'd imagine there's a significantly wider range of
interesting non-defense jobs.

Speaking as a programmer, that is.

~~~
meej
more anecdata:

I attended a small engineering college in the Great Plains. A good number of
my classmates ended up at defense contractors after graduation. I did a co-op
at a company that does a lot of defense contracting, and I could have accepted
a FT position at one, too.

I also have vivid memories of the career fair I attended during the fall of my
junior year. I had dyed my hair green at the start of the semester. The only
organization who seemed to take me seriously as a candidate was the NSA and I
think the haircolor had something to do with that. It was enough to get me to
apply for a summer internship there.

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nikcub
> On one flight, he and his aide-de-camp learned "BackTrack,"

It only took him one flight to learn to use 40+ apps? Impressive, i've been
using some of these apps for ~15 years and still don't know them well.

(BackTrack is nothing more than a Linux distro with a bunch of pentest apps -
metasploit, nmap, w3af, etc. preinstalled)

~~~
charonn0
_It only took him one flight to learn to use 40+ apps? Impressive_

True, but this is a guy who: _(...) often scores over 1 million points on the
"Bejeweled Blitz" online puzzle game._

so he's obviously quite 1337.

~~~
nikcub
I can just imagine the pre-briefing with NSA's PR people

"we need to establish your tech credentials, what are you really good at"

"err, Bejeweled Blitz?"

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obviouslygreen
I had to try very hard not to (very uncharitably and hopefully incorrectly)
assume that this guy could not possibly have the slightest clue what's going
on. Shame on me for both ageism and for just dismissing government workers out
of hand...

...but... come on.

 _Aides say the general often scores over 1 million points on the "Bejeweled
Blitz" online puzzle game._

Yes, this came second hand (if it was said at all). No, he did not say it
himself, and no, playing games is neither a crime nor a failure of
character... but _come on_ , guys that is _not_ the way to promote your boss'
image as a highly-educated security expert (which his credentials suggest to
at least some extent).

Based on the article, I think a very informative perspective could be that of
someone who heard him speak at Defcon. Anyone?

~~~
jessaustin
Skipping Dark Tangent's self-congratulatory intro:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz0ejKersnM&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz0ejKersnM&feature=player_detailpage#t=173s)

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jurassic
> On one flight, he and his aide-de-camp learned "BackTrack," a Linux-based
> product that helps people test their network security. Aides say the general
> often scores over 1 million points on the "Bejeweled Blitz" online puzzle
> game.

Either reuters got hacked (for the lulz?) or this is the worst non sequitur
I've seen in a long time.

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smackfu
That was from last month.

~~~
joshuahedlund
I believe the point is that this month's news seems to contradict it:

> "The great irony is we're the only ones not spying on the American people,"
> he quipped.

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dragonbonheur
The only way for Americans to defeat their government's spying programs is to
embed keywords like bomb, jihad, Allah, plus the names of various regions and
landmarks and the names of political figures in every communication protocol
and program so that the systems become saturated with noise. Only then they
will lift their bums from their cozy offices and start doing some legwork and
real investigation.

~~~
gcr
As usual, GNU/Emacs has your back!

    
    
        M-x spook
    

<http://www.cypherspace.org/rsa/spook.html>

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johngalt
See the problems aren't systemic. It's just this one no-name person who was
going to retire anyway. We must have just forgotten that he was back there
spending billions spying on everyone. No worries he's retired now, so we're
all good now. Right american public? Right?

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mtgx
Tor founder, Jacob Appelbaum, called this guy _the most powerful person Earth,
probably more powerful than the US president_ :

<http://youtu.be/7mnuofn_DXw?t=11m24s>

~~~
snowwrestler
Hyperbolic statements like that are silly, and just make it easy for skeptics
to dismiss privacy arguments and their proponents as paranoid kooks.

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samstave
How can we believe that when there is that previous NSA guy who stated that he
wrote the algo's that allow this spying to occur?

His name is Binny:

<http://publicintelligence.net/nsa-spies-on-email/>

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godgod
Somehow we don't believe you. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center>

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ape4
Well there's Facebook.

