NSA Recruitment Drive Goes Horribly Wrong 530
An anonymous reader writes "The Guardian is running a story about a recent recruitment session held by the NSA and attended by students from the University of Wisconsin which had an unexpected outcome for the recruiters. 'Attending the session was Madiha R Tahir, a journalist studying a language course at the university. She asked the squirming recruiters a few uncomfortable questions about the activities of NSA: which countries the agency considers to be 'adversaries', and if being a good liar is a qualification for getting a job at the NSA.' Following her, others students started to put NSA employees under fire too. A recording of the session is available on Tahir's blog."
One interesting tidbit. (Score:5, Insightful)
They get "targets" handed down, and don't decide who is an "adversary."
So we are all targets.
Great.
ONE THING I agree with Chomsky on (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want terrorism to stop, then just don't participate in it.
The same exact thing applies to NSA and all other government terrorist organisations.
I can almost imagine it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Having worked at several of the big-5 agencies (NSA included) I can attest to the fact that their HR organizations are pretty inept. They are so focused on EO and diversity that they really have no staff who know the trade craft that they are recruiting against nor even people who can simply think on their feet. For a potential recruit to act in any way other than honored to be speaking to a recruiter in the intelligence community and awestruck at the very thought of getting said job would totally derail them. I'd have loved to have been a fly on the wall.
Re:come on (Score:5, Insightful)
These are people doing a job.
So were the Stasi.
Re:come on (Score:1, Insightful)
We are a nation of laws, not men. If you don't agree with the actions of a governmental organization then you need to lobby your governmental representatives with your views.
You also need to accept that your views might not be the majority and that, to some extent, we're a country of majority rule.
Re:come on (Score:5, Insightful)
No, they are government employees, which according to our HIGHEST LAWS means they answer to US the PEOPLE. If they can't handle people asking them some hard questions, then it's a good chance they know that they are doing things they shouldn't.
Now no one beat them up, no one attacked them. But these "recruiters" jobs is to spread propaganda, and it's about time people started calling them out on it.
And yes physically attacking a cop just because they're a cop is a horrible idea. But asking a cop to abide by their OATH to Protect and Serve, and calling them out on it verbally when the police office they work in is breaking the law? There's nothing wrong with that, as perhaps they shouldn't let their fellow officers break the law in the first place.
Those that hold themselves up over others as authorities, or as law, should also be held to the strictest standards.
Normally I don't reply to ACs (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Normally I don't reply to ACs (Score:2, Insightful)
Browse at 1, problem solved. Replying to the post only attracts extra attention to it.
look at the Guardian photo (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at the people in the Guardian's photo: they hold up a sign of Snowden, write "HERO" across it, and then use the Obama logo for the "O"? How stupid and partisan can you get? Not only is Obama fully responsible for the current NSA actions and keeping them secret, he lied during his campaign when he promised to end such abuses.
Re:come on (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One interesting tidbit. (Score:5, Insightful)
To heck with K-Mart. Shop smart: be an S-Mart!
Re:come on (Score:5, Insightful)
What utter bullshit. You can't be a "nation of laws" when the laws apply differently to different subsets of the nation, when you're not allowed to know how the law works, and when those enforcing the law are above it.
If you want to keep sucking off your jackbooted masters, you'll need a new sound bite to try to excuse it. That one stopped working decades ago.
Re:ONE THING I agree with Chomsky on (Score:3, Insightful)
Does the same thing apply to carjacking? Armed robbery? Rape? "Oh, I'm sorry, but I don't participate in such activities so you must stop". Great plan.
Re:look at the Guardian photo (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe it was meant to be Ironic. HOPE you don't get assassinated, Mr. Snowden.
Re:come on (Score:3, Insightful)
I have no problem with good cops, which is the vast majority of them. I do have a problem with bad cops that don't follow the law. And good cops that are great at their job but aren't any good at recruiting shouldn't be doing recruiting.
In this case, yes, these people are just doing a job -- recruiting. That's a tough job. However, before expecting to recruit (hopefully) the brightest students in the country, they might want to have really good answers for questions that an awful lot of the ordinary people in the public may have regarding the legality of what the NSA is doing. As in, the recruiters should have been drilled in lengthy, candid, self-critical sessions about the sorts of pointed questions people might ask because of recent events, and how to handle them gracefully. To not be prepared for the result of what's been happening in the last few months of public attention is bad planning.
I'm sure there's a lot of great people in the NSA and in other policing and intelligence agencies. But if you have difficulty answering questions about the job a potential candidate may be doing in the institution, even if the questions are bold and perhaps unwarranted, then you really shouldn't be in recruiting. Furthermore, if there is any validity to those questions (i.e. they may be uncomfortable ones but are still entirely legitimate), then you might want to reconsider the image of the institution for which you work and if that's the real source of the problem. Maybe some things need to change so that your institution doesn't sabotage its own recruiting efforts because its reputation has become so poor. You can't blame these recruiters for the image that the institution has cultivated, but they do have to deal with it, and they better be taking candidates' feedback back to their bosses and saying "We have a serious problem if you want the best employees to come work with us".
Re:come on (Score:5, Insightful)
>We are a nation of laws, not men
Lol! Really? So when is James Clapper going to be charged with contempt of congress for telling them that the NSA isn't spying on millions of Americans? When are the people in the previous administration going to be held responsible for ordering torture - also a felony? We ceased being a nation of laws a while ago.
Re:Dumbasses (Score:5, Insightful)
You're never going to make it at that rate. Mother Theresa has been criticized [wikipedia.org] for some time. Perhaps most amusingly by Penn and Teller on their BS show [youtu.be] where she is described as a fraud, a fanatic and a fundamentalist, corrupt, nasty, cynical and cruel by Christopher Hitchens.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:look at the Guardian photo (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:come on (Score:4, Insightful)
This is what you wrote:
This is what it sounds like:
Re:come on (Score:5, Insightful)
If the jackboot fits...
Theoretically, even Kings are not above the law in the anglo-saxon tradition. What you are seeing right now is frustration being vented over the fact that highly placed public officials seem to be above the law.
If this were France, they might be setting your car on fire right about now.
Re:come on (Score:5, Insightful)
The NSA is building the machine that our version of the Nazi's will take advantage of.
This is why some things should never be done in a Republic. The current regime might be "nice". However, the next regime might not be so nice.
Once a tool is available, someone can decide to abuse it.
The NSA doesn't make totalitarian regimes, they just make them possible.
Re:Normally I don't reply to ACs (Score:5, Insightful)
Asking who they consider adversaries is excellent journalism. I'd actually like to hear an answer to that question.
Re:Normally I don't reply to ACs (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:come on (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:look at the Guardian photo (Score:3, Insightful)
Why must either be worse? So you can fist bump over one side being the "best" of two shitbags?
Re:ONE THING I agree with Chomsky on (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet there's any difference if it the D/Rs were reversed?
Re:NSA muzzles the Press... (Score:2, Insightful)
A recent article in CNN outlines why there is little in the US Media regarding Eric Snowden and the NSA Prism program
You must be one of those types that won't look out his window to see that it is raining because a TV weatherman said that it was sunny.
Little coverage in the US media about Snowden and the NSA? That is ridiculous. You couldn't event try Google News? [google.com]
A near-complete lack of articles in main-stream media about the Prism program and Snowden is all the evidence I need to come to that conclusion.
That isn't simply false, it is a lie.
NSA is literally threatening journalists with prosecution for espionage for doing their jobs
NSA isn't threatening journalists. To the extent that anything like that is happening it is coming from the Justice department over older leak investigations and isn't close to being a blanket, although it is very troubling as far as it goes. Slashdot has covered this before.
Re:Normally I don't reply to ACs (Score:5, Insightful)
She was unprofessional as a journalist and came off as immature as well. These people weren't squirming, they were just answering this bull dog's questions as best they could without getting fired in the process. She was clearly interested in painting them in a negative light so I would not attribute journalist credentials to her in this exchange. They did clearly state that policy makers hand down the requirements of their job--in other words the NSA doesn't choose targets the politicians do. End of story really. She seems angry.
I can't comment on this apart from the partial transcript, because the blog is down. But from what i read, it was perfectly acceptable behaviour from a journalist. Perhaps you are not familiar with journalists who ask hard, uncomfortable questions to someone's face. If you are in the US, you are probably used to interviews where the questions are vetted beforehand, and "questioning" is done in the absence of the questioned in clearly biased opinion broadcasts. Professional journalism in a functioning democracy consists of asking people hard questions to their face, and either have them answer them fully or partially, make a promise to give an answer if they don't know, or obviously refuse to answer them. An important part of that sentence is the bit allowing them to answer the questions; "opinion" televeision does not allow that. The only time I saw an american president being asked hard unscheduled questions in a live interview, it was a foreign journalist who later received death threats for being "rude" enough to ask the president a question he had not agreed beforehand was an acceptable one for him to answer. And you call yourselves the land of the free.
Re:Dumbasses (Score:4, Insightful)
She probably is a US citizen, and even if not, she would have something to contribute if she became one. Strangely enough, the US consists of people whose heritage is from all over the world. It's one of the strengths of the country that it can draw on that cultural heritage and diversity within its own citizens to better understand languages and other cultural matters when in pursuit of intelligence in other countries. A country with a more homogeneous population has a big problem trying to understand the rest of the world. Your bigoted attitude will discourage people from getting involved, and ultimately undermines the security of the country.
You're an idiot.
Re:come on (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:look at the Guardian photo (Score:5, Insightful)
Obama is "fully responsible" for a program Dubya put in place? Partisan much?
No, he's responsible for their current actions, like dramatically increasing the scope of their spying activity during his regime.
Re:NSA muzzles the Press... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yup.. and I think somebody just threw a barrel of oil down that "slippery slope"... I got a strong feeling the reason some of the "rising stars" of the teaparty/quasi-republican party (Scott Walker-Wisc Governor AND Marco Rubio) suddenly came out for the Senate Immigration bill is because *somebody* *somewhere* found some kind of dirt on them and are blackmailing them with it.. Go ahead and tell me my tinfoil hat is too tight.. We're so far down the toilet toward tyranny that NOTHING would surprise me.. Not even Mr Obama-Soetero arranging 15000 Russian troops for "support" in America.. I gather he's afraid that OUR military might refuse to fire on American civilians.. I can be pretty sure Russians would NOT....
Re:Dumbasses (Score:3, Insightful)
So you are comparing a private hate group opposed to blacks, Jews, gays, Catholics, immigrants, and who knows what else to an agency of the US government that no doubt celebrates all the usual diversity related holidays and recruits people with diverse backgrounds?
That is ridiculous, nonsense, bordering on unhinged.
Re:come on (Score:5, Insightful)
We are a nation of laws, sure... Secret laws overseen by secret courts who round up people and hold them in secret prisons. Hard to be proud of these laws.
A functioning democracy needs the voters to be sufficiently aware of what their elected officials are doing to be able to be informed voters. Adopting an attitude of only sharing with the country what you have to, instead of only hiding what you have to undermines the whole logical argument supporting the concept of a self governing populace.
Oh well.
Re:Normally I don't reply to ACs (Score:4, Insightful)
...or just see who has voiced an un-popular opinion.
Tyranny of the majority (Score:5, Insightful)
We are a nation of laws, not men. If you don't agree with the actions of a governmental organization then you need to lobby your governmental representatives with your views.
You also need to accept that your views might not be the majority and that, to some extent, we're a country of majority rule.
Freedom does not depend on majority rule. In fact, it frequently stands against it. That's what the "tyranny of the majority" means.
Desegregation was unpopular. Interracial marriage was unpopular. Letting groups like the KKK and Communists have speak their minds was unpopular. Burning draft cards was unpopular, and burning the flag in protest still is. Keeping church out of state is unpopular. The right to marry whoever and however many people you want is unpopular.
Interring Japanese and German citizens during WW2 was popular. Laws requiring everyone to salute the flag regardless of minority religious belief were (and still are) popular. Prohibition was popular -- at first. Racially restrictive housing covenants were popular in the communities that "benefited" from them.
If polls today show that a slim majority support the NSA spying on us, then remember that equivalent numbers sat out the revolutionary war or actively aided the British. The majority is not always right. The majority does not always stand for real freedom -- all they want is the freedom to keep living their narrowly-focused, myopic lives in the same day to day way that they currently do, and to hell with everyone else.
I think most Americans would gladly vote in a dictator if that dictator established that everyone had to live the way that they think people should, if they called it the "freedom" to do so. History is filled with peoples who chose to do just that.
Re:ONE THING I agree with Chomsky on (Score:0, Insightful)
When the Republicans do something bad, the media I pay attention to print stories about how horrible it is. When the Democrats do the same thing, the media I pay attention to print stories about how wonderful it i
There, fixed that for you. When you only pay attention to a few specific, politically-biased news sources that's what you're going to see happen. If you only watch Fox News you'll find stories about the R's doing bad things being ignored, quickly skipped over, or spun to lay the blame on the D's, and stories about the D's doing bad things being pumped constantly as headlines.
Re:Normally I don't reply to ACs (Score:5, Insightful)
HR recruiters are a potential employee's first contact with a company and ought to be able to answer any reasonable questions a potential employee might have. "Who does your agency consider an adversary," is a valid question to ask of an agency that's trying to recruit you. It's akin to asking a business, "Who do you consider a potential customer?"
It's a core function of an organization's representatives to have answers to these simple questions and understand the organization's purpose. Even without the current situation the NSA is in, this sort of thing is something that a potential recruit may be curious about. I'm surprised they didn't have an answer ready for it.
Re:Normally I don't reply to ACs (Score:5, Insightful)
That is a question to ask NSA public affairs, not HR recruiters.
If some government organization tries to sell someone with anything like a sense of right & wrong, and/or simply not a damned sociopath, on joining them in targeting individuals and groups, naturally the first question should be "Exactly what type and nature of individuals and groups?"
If you expect that answer from them your expectations should probably be adjusted.
Wrong. They need to be able to answer the questions. They work for the people and must be accountable. Secret courts and secret rulings on secret laws are in no way Constitutional, and are gross violations of everyone's civil rights.
They have access now to technology and information systems Orwell could never have dreamed of. Such power must be tightly chained and the ability to abuse it eliminated. Turn the giant NSA data storage centers over to public scientific research use or something similarly open and benign. If it can be abused, it will be abused. It is human nature.
Government power must be as distributed and as localized as possible to avoid corruption and suborning, for the same reasons that it's much easier to compromise a network consisting of a central server and terminals than it is a network of autonomous machines, each with their own defenses.
In a way, the Founding Fathers were genius network programmers, as the US Constitution is the "program" for the system known as "government".
Strat
Re:NSA muzzles the Press... (Score:3, Insightful)
That is not "freedom of the press" - that is distributing classified information. Do you know how many reporters spend time in jail for refusing to identify a source? They have freedom, but they are not immune to prosecution.
Just like Rosa Parks did, Snowden broke the law. He is going to be punished, and anyone who keeps spreading the information and is also under the jurisdiction of federal prosecution will be punished, muzzled, or whatever else they can do. Even if the information is already available on every web site on the internet - that doesn't make it legal to distribute, and it doesn't automatically declassify it.
And the NSA can threaten all they want - until someone is arrested, this means nothing. When someone is arrested, it will boil down to one simple question - did that person share classified information? Argue what you want about what should happen, but an illegal act will result in a conviction.
The only way to keep convictions from happening is to keep pressure on all branches of government - and not just from the American people, but from all of the governments who have been spied on - by NSA and GCHQ. Then maybe you will get a response like "our bad - everyone but Snowden is forgiven."
Just where exactly is the line you draw where journalists can break laws without repercussion? Disagreeing with the government? Breaking into your house for dirt? Disobeying a court order? Leaking classified information? Wiretapping and hacking into cell phones? Or is it just whether you agree or disagree with the information found needing to be public?
I'm not taking sides here - just pointing out what is true. If the law requires a minimal standard of "prejudicial to the U.S. interest" then maybe it is the law itself that is wrong.
Don't let it be lost on you that the author has an axe to grind because his first book was forfeited to the US - and has a second book documenting that forfeiture that he wants you to buy. The messenger's personal stake doesn't change facts - but it does cast doubt on anything outside of raw facts - especially this being an opinion piece.
Here is the spark for the piece, apparently:
So a Republican representative, typically with a perpetual plank for expanding government overreach, called for a crackdown. Which he, not being in the Executive branch, cannot do anything about. He is asking for people who broke the law to be punished, and obviously taking the side of the Administration in doing so. What has this actually changed? Nothing. Maybe if someone in the Administration had done it instead, or publically agreed, or if there were a number of Representatives and/or Senators who did this as a block, or any number of scenarios outside of an elected official pandering to his voters, this might mean something.
Your conclusion is the most disturbing part. Mainstream MSM media do not cover important news - they publish whatever will get clicks or views. They are not "the press" - they are an information business model with journalist credentials. This has been true about nearly every bit of news of significance since the dawn of the internet, when you could know what news was not being reported.
It is not self-censorship due to threats, because the lack of reporting happened before Rep. King mouthed off. The obvious conclusion here is that newsies are letting the Guardian be the source of actual leaks, non-mainstream media report on those sources, and MSM follows up with news about the "hunt for the traitor" - which really sells to Americans. Perhaps MSM is aware that releasing confidential material is a crime,
Re:Dumbasses (Score:5, Insightful)
So, if the KKK switches to a model of disaster relief (for white people) and lynching black people, it's OK?
The NSA has jumped the shark. The best bet now is burn it down and build an organization that actually sticks to it's mission from the ashes.
They seem to see the American People AND Congress as enemies to spy on and lie to. Even other government agencies are moving to encrypt their communications now.
Don't confuse their stated mission for what they actually do.
Re:come on (Score:5, Insightful)
Two lions and a sheep vote on whats for dinner...
Mutton, obviously. However, if mutton is still the main course when there are two lions and ten sheep, then you have a problem.
Theresa (Score:0, Insightful)
I appreciate P&T for their candor and honesty... but they are also evangelical atheists. I haven't seen all their episodes, but I've seen them cover religion a number of times... always unfairly (they find the stupid guy with a fancy degree to interview and mock). If they have ever said anything about Mrs Theresa, I'd take it with more than a grain of salt. (Yes, I'm religious. No, I'm not Catholic.)
I don't know if the criticisms against her are fair or not, but I do know that many good people have had mud unfairly slung at them because they're religious, to destroy their credibility. It's happened many times before, and it will yet happen again and again.
Re:come on (Score:5, Insightful)
That is just the beginning
I am Canadian, but we have the same basic system. There are systems and laws in place to stop you from even just learning one law.
Unless you go to school and become a lawyer you cannot know the law, or what will get you arrested. And only then, will you have a best guess at a probability of getting arrested. Alternatively, if you have enough money to own a lawyer, you can also be generally safe, as you can ask their advise before doing anything.
I once tried to learn knife laws in Canada. We only have about 5 laws, maybe 100 words of laws concerning knives.
But our systems are built on precedent, and really how much you can afford to spend on a lawyer.
So there will be literally be hundreds of books law precedent, which is more important than the letter, to read with respect to knife law. And unless you can afford it, their is absolutely no talking to a lawyer before you are arrested.
What I got out of this.
From my understanding, after reading the letter of the law over and over again is that technically I am allowed to do pretty much anything (carry any knife I would care to own anywhere in any way). And if I could afford a team of lawyers, I am pretty confident that I could protect that right. But in the real world were I do not own a cent, I absolutely should not even carry a Walmart pocket knife across the street to cut up a bunch of boxes. Because people have ended up going to jail for less.
You cannot know the law, because the real law is hidden (non lawyers are not allowed to give law advise, and lawyer cost too much). And even lawyers and the police do not know the law. it is all interpretable to mean anything that they want it to mean.
Re:ONE THING I agree with Chomsky on (Score:5, Insightful)
The normal rule of gunnery is to shoot, and then whatever you happen to hit: call that the target. ;-) With terrorism, whoever you missed is the target. And whoever you hit, is your weapon against that target. But in order to work, it requires the cooperation of the target. If the target does not choose to react fearfully, then the terrorism does not accomplish its objective.
No. The goal of carjacking is to get a ride; the goal of robbery is to obtain value. Deciding to not fear it, does not deny your adversary his goal.
But terrorism is about persuading the survivors, the technically-not-victims. Nobody ever carjacks in order to get the next car to lock their doors. Nobody commits armed robbery in order to manipulate a third party (movie script counter-example: Die Hard, but the FBI was manipulated as part of a "Briar Patch" strategy, rather than terrorism(*)).
e.g. Not Terrorism: "Your tank factory and its workers are gone. This gains me a numeric advantage in next month's tank battle." Terrorism: "Your tank factory and its workers are gone. Surrender or else I'll wreck more of your expensive factories and kill more of your workers."
(*) Does this happen in real life? What believed acts of terrorism were actually not?
Re:look at the Guardian photo (Score:5, Insightful)
the proper response is:
I blame bush for creating it.
I blame obama for not ending it.
it really is that simple.
It turned into a diplomatic incident (Score:4, Insightful)
He really did want to get treated like Royalty.
Re:It turned into a diplomatic incident (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the Bush White House told Carole Coleman that now she wasn't going to get the interview with Laura Bush that they had been hinting at.
The Clinton White House told Amy Goodman that now they would never answer her phone calls again. (Her response was something like, "OK.")
The reason these interviews turned out this way was that, besides being smart reporters, they didn't cover the White House regularly. For the reporters who do cover it regularly, there's a quid pro quo that they won't ask tough questions and in exchange they'll get regular access to the political celebrities. It's important for a reporter on the beat to get lots of interviews with the big shots, even if they don't say anything. That's what their editors want. If they asked tough questions, and the White House cut them off, they wouldn't be able to do talking head interviews with the president and first lady any more (and they might have to find other sources and cover real news, but that wouldn't occur to them).
There's a similar quid pro quo between reporters who cover the police beats and the cops. The reporters don't talk about brutality and corruption, and in exchange they get a steady stream of crime stories.
It's a lot easier to write regular stories, or at least turn out a lot of words, if you cooperate with the people you're covering.
But for an independent reporter there's no reason to play that game.
There's an old saw in journalism that news is something that the people in power don't want to get out.
I as a reader don't need any of the self-agrandizing bullshit that politicians spout on the PBS Newshour, for example. I want to know what my political leaders are doing to serve or harm my interests, say in health care, or going to war. If PBS won't do that for me, I'll go somewhere else.
There are reporters who cover politics who don't need the President or White House at all. There are lots of smart people to interview who understand the issues and tell the truth more than most politicians, and are happy to talk to reporters. Look at the people Amy Goodman interviews on DemocracyNow.
You could probably write a better story by interviewing the people who are demonstrating in front of the White House than by interviewing the president.