NSA Director Keith Alexander Is Reportedly Stepping Down 92
Daniel_Stuckey writes "Keith Alexander will step down by April or May of next year. What's more, the agency's deputy director Chris Inglis also plans to retire by the end of next year, anonymous US officials told Reuters today. Though the news comes in the midst of a global public backlash over the NSA's widespread surveillance programs, it's worth pointing out that Alexander had revealed his plans to retire before Edward Snowden leaked details of PRISM in June. Officials didn't give a reason for his departure."
easy reason (Score:1)
He's got enough peep show pron to last him 5 lifetimes now.
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A homosexual robot?
A better idea (Score:5, Insightful)
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No, reenact the Nuremberg trials!
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They are. Everyone who decided to work with the US government gets a pass. :)
Re:A better idea (Score:5, Informative)
Silly rabbit, laws are for the poor and weak.
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Re:A better idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A better idea (Score:5, Informative)
Actually they exceeded even the minor limitations of the Patriot Act. They lied to Congress about what they were doing as well which is a felony. It seems that if you have enough power the law doesn't apply to you nowadays. If Nixon were president today he wouldn't need to resign.
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Bullshit. On the other hand, I like the argument that Obama = Bush.
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No, Bush and Obama are worse. Nixon could only cream in his pants at the thought of what those two get away with. Nixon merely spied on the opposite party, using clumsy physical thugs. Bush/Obama are spying on 300+ million people and that's just the domestic number.
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You have to wonder what Tricky Dick could have done in this day and age don't you? Imagine J. Edgar Hoover with all these new toys and info systems. Oh man!
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Don't read too much into it. I just grabbed Nixon's name because he was the only President to resign. Obama may be liberal but I don't think he's crooked. He uses the government to rob people which is entirely legal.
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" Obama may be liberal but I don't think he's crooked."
Name 3 policies where Obama is to the left of Nixon.
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Socialized health care.
Abortion
Gay Marriage
That was easy.
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Well a few decades ago you couldn't openly flaunt it. It was necessary to cover things up.
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It's law, it's just unconstitutional law. And you're right, exceeding their authority is a form of usurpation.
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Portions maybe, but the convenient loophole these days is to refuse to hear cases by claiming the parties bringing suit lack standing. Especially when the claimants are actively prevented from gathering information to prove standing, though sometimes they just reject that outright in the first place.
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Then its time to stop seeing the laws of this country as legitimate. New constitution, the old one FAILED.
Re:A better idea (Score:5, Interesting)
There are 4 pages and 4543 words in the original, unamended Constitution including the signatures. It is the oldest and shortest written Constitution of any major government in the world. Compare that to 960 pages for the ACA, about 1300 for a typical Bible, and a whopping 73954 pages for the tax code. I shudder to think what a New and Improved constitution would look like.
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More than anything else, we need a government reset, not a constitution rewrite. I've been saying since the late 90s that the biggest thing we can do to save our nation from its government is to simply take the time, as a nation, to re-evaluate every part of the US Code and other governmental acts and throw most of them out on the grounds of either being discredited or outmoded based on its intent, or no longer performing its intended function for other reasons. What remains after such a process would def
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It's not the constitution that fails when the men who execute it are what broke it. The constitution itself is still fairly solid, our government's adherence to it not so much.
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Anger is what they'd like you to believe (Score:1)
Anger? We are talking about budgets worth tens to hundreds of billions of dollars. You are going to have a hard time convincing me that anger is a bigger movitator than greed. It barely takes a sneeze to leverage $10 million out of a $10 billion cash flow.
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Given the size of the Patriot act and how quickly it was introduced, it's clear it was sitting in someone's desk ready to go. They just waited for something they could whip up into a panic and then introduced it as the cure to what ails ya.
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Well (Score:1)
I'm sure they saw it coming.
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I'm sure they saw it coming.
He saw it on his long range sensors.
Re:Well (Score:5, Funny)
President Obama: "Well Keith, I'm here to.."
Keith Alexander: "Ask me to resign, yeah I knew."
President Obama: Whaat..how you did you know?
Keith Alexander: "Several of your aides mentioned it within hearing distance of their cellphone mikes yesterday."
President Obama: "Well okay, what are you planning on doing now?"
Keith Alexander: "Probably spend a few days whacking it to these pictures I captured from your daughter's cellphone camera. Then I'm going to become the most powerful lobbyist in Washington with all this blackmail material."
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Hey man, he's a Star Trek [businessinsider.com] fan. He's got better taste than that.
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Not if he sees himself as Garak from DS9.
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No he is more like the Ferengi, he has all this technology but doesn't quite know how to use it or what to do with it. but it is shiny.
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Modded Funny? Where is the +1. Scary mod?
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If he saw it coming then Snowden would have had an unfortunate accident.
Re:Running away (Score:5, Insightful)
Ha, even on the HIGHLY UNLIKELY chance any of these scumbags would ever be charged with anything, they would get a full Presidential pardon before the ink even dried on their arrest warrants.
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Bzzzt wrong. A pardon is given to a guilty person. Even to pardon them would be to admit their guilt.
What would happen is the attorney general would substitute the government itself as the defendant for them, since they worked for the government, and thus would shield them from real prosecution.
Then they would declare that none of the evidence can be shown for national security reasons, and once the dust settled on that, the case would be dismissed.
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Nixon was pardoned for any crimes he "might" have committed, so I don't think it requires admission of guilt. (Though there might be a perception of guilt and political fallout from that.)
Even if it did, Obama could just pardon him on his (Obama's) last day of office. If they delay the trial with pre-trial motions for a couple of years, the pardon would come through before anyone does any time.
(Of course, given that there isn't any real suggestion of an actual trial, this is all academic speculation.)
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> Nixon was pardoned for any crimes he "might" have committed, so I don't think it requires
> admission of guilt. (Though there might be a perception of guilt and political fallout from that.)
so did you catch the more recent news? Nixon was KNOWN to have committed treason before he was elected. LBJ's spies had a senior person in his campaign, on a recorded phone call to South Viet Nam, urging the South Vietnamese to pull out of peace talks, promising a better deal under a Nixon administration.
Clear col
He wants to spend more time at home (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, what a punishment (Score:5, Insightful)
They should give him a t-shirt that says "I raped my country's Constitution and all I got was full my federal pension, lifetime healthcare benefits, full pardon for all my crimes, and this lousy t-shirt."
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I'll pay for the shirt, just tell me where to have it sent.
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Oh please...congress raped the constitution long before these guys and they get re-elected time and time again. These people are saints by comparison.
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Federal Contractor. Making at lest 10X his federal salary.
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A new era for The Puzzle Palace (Score:3, Interesting)
Although the general public has always known about the CIA, they used to be totally unaware of existence of the NSA. So, although it's not remarkable that the NSA's head is retiring, it is remarkable that the public knows - or cares - about it. The Puzzle Palace just ain't what it used to be.
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No doubt he's stepping down to "spend more time with his family".
Probably because his wife's e-mail and cell phone records indicate she's having an affair.
But I sent her those emails in ROT13!
Reason for stepping down discovered (Score:5, Funny)
After an extensive audit, it was uncovered that Keith Alexander had system administrator right [slashdot.org].
Okay, now about his perjury (Score:1)
Will there be any follow up to that?
maybe (Score:2)
NSA Director Keith Alexander Is Reportedly Stepping Down
yes ... reportedly. Maybe he'll start doing it for real now he's finished being a front-man.
That's good news (Score:1)
One thing that people talked about was that Alexander knew too much dirt on everyone and couldn't be forced to resign. It makes it easier that he stepped down voluntarily.
If you think about it, the NSA had enough information to force former CIA director David Patraeus to resign. I'm not saying they did, I'm just saying that they had the information and could have done it if they wanted to. But at the same time they were not able to prevent actual terrorists like the ones who attacked Westgate mall. The
Must be nice... (Score:3)
He wins (Score:2)
Mr. Alexander (Score:2)
The State is cannibalizing its mandate. (Score:1)
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http://rt.com/usa/us-nuclear-general-suspended-495/ [rt.com]
and then:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/10/11/air-force-general-in-charge-nuclear-missiles-to-be-fired-officials-say/ [foxnews.com]
Was an item transferred from a US base without the correct paperwork?
Was an item not transferred from a US base without the correct paperwork?
Now 2 top people from the NSA too (civilian deputy will step down too).
Someone is replacing staff around
I am applying (Score:2)
NSA = No Such Administrator (Score:1)
"The spook you are trying to reach is no longer in service. Please hold while, and another bureaucrat will soon pretend not to be monitoring the line."
Do What All Retiring General Officers Do (Score:2)
I don't want to know who's stepping down... (Score:3)
I can't find a reliable source for this now, but I seem to remember someone saying recently (on another, less significant matter): "I don't want to know who's getting fired, I want to know who's going to jail."
Of course, we're not even talking about someone getting fired--we're talking about someone retiring....
anonymous US officials (Score:1)
Am I the only one who finds this a little amusing?
"anonymous US officials told Reuters today"
Nice to hear US official can maintain anonymity.
Too little, too late, end the NSA (Score:2)
The NSA has demonstrated government out of control. The whole agency has got to go. The US, my country, has not only created terrorism where it is the primary target (If the "they hate our freedom" is the cause, then why aren't other free countries targeted as well?) but has managed to lose its trust and influence all over the world due to the NSA's behaviors. Worse, it is also affecting American business as they have been shown to be extremely complicit and so also cannot easily be trusted. I'd like to
The real reason he's stepping down... (Score:1)