[HN Gopher] NSA wooing thousands of laid-off Big Tech workers fo...
___________________________________________________________________
NSA wooing thousands of laid-off Big Tech workers for spy agency's
hiring spree
Author : voisin
Score : 175 points
Date : 2023-02-05 15:47 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtontimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtontimes.com)
| pharmakom wrote:
| Is NSA pay still uncompetitive though? I think this might be the
| biggest obstacle to mass surveillance honestly.
| philip1209 wrote:
| "The 2023 salary cap for all GS employees is $183,500 per year.
| You cannot be offered more than this under any circumstance."
|
| https://join.tts.gsa.gov/compensation-and-benefits/
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| That's only base salary. There are quite a few performance
| and skill based bonus programs in the federal government
| which end up in the mid-200s.
| thdespou wrote:
| At least they get to play with some cool "toys".
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| So basically it's still not worth it to work for the
| government, and it's more profitable, literally, to sell
| secrets to private companies.
|
| Absolutely wild and shortsighted.
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| It's less the NSA specifically and more civil service in general
| that you should worry about. Civil service is the opposite of
| everything that you love in big tech - it's neither fast, nor
| efficient, nor progressive, the people you work with will not be
| "best and brightest", the technology you work with will not be
| latest and greatest.
|
| You know how anytime you see more then one cop they are always
| talking about seniority and benefits and how many years, months,
| and days until their next pay grade or benefit tier kicks in?
| That will be you every day for thirty years. I knew people who
| got jobs at NASA, their life long dream, finished their first
| project in record time - were informed the project was a three
| year contract so even though they were done they needed to fill
| the desk for the next two and a half years - so they left.
| Julesman wrote:
| [flagged]
| danrocks wrote:
| Confusing comment with nothing to back it up. Says more about
| you than the entities you're racing against.
| [deleted]
| dbg31415 wrote:
| Not what the world needs.
| magwa101 wrote:
| [dead]
| oars wrote:
| Anyone know what the salaries are like for a mid level SWE in the
| NSA?
| voytec wrote:
| "I got an offer from the NSA" would be a good synonym for "I have
| a very clean and rather thoroughly checked background".
| giardini wrote:
| wayrec says _> ""I got an offer from the NSA" would be a good
| synonym for "I have a very clean and rather thoroughly checked
| background"."<_
|
| Or perhaps not. Complete the initial phrase: "I got an offer
| from the NSA _to be a hitman._ " hardly qualifies one for
| general employment! I would prefer to not be the one who turns
| down such an applicant for a job.
| necroforest wrote:
| i don't think the NSA has hitmen.
| Klonoar wrote:
| Not necessarily - one can get govt offers without the clearance
| in some cases, then go on to fail the clearance check.
| Pegasus930 wrote:
| [dead]
| aaomidi wrote:
| Once they get rid of drug testing, NSA is going to boom in
| hiring.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Non-JS Version [1]
|
| [1] - https://archive.ph/OPror
| cgb223 wrote:
| Is there such a thing as a "Product Manager" at the NSA?
|
| Not sure how requirements work when your "customer" is
| intelligence chiefs and requirements relate to gaining access to
| data in ...unconventional ways
| necroforest wrote:
| yes, they are called Program Managers
| spookthesunset wrote:
| was wondering the same thing...
| renewiltord wrote:
| No chance someone who chose to work at Google for half a million
| is going to work at the NSA for $120k.
|
| Then again, they probably both have lots of jobs where they do
| very little work.
| giantg2 wrote:
| They likely want people to switch for ideological reasons. I
| know of one person who as done something similar.
| exegete wrote:
| What are the ideological reasons? Patriotism? Can you
| clarify?
| ttul wrote:
| It's easy to criticize the NSA because what we see in the
| news is mostly criticism of their failures and mistakes. My
| understanding from the little information I have ever
| received from former NSA colleagues is that the work they
| do is critical for global security. They actually prevent a
| lot of badness and people who work there feel they are
| making a difference.
|
| The other thing I have gleaned is that the work involves
| tech that no one else would ever invest in. For example, a
| former professor of mine worked on an integrated circuit
| VLSI design that was, at the time, at least 10-fold larger
| than any commercial chip. Entirely in secret, of course.
|
| The salary may not be world-beating, but - from what I can
| glean - the work is rewarding and meaningful in ways that
| compensate for the difference in pay.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Secure retirement?
| giantg2 wrote:
| Based on the way the government operates today, I feel
| like the private sector is better. Unless you get defined
| benefits like police and military. I'm not sure where NSA
| falls.
| dopeboy wrote:
| Patriotism is a good one. A lot of people want to serve
| their country but don't want to run for office. This is one
| way to exercise your talents and also serve your country.
| sebastien_b wrote:
| > _No chance someone who chose to work at Google for half a
| million is going to work at the NSA for $120k._
|
| Sure there's a chance, which is equal to the chance the NSA
| will coerce you into it by blackmailing you based on the info
| they have on you.
| sebastien_b wrote:
| Thanks for the confirmation folks.
| nipponese wrote:
| Source: The Washington Times
|
| Founder: Yong Myung Moon, Founder of the Unification Church
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I've seen plenty of comments here from people too moral to work
| at FAANG companies. Let's hope they hold to those morals now...
| philip1209 wrote:
| With the federal salary cap - I'm curious. Is there as much
| pressure to move from IC to Manager?
|
| My impression is that so many people move from IC to Manager at
| startups because they seek comp increases.
| threadweaver34 wrote:
| My not notable FAANG job is within the top 100 pay for
| government jobs.
| theknocker wrote:
| [dead]
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Some years ago there was a "Intelexit" campaign to try persuading
| agency staff to quit. Problem with convincing the most morally
| upstanding people get out is - who does that leave behind? I'm
| not sure bad crowds can be changed from the inside, because you'd
| have a hard time smuggling a truly sceptical mind past indoc, but
| an optimistic take is you could see this as an opportunity to
| change things for the better.
| qualudeheart wrote:
| Selection pressures go brrrr.
| [deleted]
| purututu wrote:
| Where does NSA get the money from to hire thousands (=multiple
| 1000s) of big tech workers? How comes big tech is laying them off
| but NSA can afford to hiring them, in the thousands?
| nirav72 wrote:
| NSA is part of the DoD - the DoD's annual budget at this point
| is north of $700 billion. While NSA's exact slice of the
| overall DoD budget is classified - they're by far the largest
| intelligence agency in U.S government. Many times larger than
| even the CIA. It's safe to say they have the funds to hire
| 1000s of tech workers.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| You
| fogforthought93 wrote:
| All kinds of source I'm sure--for example, the CIA has financed
| all sorts of black operations with drug trafficking since at
| least WWII. Now, that money would not be used to hire the rank
| and file, but it does relieve pressure on the budget.
|
| Ransomware attacks come to mind. It wouldn't be hard to
| subcontract that out and keep even the hackers themselves from
| knowing who they're working for.
| flir wrote:
| Much smaller scale, but I'm sure most of the VPN companies
| run at a profit.
| Pegasus930 wrote:
| [dead]
| slavboj wrote:
| It gets the money from you, and unlike MicroGoogBook, you are
| absolutely obliged to be their customer.
| kilgnad wrote:
| Tax dollars. These jobs are safe from layoffs. It looks really
| bad when the government starts laying off people.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Also borrowed dollars. The federal budget deficit is $1.38T
| in 2022, enough to fund 16 NSAs.
| tcoff91 wrote:
| Its insane that NSA is 1/16 of federal budget. Thats way
| too much money to spend on merely one part of the defense
| budget.
| archgoon wrote:
| [dead]
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Deficit, not budget.
| [deleted]
| willis936 wrote:
| Snapshots are valueless. The deficit shot up to 3T in 2020,
| though I'm not really sure why (;. Then, in 2022 it was cut
| in half. It looks like we're on track to hit pre-Iraq War
| levels of deficit in another few years.
|
| https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-
| guide/natio...
| nostrademons wrote:
| We haven't run a surplus since 2001, and I'd be very
| surprised if we continue to see the deficit decline. You
| can think of 2020/2021 as outliers because of all the
| pandemic spending assistance, and then taking them out,
| we're back on the same trendline since 2015, i.e. up.
| Likely will be even steeper if we get a recession later
| this year or next.
| photonbeam wrote:
| Are they safe from government shutdown brinkmanship
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Usually, government shutdown excludes security-critical
| programs.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| In the past, the government workers got unpaid time off.
| Then Congress quietly voted to reinstate all of lost pay so
| it turned into extra paid time off that didn't count toward
| the vacation allowance.
|
| It's not guaranteed, but I would guess that Congress would
| do the same thing again.
| dpflan wrote:
| Blurb in the article: "The NSA declined to say how much
| taxpayer money is allotted for the hiring effort. Total
| spending on the intelligence community for fiscal 2022 was
| $89.8 billion."
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Government budgets tend to be stable so I suspect they have
| always been hiring this many positions, but have had severe
| difficulties retaining talent with the lower salaries.
| lokar wrote:
| They pay a fraction of big tech
| dogma1138 wrote:
| The gravy train isn't running as well as it used too, and
| even during the glory days it's not like every FAANG employee
| was on a half a mil+ total comp... and not ever tech worker
| worked for FAANG.
|
| You can get a very decent salary with amazing benefits and
| job security working for the government, living in a far
| lower cost area than SF or Seattle and retire early on a very
| generous retirement plan.
| rhino369 wrote:
| I'm not sure the DC is really much (if at all) cheaper than
| Seattle.
|
| And GS salaries are bad. GS-15 tops out at like 160k at the
| most senior levels.
|
| Maybe NSA puts them on a special track, but even that isn't
| very good.
| Klonoar wrote:
| I've lived extensively in both Seattle and DC. DC works
| out to be cheaper at this point.
|
| The GS salary, as you noted, is the bigger issue.
| loeg wrote:
| Ok but like 80-90% of FB engineers are E5s making ~300k+.
| That's a lot more than an upper limit of 160-185k (sibling
| comments). And cost of living in Seattle is not
| substantially higher than DC.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > That's a lot more than an upper limit of 160-185k
| (sibling comments).
|
| The GS upper limit is on base pay. Just as with FAANG,
| you'd have to look at bonus structures too.
|
| It's definitely not the same as FAANG upper limits, but
| it's also going to be a more stable and steady-paced job
| that still pays more than the median developer salary.
|
| There are _a lot_ of burned out ex-FAANG employees out
| there who will gladly take a pay cut to work at a
| different pace. Not all of the FAANG jobs are like the
| "I only work 3 hours per day and make $300K per year"
| anecdotes that get posted here all the time.
| loeg wrote:
| I'd be keen to hear from anyone familiar with GS
| compensation about typical bonuses you might expect in
| any given year. I suspect it's a lot less than $100k.
| mason55 wrote:
| > _living in a far lower cost area than SF or Seattle_
|
| If you're talking about DMV, it's not that different.
|
| This random calculator has SF[1] as 15% more expensive and
| Seattle[2] as slightly less expensive
|
| [1] https://www.forbes.com/advisor/mortgages/real-
| estate/cost-of...
|
| [2] https://www.forbes.com/advisor/mortgages/real-
| estate/cost-of...
| blame-troi wrote:
| Calling Y.T.'s mom...
| vulcan01 wrote:
| It's a shame you're being downvoted for this, especially when
| the reference (or the reference's author) is one of the more
| highly-upvoted suggestions on the yearly book recommendation
| thread on HN.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| As stated, they are wooing you... At a time when you were let go
| for having nothing special to offer.
|
| So now you get to decide if you want to be a pawn for the
| government and entertain their stupid offers so that you can
| essentially be a monkey in front of a keyboard, or if you want to
| wait and improve your skills for a time when they are not trying
| to take advantage of you being jobless and for when you have a
| newfound confidence in yourself.
| alephnerd wrote:
| It's a good job with great benefits, but idk how many FAANG
| employees wokld be eligible due to Drug Testing or Marijuana
| requirements (if you smoked within the last 10 years, you're
| ineligible).
|
| The pay is pretty good for DMV and the hours are great (a strict
| 40 hours and work doesn't come back home)
|
| edit: according to vlovich123, past drug use won't make you
| illegible anymore if you stop at the time of hire
| giardini wrote:
| says _> "...a strict 40 hours and work doesn't come back
| home..."<_
|
| It is unlikely anyone will throw out an eager beaver working
| voluntary overtime. Plenty of stories about this in both
| private and government organizations. In fact, IIRC Snowden
| mentions working over once or twice.
| kilgnad wrote:
| 10 years?? How would they know?
| davidcbc wrote:
| Security clearances often involve polygraph tests. On top of
| that they will interview a ton of people you know. So not
| only do you have to commit a federal crime to cover it up and
| learn how to fool a polygraph, you also have to convince a
| bunch of people that know you to commit a federal crime for
| you.
| csomar wrote:
| I was surprised when I learned that you need to give your ID
| if you want to be marijuana in California. The government
| probably knows if you smoked.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Every marijuana seller, "legit" or not is breaking numerous
| federal laws. If the Feds are interested in you, your drug
| dealer will happily give them whatever they need.
| necroforest wrote:
| Polygraph
| vlovich123 wrote:
| I imagine lying on a federal form is going to be a risky
| move, especially when going to a spy agency that's going to
| do background checks. I'd recommend being honest if you're
| interested in this line of work.
| mountainb wrote:
| It is more than a risky move. It can carry up to five years
| in prison. The statute governing this has been enforced in
| the past in some relatively unfair ways (getting past job
| details incorrect on the application).
| kilgnad wrote:
| This line of work is all about dishonesty. Espionage and
| spying and dishonesty is the job description.
|
| They can't know.
|
| Also I would argue people in the NSA are less honest then
| normal despite the background checks.
| samdcbu wrote:
| People with security clearances spill their guts and tell
| all on their security clearance forms, because not doing
| so is a felony that the DOJ takes incredibly seriously.
| People's most personal and intimate secrets are in those
| forms.
|
| Never, ever lie or knowingly omit information on a
| security clearance form. If you tell the truth and you
| are disqualified, it's extremely unlikely that
| information will be used against you. The FBI isn't going
| to come after you for doing mushrooms. If you lie to the
| federal government while trying to obtain a security
| clearance, they will put you in federal prison.
| lolfullshit wrote:
| [flagged]
| thedougd wrote:
| I've been interviewed by the DOD for friends and coworkers
| to obtain security clearance. They ask all sorts of
| questions.
| pge wrote:
| If the position requires a Top Secret clearance (as many of
| them do), the background check is quite extensive. Expect
| your family, neighbors, former colleagues, college roommates,
| etc to get knocks on the door from guys in suits that will
| ask them questions.
| FpUser wrote:
| Are you serious? You think they'd knock on someone's door
| and start asking questions? And why would people even agree
| to talk to them? Especially relatives and friends.
| necroforest wrote:
| ...yes. that's exactly what they do.
| FpUser wrote:
| Strange. Unless forced I would not discuss my friends /
| relatives with some weirdos. Not in my job description.
| eldritch_4ier wrote:
| Ok, it sounds like you're not working a job relevant to
| national security?
|
| Google/etc doesn't care who you are as long as you can
| make them profits - bad person, good person, etc. I'm
| glad to see that at least the government takes seriously
| the matter of who influences the system with so much
| power.
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| Hair tests can go back very far depending on how long your
| hair is
| hulitu wrote:
| Damn, anyone knows a hair removal agency ? I i mean all
| hair. /s
| vlovich123 wrote:
| The article says that's being waved as long as you don't have
| any continued drug use.
| klyrs wrote:
| Using, perhaps; dealing, not necessarily.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Oh whoa! I didn't see that! Good to hear!
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > but idk how many FAANG employees wokld be eligible due to
| Drug Testing or Marijuana requirements (if you smoked within
| the last 10 years, you're ineligible).
|
| Large numbers of adults have either never smoked, or have not
| smoked within a decade.
|
| Marijuana use is common, but it's not 100% ubiquitous. It only
| feels like that when you're in certain social bubbles.
|
| The illegal restriction will definitely reduce the number of
| applicants, but it's not as severe as you're implying. The
| number of "boring" adults who work in Big Tech is quite high.
| infamia wrote:
| I'd like to point out to the folks up at arms that anyone would
| even consider a job at the NSA, that they might not fully
| understand the dualilty of the NSA. The SIGINT (signals
| intelligence) mission of the NSA is constantly in the news and is
| what folks mostly associate with the NSA. However, it's other
| mission of Information Assurance/Central Security Service gets
| little notice which is responsible for defensive security. The
| hopelessly conflicted nature the NSA is reflected in the title of
| the NSA's website which is NSA/CSS, and it describes the director
| of the NSA as "dual-hatted". The CSS/IA portion of the NSA is
| responsible for protecting the Dept. of Defense from cyber
| attack. It also helps government agencies, academic
| instituitions, critical infrastructure providers, and other
| companies (particularly government contractors) secure their
| infrastructure from cyber attacks. It also develops standards
| around the protection of systems and communication links.
| Unfortunately, this work is tarnished by the SIGINT role of the
| NSA. Very understandably this leads to a lot of mistrust, like
| when the NSA proposes cryptography algorithms for example. It
| also works closely with the NSS who helps produce NIST security
| standards. Just thought I'd point out the two hats of the NSA,
| since many folks don't know about this duality. There was some
| talk about splitting the NSA's dual missions into two agencies,
| but sadly that died off years ago with nothing being done.
| jschveibinz wrote:
| This comment section is useless.
|
| Here is a useful comment: working for that agency results in a
| strong technical experience, a security stamp of approval, and a
| social network that often leads to very high paying contractor
| jobs or the development of startup businesses that end up being
| worth tens of millions.
|
| Did you ever wonder why there is so much wealth in the Maryland-
| DC-Northern Virginia area? Well, now you know.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| Sure, but some people have morals.
| Entinel wrote:
| Is there really such a big leap going from working for
| Facebook to working for the NSA except the spying you are
| doing is much more direct and not surrounded in business
| speak?
| tmaly wrote:
| Your family and friends will need to be interviewed. So
| overall the interview process is a bit more in-depth.
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| People can (mostly) opt out of Facebook. There's no opting
| out of government surveillance. There's no opting out of
| zero days and built in backdoors and secretly modified
| hardware.
| kodah wrote:
| I think OPs point is there is probably very little
| ethical difference between Google, Facebook, and the NSA.
| The people at all three probably aren't also climbing
| moral mountain either. Most people in tech probably have
| to struggle or ignore both morals and ethics, maybe not
| directly about their job but definitely about the
| companies they work for. You can't really opt out of what
| Google and Facebook do, because a big part of it is
| industry influencing and their own opt-out features are
| rarely comprehensive enough to be useful.
| thfuran wrote:
| Opting out of being tracked by Facebook isn't nearly as
| easy as opting out of using Facebook.
| nirvdrum wrote:
| Facebook builds shadow profiles for people that don't
| have accounts. I have a dormant account and checked out
| my profile and they've linked together multiple email
| addresses I've never given them. Ad blocking and tracking
| protection aren't sufficient because retailers give data
| to Facebook. There are ways to delete data now, which is
| a welcomed improvement, but that's after it's already
| been collected.
|
| With that said, I understand the larger point you're
| making about government surveillance. I just don't see
| most people being able to opt out of Facebook. Moreover,
| the government can compel Facebook to hand over whatever
| data is provided by users voluntarily, making the
| private/public split less than airtight.
| bitxbitxbitcoin wrote:
| And "patriotism."
| Marsymars wrote:
| I mean, I'd say there's a big positive leap in working for
| the NSA rather than Facebook. (And I'm not American, so I'm
| an explicit target of the NSA in ways that Americans
| aren't.)
| alephnerd wrote:
| This needs to be upvoted! He's right! DMV has a similar energy
| and vibe to how the Bay Area felt in the early 2000s, and
| that's definetly because of the cybersecurity ecosystem that
| has been cultivated there since Obama 1
| Julesman wrote:
| Because being wealthy is definitely the most important thing.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| Many engineers on this site spend their lives developing
| machines to hook young adults on toxic social networks for
| that wealth
| shitlord wrote:
| This comment doesn't deserve the downvotes.
|
| The surgeon general recently suggested that children should
| stay off of social media because it's bad for their
| psychological development:
| https://www.edweek.org/leadership/surgeon-general-kids-
| under...
|
| There's growing evidence that social media is also bad for
| teenagers. Rates of teenage depression and suicidality have
| increased in recent years, and there is a direct
| correlation to social media use.
|
| Cigarette companies are viewed as evil because they peddled
| addictive, cancer-causing products to kids. Our industry is
| peddling a different type of poison, and I suspect we'll
| have a similar legacy.
| TheNorthman wrote:
| More than one thing can be bad
| ttul wrote:
| Here on HN, it seems to many people, income and wealth are
| the primary determinants of satisfaction.
| mc32 wrote:
| In life, people aspire to many things, but often do quite
| different things.
| yeahbu777 wrote:
| [dead]
| roncesvalles wrote:
| Whatever it is that you consider "the most important thing"
| is probably enabled or significantly enhanced by wealth.
| Money is just a resource.
|
| Often I've found that the people who think money isn't
| important think nothing is important.
| brewdad wrote:
| Sure but the number of people on here who seem to think if
| you don't have FU money you might as well be living in
| poverty is a bit over the top.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > working for that agency results in a strong technical
| experience, a security stamp of approval, and a social network
| that often leads to very high paying contractor jobs or the
| development of startup businesses that end up being worth tens
| of millions.
|
| Even without going into contracting or starting a business,
| having worked a high level job at an agency like the NSA comes
| with a resume boost. It may not mean much to a mid-level hiring
| manager on the west coast who only knows about the NSA from
| what they read on Twitter, but it carries some weight in
| communities that understand what goes into these careers.
| photonbeam wrote:
| I wonder if there is risk that a typical hiring manager would
| consider three letter agency experience to be a red flag if
| they disagree with the agency's behavior
| metadat wrote:
| It makes sense that some folks may not have favorable
| opinions of government employment. At the same time, it's
| worth considering alternate perspectives, too. Any single
| grunt worker has little hope to sway the trajectory of top-
| down mandates at federal security agencies. Even if the
| individual disagrees with the decree.
|
| Should similar forms of micro-judgement stemming from macro
| concerns also be applied to candidates from other
| industries such as adult entertainment or legal cannabis
| operations?
|
| Edit: blep_, all salient points, thanks for sharing.
| blep_ wrote:
| If you think those things are as immoral as what the NSA
| does (I don't), then yes, that seems like a conclusion
| you might reach.
|
| But it doesn't actually matter: we're talking about "are
| there people who believe this and will that belief
| negatively affect me", not "should those people believe
| this".
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| In the real world, I haven't known many hiring managers who
| would discriminate based on former employment.
|
| Hiring managers need to build out their team with whoever
| will do the best job. You aren't entering into a
| relationship with their former employer, you're hiring the
| employee for what they can do for you.
|
| HN commenters might say they'll discriminate against FAANG
| employees or NSA employees or otherwise hold weird grudges
| against employees of companies they don't like, but that's
| mostly just internet bluster. Real hiring managers (that
| you'd actually want to work for) aren't going to
| discriminate against good candidates just because they
| worked for a big company that the hiring manager doesn't
| like.
|
| I suppose there are exceptions to this. If you were head of
| financial controls at FTX, you're in trouble. But if you
| were a front-end developer at FTX and you do good work, I'm
| not going to hold FTX's failure against you.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I would certainly not want to work with a former CIA
| employee. The others I would probably be fine with.
| to11mtm wrote:
| The concern with a former CIA employee is that the
| concern they are not truly a 'former' CIA employee is
| much higher.
|
| Although, ex-mil psyops are not much lower on the list...
| aquinas_ wrote:
| [flagged]
| Bnichs wrote:
| I always figured that the DC area was wealthy due to mostly
| political corruption and creating government contracts that
| enlist a 30 person team over 5 years to design a toilet seat
| for a plane that will be used twice. I didn't know it was this
| mecha of tech expertise and problem solving.
| delecti wrote:
| Not sure if that was a typo, but the term is "mecca", not
| "mecha", referencing the place in Saudia Arabia, where
| Muslims are supposed to make a pilgrimage at least once in
| their lives.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecca
| blep_ wrote:
| I kind of like "mecha", though. Like the area is populated
| by giant robots and they all just agree to not mention that
| to outsiders.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >>30 person team over 5 years to design a toilet seat for a
| plane that will be used twice.
|
| Talk to the carpenters and plumbers working on wealthy
| houses. Once you see people regularly dropping 200k+ to redo
| a bathroom, those government toilet seats don't seem all that
| extreme.
| justinbaker84 wrote:
| You figured correctly.
|
| I understand there is some exaggeration here, but this take
| is far more accurate than the parent comment.
| kilgnad wrote:
| How so? Care to elaborate on how you know this?
|
| Personally I've definitely heard arguments from both sides,
| but I've never known which one was "more" true.
| alephnerd wrote:
| It's much more "middle class" than wealthy imo. For example,
| most lobbyists for top firms earn less than an L3 at Google
| and less than a GS-15 or SES1 employee, and with much less
| job security (for example, if you were an ex-Trump staffer,
| your political currency is useless on the Hill at the
| moment).
|
| There definetly is old money in the city, but it's honestly
| about as prominent as Pac Heights old money in the Bay Area
| and absolutely gets dwarfed by out of towners.
| eldritch_4ier wrote:
| I'm sure you're an otherwise intelligent person, but your
| view of the world has been so warped by living in the Bay
| Area that it's astounding.
| jschveibinz wrote:
| The area has the 1st, 2nd and 4th wealthiest counties in the
| US by median income. Marin and Santa Clara are 5th and 11th,
| respectively.
| erehweb wrote:
| To engage with your comment - some of this experience will not
| be transferable outside government - is this a big problem?
| Also, is DC really that wealthy, compared to Silicon Valley?
| alephnerd wrote:
| Govt experience can translate well into Federal Sales and
| Solutions Engineering and Product Management. I've found ex-
| Govt engineers to be amazing salespeople, because they
| understand both the technical AND the organizational aspects
| in implementing technical projects.
|
| Also, DC is much less wealthy than the Bay Area. The upper
| bound on salaries in the DMV is around $150-200k with 15-20
| years of experience because of how prominent government
| employment is. It's a very solidly middle class feeling
| metropolitan area.
| beckingz wrote:
| The greater DC and Bay Area have the top 8 counties by
| median household income, and 13 of the top 20 counties. [0]
|
| Sure, it's just a bunch of doctors (NIH), lobbyists,
| defense contractors and government lawyers that skew that
| towards only being upper middle class and probably not as
| many ultra high net worth people, but it's extremely
| affluent.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-
| income_countie...
| alephnerd wrote:
| That's a fair point. DMV definetly skews top 10%, but I
| feel the affordability skew doesn't feel as crazy
| compared to the Bay Area. At least there's plenty of
| building occurring in DC and NoVA that helps keep prices
| manageable at the moment.
| betaby wrote:
| So cronyism?
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| >Did you ever wonder why there is so much wealth in the
| Maryland-DC-Northern Virginia area?
|
| Nobody who's ever read their pay stub wonders.
| bobkazamakis wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. Let's assume
| you don't owe spy agency contractors better--you still owe
| this community better if you're participating in it.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Edit: also, you've been doing this quite a bit and we've
| asked you more than once before. We end up having to ban
| accounts that post like that. I don't want to ban you, so
| could you please review the rules and fix this?
| ourmandave wrote:
| And the NSA is practically recession proof, like all the other
| spook depts.
| whoopdeepoo wrote:
| Exactly. I made a fortune as an intelligence contractor during
| the Iraq war.
| voisin wrote:
| Define fortune.
| whoopdeepoo wrote:
| Chump change compared to the hundreds of billions of
| taxpayer dollars wasted but enough for me to not care about
| the consequences of my actions
| [deleted]
| heyoni wrote:
| Doing what? Government IT contracts? Were they easy to get?
| whoopdeepoo wrote:
| First we were looking for potential uranium deposits with
| satellite imagery. When that was no longer necessary we
| switched to identifying targets for aerial strikes. The
| imagery was pretty outdated but they needed a set amount of
| targets each week so we weren't very accurate.
|
| I got the job through family, my uncle was able to get in
| the industry in the 80s.
| rurp wrote:
| > they needed a set amount of targets each week so we
| weren't very accurate.
|
| I don't think that enabling capricious air strikes is the
| kind of work that is going to allay most people's ethical
| concerns.
| the_only_law wrote:
| The nepotism involved probably isn't available to
| everyone anyway.
| anthomtb wrote:
| I have worked with a few folks who did stints with various 3
| letter government agencies.
|
| My takeaway is that you get to do some very technically
| interesting and challenging work. But politics, both
| organizational and electoral, means your cool thing is likely
| to sit on a shelf. They are good places to be if you like
| building for the sake of building. Not so good if you like both
| building and shipping.
| aeturnum wrote:
| There is absolutely money in work that requires a clearance.
| There always has been.
|
| I would also point out that, historically, a lot of "startup"
| culture comes directly from people fleeing from the more
| conservative east cost workplace culture. Consider if you can
| get the life you want working for a security service.
|
| Obviously making between 100 and 200k is a healthy salary, but
| we shouldn't pretend that it's at the top of the industry.
| You're agreeing to a very particular work culture in return for
| middle-industry compensation.
| drblastoff wrote:
| Why are you pretending that $100k-$200k is the ceiling in the
| defense industry, when the comment you're replying to is
| specifically pointing out that it's frequently a stepping
| stone to more lucrative career options?
|
| Not to mention that those nominally earning more in SF/SV
| often have worse quality of life than those earning less
| elsewhere due to housing prices and overall cost of living.
| aeturnum wrote:
| I'm not pretending anything? I'm saying that's a normal
| salary - not bad but not high. Not a very good basis, by
| itself, for picking a job.
|
| Also, low cost of living is great. I have a fully work from
| home position so I could move to a lower cost of living
| location if I wanted. That kind of flexibility is unusual
| in government work in my experience.
|
| Edit: Also - I wasn't saying the pay was bad, or that 200k
| was the max you'd get - I was saying it comes with a work
| culture you might not like. It's not a situation where the
| pay is so much better in return for restrictive culture.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >>You're agreeing to a very particular work culture
|
| There is also still a concept of national service in such
| places. Even as a civilian, some people would rather design
| systems to protect their county than design systems to
| support real estate in the metaverse. Do you want to do data
| analysis to catch terrorists or track international drug
| shipments, or design another algorithm to better serve ads to
| elderly people needing regular diabetic testing supplies?
| alexjplant wrote:
| > design systems to protect their county [sic]
|
| A few months back the US Navy's CTO asked LinkedIn why
| technically-talented people were leaving his organization
| and hundreds of people flocked to the comments to answer
| him [1]. Based upon some of the replies there are secondary
| considerations that override the concept of "national
| service" and stop people from working in this space.
|
| [1] https://www.linkedin.com/posts/don-
| yeske-b7957510_peoplefirs...
| azinman2 wrote:
| Exactly. It seems most feel they're above this, while
| taking everything given to them for granted. This is
| especially true of people who become libertarians after
| they get rich, forgetting everything that made that
| possible, and then wanting to keep it all for themselves.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Like the steady stream of 50+yo tech millionaires who buy
| boats. After decades of working to minimize their
| individual tax burdens and arguing for small government
| they suddenly expect a giant helicopter full of trained
| government employees to appear and lift them out of
| whatever dangerous situation they got themselves into.
| aeturnum wrote:
| Sure man - nothing I said disagrees with that. The parent
| comment wasn't saying "they do good work - you should
| consider it," it was talking about compensation. If you
| want to work for a three-letter-agency then go do it - you
| don't need me to give you permission.
|
| Edit: I also want to point out that there are many tech
| jobs available in the government sector (state / transit /
| local / etc). They generally pay less, but are also less
| restrictive. You don't have to sign up for an intelligence
| service (and everything that means) to serve your country.
| drewcoo wrote:
| National service and profiting from the government . . .
| cognitive dissonance!
| dmd149 wrote:
| I've been working for myself in the government contracting
| industry. Started off with a job, switched to 1099 sub-
| contracting, and now still bill myself out with a few
| employees.
|
| If you have tech skills and a clearance you could probably
| bill around 200/hour for full time work which would be pretty
| healthy income.
|
| Edit: article I wrote about the topic:
|
| https://blog.clearedjobs.net/leveraging-your-clearance-to-
| be...
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| I'm sure that simply working in big tech is enough to get the
| attention of the three letter agencies. I'm sure they have the
| folks that they especially want listed already.
|
| How can one in big tech know that the things that happen in their
| life are genuine and not due to the influence of an agent who
| sees this tech worker as a future "agent of change" which needs
| to be "cultivated"?
|
| How many big tech workers are basically living in a lower stakes
| lower quality Truman show world ran by the three letter agencies?
| rootbear wrote:
| When I was at the University of Maryland in the late 70s, we had
| a student chapter of the ACM that met regularly. Once a year (or
| semester, I forget) we had "Career Night" when local IT companies
| would do a presentation of what they had to offer to future comp.
| sci. grads. We always had a good turn out for Career Night since
| the vendors provided the refreshments, which were orders of
| magnitude better that what we had at a regular meeting. NSA was
| always one of the presenters, and it was an amusing talk because
| they couldn't really tell us anything about what we'd be doing.
| They just said they had interesting problems, pretty much any
| hardware you could name, and decent salaries and benefits. I
| don't think any of my friends ended up working for them, but I
| have known quite a few NSA employees over the years. A friend who
| worked as a Russian language specialist had little good to say
| about the IT system they had to use. I imagine the cryptanalysts
| were the ones with the really good systems.
| alephnerd wrote:
| They try their damndest, but the systems can be a hot piece of
| garbage. That said, it isn't drastically worse than other
| foreign agencies I've dealt with.
| simple-thoughts wrote:
| [flagged]
| sprash wrote:
| From Alphabet Inc to Alphabet Soup. Why not? The former is just a
| front of the latter anyways.
| kilgnad wrote:
| You'd have to be ok with doing a lot of f-ed up shit working for
| the NSA. Enough shit to cause someone like Snowden to Exile
| himself as a whistleblower.
|
| There is no-doubt in my mind a lot of those programs are still
| running and new ones have been initiated.
|
| Although The government protects whistleblowers, the government
| does not really protect whistleblowers that whistleblow
| government shit.
| luckylion wrote:
| Have you looked at Google Ads lately and the detail of
| categories they let you target people by? They do essentially
| the same, so I'm not sure how much different it would be. It's
| possibly easier to rationalize that you're doing this "for the
| security of the nation" and not "for Google's profit" when you
| add a way to find out whether someone is a woman who's about to
| be vulnerable to a certain kind of advertisement because the
| last child is moving out soon.
| kilgnad wrote:
| Well Google doesn't write shit like stuxnet. I don't know for
| sure but I'm pretty sure Google employees can't directly look
| at user details?
|
| For the NSA I'm sure you'll literally be able to look up
| personal details on anyone.
|
| NSA is waaay worse then Google. Or waaay cooler. Depends on
| your perspective.
| qualudeheart wrote:
| Goog employees cannot. Amazon employees have been rumored
| to.
| zirgs wrote:
| >For the NSA I'm sure you'll literally be able to look up
| personal details on anyone.
|
| Without a warrant? That would attract all sorts of creeps
| and stalkers to the organisation.
| luckylion wrote:
| Or it's ... just different. I mean, I'm pretty sure most
| people agree that Iran not having nukes is a good thing.
| I'm also pretty sure that far fewer people agree that
| Google should have a far-reaching profile on every citizen
| who isn't aggressively blocking ads/tracking.
|
| The government does shady stuff, but would you really have
| _more_ trust in a corporation?
| kilgnad wrote:
| Not necessarily more trust for a corporation by virtue of
| the corporation not being government.
|
| I have less trust for the NSA and CIA because of past
| infractions. For example how the CIA was selling coke to
| the US to fund their programs. That's next level shit
| that not even a corpo will do.
| luckylion wrote:
| Corporations wouldn't get people hooked on drugs and
| misinform/bribe doctors to over-prescribe opioids to make
| a nice stack of dollars? I guess the motives are
| different, the CIA does their stuff to fund guerilla
| troops to overthrow uncooperative governments or battle
| the Soviets, the corporations do it so their owners can
| buy another 400ft yacht.
|
| I think it's still easier to rationalize working for the
| CIA than Purdue, and easier to work on mass-surveillance
| for the NSA than for Google. National security vs private
| yachts. I mean, I'd understand if you say you wouldn't
| work for the CIA or NSA because you don't believe in
| their approaches to things, but I doubt you'd say "...
| but I have no problem writing software to push more oxy
| into rural communities and kill a few tens of thousands
| citizens a year as long as my bonus comes through".
| kilgnad wrote:
| As I said I'm making no commentary about government and
| corpos in general. I'm saying something specific to the
| CIA and NSA.
| acdha wrote:
| > For the NSA I'm sure you'll literally be able to look up
| personal details on anyone.
|
| This is contrary to everything I've heard about their
| internal controls, especially after Snowden. He was able to
| get as much as he could because he was a trusted
| administrator, and that was reportedly tightened
| significantly afterwards.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| [flagged]
| newsclues wrote:
| Big Tech is just an extension of the government. Or maybe the
| government is an extension of Big Tech.
|
| But either way, it's the same thing.
| neltnerb wrote:
| Seems nearly certain that they'll end up with employees that
| have a deeper understanding of how Twitter works and how it is
| vulnerable to attack than Twitter itself.
| factsarelolz wrote:
| [dead]
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| [flagged]
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> If you're smart enough to work in BigTech, you're smart
| enough to understand the programs, unlike Snowden._
|
| There's really no such proof for this kind of casualization.
| To get in to big tech you mostly need to grind leetcode, a
| known set of problems that have already been solved and well
| documented. I met plenty of people who can grind leetcode but
| aren't really good at many other basic things in life like
| boiling some pasta or understanding why women's bathrooms
| have tampons. Just because you can grind leetcode, doesn't
| make you smart at everything else.
| astrange wrote:
| I'm in big tech and don't know what that is, know anyone
| else who knows what that is, and doubt my mostly-older-
| than-me coworkers are not just hiding it from me.
|
| I mean, I know it's a Blind meme, but I assume they just
| made it up.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| That's all you need to do to get hired in BigTech, but to
| work in BigTech, you need to understand system diagrams and
| be able to describe the pieces involved. This is exactly
| the thing that Snowden couldn't do, which put him in the
| situation he now finds himself in.
| qualudeheart wrote:
| Could you describe what he misunderstood in greater detail?
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34510696
| notinfuriated wrote:
| > and now every computer literate person knows he's an idiot
|
| So if I don't "know" that he's an idiot, then I am computer
| illiterate. Great argument.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Fair. I misspoke. Every computer literate person who looked
| at the documents Snowden leaked instead of just the batshit
| interpretation of the documents he gave to Greenwald knows
| he's an idiot.
| notinfuriated wrote:
| Fair correction. Your other linked comment describing why
| was helpful. Thank you.
| kilgnad wrote:
| I don't think most people (programmers included) followed it
| in detail as closely as you. Care to elaborate on Snowden's
| misunderstanding or prism?
| samdcbu wrote:
| During the first days of the Washington Post's reporting on
| the Snowden documents, the outlet misreported the mechanism
| for how PRISM obtained it's data. It was initially
| reported, seemingly based on Snowden's misunderstanding of
| PRISM, that the NSA has a direct connection into the
| servers of Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc. That wasn't
| actually true, as the data for PRISM was obtained through
| Section 702 requests the FBI sent to tech companies which
| was a practice established in the FISA Amendments Act of
| 2008.
| hulitu wrote:
| > That wasn't actually true, as the data for PRISM was
| obtained through Section 702 requests the FBI sent to
| tech companies which was a practice established in the
| FISA Amendments Act of 2008.
|
| Nice. Not thrilling, but nice. I'm really sure that how
| they are working because i read it somewhere. /s
|
| Then again ? Why do they need to tape telecom operators ?
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34510696
| giardini wrote:
| "...and the _US governor_ brands him a traitor.... "
|
| Ha, ha! It's the little things that mark a poster as natively
| non-English speaking. But I see you corrected it quickly!
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| You're right that autocorrect doesn't speak English. It
| usually swaps one word in for another, often apostrophe
| errors but occasionally errors with larger edit distances
| like this one.
| theknocker wrote:
| [dead]
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Snowden's exile has a lot more to do with Snowden than with the
| NSA. There are plenty of folks who think the NSA is actually
| doing meaningful defense work.
| n0tth3dro1ds wrote:
| "Meaningful defense work" is not orthogonal to violating the
| 4th amendment. I don't think I've heard Snowden argue that
| the NSA's work is not meaningful. He mainly objected because
| it was unconstitutional.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Although The government protects whistleblowers, the
| government does not really protect whistleblowers that
| whistleblow government shit."
|
| Sort of true, but not exactly true. Thomas Drake was a
| whistleblower. Snowden might have started out as a
| whistleblower (without going through the proper process), but
| has released a lot of detailed information beyond what is
| necessary to be a whistleblower, which could even possiblt
| cause net harm.
|
| Edit: why disagree?
| webdoodle wrote:
| I was a major skeptic of Snowden for the whole first year of
| Glenn Greenwald's releases. The Snowden leak was too
| convenient for folks like me that suspected it was going on
| for years, ever since the 1980's encryption scandal involving
| RSA and also PGP. They were clearly up to no good, but
| without evidence it was easy to dismiss.
|
| Then almost a year to the date of the first publishing of the
| Snowden docs, along came heartbleed, which clearly showed the
| Snowden documents were legitimate. As more technical leaning
| documents came out, they also proved it. Without those
| documents though, we'd be told it was all a fairy tale.
| kilgnad wrote:
| I don't disagree. Not sure who is voting you down.
| joxel wrote:
| People who care about the rule of law and not having the
| most powerful bureaucracy in the history of the universe
| point their targets at our fellow citizens for basically no
| reason.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| If he hadn't released all the information proving that what
| he was saying was true, we'd be hearing about how he was just
| a disgruntled employee with personal issues who was making
| stuff up for the publicity so he could sell books, etc.
| giantg2 wrote:
| That's a possible theory. But then why wasn't that the case
| for Drake? And wouldn't it have been possible to do that
| with limited data release rather than as much as he did?
| For example, how is releasing lists of foreign cyber
| targets, or foreign embassy surveillance useful to he topic
| of domestic surveillance? It seems they released several
| thousand documents to prove his point, and yet it's
| believed that there are over 1M more that he exfiltrated.
| It seems like that's overkill for just proving you're
| telling the truth about domestic surveillance. This might
| have been a case where less is more - if he had
| taken/released just enough and limited the scope, then
| there would be more support for him.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| [flagged]
| nhchris wrote:
| > sold out his country
|
| You mean his government.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| No, I mean his country.
|
| Civil disobedience or w/e against a surveillance state
| culminating in fleeing to Moscow says all you need to
| know about Snowden's commitment to freedom and opposition
| to surveillance.
| nhchris wrote:
| It tells me he's willing to risk his life and freedom,
| and take a big hit to his standard of living and lose a
| cushy job, and contact with most of his friends and
| family, to inform the American people of the crimes their
| government is committing against them.
|
| You said he "sold" his country out, but you got it
| backwards. He didn't get paid for his whistleblowing, but
| did get paid to help break the constitution before that.
| It's those still working for the NSA that are selling you
| out.
| joxel wrote:
| I hope you don't have any power over anyone. Your views
| are a combination of evil and stupid.
| joxel wrote:
| A traitor to what? Not the country. Maybe to the NSA.
|
| To be fair I think the NSA has done more to harm
| Americans than Snowden ever could have (and didn't). If
| you want to call someone a traitor maybe point your
| finger at clapper and the other pieces of shit at the NSA
| that target Americans.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| You sound like someone educated through the circular
| reasoning and echo chamber of Reddit and other internet
| fora.
|
| You're demonstrating a two dimensional, emotionally
| charged view of complex topics, which doesn't reflect
| well.
|
| My apologies for the modest challenge my comments created
| for your worldview.
| joxel wrote:
| And you sound like someone I would never ever trust.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Can you elaborate on what harm the NSA has done?
| joxel wrote:
| Basically everything I have said to anyone since I was a
| young child is sitting in their data center, ready to
| blackmail me if I ever tried to run for office or pursue
| any power.
|
| Ditto for everyone else here that grew up in the age of
| the internet and the patriot act
| giantg2 wrote:
| I agree that there's potential for harm with the data
| collected. I was wondering if there's any examples of
| actual harm.
| joxel wrote:
| The chilling effect it causes has already caused a ton of
| harm. For instance, I can never run for office because I
| don't want the public to know what I said on Facebook
| when I was 16.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I personally think setting up the kinds of mass
| surveillance systems in the United States that both the
| Gestapo and the STASI would have salivated over is
| fundamentally un-Constitutional and the people who did it
| and lied about it deserve serious investigation and
| probably prison sentences.
|
| Also the whole "Russia fixed the 2016 election" line is
| nonsense. The real issue was that the neoliberal economic
| policies championed for decades by Team Clinton
| devastated this huge region of American now known as "The
| Rust Belt" and it was disenchanted voters in that region
| that flipped the election to Trump (not that he did
| anything to reverse those policies, of course). Without
| the Rust Belt flip, Clinton would have easily won.
| Incidentally Obama's diehard 2016 TPP promotion was a
| major factor in that outcome, not that any Democrat wants
| to admit it.
|
| As far as why the Democrats pushed "Russia did it" so
| hard, it's because in normal politics, such a devastating
| lost to a reality TV clown would have led to a shake-up
| in party leadership, and that would have meant FDR-style
| Democrats taking over leadership positions, but that's
| not what the financial oligarchs who control media and
| the neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party wanted, hence
| Russia nonsense. Of course the 'intelligence community'
| got on board, because conflict with Russia is good for
| keeping the bloated budgets intact.
|
| Also, the USA neocon crowd on the Republican side has
| been pushing for war with Russia since about 2003, when
| Putin rejected joining the petrodollar recycling club, as
| per Saudi Arabia. If he had, i.e. if Russian oil money
| was banked with Wall Street, there'd never have been the
| 2008 Georgia war or the 2014 Ukraine coup, and if Russia
| had invaded Ukraine, it'd have been treated just like the
| Saudi war on Yemen.
|
| Notably the one thing Snowden couldn't get from his
| position is the budgetary outlay of the NSA, i.e. just
| how much money went to all the private contractors and
| their hangers-on. Pork city no doubt.
|
| Snowden exposed a lot of gross corruption and un-
| Constitutional behavior within the US government, that's
| undeniable. He deserves complete amnesty and a medal for
| good citizenship.
| lioeters wrote:
| There is more truth in this one comment than the whole
| rest of the discussion. Thanks for shining some light and
| coherence into the confused mess.
| samdcbu wrote:
| I don't think the NSA has ever been able to directly link
| any deaths to the Snowden leaks.
|
| I also don't see how the disclosure of NSA sources and
| methods had any impact on the Russians ability to get
| John Podesta to click on a phishing email.
| hulitu wrote:
| > How many lives were cut short as a result of his
| betrayal?
|
| Yes, how many ?
| gizmo686 wrote:
| Shit like looking at the data that Big Tech has been collecting
| on American citizens?
|
| The NSA is incapable of building the type of mass surveillance
| infastructure we see today. That infrastructure is built and
| maintained by private tech companies. The NSA comes along
| repurposes that already collected data to their own ends.
|
| Further, the NSA's usage of said information has never been
| linked to any population wide mental health crises, unlike big
| tech.
|
| There is also a wide range of work the NSA does, and most
| people working there don't know much beyond their own need to
| know.
| elromulous wrote:
| I'm not defending big tech. That's a whole other topic. But
| as for the government, it is supposed to be held to a
| high(er) standard. This is codified into law: the limitations
| the constitution imposes on the government are not imposed on
| civilians/corporation. This is with good reason: quis
| custodiet ipsos custodes.
| godelski wrote:
| Why is it always framed as a verses conversation? This isn't
| helpful. It is quite possible that people don't like either
| form of surveillance. But let's also not pretend that
| surveillance capitalism is identical to a surveillance state.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| In the context of this thread, because we are talking about
| the NSA hiring laid-off Big Tech workers. The question at
| issue is not, in general, if people have a problem with
| Government surveillance. Rather, the question is if people
| who have built their careers around private surveillance
| have a problem with government surveillance.
| antisthenes wrote:
| Large capital is indivisible from the state. I'm not sure
| making that distinction serves any real purpose, because a
| government that doesn't regulate surveillance capitalism
| effectively makes its stance pretty clear about
| surveillance in general.
| goldfeld wrote:
| The NSA is a big old bitch, "so are your fangs and
| VCs" says the crowd who has the itch for cool
| projects but sees all really as prostitution. Stitch
| up the foul mouth hey, one who pees in the water is
| bound to filth drink, work, make, grow rich but don't
| think.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| It's certainly another one of those public-private
| partnerships, for example the NSA keeps its fiber-optic
| splitters on domestic trunk lines in AT&T buildings, to
| vacuum up all traffic (including that between US citizens, of
| course, which seems to be something of a violation of
| warrantless spying):
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2348156
|
| "AT&T has a fiberoptic splitter copying our data to NSA"
| (eff.org)" (2011, 200 comments)
|
| However there's also the massive Ogden Utah data storage
| center run by the NSA and contractors, which has a constant
| demand for 65 MW of power, I think that counts as mass
| surveillance infrastructure.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center
|
| Seems pretty Orwellian.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| If someone is transiting sensitive data without encryption
| over the internet, and the NSA is included in their threat
| model, then they need to rethink a lot of things.
|
| Assuming the NSA catches and stores the traffic (i.e. it
| passed a keyword/subject filter), they still have to break
| the encryption.
|
| And even if they have devices capable of doing so, they
| don't have capacity to do so on an unlimited volume of
| messages.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| A dystopian system would be more interested in the
| metadata, which can't really be hidden. The Gestapo or
| STASI would work by making graphs of who was in
| communication with who, and then, they'd go kick down
| doors and round up everyone on their list for
| interrogation, because they were somehow connected to
| some bad person via the metadata. Of course, this would
| have a stifling effect on communication and lead to
| constant fear and paranoia in the general population,
| which is precisely what an authoritarian regime would
| want.
|
| They're still pushing this stuff today, not surprisingly:
|
| https://www.ctinsider.com/news/article/NSA-director-
| pushes-C...
|
| > "WASHINGTON (AP) (Jan 12 2023) -- A top U.S.
| intelligence official on Thursday urged Congress to renew
| sweeping powers granted to American spy agencies to
| surveil and examine communications, saying they were
| critical to stopping terrorism, cyberattacks and other
| threats."
|
| "Other threats" such as what, populist movements unhappy
| with the increasingly feudalist-aristocratic nature of
| the United States and the gross corruption seen in
| Congress and the federal bureaucracy?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Metadata is increasingly shifting into the encrypted
| payload, and networks are shifting away (conceptually and
| physically) from p2p channel-based to packet-routed via
| intermediaries.
|
| At some point, the metadata is (user X talks to SaaS
| service Y), and then the trail goes private.
| brewdad wrote:
| This is the NSA we're talking about. They will simply put
| their hooks inside service Y and collect the data there.
| hulitu wrote:
| > If someone is transiting sensitive data without
| encryption over the internet, and the NSA is included in
| their threat model, then they need to rethink a lot of
| things.
|
| You still think that the "security" certificates make you
| secure ? that s in https stands for security ?
|
| Why would a spy agency collect TB of data without a mean
| to decrypt it ?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Encryption doesn't require certificate authorities and
| TLS.
|
| And the NSA is doing that because they can break a
| percentage of it, or anticipate they can in the future.
|
| And it's order of exabytes of data.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| Data collection has never been used by government agencies to
| do bad stuff? You must have forgotten about Nazi Germany.
| Where it suddenly was very convenient the state knew who was
| Jewish.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| The Holocaust would have been horrendously more effective
| had Nazi Germany convinced Europe's citizens to self-
| register on Facebook and declare their own religion.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| Many of Europe's citizens actively helped to identify and
| genocide Jews
| bushbaba wrote:
| Many of Europe's citizens got to keep Jewish apartments,
| jewelry, and assets for free. Heck take Ukraine, where
| did all those Jewish belongings go? Ukraine had 1million
| Jews die in ww2. Even more fled. Yet all the wealth from
| those Jews was never returned to the families or
| survivors.
| threadweaver34 wrote:
| If you blow the whistle on big tech for doing something
| illegal, you get a pat on the back and a cash reward. Blow
| the whistle on the US government doing something illegal and
| you're either hanging out with your new friend Vlad or in
| pound me in the ass prison.
| hulitu wrote:
| Ahh, you mean TikTok right /s
| [deleted]
| soup10 wrote:
| >The NSA is incapable of building the type of mass
| surveillance infastructure we see today. That infrastructure
| is built and maintained by private tech companies.
|
| This is false, the snowden releases showed they have
| extensive infrastructure that aggregates data from many
| different sources.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Parent's point is that any NSA system falls far short (in
| comprehensiveness and freshness) of what Google, Facebook,
| Microsoft, and Apple have (in addition to their analogs in
| other countries).
|
| At the end of the day, worldwide profit scales systems
| faster than even national security dollars.
| soup10 wrote:
| And parent's point is wrong, because A) the NSA has
| broader legal powers to collect and use data, and B) the
| NSA's mission is literally signal intelligence. They
| aren't in the business of making phones or serving ads.
| Of course without inside knowledge of how companies are
| collecting and using data and what exactly the NSA is
| doing there's no way to know for sure. But the public
| revelations of what the NSA are doing go far beyond what
| we've heard tech companies are doing.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| Yet it was private companies that managed to get almost
| everyone to carry around a microphone, video camera,
| accelerometer, gps device which they also use to store
| and transmit the majority of their personal
| conversations.
|
| Granted, they do not snoop on you to the maximum extent
| the hardware of these devices allow. But, take a look at
| [0]. Unless you are one of the few people who goes out of
| their way to limit tracking, do you think that the NSA
| would be able to get that detailed tracking of everyone's
| movements.
|
| And this is just the obvious part (which Google is nice
| enough to share with its users as a feature). Big tech
| companies have also built detailed models of most
| people's interests; which is simply not possible without
| the large amount of data that comes from people actually
| interacting with them.
|
| All of the NSA's dragnet surveillance is built on the
| back of private industry, and works because that private
| industry has convinced people to participate in it.
|
| [0] https://www.google.com/maps/timeline
| soup10 wrote:
| It's true that state surveillance infrastructure is
| mostly built on top of civilian infrastructure, the
| original post just made it sound like the NSA didn't have
| its own enormous datacenters and wasn't slurping and
| processing an extraordinary amount of data.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| > Shit like looking at the data that Big Tech has been
| collecting on American citizens?
|
| Yes. When we elect our officials we grant them significant
| power. We have rules they must abide by to protect us from
| that power (I.e. using this data to interfere with elections
| to continue/advance their power.)
|
| This is substantially different than private industry. Don't
| get me wrong, surveillance capitalism is its own shade of
| gray. But the government laundering away constitutional
| rights through collaboration with private industry and
| protecting themselves from prosecution for their crimes by
| labeling these collaborations a state secret?
|
| Between their clandestine organizations, their militaries,
| and their law enforcement - the government is capable of
| perpetuating more crimes against humanity than their private
| industry counterparts.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| >You'd have to be ok with doing a lot of f-ed up shit working
| for the NSA.
|
| If the paycheck is ok
| qualudeheart wrote:
| Yeah. Same here. I need money for early retirement and I
| don't care how many eggs have to be cracked to make that
| omelette.
| jlarocco wrote:
| Seems like the type of people comfortable with secretly
| gobbling up other's private info would be right at home...
| sharkweek wrote:
| "Why shouldn't I work for the NSA? _chuckles_ It's a tough
| one... but I'll take a shot."
|
| https://youtu.be/mJHvSp9AKYg
| dehrmann wrote:
| Didn't I see this guy hawking crypto a year ago?
| lokar wrote:
| Why go to the NSA when you can do just as much evil (for the
| same people) at palantir for twice the pay?
| kilgnad wrote:
| Because palantir can lay you off.
|
| Also the scope of the NSA is much more broad and you'll also
| have the possibility to work on stuff that could be closer to
| ops stuff as well.
|
| For example I don't think palantir works on shit like stuxnet
| or deploying stuxnet.
|
| Last I read about palantir it was some boring ass search
| graph relationship thing.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| > For example I don't think palantir works on shit like
| stuxnet or deploying stuxnet.
|
| You mean they don't help prevent a hostile state from
| developing nuclear weapons? All withou causing anything
| approaching the collateral damage (and risk of open war)
| that a traditional attack on infrastructure would cause?
|
| Setting aside the fact that the NSA work sounds a lot more
| interesting from a technical perspective [0], a lot of
| people would find the work far more fulfilling than
| convincing people to buy widgets they don't need.
|
| [0] Especially considering that the day to day work of
| working for a large government organization is far more
| boring, even without the extra headache that comes with
| working with classified materials.
| filoleg wrote:
| > You mean they don't help prevent a hostile state from
| developing nuclear weapons? All withou causing anything
| approaching the collateral damage (and risk of open war)
| that a traditional attack on infrastructure would cause?
|
| I think the parent comment fully agrees with you on this.
| Their whole reply is just saying that despite paying
| more, Palantir isn't nearly as layoff-proof as NSA, and
| you don't get to work on such a wide range of "cool"
| things (such as stuxnet) at Palantir either.
| newsclues wrote:
| > For example I don't think palantir works on shit like
| stuxnet or deploying stuxnet.
|
| Stuxnet was developed in a way that Palantir or other
| people outside the ultra secrete government cyber weapons
| labs, could have been contracted to work on parts of it,
| government may have merely assembled parts of code sourced
| from private industry to create the malware.
| samdcbu wrote:
| The NSA's TAO (tailored access operations), the group
| that wrote Stuxnet and is known to the cybersecurity
| community as The Equation Group, is not known to work
| with outside contractors to develop malware. They're more
| likely to collaborate with GCHQ and Israel's Unit 8200,
| but not contractors. The NSA does some of the most
| advanced malware and vulnerability research internally,
| no contractor has the capabilities they do internally.
| They might buy some premade malware from contractors, but
| for a highly targeted piece of malware like Stuxnet it
| would be developed internally.
| newsclues wrote:
| The compartmentalization required for NSA TAO to
| interoperate with GCHQ or Israeli Unit 8200 or the
| French, Canadians, Germans, Australians etc, is the same
| as if they wanted to plug in code from some private
| network or PLC expert.
|
| I'm not saying that they are going to subcontract out
| everything or the important things, but their advantage
| is being able to leverage private industry for specific
| knowledge and expertise.
| moremetadata wrote:
| >no contractor has the capabilities they do internally.
| Thats where you are wrong! Capitalism enables the
| greatest number of (self/mon(k)ey token) motivated
| varieties, beit innovations, why do you think ESA just
| put out a request for idea's on the space suit to be used
| on the moon? The creativity of unrestricted thinking
| especially from kids, is massively untapped, they are
| natural operating-in-plain-site Dimenthyltryptamine users
| for a start, unconditioned by university's, culture and
| life in general!
|
| Saying that though, working for govt in any form comes
| with its own risks. https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Document:
| NSA_GCHQ_and_the_Death_...
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6585263/Damning-
| new... https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Chelsea_Manning
| https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Julian_Assange
|
| Sometimes being in the public spotlight is the less
| dangerous path, which these NSA jobs are not.
| https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Bill_Clinton
|
| Accidents happen. Prison happens. Intelligence gathering
| comes in all shapes and sizes, but one thing is for
| certain, it was previously thought being on the right
| side of the law was a psychological advantage, its not
| any more, it could be extremely risky. This is the era of
| psychological warfare, and the best candidates are those
| who volunteer for their trauma as any Emergency Response
| (Police/Fire/Ambulance) person knows.
|
| Psychological trauma is a life long condition with no
| visible scars.
|
| How you survive working for the state largely depends on
| your own intelligence, but you can bet your bottom dollar
| you will be experimented in ways that science dictates
| that subjects are not too be made aware of any said
| experiment.
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