NSA Intends To Fire 90% Of Their System Administrators

By EmmaZahn on Fri, 08/09/2013 - 3:03pm |

(Reuters) - The National Security Agency, hit by disclosures of classified data by former contractor Edward Snowden, said Thursday it intends to eliminate about 90 percent of its system administrators to reduce the number of people with access to secret information.

[...] The remarks came as the agency is facing scrutiny after Snowden, who had been one of about 1,000 system administrators who help run the agency's networks, leaked classified details about surveillance programs to the press.

URL:

http://www.businessinsider.com/nsa-firing-sysdadmins-2013-8

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Geez, amazing. 90%? You can't trust a geek, fire them all? Isn't this sort of like: you can't find a Pashtun translator you can trust?

And to systems administrators in private jobs: be afraid, be very afraid. Geek libertarianism is not going to help you now in keeping that good salary...

by artappraiser on Fri, 08/09/2013 - 4:03pm

NSA director says "automating much of the work would improve security." Because wholly automated systems virtually never experience glitches. And I'm sure having 900 disgruntled ex-employees with intimate knowledge of NSA operations won't pose any problems either. Amazing!

by acanuck on Fri, 08/09/2013 - 7:59pm

The stuff about automation in the article seems to be a way to not talk about outsourcing security work as a corporate enterprise.

Or: 'Snowden was just a cog that another cog could cog just as well as a wood chuck could chuck wood.'

This announcement comes at an interesting time. With the shuttering of embassies in anticipation of terror attacks, at least some people think the work done by these contractors has no bearing on the present circumstances.

Why fire these people just now?

by moat on Fri, 08/09/2013 - 8:42pm

not much in the way of details and the devil is in the details.

automation has a tendency to be very specific in carrying out tasks, but not everything can be documented with the associated taskings necessary to be carried out

and sometimes automation does the unexpected and puts something somewhere where it doesn't belong and no one can locate it later when its needed.

and then there are times when it's flagged in a way that makes it either a false positive or a false negative.

automation can't make cognitive decisions ... I would think the NSAwould know tht.

by Beetlejuice on Sat, 08/10/2013 - 12:21pm

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