Breath of fresh air -- while everyone is busy trying to tear apart what I said (even though I've worked in the NSA, CIA, and with the FBI and consider myself a credible source), you, sir, have your facts correct.
What all of the anti-NSA sentiment fails to address is the actual truth of the matter. The NSA is the only intelligence agency with its shit together, and provides the most actionable intelligence to decision makers. That being said, their collection strategy is determined by policy makers (in Washington) based off of what policy makers deem are the most important priorities. This means that the cycle works like this:
1. Policy makers determine what are their priorities pertaining to foreign policy, national security, etc.
2. *Policy makers provide that list of priorities to the NSA.
3. The NSA returns with what is needed in order to fill those priorities such as budgets and policy changes.
4. Policy makers take that information and weigh the cost/benefit of changing current policy, allotting more funding, etc.
5. NSA sends reports on collection, which policy makers have access to.
6. Policy makers take that information and provide feedback as to the helpfulness of it, who it was briefed to (as in, how high it was briefed), and what direction they are more interested in seeing reporting go.
The NSA is a well-greased cog in a malformed machine. Don't blame the NSA for performing the duties they've been directed to do -- blame the politicians directing them to do it.
In closing, the whole fact that public policy is shifting from all of the backlash is kind of heartening in that it shows the public does have a say in the process. I can't speak to the things in the news, but I will say that collecting on a US person is the fastest way to get fired in the NSA. That's probably why I find it so ironic for all the people deriding NSA now, and NSA having to take the "neither confirm nor deny" stance.
>In closing, the whole fact that public policy is shifting from all of the backlash is kind of heartening in that it shows the public does have a say in the process
I can understand a lot of your comments in this thread, but not this one. The only reason the public has the chance to influence this process is due to leaked information. There is not an official system of checks and balances of which the general public may play a part.
I'm going to stick my neck out a little and say that the reason for this line is this:
I don't believe in the veracity of the leaked documents detailing PRISM. As I'm not in there anymore, this is not a confirmation of anything, just personal belief (speculation). I, for one, have seen one too many shit powerpoints floating around NSANet written by some military E-6 trying to explain some difficult concept to a group of E-5's. What do they do? Generalize and over-simplify. Just because it has classification markings doesn't make it official -- when I emailed friends to say "Hey, you want to get lunch today?", sometimes it was marked as top secret because I forgot to change it.
A sysadmin is a job that has little to no understanding of operating concepts, architecture, and program scope. It's someone you go to when you accidentally lock yourself out of your account and need to change your password. It's a Tier-1 technician who sees a green box in a network diagram go red, and start making phone calls to people who are actually capable of a root-cause-analysis (tier-3 technicians). So, a sysadmin swoops up a bunch of powerpoints knowing nothing about the operational details of the programs they seem to be describing, and posts them for people to read and make their own conclusions using only those powerpoints as a source of information. That whole way of starting a public discussion is flawed, because the information contained therein is so utterly questionable to me. Regardless of that, I'm glad that online privacy (which is something I strongly believe in) is finally being publicly discussed, which is why I said that.
What all of the anti-NSA sentiment fails to address is the actual truth of the matter. The NSA is the only intelligence agency with its shit together, and provides the most actionable intelligence to decision makers. That being said, their collection strategy is determined by policy makers (in Washington) based off of what policy makers deem are the most important priorities. This means that the cycle works like this:
1. Policy makers determine what are their priorities pertaining to foreign policy, national security, etc.
2. *Policy makers provide that list of priorities to the NSA.
3. The NSA returns with what is needed in order to fill those priorities such as budgets and policy changes.
4. Policy makers take that information and weigh the cost/benefit of changing current policy, allotting more funding, etc.
5. NSA sends reports on collection, which policy makers have access to.
6. Policy makers take that information and provide feedback as to the helpfulness of it, who it was briefed to (as in, how high it was briefed), and what direction they are more interested in seeing reporting go.
The NSA is a well-greased cog in a malformed machine. Don't blame the NSA for performing the duties they've been directed to do -- blame the politicians directing them to do it.
In closing, the whole fact that public policy is shifting from all of the backlash is kind of heartening in that it shows the public does have a say in the process. I can't speak to the things in the news, but I will say that collecting on a US person is the fastest way to get fired in the NSA. That's probably why I find it so ironic for all the people deriding NSA now, and NSA having to take the "neither confirm nor deny" stance.