Wednesday, January 24, 2018

Well played, NSA - NOT!!!


Just after the National Security Agency (NSA) deleted critical data that a court had ordered it to preserve, we learn this.

The National Security Agency maintains a page on its website that outlines its mission statement. But earlier this month, the agency made a discreet change: It removed “honesty” as its top priority.

Since at least May 2016, the surveillance agency had featured honesty as the first of four “core values” listed on NSA.gov, alongside “respect for the law,” “integrity,” and “transparency.” The agency vowed on the site to “be truthful with each other.”

On January 12, however, the NSA removed the mission statement page – which can still be viewed through the Internet Archive – and replaced it with a new version. Now, the parts about honesty and the pledge to be truthful have been deleted. The agency’s new top value is “commitment to service,” which it says means “excellence in the pursuit of our critical mission.”

Those are not the only striking alterations. In its old core values, the NSA explained that it would strive to be deserving of the “great trust” placed in it by national leaders and American citizens. It said that it would “honor the public’s need for openness.” But those phrases are now gone; all references to “trust,” “honor,” and “openness” have disappeared.

There's a lot more at the link.  Go read the whole thing.  It's worth your time.

Tell me, again, why we should trust the NSA to do anything other than betray the trust it so arrogantly demands from us?  And why we should not apply the Aliens solution to it?








Peter

8 comments:

Andrew said...

Only after you get all the evidence to nail the Arkansas Hag and her cotillion of Evil.

Then a small clean nuke, or maybe a nice neutron warhead. Or Heinlein them with a space rock.

Then use the threat to clean up the FBI and CIA and GSA.

It's the only way to be sure.

Ritchie said...

See, this is why we need to be able to steer asteroids. Even just small ones.

Footfall them.

Wraith said...

What unnerves me is that this is a "F.U, come and get us" from the NSA. Just a little too blatant, given current events.

HMS Defiant said...

I think it was Heinlein that wrote about never ever trusting a man who claimed to be honest. I notice that most of the agencies of the government that claim to be honest are about as dishonest as it is possible to get. Those that claim to have integrity have shown over and over again (navy) that they don't have any. It's time to clean house on these agencies and simply remove the parasites running them and put them out to pasture. It may well be that they cannot be fired but if they lose their security clearances they lose their jobs. Let it be so.

Anonymous said...

Well, at least they are being honest in stopping lying about being honest. So they've got that going for them at least.

Borepatch said...

Best NSA movie scene of all time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed1FIRW4HeM

Tal Hartsfeld said...

Can't have transparency without honesty.
Isn't the NSA, in essence, confessing to having "neutralized itself"? In other words, why continue existing? In a nutshell, it's pretty much useless now.

Sam L. said...

Them and the FBI, too.