[LINK] No more human sysadmins??

[Jan Whitaker]

[Is this even reasonable or possible? Or does this general just not 
know what a sysadmin does? Discuss.]


NSA Chief: Solution To Stopping The Next Snowden Is Replacing His 
Former Job With A Machine
Posted: 08/08/2013 4:16 pm EDT
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/nsa-snowden_n_3727668.html

NEW YORK -- The director of the National Security Agency said 
Thursday that the agency has found a way to prevent further leaks 
about American surveillance by replacing nearly all its system 
administrators with machines.

At a cybersecurity conference, Gen. Keith B. Alexander told the 
audience that intelligence agencies plan to reduce by 90 percent the 
number of people in the system administrator position. Edward Snowden 
worked as a system administrator as an NSA contractor before leaking 
secrets about the agency's controversial cyber-spying programs and 
then gaining refuge in Russia.

The NSA employs or contracts with about 1,000 system administrators, 
Alexander has previously said.

The general said Thursday that the NSA planned to replace system 
administrators with new technology that will make computer networks 
"more defensible and more secure."

"We've put people in the loop of transferring data, securing networks 
and doing things that machines are probably better at doing," 
Alexander said during a panel discussion with the heads of the FBI 
and CIA, which was attended by about 300 people.

Alexander added, "The intent of what we're now doing is to come up 
with ways that limit what people can take, what data they have and 
how we monitor that."

As another step, Alexander said intelligence agencies are now 
requiring system administrators to follow the so-called "two-man 
rule," or having someone with them when they access sensitive data.

Alexander has previously said that the NSA would restrict the use of 
thumb drives by systems administrators in response to the Snowden leaks.

Alexander did not mention Snowden by name, but said new technology -- 
which he called a "thin virtual cloud structure" -- would replace 
employees, greatly reducing the agency's need to trust them with 
protecting government secrets.

"We trust people with data," Alexander said at the conference. "At 
the end of the day it's all about trust. And people who have access 
to data as part of their missions, if they misuse that trust they can 
cause huge damage."

Snowden has acknowledged that his former position gave him enormous 
access to sensitive information. He told the Guardian in June: "When 
you're in positions of privileged access, like a systems 
administrator for the sort of intelligence community agencies, you're 
exposed to a lot more information on a broader scale than the average 
employee. And because of that you see things that may be disturbing, 
but over the course of a normal person's career you'd only see one or 
two of these instances."

The recent leaks by Snowden to the Guardian and Washington Post have 
renewed the debate within the intelligence community over how much 
access IT employees should have to government secrets.

Prior to Snowden, perhaps the most famous case of an employee accused 
of causing trouble on his employer's network is that of Pfc. Bradley 
Manning, who was charged with providing thousands of government 
documents to WikiLeaks. The 25-year-old Army private first class was 
convicted last month on 19 counts for sending a massive trove of 
documents to the anti-secrecy group and faces up to 90 years in prison.


Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com

Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or 
sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
~Madeline L'Engle, writer

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