A former NSA employee review of Permanent Record (the Snowden story)

A former NSA employee review of Permanent Record (the Snowden story) – The Geek Professor
Permanent Record: Edward Snowden
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I wish I could share what it was like being an NSA employee when the Snowden story broke, but I won’t compromise any rules or laws and have to submit everything I write to the NSA for pre-pub review. What I have written is working through the process and, if you’re interested, please click here to sign up for updates.

For now, I want to talk about is Edward Snowden’s book, Permanent Record. Summed up:

Snowden’s releases showed the NSA and intelligence community engaged in proven illegal and perversion of their charter and authorizations that, after public exposure, led to a national review from Congress and the Whitehouse.

I never expected to learn much new about the leaks nor did I, but that wasn’t what I was looking for. What I wanted was to resolve a decade-old incongruity.

On one hand, I knew that Snowden never reported issues to NSA oversight, the DoD, Congress, or any other official channel that would have kept him out of jail. And, to hear the NSA tell it, he was an unhinged narcissist who leaked for pride reasons more than any real sense of civic duty (that’s the gist anyway). Together, it gives a very clear image of a leaker – someone who simply thought they knew better than everyone else and didn’t care who got hurt so long as they got their 15 minutes of fame.

On the other hand – in every interview, every soundbite, every public post – I can’t recall a single thing Snowden has said that I disagreed with. I find him to be extremely well-spoken and a consistent champion of non-techs who are assaulted constantly with government and business overreach. Most importantly, time proved him right – the NSA was illegally collecting information on average Americans.

Ultimately, saying that you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different from saying you don’t care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say. --Edward Snowden, Permanent Record, pg 162

So which was it? Was Snowden a hero? A whistleblower? A pride-filled leaker? After reading his version of the story, here are my impressions:

Early life and career

The first 50 pages or so cover his childhood which I skimmed, but did learn that Snowden’s background was similar in many ways to my own. Not in terms of family drama (of which he had more than most deserve), but in terms of hobbies, love of computers, and falling asleep with our heads on the keyboard after late nights of computing. He’s also a fan of Japanese animations and took language classes as a result (and we both noticed a weirdly high rate of art and design majors in our classes).

Snowden, the man, the legend, the myth

Early in his computing life, he had a neat accomplishment where he caught a national laboratory using poor web server security, though I feel like making minor changes to a web address doesn’t really count as “hacking". Eventually he started his career in the Intelligence Community (IC); something he referred to as being a “spy" despite working jobs that, like mine, were far less world-changing and far more like attacking water with a spoon to keep the Titanic afloat.

I honestly was put off by the way he presented himself as something akin to the Forrest Gump of the IC – always somehow part of the elite and responsible for most major and notable events during his career. I suppose it’s possible (I wasn’t there), but it seemed consistently overstated. What wasn’t overstated was… pretty much everything else. For example:

  • How the government/corporations have perversely conditioned most people to beg for privacy, hat in hand, rather than justifying their worsening violations of our innate rights.
  • How disgusting it was watching DNI Clapper lie to Congress and how Congress was derelict in their duty when they didn’t call him out on it.
  • That, even if Snowden didn’t report issues through proper channels, those “proper channels" aren’t how anything gets resolved – it’s where issues go to die.
  • That the NSA has a bad habit of hiring people only to have them sitting around doing nothing of value – sometimes for months – even years – at a time.
  • The way they use federal contractors (at great cost to both budget and national security risk) to bypass hiring limitations.
  • The deep vanity of some upper managers who think org chart height equals “rank" and complain about “breaking the chain of command" if you escalate issues past them (even if you properly went to them first).
  • And finally (and most importantly), the hostility to whistleblowers – something I experienced first-hand when my clearance was revoked on a custom blend of information that was skewed, desperate, and invented.
It’s easier for an institution to tarnish a reputation than to substantively engage with principled dissent – for the IC, it’s just a matter of consulting the files, amplifying the available evidence, and, where no evidence exists, simply fabricating it. --Edward Snowden, Permanent Record, pg 295

About Leaking

Following Snowdengate, the NSA responded poorly with one exception: they created a presentation for the workforce outlining rebuttals to Snowden’s claims. Among those were:

  1. He was clinically narcissistic and did what he did for personal pride, not national pride.
  2. He never reported the issues to the NSA and never gave them a chance to handle it.
  3. He flew to our two greatest adversaries with the data which is not something an innocent person does.
  4. He exfiltrated data far beyond the scope of the programs in dispute – stuff that seemed intended to harm US interests and the NSA more than help the public.

On the first one, I definitely got a sense of narcissism when he talked about himself, but hardly to the degree the NSA proposed. The vast majority of the book is simply a tale of his exposure to the dysfunction (and illegal activity) of the IC mixed with the immense pressure and emotional damage of his decision to leak. Most importantly, even if he’s narcissistic, that doesn’t make him wrong.

What does make him wrong was bypassing any of the reporting and oversight offices. I can say with near 100% certainty, that nothing at all would have come of it if he had, but if you want to avoid jail and earn the label of “whistleblower", that’s the process.

But even in the best possible case, the whistleblower process of today is not where you go to get attention and change, it’s where issues go to die silently and unnoticed. For actual impact, Snowden wasn’t wrong that he’d have to come in like a meteor. Sure, he’d burn up on entry, but he’d light up the IC on the way down.

One might argue that his accomplishment in bringing this program public and the advances in freedom and accountability that followed make a strong case for a pardon and retroactive whistleblower status, but I had two key reasons I couldn’t agree.

The first is his choice to fly to China-controlled territory and Russia. However, the book outlines very plausible reasons why Hong Kong was the best choice at first. As for Russia, that was supposed to be a pit stop, but his notoriety made getting through Russia without incident impossible (as we clearly saw). I also think that his claim of destroyed the encryption key for the data after giving it to journalists is plausible as well. So, for now, I consider those points generally resolved.

My one remaining hesitation is this: to my knowledge, Snowden left with data far beyond the scope of the problematic programs at hand. It’s suspicious and it’s strange (if true)… but… I’ve faced the NSA exaggerating and fabricating information several times in my career – the most recent resulting in revocation of my security clearance and subsequent job loss.

Maybe the agency was honest in their summary of the data he leaked and maybe it was overblown. Until we have strong leaders in Congress or the Whitehouse to dig into this issue and get a real answer, there’s really no way to know for sure.

Final Impressions

It was pretty wild reading about someone who’s IC journey matched mine in so many ways.

I worked in the same building he had █████. I walked the long tunnel under the pineapples in Hawaii. I’d been forced to read nearly 1000 pages of pre-access documents when I was a system admin. And I saw how clearly apathetic the agency was if you actually read or learned anything before getting that access.

I’ve felt the frustration of working for an agency that should do better and be better than it was. I’ve faced retaliation and security investigation for speaking out. While it may be nothing close to the harassment that his poor girlfriend (now wife, hooray!) faced after Snowden ended up on the news, I’ve had my life put on hold for months and held in purgatory while expenses, fear, and depression wrestled for dominance. And, like Snowden, I am determined not to let all of that stop me from exposing the abuse and dysfunction of the NSA.

We swore and oath to the constitution – one that states that “We the people…" should be sure in our right “to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures". That means calling the NSA out when they go too far.

Despite that, I noticed that Snowden never calls for the NSA to be torn down or disbanded. He never argues they don’t serve an important function. He simply believes (as do I) that, whatever the NSA does, it should be legal and limited in scope as much as practically possible. That means they shouldn’t possess massive and permanent databases of information on non-threats. They shouldn’t be able to hide the details of these programs from their overseers. And, most important of all, they should protect and streamline the vital oversight function of whistleblowing, not retaliate and penalize those that try.

Whistleblowers can be elected by circumstance at any working level of an institution. But digital technology has brought us to an age in which, for the first time in recorded history, the most effective will come up from the bottom, from the ranks traditionally least incentivized to maintain the status quo. --Edward Snowden, Permanent Record, pg 184
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16 Days of Christmas – NSA edition

16 Days of Christmas – NSA edition – The Geek Professor

In preparation for my book, Are You Listening? Lessons in Waste, Abuse, and Mismanagement from the Agency That Doesn't Listen, I thought I'd share some festive ornaments available to NSA employees. Here we go!

16 Years of NSA Festivity!

2005

I earned my Master’s degree on a swank program called the “Scholarship for Service”. It was a great deal: they paid for school, housing, a small living allowance and so on – all you had to do was complete a CS Degree (with a focus on national security) and then go work for the federal government for a few years to put that education to use.

My program director summed it up as ~”the NSA’s attempt to grow talent and bring in new ideas”, which, honestly, seemed pretty smart. While I had reservations working for a spy agency, as long as they were open to new ideas and perspectives, maybe I didn’t have that much to worry about.

Sadly, I discovered that new ideas and enthusiasm are about as welcome in the NSA as a 2am bedside hairball.


2006
2007
2008

2008

Not only was the ornament this year top notch, I was working the best-fit job of my career where I trained thousands of government employees and contractors in Operations Security (OPSEC) principles on behalf of the DoD. I provided both platform training and briefings to agencies such as the FBI, DHS, State Department, and many military installations across the US. Some of the highlights:

  • After Speaking at the State Department Foreign Services Institute (FSI), I was personally requested by the Deputy Director of the FSI to deliver a follow-on briefing to her technology working group as well.
  • I received a letter of appreciation from the office of the Department of the Navy, Chief Information Officer.
  • I led inter-office development effort to rebuild and redesign the IOSS.gov official website with a cost savings of over $300,000 per year versus the replaced contract (so basically, I saved the NSA millions of dollars over the next several years).

  • 2009
    2010
    2011

    2011

    After seven years of living in Maryland, my wife and I wanted out. Yakima Washington was less crowded, less expensive, and only a few hours away from the grandparents by car. I would be giving up the best job I ever had at the agency , but moving close to family on the government dime was a no-brainer. The only thing standing in the way was the poly.

    Things were going well at first, but one of the security questions continued to be a sticking point. My examiner asked about it and, in the spirit of cooperation and disclosure, I waxed eloquent about my strong belief in whistle-blowing.

    It was a huge mistake.

    The exam, which should have lasted less than 30 minutes, extended for five hours. They must not have found what they were digging for because they eventually kicked me out and said “we’ll get back to you”.

    Weeks turned to months as, with every passing day, financial and logistical issues mounted. Our lease expired, my car died, the new school year approached, and my office wouldn’t assign me any work since “they didn’t know when I was leaving”. My wife and I scrambled to deal with the consequences of sitting in PCS (location transfer) limbo while suffering from constant fear that the Yakima office might get tired of waiting and rescinded the offer.

    The whole time, I battled fear and depression until they finally scheduled the second poly (which I passed in 20 minutes) and a follow-on security interview. It was then that I finally learned they had needed time to investigate me fully because I “admitted” in the polygraph that I support whistleblowing.

    2012
    2013
    2014

    I'm almost certain there were two ornaments in 2012 - one anniversary one and one normal Christmassy one - but I haven't been able to find it and I can't find a picture of one online to compare to. But if I'm right, I lost one somewhere and that's sad 🙁

    2015

    The timing worked out to snag a job overseas (OCONUS); a place I wanted to go so badly I told everyone I'd clean toilets if that's what it took. Thankfully the work wasn't much like cleaning toilets, but I still landed in a more fecal position than I bargained for.

    OCONUS is where I suffered the most soul-destroying management of my career. To cope, I learned to speedwalk through the halls, keep my head down, avoid eye contact, and memorize noisy floor tiles so I could get to my cubicle silently and unnoticed. I tried not to talk or send emails that might draw attention, adjusted my work schedule, and timed my bathroom breaks to limit my exposure to abusers. After work, if I noticed certain cars at the commissary or post office, I'd do a U-turn and try again another day. My morning drives were spent decompressing over the previous day's trauma and trying to steel myself for the next.

    One thing's for sure, working for bullies and abusers made my OCONUS assignment a lot less appealing.


    2016
    2017
    2018

    2019

    Back to a good assignment. I was the team lead and lead UX designer for web-dev shop building/maintaining custom applications used to streamline and simplify operations for thousands of employees world-wide. Not only that, but I was selected for a summer leadership program called the Defense Civilian Emerging Leaders Program (DCELP). I spent an entire summer flying back and forth to Michigan to complete the 5-week course. It was a great experience where I met some amazing people from all over the DoD – including some other NSA people.

    When I first flew to the Defense Civilian Emerging Leaders Program leadership program and we were doing classroom introductions, someone audibly gasped upon hearing my name and reverently said, “You’re THE Jeremy Duffy!? I can’t wait to tell the people back in the office that I met you”. You see, I'd become somewhat infamous by that time due to years of speaking out against bad policy, abuse, waste, and calling out execs up to (and beyond) the NSA director.


    2020

    Covid time. By this time, I had been elected as a "Workforce Matters Representative", got a promotion, and was otherwise distinguishing myself not just as an employee, but as an advocate for employees. I admit; my approach was overly combative and put people on the defensive for a long time, but I was really starting to turn it around. I was mentoring the site chief and deputy chief trying to teach them how to better engage with people on site and had even at one point been recognized as one of the NSA’s five top employee advocates by the agency Anti-Harassment Campaign.

    By 2021, I was on my way out, but had been working on a goodbye post highlighting some of the key issues I felt were still unaddressed. I guess I wasn't as good at communicating as I thought because, despite my efforts, I still pissed off someone(s). The post triggered a new "investigation", a psyche eval, and then a clearance revocation listing my book as a "threat", admitting that I'd been retaliated against for supporting whistleblowing, and full of exaggerations and lies (stuff I was only able to prove because I'd requested copies of my own security records years prior).

    I didn't get a 2021 ornament because I left in the summer. Cest la vie!

    And that's the career! Would I do it again? Maybe if I could take some of my current perspective back with me. But one thing's for sure, all those people who warned me not to rock the boat were right in the end. I had a good run, sure, but eventually they falsified security records and left me jobless in the worst job market in decades. It was not fun… although – the only reason I was hesitating to publish the book was because of my clearance. Now that it's gone (ironically) the NSA has removed the only thing that was keeping their ugly side from becoming public.

    Please consider adding your email to my 'book updates' mailer to stay up-to-date with the publishing effort [CLICK HERE]

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4th Amendment Underwear and Shirts

This isn't what it would look like though...

It'd be nice if they could post an actual picture of a backscatter scan instead of a full x-ray, but this is still pretty cool. I personally wouldn't buy one since I'd rather not be scanned at all than try to make a statement after the fact.

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TSA Scanner Political Cartoons

(Image is in the Public Domain)

Check these out 🙂

Also a series of current articles and links about the issue here.

And finally a story of a pat down that's been resurrected from 2002 by Penn of Penn and Teller.

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Nude Scan Photos Weren’t Supposed to be Stored – They Were

The TSA has constantly said that photos from the nudie scanners wouldn't be stored so how did we get : this story of nudie scanners where over 35000 photos were stored. Whoops.

To be fair, this wasn't the TSA, but US Marshalls in an Orlando courthouse, but the technology makes it possible. If the only thing that stops someone from recording a pic is a setting on the machine, I don't feel very safe.

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Prosecuting Whistleblowers

Toot toot!
(Image used under: Creative Commons 2.0 [SRC])

It seems there's a been a big push recently to punish those naughty whistleblowers who leaked government secrets and put everyone in danger. The only problem is, they didn't leak any secrets or put anyone in danger. Instead, they embarrassed their leaders and paid the price.

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Government Employees Have No Privacy on Government Devices

(Image is in the Public Domain)
The city obtained a transcript of Quon’s messages during an investigation to determine whether officers were using their pagers for personal messages. The transcripts showed that Quon had been exchanging sexually explicit messages with his wife, his girlfriend and another SWAT team member.

In the end, the US Supreme Court ruled that for government employees at least, there is no privacy for your use of government furnished equipment.

To me, this is no shocker. What does surprise me is that this made it all the way to the Supreme Court! This guy really wanted someone to blame since obviously someone who's cheating on his wife AND his two girlfriends shouldn't be pointing fingers at himself.

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Police Calm Rioting Teens Peacefully With Ice Cream Music

(Image used under: Creative Commons 2.0 [SRC])

This is much better than beatings and bullets:

Nursery rhymes set to music are deeply uncool. Just ask the bottle-throwing teenagers on the Twinbrook estate on outskirts of west Belfast. Ice cream music was played to them as they misbehaved and it stopped them.

The rest of the article talks about how they were trying to solve the issue with humor and not violence, and yet these police heroes instead got scolded by their command. Not only was this awesome, there are many other examples where a non-violent solution was effective.

Further down in the article is an example where a Los Angeles gang was removed from an area by renaming the street "Gay Street" and "Pansy Square". A commenter mentions that a New York bus terminal was cleaned up by playing classical music instead of rock. And of course there's the Arizona sheriff who found that making prisoners wear pink underwear made them less likely to fight each other.

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22 Million “Lost” Bush-Era E-mails Recovered

I'm outta office. Too late sucka!

E-mail records required by law to be available were "lost" during the Bush administration and somehow no one seemed to end up bearing the responsibility. That aside, the e-mails have now been "found" and it will be very interesting to see what's in them.

Meredith Fuchs, general counsel to the National Security Archive, said "many poor choices were made during the Bush administration and there was little concern about the availability of e-mail records despite the fact that they were contending with regular subpoenas for records and had a legal obligation to preserve their records."

"We may never discover the full story of what happened here," said Melanie Sloan, CREW's executive director. "It seems like they just didn't want the e-mails preserved."

"It seems like they just didn't want the e-mails preserved"…. No kidding. During a time when they were blocking the subpeona's of congress for Whitehouse staffers to testify against them for the screwups of WMDs in Iraq, the CIA leak, the security agency spying case, and more. I wonder what they could have to hide?

More importantly, can they retro-actively impeach him or is there some kind of statue of limitations? One of the biggest mistakes Obama has already made was to say that we should look forward and not back. That is incorrect mister president. The American public needs to see that abusers of power are held accountable. Make it so!

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The Truth About Bottled Water

(Image is in the Public Domain)

This chart is a little eye-opening. I already knew that a lot of bottled water is actually filtered tap water, but I didn't know (nor am I surprised) that the regulation on bottled water is insufficient. If you want to buy a bottle of water, go ahead, but know what you're getting for the money.

Presented by Online Education

The Facts About Bottled Water
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