Why the NSA Can't Replace 90% of Its System Administrators 251
An anonymous reader writes "Curious about the recently purposed NSA cuts, Courtney Nash explores a few myths about systems automation 'In the aftermath of Edward Snowden's revelations about NSA's domestic surveillance activities, the NSA has recently announced that they plan to get rid of 90% of their system administrators via software automation in order to "improve security." So far, I've mostly seen this piece of news reported and commented on straightforwardly. But it simply doesn't add up. Either the NSA has a monumental (yet not necessarily surprising) level of bureaucratic bloat that they could feasibly cut that amount of staff regardless of automation, or they are simply going to be less effective once they've reduced their staff.'"
change of title? are all IT system administrators (Score:3)
change of title? are all IT workers called system administrators? do all IT works say do stuff maybe 1-2 times an week that classes them as an system administrator? maybe with more automation then that 1-2 times a week can go a way?
Re:change of title? are all IT system administrato (Score:5, Insightful)
My guess is a change of title, too.
I don't understand why the news and journals report what the NSA announces. For a long time this agency didn't even exist officially. They are allowed and expected to lie about absolutely everything, there are not even reliable records on how many people they employ. Their official statements are and have always been deliberate bullshit and disinformation. It's pointless to take into account anything they say about themselves at all.
Re:Laying off Americans, hiring Bangladeshi ? (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps NSA is not kidding
Perhaps they will just go ahead and lay off 90% of their admins, who are American citizens
And then, they will hire admins from Bangladesh as replacement
NSA doesn't need to be troubled by admins who are American citizens who understand the concept of Liberty, Human Rights, and Democracy - they can hire replacement admins from 4th world countries where nobody cares about any of those "Western Luxuries"
Actually this is a good point. If the sysadmins are not American citizens and are not based in America then the NSA can legally spy on them with no problems.
So yeah NSA outsourcing system administration to India might be a winner!
Re:Laying off Americans, hiring Bangladeshi ? (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps NSA is not kidding
Perhaps they will just go ahead and lay off 90% of their admins, who are American citizens
And then, they will hire admins from Bangladesh as replacement
NSA doesn't need to be troubled by admins who are American citizens who understand the concept of Liberty, Human Rights, and Democracy - they can hire replacement admins from 4th world countries where nobody cares about any of those "Western Luxuries"
Actually this is a good point. If the sysadmins are not American citizens and are not based in America then the NSA can legally spy on them with no problems.
So yeah NSA outsourcing system administration to India might be a winner!
Pakistan would be even better, then if any of them cause problems they can just send in a drone
Re: Laying off Americans, hiring Bangladeshi ? (Score:5, Insightful)
SILLY RABBIT!
The NSA will just set up shop in Dubai, with their other Haliburton friends... They will import labor that can barely speak English, and with Dubai's labor laws they can literally padlock the employees to the desks.
Manning and Snowden both prove anybody not an "Inquisitor" for the team is a liability to the cause. They consider themselves OUTSIDE the law, don't expect them to learn the lessons we think they should.
This is a message (Score:3)
This comment has been generated by obligatory troll-bot 10000, an innovation of Huawei and your local NSA front. Have a nice day.
Outsource to China (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe instead of cutting staff numbers they can just outsource the administrators to China?
To The Cloud (Score:2)
My not just migrate To The Cloud.
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Even better, fire 90% of sysadmins then give the rest of the employees admin access. The problem of sysadmins is now solved...
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Whoosh...
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Re:outsource to F*** Up and give up control of dat (Score:5, Insightful)
Hello? Have you have your sarcasm detector surgically removed?
And please don't do that fucking boneheaded bit with the fucking asterisks. If you're really fucking old enough to say "fuck" and that's what you fucking mean, then fucking say "fuck", already. Otherwise, just fucking use a different fucking word.
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Yes, that's a pretty apt description of the likely downward spiral of greed.
(I guess I was just busy enjoying some cheap thrills, watching JD troll himself with the China reference at the top of the thread.)
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Hey, they were the ones that claimed that noone need to have anything to hide, unless they are terrorists. In the other hand, maybe the ones that order drone strikes qualify as that.
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H* w** b**** fucking s********, y** fucking i****.
They seem to have a strategy (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently they look for clues to organizations that have solved similar problems.
NSA Boosting Automation in Wake of Snowden Leaks [wsj.com]
The agency has created a private cloud using OpenStack, a Web standard developed by NASA and Rackspace Hosting Inc. Analysts say this lets the NSA run its IT operations in a way that more closely mirrors that of Amazon.com Inc. or Google Inc. Previously, it took weeks or months for employees at NSA to get access to computing resources, said Nathanael Burton, a computer scientist speaking at the OpenStack Summit in Portland in June. The private cloud “let us grow to a scale that a very small team of 12 to 15 people could manage,” he said.
“We’ve transformed the NSA and over the next few months we’re going to be working with the larger intelligence community to roll out our OpenStack system across the entire intelligence community,” said Mr. Burton in a video of the conference. The NSA did not respond to requests for comment.
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Woohoo! The Cloud is the solution to all our problems! We're saved!
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Shhhh. Shhh. Shh. Sh. This will be funny. They will narrow it down to several people, who will be totally trusted with all the secrets, and one of them will make out with everything, all at once.
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That whooshed right past you, didn't it?
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Start with History of Computers 101.
Nothing is new under the sun.
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It's hard to set things up so that secrets are 100% isolated from those who don't need to know them while providing "cloud" style management. The "users" might not be able to see each others data, but typically the admins in practice end up being able to see everyone's secrets.
So if you are going to have fewer admins, it means those fewer admins are going to ha
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The NSA always worked with small groups cold. What you seem to be suggesting is the NSA is having its own past resold to it by private contractors with open ended data costs. Better private sector vetting for real this time too?
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This is not about renting floorspace, cooling and adding ever more size.
The cloud is for data sharing ie connecting to others in the US gov and getting data in from private groups/contractors.
Again the NSA always used "logical, not just physical" file "access" to keep staff from seeing the full projects.
You mention "maintain" - someone still has to look after all the new new captured/shared files
We know nothing (Score:4, Interesting)
Since "anonymous reader" isn't in a position to know anything about how the NSA's systems are set up, what these administrators exactly do, who has/needs administrator privileges vs. who could do their jobs with reduced privileges, etc., etc., then isn't this discussion even more of a waste of time than usual on slashdot?
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then isn't this discussion even more of a waste of time than usual on slashdot?
Law of headlines... no. It's probably about the same amount of time wasted.
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You can understand the option to collect all info in real time and then not want to move vast amounts of bulk data around the world, so it it worked on in safe regions eg UK, Australia, NZ.
We know the data "out" is a select stream returned to the USA in near real time.
We know the brands of super computers, power needs and cooling water use.
We
the bright side (Score:5, Insightful)
> or they are simply going to be less effective once they've reduced their staff.
Which wouldn't be such a terrible thing.
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Will be. They will still be collecting everyone's information, but as with less staff could be less secure, and an external intrusion there will mean that even more people with bad intentions will be able to access your information, or get 0day vulnerabilities right from the source, or use the backdoored (by them) systems in all the world to do a test drive of the attack the NSA is preparing [schneier.com].
Point to you. I would reply that, perhaps I'm being too optimistic, but I'd like to think that such occurrences would serve to further discredit the NSA, making it more likely that such information gathering and intentional security breaches (backdooring being essentially that) would be curtailed. So, short run, sucks, but long run, better.
The idea being, people who can't be trusted with security, should have security taken away from them.
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> or they are simply going to be less effective once they've reduced their staff.
Which wouldn't be such a terrible thing.
Or they can be easily disabled by a small but disgruntled group of sys admins. See Terry Childs [wikipedia.org] for an example of what can happen when a limited number of people hold the keys to the kingdom.
I'd be far more worried.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The worst thing you can do with a person in a privileged access position is tell that person substantially in advance that they have a 90% chance of being made redundant. The overwhelming majority of people are reasonable, rational and won't do anything - but when you have such a large set of people - some won't be so amenable to being pushed out the door.
In short, I'd be surprised if they haven't created a small army of potential Edward Snowden's through this. Wherever I've worked, if we made a system administrator redundant we'd have disabled their account before they were told and then broke it to them - even if it was under consideration, we'd send them home with pay for the duration - it's just common sense.
-SG
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The Soviet Union picked up so much form UK staff in the 1950/70's via poor working conditions/pay.
The UK staff where mostly in the gov and had real standing, rank, jobs.
If your security clearance is the only way to work and its not worth as much outside the gov?
If a contractor job gave you standing, a good lifestyle, holidays (as in time and cost), rent, a good car - what is waiting?
A resume t
Simple solution (Score:2)
Replace computers with typewriters [slashdot.org].
Only one thing is for sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
... 100% of potential leakers are now 90% sure that they're going to lose their job anyway.
Carry on, NSA.
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The catch is... the ones who are left, are going to be the ones that get to maintain the automated scripts; as a result, the 10% who are left are probably going to wind up being the go-to folks, which ultimately suggests the administrative duties and powers the 90% had will now be concentrated in the 10% --- so if one of those guys turns out to be bad, it may be even worse, and there will be fewer other h
Re:Only one thing is for sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
also denigrating the character of System Administrators as a class, that they would betray their country over a job
Quite the opposite - they appear more likely than typical to betray their job for their country.
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...that they would betray their country...
"If you see something, say something." Failing to report a crime can get a guy in trouble...
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Probably hundreds of thousands of people have worked for the NSA and only a small hand full of them have betrayed their country, stole secrets, and defected.
Working for the NSA is a betrayal of country, so I think that 100% of those people have by definition earned your disapproval.
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ie not wondering about 'work' in a week, month or year. You now have many more staff been given a few years of the same clearances with all the wages and contacts of moving 'up' or been very job secure.
MI6/5/GCHQ can tell the NSA what the outlook is when you dont keep that full wage/full pension deal on averag
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"and only a small hand full of them have betrayed their country"
You have a very interesting definition of "betrayed", personally I'd say that those who violated their oaths of office, ignored the highest laws of our land, lied to the people REPEATEDLY & continue to waste billions upon billions of our dollars are those who are betraying our country. Those who brought these crimes into the light of day, no matter their motives, may not be full fledged hero's. But they are certainly more worthy of praise
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Do you really know that many people that shallow?
I know of a lot of people that I think are that shallow.
Few, nay... none of them are system administrators.
System administrator is a position of trust. The ones who aren't trustworthy either aren't system administrators, or they are very good at hiding their poor character.
Not that I necessarily think Snowden was a person of poor character; nonetheless, the NSA is charged with protecting secrets, and analytically speaking -- whether you agree w
Encrypt their data (Score:2)
The NSA could certainly prevent 90% of their systems administrators from seeing the data though. All data should be encrypted when it is not displayed. Everything on file servers should be encrypted and most of the admins won't need the keys.
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The US has a love/hate feel on data been encrypted.
In the past the US has many great wins with sloppy work by ww2 German, the Soviet Union, now the EU, Japan
Get all their super good 'encrypted' data, work on it in bulk, be fast, only then send small amounts of safe encrypted work back to the USA.
Everybody know the USA is listening, but exactly what is the mystery.
A junta, celeb, drug dealer, political hopeful, a huge financial scam or test flight...
The US also bu
Better becareful posting that stuff (Score:5, Funny)
Don't you dare try to get rid 90% of system admins.
Better back off, or I will replace your management team with a 5 line shell script, and sell it to Obama as a way of demonstrating that he is serious about more efficient government.
Uh... (Score:2)
woot?
Offshored, of course! (Score:3)
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Good. There's nothing like hiring the Russians to fight the Chinese, who are busy fighting the Vietnamese, who are busy fighting the Iraqis, who are busy fighting the Russians. The entire world is fighting a war on a dozen fronts, and you don't need to worry that they'll do anything really stupid, since their best minds are devoted to the mindless tasks of destroying someone's bunker or supply lines. Then you take your private jet to your private island, and quietly learn how to solve that Rubik's cube...bl
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Vast numbers of young people are returning with clearances, or went into expensive 'security' education and are all expecting many "local" federal jobs.
Speeches presenting and contractors lined up for an ever expanding security apparatus in their State. Political skill and connections got the future jobs....
If one agency is not hiring in the "correct" way, other agencies might get funding moved over to them and
And you know what? (Score:2)
I'm perfectly fine with their being less "effective."
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I'd be more happy with them returning to their original mission, and understanding that destroying the Constitution to save the Constitution is not a valid option.
That makes a great sound bite (Score:2)
and in the spirit of pointy-haired bosses everywhere it means little. The administration is going to squeeze whatever good press they can garner from the comment and then do nothing. Oh, wait, there will be a panel of learned IT staff, then a study group, then a plan-for-a-plan group, then a project planning group then a phase I project and then, wait for it, a cut in funding that cancels the project.
Wow, that was dumb (Score:2)
1. You don't need very many smart people. Albert Einstein did all the hard stuff when it came to the atom bomb. Factories run with a 2 or 3 engineers instead of thousands of workers. Lotus 1-2-3 put thousands of accountant clerks out of work. Etc, etc. I suppose we can all go work at Walmart.
2. Fewer people means less people to leak. Also fewer jobs means people more afraid of losing what little they have. It means less idealism and
Wut? (Score:3)
Albert Einstein did all the hard stuff when it came to the atom bomb.
Einstein didn't do diddly with the atom bomb besides help persuade Roosevelt to get out ahead of the Germans in developing one.
So inefficient... (Score:2)
This shouldn't be that complicated.
1) Sysadmins who implement surveillance systems have access to information for which they are not authorized. Replace them with small shell scripts.
2) Since analysts as well can abuse their authority in selecting surveillance targets, replace them with a "target identification AI."
3) Drone pilots are fallible, and may accidentally fire on the wrong targets (or worse, refuse to fire at all!). Replace them with automated piloting systems.
That should do it! Why, with the comp
N.S.A. Official Bulletin (Score:2)
As of today, System Administrators will require an Entry Permit. System Administrator Entry Tickets are no longer sufficient.
More leaks not fewer (Score:2)
But if you have fewer admins each will have to not only have greater power due to the larger surface area but due to the whole hit by the bus t
SCOM to save the world! (Score:2)
Replace all of your systems administrators!! Just install Microsoft System Center, press a few buttons, wave a magic wand. Then get those pink slips ready! Sit back and relax as Microsoft System Center takes care of everything. It supports just about every operating system, non-Windows(tm) based systems requires additional licensed third party vendor software. Once you stream line your business and embrace the cloud you will be able to reduce your human capitol. If you do ever have any issue Microsoft will
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Microsoft will always be there to help.
Yeah... after spending 24 hours on hold, then waiting another 24 hours for a callback, and getting referred to different departments over and over again; with incrementally larger waiting periods.
Win / Win (Score:2)
Hire 95% more or lay off 95%. Doesn't matter really. Either way, our individual rights will benefit. The turmoil will only distract from their efforts to subvert our inalienable rights.
Actually, probably better if they were to hire 95% more managers. That'd make them incapable of doing anything aside from having meetings.
Third Option (Score:2)
They plan to confine their activities to legal surveillance from now on.
Yeah, right.
Problem (Score:2)
Which 10% are actually doing the work, which they should keep? Which 90% are spending their days playing Minesweeper?
Its a problem that most of industry has to deal with. And indications are that they haven't done a very good job of it.
NSA disbanding itself? (Score:3)
Seems to me that in order to succeed the NSA has to disband itself.
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source for that f-22 shitniz? 'cause I call bullshit OR it's very creative definition for a commercial processor. blackbird wasn't ahead in "physics", rather it was and still is a milestone in _manufacturing_(titanium).
but yes, it is far fetched to "thing" that nsa has an AI, since they don't seem to have even a HI. they just said they're cutting down on system admins to get the senate off their backs since what the NSA actually is... is that it is a MASSIVE money pump to private hands(for people who skim t
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You're joking, right? It's a way to reduce the amount of money you give to MS, but increase the number of admins you have, or increase the pay of your admins.
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Not really increase the number of admins, but I'll give you the last bit about having to pay more.
"Oh no we now have to employ competent people and they want reasonable wages!!!!!"
The only reason why there are as many Windows servers out there as there are is because a cheap IT graduate without a clue can blunder their way through it and eventually get the job done. Its not because they are manned by efficient admins who understand the system well.
Re:replace Windoze with Linux (Score:4, Informative)
Windows server management is much more SysAdmin intensive than Linux server management. Most Linux Boxes are "fire and forget" after they have been configured. Windows boxes decay quickly, and need a great deal more upkeep from the SysAdmin.
Why do you think that? Sure, unskilled Windows Admins have to fiddle with it relatively often, but not good Windows admins. I have a couple of SAP, Exchange and other Windows servers I have to manage. They don't require any more babysitting that any of the linux boxes do. They're all VMs on Hyper V or Xen or ESX and I worry more about patching the host firmware than anything else.
I choose to check up on them, and verify that backups are really restorable, etc, but in terms of HAVING to manully manage them? Not this year. And I do it all with built in tools, no "enterprise" level management either. Just bandwidth, scheduling and lots of disk space and scripts.
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I have a couple of SAP, Exchange and other Windows servers I have to manage. They don't require any more babysitting that any of the linux boxes do. They're all VMs on Hyper V or Xen or ESX and I worry more about patching the host firmware than anything else.
I work with about 7 Exchange organizations; all deployed as VMs.
Hyper-V is nasty... careful not to get any of that stuff on you.
At any rate; these Windows services DO require more babysitting. Or at least, the admin team gets more "issue r
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Re:replace Windoze with Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
That's one way to reduce the number of sysadmins effectively.
I don't think that's true in an enterprise environment with thousands of servers.
In my experience, it takes a larger installation to justify the team size for a well run Windows Server installation (to administer all of the Microsoft System Center [wikipedia.org] components (SCCM, SCOM, etc)), but once that investment in management tool configuration is done, then administering large numbers of Windows Servers doesn't really take more people than administering large numbers of Linux servers. LIke most MS Enterprise products, the MSC components can be complicated to configure and take a certain amount of dedicated resource to configure and use them well.
The same scalability may not hold true once you get to Google Scale with a million servers to manage, since at that point you can justify spending a lot more resource on writing custom management and support tools even down to customizing kernels if you want to.
In a small shop where you may have a few dozen servers, then you may find the MSC tools to be overkill and not worth the effort to set them up well so Linux can be simpler and easier to administer.
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No, it is very true in exactly that environment - you don't need a lot of people to run clusters full of a lot of very similar nodes.
In slightly smaller situations where every machine is its own unique little snowflake you may not get that, but at huge scales it has been demonstrated to be true almost universally.
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That's one way to reduce the number of sysadmins effectively.
I don't think that's true in an enterprise environment with thousands of servers.
In my experience, it takes a larger installation to justify the team size for a well run Windows Server installation (to administer all of the Microsoft System Center [wikipedia.org] components (SCCM, SCOM, etc)), but once that investment in management tool configuration is done, then administering large numbers of Windows Servers doesn't really take more people than administering large numbers of Linux servers. LIke most MS Enterprise products, the MSC components can be complicated to configure and take a certain amount of dedicated resource to configure and use them well.
The same scalability may not hold true once you get to Google Scale with a million servers to manage, since at that point you can justify spending a lot more resource on writing custom management and support tools even down to customizing kernels if you want to.
In a small shop where you may have a few dozen servers, then you may find the MSC tools to be overkill and not worth the effort to set them up well so Linux can be simpler and easier to administer.
I think people claim Linux needs fewer admins because it has a history of bailing twine and bubblegum configuration management with rsync and ssh-while-loops...
At around 3-400 servers we implemented Puppet and MCollective with some in-house plugins. Now that I know it well, I seriously wouldn't run ten servers without it.
There isn't anything really special about Linux that enables these tools to work, and I actually think the Windows Puppet agent gets off easy with NT services vs. init scripts with sketchy
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Let me know when puppet allows me to login to a Windows server and type "yum install exchange-server" :)
The job of a sys-admin is ultimately to avoid manually typing in commands. At least that's how I run my windows build boxes ;)
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expletives deleted
The job of a sysadmin is to administer the system performance in a cost-effective manner. Sheesh.
That's like saying the job of a programmer is to avoid typing but instead choose commands from a dropdown list.
Do not confuse process with result. The job of a programmer is to provide a working program that does what it is supposed to do.
Reminds me of the Windows sysadmin who complained about how long it took for our
Re:replace Windoze with Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
Ya I have to day at my work at least the Linux servers are certainly NOT easier than the Windows servers to administer. The Linux lead spends a lot of time dicking around in the command line messing with scripts and settings to get everything working and managed nice. It works, don't get me wrong, we have a functional setup and process, but this idea that it is somehow easy and magic is false and speaks to a lack of experience.
When I see someone who proposes something like "replace Windoze (lol I totally stuck it to Microsoft misspelling their software!) with Linux" as a magic fix for needing less people in a big enterprise to me it says this is someone who has installed Linux on their desktop, and maybe a personal web server, and somehow thinks that means they know all about enterprise administration. They figure what is true for them must be true for 50,000 systems. I mean after all, the fact that they had Windows crash on them one time clearly means it is unstable and unsupportable!
Windows does a lot right for the enterprise. Their authentication service is really good. AD really does the trick for managing a large collection of systems and users. We use it as the backend for everything, Windows, Linux and Mac and yes, we've tried it other ways (we used to do Sun LDAP and IDsync as the backend, what a nightmare to make work). Anyone who says Microsoft doesn't have good tools for large scale management is really just saying they don't have experience in a large scale setting with Windows and other OSes.
Also that suggestion is funny, given that the NSA likes and uses Linux for a number of things. You might want to look up who gave us SELinux (hint: the NSA). Ever wonder why it has such paranoid, granular, control if you want it? That's why.
Larger installation (Score:3)
The problem with the NSA is, they think they can see all their systems as "a larger installation" and as such, automation would work. By connecting all their systems into one "larger installation" they are effectively putting all their data in a single place. That's something you really don't want to do. Before you know it, someone tasked with migrating the data to a newer instance of "a larger installation" makes a copy of it and runs off to Hong Kong with it.
By giving "everyone" access to the Business Int
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No way, dude! Haven't you heard? Windows administers itself. Well, unless it's in Russia....
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They probably they already have Linux in most, as they know the backdoors it have Windows builtin, and who wants to intentionally install a backdoored system for their critical information? At least for linux they can have their own internal distribution for servers.
But what say the article is that even with Linux they can't reduce a lot the number of sysadmins, and that said by people of 2 of the most used linux automation platforms, Puppet and Chef.
Re:replace Windoze with Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
Another way is to completely scrap the computer systems and go back to paper. It is a lot harder to get a hold of 500,000 classified documents and walk out of the office with them. I think it'd get flagged if Mr. Manning all of a sudden was at the photo copier 24x7 for a few weeks.
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It is a lot harder to get a hold of 500,000 classified documents and walk out of the office with them.
That's true, but it also makes it infeasible to do a search through those documents in a reasonable time, at least with the same generality as a computer search.
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Meter each person's use of the photo copier -- via biometric and PIN number, put a barcode on each document, and have the copier log a record of each document/page that was copied.
Put similar scanning mechanism on paper shredders to log destruction of pages.
If someone over and over again is copying top secret docs, and it doesn't get shredded or logged into a secure area, then notify management about the "outstanding" documents.
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Plain and simple the federal government is suposed to be small, the states are suposed to be the ones with the power.
And who is supposing this? Also, people might have had more sympathy for States' Rights if states didn't use them to oppress people.
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Plain and simple the federal government is suposed to be small, the states are suposed to be the ones with the power.
And who is supposing this? Also, people might have had more sympathy for States' Rights if states didn't use them to oppress people.
Don't say that, for the people who call the Civil War "The War of Northern Aggression" might get offended with facts and shit like that.
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But is says to the states respectively, or to the people. Also, the Fourteenth disallows the states to violate Constitutional protections.
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Plain and simple the federal government is suposed to be small, the states are suposed to be the ones with the power.
And who is supposing this? Also, people might have had more sympathy for States' Rights if states didn't use them to oppress people.
Ironically posted to an article about one of the many federal agencies currently in the news for oppressing people.
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As if the states were opposing the NSA.
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you stop at the DoD??? pfft, the same could be said of ALL federal employees. We could cut the federal government by 90% overnight and the vast majority of americans would not even feel a bee sting out of it. Plain and simple the federal government is suposed to be small, the states are suposed to be the ones with the power. Sometime about 100 years ago (some would argue the progressive movement) things changed and we started giving the federal government more power.
No. Not 100 years ago, but 148 years ago, with the end of the civil war, which settled once and for all the supremacy of the federal government over states powers (including the power to keep slavery legal.) Let us not skip the nitty gritty details, shall we?
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And you want the job of spying on your fellow citizens, breaking the law, abusing your power, and covering up for others who do the same?
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The days of new staff having extended sit down family, teachers, lovers, friends interviewed for hours is less.
Long exhaustive paper work trails of the family tree and deep political connections where once done.
Now low level staff face a digital state and federal cross reference and deep interview bringing past "work" in as clearance or the firm/brand as
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I've worked with Phds who programmed and admined machines. It was scary. Horrible code and scripting and one guy deployed an hardened box on the interweb outside of the organization firewall. The server which was deployed was compromised in less than a day.
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To be fair when you work force is made up of a lot of computer scientists, cryptographers, mathematicians, etc you could probably turn over some responsibility for administration to the workforce with out losing much.
HA HA HA HA HA!
Hoo.
Competence with algorithms does not carry over into competence with administering systems (which is equal parts programming, psychology, resource management, customer service, and arcane lore).
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Most people do. Show me anyone, anyone at all, and, given enough access, I could probably prove them a liar.
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