NSA Circles the Wagons - Ditching 90% of its System Administrators to Keep Lid on Secrets [View all]

[bigtree]

from Raw Story:


The National Security Agency (NSA) intends to eliminate the majority of its system administrators as a way to reduce the number of humans who could leak sensitive data, Edward Snowden-style.

NSA director Keith Alexander told a conference in New York City that headcount among its system administrators would be severely curtailed in the future. “What we’re in the process of doing—not fast enough—is reducing our system administrators by about 90 percent,” he said, according to Reuters. The newswire added that roughly 1,000 such employees maintain the agency’s networks and equipment.

The NSA is dismissing all those people in the name of secrecy. “What we’ve done,” Alexander added, “is we’ve put people in the loop of transferring data, securing networks and doing things that machines are probably better at doing.” An automated system operated by a minimum of human beings, on the other hand, will make the NSA’s digital assets more defensible.

The NSA claims this automation initiative began before Edward Snowden leaked top-secret information about the agency’s surveillance programs to The Guardian, but that it accelerated the timetable following that fracas . . .


read more: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/08/10/nsa-ditching-90-percent-of-its-system-administrators-to-avoid-leaks/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter