State sanctioned secrecy: NSA's criminality shield

Re:State sanctioned secrecy: NSA's criminality shield by marcus_holmes on Tuesday October 06, 2020 @07:58AM (#24696773)

I might be reading between the lines, but presumably there was a payment of some sort from the external contractor developing TRAILBLAZER to Hayden? Otherwise why was he so keen to spend so much on so little?

Isn't this the sort of thing that the GAO deals with directly? It appears to be a clear-cut case of fraud, so why isn't this being dealt with through the usual channels for that?

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Re:State sanctioned secrecy: NSA's criminality shield by lastofthemojito on Tuesday October 06, 2020 @08:38AM (#24697055)

I don't think it was that clear-cut. Having had experience with low quality home-grown software, Hayden was a proponent of buying rather than building. Rather than struggle to hire good developers on government salaries, he took advantage of contracting to bring in well paid people to do the job well. Only, guess what...sometimes you don't manage to get what you pay for.

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Re:State sanctioned secrecy: NSA's criminality shield by wil421 on Tuesday October 06, 2020 @08:59AM (#24697208)

I’ve seen it my self in IT. The older in-house team tries to recreate every feature 1:1 based on the old system. The end result is a newish UI in front of all the crap from the old system.

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