His first application to join TAO as a remote operator was denied due to personality conflicts (the interviewers felt he was cocky in his responses and weren't sure of his ability to fit in with the rest of the operators.) This was circa 2011 when he was working with the CIA in an NSA joint Billet.
Early 2012 during expansion and hiring within TAO Hawaii, he was given a second chance to prove technical talents in a test designed to pre-empt RIOT (Remote Interactive Operator Training). He failed the test twice both at NSAH and NSAW. His only option was to transition as a contractor at BAH where he was the equivalent of an R&T analyst even though he was in a network administration billet(he was never assigned to TAO directly, because his administration billet supported missions he was asked to fill a critical shortage of manpower). The technical requirements to become an R&T analyst while high, were well below those that perform as Interactive On Net operators (ION). As an analyst he worked projects targeting the exact groups he leaked information about. During his time working his targets he submitted numerous plans that were rejected and greater HQ at NSAW began to ignore is operations proposals. His projects were ultimately removed from him and placed in the hands of capable analysts. It wasn't long after that he decided to lash out. So no he was never offered a job within TAO (which has multiple groups), when he did work with BAH interacting with them he failed miserably.
Maybe. And I get that as CEO's they can be regarded as peers, but if you're going to call this a "letter", I think it would have been better to use either full name (which is how it's signed BTW), or Mr.
To the extent that this is true (which I think is only in rather specific circumstances), backdoors also also ways of routing around constitutional protections.
First of all, encouraging Congress to change laws is not police work. It's political work.
Second, in this case, "routing around" is distinct from "respecting".
The courts and constitution state that in some circumstances, a person has the right to encrypt messages and not divulge the encryption key. The fundamental right here is the right to a private internal dialogue -- the state can't compel you to speak on certain questions. The FBI is trying to route around that fundamental right by creating a technical mechanism that allows them to never have to ask you to hear your internal dialog.
In short, the existence of a technical means for violating the intent of an guaranteed right without technically violating the letter of constitutional law is a game that the courts eventually shut down as unconstitutional bullshit. But a lot of people get hurt in the in-between.
But again, just to be extremely clear on the most important issue here, encouraging Congress to pass laws is not in any way police work...
> encouraging Congress to pass laws is not in any way police work
Who said it was? Police work is obtaining evidence while respecting the Constitution. As technology changes, Congress and the courts must redefine exactly how that can be done, and the police participate in that discussion.
The fifth amendment guarantees the right not to be a witness against oneself. It doesn't guarantee unbreakable encryption.
That said, I don't think Congress can stop criminals from using encryption and I don't think Congress should stop law-abiding citizens from using encryption.
Because you still need the user's willfull cooperation. It doesn't work if the user doesn't cooperate or if he's not supposed to be aware that he is being listened to, which is I believe the case in most terrorism cases.
Not always, especially when law enforcement can request data straight from the provider, which I would imagine happens in the majority of internet crime investigations. Because let's be real, how many internet companies have a zero knowledge policy towards their users' data?
> Because let's be real, how many internet companies have a zero knowledge policy towards their users' data?
Well, the whole point of TFA is that Apple, Google, Yahoo and the likes want to progressively move in that direction (not totally for sure, but just enough so that the FBI/NSA doesn't like it).
