Presented at
Still Hacking Anyway (SHA2017),
Aug. 4, 2017, 8 p.m.
(60 minutes)
Kirk Wiebe will talk about his experiences during his 32 year NSA career, specifically about effective intelligence gathering, the failure of mass-surveillance and how to fix it.
#Society #SurveillanceState #Politics
As the makeup of the work force becomes ever more diverse, the very meaning of ethics on a personal basis can differ significantly. With the work force increasingly made up of people who may have grown up in differing cultures, and with a society increasingly tolerant of corruption, how does today’s enterprise ensure a common understanding of what is expected in terms of personal behavior at the work place? If an enterprise does not have a clearly articulated policy in terms that define behaviors to be rewarded and behaviors to be discouraged, the risk is high that expected outcomes will not be realized. If the policy regarding ethics is not widely embraced by employees, the risk is even higher. An examination of ethics and their relationship to the events of 9-11 serve to illustrate what can happen when other agendas subvert ethics at the work place.
Presenters:
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Kirk Wiebe
J. Kirk Wiebe worked as a senior analyst at the NSA from 1975 to 2001. In the aftermath of 9/11, he was among a handful of NSA employees who stumbled upon a secret program at the agency to monitor the communications of millions of U.S. citizens.
J. Kirk Wiebe is a retired National Security Agency whistleblower who worked at the agency for over 32 years. During his tenure there, he received the Director CIA’s Meritorious Unit Award and the NSA’s Meritorious Civilian Service Award – that Agency’s second highest distinction – for work against foreign strategic weapons systems. Wiebe’s colleague William Binney developed the ThinThread information processing system that, arguably, could have detected and prevented the 9/11 terrorist attacks. NSA officials, though, ignored the program in favor of Trailblazer, a program that ended in total failure in 2005 with costs of billions of dollars. Wiebe, together with colleagues William Binney, Diane Roark (former HPSCI senior staffer), and Ed Loomis (former NSA computer systems analyst) blew the whistle on NSA mismanagement and waste of billions of dollars on Trailblazer in a complaint to the Department of Defense Inspector General (DoD IG), but to no avail. Post 9/11, the NSA used ThinThread to illegally spy on U.S. citizens’ communications. Unable to stay at NSA any longer in good conscience, Wiebe, along with colleagues Binney and Loomis retired in October 2001. Since retiring, Wiebe has made several key public disclosures regarding NSA’s massive surveillance program subverting the U.S. Constitution.
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