The real problem: Government officials and agents aren’t allowed access to the tech they need.
A few years back, I was asked to speak to a hundred or so officials and agents from CIA, DIA, NSA, Diplomatic Security, FBI, etc. All of these agents, with the highest levels of access to classified information, asked me questions for over an hour. They were curious about how quickly we move in tech and how rapidly we build and deploy new platforms to millions of users.
Along the way, they openly expressed their frustration with government IT processes. They said gov IT rules kept them from doing their jobs. These government agents said they couldn’t get their hands on relatively new software or websites because IT approvals took up to two years.
Agents with top secret access told of bringing their personal laptops and phones into the office and out into the field to bypass the rules. There was even one story of an agent visiting an Internet cafe in Baghdad to do intelligence work unfettered.
Secretary Clinton requested secure mobile email access through the proper channels and was denied by the NSA. As one official said, “The current state of the art is not too user friendly, has no infrastructure at State, and is very expensive.” This, for one of the highest offices in the land.
I will not defend her team setting up a personal email server as a result. That was a bad response to a frustrating NSA decision and should never happen again. Yet, it’s emblematic of the lengths to which so many officials and agents go to obtain the tools to be effective in their jobs. I hope the FBI’s decision will prevent a few more cycles going round and round on this Clinton email mess. In the meantime, let’s try to focus one of the bigger, bi-partisan issues at hand.
Government must work faster to equip our officials with the latest and best technology. Prior generations of government workers could execute their jobs on paper. But that isn’t the reality of today’s world.
Friends across the branches of government complain about the current state of IT tools available to them. Woefully outdated. Could you do your job without mobile email? iMessage/texting? Slack? Let me ask rather, could you do your best work without those tools? No. Neither can they. So they still use those platforms, but outside of the officially-approved sandboxes.
I admire many friends who have decided to go work for groups like the @USDS to personally try to improve the situation. But when even our most important officials and agents in the fight against global terror can’t get the tech they need, that’s a crisis.
Let’s be honest, it isn’t an accident that the NSA doesn’t approve use of mobile email, etc. No one is better than the NSA at corrupting tech to violate our rights then lie about it to the American people, Congress, and courts. The NSA knows well the vulnerabilities of these platforms because often they have directly required the providers to create backdoors.
What if the government invested a fraction of the time and money it spends on spying on us all into helping procure and secure current tech? Rather than make allies in Silicon Valley, they have chosen to force our hands to be complicit in their illegal work. Instead of intentionally weakening IT platforms so they can eavesdrop in violation of our laws, the NSA could help us strengthen our tech.
Silicon Valley is a willing partner, ready to help our government be the best it can be at such an important time. We are prepared to act quickly to build and improve robust, secure, accountable systems for officials and agents to use. I hope government agencies will show us they are ready to accelerate their move into the future as well. Government should empower the technology industry rather than exploit it. The stakes are too high to send our best people to work without everything they need to succeed.
- Yes, each of the foregoing sentences contains 140 characters or fewer. This started as a potential Tweetstorm. Then I asked myself if my followers would really enjoy being bludgeoned with a couple dozen Tweets about government IT. Especially while just getting back to their desks after a three-day, hell yeah America, weekend.
- Whenever I write or Tweet something like this, some of you ask whether I am worried about being placed on a government surveillance list. Just remember that all of us, literally All. Of. Us., are already on that list today. Indeed, you should be upset.
