The NSA Is Being Sued for Keeping Keith Alexander's Financial Records Secret

[Ichingcarpenter]

Former NSA Director Keith Alexander's lucrative entrance into the private sector has raised a heap of ethical questions about the spy chief's intentions.

Now the NSA has yet another dilemma on its hands: Investigative journalist Jason Leopold is suing the agency for denying him the release of financial disclosure statements attributable to its former director.

According to reports, prospective clients of Alexander's, namely large banks, will be billed $1 million a month for his cyber-consulting services. Recode.net quipped that for an extra million, Alexander would show them the back door (state-installed spyware mechanisms) that the NSA put in consumer routers.

But some aren't simply laughing off the retired four-star general's new endeavor. Some, like Leopold, are concerned that Alexander might actually plan on selling high-level state security secrets for his hefty price tag.

In the Baltimore division of the federal district of Maryland, the law offices of Jeffrey Light have served the NSA with a complaint, listing Leopold’s multiple attempts to retrieve Alexander's records, and the utter refusal by the agency to fulfill the journalist’s requests.

Citing the Ethics in Government Act, Florida Congressman Alan Grayson wrote on behalf of Leopold, in a letter addressed to NSA Deputy Counsel Ariana Cerelenko, pressing that the public release of Alexander’s financial records are required—“unless the President finds that the release of the form would ‘reveal sensitive information,’ or ‘compromise the national interest.’"


http://motherboard.vice.com/read/nsa-is-being-sued-for-keeping-keith-alexanders-financial-records-quiet


Keith Alexander's Unethical Get-Rich-Quick Plan

The answer, Alexander said in an interview Monday, is a new technology, based on a patented and "unique" approach to detecting malicious hackers and cyber-intruders that the retired Army general said he has invented, along with his business partners at IronNet Cybersecurity Inc., the company he co-founded after leaving the government and retiring from military service in March. But the technology is also directly informed by the years of experience Alexander has had tracking hackers, and the insights he gained from classified operations as the director of the NSA, which give him a rare competitive advantage over the many firms competing for a share of the cybersecurity market.
Details on the "unique approach" are thin, but it wouldn't surprise me if Freedom of Information Act requests are already being prepared to send to the U.S. Patent Office:

Alexander said he'll file at least nine patents, and possibly more, for a system to detect so-called advanced persistent threats, or hackers who clandestinely burrow into a computer network in order to steal secrets or damage the network itself.
As FP notes, these are the sorts of "cyberattacks" that Alexander harped on while in government, claiming they already represented "the greatest transfer of wealth in American history."

Let's mull that over. While responsible for countering cybersecurity threats to America, Alexander presides over what he characterizes as staggering cyber-thefts and hugely worrisome security vulnerabilities. After many years, he retires. And immediately, he has a dramatically better solution to this pressing national-security problem, one he never implemented in government but plans to patent and sell!

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/keith-alexanders-unethical-get-rich-quick-plan/375367/


Now think about this for a second .... he had two jobs and was able to go home and write IT security guides and programs without NSA help after a long day at the NSA.

Now who is corrupt?

[Ichingcarpenter]

1. Of course he will not be treated like Snowden

Of course he will not be treated like Snowden. This man is passing secrets to corporations. Snowden did the unforgivable, exposing government violation of the constitution on a massive scale.

[Ichingcarpenter]

2. Former NSA director will file “at least” 9 patents to detect malicious hackers

Alexander reportedly filed seven patents while at the NSA, of which four are still pending. Ars was unable to turn up any of the three approved patents, possibly because patents can be kept secret from the public if disclosure is considered to be “detrimental to the national security.”

The former NSA director said that he consulted with lawyers at the NSA, as well as his own private lawyers, to be sure that none of his forthcoming patents relied on work done by the NSA. A source familiar with Alexander told Foreign Policy that “the former director developed this new technology on his private time and that he addressed any potential infractions before deciding to seek his patents.” But Alexander's unique position and status during his time at the NSA suggests that clients might be more susceptible to an up-sell that could pad Alexander's pocketbooks quite a bit.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/07/former-nsa-director-will-file-at-least-9-patents-to-detect-malicious-hackers/

[KoKo]

3. His "Patents" should be stamped "Property of US Government."

He shouldn't be allowed to profit off of his experience at NSA. But, who will stop him when everyone else is allowed to do it through "the Revolving Door."