This article was originally published by Aaron Kesel at Activist Post.
A recent article in CNN tells the tale of teens whose friends think they are spying on their phone conversations because they work for the National Security Agency (NSA) at the complex at Fort Meade in Maryland.
CNN expresses that three 18-year-old teens who graduated from high schools in Maryland — Summer, Brianna, and Simon — are among more than 150 high schoolers in a work-study program at the NSA. These students are then given TS/SCI or Top Secret security clearance access to U.S. secrets.
“Recruiters at the NSA (and other intelligence agencies, like the CIA, have similar programs) know that when it comes to hiring smart, driven, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math)-minded young people, they are competing with the flashiness and deep pockets of Silicon Valley. So, they aim young and try to dazzle the teens with the work, rather than the paycheck,” CNN wrote.
CNN tries to give lightheartedness to the subject but fails to address the concern about giving teens the responsibility of handling such highly classified information and the other problem at hand. The fact that teens in schools in Maryland and possibly elsewhere are being taken into the NSA and brainwashed into working for the establishment while attempting to balance their studies. The NSA and agencies alike also use the Web, social media and job fairs to recruit students. Although, some of the students filled out a long application on intelligencecareers.gov.
“Once they’re here they get that sense of purpose from what they’re doing every day and they see that they can do things here that they can’t do anywhere else,” Courtney, an NSA recruiter told CNN. (Her last name withheld for security reasons.)
“We want to get them in and get them hooked early to the mission so they can have a long career here. There’s more emphasis now on student programs than I think there’s ever been to try to get them when they’re young. Get them hooked young,” Courtney added.
According to the article, the students are required to intern and go to Fort Meade every summer during college; in exchange, the NSA pays a year-round salary and guarantees them a full-time job at the NSA when they have finally graduated.
CNN’s article paints the NSA as a fun job experience while ignoring the absurd constitutional abuses that were exposed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. In fact, the piece reads like a promotional press release for the NSA.
Snowden quickly rose to prominence in 2013, after leaking classified information on widespread warrantless NSA surveillance programs like XKeyscore and PRISM to The Guardian and The Washington Post. In fact, the first Snowden leak was a FISC order issued to Verizon under Section 702 that required the company to turn over all of its calling records to the NSA.
FISA was enacted in 1978 as a response to illegal domestic surveillance operations revealed by two Senate committees in the 1970s, including President Richard Nixon’s use of federal intelligence agencies to monitor his political opponents. It was brought into law “to authorize electronic surveillance to obtain foreign intelligence information.”
The law requires the government to obtain a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court before setting up an electronic or physical wiretap targeted at foreigners and foreign agents. However, that law is not always followed.
Congress amended FISA in 2007 to let the government wiretap communications that either begin or end outside the United States jurisdiction without Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) approval; in a stronger 2008 overhaul, they further limited that power to non-U.S. persons. The last reauthorization of the Act was in 2012, which set the current expiration date of Dec. 31, 2017.
The FISA law has long been criticized by privacy and civil liberties advocates like the EFF who say the order allows broad, intrusive spying without oversight. The section first gained renewed attention following the 2013 disclosures by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that the agency carried out widespread monitoring of emails and other electronic communications through PRISM, XKeyscore, Upstream, and other NSA surveillance programs.
Activist Post covered XKeyscore and PRISM in extensive detail when the revelations happened. XKeyscore, which in 2008 was on 750 servers on 150 sites around the globe, served as the point of entry for most of the information that was collected by the NSA.
NSA agents would easily be able to gather information using XKeyscore’s system the operator could then trawl through billions of emails and online chat sessions, or check sites visited by specific computers by using IP addresses.
It’s worth noting that this author recently wrote an article on Palantir, the company that was accused of providing the technology that enables NSA’s mass surveillance PRISM. In that article, we went into extensive detail about Palantir’s history as a company and the development of software used at Fusion Centers across the U.S.
Some of the other programs that Snowden leaked include the following – MUSCULAR, CO-TRAVELER, Dishfire, and Tailored Access Operations.
Snowden has recently announced a new forthcoming memoir called Permanent Record, due out in September, which will tell all his secrets. Snowden has also released a YouTube ad for the book and stated that he would begin exposing social media surveillance of Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram, as Activist Post reported.
As a free society, we can only hope that these students involved in the NSA programs will do the same as Edward Snowden and whistle-blow if they encounter abuse of civil and privacy rights.
This shit drives me NUTS!
The US Army tried to recruit me when I was graduating,
with a STEM degree.
They did not even know I’d already spent over 5 years in the
USAF during the Vietnam war era, earned the rank of Staff Sergent, and was a service connected disabled Vet.
These government people are frigging nuts! They are all just affirmative action Pieces Of Shiite.
Scary that they run the show these days.
I have a degree, so I can say this, this stuff isn’t
really that hard. Crypto stuff is. Until you find the “seed”
Crypto is nearly impossible to break.
Thanks alot, Makes me want to break it, now.
Different agencies are in online challenges for fabricators and inventors.
Comments dwindling to very few.
Teens and Intelligence? That’s an oxymoron if I ever heard one lol.
You didn’t like to mess with bad teachers.
Another bullshit story.
Authour loves to quote the law yet author is opposed to any authority that enforces it.
Typical socialist-commy scumbag.
You know, you could go down to McDonalds, get a job scrubbing toilets, and begin making payments on your student loans.
America was great during the 1950’s, that’s before the population doubled, national debt went from mere millions to $22 trillion, and the bottom 50% wants everything free and break all the laws they wish without consequences.
Hell in the late 60’s and early 70’s when I was in High school they were recruiting. So what is new???? You think they stopped, just so you can write about it??? get a real job!!!
Sgt.
And a haircut ya fookin’ hippie!
It used to be considered a dress code violation, when there was not enough hair to be cut. You were expected to look like a nice human, not robot or alien.
100% Sgt. Dale.
It’s a full moon, somebody must of left the door to the Loony Bin open . I only come here/post for a laugh to see what the Mac Salvo nutjobs are up to
Watch out fur dem hogs!
Not a member of their cult. Just saying —
youtube.com/watch?v=uVXR2LYeFBI
Yup, seminole just cruises thru an rattles our cages, I saw it muhself, yup yup my brother in law saw whut seminole saw solid in the sawgrass.
What’s the big deal? All organizations must recruit employees.
My daughter was recruited by a Federal governmental agency in high school. They wanted her so badly that they paid for her 5 year college degree in a STEM field and paid her a salary while she pursued that degree. The college is called the U.S. Air Force Academy.
Stew,
Congratulations!
Good thing she isn’t a microbioligist, that is a very dangerous profession!
My dad earned a degree in Microbiology.
I used to help him in his senior labs.
I grew more diseases than you could know.
I was 10 years old.
What I learned, was Betadine and Ivory soap
for cleaning.
Merthiolate for small cuts and cold sores.
Above all your immune system is really
good. You really don’t have to take a lot of crap
to stay healthy.
Do you believe that these items would be adequate, against superbugs from the hospital story? Why, or why not?
CW
To answer you before I go out to mow.
#1 your best defense is not to allow “super bugs” to get into your body. Keep clean.
#2 Merthiolate has Mercury in it, it works, it is toxic, even to you.
It is all a trade off, does the bug kill you or your medicine/vaccines? I’d rather get a cholera shot than get cholera.
Most people would just shit if they understood just how many “bugs” they have, depend on, or are infected with.
Taking anything is a risk.
In one conspiracy theory, Epstein was an asset, collecting intel, using highschool age teens.
All you have to do, guys, is say she is genetically superior, and you will be flying to a private island.
Matt Damon Goodwill Hunting, “Why should you work for the NSA”
h ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJHvSp9AKYg
This is no different that Epstein’s Lady friend recruiting girls. They liked the future they were presented and bought into it. They could have left at any time, and look at them now. None of them is homeless or lacking the facial care many women can’t afford. Doesn’t make it right, but we all have to make different choices.
My first question for chest-thumping and bumping ‘patriots’ is, ‘Do you homeschool your children or send them to government indoctrination centers?’ Yea, that’s what I thought. Talk is cheap.
“Give us the child for 8 years and it will be a Bolshevik forever.” Vladimir Lenin
My govt indoctrination center looked and worked like a prison intake, where the inward parts were run by the prisoners. Literal bastards took literal tips, from their jailed, elder siblings trying to support the families, illicitly.
It wouldn’t surprise me, if interviewers don’t know any of the families’ particulars, in advance.
Intel agencies and the U.S. Military should have no trouble recruiting. Government indoctrination centers crank out 3.3 million compliant, non-thinkers every year.
Just another form of Pedo’Z and I would bet.. the same ol’ Pedo’Z.
When I was drafted I told the interviewer that I did not believe in killing. They took me anyway.
One robotics professor reported interest in the intel community. He told me that he answered simple morality questions in a contrarian way, expecting 007’s notorious license to kill. (A war vet with confirmed kills. Where would he get such an idea. I never…)
They asked whether he was crazy.
Firstly, most j.obs, besides menial l.abor are tediously bookish.
Statism is generally a religion, ponzi scheme, and pep rally, that runs on positivity. You just have to want it hard enough. Their way of talking is like encouraging a small puppy or cherring the home team to win. Try Oprah’s positivity secret, if you want this j.ob, imho.
sarcastic references, not intended to be taken seriously —
Ren and Stimpy’s happy helmet
Stepford Wives
Black Mirrors episode, Nosedive
Serotonin Overload
Someone always expected to be upbeat would ultimately be suggestible, but, in this case, compartmentalized. There is no assumption of heroics or even executive function, as campy and risque as it all sounds.
The square pig from ‘Space Truckers’, or just a square pig.
How old ? Eighteen ?
That’s old enough.
The NSA hires some really smart teens. What’s wrong with that? I don’t get it. This doesn’t bother me. Watching teens get high on drugs and turning their brains into mush bothers me.
.