Horrible timing: National Security Agency lists 'Digital Network Exploitation Analyst' internship opening as controversy swirls over digital snooping scandal



It's either a cruel joke or the world's worst timing: An internship listing for a 'Digital Network Exploitation Analyst' appeared Thursday on the National Security Agency's job-opening Twitter feed, just as the cyber spy directorate was caught up in an international scandal involving snooping on millions of telephone, email and social networking accounts.

The program, based at the NSA's Fort Meade, Maryland headquarters, promises to hire successful applicants 'who can perform discovery and target technology analysis of digital network and mobile communications.'

'The three-year intern program combines training (SIGINT Discovery/Analysis), operational assignments (in the SIGINT Directorate) and a technical report to enhance the skills of an individual. There is a one year commitment to the SIGINT Directorate upon graduation from the Development Program.'

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The National Security Agency picked Thursday, in the midst of a growing scandal over privacy issues, to list a job opening for a ¿Digital Network Exploitation Analyst¿

This slide from a top-secret NSA presentation shows the extent of PRISM. The NSA is under fire for exploiting digital data normally covered by privacy policies, but none of the providers (at L) has yet admitted being part of the program

'SIGINT' is government shorthand for Signals Intelligence, the practice of intercepting electronic communications between people to discover sensitive information that governments use for national security. It typically includes proficiency in code-breaking, pattern analysis and sifting through trillions of data points in massive collection exercises.

Terrorism expert Richard Miniter, a best-selling author who wrote the definitive biography of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, told MailOnline that the NSA's foot-in-mouth moment would make it an even bigger butt of jokes.

'They should probably outsource this internship to the Chinese,' Miniter quipped. 'I hear they've got special expertise in cracking into computers and reading other people's mail.'



The NSA was exposed on Thursday in a British news report for working with Verizon Wireless, the largest U.S. mobile phone company, which has been providing day-to-day data dumps of its customers' phone records.

The NSA's job description seems tailor-made for PRISM, offering a three-year internship for the next generation of digital eavesdroppers Barack Obama said farewell to outgoing National Security Adviser Tom Donilon (C) on Wednesday. UN Ambassador Susan Rice (R) will take over from him in July, inheriting his vast portfolio of all the government's most secret intelligence operations

The operation was approved by Congress as a vital part of implementing the PATRIOT act in a post-9/11 America, and ultimately green-lighted by a special court empowered under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The NSA sought 1,789 such orders in 2012, which are suspected of covering, in the aggregate, most business and consumer phone lines in America.

In addition to Verizon, the program, nicknamed PRISM, also includes AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Skype, Yahoo! and YouTube.

During a March 2012 congressional hearing, NSA Director Keith Alexander told Georgia Democratic Rep. Hank Johnson - 14 times - that his agency wasn't engaged in collecting the kind of domestic digital data that has now become the subject of embarrassing disclosures.

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Successful applicants to the digital exploitation internship program will work at the NSA's busy headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland

ACLU deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer said in a statement that 'from a civil liberties perspective, the program could hardly be any more alarming.'

'It’s a program in which some untold number of innocent people have been put under the constant surveillance of government agents. It is beyond Orwellian.'

During a speech Friday in San Jose that was planned as a plea for Hispanic Californians to enroll in Obamacare health insurance exchanges, President Barack Obama insisted that the program was necessary and benign.

'What the intelligence community is doing is looking at phone numbers and durations of calls,' the president said. 'They are not looking at people’s names, and they’re not looking at content. But by sifting through this so-called metadata, they may identify potential leads with respect to folks who might engage in terrorism.'