To reiterate: The Cyber Corps program can and is being used by undergraduates; it will take care of two years of your 4 year degree; if you've got the ability to get your undergrad degree in three years, you'd only have to pay for one year if you were in the Cyber Corps. And if you were to go into college with no debt and no significant obligations -- like a car payment -- you could probably make enough from your stipend and summer jobs to take care of that one year.

I am very sympathetic to your position; I was extremely poor as an undergrad, but I got great scholarships; federal grants took up most of the slack, with jobs and very small loans finishing up. But that was almost 40 years ago; it would be impossible to do that now. that's why programs like this are so important. I urge you to explore it if you're at all interested in infosec as a career.

Excellent argument. The government-employed medical doctors doing cutting edge research developing treatments no private sector company will touch because there's not enough profit in it: Clearly corrupt. Those firefighters who parachute in to disaster areas with nothing but a shovel and desire to save whoever they can: Obviously corrupt. People battling for meaningful financial reform against incredibly powerful opponents: Corruption incarnate. The only moral choice is to do nothing; anybody who says they're in government to try and do the right thing is obviously lying.

Yes, I was quite hesitant but most of the people in my program were older; this was a second career for many of us.

To recap: You do *not* have to work for the NSA (that article was awful). You do have to work for the government, but you only have to do that for two years (the amount of time you're in school under the program). A masters degree from Carnegie Mellon would cost you something like six figures. And after that all you have is a degree with no experience. Cyber Corps offers you a *free* degree *plus* a monthly stipend, *plus* a virtually guaranteed job, meaning in four years you have no debt, a solid degree and a real resume. I can't say enough good things about the program.

No, I am not a coder on any significant level. You should definitely check out a few schools. Tulsa is not much of a coding program, but they do teach you principles in java; Purdue has an interdisciplinary program that is heavy on programming theory but you can get out with little to no programming; Syracuse has a pure policy program where I think no coding is required at all.

You mean we're not?

Actually, a number of the members of my team are non-white, gay, or both, including some senior folks. We do however tend to avoid hiring the ignorant.

Your description is more accurate than mine; saying that the FBI engages in "spying" is probably a bit off. they do engage in covert surveillance and counter espionage within the United States.

Systems housing government data are required to meet certain minimum protective requirements, every system also needs to be certified as initially complying with those requirements by an independent third party (i.e., not the system owner), with a re-examination every three years. It's called "Certification and Accreditation." if you want to understand more about the requirements, look for a document called NIST 800-53. It's basically a penetration test.

In the United States, it's not that domestic spying is not allowed, it's that it's prohibited within specific agencies. The FBI does a lot of internal spying.

The key word there would be "automatic."

Actually, you can apply the two years to an undergrad degree and a lot of people do that.

I would agree that active duty enlisted tend to be "redder" than average. Also, the time frame you're describing is quite interesting as sounds like it was just about the time that the NSA had been publicly identified as breaking the law and new restrictions were put into place (which is probably what the Chief was bellyaching about). But my experience post reform is that the vast majority of people at the NSA take the prohibition on domestic spying very seriously.

The Tulsa program recruits students from all over the United States. Each of the colleges certified by the NSA as a Center of Excellence has different strong points; some are very focused on coding, for example, other on forensics or policy. My experience with the program is that is a reasonable mix of liberals and conservatives.

The program offers four semesters of financial help; it was obviously aimed at the Masters level, but it can be applied to both undergraduate and even a PhD.