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HP Government Republicans IT

Carly Fiorina: I Supplied HP Servers For NSA Snooping 488

MFingS writes: According to an article at Motherboard, shortly after 9/11, NSA director Michael Hayden requested extra computing power and Carly Fiorina, then CEO of HP, responded by re-routing truckloads of servers to the agency. Fiorina acknowledged providing the servers to the NSA during an interview with Michael Isikoff in which she defended warrantless surveillance (as well as waterboarding) and framed her collaboration with the NSA in patriotic terms. Fiorina's compliance with Hayden's request for HP servers is but one episode in a long-running and close relationship between the GOP presidential hopeful and U.S. intelligence agencies.
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Carly Fiorina: I Supplied HP Servers For NSA Snooping

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  • Good old Samuel Johnson, he sure understood Fiorina's type very well indeed.

    • Re:Big Surprise (Score:5, Insightful)

      by lgw ( 121541 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2015 @05:14PM (#50622733) Journal

      I would care so much more about Carly here if I believed that any of the candidates won't cooperate fully with the NSA. Heck, one of the very few things Obama actually promised as a candidate was to cut back on this sort of thing, and he reversed as soon as he was in office. Either the NSA has some good shit on everyone in power, and/or everyone in power values convenience over the interests of the people. Sorry, I wouldn't even believe Bernie or Rand Paul here. We've created a monster.

      "Do not summon that you cannot dismiss" - H. P. Lovecraft

      • Re:Big Surprise (Score:5, Informative)

        by Noryungi ( 70322 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2015 @05:23PM (#50622805) Homepage Journal

        Either the NSA has some good shit on everyone in power, and/or everyone in power values convenience over the interests of the people.

        No, they have some good shit on everyone. They have said as much, without really coming out and saying it outright, if you see what I mean.

        Read all about it here [theguardian.com] and here [washingtonpost.com].

      • Re:Big Surprise (Score:5, Informative)

        by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2015 @05:25PM (#50622825) Journal

        I would care so much more about Carly here if I believed that any of the candidates won't cooperate fully with the NSA.

        Sanders is the only one that I think would give them any pushback.

        He voted against both the Patriot Act and the Iraq war, and in my book that counts for something.

        • Re:Big Surprise (Score:4, Interesting)

          by circletimessquare ( 444983 ) <circletimessquare@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday September 29, 2015 @07:19PM (#50623423) Homepage Journal

          my dream is trump carries the nomination

          and sanders beats hillary (not impossible, she's weak, bland, uninspiring... i'm not sure why republicans get so upset about her, it's not possible to feel great hate nor love for someone so boring)

          sanders can't beat a rubio (i don't know why, but people have a thing for plastic liars in suits, the man is a lizard)

          but sanders can beat a trump

          can you imagine a president sanders? i would weep for joy

          • by tnk1 ( 899206 )

            Republicans aren't upset about Hillary, they love her. Which is to say they think she's a much easier mark.

            However, that "easy" label is one that they are secretly sweating about because she's still likely to beat any of them in a general election just because of how bad the Republican field is and how incapable they are of nominating a real moderate. Even with the email situation and Benghazi she's still the winner at this point.

            Unless they indict her or something, of course.

            Trump is a clown. He won't g

            • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

              because benghazi and the emails are fucking jokes. she didn't do a damn thing wrong in benghazi. she did do something wrong with the emails. but it's a minor fucking thing, and the republicans treat it like she handed top of the line drones to north korea. it's such a pile of trumped up bullshit. just like with planned parenthood: lies, edited footage to suggest different meaning, pictures of unrelated miscarriages. they even tried to plead the fifth when the original footage was asked for! all to try to g

              • by tnk1 ( 899206 )

                I'm not a big fan of the Democrats, but honestly you're absolutely right. I think the conservative wing of the Republican party has lost the culture wars and they are now just squawking on their way down. It's embarrassing.

                And some of that BS is good riddance, although I am very concerned that the complete failure of the Republicans will mean that the tendency towards all encompassing government is now unstoppable. Entitlements and the NSA are just two different faces stamped on the same coin.

                I'm not rea

                • Don't hold your breathe on blacks ever leaving the Democratic Party.

                  As a Slashdotter, I am statistically virtually certain to be right in my racist assumption that you are white. So I will play the odds and say:
                  As a white person what American history has taught you is that a) the current political and economic system protects freedom, b) the main threat to freedom is centralization of power, and c) if the system causes you problems it will be fairly simple for you to get it changed.

                  Constrast this with black

        • Sanders is the only one that I think would give them any pushback./i>

          Then you haven't been paying attention. Rand Paul ALREADY gave them a BUNCH of pushback.

          Just one example: He one-man filibustered the renewal of the Patriot Act for 10 1/2 hours, making it actually time out and creating a gap (to invalidate any claims to legality for information collected before the expiration and not destroyed after it.)

        • Yeah..... I actually agree. Though I don't like the idea of Bernie getting elected at ALL, it's also pretty clear he's not paid for by the establishment (corporate interests, military contractors, etc.). He's essentially advocating for the United States to end the political design of its founders and convert to Socialism. That, in itself, separates him from everyone else running for office under the Democratic or Republican ticket.

      • Re:Big Surprise (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2015 @05:34PM (#50622879)

        I suspect that sometime between election day and inauguration day a small committee sits down with the president elect and explains to them that they will be allowed use the turn signal and the horn, but not the steering wheel or the pedals.

        • by PRMan ( 959735 )
          I have come to believe this as well.
        • Re:Big Surprise (Score:4, Interesting)

          by s.petry ( 762400 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2015 @06:59PM (#50623337)

          This would assume that the outcome is not predetermined, and in the big (President, Governor, US Senate//Congress) I have come to believe it's fully controlled.

          As much as you may disagree with him, look at the press coverage of Ron Paul. My kid in 7th grade noticed how any time they showed a clip on TV it portrayed him as crazy, and the commentary was always about him being crazy. Now look at Hillary who has not dropped out and the Democrats only other candidate is "Socialist Bernie Sanders". Listen to the messages, and the brainwashing becomes pretty obvious. Subtle, but obvious.

          There is a whole lot of psychology involved in these campaigns, and even though people claim politicians are stupid that's not really true.

        • by tnk1 ( 899206 )

          You're mostly right, but I don't think it is determined in the same way you're thinking.

          There may or may not be a committee that does that, but the real fact is that certain paths are pre-determined for a candidate these days. It's not that there is a conspiracy, it's that the government has attained a weight and momentum that allowed it to become an unstoppable avalanche already, and nothing is slowing it down. Certainly not some clown elected for two four year terms.

          He or she isn't going to start anothe

      • Re:Big Surprise (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Fire_Wraith ( 1460385 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2015 @05:54PM (#50622981)
        Skepticism is certainly warranted - however, far better to go with someone whose track record indicates that they could oppose mass surveillance, or take actions to roll it back. I would choose someone who might go back on their word later over someone who PROMISES to do the very thing I don't want them to.
        • I mean, I agree with you... but given how good politicians are at keeping promises, maybe we *should* want one "who PROMISES to do the very thing I don't want them to"! I mean, which do you think is more likely: a politician keeping a promise to do something that is in the public good, or a politician lying *regardless* of reason?

          I'm joking. I hope...

      • Re:Big Surprise (Score:5, Insightful)

        by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2015 @06:31PM (#50623201)

        I would care so much more about Carly here if I believed that any of the candidates won't cooperate fully with the NSA. Heck, one of the very few things Obama actually promised as a candidate was to cut back on this sort of thing, and he reversed as soon as he was in office. Either the NSA has some good shit on everyone in power, and/or everyone in power values convenience over the interests of the people. Sorry, I wouldn't even believe Bernie or Rand Paul here. We've created a monster.

        "Do not summon that you cannot dismiss" - H. P. Lovecraft

        You don't even need a conspiracy to explain it:

        NSA: I need to look at anyone's email I want without a warrant.

        Obama: What? Absolutely not, that's a huge invasion of privacy I was elected to stop!!

        NSA: Ok, if there's a significant attack on US soil we'll investigate afterwards and find an email that plausibly could have warned us. Someone will then leak this email to the media and everyone will know that if you didn't take away this power we begged you for there was a non-trivial chance we could have saved the tens, hundreds, or even thousands of people who died in that attack.

        Obama: Snoop away!

        • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

          by PRMan ( 959735 )

          NSA: I need to look at anyone's email I want without a warrant.

          Obama: What? Absolutely not, that's a huge invasion of privacy I was elected to stop!!

          NSA: We have irrefutable proof that you were born in Kenya, not Hawai'i.

          Obama: Snoop away!

      • by tnk1 ( 899206 )

        The President needs a lot of information in order to do his job. It can be difficult to tell the people who you expect to get you that information that you don't want them doing so much of that.

        The good shit that the NSA has on the President is that they're the people the President needs to combat threats. The problem is that they've gone outside their mandate, but their actual function will make it difficult for any President to just walk in there with a broom and kick them all out.

        So the reason NSA is c

        • by lgw ( 121541 )

          It's part of the executive. He just needed to tell them "stop snooping on Americans inside America" and done. No congress or courts involved. He can fire anyone he needs to fire until he gets an NSA boss who complies. The buck stops with Obama right now.

  • by Fwipp ( 1473271 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2015 @05:06PM (#50622675)

    I thought she was all about keeping the government small & outta your business.

  • by jodido ( 1052890 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2015 @05:11PM (#50622699)
    That stuff about small government is for the chumps. The NSA and the rest of the police agencies are there to protect US capitalism. HP is a big US corporation. There's no reason in the world why she wouldn't cooperate with the NSA. Nor is there any reason why any other big corporation won't, whatever they may say publicly.
    • by JBMcB ( 73720 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2015 @06:19PM (#50623125)

      The NSA and the rest of the police agencies are there to protect US CORPORATISM.

      There, fixed that for you. Having government "protect" capitalism is kind of a contradiction in terms.

      • I know the AnCaps hate to hear it, but you do actually need a government even to have a chance of making capitalism work. It's all very noble to talk about how using force is unethical, but the violent will laugh in your stupid face while they rob you blind. Without an official government - authorized, equipped, and publicly funded to commit violence - all that you'll get is an unofficial one built by the best warlord to rise up to pluck all you idiots busily making economic value that you can't protect. At that point you'll have a choice: produce for the warlord (keeping a fraction, if any, of the profit), fight for the warlord's army, or a shallow grave courtesy of that army. Your option to pay off the warlord will last until the amount you pay + the cost of just rolling over you becomes less than could be squeezed out of you at gunpoint. Don't bother pretending you can hire you own armed protection agency to protect you; that's just setting up your own warlord whose guns point at your back instead of at your face.

        That's not even considering external threats, which of course do exist. You can't overhaul humanity as a whole. An invader doesn't care that they'll wreck your pretty little fairy-tale economy; they want your land, your natural resources, your skilled laborers who will work for them if the only other alternative is a taking a bullet, and your technology. You know what the easiest way to get somebody's trade secrets is? Point a gun at them and ask.

        Any way you cut it, if you don't publicly set up a government to enforce the will of the populace and fund it through social contract that says it's OK to coerce payment (and you'll still have defectors even then), you're just going to get a tyrannical government run by whoever has the biggest / best-trained guns and/or the best ability to convince others to fight on their behalf (and believe me, people are always willing to do that). The odds are very strongly in favor of you being nearer the bottom of the new government - possibly a couple feet underground - than being anywhere near the top.

  • Misleading Summary (Score:4, Insightful)

    by neonv ( 803374 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2015 @05:13PM (#50622715)

    Being that the program was classified, they would have just ordered are large number of assets without telling her the reason for them. If I were HP and the NSA wanted to buy a large numbers of servers, I would sell the servers to them as well.

    From the article

    Fiorina said. “They were ramping up a whole set of programs and needed a lot of data crunching capability to try and monitor a whole set of threats... What I knew at the time was our nation had been attacked.”

    The summary makes it sound like she purposely did it to screw over Americans. There's nothing to indicate that. The waterboarding issue is added on even though it is not related. This is a flame bait summary, and a misleading article. We really don't need articles on Slashdot that demonize people like this.

    • True, but she's still a not very good human being.

    • by amorsen ( 7485 )

      She brags about her security clearance and about how she knows so much about what is going on. She may not be all that bright, but surely given that information she could figure out why they needed the server capacity.

      Her defence of waterboarding shows what a disgusting person she is. I am ashamed that I was working for HP at the time.

  • Just ask anyone that worked for her.

    Honestly is she that delusional or is there some secret money machine from running for president? Because I can not figure out WHY she is running.

    • It used to be that person would ask themselves, "Why should I run for President?"

      Now they ask themselves, "Why shouldn't I run for President?"

    • One hypothesis is that a lot of the candidates are just running to drive up their speaker fees and the demand for them to speak.

      • by Fire_Wraith ( 1460385 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2015 @05:52PM (#50622967)
        There's certainly very little downside to it, these days, for most candidates. Even if you gain no traction/little notice, and you drop out early, the net resultis likely that nobody really remembers so it doesn't matter.
        On the other hand, if you make a splash, but you lose out after a while, you can write/sell a book, get hired as a contributor on Fox, go give speeches, etc, and do a lot more than you could have before.

        The really sad/funny thing is that Fiorina ran in 2010 as a moderate for California Senate. Now she's trying to sell herself as a hard-right ultraconservative republican. It's a bunch of flimflam, and you shouldn't buy it, any more than you should hire her to run your company.
  • by JustAnotherOldGuy ( 4145623 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2015 @05:22PM (#50622795) Journal

    Well there's a ringing endorsement for our new dictator, err, I mean "president".

    I'm sure she's keen to do all she can to protect my privacy and limit the data collection powers of all these 3-letter agencies that are scooping up our info wholesale.

  • Patriotism? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ledow ( 319597 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2015 @05:41PM (#50622925) Homepage

    Maybe it's the country I grew up in, but anything "framed... in patriotic terms" is usually only ever a disguise for some of the worst atrocities and general scummy behaviour possible.

    Be wary of people who are doing things "for their country" rather than, say, "for humanity", "for peace", etc.

    My country is a geographic statistic of my birth. How that justifies criminal and/or amoral behaviour against those with a slightly different statistic, I've never quite fathomed.

    Fuck, even "I did it because it looked like the right thing to do" holds a billion times more weight than any patriotic shit.

    Patriotism is racism without mention of colour. "Not born here" syndrome.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Black Parrot ( 19622 )

      Excellent post.

      FWIW, I knew there was going to be trouble as soon as they stuck a flag on the ruins of the WTC.

    • by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Remember the "Patriot" Act?

      A translation guide for bill names:

      "Patriotic" = Behavior we like only when our party is in power

      "Liberation" = Endless war

      "Defense" = Offense pork

      "X Child Act" = Get up into our business to protect a net 1.7 children

      "Affordable" = Open your wallet wider

      "Care" = Socialism

      "Jobs Bill" = The 1% get a raise

      "X Accountability Act" = More slacking inspectors at your expense

      "X Transparency Act" = Your personal info is outed

      "X Voting Act" = Longer booth lines

      "X Justice Act" = Bloated jails

    • Reminds me of a big discussion we had in history class back in high school .... Supposedly, Nationalism was the blind, "racism without mention of color" that you speak of, as opposed to the good/healthy concept of Patriotism.

      Frankly, I was never that convinced the difference was substantial. In theory anyway, Patriotism is simply taking pride in your country without going to the extreme of using it as a reason to put down any other nation.

      As you point out though? In practice, I think the difference amounts

      • by dbIII ( 701233 )
        The thing that did it for me is when Oliver North wrapped himself in a flag to get his photo taken, then had "Patriot" written over it after selling weapons to Iran and Hezbolla while embezzling a bit on the side for a convertible and airconditioning for his house. For a while that was the definition of "Patriot" for one wing of the Republican party despite it looking a hell of a lot like treason and theft to me.
        So when it's laid on really thick it can mean an utterly evil prick wrapped up in a flag to hid
  • by xeno ( 2667 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2015 @05:47PM (#50622945)

    disclaimer: I have a household member who's worked as an engineer at HP under Carly.

    The unending wellspring of universal hatred for Carly as a leader from those who worked under her (especially at HP) is impressive, and remains constant even from people whose politics are somewhat to the right of Genghis Khan. She did what she was told, she laid waste to that not-so-micro economy, and she shows no regrets whatsoever -- for either the human or financial disaster in her wake. There's no surprise, then, to find she was unquestioningly supportive of what she perceives to be rungs above her on the ladder of power. Godwin's Law is entirely appropriate for examples of where this leads; don't mistake "comfortable sociopath" for "hawkish."

    Carly is precisely the sort of person who should never be allowed to have power over others, or even a sharp knife at dinner: Total obedience and no discernible ethics at all.

  • That scares me. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AndyKron ( 937105 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2015 @05:52PM (#50622969)
    There are people in this country who want her to be president, and that scares me.
  • Does anyone believe that the NSA shared any details or scope about their hardware purchase? Or any of their vendors?

    "Hi we're building out datacenters so we can do some probably illegal data snooping, can you help us?" I'm sure an agency that is cloaked in as much secrecy as possible goes around sharing that sort of information. Especially without gag orders.

    Not only is she a massive tool she's obviously full of it. She needs a gag, it's an order.

  • by Overzeetop ( 214511 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2015 @06:06PM (#50623061) Journal

    The government calls up your company for a big order of you product, and you make it happen and get the product delivered, and now you're going to crucified for it?

    Carly was a horrible CEO and I want to see her ripped to pieces by rabid monkeys and dance about on the incinerated remains of her entrails. But I'm having a hard time seeing how - as a businesswoman - delivering a product for money makes her somehow worse because she happened to sell to the NSA. I'll still hate/mistrust her for the moral support of the questionable practices of the spook community in the 00s, but not for selling stuff.

    • Her fiduciary responsibility as CEO of a corporation was to maximize profits, thus maximizing returns to shareholders. CEOs have no fiduciary responsibility to act ethically, they only have a responsibility to not get caught, if getting caught would effect share price. The best thing Fiorini ever did for shareholders was to get fired -- HP share prices jumped 7% the day she left the company.
  • by Ol Olsoc ( 1175323 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2015 @06:21PM (#50623147)
    All she needs to do now is demand we teach creationism, Nuking the Mexian rapists, and burning gays at the stakes like they used to do before liberals emerged from hell and took over the world, and she's a shoo-in for the Presidential nomination>

    Maybe put cameras in everyone's bedrooms - but please gawd, not hers!

  • OMG! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by kenh ( 9056 ) on Tuesday September 29, 2015 @09:46PM (#50624137) Homepage Journal

    A tier-1 vendor supplied servers to the NSA! OMG! We need to boycott that vendor!

    Wait, what? Other Tier-1 vendors ALSO wanted to win the NSA procurement contract? We must boycott them also!

    And you know what? I hear they have Coca-Cola machines at the NSA! I bet their employees drank countless caffeinated sodas from Coca-Cola as they were violating the civil rights of countless millions of Americsns - we need to boycott Coca-Cola as well!

    You know what? I bet all the government cars in the NSA fleet come from GM - we need to boycott all GM cars for their support of warrantless wiretaps!

    Wow, it's amazing how many corporations secretly support the NSA's warrantless wiretapping! /sarcasm

  • by Hognoxious ( 631665 ) on Wednesday September 30, 2015 @03:58AM (#50625389) Homepage Journal

    One server is an embarrassment. A truckload of servers is a statistic.

  • by ThatsNotPudding ( 1045640 ) on Wednesday September 30, 2015 @06:52AM (#50625937)
    Thus, she is a Republican.

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