truthfollower
BANNED
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- Mar 8, 2019
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COWEN: As I understand how the CIA works, inside the CIA buildings, you, in essence, have a workplace without smartphones for security reasons. As a manager, what have you learned about the effect of smartphones on our workplace?
BRENNAN: It’s a relatively recent technological development, as far as smartphones and Fitbits and other types of things that . . . even though I grew up in an era when we didn’t have all of this technology at our fingertips, I have come to understand the power of technology and how it can be used to advance one’s objectives.
But also, it could be used by adversaries to exploit, to gain access in certain areas, to certain types of environments or conversations or whatever, that can really defeat physical security, obstacles, and perimeters.
So I fully understand why certain types of technologies could compromise the secrecy or the needed protection of methods in certain environments. You can do things to defeat those types of exploitations, but again, the CIA, NSA, FBI, and others are always mindful that technology that is used for our purposes can be reverse-engineered for the purposes of others.
COWEN: My question is much more mundane. When you have all the workers with no smartphones, do they get more done? Or is there no benefit?
BRENNAN: [laughs] I think there are certainly benefits to it. The CIA officers leave the phones in their car or whatever, so they can go out and be able to talk to their family or whatever else. There are ways to communicate outside. But I think that there are a lot of distractions that come with phones. You can go off in pursuit of various tangents as you get more and more curious about certain things.
Now, agency officers have access to computers and the internet, but even there, we’ve had to take steps to make sure that people don’t go down wrong paths.
BRENNAN: It’s a relatively recent technological development, as far as smartphones and Fitbits and other types of things that . . . even though I grew up in an era when we didn’t have all of this technology at our fingertips, I have come to understand the power of technology and how it can be used to advance one’s objectives.
But also, it could be used by adversaries to exploit, to gain access in certain areas, to certain types of environments or conversations or whatever, that can really defeat physical security, obstacles, and perimeters.
So I fully understand why certain types of technologies could compromise the secrecy or the needed protection of methods in certain environments. You can do things to defeat those types of exploitations, but again, the CIA, NSA, FBI, and others are always mindful that technology that is used for our purposes can be reverse-engineered for the purposes of others.
COWEN: My question is much more mundane. When you have all the workers with no smartphones, do they get more done? Or is there no benefit?
BRENNAN: [laughs] I think there are certainly benefits to it. The CIA officers leave the phones in their car or whatever, so they can go out and be able to talk to their family or whatever else. There are ways to communicate outside. But I think that there are a lot of distractions that come with phones. You can go off in pursuit of various tangents as you get more and more curious about certain things.
Now, agency officers have access to computers and the internet, but even there, we’ve had to take steps to make sure that people don’t go down wrong paths.
