Gen. Keith Alexander was the longest serving
chief of the National Security Agency (NSA) in the history of the
organization, spending nine years at the top of the agency. In that
time, he was part of nine patent applications for technology he
helped develop while there. But now Alexander is
going around charging big corporations and banks $1 million a
month for consulting work and says that he’s got new ideas he’s
going to patent that make his advice worth so much. Although he
only retired in March, Alexander now says that the reason he can
charge up to $1 million a month is because of a new set of patents
he plans on filing he insists he came up with only after leaving
the NSA. He insists, too, that agency lawyers have reviewed to
ensure were not based on ideas proprietary to the NSA.
Alexander’s explanation comes a few weeks after Rep. Alan
Grayson (D-Fla.)
wrote (PDF) one of Alexander’s clients expressing concern that
the former NSA chief must be offering classified information to be
charging as much as he is.
Foreign Policy
explains why Alexander’s actions could be problematic even if
everything he says is true:
But even if Alexander’s new technology is legally unique, it is
shaped by the nearly nine years he spent running an intelligence
colossus. He was the longest-serving director in the history of the
NSA and the first commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, responsible
for all cybersecurity personnel — defensive and offensive — in
the military and the Defense Department. From those two perches,
Alexander had access to the government’s most highly classified
intelligence about hackers trying to steal U.S. secrets and disable
critical infrastructure, such as the electrical power grid. Indeed,
he helped to invent new techniques for finding those hackers and
filed seven patents on cybersecurity technologies while working for
the NSA.
Foreign Policy calls this an unfair competitive
advantage. Alexander’s actions after leaving his post at the NSA
provide an illuminating example of how government officials use
their “public service” careers to profit in retirement, something
that should be, at the very least, seriously questioned. The NSA
compensated Alexander well for his time there—perhaps it would not
be too unreasonable to include in employment contracts for people
like Alexander clauses that prevent future private sector
employment in related fields. After all, wasn’t that one of the
reasons provided for compensating government employees well in
salary and pensions in the first place?
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