Hi and welcome to Sabirism's malicious life besides. I'm Ren Levy. The NSA is one of the world's most formidable intelligence agencies.

Being that powerful, the sentiment towards the NSA in the U.S. security community

has always been mixed.

Many feel pride in the NSA's technological sophistication and successes, but there were

always some people who feared that the National Security Agency's advanced capabilities would one day be directed inwards

instead of outwards.

That negative sentiment can be attributed to the fact that many security professionals started their careers as hackers,

thus may have strong anti-establishment notions.

But Edward Snowden's leaked documents proved that at least some of these fears were justified.

The NSA, it was revealed, was spying on US citizens as well as foreign nationals.

Are those fears justified?

Is the NSA more dangerous than it is useful?

Our guest today is Aira Winkler, Arthur and Sisso of Skyline Security Solutions, who started his career in cyber security as an intelligence analyst at the NSA.

Ira will try to disperse some of the thick fog surrounding the mysterious security agency.

Who are the people working for the NSA?

What kind of admission tests do they go through? And most importantly,

how critical is the NSA to the US national security? And are those fears I mentioned earlier justified or not?

Ira spoke with Nate Nelson, our senior producer.

Enjoy the interview. Ira if you could just start by briefly introducing yourself.

Yeah, hi, my name's Ira Winkler. I'm author of You Can Stop Stupid,

C-Seso of Skyline Technology Solutions, and just been around cybersecurity way too long.

Could you tell the listeners about your experience in government and then specifically with the NSA?

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