After General Alexander, Obama Should Split The NSA To Make Us All Safer - GuardianUK

[WillyT]

After General Alexander, Obama should split the NSA to make us all safer
The NSA's aggressive pursuit of Big Data has not only invaded our privacy, but also left us more vulnerable to cyber attack.
Marcy Wheeler - GuardianUK
Monday 21 October 2013 11.33 EDT

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The NSA is one of its own biggest adversaries in its fight to keep America safe from cyber attacks. To fight this considerable adversary, the president should use the replacement of NSA Director Keith Alexander and his deputy, John Inglis, as an opportunity to split off NSA's defensive function and rebuild necessary trust. Commentators have long recognized the NSA had two conflicting missions: one to defend key American networks, and one to collect intelligence on our adversaries. As Wired explained three years ago:

NSA headquarters … in Fort Meade, Maryland, is actually home to two different agencies under one roof. There's the signals intelligence directorate, the Big Brothers who, it is said, can tap into any electronic communication. And there's the information assurance directorate, the cyber security nerds who make sure our government's computers and telecommunications systems are hacker- and eavesdropper-free.

The addition of US Cybercommand to this mix made things still worse: General Alexander has warned of attacks on the US's electrical grid that might rely on vulnerabilities similar to the ones the US exploited to attack Iran's nuclear program.

Documents leaked by Edward Snowden have exposed more details about how the NSA's dual missions undermine each other. The agency uses court orders to oblige Google to turn over its users' data under the Prism program, while finding ways around Google's encryption when compiling contact lists of unsuspecting Google users in collection supervised by no court.

While the NSA points to vulnerabilities of American business networks and communications, it works with companies to "insert vulnerabilities into commercial encryption systems" and "influence policies, standards and specification for commercial public key technology". Even as NSA and other national security leaders warn that cyberattacks (pdf) present the biggest threat to the country, NSA is leaving open or even creating vulnerabilities that our adversaries can exploit.

As security expert Bruce Schneier described:

Finding a vulnerability – or creating one – and keeping it secret to attack the bad guys necessarily leaves the good guys more vulnerable.

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More: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/21/general-alexander-obama-split-nsa

[Thinkingabout]

1. So we should take the advise from the guardian, never, they can give all the want, we

Don't need their free advise. How about the guardian just folding up, my free advise to them.

[WillyT]

2. Hmmm...