6 ms·

It does seem logical to separate offensive and defensive cyber warfare agencies in order to prevent overreaches in the name of defense.

DrScump 10y ago
It doesn't seem logical to initiate major administration structural changes when your term is 99% over.
- makecheck 10y ago
  Timing should not be an issue. Worrying about "when" is how we got into this farce about the Supreme Court appointment being "too close" to the election, and that shouldn't have mattered either.
mtgx 10y ago
It does, but I'm very skeptical the NSA has the right "defense" culture. Throughout most of its life it has been a very offense-heavy agency. The article says this: > The NSA also has a defensive mission — to protect the government’s classified networks — but is better known for its role in conducting electronic spying on overseas targets to gather intelligence on adversaries and foreign governments. So even the very tiny defense focus it has now (protecting classified networks), while ignoring the vast majority of networks and databases of the federal government is still overshadowed by the fact that its main purpose is to spy on everyone in the world...(gather intelligence on "adversaries" and foreign governments - good joke, WashPost!) If the U.S. government is actually serious about "cybersecurity" then it needs a new agency that is in charge of implementing modern security best practices and keeping all systems up to date from the least important government network to the most critical infrastructure that would wreck havoc if it was to be hacked. The NSA is definitely not the agency to do that. And it also lacks the culture to do so. For instance, implementing backdoors should be a big NO-NO in the culture of such an agency. The NSA seems to prefer backdoors and secret access over strong security, because its main mission is spying, not cybersecurity. So all in all, still a good move that the most ruthless of US government's cyberattacks won't benefit as much from NSA's vast spying capabilities, which could lead to less abuse in the future, but it does nothing to increase cybersecurity in the US (unless you believe the "deterrent" argument, but so far I haven't seen it work at all when it comes to cyberattacks, and the deterrent is useless against random hacking groups anyway).
- blackflame7000 10y ago
  Right, the NSA should be focused solely on the defense of American (public/private) networks whereas the US Cyber Command should be used solely for offensive purposes. That way the NSA cant justify going on the offensive to probe for targets or meta-data when they should be focused on securing infrastructure.

DrScump 10y ago

It doesn't seem logical to initiate major administration structural changes when your term is 99% over.

makecheck 10y ago
Timing should not be an issue. Worrying about "when" is how we got into this farce about the Supreme Court appointment being "too close" to the election, and that shouldn't have mattered either.

mtgx 10y ago

It does, but I'm very skeptical the NSA has the right "defense" culture. Throughout most of its life it has been a very offense-heavy agency. The article says this: > The NSA also has a defensive mission — to protect the government’s classified networks — but is better known for its role in conducting electronic spying on overseas targets to gather intelligence on adversaries and foreign governments. So even the very tiny defense focus it has now (protecting classified networks), while ignoring the vast majority of networks and databases of the federal government is still overshadowed by the fact that its main purpose is to spy on everyone in the world...(gather intelligence on "adversaries" and foreign governments - good joke, WashPost!) If the U.S. government is actually serious about "cybersecurity" then it needs a new agency that is in charge of implementing modern security best practices and keeping all systems up to date from the least important government network to the most critical infrastructure that would wreck havoc if it was to be hacked. The NSA is definitely not the agency to do that. And it also lacks the culture to do so. For instance, implementing backdoors should be a big NO-NO in the culture of such an agency. The NSA seems to prefer backdoors and secret access over strong security, because its main mission is spying, not cybersecurity. So all in all, still a good move that the most ruthless of US government's cyberattacks won't benefit as much from NSA's vast spying capabilities, which could lead to less abuse in the future, but it does nothing to increase cybersecurity in the US (unless you believe the "deterrent" argument, but so far I haven't seen it work at all when it comes to cyberattacks, and the deterrent is useless against random hacking groups anyway).

blackflame7000 10y ago
Right, the NSA should be focused solely on the defense of American (public/private) networks whereas the US Cyber Command should be used solely for offensive purposes. That way the NSA cant justify going on the offensive to probe for targets or meta-data when they should be focused on securing infrastructure.