Tag: news

What’s it like inside the
National Security Agency (NSA) headquarters? One journalist
recently got access to the shadowy and controversy-laden agency for
a day. He discovered a range of issues within the NSA’s walls, from
their own hurdles to the ominous desires of some officials.

As part of an effort to improve its public relations, the NSA
allowed Foreign Policy contributing editor and
international politics professor Daniel Drezner to tour the Fort
Meade, Maryland compound. Drezner at times paints an almost
sympathetic account of some of the agency’s graceless
behavior and
statements, explaining that the NSA seems unaware that the
immediate post-9/11 willingness to compromise personal freedom for
national security has worn away. As if the briefing room were the
stage for some kind of tragicomedy, Drezner highlights “faded
banners” that hang on the walls, proclaiming the NSA’s ostensible
mission to “protect privacy rights.”

He also
explains the problems the NSA has encountered since its former
contractor
Edward Snowden revealed how massive their meta-data collection
program is:

For one thing, they were upfront in acknowledging the damage
that Snowden had wreaked on agency morale and recruitment.
Applications to work at the NSA are down by more than one third,
and retention rates have also declined… Traditionally, when
analysts joined the NSA, they joined for life. This is changing,
and not for the better from the NSA’s perspective.

Apparently, the post-Snowden era also comes with more rigorous
internal checks. The NSA used to subject its employees to lie
detector tests once every five years. Now, they plan to issue
several tests per year.

In some aspects, the agency is far from sympathetic and outright
alarming. “I have some reforms for the First Amendment,” an unnamed
official told Drezner, confiding his wish that the Obama
administration would reprimand journalists who he believes have
wrongly portrayed the agency.

Whether or not the official spoke in jest when he suggested the
NSA more robustly trample on citizens’ rights, Drezner says he does
not know. “Either way,” he asserts, “it’s not funny.”

Mike Masnick of TechDirt offers his opinion on the cringe-worthy
statement about repressing free speech. “Given everything that’s
going on,” pointing broadly toward the seemingly endless
stream of controversy that the agency has found itself paddling
up this year, he
believes “that seems like something you should
not joke about if you’re an NSA person.”

The
Washington Post is reporting that the White House will
release later today the report from the Review Group on
Intelligence and Communications Technology appointed by President
Obama in August. This review was prompted by the revelations of
Edward Snowden
that the National Security Agency was, among other activities,
monitoring for the past five years when, to whom, and for how long
virtually every American spoke on their phones. The group has made
40 recommendations with regard to how and when the NSA may engage
in domestic surveillance.

From the Post:

The recommendation that the NSA no longer keep the phone
database — estimated by some former officials to contain more than
1 trillion records — is among a set of sweeping technical reforms
aimed at restoring public confidence in the spying apparatus, said
individuals briefed on its contents…

Rather than the NSA, the phone companies or a third party would
hold the records, said U.S. officials briefed on the contents.

The report’s 40-plus recommendations, also include barring NSA
from asking companies to build “backdoors” into their software so
that the government may gain access to encrypted communications,
barring it from undermining global encryption standards and
prohibiting it from stockpiling “zero day” hacking tools that can
be used to penetrate computer systems, and in some cases, damage or
destroy them, according to the individuals, who were not authorized
to speak on the record.

The panel also suggested moving the NSA’s information assurance
directorate, which is in charge of protecting classified government
computer systems, under a separate entity. The idea there would be
to separate a clearly defensive mission from the offensive side of
NSA, which works to gain access to networks overseas for espionage,
and which can be used to enable a military cyber attack on an
adversary’s computer system.

At a minimum, these proposals certainly should be adopted.
However, the Post reports that the president may be
reluctant to go even this far:

Some U.S. officials have said that the White House, which is
free to accept, reject or modify the panel’s ideas, has indicated
it is not likely to endorse substantive changes to the phone
records program.

In fact, the president has evidently
already rejected the important recommendation that a civilian
be appointed to head up the NSA.

Yesterday, the CEOs of leading Internet firms, Google, Yahoo,
Apple, and Facebook
met with President Obama to express their concerns about NSA
spying. Last week, they had released an
open letter to the president and Congress urging the adoption
of five principles to govern government surveillance. The five
principles listed at the ReformGovernmentSurveillance.com
website include (1) no bulk collection of user data; (2)
independent judicial review of intelligence agency demands, (3)
transparent reports on what is being compelled; (4) no country
firewalls against cross border data; and (5) a mutual legal
assistance treaty (MLAT) among countries to prevent conflicts.

Earlier this week, a federal district court judge found that NSA
domestic surveillance program
violated the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protections
against unreasonable search and seizure.

It is a puzzle that the man who promised that his administration
would be the
most transparent in history is apparently refusing to make
“substantive changes” to domestic surveillance programs.