Keith Alexander Speaks: "The NSA Protects America's Privacy And Civil Liberties"

Authored by Keith Alexander (director of the NSA and commander of the US Cyber Command), originally posted at The National Interest,

Obama has identified cybersecurity threats as among the most serious challenges facing our nation. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel noted in April that cyberattacks “have grown into a defining security challenge.” And former secretary of defense Leon Panetta told an audience in 2012 that distributed denial-of-service attacks have already hit U.S. financial institutions. Describing this as “a pre-9/11 moment,” he explained that “the threat we face is already here.” The president and two defense secretaries have thus acknowledged publicly that we as a society are extraordinarily vulnerable. We rely on highly interdependent networks that are insecure, sensitive to interruption and lacking in resiliency. Our nation’s government, military, scientific, commercial and entertainment sectors all operate on the same networks as our adversaries. America is continually under siege in cyberspace, and the volume, complexity and potential impact of these assaults are steadily increasing.

Yet even as it confronts mounting threats, the United States also possesses a significant historical opportunity to deter them. America has built something unique in cyberspace—an evolving set of capabilities and activities that have not yet reached their collective potential. We have learned through two decades of trial and error that operationalizing our cyberdefenses by linking them to intelligence and information-assurance capabilities is not only the best but also the only viable response to growing threats. Our capabilities give us the power to change the narrative by making our networks more secure—and ensuring that cyberspace itself becomes a safer place for commerce, social interaction and the provision of public services. We want to take this opportunity to put these developments in historical context, and then explain why we as a nation must continue to build a cyberenterprise capable of guarding our critical infrastructure and population. We can and must do this while always protecting civil liberties, personal privacy and American values.

We now rely on social structures that barely existed 150 years ago. The order and functioning of modern societies, economies and militaries depend upon tight coordination of logistics and operations. Reliability of timing and flow has become indispensable for modern nations and their armed forces. This synchronization rests upon an infrastructure that allows communication, transport, finance, commerce, power and utilities to serve policy makers, managers, commanders and ordinary citizens in an efficient and reliable (i.e., unbroken) manner. Efficiency and dependability make realistic planning and effective operations possible across a whole society. Such intricate ties in the mesh of infrastructure systems also constitute a lucrative target for an attacker and a significant vulnerability for modern societies. Disrupt the synchronization, and the whole system of systems becomes unreliable—thus diminishing the nation’s power and influence.

This unprecedented degree of exposure to systemic dislocation was first anticipated over a century ago when British cabinet ministers and business leaders contemplated the potential for disruption to their entire economy if French armored cruisers even temporarily interrupted the empire’s overseas trade. The perceived peril to British society prompted the Royal Navy’s intelligence office to begin gathering data for the strategic assessment of risk and vulnerability. That effort convinced decision makers that Britain was vulnerable to disruption of its commerce and to sabotage of its war-fighting capabilities. At the same time, Royal Navy planners recognized opportunities to exploit Germany’s systemic vulnerability to economic disruption. This would require the coordination of a range of institutions and capabilities: financial services, international communications, shipping, energy, diplomacy, and naval and intelligence activities meshed into what historian Nicholas Lambert aptly describes as an “Armageddon” strategy.

London approved use of this collection of levers as a weapon against Germany in 1912, but when war came soon afterward British leaders quickly recoiled from the plan under economic and diplomatic pressure. Britain’s economic-warfare measures were proving to be shockingly effective. At the outset of war in 1914 a global financial panic affected world trade on a scale like that of 1929. Britain’s strategy swiftly exacerbated the crisis. Citizen and business confidence in economic institutions collapsed. Traders withdrew from markets. World trade ebbed. Commodity exchanges closed their doors. Banks recalled loans, and global liquidity dried up. In an increasingly globalized and interconnected world, moreover, many of the unintended victims of economic warfare were British.

While the British never fully implemented their 1912 vision of coordinated levers of power to defeat an enemy, the notion of employing strategic technological and economic power indirectly helped bring about a new capability in the United States. One of the most important pillars of Britain’s strategy, which was bequeathed to the United States, was a strategic signals-intelligence capability that served both national and battlefield users. By 1952, the United States had established the National Security Agency (NSA) as the capstone of a signals-intelligence enterprise. That capability became computerized over time, and the resulting “cryptologic platform” emerged as one of the bases of expertise and infrastructure for cyberspace and cyberoperations. From this emerged America’s military cyberspace architecture and capabilities. In 1981, the Pentagon gave the NSA the mission to help secure data in Department of Defense computers. In 1990, that role expanded to the government’s “national-security information systems.” The NSA also played a role in helping the government and military to understand the vulnerability of the nation’s critical infrastructure. When planning accelerated for military cyberoperations after 2001, the NSA provided expertise to the Pentagon’s new “network warfare” capabilities.

Since then, cyberspace has become vital for the functioning of our nation in the digital age. Our national digital infrastructure facilitates the movement of commodities and information, and stores them in virtual form as well. We now use cyberspace to synchronize those critical infrastructure systems that coordinated economies and militaries a century ago. Many of the same vulnerabilities that Royal Navy planners noted in 1905 apply in cyberspace and are magnified by our dependence on the information sector. The features that allow all these infrastructure sectors to link together in cyberspace, however, also make them accessible to intruders from almost anywhere at a comparative minimum of cost and risk. The cyberdimension, therefore, adds an unprecedented degree of complexity and vulnerability to the task of defending ourselves against a modern-day “Armageddon” strategy.

The century-old dream and nightmare of crippling a modern society by wrecking its infrastructure—or just by disturbing its synchronization of functions—is now a reality others are dreaming of employing against the United States. We do not know how effective such a strategy would be against the United States in practice, but glimpses of global financial panics in recent years should raise concern about even partial “success” for an adversary attempting such an attack.

Military Cyber-capabilities are now being “normalized,” following a traditional path from commercial innovations to war-fighting systems (much like that of aviation in the last century). Several nations have pondered cyberdoctrine for years at senior military schools and think tanks. Cyberattacks against Georgia in 2008 demonstrated how network warfare could be employed alongside conventional military forces to produce operational effects. Lessons learned from such operations are now being turned into tactics and planning by future adversaries. This normalization of cybereffects and their integration with conventional forces will not diminish their power—on the contrary, it will magnify it. Decision makers like former secretary Panetta have mentioned the possibility of a “cyber Pearl Harbor” to evoke our current predicament. We may have already witnessed the cyberequivalents of the sinking of a battleship at Taranto and practice runs with shallow-water torpedoes (the inspiration and preparation, respectively, for Japan’s Pearl Harbor attack).

Cyberconflict occurs on a second level as well. Three times over the previous millennium, military revolutions allowed forces to conquer huge territories and forcibly transfer riches from losers to winners (namely, in the Mongol conquests of China, Russia and Baghdad; the Spanish conquests of the Americas; and the European empires in the nineteenth century). Remote cyberexploitation now facilitates the systematic pillaging of a rival state without military conquest and the ruin of the losing power. We have seen a staggering list of intrusions into major corporations in our communications, financial, information-technology, defense and natural-resource sectors. The intellectual property exfiltrated to date can be counted in the tens to hundreds of thousands of terabytes. We are witnessing another great shift of wealth by means of cybertheft, and this blunts our technological and innovative edge. Yet we can neither prevent major attacks nor stop wholesale theft of intellectual capital because we rely on architecture built for availability, functionality and ease of use—with security bolted on as an afterthought.

The United States has not sat idle, however, in the face of diverse and persistent threats in cyberspace that no one federal department or agency alone can defeat. There is clear recognition that the nation’s cybersecurity requires a collaborative approach and that each department brings unique authorities, resources and capabilities to the table. The Department of Homeland Security is the lead federal department responsible for national protection against domestic cybersecurity incidents. The Department of Justice, through the Federal Bureau of Investigation, is the lead federal department responsible for the investigation, attribution, disruption and prosecution of cybersecurity incidents. The Department of Defense has the lead for national defense, with the responsibility for defending the nation from foreign cyberattack. This team approach helps us protect U.S. infrastructure and information, detect attacks and deter adversaries in cyberspace. Relationships also have been forged with private enterprises that carry the data (or create or study the hardware and software that manage the data). Working together, we are improving our knowledge about what is happening across the cyberdomain, enhancing shared situational awareness for the whole U.S. government while ensuring robust protection for privacy and civil liberties.

At the heart of our national-scale capability for defending the nation in cyberspace is the set of relationships for intelligence, analysis, and information security and assurance. The NSA makes that team work. The agency’s importance was reflected in then secretary of defense Robert Gates’s 2009 decision to designate the director of the NSA as commander of U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) as well, and to locate the new command’s headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland, alongside the NSA. Through these decisions, the department leveraged the similarities and overlaps between the capabilities needed for the conduct of the NSA’s core missions—signals intelligence and information assurance—and those of USCYBERCOM: to provide for the defense and secure operation of Defense Department networks and, upon order by appropriate authority, to operate in cyberspace in defense of the nation.

The NSA and USCYBERCOM operate under multiple layers of institutional oversight that reinforce our commitment to privacy and civil liberties. These include processes internal to both organizations, executive-branch oversight accountability mechanisms, congressional oversight and judicial scrutiny. Physical, managerial and technical safeguards serve to prevent, correct and report violations of procedures. There is a culture of accountability and compliance, rigorous training and competency testing, auditable NSA practices and self-reporting of incidents. The NSA and USCYBERCOM do not set these procedures but comply with very specific provisions approved by our nation’s lawmakers. Far from imperiling civil liberties and privacy, the tight links between the NSA and our growing cybercapabilities help to ensure professional, sober and accountable consideration of potential impacts from our operations.

The evolution of USCYBERCOM has reinforced the imperative for a close and unique connection with the NSA. The command’s creation in 2010 reorganized the department’s Title 10 “war fighting” segment of our cyberteam and represented a major organizational step toward developing and refining the Department of Defense’s role in strengthening the nation’s cybersecurity. Events since the formation of USCYBERCOM have taught us a great deal about the gravity of the cybersecurity threat, the development of the Department of Defense’s operational capabilities, the department’s role in a whole-of-government approach to cybersecurity, and structural, policy and doctrinal changes that are needed. Some of these changes can be implemented as part of the natural evolution of the command. Others require activity outside USCYBERCOM itself—within the Department of Defense, by the executive branch more broadly, by Congress and by the private sector.

The synergy between the NSA and USCYBERCOM is evident every day even if it is not visible. The cryptologic platform constitutes the collection of signals-intelligence and communications-security capabilities that since 1952 have served users ranging from national customers to departmental analysts to battlefield commanders. To the extent permissible by law, USCYBERCOM and the NSA have integrated operations, people and capabilities to help the nation and its allies respond to threats in cyberspace. USCYBERCOM’s defense of U.S. military networks depends on knowing what is happening in cyberspace, which in turn depends on intelligence produced by the NSA and other members of the intelligence community on adversary intentions and capabilities. USCYBERCOM’s planning and operations also rely on the NSA’s cybercapabilities. No one entity in the United States manages or coordinates all this activity on a strategic scale. It requires cooperation across government agencies and with industry.

The cyberteam works for strategic, operational and tactical ends, and it does so because we cannot afford (in terms of resources, security or missed opportunities) to maintain distinct capabilities for strategic, operational and tactical decision makers. This approach makes it possible for the United States to operate national-security information systems with some assurance of security; to understand the dimensions of the threats that we face; and to know which threats are exaggerated. It also gives us a measure of warning and situational awareness and is the basis on which those vital attributes will be improved in the future. What are the possibilities for maximizing its potential?

AT THE dawn of the “cyberage” in the 1980s, the United States was positioned to take a commanding military lead in this new domain. Much of the world’s cyberinfrastructure, capacity and computer-security expertise resided in America, and the U.S. government debated policies that might have made federal and critical infrastructure networks much more secure than contemporary external threats could have surmounted. The U.S. military and intelligence community held strong advantages in cybercapabilities that might have been mobilized in the 1990s. Although potential threats were recognized early, there was little urgency to reorganize and change established processes. By the time the United States started losing intellectual property on a massive scale in the middle of the last decade, the opportunity to capitalize on commanding advantages had been lost.

Today the United States is striving to maintain the edge it holds over potential adversaries in cyberspace. This advantage is preserved in part by the large U.S. government capacity in this domain. Our lead is also maintained by our adversaries’ own difficulties in crafting new policies, doctrines and organizations to operate in the new cyberdomain; in some cases their social and political contexts are even more challenging than ours. This American advantage might not last long. We still, however, would not trade our predicament for that of any other nation on earth. Every nation has significant vulnerabilities that can be exploited in and through cyberspace; almost alone among nations, we have the ability to lessen ours dramatically.

As then deputy secretary of defense William Lynn explained in Foreign Affairs in 2010, global circumstances continue to require an agile and technologically advanced cybercapability. We have made progress but still must do more to ensure that we have: the situational awareness needed to defend our networks; the authority to respond to threats to the United States, even beyond the boundaries of military systems; legislation that facilitates information sharing with the private sector; established security standards for critical infrastructure; trained and ready cyberforces certified to common, baseline standards; doctrine along with tactics, techniques and procedures for educating our armed forces on the conduct of military operations in cyberspace; a defensible cyberarchitecture enabled by the new Joint Information Environment (JIE); and clear lines of command and control to ensure network-speed decision making and action. The Department of Defense is making progress on an array of efforts to address these challenges, all the while protecting the privacy of our citizens and the civil liberties that are at the foundation of our political system.

The Pentagon is moving to reduce significantly the number of its networks and limit the points where those networks touch the Internet. Its new joint network—the JIE—is inherently more defensible than the fifteen thousand disparate enclaves that currently exist in the Department of Defense. USCYBERCOM is involved in efforts to leverage cloud-computing technology to dramatically increase the ability to safely and securely store and access data.

We continue to improve our ability to understand the vulnerabilities of our networks, the cyberenvironment and the capabilities of adversaries. Doing so improves situational awareness of what is happening in cyberspace for the benefit of government organizations, private industry and foreign partners.

We are aware that as we increase our dependence on networks in cyberspace, we must have a codified and logical manner by which to provide structure, command and control to our forces—and to allow the coordination and synchronization of U.S. military operations with those of our military allies and our partners.

We are developing a force capable of defending the nation in cyberspace, operating and defending Department of Defense information networks, and providing direct support to Unified Combatant Command plans and operations. These forces must be able to defend our national-security networks, providing a vital sanctuary from which we can operate even while under attack. Having such an assured capability will not only defend Department of Defense and national-security functions, but also help government and civilian networks by convincing adversaries that an “Armageddon” strategy will not succeed against America.

We are working to understand how existing international and domestic laws and norms apply in the new cyberenvironment. We are also developing processes and policies to manage cyberemergencies and to defeat cyberattacks.

Our reliance on cyberspace yields significant strategic benefits but also poses grave risks to our nation. The very nature of cyberspace is one of convergence—of networks, devices and people combining and interacting in new and increasingly complex ways. Communications that previously moved in separate channels now travel in one, global network—the Internet. We must be able to operate securely in this convergent space and to protect the broader social, political and economic developments that the digital age has brought us. The things we value—personal wealth, national economic prosperity, intellectual property, our nation’s defense secrets and even our way of life—are all targets for our adversaries. More and more, those treasures reside in cyberspace, and that is the battleground where adversaries can threaten us. The potential for strategic-level theft and disruption is growing as adversaries probe our critical infrastructure networks and take our data. We do not know how economically and physically damaging coordinated cyberattacks could be if mounted on a national scale—or if a “limited” attack could get out of hand and cause cascading destruction. But the vulnerability of critical infrastructure and the power of cyberweapons together represent serious cause for concern about the resiliency of modern, networked economies and societies.

Defending the nation in cyberspace, preventing strategic surprise and maintaining technological advantage all depend on collaboration, information sharing and a world-class workforce. This requires teamwork across the military, intelligence community, the federal agencies, industry, academia and our international partners. Leadership is vitally important as well. The U.S. government has made significant strides in defining cyberdoctrine, organizing cybercapabilities and building cybercapacity. We must do much more to sustain our momentum in a domain where adversary capabilities continue to evolve as fast as or faster than ours do. Our cyberteam can be the core of whatever national capability we build, but that capability must also extend well beyond the confines and authorities of the Department of Defense and even the federal government. Building that extended cyberenterprise now is indispensable to our ability to deter and defeat enemies in cyberspace so that they do not threaten our security, prosperity and way of life.

Comments

[g'kar]

That's a load off my mind..._{(I just took a dump)}

[King_of_simpletons]

.... And Congress is fiscally responsible and the Federal Reserve is not frivolous. Wall Street and Banksters are saints. Economy is booming. Unemployment is at historic low. Obamacare is the way to go.

[NoDebt]

Well, I don't know about all of you, but I'm totally convinced.  Thanks for clearing that up, Keith.

Jeez, could that thing have been any longer?

[GetZeeGold]

Thanks for looking out for us Uncle Keith!

First time I've ever agreed with Dianne Feinstein about anything....I thank the NSA for bringing us all closer together.

[Element]

I distinctly remember reading 'cyber-space' fiction articles on gopher web that said in a few decades we'd have authoritarian people, like him, saying stuff like that, and spying in everything we do, no matter what we do or say about it, and that they would hack us at will, and take our data, and we'd never get it back again. It was all true.

[outamyeffinway]

And that's just how the story begins!!!

[exi1ed0ne]

TL;DR summary:

Move along, nothing to see here.  Look, (points vagely out the window) TERRORISTS!

[Surly Bear]

I am shocked, just shocked...I mean really, I had no idea this was happening.

[Anusocracy]

Total surveillance is absolutely necessary for the total State.

[Skateboarder]

And only total queermos like this fool are absolutely necessary for total surveillance.

[James_Cole]

Very informative, persuasive piece - only criticism I have is it felt a bit short.

Look forward to this mans book tour and hopefully a follow up artice on why he chose to model his command centre after a Star Trek ship rather than Star Wars. I get that there's no better persona to emulate than Kirk whilst protecting everyone's freedom, but wouldn't it be more fun to have light saber battles in-between safegaurding civil rights? Or imitating yoda when hacking Merkel's blackberry?

Inquiring minds want to know!

[akak]

Keith went with the Star Trek formula because, you know, Kirk always got the woman.

Too bad he didn't realize that he was actually recreating the Borg.

[MontgomeryScott]

Stardate 2259.3

Universal Translator summary:

Kieth Alezander, titular head of the 'M' in 'MIC':

'MOAR, BITCHEZ, BECAUSE OBAMA, YOU WEAK LITTLE ALIEN WHORES, OR ELSE!'

(he forgot the obligatory '9/11' reference, however)

I was wondering how one 'recreates' the BORG. I suppose you are talking about 're-creation', as in the way that the mythical Phoenix bird was thought to be 're-created' from the ashes of whatever forest fire the ancient indigenous peoples in the Americas invented to help them stay 'spiritually centered' on their graven images (which subsequently burned all up).

HMMM.

WHAT do the BORG do in their 'off-hours' for fun or RECREATION?

I suppose that the females assimilate the blasts from the male weapons of ass destruction, and the males give speeches in front of the universal Congress, talking about how they are not assimilating others (except because of a galaxy-wide threat to all sentient beings known as 'AL'FRANKEN').

The 21st century is SO fucked up! It is a hard course to master. Give me some more tech journals to read...

[Anusocracy]

dup

[EscapingProgress]

Welcome to America in the year 2013 where surveillance is privacy.

[Titus]

The NSA and USCYBERCOM operate under multiple layers of institutional oversight that reinforce our commitment to privacy and civil liberties. ... Far from imperiling civil liberties and privacy, the tight links between the NSA and our growing cybercapabilities help to ensure professional, sober and accountable consideration of potential impacts from our operations.

HAHA, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Doubleplusgood! Reminds me of something I read somewhere:

War is Peace

Freedom is Slavery

Ignorance is Bliss

[StychoKiller]

"Of course, being able to spy on political leaders, both external and internal to the USA (for blackmailing information), is just icing on the cake of "Total Information Awareness!"

 The missing statement in all that gobbledygook!

[Citxmech]

GFD! - It sounds like he thinks he deserves a medal for "protecting" our privacy by tapping every electronic  communication in the entire world.

These clowns are completely out of control. . . 

[Wahooo]

I hope he dresses up in crosshairs for Halloween.

[gavrilo princip]

if there is a conspiracy, NSA is a liability. That is why it was probably possible for Guardian newspaper publish Snowdens files.

[gavrilo princip]

and there is aplenty of the sheeple who believe mainstream uk paper is completely free when it comes to what they can publish. 

[putaipan]

 been looking for a place to drop this. i always said the best perspective to take on snowden was to remember the full lesson of ellsburg- take the damaging truths revealed and work them for all they are worth, but remember the reveal in a larger context of why it was finally revealed.

http://www.rense.com/general96/saving.html

really hate to be this conspiranoid... but i'm starting to think the reason hastings blew up was that he didn't want to play the little reveal. just sayin'.

[gavrilo princip]

playing chess you need to be carefull of drawing conclusions when offered with a free piece by obviously tricky players. why do differently in life? 

[Bananamerican]

He could have just said "none of your damn business" but a propa's gotta ganda

[Pairadimes]

At least Mengele was a poet. This brand of sociopath wields the English language like a carton of smoke bombs.

[Overfed]

I only got about half way through it before the headache became too much to bear.

[lotusblue]

Self-righous menace.Alxander,Clapper,Fienstin,King-Danger to what little is left to our society.

"We didn't listen in on our allies but we'll stop doing it" WTF BS.

tHE STRUCTURE OR RATHER"systems built"Synchronous sytems" They allude to have grown to be DISMANTLED ! All this is is system to protect  and garner more $ for their codrie.

The spending for "security " is entirely out of proportion to any real threat !

The NSA created threat is so much greater !

No over site,no congress,no Sam Church.They know their time and the Jig is up !

[CaptainObvious]

That was my thinking.  He used an awful lot of words to say, "Yes, we're spying on you, and yes, we'll keep on spying on you."  I don't care how this fuckwit justifies the spying, because we have this thing called a Constitution that nullifies all of his arguments.

[Skateboarder]

"Just a document," "outdated," "doesn't apply to 'modern society' anymore," etc.

What kind of a document says only gold and silver coin can be currency lol. Everyone knows that a Capital One credit card is the only legitimate form of money. Samuel Jackson said so on a commercial and it sounded like his nuts hurt.

[Seasmoke]

Keith will wipe your ass for you. 

[DoChenRollingBearing]

Right, + 1

Keith is just another liar.

[Colonel Klink]

I would like to add, FUCK YOU Keith Alexander you traitorous lying cunt!

[DaddyO]

Off to the Gulag with you, Colonel!

Gen Alexander is a liar, plain and simple!

DaddyO

[Colonel Klink]

I will not go off to the gulag.  I will go down fighting against tyrannical government.

Government forcing me to comply with fraudulent enacted laws will cause me to forfeit my life for the tree of liberty.

[StychoKiller]

Hmm, does Major Hofstater have the ear of Herr Himmler?  Kleennnk!

[Colonel Klink]

Yeah but our Hitler "knows nuthzink!"

[King_Julian]

From the bridge of his starship... Keith "Capt. Kirk" Alexander.

[Element]

Looks more like a Janeway to me.

[StychoKiller]

More like Khan!

[El Vaquero]

I keep on saying it:  Put him in a zoo.  Put all of the fuckers who spy on us in a zoo.  24/7, no privacy.  I don't give a damn if it's prostate exam day, zero fucking privacy for these fucks.  If they have nothing to hide, they have nothing to worry about, right?  It would be a very fitting punishment.

So, if by "Gulag" you really mean a VERY public zoo, then I agree. 

PS:  Ya got that NSA?

[Sean7k]

Let me add my Fuck You Keith Alexander, as well.

[Crash Overide]

Stop spying on me you assholes, I will take my chances with the terrorists...

[FieldingMellish]

Wednesday humor at its finest.

[Headbanger]

Yeah and Hitler was really just an aspiring artist!

[Dapper Dan]

We were the first to assert that the more complicated the forms of civilisation the more restricted the freedoms of the individual must become.

B. Mussolini.

Even the very poor have more personal freedom in an open society than a centrally planned one.

Hayek

 Argentine Cardinal Bergoglio elected pope 2013

NSA surveillance programs leaked

Report: The NSA allegedly eavesdropped on cardinals before the conclave in March to elect a new pope, Italian weekly magazine Panorama reports - @AFP

[WillyGroper]

They were just trying to verify he was Catholic.

[StychoKiller]

Next up:  Bears, just where do they defecate?

[Mongo]

As if we had a choice... fascists!

[One And Only]

Right. He would have me believe Hitler protected the Jews too. Fuckin cunt.

[Azannoth]

As a matter of fact, Hitler wanted to create an independent Jewish State .. only the jews had a problem with moving to .. Madagascar

[FeralSerf]

Did Adolph ask the Madagascar locals what they thought about the plan?

[StychoKiller]

Don't lemurs out-number the Human population?

[FeralSerf]

The humans are eating the lemurs. I think mosquitoes out-number the lemur population.

[Portuguese Revo...]

Stop attacking the World and the world will stop retaliating...

Fascist pig!

[Seasmoke]

Never trust a person with two first names !!!!!

[Bananamerican]

Hey, that's my line!

[DaveyJones]

Is it a good sign that their lies are getting more and more ridiculous?

[Dewey Cheatum Howe]

Cue major disruption in 3,2,1.... Then the usual we told you so bullshit tactics.

[Dr. Bonzo]

Weyland-Yutani... Building Better Worlds.

LMAO.

[Broccoli]

I understood this reference.

On topic, what does anything he says have to do with domestic spying without a Constitutional warrant.

[Bananamerican]

Ask Merkel...

[djsmps]

Send your opinions to:

James Clapper, 5366 Ashleigh Rd., Fairfax, VA 22030

Keith B. Alexander, 4628 English Ave., Fort George G Meade, MD 20755

John Brennan, 13351 Point Rider Ln., Herndon, VA 20171

[CaptainObvious]

Heh.  We don't need to send our opinions anywhere, they know what our opinions are before we even type them.

[GOSPLAN HERO]

General Alexander, huh ... and this fuck stain is an army officer?

The fucker ignores or does not understand the U.S. Constitution - a document he swore to defend.

He is a careerist swine, and the U.S. Army is full of them.

[Colonel Klink]

I regret I have but one +1 to give.

[Kirk2NCC1701]

I can categorically say that he is not Starfleet material.

More like Ferengi Diplomatic Corp material.

[Colonel Klink]

He's a Cling-on within the US military and taypayers dole.  A traitor to the American people and Constitution.  He has failed to uphold the oath of his office.  He's no James T Kirk!

[Things that go bump]

He believes he is. It doesn't matter how we perceive him. Only his perception of himself matters, and the key to that is the way he had his office decorated. It tells us everything we need to know, and it doesn't take a degree in psychology to see it. In fact, it was shockingly revealing. I'm not the most perceptive of people and it just screamed to me. It is frightening and troubling that a grown man in a position of power is so in thrall to an adolescent fantasy that he would display it for all the world to see. Its not unlike how a child's choice of Halloween costume is revealing and his display is just about at that the same level of subtlety - the equavalent of going to work in a Superman costume. He sees himself as kindred to that Star Fleet Commander. He is firmly convinced of the rightness and necessity of his actions and in fact believes himself a hero, quite beyond any hope of convincing him otherwise. This belief lies at the core of his being. The rest of us are either crew of the Star Ship Enterprise or enemy, if he even sees us as people at all. 

[MoneyPowerWomen]

Bingo. He absolutely believes he is doing the right thing, and no-one will convince him otherwise. In fact anyone who tries will be seen as the enemy, and will only strengthen his resolve.

[Things that go bump]

Most disturbing to me is what it says about the power this man wields that he felt free to indulge himself in this manner and that there was nobody to put the breaks on it. 

[The Navigator]

Not to worry, many years later he will apologize like McNamara did.

By then, his grand kids will be enslaved and pissing on his grave.

[Jim B]

Things are getting very Orwellian! Very!

[Portuguese Revo...]

"are getting"??

Either you're still in the 70's or you are living in a dreamworld...

[Gringo Viejo]

Long winded asshole, huh?

[ShorTed]

And my emails, text messages and phone calls are very important in the grand scheme of achieving this "security"?  Sure. 

Fuck you Keith Alexander

[Joebloinvestor]

Just change a few words and this is a good arguement for space based nukes.

[cougar_w]

Nice catch.

[Joebloinvestor]

Thanks!

Just remove the word,"cyber" and it sounds like a grand scheme to have nukes circling overhead.

[Sufiy]

Why NSA can not help us with the ongoing fraud in the markets?

GATA: Bill Murphy - The Andrew Maguire Saga Continues: Gold And Silver Markets Manipulations

 Somebody is getting very desperate with physical Gold flowing to China and COMEX and LBMA vaults running on fumes. System knows how to dilute the real message, but we are talking here not just about one of the wistleblowers or his credibility - we are talking about Gold and Silver Market Manipulations.  "We will ask our rhetorical question again: after LIBOR fraud, FOREX manipulations, Energy market rigging, Mortgage scam and Pension looting - Is The Gold Manipulation To Be Admitted Next?"
You can find more about this Saga below.   Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap: Who is the Real Fraud - Andrew Maguire or Jeffrey Christian?

[Bay of Pigs]

NSA has little to do with the gold rigging scheme. It is a UST, ESF and FED operation (in conjunction with the member bullion banks).

Chris Powell explains,

http://www.gata.org/node/13185

And FWIW, pimping your own blog here everyday won't fly with this crowd, or the Tylers. 

[Sufiy]

NSA has all the records ... sharing here helps to bring new information exposing the fraud, please do not read if it is of no interest for you.

Best.

[Bay of Pigs]

Sharing is one thing. Tyler will boot your ass if you keep pimping your blog everyday. That was my point.

[Lendo]

What a fucking joke.

I'll continue to wear my "Yes We Scan" shirt I got off of Ebay to piss off statists.  Where's the outrage from liberals about the erosion of civil liberties?  Oh that's right, if you criticize Obama you're a racist.  If you call him a liar, you're a racist.

I'm tired of this shit.

[earnyermoney]

I've thought a photo of Snowden and Zero with Freedom vs. Fascism under each photo would make a nice T-shirt.

[climber]

To paraphrase, "The British did this in 1912 and indirectly brought about WW1, but they didn't do it good enough. So that justifies what we are doing."

[withglee]

"Disrupt the synchronization, and the whole system of systems becomes unreliable—thus diminishing the nation’s power and influence."

Like on 911?

[Little John]

This bastard should be hung on the plain at West Point in front of the assembled Corps of Cadets and the Joint Chiefs.  

[Portuguese Revo...]

You mean he should be hanged ALONG WITH the Joint Chiefs, right?

Pigs in uniform only bring disgrace... "Only following orders" is not a valid excuse IF you are a HUMAN being...

[monad]

Star Fleet Captain Alexander's definition of 'American' is just a little different than yours. However, the timing of the mostly quiet NSA being dragged out for humiliation suggests that someone is trying to discredit the most credible witness against her before that witness testifies. Come on NSA, tell us a story.

[Kirk2NCC1701]

He posted on "The National Interest".  Does he know what "National Interest" means?

It means... The interest (simple and compound) of the small group of Elites, the Oligarch families who own most of the country and control all of it:  The 400 Club.  Which itself is structured in a hierarchy.

This is no longer a Republic "Of, By, or For The People".  In the last 100 years or so, it has grown into an Empire and morphed into an insatiable Beast, a Latter-Day Rome.  We may owe our allegiance to the Republic, but not to the Beast. 

Like the early Christians, we may be forced to give Caesar his dues (but only to the letter of the law, to avoid prosecution), but NO more.  We shall set up our own, parallel society (part open, part closed) -- just like the predecessor of Christianity have done over the centuries.  And in time we shall reclaim what is rightfully ours from these devil worshipers of questionable origin.

[Element]

You realize those guys ended up as the Saturday Matinee in the Colosseum, demonstrating with abnormal candor how to feed a lion?

[cougar_w]

Well played.

[NIHILIST CIPHER]

There is a MK ULTRA mind kontrol technique ( nazi born BTW) that is in reality "the more we violate you, the more you will believe we are helping and protecting you".  Seems to be working out well.  Sheeeeeeeeeeeep !

[monad]

Hegelcare Plan

[Magnum]

Snowden is a hero and deserves a medal of honor.

[kito]

no no!!! snowden saw how much GOOD the nsa is doing, how honorable and noble the agency is. and for that, he felt the need to sacrifice his entire way of life!! 

[ParkAveFlasher]

Six figures, Hawaiian residence, yoga pussy.  The American dream for a 20-something.  God I love these kids today.

[Kaiser Sousa]

Hey keith r u listening. ..

I'd like to blow a hole n ur fucking head u fucking cocksucker. .... 

[Crazed Weevil]

So they are protecting people's freedom by taking them away...

I do wonder if these people actually believe this shit, or they are just out-and-out liars.

[viahj]

how about we just update our aging power/telecom grid?  compared to Asia and Europe, we're in poor condition.

[HoleInTheDonut]

And just where are they going to find the money for that in the $3.7T/yr budget?

[A Lunatic]

I'd take a moment to tell the NSA what I think but it would just be a waste of time since they already know.......

[Fiat Burner]

Hey Keith Alexander, fuck off you lying traitor, we are not buying your bullshit.

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Weasel words and too many of them. Alexander is a prolix prick.

[SkottFree]

"Obama has identified cybersecurity threats as among the most serious challenges facing our nation. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel noted in April that cyberattacks “have grown into a defining security challenge.” And former secretary of defense Leon Panetta told an audience in 2012 that distributed denial-of-service attacks have already hit U.S. financial institutions."

You Keith Alexander negelected to mention that the attacks are comming from your facilites!

[banzai401]

finest government that fiat can buy,

given that +60% of the USA public get a US treasury check, that means the majority will always support anything that comes from an official rep of the US gubmint,

the usa deserves to rot in hell, and its people deserve to cannibilize one another, and the world will fucking cheer

**

We all know what this is about 'TIA' total information awareness, complete knowledge means the ultimate money making machine, all in secret without a budget, and now the NSA can print its own money because it has the 'all seeing eye' in  its possession,

I can guarantee you that most americans respect this kind of power, and their only wish is/was their child can be employed by the NSA,

[HoleInTheDonut]

Just laying the ground work for a new round of defense contracts...  Cybersecurity my ass, sounds so 90's.  The .gov people just want to justify buying the new iGadget toys as "part of the job", so their lame-ass .gov workplace will seem less un-cool. 

[earnyermoney]

Court Martial is in order for this perpetrator of treason.

[Winston Churchill]

formalities after we execute the swine.

[Reaper]

Please make us safer in a cage, where the bogeymen can't get us. Please control our diet, so we'll not get fat. Please take our savings and keep them safe in your care.
Please deliver from the excesses of freedom and keep us safe.
Please be our leader in this fearful world.
Praise be to our lords and masters.

[banzai401]

Reaper, your right, ... but I think the /sarc needs to be clarified,

1.) the majority of us citizens have no money, ... so they don't fear another taking care of what  is not theres,

2.) the majority already live in a cage, its called 'home', the modern TV home is a prison,

3.) People will eat what they're told are given, or what the food-stamp rules say they can buy.

4.) the majority of us citizens think the usa is the greatest nation on earth and believe alexander,

in summary if you have not already run and fast from the USA, cuz its going FULL NAZI ( not unlike full retard )

[NOTaREALmerican]

Re: if you have not already run and fast from the USA

We've got the government the Red and Blue Team have been told to create by the voters.

Show of hands of REAL "Conservatives" who wanted to drowned Big-MIC in the bathtub along with the "Liberal's" welfare queens?

Yeah, didn't think so.   Everybody loves the Big-Gov their brain is designed to love.   And the two types of brains are:

Red Team = old-testament, kick-ass daddy, paranoid, authoritarian, authority-worshiping, crony-capitalism
Blue Team = new-testament, smothering mommy, guilt-ridden, authoritarian, authority-worshipping, crony-socialist

We've got the only system possible.

[banzai401]

+60% of the US public get a US treasury check,

thus the majority of the USA support the NSA, because the NSA helps the USA steal shit and keep the 60% fed,

the rest of the world is sick and tired of this fucking shit

the USA has killed more people than all the other assholes in history and the majority of the USA public has the blood on their hands,

Who is more right-wing? Cheney or Feinstein/Pelosi? Who is a bigger killer Obama or Bush? left/right dem/pug is what chomsky calls 'manufacturing consent'.

[Ivan K]

good to see you again buster. QfrmBB2

[Kina]

Keith Alexander is the culmination of a centuries accumulation of moral, ehtical and political corruption....all in the one man.

[banzai401]

alexander is proof that shit always flows to the top in a toilet bowl,

that the usa is a human sewer, and alexander is one of the biggest turds in the pond,

that men like alexander can raise to the top is proof that the USA is terminally fucked, without redemption

[Bananamerican]

It's not just the u.s.
It's a fact of life.
The self aggrandizing elbow their way to "the top" all over the world; the Devil egging them on every step of the way...
Very few merit-ocracies on this miserable planet

[banzai401]

BULL FUCKING SHIT

This is 100% british and american

most of the world would never tolerate this shit, not for a second,

the USA is a nation of fucking sheep,

if you honestly believe that the world is like this, then you have not traveled, I can tell you that where I live there is not shit like this, ... that the cop's could care fucking less what you do with your dick, or you money, .. or what you put in your mouth or your ass,

So please go see the world and then understand that the USA is a fucking penal colony of the mind.

[kito]

wtf are you talking about? go take a long walk through russia and china, or south america, or just about anywhere else in the world where this shit, and worse, is tolerated. the difference being is that america, unlike nearly everywhere else, was founded on principles that run counter to this shit.  sadly, that is no longer the case. and that is why this shit stings harder here in america (for those that understand the foundation that this country was built upon.  you should talk less and listen more in your short time here on zh. 

[falak pema]

Behind all the BS of Alexander; lies damn lies and fallacious logic which proclaims preempting your enemy in America's new role.

Paranoid conclusion of leaving dead bodies all over the globe. The US makes more cyber attacks 100 times over than its enemies. Its into the same mantra as bombing Nam : Massive proactive attack.

On the specific issue of spying on millions of private mails in France, Spain and Italy Alexander had this to say : Its all lies. We never did that. The official reply of the french has immediately responded : We have irrefutable proof of the contrary and the NSA boss is a Liar.

So what do you do with a bureaucrat who obviously looks like he has committed perjury in front of the Congress in the eyes of a foreign nation, deemed ally by the US admin,  now in their official position responding to his denial??? (We all know that he won't be the sacrificial lamb for the admin. as he is retiring anyway).

For those who read frog language and eat frog legs as well : http://www.lemonde.fr/technologies/article/2013/10/30/le-gouvernement-ju...

[NOTaREALmerican]

It's a good thing this great-n-glorious country has heroes like Alexander to offset the malcontent hippies like Snowden who hate Merica, and the troops.

[daemon]

" The Department of Homeland Security is the lead federal department responsible for national protection against domestic cybersecurity incidents. "

That's why they need armored vehicles and 2 billions of ammo .

"... so that they do not threaten our security, prosperity and (detainee)  way of life. "

Heil Alexander !

[Dr. Engali]

What a load of shit. The foresight that Orwell and Huxley had is pretty amazing, but I think they would be astonished to see the monster we have created.

[NOTaREALmerican]

Re: but I think they would be astonished

I think they would have been more amazed if it didn't happen.

The true-believing "left" and "right" have been battling forever to impose their version of an authoritarian government on those they don't like.

It's like inlaws annoying "the kids".   Kick-ass daddy and smothering-mommy just can't stop intruding, each in their oppressive way. 

Very few humans really want anything close to a live-and-let-live Libertarian society.   It's allot more fun screwing people with a government your own favorite Team runs.

[banzai401]

less than 5% want libertarianism, and even less know what it means,

+90% of the USA wants to rob his nieghbor and fuck their children,

being part of the criminal MIL-COP police state lets  you rape/rob anyone you wish, ... and most americans would love to get in on the action, sadly there are only a few opening's, but we're going to have 'try outs'.

[markar]

Goebbels would be proud

[daemon]

"Goebbels would be proud"

Or jealous ?

[Emergency Ward]

Shit, he'd try to liquidate Alexander to protect his [Gerbil's] job.

[Vooter]

Maybe Keith will take a hint from ol' Joe and poison his children and shoot himself...

[Fix It Again Timmy]

Fuck You! - Keith.....

[kito]

We are working to understand how existing international and domestic laws and norms apply in the new cyberenvironment. We are also developing processes and policies to manage cyberemergencies and to defeat cyberattacks.

what an asshole. how hard is this to understand:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

[Vooter]

"The century-old dream and nightmare of crippling a modern society by wrecking its infrastructure—or just by disturbing its synchronization of functions—is now a reality others are dreaming of employing against the United States."

Hmm...I wonder why that would be? Do you think they're just doing it for fun? Out of boredom? Did they close their eyes, stick a pin in a world map and decide to bother whatever country they happened to land on?

[Kina]

Keith says the world woud be more safe and secure if none have civil liberties or rights.

To follow Keith Alexanders logic..he will end up saying the world would be much safer if the NSA killed everybody....for the protection of your rights, and life.

Then the question is.... safe for whom?

Keith is a bucket of dog shit, and deserves less respect than a scum sucking traitor to a country, which is what he is to the consitution and americans.

[shiftless]

He deserves (and one day will get) a bullet right in the temple.

[Iam Yue2]

Thank you Keith. You and the boys have done a great job at keeping things under control in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen
Et al.

[silentboom]

"Disrupt the synchronization, and the whole system of systems becomes unreliable—thus diminishing the nation’s power and influence.""

Yes it's called a Ponzi scheme.

[Son of Captain Nemo]

My take on these constant "trickle downs" from our inveterate Censorship General that resembles more a bad case of diarrhea with the unpleasant odor that accompanies it is to not waste your time reporting on it at all anymore given the inevitable mantra and outcome.  It just looks bad and it smells even worse the more it's repeated.

A better use of ZH time and space is to follow the whistleblowers from "boilingfrogs" and 'VIPS' in casting the net for worthwhile damage control information on the IC problem du jour. 

I'd much rather hear what a Bill Binney or a Tom Drake has to say about Keith Alexander's testimony versus a regurgitated news feed from a paid shill out of the BBC or CNN.

[banzai401]

not going to happen

rule number one here at fight-club is only insipid OP's get posted, to maximize the blogger fodder, for clicks for the ad's,

intelligent analysis on NSA will never be found here, only OP dumps from the status quo MSM

[Son of Captain Nemo]

Well in that case banzai401, at least people who read the comment section here know where to go when they wish to dig a little deeper.

Thx

[banzai401]

if you have a good link on detail you should post for others to read, but honestly, I mean going back to the 1960's many books were written about the NSA,... IMHO what your seeing now is largely a PR job ran at the highest levels to justify the $10B for new ooTah Facitiliy.

I think most of us here are tech geeks, and certanly we're not fooled by alexander nor impressed by his rhetoric,

but nobody has been surprised at any of this and we have all along known that anything that you enter into a computer is tracked, logged, and kept forever by an infinite number of agency's. Shit Windows was putting in spyware back in mid 1980's.

TIA was started back in the time of RAYGUN under Poindexter,

The USA has always been a KLEPTOCRACY, fuck the MIL created TCP-IP so what the fuck does anyone expect? Any other outcome? I don't think so,...

Just remember if its a secret keep it off your computer, and don't own a phone, or any electronic device.

Don't have any thing of value, and the gubmint can't steal from you. They don't fear words, they're only looking for soft targets to rob.

Like any crimnal, he looks for the weak, those who don't fight back.

[Son of Captain Nemo]

No truer words spoken.

The one statement I might call into question is that one about "not fearing words". 

This Government wouldn't have a listening appartus like it has if what you say doesn't matter to them -along with actions of course. 

Just ask MLK about what happens when you decide to play outside your "sand box" on the issues of civil rights to attack the Leviathan on it's war machine and the stable of new recruits it wants to send to war? I guess it all boils down to where you are in the pecking order for the words to matter and how it affects the rest of us that struggle to be burdened with a conscience. 

I will say that over the last 12 years since our "state of emergency" doctrine was initiated the days of the J.F.K. and MLKs have all but disappeared into the ether for good.  Fear is a remarkable cocktail especially when it's administered to earning a living that you don't control.

The beauty of this whole dilemma is that the monster that DARPA created more than 45 years ago cuts both ways and produces the honorable as well as the deviant.  This is what we're witnessing unfold with the fence sitters like the Ed Snowden's who had enough took the "high road".

Wouldn't we love to know what took place at the NSA after he left the Country, especially to those co-workers and business associates that were the closest to him?

[banzai401]

MLK was a threat, because he was a public spokesperson, who was NOT on the payroll.

Today, your simply NOT allowed near the MSM unless your on the team.

Today if your not on the team your labelled a 'nut' and ignored by the MSM.

This is why today there is  NO MLK.

Today we only have recycled whores like Alexander or Obama, or Kerry, or Pelosi, or McCain.

***

If some moron wants to piss in the wind on the internet, nobody really cares, of course sure he gets logged and labelled a 'dissident', and if that person is stupid enough to use his 'real name', then when he passes customs or local cops he will become a POI ( person of interest ), but I don't think it needs to be said here that we are all anonymous,

[Son of Captain Nemo]

At what point do you call it stupidity or taking a stand to be counted in putting your "brand name" on it when it matters most?

Guess we can only hope that others on the inside will continue to take the initiative like Snowden' did while the rest of us continue to declare ourselves "anonymous".

Can't have it both ways.

[hangemhigh77]

Oh please government keep me safe. I'm scared of cyberterrorism. We need the NSA to keep me safe. If they say we need them then I will lick their jackboots Actually I'll keep myself safe, fuck the NSA drop the first nuclear bomb on the salt lake building and the second on the White House. THAt takes care of the terrorists

[Running On Bing...]

That's not nice. I want my NSA bwankie. I wanna wrap it around me at nighttime so the big bad terrorists don't get me.

Ooooh so scary. But I'm a big skardiecat and I heart my .gov like soooooo much.

[buy your NSA Snuggie in the swag store]

Over.

[redd_green]

What a giant load of propaganda, Mr Alexander.   You must live in one of the medical marijuana states.

[banzai401]

well look at it this way, his cyber  babble is targetting to old toothless fearful people living

in the midwest, hiding under their bed and fearful that a muslim is going to rape their poodle,

in other words he's addressing the american people, and best of all he's telling them that 'computers' are what make american great, and that the USA MIL is at the top of the computer game,

all we can hope is some geek kids knock out the NSA.GOV site often and long, ... cyber-babble is one thing, but having an army of nerds working for free against you, ... will eventually humble this sack of shit

funny that the greatest enemy of the NSA is the 12 year old hacker, armed with free software that exposes all the backdoors to the nations MIL

[Navymugsy]

We must spy on you to protect your constitutionally guaranteed liberties. I like it!

[TradingTroll]

mentally ill misfits, like Keith

-the only ones applying for the crappy govt jobs these days

[Emergency Ward]

Once upon a time, someone who babbled on like Keith might have been confined to Ward A of the sanitarium.  "The poor dear is suffering from Caesar Complex and Paranoid Disorder -- completely bonkers, and incurable."

Today they promote him to a highly-paid position of power and influence.