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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.
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Is there a law that states we must believe what these assholes say no matter how fucking full of shit they are?
"Breathtaking" - The Maybury Times Picayune
i tried to read it...what a bunch of bullshit propaganda!
he only convinced me of one thing...he needs to be stopped!
i guess we should be looking forward to a false flag attack to get everyone back in line and suitably frightened of the bad guys.
Those who are willing to give up some freedom for a little security, deserve neither freedom nor security.
...and will lose both.
Soooo I'm confused. Are we spying on us or aren't we? Cuz' I was upset about being spied on, but apparently we have to protect the 1990s from our infrastructure and the British in WWI steal our money from Georgia.
This man needs to be thrown in a deep dark hole. And then an outhouse should be built over it.
The lying bastard should have the stars ripped from his shoulders, and the buttons cut from hs coat.
-30-
"Obama has identified cybersecurity threats as among the most serious challenges facing our nation" oh... ok... that makes violating our Constitutional rights OK... by all means
obumbler cant identify his asshole from a hole in the ground, plus he is a LIAR, a commie muslim and a foreign agent set to destroy Amerika.. and doing a damn good job of it.
no thanks, ill keep my rights, my money and my FREEDOM... the rest is horseshit... great britian, israel, china, russia have beeen spying and stealing technology and defense secrets unabetted forever.... nothing new... THE ONLY THING NEW IS NOW THE obumbler/ NSA HAVE TURNED IT AGAINST US CITIZENS... fuck you very much
Keith ... nice costume, has obumbler promised you more medals and a larger hat with a skull on it ??? typical ball lciking ass sniffing incompetent buffoon in a costume...
Kaptain Kangaroo's death-Klown Kostoom
2 + 2 = 5
Don't forget his champions, who defend every last detail, known and unknown, of what this Neo-Nazi prick does. Don't forget the people who elected them either:
Feinstein, Cheney, McCain, Graham, Bush, Obama, Panetta, Clinton, Biden, King, Rogers, Boehner, Pelosi, Cantor and the list goes on and on....that is why you're fucked if you don't buy into the NSA crap because a lot of people do.
Look at the sickening comment sections of the statist weblogs [the partisan ones are the most statist -- if they hate only Bush or only Obama, look out] -- see how many "death to the traitor Snowden" type comments there are. If you are stunned, revolted and angered by Alexander's remarks, there are many Americans who cheer him.
What a load of shit. Everyone knows that a networked world can never be made "safe". If he wants the US to be safe he should stop globalization and become a country like Switzerland. Ever heard of anyone wanting to attack Switzerland, or fly into Swiss buildings? Of course not, they mind their own business. Now that's safety.
When people use alot of words to explain their actions or reasoning you know they are lying
A few things:
Society is not as vulnerable to cyber attack as he would have you believe. This system on top of system bullshit is in the context of the monopolistic, uncompetitive telecom environment created by the Feds and their corporate cronies. Any vulnerability of this system is the result of the lack of redundancy within cyberspace. To the extent that you could "attack" the Internet or the US via a virtual world is dependent completely on the physical assets that are reliant upon those systems. THIS IS AN ARGUMENT FOR GREATER DECENTRALIZATION OF CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE IF NOTHING ELSE.
Spare us the history lesson and this trite British empire bequeathing anything to the US. Echos of "American Imperialism" drip from your power hungry chins with this. It also slaps the rest of Europe in the face that they allow it. You're not the first or last US military officer to give us the Whig history of national greatness bullshit.
Helping to understand the context of the threat means that because they capture everything, they view everyone and everything as a threat. This is the point that educated people are making: what you view as a threat is only the matter of perspective of the few people in power. That context could be in relation to those individuals siezing and maintaining power. If you can't see how deeply offensive this to Americans, it's because youre no longer one. Nor do you understand that this is exactly what the original Americans fought to depose.
Gen Alexander -- counter-revolutionary commander.
Well said.
The NSA and USCYBERCOM operate under multiple layers of institutional oversight that reinforce our commitment to privacy and civil liberties.
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BAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAH
Fuck Alexander and tear off his stars for being derelict in his duty to uphold and defend the US Constitution! He is an enemy of the people (good intentioned or not)!
The people of the US of Fascism were replaced by the military complex. Why is the military anywhere near spying on domestic soil?? For Widowmaker's protection?? FUCK THAT LIE!!
Still waiting for the "banking-connections" to be uncovered by Snowden and pals. Spying is BIG business and government likes to sell your data. How much is jaw-dropping.
+1 Hurrah for you!
This is sedition, plain and simple.
Fuck You General Assmaggot
If you repeat a lie often enough some people will begin to think it's true.
What else would he say??? "Yeah, we're scanning and keeping everything on the internet. Yeah, presidents and administrations will use the data against political adversaries in this country to squash political dissent. Yeah, you too, even the little guy. Hey, if you're not doing anything wrong, you've got nothing to worry about."
That last sentence used by the useful idiots in the Ministry of Propaganda and administration and governmental hubris sycophants (Greg Gutfeld, Michael Moynihan, etc) to justify this gargantuan overreach of governmental powers constitutionally allowed for in this country.
"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"
As an engineer it pains me to read shit like this! First, the threat is fairly overblown...and if the NSA spooks are anywhere near as smart as they claim to be, knowingly inflated to their benefit. Much like with the Y2K fear-mongering, we're still not even close to the level of interconnectedness depicted in movies, whereby vast physical infrastructures can be controlled through a single system or protocol, much less subverted remotely through the internet. Hell, the majority of our ageing infrastructure, even if automated is on legacy systems that can't talk to each other. Besides, you know the unions fight tooth-and-nail to make sure that people still get paid to midlessly push buttons and flip switches!
If a fraction of the $75 billion intelligence budget were diverted to investments in R&D and infrastructure updates, we would be capable of constructing far more secure and robust systems. It's a glaringly obvious approach, I know. Of course, solving the problem isn't really what these people are interested in.
...."Fox declares that he Protects the Safety and Civil Liberties of the Henhouse"
ironically the Socialist state is loooting it's infrastructure to finance it's Socialist agenda, exhibit A, from the East LA SEIU Obama base:
http://www.loscerritosnews.net/2013/10/24/california-state-assembly-speaker-john-perez-implicated-in-central-basin-water-scheme/
Most people and organizations overestimate their own importance and the importance of the job they perform. "Without us, the entire system would crumble .... blah, blah". Here's a clue. You are wrong.
I have read enough of these types business and defense position/promotional papers and the key to each of them is to evaluate the assumptions on which they are built. A strong argument always first evaluates the assumptions and alternative. Weak propagandist pieces try to hide the fact that the assumptions have not been thoroughly vetted or are outright flawed or in this case LIES and that alternatives have not been examined (or that the alternatives were discarded because they do not meet the personal objectives of those in charge).
Alexander's entire arguement falls apart because his assumptions are based on elitist control, empire building, globalism and murder for hire. While he lies about his altruistic motives in service of the people and the nation ... his assumptions speak otherwise.
Not even a good try .... rejected.
Today we have DOT-COM bubble 2,
Twitter IPO
Facebook rocketing to the moon,
We all know all this 'social networking' is all front end collection mechanisms,
***
I would suggest that the majority of ameriKKKan's and wall street LOVE this shit, ... big DATA, like the NUKE race long ago, or doctor-strangelove, the USA is in a battle with EUROPE and china, and russia, of who can be the biggest SPY of all,
Just another fucking klusterfuck and waste of fucking resources of a dying fucking empire,
I am the LORD HUMOUNGOUS ( road warrior )
I have a vision of a NEW USA POWER, called the COMPUTER-MIL, and the battle field of today is all ONLINE, and I HUMONGOUS will lead ameriKKKa out of the darkness ( debt and worthless currency ) and into the new world order,
So follow me, follow LORD Alexander Humongous
Can I be your Dog of War? I want a motorcycle, leather pants and feathers, and my own blond sissy...
Basically, his view is The MIC complex must live. Anything else is secondary. This weird parasite will kill its host, but the MIC must survive.
It is funny that they feel they must undo many of the features that allowed the internet to thrive to begin with..
DOD created TCP-IP, so they may do with it as they wish, who is to say this isn't strategy going back to the 1960's?
The US-MIL gave away the trojan horse, the world adopted and now the US-MIL has the 'kill switch'.
Ultimate fucking power for 'game boy' Alexander. GTA would probably be better for him.
The Internet was never your fucking friend, and now the DOD is telling you that from the MIL to the Federal to the local-law that the Internet will be policed for your 'safety', so fucking what?
When the USA made the roads 'safe' I left the USA, and when the DOD makes the internet 'safe' I will quit using the internet.
"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."
There is disturbing food for thought in this nugget from one of our elite...
Just a little reason for other countries to want NOTHING to do with us ....Lie Cheat and Steal....Constitution gone to hell
Very interesting Mr Alexander.
And how much does it cost per year?
Apparently the NSA does this by maintaining hidden rooftop spying units at several embassies around the world, including Tel Aviv, Israeli intelligence analyst Ronen Solomon told the Maariv daily Tuesday. DETAILS HERE
and when he uses 'we' he means the elite... read it again with that in mind and it all makes sense
If you like your privacy, you can keep your privacy...
Interesting that the NSA is given so much attention when others like the CIA are left feeling lonely. Didn't the Snowman work there before transferring over to the NSA affiliate? Yet not a word, and as usual, it's what isn't said that speaks volumnes, not the noise emitted daily, all of which reminds me of what 'the Crow'(Crowley at the CIA) said a couple of decades ago in 'Conversations with the Crow':
"RTC: [...] No, Hoover was a vicious man. We, on the other hand, use the same methodology but we are far smoother in applying it. We have a strong influence, for want of a better term, with the banking industry. We have the strongest and most effective influence with the print and television media. We have a much stronger hold on the Hill than Hoover ever had. At times, we've had iron control over the Oval Office. Hell, the NSA snoops domestically and we get it all. We have a strong in with the telephone people and we don't need warrants to listen to anybody, domestically, we want, when we want. Now that the internet is in full bloom, trust it, Gregory, that we will establish our own form of control over that. It's an invisible control and we never, ever talk about it and anyone who gets really close to the truth gets one in the back of the head from a doped-up burglar. And if something gets loose, who will publish it? Surely not our boys in the media. A book publisher? A joke, Gregory. Never. Rather than off some snoop, it's much more subtle to marginalize them in print, imply they are either liars or nuts and make fun of them. Discredit them so no one will listen to them and then later, the car runs over them in the crosswalk.[...]"
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Just like Wizard of Oz... keep your eyes on the prize and that man behind the curtain pulling all the strings. Of course, it makes you wonder if they know who's pulling their strings? But that's another story.
There was a time when I thought that the government didn't listen to the people. Now I know better. I am grateful for ways I can protect my privacy, such as keeping my private data on an external (SSD, HDD, Flash drive, optical, etc.) and use an unbreakable, mutating-key algorithm encryption softwate like Cryptogra.ph for all my sensitive data and communications.
All this blather and yet the Cyber Octopus still can't protect itself from the Assanges, Mannings and Snowdens who expose their hidden activities and crimes.
Big Brother turns out to be your dull-witted cousin with big plans who manages to fuck everything up he tries to do.
This doesn't mean he can't turn dangerous on you in a heartbeat because he has a gun in his waistband and some equally dull-witted friends.
This elaborate lie is not designed for sheep consumption but is directed at the CFR opinion shaping apparatus stratgically located in the highest reaches of academia and the mass media and other leading cultural institutions within the US. It will be regurgitated over and over again, in pithy simple phrases that will have been designed and focus group tested to insure that the general population comes to accept and eventually love, BIG BROTHER. This technique has been employed with spectacular success in getting the general population to accept dogma that is anathema to our basic economic interests (like being impoverished much?) and terminating our most basic freedoms. acquired at such cost in blood over the last ten centuries!
We are living in "1984" on steroids, astonishingly complacent and inert in seeming acceptance of a truly dystopic future.
What a fucking windbag. I stopped at the end of sentence 1, sorry.
Away team to Captain. Fuck You! Over.
The Dear Leader is my shepherd; I shall not question.
He maketh me to lie. Period.
He leadeth me to shread the Constitution.
He destroyeth my soul.
He leadeth me in the paths of inequity for his profit's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the mall on my way to Apple to buy iPads,
I will fear no unwelcome truth: For thou art brainwashed me already.
Otherwise thy rod and thy staff -- in the hands of thy riot police -- they break me.
Thou preparest a FEMA tent before me in the presence of mine helpless children.
Thou bashest my skull with a club; my blood runneth over.
Surely if I am not careful evil and terror shall follow me the few remaining days of my life,
and for these reasons I will instead dwell in the house of timid debt slavery forever.
Tell a lie once and you are only deceiving yourself. Say that same lie a thousand more times and it can only be truth.
I wonder if any of those geniuses in the Federal gov't or the big banks understand that they have created possibly the most dangerous kind of revolutionary in the US - the disillusioned idealist. I suspect that many of my fellow commenters here at ZH may be a lot like me - there was a time when I loved what my country stood for, or appeared to stand for. There was a time when I really believed "America The Beautiful" and cried happy tears as I sang it.
When I came back from living in Japan 1947-49 (I was an Army kid) I was so happy to be back in America that I took a lot of shit in my Columbus Georgia school for saluting the flag during the POA rather than the approved hand-over-heart gesture. (I suspect that most of my fellow Georgia classmates- those still alive - are all very much 110% Americans now, bumper stickers and all). But the federal Gov't and the PTB have managed to steadily erode all the positive things that I felt about this country with their criminal, hypocritical, greedy, cynical behavior, to the point where if someone put a big red button in front of me and said "If you push that button every Federal employee and every executive of every big bank will immediately die a horrible and prolonged death - but so will you and everyone you have ever loved and cared about" you would see only a blur as I reached out to push that button.
Does anyone still believe anything this man says?
"POE" Purity of essence
All lies.
so, innnitiate fake .guv Hegelian Dialectic intertube outage when?
Wow, the wordiness and truthiness has me sold! I can see why it's so important for the NSA to have real-time access to everything. An internet kill switch would make me feel even more secure, because information is scary and dangerous.
An open source world is a stronger, more stable, and more fair world. It takes courage to make the leap. The US is positioned to take the lead on transparency and so far the US has come up short. That will be a missed opportunity if attempted after burning through every last bit of good will and credit.
Summary of what is wrong with NSA sharing anything with domestic organizations:
* Insufficient penalties for abuse against the J Edgar Hoover effect.
* Information obtained by spying or exchanging spy info with other countries will always have insufficient oversight to prevent abuse.
* Remedies can only occur after damage is done.
* State secrecy moral hazard.
Due to the informational and state secrecy asymmetries, these problems cannot be fixed in a democracy.
Summary: Pay no attention to the fact that we have disregarded the Constitution, we're good guys doing important work, and besides, we're being very mindful of your privacy....honest...
Fuck you Keith.