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US Cybersecurity Chief Beckstrom Resigns
nodialtone writes with a Reuters report that Rod Beckstrom, director of the National Cybersecurity Center (NCSC), has tendered his resignation, citing clashes between the NCSC and the NSA with regard to who handles the nation's online security efforts. In his resignation letter (PDF), he made the point that "The intelligence culture is very different than a network operations or security culture," and said he wasn't willing to "subjugate the NCSC underneath the NSA." He also complained of budget roadblocks which kept the NCSC from receiving more than five weeks of funding in the past year. Wired has a related story from late February which discusses comments from Admiral Dennis Blair, director of National Intelligence, who thinks cyber security should be the NSA's job to begin with.
I'm sure the military branches use their own methods, which are even resistant to NSA spying
The entire point of the NSA is to secure government (and thus military) communications. DES, hello? That was developed so that the government could send shit privately, not for you and me.
The NSA takes charge of development of all the various devices used, and probably gives recommended policy and procedure too. For example, secure communications between embassies? That gear was designed by the NSA, as were the protocols for programming them. Same goes for the encrypted comms on military planes and whatnot. The military uses these fancy boxes to "load" encryption keys into radios and such- and assure their security, chain of custody, blah blah. NSA developed.
If you think the NSA has secret access and is running counter-ops or some bullshit like that, you've been watching too many bad movies and reading too many bad (Tom Clancy) novels.
Please help metamoderate.
Having different independant departments with different focus s not a bad idea. One of the concerns about FEMA after the New Orleans incident is that it had been reduced from a cabinet level agency and perhaps had lost some of its focus on natural disasters. In government there is transparency, so that a government agency can avoid duplicating the work of other agencies and as well they can also cooperate. So having a larger number of agencies also can allow for checks and balances to happen as well, so you dont have all of your eggs in one basket. Its important to have several indepandent agencies that can monitor each other. Different departments may also have different specialisation and may better able to fulfill certain needs than others.
Why not just close/merge a bunch of them. CIA FBI NSA NCSC US SS DoH DIA NRA really I could just start picking random letters (and i'm sure there are more than i've listed)
One of the key reasons that there are so many agencies is that there is a clear dividing line in US law between the military and civilian agencies. These agencies were divided because the goal was to have the military worry about external military threats while civilian agencies handled internal threats and non-military external threats. This division is a positive defense against making the US a police state or giving the military too much power. It costs more money, but it also restricts mission creep. And the last thing you want is an agency with military power experiencing mission creep. The mission creep of our civilian agencies during the "War on Terror" was frightening enough (which leads me to think that we need another division between civilian agencies that handle internal threats and agencies like the CIA that handle non-military external threats).
They didn't think up checks and balances, they just implemented Montesquieu's theories in a more thorough and novel way than had been done. And it wasn't Carpenter's Hall, it was Independence Hall, then I think still called the Pennsylvania State House.
OP probably meant the NRO.
When blueprints and stuff for Marine 1 show up in Iran because some contractor wanted to download Britney Spears mp3s, yeah. I'd throw my hands up and walk away too. Things are only handled as intelligently as the dumbest person involved, and the leading cause of aneurism these days is having to deal with dumb people.
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*