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.

Comments

NSA = leaky pipes

[johnny cashed]

If the NSA is "put in charge" (I fail to see how this occurs) then many, who presumably already do this, will just have their own secure networks. I'm sure the military branches use their own methods, which are even resistant to NSA spying. Individuals who are concerned can currently use their own encryption or other methods to best secure their networks (it isn't illegal). If the NSA is in charge, one can rest assured that the copy and archive everything they can. How big "everything they can" is depends on some technical limitations and possibly some sort of legal oversight, but I don't really know.

Re:another decent man leaves government in disgust

[pcolaman]

None of those childish finger point "you're just as bad" quips come close to matching:

1. Running around the world like a rogue state starting wars of aggression in the name of geopolitical one upsmanship.

2. Starting a meaningless "war on terror" and railroading other countries into that same paranoid delusion resulting in the destruction of the last half millennium of democratic development in the Anglo-American world.

3. Arbitrarily toppling democratically elected leaders (before you go off refuting this, read up on the US interventions in South America such as Chile).

4. Reality television.

So yea, clean up your fucking country, esp point 4.

If you are a Brit, than number 4 applies to your country even more so than the US. Brit Reality TV is even worse and such a blatant copy of our pathetic reality TV it's laughable. As far as Chile goes, it's fucking Chile. Who cares about them anyways?

Re:another decent man leaves government in disgust

[gtall]

This was the same USAF that stated they were standardizing all their computing on Microsoft software. Security? Microsoft? No, it just cannot be done, not here, not anywhere, ever, no how...

Gerry

Re:another decent man leaves government in disgust

[MrNaz]

I'm from South Africa.

Re:another decent man leaves government in disgust

[MrNaz]

Oh, and I'm not white.