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NSA Director Wants Threat Data Sharing With Private Sector
Trailrunner7 writes "While Congress and the technology community are still debating and discussing the intelligence gathering capabilities of NSA revealed in recent months, the agency's director, Gen. Keith Alexander, is not just defending the use of these existing tools, but is pitching the idea of sharing some of the vast amounts of threat and vulnerability data the NSA and other agencies possess with organizations in the private sector. Speaking at a time of great scrutiny of the agency and its activities, Alexander said that the NSA, along with other federal agencies such as the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and CIA, need to find a way to share the attack and vulnerability information they collect in order to help key private organizations react to emerging threats. Though the idea is still in its formative stages, Alexander said that it potentially could include companies in foreign countries, as well. 'We need the authority for us to share with them and them to share with us. But because some of that information is classified, we need a way to protect it,' Alexander said during a keynote speech at the Billington Cybersecurity Summit here Wednesday. 'Right now, we can't see what's happening in real time. We've got to share it with them, and potentially with other countries.'"
So if I'm a company listed on the NASDAQ, do I get bump in my stock price for being in the NSA's "circle of trust"?
And if so, what incentives does that give to the NSA, to companies, and to traders?
He simply believes he is a higher class of human being than the rest of us.
No wonder it's hard to explain to such people that the cattle doesn't like being fire branded.
So now they want to become the National Spamming Agency?
Is this guy for real? He's talking about real-time information sharing, obviously with no judicial oversight of any sort, rubber-stamped or otherwise.
FTFA: “Right now, we can’t see what’s happening in real time. We’ve got to share it with them, and potentially with other countries.”
Speaking to a crowd of mainly industry and government workers, Alexander appealed to them to help support the information sharing concept and any legislation that may be required to implement it.
Private sector data companies don't have a leak-proof record either http://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/09/data-broker-giants-hacked-by-id-theft-service/
If these goons want to see what the worst threat to freedom is they should simply install mirrors throughout all NSA buildings.
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
How the hell is this not industrial espionage? And then you expect me to host my backups in a US-based cloud or use US-based services like Office365? Apparantly these NSA-approved encryption techniques dont work so good when you're trying to shield from the NSA.
How about this cloud-based electronic laboratory-notebook software that is being pitched to pharma companies. These contain all the sensitive data before the patents are filed. Will that data be "shared" with my competition as well?
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
It's also very hard to vote for political appointees.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
He simply believes he is a higher class of human being than the rest of us.
That's very common in hardline Trekkies. ;-)
Ezekiel 23:20
But it is easier to vote for people who can fire appointees.
And who can pass laws first to make them fireable very quickly, if necessary.
The West has become as ideological as the East, and it's fucking depressing. It's time to use the government to serve not the corporations, not a mythical immutable class - but the people.
You voted for them!
No. I didn't. And even if I had, I don't believe democratically elected representatives represent their voters regardless of how is democracy implemented.
When it comes to representative democracy, it's impossible to emphasise enough that this can all be changed by voting differently.
That is false and naive.
As a simple proof, I challenge you to change it all by voting differently.
The mechanisms are there.
Nope.
So, ideologues, toadies and milquetoasts - please all go fuck yourselves and regenerate as something better - because it's time to build a society where there's a more equitable balance of power.
Thank you for your useful input.
representative democracy= we make promises, you vote, we enter into office.
Immediate benefit for them, promise of later benefit for you.
Hmmm sounds like the most classical blueprint for a scam.
You should vote PROGRAMS, whose points become law overriding everything else, with the parliament devoted to harmonize it into the existing situation and the government devoted to apply.
And emergency laws should last 3 months.
Or direct democracy. Of course those in powers make sure we as people are not mature enough for direct democracy. We should adopt it as a form of punishment against our lack of spine.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
And emergency laws should last 3 months.
I believe some "emergency laws" shouldn't exist for any period of time; namely ones that violate people's rights (e.g. the USA PATRIOT ACT).
Da derp dee derp da teedly derpee derpee dum. Rated PG-13.
Far sooner than I thought. I believe this means that ACTA and similar orgs have successfully argued for access to this 'threat' data.
urine would test positive for crack, smack, uppers, downers, outers, inners, horse tranquilizers, cow paralyzers, blue bombers, green goofers, yellow submarines and LSD Mach 3.
"One of the things you learn from years of dealing with drug people, is that you can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on a drug. Especially when it's waving a razor-sharp hunting knife in your eye."
Hunter S. Thompson (RIP)
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
Make it fit for dollar! And anyone against it will be branded a commie. Do so whatever the issue is.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Obama? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAQlsS9diBs
European countries really need to stand up and stop this madness! It's bad enough the government is spying on everyone, now they want businesses to use this data aswell? Probably to start lawsuits against everyone who ever downloaded a music file.
And the descent into fascism is complete.
The police have automatic weapons and battle-armour. How exactly, will private organisations, who already give all their customer data to the NSA, control terrorist threats? Thirteen years ago the US government socialized security services to make the country 'safe'. But now the NSA wants to privatize intelligence services! Three months ago they wanted to sack (IT support) contractors in the interests of national 'security'.
In Australia, a major rigged-games scandal has appeared. So sporting clubs are demanding access to intelligence from the federal police (US-ians think FBI).
And who said they are wasting resources. While at, it let's pick up some foreign patents, technologies, trade secrets, contract bids and anything that destroys overseas companies..
Surprise, surprise. That technology you worked for the last 4 years, has been just patented by some start-up in California.
Thank you Mister! You are a true American patriot.
Its not like the NSA doesn't have past form on passing industrial espionage on european companies to American ones...
Was thinking the same thing. Why should I believe this is anything but some sort of Trojan?
If not in the classical computer sense of a program that appears to do one thing and also does another, but in the more general sense as some way to help get me to let them in the door. If nothing else I am sure they won't be sharing the vulnerabilities they are actively using.
Sorry NSA but you have lost trust; its going to take years proving you can be a good actor before I'd advocate my security team collaborate with them. And so far I have not seen them even really start something like a real reform.
In summary -- Screw you Feds.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Yeah but this is done already. Banks, utilities, manufacturing, telcoms, ISPs, food processors everyone gets informed of threats or BOLO type situations .. they've always done this, it's absolutely nothing new.
'We need the authority for us to share with them and them to share with us. But because some of that information is classified, we need a way to protect it,'
Why not declassify it then? Why in the hell are newly discovered vulnerabilities in civilian applications classified in the first place?
I think it's far more likely they'll hack into Airbus's servers, steal all the cool info and then share it with Boeing.
You know, like last time. Why anyone trusts the US at all after all these scandals for -decades- is beyond me.
Hi agents!
I believe the 'you' in "you voted for them" is the plural. That is, you and your neighbours and friends voted for them.
I don't like it either, but like you, I can't be arsed to go out and canvass my neighbourhood on the merits of the Pirate Party (or even just to vote for someone other than the incumbent). Hence, like you, I have got exactly the government that I voted for.
As an aside, lots of people here in the UK have been voting for UKIP. As far as I can tell, the majority of UKIPs manifesto is that they want to 'rebalance' immigration so that we have less immigrants. Once UKIP started getting voted into small seats, the 2.5 major parties all started talking about their new plans to tackle immigration, whereas before that they'd just shrugged it all off as nonsense (hell, Labour actively encouraged immigration so that there would be a whole new generation of Labour votets, and even they are now talking about curbs on immigration). The point here is of course that you don't necessarily need to replace the incumbents, but actually just make them alter course a little. It all still means getting off your arse, and that's where my whole argument falls down because none of us can be bothered.
And this is the problem with democracy..
To paraphrase marcello_dl (667940) from above
Representative Democracy: They make promises, we vote, they enter into office.
Immediate benefit for them, promise of later benefit for us.
Sounds like a classic blueprint for a scam.
Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
Every NSA employees home address, all the records on them published to a PUBLIC website and updated daily with their credit card records and purchasing habits.
They will gladly agree as they have nothing to hide.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
yeah....good point...I'd forgotten about that specific story...
Sorry, General Alexander. You're backfilling now because you know that the behavior of your agency is an affront to every single one of the principles of a free society. There can be no liberty - social, economic or political - in a surveillance state. They are antithetical.
I think it's sinking in that this can only end one of two ways: Either there is massive reform of the NSA to bring in significant checks and balances (no secret court warrants) or there is an end to the notion that the United States is a free society that values liberty. And I think the second option is going to involve a whole lot of suffering, for both citizens and the surveillance masters like you, before it's done.
People are widely disgusted with you, General Alexander, and every day, more people are starting to realize what you and your agency have really become.
You are welcome on my lawn.
He has violated the Constitution of the United States tens of thousands of times, without repercussions. He has consistently lied to Congress and the American people. He has created a rogue agency that threatens our very democracy and therefore represents a Clear and Present Danger to our freedom. I fear him and his lackies far more than Al Qaeda.
He and his followers are the ones who should be super max for the rest of their lives. Or executed. Either works for me.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
If the information needs to be shared with people who can't be cleared, you're misusing the classification system. The whole point of classifying information is that you have identified it as information that is NOT to be shared outside an identified set of people that you explicitly trust. Bottom line: they're making too much information secret and setting the limits on dissemination tighter than they should be and now they want to make new rules instead of just declassifying the information that should never have been classified in the first place.
From personal experience, here is how this proposal will work out. Private orgs will share data with the NSA, the NSA will then share nothing with the private orgs because everything of any interest is classified. Anyone who has attended any conference with a presenter from the NSA has seen this in action. Really, the fact that the proposal isn't simply to make the information public shows the contemptuous disregard the NSA has for the public.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
You voted for them!
I voted for change in 2008. So did millions of other Americans, and our candidate won. But the U.S. political system makes meaningful change effectively impossible.
I'm not sure the General understands the meaning of the word "need".
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Or direct democracy.
Show me one instance of direct democracy not being a complete and total failure.
A person may not be stupid, but people are. They'll vote themselves lower taxes and more social services, then you end up with California.
No thank you.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
...
Then you're ignorant of how the world works. Plain and simple.
You got scammed and you still won't admit to it or recognize it. Thats a problem you need to overcome before you'll do anything productive in a political sense.
You voted for a marketing slogan. WTF does 'CHANGE' even mean? You got change. Not the change you thought he was magically referring to without him ever actually saying what 'change' was. The US political system just lets ignorance like your own win out. Its not the systems fault, its the fact that most people are like you and too lazy to look at what a politicians history has been rather than what their marketing slogan is.
Had you bothered to look at Obama's congressional voting record before you voted, nothing that has happened would be a surprise to you. But instead, you voted for OMFGBBQ CHANGE!
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Exactly.
NSA so very much wants to be the major Agency of the United Corporations of America. To hell with the citizenry.
Will
And you would have suggested what? Voting for John Edwards (he'd already dropped out by the time my state had its 2008 primaries)? Wasting a vote on some meaningless third party? Or do you think I should have voted for McCain instead in the general election? You honestly believe his record on drones and surveillance would have been better? This is a guy who never saw a war he didn't like.
In a first-past-the-post system, there is always going to be two parties – political science proves it. So we're stuck with the lesser of two evils. Yes, I overestimated the degree to which Obama was going to be different from the usual neoliberal Third Way Democrat. The point is that people who voted for Obama in the primaries and general election did so because we were specifically promised an end to unnecessary wars, Gitmo, and the incessant violations of civil liberties that followed 9/11. None of that happened. The problems are structural, not limited to one candidate or one party.
This has nothing to do with terrorist. This is about business. The American people are getting ripped off and people want to do something about it. How to prevent change? Spy on everyone and head off any political moment to change market and legal rules. The corps asked for this spying technology. This whole thing stinks of fascism.
No. I didn't. And even if I had, I don't believe democratically elected representatives represent their voters regardless of how is democracy implemented.
Democracy never promised that you'd get your wish, nor did representative democracy promise that your representative will follow your exact wishes.
When it comes to representative democracy, it's impossible to emphasise enough that this can all be changed by voting differently.
That is false and naive.
As a simple proof, I challenge you to change it all by voting differently.
You're either a control freak, ignorant, or both. You might be ignorant because you mistake democracy to mean "I control stuff." You're wrong - democracy just means you have input. Along with millions of others. So your share of the control is 1/n, which can be quite small in a country the size of the US. You might be a control freak because you think that everyone should just do what you think is right. There's also the possibility that you're some teenage know-it-all who thinks that his 30 minutes of coverage of the American Revolution taught him everything he needs to know about civics and political theory. But that would be just insulting.
Yes, the mechanisms are actually there. Sorry that democracy doesn't mean that we all just do what you want. Wait, no, I'm not sorry. That'd be just a dictatorship, and we actually moved away from that. For good reasons. Maybe one day you'll learn about them.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
It's about monetizing their assets. They have all this wonderful data, and the advertisers desperately want to buy access- and the NSA wants a secure source of funding that the revolting serfs can't cut off in retaliation over their "minor" spying scandal.
So he's lobbying for it in public.
The House of Representatives has passed it twice. Twice Obama threatened to veto it. Twice it died in the Senate.
It's not dead yet.
Even before prop 30, California had the fourth highest tax burden of the 50 states. The average _state_ tax burden was
$4,934 per person. Their tax _revenue_ dropped like stone because businesses and other money moved to Nevada (second lowest taxes) and Texas (6th lowest taxes).
So, I'll FTFY:
A person may not be stupid, but people are. They'll vote higher taxes and more social services, then you end up with California.
You should vote PROGRAMS, whose points become law overriding everything else, with the parliament devoted to harmonize it into the existing situation and the government devoted to apply.
Remember, In the Obama platform in 2008 was a particular point regarding protecting whiteblowers. No matter what they say, they won't follow it if their real bosses tell them to do otherwise after they got elected or the situation arises.
All the big parties in US have the same bosses, electing any of them, no matter how "this time is different" the candidate looks, will keep things getting worse in the same direction, as was with the change from Bush to Obama, different person, different party, different skin color, no matter how much you change, the bosses are the same, the trend keeps in the same direction, and no matter how low we fell so far, they can do a lot of things to make the things much, much worse following the same trend.
You can elect minoritary parties, or choose the appropiate way to express make count your vote for nobody. But in the end, they don't have only control of the government, they control the media, people will buy again their candy thinking that this time, things will change. I just hope that the world can survive the remaining of Obama administration and the 8 years of whoever comes after (a woman? a recent drug addict? someone with a disability? oh, wait, that was Bush, anyway they need to push the boundaries if want to give the illusion of that something will change)
> I voted for change in 2008. So did millions of other Americans
Millions of Americans voted for "hope and change". My mother-in-law was one of those millions. The problem is, "hope and change" was a _slogan_. She voted for a slogan. That's entirely understandable, most people are not political scientists, and they have several other things in their life that they care more about than economics, foreign affairs, etc. They aren't researching the candidates voting records because they are busy making dinner for their kids, changing a tire, or enjoying some hobby.
When I ask my mother-in-law opinion on any issue, she's most often against the position Senator Obama voted for. She actually disagrees with him on most things. She doesn't know that because she works 50 hours a week and has a life, so she doesn't spend time studying the issues. Instead, she votes a slogan. Completely understandable.
While it's completely understandable, it creates big problems. Ideally, everyone would spend 100 hours every four years studying the candidates, after spending 100 hours in each of the off years studying economics, foreign policy, etc. That's not going to happen. Most people are to busy / not interested enough to make a truly informed choice. If you're willing to study from impartial sources, great. If not, please do waste your vote on a third party, or stay home. Uninformed votes based on slogans are not helpful.
If you don't know what the capital of Iran is AND you don't know what the two major branches of economics are AND you don't know how many trillion the national debt is, you don't know who to vote for. That's okay. If you know two of the three, great, go vote.
Alas, our choice is usually unga bunga or death.
people have been voting the bums out for decades now and DC is still full of bums.
The problem being that most industrialized nations support, if not outright underwrite industrial espionage. I get that everyone is pissed off at the USA today, but seriously, do you really think that Japan's, China's or Britain's security services aren't passing on foreign commercial tidbits they've picked up to domestic commercial interests? What this looks like to me isn't so much a trojan, but as a way to create a network of necessity. Once companies get used to the NSA "helping" them, they're much more likely to push Congress to maintain the methods and extent of spying the NSA is doing. It's sort of a "join us on the dark side."
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Yes, the mainline parties in the UK have started talking about immigration reform (well, there was always a Tory rump that talked about it, and many of those are now UKIP). The problem being that the very inventors of "embrace, extend, extinguish" are politicians. They are very very good and taking an opponent's idea and running it through an election, after which they'll happily toss it in the dumpster and go back to their original plans. Look at how the GOP has for decades adopted the language of Libertarians, and yet every time they achieve power, any Libertarian ideas disappear. People like Ron and Rand Paul have been for years the GOP's useful idiots.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Anyone? Have you seen it coming?
democracy just means you have input. Along with millions of others. So your share of the control is 1/n, which can be quite small in a country the size of the US.
That's an oversimplification. If two wolves and a sheep are voting on what to have for dinner, they don't eat two thirds of a sheep - they eat the whole sheep. The sheep's "share of control" is 0% because his views aren't being enacted at all. We're seeing that now, where a terrified Republicrat majority wields almost all the power and third parties are marginalized or give up on voting altogether. I'd bet that if we actually took a vote on every existing policy, it would be faaaaar away from the status quo.
You might be a control freak because you think that everyone should just do what you think is right. There's also the possibility that you're some teenage know-it-all who thinks that his 30 minutes of coverage of the American Revolution taught him everything he needs to know about civics and political theory. But that would be just insulting.
Yes, the mechanisms are actually there. Sorry that democracy doesn't mean that we all just do what you want. Wait, no, I'm not sorry. That'd be just a dictatorship, and we actually moved away from that. For good reasons. Maybe one day you'll learn about them.
Indeed that was insulting; it says a lot about your ability to understand and empathize with others. Can I presume you're an old know-it-all, your expertise proven by virtue of the wonderful government you've left us?
And of course not long thereafter will come the financial incentives, cajoling, and outright threats necessary to ink a "deal" that the malware companies will not detect CIA and NSA wares.
I would certainly hope that McAfee et al would not be dumb enough to jump into bed with the devil, but sadly that may be more wishful thinking than anything.
I agree with you in general, although in the Westminster model, you usually have two parties that swap power and a distant third that on very rare occasions can play a kingmaker role. At the end of the day, it's all the same. Conservatives and liberals, however they are constituted (and sometimes the liberals may cross the line into some degree of socialism, aka Britain in the post-war period up until New Labour's victory in 1997) simply swap places.
What has exacerbated the situation in the United States is the way in which the two major political parties have so thoroughly taken over the voting system itself. I think back to the 2000 election where you had a Republican in Florida (Katherine Harris) actually responsible for certifying election results. When you have a close race like in 2000, whether she's the finest most upstanding person or not, it calls into question the validity of the whole process. While other countries usually have a central non-partisan election authority that manages elections and certifies results, in the US, the constitutional division of powers between states and the federal government basically allow the very voting system itself to be undermined, if in appearance alone, by partisan concerns.
Then there is gerrymandering, which happens in a number of countries besides the United States, which can heavily distort elections. In some ways the US is a century or more behind other industrialized democracies, although a certain amount of gerrymandering does go on elsewhere.
This has been the chief argument for the party list proportional representation system, in that it largely removes the temptation to gerrymander. Parties have to campaign to get representatives elected, and it becomes much more difficult to rig the voting system so that certain districts are created that will tend towards one party or another.
FPTP is just a bloody awful system. It tends to disenfranchise an enormous number of voters, and it basically allows major political parties to game the system to their benefit.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
And what else will they share?
Come on, everyone: tell me how this is *not* fascism, outright?
mark
"Fascism is more properly called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power" - Benito Mussolini
FUCK NSA
wrong approach. This isn't to anyone's benefit, this is their attempt at transparency in ways they're comfortable with.
in short: fuck the public.....but hey! Customers! Here's the people who enable our careers so please don't fight against us, we'll give you information?!
this is NSA damage control.
...the MAFIAA are first in line. This will surely end well.
Don't be giving the NSA any ideas. Or they'll be mounting a false flag operation any day now.
Have gnu, will travel.
1) if you're in trouble you can try to divert the attention away from your efforts into efforts that you might want. Good tactic to switch the attention off what you are doing bad and what you could do that's bad.
Make no mistake. This is without a doubt a bad thing for them to do.
2) if you are in trouble air everything bad so that when it all settles down there's nothing else that could rise up.
Snowden has been doing a great job with his releasing of information to combat this by not having it all disclosed at the same time, thus extending it and keeping the irritation up and the nation's attention on the NSA.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
How to make spying and finding terrorists profitable, so the government can hand it over to the private sector. Like almost everything the US government does these days, i.e. NASA, health care, jails, someone has to earn more money than the effort they put into it: profit.
Society use your Sciences
If by 'failure' you mean razed to the ground by either communists, republics, or both – then you're probably right. The US went to 'nam to fight direct democracy (so did the communists). Same in Italy. And Guatemala. And Cuba. And, well... you probably get the point. It's notoriously difficult to maintain a functional society when you are being murdered all the time...