Obama Nominates Vice Admiral Michael Rogers New NSA Chief

wiredmikey writes "President Barack Obama has nominated a US Navy officer, Vice Admiral Michael Rogers, to take over as head of the embattled National Security Agency, the Pentagon said Thursday. Rogers, 53, would take the helm at a fraught moment for the spy agency, which is under unprecedented pressure after leaks from ex-intelligence contractor Edward Snowden revealed the extent of its electronic spying. If confirmed by lawmakers, Rogers would also take over as head of the military's cyber warfare command. Rogers, who trained as an intelligence cryptologist, would succeed General Keith Alexander, who has served in the top job since 2005. He currently heads the US Fleet Cyber Command, overseeing the navy's cyber warfare specialists, and over a 30-year career has worked in cryptology and eavesdropping, or 'signals intelligence.' His confirmation hearings in the Senate are likely to be dominated by the ongoing debate about the NSA's espionage, and whether its sifting through Internet traffic and phone records violates privacy rights and democratic values."

Comments

rebranded?

[Infestedkudzu]

Is this what companies do when their product turns out to have lead paint in it or something.

Re:rebranded?

[edibobb]

This started long before Obama. The big data collection was almost inevitable because it became possible, economical, and easy to justify in the name of "national security." As long as they could keep it secret with virtually unlimited funding, it would keep growing regardless of who controlled the White House, Congress, or the Supreme Court.

Re:rebranded?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

NSA Reputation Is Dirt

Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2014 18:30:39 -0500

From: William Allen Simpson
<william.allen.simpson[at]gmail.com>

To: Jerry Leichter <leichter[at]lrw.com>, John Kelsey
<crypto.jmk[at]gmail.com>

Subject: Re: [Cryptography] RSA is dead.

I'm surprised at the sudden interest in my month old December 23 post.

On 1/20/14 2:39 PM, Jerry Leichter wrote:

On Jan 20, 2014, at 12:49 PM, John Kelsey <crypto.jmk[at]gmail.com>
wrote:

Perhaps this is the result of living in a government bubble for awhile, but
I certainly saw and heard a lot of the bigger community who thought NSA's
involvement in domestic crypto standards and companies was intended to improve
security. That's why NSA people were and are openly members of a bunch of
standards committees, why people invited NSA guys to give talks and take
part in competitions, why people were using stuff like SE Linux. People have
been using DSA, the NIST curves, SHA1, and SHA2 for many years, believing
them secure--because the assumption was that NSA wasn't putting backdoored
stuff out there.

Absolutely. And it's not just a matter of living inside the government bubble.

NSA has had a surprisingly good reputation pretty much until Snodownia. Before
their involvement with DES, no one really knew anything about them - but
every interaction I've ever heard of with NSA people left the impression
that they were extremely bright and extremely competent. (A friend who, many
years ago interviewed with both CIA and NSA, thought the interviewers for
the former were a bunch of bumbling idiots, while he was very impressed with
the latter. He never took a govern

Can you spy?

[ackthpt]

"Yes"

"Can you spy a lot?"

"Yes"

"You're hired."

new hiring practice at the NSA

NSA spied on Copenhagen climate summit ..

[DTentilhao]

"Developing countries have reacted angrily to revelations that the United States spied on other governments at the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009."

"Documents leaked by Edward Snowden show how the US National Security Agency (NSA) monitored communication between key countries before and during the conference to give their negotiators advance information about other positions at the high-profile meeting where world leaders including Barack Obama, Gordon Brown and Angela Merkel failed to agree to a strong deal on climate change." link

Re:The only acceptable solution...

[Zynder]

Dude, if they haven't dismantled the TSA, which visibly annoys people day in and day out, by now what even gave you a glimmer of hope it would happen this time? There have been so many opportunities to break up the TSA, repeal the Patriot Act, and all of the other nonsense that's been going but it seems the only person who gave a shit all of these years was Ron Paul. You see how well that went over. The only way you'll see the NSA or TSA dismantled will be when it becomes profitable for those who pay Congress' bills.