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NSA, CSS and DOD Cyber Command staying under one boss
Since the creation of the US Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM), the Department of Defense's joint command in charge of operating and defending the military's network, one man has been at the helm. He is also Director of the National Security Agency and the Chief of Central Security Service. Those combined roles have put responsibility for a huge swath of the US military's "network warfare" under a single man's purview--a concentration of power that has caused a great deal of concern. In fact, the Director of the Office of National Intelligence and the panel appointed by President B.O. to review the operations of the NSA have both recommended that the NSA and the DOD's Cyber Command be put under separate leadership. The review panel, appointed in the wake of leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, submitted a draft recommendation to President Barack ObamaThey get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them... recommending that a civilian should be appointed head of the NSA, while Cyber Command should remain under military leadership. But the B.O. regime has ignored that advice, announcing that it will continue the arrangement that let Alexander command most of the nation's military and civilian offensive and defensive cyber capabilities. "Following an interagency review," White House spokeswoman Caitlyn Hayden wrote in an email to the Washington Post, "the administration has decided that keeping the positions of NSA Director and Cyber Command Commander together as one, dual-hatted position is the most effective approach to accomplish both agencies' missions." The NSA has been under a military commander since its inception. But General Alexander is the highest-ranking military officer ever to lead the agency, and the combination of responsibilities he has retained since being "dual-hatted" are unprecedented. As USCYBERCOM Commander, he has operation control over the Army's, Navy's, and Air Force's cyber commands and their component network operations and intelligence collection units. He also oversees the network operations of the Defense Information Systems Agency, which provides information infrastructure to all of the services as well as communications support to the "national leadership"--the White House and other key government officials. That means that the Commander of USCYBERCOM is responsible for nearly everything that passes over a military network and for the units responsible for offensive and defensive operations on any network worldwide that the military touches. As director of the NSA, Alexander's duties put him in charge of all electronic signals intelligence, crypto breaking, and the development of security rules, regulations, standards, and practices for all of US intelligence. The NSA operates, on its own, more than 500 different intelligence "platforms." The Central Security Service, which is also under the NSA Director's purview, is responsible for coordinating all cryptography for military and intelligence networks. While having a single chain of command for both CYBERCOM and the NSA does ensure a high level of coordination between the two, critics say it reduces the amount of oversight and transparency of the organization. The White House decision, the Post suggests, is in line with an attitude that there isn't much wrong at the NSA. The one concession the B.O. regime may make is to adopt the review panel's suggestion that the phone records currently collected by the NSA be held by either the phone companies themselves or by some third party for the sake of privacy protection. Posted by: Pappy 2013-12-15 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=381685 |