| Online: | |
| Visits: | |
| Stories: |
| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
The NSA Isn’t Just Spying on Us, It’s Also Undermining Internet Security
Bolstering the nation’s defenses against hackers has been one of the Obama administration’s top goals.
Officials have warned for years that a sophisticated cyberattack could cripple critical infrastructure or allow thieves to make off with the financial information of millions of Americans. President Obama pushed Congress to enact cybersecurity legislation, and when it didn’t, he issued his own executive order in 2013.
“The cyber threat to our nation is one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face,” Obama wrote in a 2012 op-ed in The Wall Street Journal.
Collecting intelligence often means hacking encrypted communications. That’s nothing new for the NSA; the agency traces its roots back to code-breakers deciphering Nazi messages during World War II.
So in many ways, strong Internet security actually makes the NSA’s job harder.
“This is an administration that is a vigorous defender of surveillance,” said Christopher Soghoian, the head technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union. “Surveillance at the scale they want requires insecurity.”
The leaks from Edward Snowden have revealed a variety of efforts by the NSA to weaken cybersecurity and hack into networks. Critics say those programs, while helping NSA spying, have made U.S. networks less secure.
According to the leaked documents, the NSA inserted a so-called back door into at least one encryption standard that was developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The NSA could use that back door to spy on suspected terrorists, but the vulnerability was also available to any other hacker who discovered it.
Source: http://truthisscary.com/2014/05/the-nsa-isnt-just-spying-on-us-its-also-undermining-internet-security/
