NSA Director Wants Threat Data Sharing With Private Sector 126
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.'"
Re:and once they have the vulnerability informatio (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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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.
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yeah....good point...I'd forgotten about that specific story...
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Exactly.
NSA so very much wants to be the major Agency of the United Corporations of America. To hell with the citizenry.
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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
company valuation (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
Re:company valuation (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep your friends close and enemies closer.
Bring all the companies who've been complaining they can't reveal the NSA's information requests into your privileged enclave - to make them feel special.
And in the process, ensure those companies are even more firmly ensconced in the laws that prevent them from revealing anything.
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Bah. Just make it all public and to hell with it. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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Alas, our choice is usually unga bunga or death.
Re:Bah. Just make it all public and to hell with i (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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
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people have been voting the bums out for decades now and DC is still full of bums.
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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 Libertar
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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 everyo
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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 q
Re:Bah. Just make it all public and to hell with i (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Bah. Just make it all public and to hell with i (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
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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.
California has highest taxes (Score:2)
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.
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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 [huffingtonpost.com] 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 s
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Obama? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAQlsS9diBs
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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.
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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.
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...
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 faul
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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 st
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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
"Hope and change" was a slogan. Millions not inter (Score:2)
> 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 d
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He simply believes he is a higher class of human being than the rest of us.
That's very common in hardline Trekkies. ;-)
Oh great (Score:2)
Chilling stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Chilling stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Unfortunately, he is real . . . and seems to be a bit of a megalomaniac to boot . . . totally intoxicated and ripped to his tits with his ever increasing power. Joe McCarthy and Edgar Hoover 2.0 . . . Enterprise Edition.
It doesn't seem like there is anyone in the government or general public who has the courage to stand up to him.
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Yet, they'll be all shocked, surprised, and butt-hurt when someone shoves a bullet through his brain-pan or a pressure-cooker up this megalomaniac's ass.
There should be international "Wanted Dead Or Alive" posters in every nations' post offices with this scum-bucket's picture on it. That there are not says that most Western nations do data-sharing with the NSA
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Alexander appealed to [key private organizations] to help support the information sharing concept and any legislation that may be required to implement it.
And of course it has long been true, and even more blatantly so since Citizens United, that large corporations have a significant influence on legislation. The campaign with the largest budget wins, every time. And obviously they expect something in exchange.
So yes, unfortunately, this guy is for real.
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Well I must admit that I can't remember exactly where I had heard that "the campaign with the largest budget wins, every time", and can't seem to find it just now. Still, a quick search gave me this nice chart [opensecrets.org].
Since I don't have House/Senate results memorized, I only glanced at recent Presidential elections. At first sight, this does not seem to support my statement. But these figures are per party. I am pretty sure that, typically, the incumbent party will typically spend a much larger percentage of total
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Sorry for late reply, I am in Europe and just woke up. I think this also might explain my confusion when I read your post, eg that the DP have radicalized and are now "socialists". Likewise for your statement that the major networks (even CNN?) have liberal bias.
You see, compared to what we've got over here, both major US parties are decidedly right wing. Even the Ds would be judged by most here to be to the right of our mainstream right wingers. There are lots of reasons for this I suppose.
Finally, I am in
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they already started to do this...
so... i guess the real plan is to get their illegal actions legal before all this spying shit hits the fan... same thing they did before with the phone taps.
The goal (Score:2)
out of the frying pan and into the fire (Score:5, Informative)
Look in the mirror (Score:5, Insightful)
If these goons want to see what the worst threat to freedom is they should simply install mirrors throughout all NSA buildings.
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I like this idea... .. Unfortunately right now they seem to be taking that as a challenge instead of a chide.
Plaster the walls of all government buildings with framed mirrors with the title "Worst Threat to Freedom"
as a non-American (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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And Israel. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/11/nsa-americans-personal-data-israel-documents
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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)
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He's gone mad with power. In fact he's theoretically the most powerful man alive. He can spy on Rupert Murdoch's communications.
ACTA needs access to this 'threat' data! (Score:1)
Make it fit for dollar! (Score:2)
Unacceptable (Score:1)
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.
It's complete (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
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That was my first thought, this is full-on fascism. Full two-way power sharing between the corporations and the government.
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Hi agents!
Don't forget foreign trade secrets, technologies, (Score:1)
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.
Like the threat that Airbus posed to Boeing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Its not like the NSA doesn't have past form on passing industrial espionage on european companies to American ones...
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The NSA gets the info, then the CIA takes out selected individuals by lobbying, blackmail or if all fails ... - after all cmpetitors are an imminent threat to the american way of life ...
But this is done already... (Score:2)
solving the wrong problem (Score:1)
'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?
And I want... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
No Sale (Score:2)
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
Why is this Criminal not in Prison? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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He didn't create shit; he is just in charge of it currently. Congress and the President created this.
Misused of Classification (Score:2)
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
Here's what will happen (Score:3)
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On the surface, this sounds correct. But what this is, is the NSA's attempt at removing the last vestiges of due process from their access to the private sector's data.
the NSA will then share nothing with the private orgs because everything of any interest is classified.
You really think Snowden was the first person to go rifling through the NSA's servers? He was the first one to show us how easy it was to do. And what sort of stuff they've got in there. Having 'consultants' and 'contractors' inside gov't departments feeding stuff back to their home office has been going on for decades. And I'm not so sure th
"Need"? (Score:1)
I'm not sure the General understands the meaning of the word "need".
Why spy? Business. (Score:2)
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.
The American way (Score:2)
He Wants CISPA (Score:2)
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.
Industrial Espionage... (Score:2)
Camel nose, meet tent. (Score:1)
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.
"Threat sharing with the private sector"? (Score:2)
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
and the conclusion is (Score:2)
FUCK NSA
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notice to any political spiders, i will contribute to any political candidate that wants to limit NSA.
And I bet... (Score:1)
Two lines of thought (Score:2)
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 disclos
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Don't be giving the NSA any ideas. Or they'll be mounting a false flag operation any day now.