Several cyber security initiatives lost after Snowden leaks

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.stripes.com/news/us/several-cyber-security-initiatives-lost-after-snowden-leaks-1.265344

By Ken Dilanian
Tribune Washington Bureau
February 2, 2014

WASHINGTON -- Early last year, as Edward Snowden was secretly purloining 
classified documents from National Security Agency computers in Hawaii, 
the NSA director, Gen. Keith Alexander, was gearing up to sell Congress 
and the public on a proposal for the NSA to defend private U.S. computer 
networks against cyber attacks.

Alexander wanted to use the NSA’s powerful tools to scan Internet traffic 
for malicious software code. He insisted the NSA could kill the viruses 
and other digital threats without reading consumers’ private e-mails, 
texts and Web searches.

The NSA normally protects military and other national security computer 
networks. Alexander also wanted authority to prevent hackers from 
penetrating U.S. banks, defense industries, telecommunications systems and 
other institutions to crash their networks or to steal intellectual 
property worth billions of dollars.

But after Snowden began leaking NSA systems for spying in cyberspace last 
June, Alexander’s proposal was a political non-starter, felled by distrust 
in his agency’s fearsome surveillance powers in the see-sawing national 
debate over privacy and national security.

[...]

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