
Obama moves to split cyberwarfare command from the NSA - perseusprime11
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-moves-to-split-cyberwarfare-command-from-the-nsa/2016/12/23/a7707fc4-c95b-11e6-8bee-54e800ef2a63_story.html
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blackflame7000
It does seem logical to separate offensive and defensive cyber warfare
agencies in order to prevent overreaches in the name of defense.

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mtgx
It does, but I'm very skeptical the NSA has the right "defense" culture.
Throughout most of its life it has been a very offense-heavy agency.

The article says this:

> _The NSA also has a defensive mission — to protect the government’s
> classified networks — but is better known for its role in conducting
> electronic spying on overseas targets to gather intelligence on adversaries
> and foreign governments._

So even the very tiny defense focus it has now (protecting classified
networks), while ignoring the _vast_ majority of networks and databases of the
federal government is still overshadowed by the fact that its main purpose is
to spy on everyone in the world...(gather intelligence on "adversaries" and
foreign governments - good joke, WashPost!)

If the U.S. government is actually serious about "cybersecurity" then it needs
a new agency that is in charge of implementing modern security best practices
and keeping all systems up to date from the least important government network
to the most critical infrastructure that would wreck havoc if it was to be
hacked.

The NSA is definitely not the agency to do that. And it also lacks the culture
to do so. For instance, implementing backdoors should be a big NO-NO in the
culture of such an agency. The NSA seems to prefer backdoors and secret access
over strong security, because its main mission is spying, not cybersecurity.

So all in all, still a good move that the most ruthless of US government's
cyberattacks won't benefit as much from NSA's vast spying capabilities, which
could lead to less abuse in the future, but it does nothing to increase
cybersecurity in the US (unless you believe the "deterrent" argument, but so
far I haven't seen it work _at all_ when it comes to cyberattacks, and the
deterrent is useless against random hacking groups anyway).

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blackflame7000
Right, the NSA should be focused solely on the defense of American
(public/private) networks whereas the US Cyber Command should be used solely
for offensive purposes. That way the NSA cant justify going on the offensive
to probe for targets or meta-data when they should be focused on securing
infrastructure.

