April 22nd, 2009
General: NSA doesn't want to control cybersecurity
As the 60-day cybersecurity review draws to a close, NSA director Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander told the RSA conference that the agency has no desire to strip responsibility from the Department of Homeland Security, Cnet’s Declan McCullagh reports.
Although NSA “has tremendous technical abilities” and Alexander sees clear benefits to centralizing the government’s cybersecurity abilities, “We do not want to run cybersecurity for the U.S. government.”
That statement stands as a denial of charges made by Rod Beckstrom, who in resigning as director of the National Cyber Security Center, claimed that NSA was engaged in a power grab. NSA effectively controls cybersecurity through a policy of “through detailees, technology insertions” and a move of a cybersecurity directorate to an NSA location, Beckstrom wrote DHS boss Janet Napolitano.
