Writing for New Republic, Jack Goldsmith supports General Keith Alexander’s vision for increased government surveillance to combat cyber threats and believes that, one day, the government and, specifically, the NSA, will “intimately monitor private networks.”
He offers two reasons for this assertion:
- Cyberthreat is more pervasive and severe than the traditional terrorist threat.
If the [New York] Times’ website goes down a few more times and for longer periods, and if the next penetration of its computer systems causes large intellectual property losses or a compromise in its reporting, even the editorial page would rethink the proper balance of privacy and security.
- The public distrusts the NSA mainly because it is secretive. The government, according to Goldsmith, may be able to gain public trust by gaining public permission.
To obtain the creditability it needs to secure permission from the American people to protect our networks, the NSA and the intelligence community must fundamentally recalibrate their attitude toward disclosure and scrutiny.
Goldsmith addresses the need for such government involvement. Essentially, his point boils down to the sophistication of the adversary.
Most truly harmful cyber-operations . . . require group effort and significant skill. The attacking group or nation must have clever hackers, significant computing power, and sophisticated software . . . .
Such capabilities, Goldsmith argues, call for powerful government intelligence capabilities, incentive programs for individuals and corporations to use security software in their cyber operations, and, perhaps most importantly according to Goldsmith, increased government monitoring of networks.
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