NSA Director Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander, appears today for a Senate confirmation hearing as the first head of the Pentagon new Cyber Command. Some in government want to overhaul laws to unshackle US ability to conduct cyber warfare. New York Times, Associated Press and Washington Post have more.
Gen. Alexander has warned Congress that computer network warfare is evolving so rapidly that there is a gap between the military’s technical capabilities and legal controls over digital combat.
The N.S.A.’s role in intercepting international calls to and from the United States has generated intense contention — and scrutiny by Congress and the courts.
Alexander’s confirmation has been delayed for nearly six months, says the Washington Post. Lawmakers questioned whether the head of the NSA should lead a military unit and what, exactly, that new unit will be empowered to do.
In a 32-page response to questions from senators (pdf), General Alexander sketched out the broad battlefield envisioned for the computer warfare command and acknowledged the kind of targets that his new headquarters could be ordered to attack. Whether the target list would include civilian institutions and municipal infrastructure that are essential to state sovereignty and stability, including power grids, banks and financial networks, transportation and telecommunications, was one of the questions.
“It is difficult for me to conceive of an instance where it would be appropriate to attack a bank or a financial institution, unless perhaps it was being used solely to support enemy military operations,” he wrote.
When Alexander was NSA director in August 2005, he wanted to speed the harvesting of raw signals intelligence, reports the Washington Post. He wanted a soldier in, say, Fallujah, Iraq, to be able to type in a name or phrase on a laptop-like device, as in a Google search, and in seconds pull up relevant information. He gave NSA developers 90 days to build a prototype. He called it Real Time 10, or Real Time to the 10th power, to emphasize speed.
“The [signals intelligence] may reveal an insurgent who’s getting ready to detonate an IED or ambush a unit,” said Collin Agee, an intelligence official who saw RT 10 at work in Iraq. “The whole point was to compress the timeline.”
The NSA is now building a massive $1.6 billion data center at Utah’s Camp Williams and held a tour of the site last November. An estimated 5,000 to 10,000 workers will be involved in the construction of the National Security Agency’s $1.5 billion data center.
Cyber espionage threatens the U.S. national security and economic welfare according to a report by the Defense Security Service (DSS). UAVs are likely to remain a principle target of foreign collection activities, particularly given the growing market in UAVs, the report notes.
Meanwhile, the development budget for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office has been drastically reduced in recent years, and the spy satellite agency’s top official will push to reverse that trend starting with the 2012 federal budget request reports SpaceNews. At the National Space Symposium the NRO chief said over the next 18 months the agency will pursue its most aggressive launch campaign of the last 25 years.
