*Spooks uber alles.
*The NSA has won the turf battle, but now they have the interesting problem that the worst cybersecurity threats to the USA come from non-governmental entities. Instead of the NSA versus the DHS (which is clearly something NSA is pretty good at), it's gonna be NSA versus the likes of the Storm Worm Zhelatin Gang. Suppose there's a much-trumpeted Electronic Pearl Harbor and the eastern seaboard goes dark for a couple of days. Do you think anybody is gonna call the NSA on the carpet? Tell the NSA to shape up? The NSA scarcely even officially exists and all their internal procedures are top secret.
http://gove-media.com/portal/wts/cgmcfObDzAaq4ADLke6xicjCFA2Ra
The Real Cyber Czar
By Shane Harris, National Journal 10/05/2009
A formidable intelligence chief, not a White House staffer, will run
network security.
In May, President Obama declared cyberspace a "strategic national
asset," and an unacceptably vulnerable one. In a speech at the White
House, he warned of unprecedented levels of online theft, pervasive
electronic espionage and the increasing use of cyberattacks in
conjunction with military operations. Then he pledged to appoint a
national-level cybersecurity official to coordinate the government's
responses to online threats, giving such efforts "the high-level focus
and attention they deserve."
But three months after the president's speech, he hadn't yet named the
official, in part because more candidates had declined the job than
were still in the running for it. The duties of the so-called cyber
czar were poorly defined and the office's authorities were too weak to
entice a number of well-qualified candidates. According to several news
reports, they told the White House, "Thanks, but no thanks."
As of mid-September, Obama was still czar-less. But that doesn't mean a
national-level cyber chief, watching over the country's networks, isn't
already in place.
Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander is the director of the National Security
Agency, the largest intelligence agency in the government, and with
little public fanfare he has been setting up the central nervous system
in the government's new campaign to defend cyberspace. The agency
historically has not been a front-line guardian of civilian government
networks, much less the systems that run privately owned electrical
plants, dams and financial systems. But that is changing. Recently,
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said NSA will provide DHS
with "technical assistance" as it carries out its statutory mission to
defend civilian networks and coordinate private sector protection.
Homeland Security, with its much smaller and less experienced cyber
staff, will depend on Alexander and his crew for the tools, expertise
and resources to do the job. "That is the structure of the cyber policy
plan that the president announced," Napolitano recently told Wired
magazine's Danger Room blog.
And where would this elusive cyber czar fit in that matrix? The
official won't have the budget of a major agency, nor the authority to
tell Napolitano or Alexander how to run theirs. At that speech in May,
Obama said he would "depend on this official in all matters relating to
cybersecurity." But in terms of actually doing the job, it's clear that
the president already has someone - Alexander.
A number of DHS cyber officials have resigned in recent months, one of
them after complaining publicly that NSA was trying to take over the
department's mission. Melissa Hathaway, the official who was Obama's
most senior cyber expert in the White House and who had been a
candidate for the czar post, decided to leave government, telling The
Washington Post she "wasn't willing to continue to wait any longer,"
and she wasn't "empowered" to make any policy changes.
For his part, Alexander has kept a modest public profile and downplayed
talk of bureaucratic turf wars with Homeland Security. He and
Napolitano are on the same page, even if that can't be said for her
staff. In his speeches and statements, Alexander displays the ease of a
man who's been given a mission and who knows what it is. Whoever
becomes czar will have to hope Alexander maintains this collaborative
spirit - and that he returns phone calls.
Shane Harris, a staff correspondent for National Journal, wrote about
intelligence and technology at Government Executive for five years.
