The American equivalent of GCHQ is being promoted as the
guardian of the US's cybersecurity, according to reports.
Congress yesterday heard National Intelligence director Admiral
Dennis Blair say the National Security Agency (NSA) should assume a
greater role in cybersecurity because of its technological prowess
and current role in detecting attacks.
Like GCHQ, the NSA is responsible for codebreaking and
electronic spying. The two agencies, together with equivalent
agencies in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, were partners in the
so-called Echelon project. Echelon was designed to watch the
world's electronic communications for threats to the partners'
national security.
GCHQ is the driving force behind the UK government's plans to
snoop on every electronic message sent, received or passed through
Britain.
Giving evidence to the House of Representatives intelligence
committee, Blair acknowledged that many Americans distrust the NSA.
The agency earlier ran the Bush Administration's secret programme
of warrantless spying on some Americans' overseas phone calls.
"The NSA is both intelligence and military, two strikes out in
terms of the way some Americans think about a body that ought to be
protecting their privacy and civil liberties," Reuters reported
Blair saying.
Earlier this month, President Obama asked Melissa Hathaway, the
top cyber official with the intelligence director's office, to
oversee a 60-day cybersecurity review.
Software, security and communications firms are expected to play
a major role in recommendations to tighten both government and
civil cybersecurity in the face of a perceived rise in threat
levels from hackers and spies.
According to Reuters, Blair said, "The National Security Agency
has the greatest repository of cyber talent. They are the ones who
know what is coming back at us, and it is defences against those
sorts of things that we need to be able to build into wider and
wider circles."
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