Who’s Worst Hacker?
Most would agree that unknown shadowy figures intent on malicious attacks in cyber space would be first on the list of worst hackers, meaning those the rest of us likely want closed down. But who knew that the US National Security Agency should be near the top of the list?
Why, one may ask? NSA knew from the beginning of the OpenSSL encryption vulnerability now called ‘Heartbleed,’ and instead of alerting at least the citizens of its own nation it kept the weakness secret to exploit for its own illegal surveillance agenda. https://www.yahoo.com/tech/report-the-nsa-knew-about-heartbleed-vulnerability-for-82407088205.html and http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/04/11/heartbleed-cisco-juniper/7589759/
HFS analysts point out that NSA’s mission does not include looking out for ordinary American citizens. Yet, still NSA says in its mission statement that NSA “…enables Computer Network Operations (CNO) in order to gain a decision advantage for the Nation ….” So shouldn’t that mission include network operations of the citizens? Maybe a change to the NSA charter should include a mission or policy to disclose known cyber threats to the public, making NSA a service organization in a fuller sense.
Some in the HFS stable openly support everything NSA does in the name of national security. In contrast, most argue that the concept of a nation, any nation, must include its citizens. So when action by a government agency – particularly in a government of, for, and by the people, as in a democracy – jeopardizes the economic, political, and social stability of that nation, then the agency must either be re-tooled in some major way or it must be shut down. In the case of the heartbleed flaw, apparently NSA depended heavily on it to carry out its mission. So to HFS generally, NSA needs serious re-tooling for the purpose of maintaining national security and at the same time doing nothing that harms the society of the nation. While a minority of voices yells loudly how national security demands the sacrifice of some historic freedoms, the majority insist that any grand sacrifice of freedom must be the product of open, democratic decisions, at least in the USA where democracy should remain the foundation. What do you think?
