US spying row complicates cybersecurity efforts

THE Obama administration’s cybersecurity agenda, which includes expanding the military’s Cyber Command and beefing up protection for critical infrastructure, faces more intense scrutiny after two vast domestic surveillance programs were exposed this week.
Civil liberties groups say the revelations give new life to several privacy lawsuits against the National Security Agency, which hit the headlines twice in two days for secretly monitoring Americans’ phone records and internet activity. Renewed concerns about the spy agency’s domestic surveillance programs could also hamper efforts to give it a broader role in defending the country’s infrastructure, and put pressure on lawmakers to update laws protecting online privacy, say congressional aides and defense and security experts.
“They’re going to make it harder to do the work that is now going on,” said former chief Pentagon weapons buyer Mike Wynne, who also served as Air Force secretary from 2005 to 2008. Wynne said growing unease about domestic surveillance could have a chilling effect on proposed cyber legislation that calls for greater information-sharing between government and industry.
Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Dutch Ruppersberger, who are top lawmakers in the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, had rewritten the cyber bill to designate the civilian Department of Homeland Security, and not the NSA, as the hub of information exchange between the government and private sector.
But the bill still allows sharing of information with the NSA, which could prove troubling to some lawmakers disturbed by the scope of the intelligence agency’s surveillance powers. The Democratic-controlled Senate already represented a steep obstacle for the cyber bill, which has been passed by the Republican House, even before this week’s revelations. While support for strong national security measures is one of the few issues that crosses Washington’s party lines in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, a few lawmakers did call for probes or closed-door hearings on the NSA’s surveillance programs.
“Our investment in protecting American lives and liberties simultaneously is not a blank check,” said Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, who called on Friday for a “thorough vetting of this policy.” President Barack Obama on Friday staunchly defended the sweeping US surveillance of Americans’ phone and internet activity, calling it a “modest encroachment” on privacy that was necessary to defend the United States from attack.