14 DAY TRIAL // Michael Hayden, well known for once being the head of the NSA and CIA, recently urged the US Congress to allow the National Security Agency to monitor the activity on public networks in the attempt to locate potential threats.
According to Wired, because this was a highly controversial matter during the Bush administration, Hayden revealed that there are now means to track networks without violating the privacy of honest citizens.
“We’ve got capability on the sidelines wanting policy guidance. And when we can enrich that guidance and get them in the field, the better — the safer — we are,” said Hayden in front of the House Intelligence Committee. “
This still remains a delicate matter and because the former CIA director believes that the threat level that shadows the United States has not passed, he stated “We want NSA to protect us, but we don’t want NSA out there being present where our own communications are flowing.
“And we’re just going to have to have a serious chat [about that]. I think we can do that — both the technology and the ethic at NSA would allow us to do that. But it will require some convincing before the agency is given that authority.”
When it came to the Chinese government and the suspected hacking attempts they launched against the US, he revealed “as a professional intelligence officer, I step back in awe at the breadth, depth, sophistication and persistence of the Chinese espionage effort against the United States of America.”
Others also spoke on behalf of the NSA. Art Coviello, executive chairman of RSA Security, a company that fell victim to many hacking attempts stated “We ought to be able to figure out a way for the NSA, which has so much expertise, to work their way in an ethical way to protect us.”
“To me it’s a tragedy that we can’t get them more heavily involved working with Homeland Security to a point where they can be more effective protecting American organizations.”
Kevin Mandia, CEO of Mandiant, an organization that handles the after events of a data breach revealed for the lawmakers that in most of the cases, the victim businesses didn't even know they were under attack until they were alerted by the agency.