CIA, FBI and NSA Leaders Ask for Help Fighting Cyberattacks

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By Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai2013-08-08 22:05:25 UTC

The heads of the CIA, FBI and NSA called for help from the private sector in fighting cyberattacks, which they said are growing in size and level of threat.

CIA director John O. Brennan, FBI Director Robert Mueller and NSA chief and four-star general Keith Alexander stressed the importance of collaboration between the public and private sector at the International Cyber Security Conference organized by the FBI and Fordham University in New York City this week.

See also: Former NSA Chief: Cyberattacks Possible if Snowden Is Arrested

"Government can not solve this by itself," Alexander said at a keynote roundtable with the other two government leaders on Thursday. "We can't do it by ourselves. We don't see all the data, we don't have the footprint that the industry has, so we have to have a partnership with the industry."

Brennan and Mueller echoed these thoughts.

Brennan called fighting cyberattacks a "team sport," noting that 85% of the critical infrastructure in the United States is in the hands of private companies. Cyberspace "is a privately owned and operated environment," he said.

"What is the appropriate relationship between private sector companies that are really responsible for the development of that cyber environment and the government?" Brennan asked. "How should that relationship evolve?"

Mueller called the private sector an "essential partner" in this fight.

Yet while the three leaders exchanged questions and dialogue, very few answers or concrete policy proposals surfaced.

None of the leaders referred specifically to the controversial and now effectively stalled Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), which the House passed in April, despite a veto threat from the White House. But their words seemed to echo the ideas behind the bill.

"We must do more. We must develop means of sharing information intelligence more quickly and effectively between these two conclaves," Mueller said, referring to the public and private sector.

None of the men referred to the recent leaks by Edward Snowden about top secret NSA surveillance programs such as PRISM. Alexander only made a passing joke about it at the end of his talk.

"I've been in this job now for eight years — seems like 20, for the last couple of months," he said, after praising his colleagues at the NSA and Cyber Command.

The matter was not addressed during the Q&A session, either, which consisted of questions collected beforehand and sent to the organizers, who chose them at random. No questions from the crowd or the press were permitted.

Only the last question — "Do average Americans have the presumption of privacy in any arena of life anymore?" — touched the story that has consumed the news for the past month.

"No one has willfully or knowingly disobeyed the law or tried to invade your civil liberties or privacy. There were no mistakes like that at all," Alexander said, paraphrasing an earlier denial from the security conference Black Hat last week. At Black Hat, he said that the NSA had overstepped its legal boundaries "zero times."

Even more so than at his talk in Las Vegas last week, Alexander was playing on home turf with government allies Brennan and Mueller, in front of a crowd of federal agents and government contractors.

That's probably why he felt at ease sharing a family anecdote about mobile devices like iPads, iPhones and Samsung Galaxy phones.

"Think about what my wife is doing right now with these devices. Banking online — it's frightening. We're gonna have to cut this stuff out," he said, amidst loud laughter. "I have 15 grandchildren, she shops for them everyday. We gotta get ride of the world wide web right away."

Image: Chris Taggart/Fordham

Topics: CIA, cyberattacks, FBI, NSA, U.S., US & World