[Infowarrior] - DHS CyberSecurity Czar Quits Amid Fears of NSA Takeover

[Richard Forno]

  Cyber-Security Czar Quits Amid Fears of NSA Takeover By Noah  
Shachtman March
06, 2009 | 11:52:14 AM
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2009/03/breaking-cyber.html

Rod Beckström, the Department of Homeland Security's controversial
cyber-security chief, has suddenly resigned amid allegations of power  
grabs
and bureaucratic infighting.

Beckström — a management theorist, entrepreneur and author — was named  
last
year <http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/03/military-surren.html> to  
head up
the new National Cybersecurity
Center<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Cyber_Security_Center>,
or NCSC. To some, it seemed an odd choice since Beckström isn't an  
expert in
security. But the hope was that he could use his management skills to  
help
coordinate the nation's often-dysfunctional network defenses.

Part of the Department of Homeland Security — for now, the  
government's lead
agency for cyber protection — the Center was supposed to be the one  
place
where the defense of civilian, military and intelligence networks  
could all
be marshaled together.

At least, that was the idea. But the Center never had a chance to even  
start
doing its job, Beckström complained in a resignation
letter<http://blog.wired.com/defense/files/ncsc_directors_resignation1.pdf 
 >
to
DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano that has been obtained by Danger Room.  
The
Center "did not receive appropriate support" from the Department of  
Homeland
Security to help coordinate network defenses, he said.

"During the past year the NCSC received only five weeks of funding,  
due to
various roadblocks engineered within the department and by the Office of
Management and Budget."

What's more, Beckström said, it is a fiction that DHS is in charge of  
the
country's cyber security. That power, he asserts, is held by the  
National
Security Agency — the supersecret signals intelligence service — that
"currently dominates most national cyber efforts." And that, he says,  
is not
a good idea.

*While acknowledging the critical importance of NSA to our intelligence
efforts, I believe this is a bad strategy on multiple grounds. The
intelligence culture is very different than a network operations of  
security
culture. In addition, the threat to our democratic processes are  
significant
if all top government network security and monitoring are handled by  
any one
organization (either directly of indirectly). During my term as  
Director we
have been unwilling to subjugate the NSCS underneath the NSA.*

Last Thursday, the new Director of National Intelligence told Congress  
that the
NSA, not Homeland Security, should be put in charge of network
defense<http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/02/nsa-should-over.html>.
A week and a day later, Beckström told his bosses that he was through.

"Rod [was] trying to get over NSA's power grab," a cyber-security source
with deep government ties tells Danger Room. But in the end, Beckström
couldn't. "He jumped nanoseconds before being pushed."