The new director of the National Security Agency says he believes whistleblower Edward Snowden was probably not working for a foreign intelligence agency, despite frequent speculation and assertion by the NSAs allies to the contrary...In one of his first public remarks since becoming NSA director in April, Admiral Michael Rogers, who also leads the military’s cybersecurity and cyberattack command, distanced himself on Tuesday from contentions that Snowden is or has been a spy for Russia or another intelligence service.....Rogers confirmed the broad outline of a New York Times story based on the Snowden disclosures that reported NSA’s mass collection of digitized images of people’s faces and other biometric identifiers....We use facial recognition as a tool to help us understand these foreign intelligence targets. Counter-terrorism is another big area – this has probably had more impact for us in the counterterrorism arena than anywhere else, Rogers said...At the Tuesday event, Rogers pledged increased candor with the public about NSA’s operations, which he acknowledged was a cultural challenge for America’s most secret intelligence agency....Rogers told Reuters last month that transparency would be key to restoring confidence in the NSA, even as he declined to criticize the broad surveillance that prompted widespread outrage....Fulfilling the agency’s transparency pledge has been complicated by measures from the US director of national intelligence to clamp down on public interaction, even on unclassified matters, without the approval of the secretive agencies’ press monitors. Critics, noting the government’s selective and incomplete intelligence disclosures, consider the NSA and its allies more interested in reasserting control over its public image than in shedding light on its practices and authorities....Occasionally animated during his talk, Rogers appeared relaxed and jocular. While rejecting charges of NSA wrongdoing, he said he was open to public debate about the proper scope of the agency’s surveillance authorities – though he neglected to mention that the agency and its allies worked behind the scenes last month to weaken privacy and transparency provisions in a major surveillance reform bill....A broad dialogue of what we’re doing and why is a good thing for us as a nation. I don’t question that for one minute, said Rogers, who repeatedly described himself, to laughter, as a direct person.
Posted on: Tue, 03 Jun 2014 18:44:51 +0000
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