PRINCETON: NSA director says better balance needed between individual privacy and national security

The National Security Agency needs to establish a broader dialogue across the nation in order to better strike a balance between an individuals rights to privacy and the need to intelligently secure our nation, said Admiral Michael Rogers, NSA director and U.S. Cyber Command commander.

Its not me as director of the NSA that ought to be making that decision [to find a balance]. We as a nation need to decide what are we comfortable with, whats the right balance, he said.

Admiral Rogers, who has been in command since April 2014, spoke to an audience of students, faculty, and community members in a conversation titled Challenges and Opportunities in an Interconnected World in Alexander Hall at Princeton University on Tuesday.

He opened the conversation with an introduction to the missions of the NSA and Cyber Command, and his expectations for the organizations core priorities: obeying the rule of law, being accountable to the citizens they defend, acknowledging mistakes, and not cutting corners.

In the end, NSA is a group of highly motivated men and women who are trying to do the right thing the right way, but they are men and women. They will sometimes make mistakes, Admiral Rogers said. So we say, hey, if we make a mistake, we stand up, we tell the court we made a mistake, we tell Congress we made a mistake, we tell the attorney general that we made a mistake.

During the subsequent question and answer session, Admiral Rogers emphasized the need for the NSA to create more public confidence in its mission.

If were honest with each other, what is our confidence in Congress and the world were living in right now? Admiral Rogers asked. Not as high as we all wish it were.

He noted that after Senate investigation into intelligence community abuses of the rights of citizens, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which created a new legal framework of oversight for the NSA yet national confidence in the NSA remains low.

The very mechanisms, almost 40 years ago, that we put in place to try to generate confidence are now questioned by our citizens. Its not a criticism, its just a fact, he said. What are the mechanisms we can create that will engender greater confidence?

In response to a question about cyberspace deterrence, Admiral Rogers advocated for a proportional and specific response. He also noted that much of the current research about deterrence is done in the private academic sector and called on the Princeton community to help address these difficult questions for the nation.

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PRINCETON: NSA director says better balance needed between individual privacy and national security