Category Archives: NSA

According to a popular saying, justice delayed is justice denied. But what if a person is convicted for a crime that he never did and was just a mere suspect. This is the outright injustice and absolutist nature of the state. A commoner gets up in the morning, goes to work, gives his everything there, comes back home exhausted and sleeps peacefully at night. He can do so without any stress because he knows that the state machinery is patrolling the streets at night. He can do so because he knows that if any mishap is to happen, he can go to the police, who will help him.

In case of any conflict, he can knock on the doors of the judiciary who will protect his interests. If the fundamental rights are harmed, they can directly approach the Supreme Court of India. But what if a persons trust in the state machinery and its policies fly right through the window. He is left with nothing but fear, panic and insecurity. Given the present circumstances, peoples trust in state machinery is waning away. Pandemic has rendered many people jobless; those who have jobs are demoted, businesses are shutting down, and people move towards poverty.

The cherry on top was that the gross revenue collection of the central government was near than pre-pandemic levels. This is absurd and unrealistic because if the income of people of a nation reduces, the tax collection must reduce. This mighty figure owes itself to increased excise duty on petrol and diesel. The government shifted the burden of filling its treasury from corporate tax profit to the shoulders of a commoner who is already grappling with death, despair and low income. The recent survey by RBI in Consumer Confidence Index CCI shows that the consumers have bleak economic expectations for the coming year.

Despite all these hardships, a person can still sleep peacefully at night knowing that the state will protect him if a conflict arises, but draconian acts like the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act UAPA and National Security Act NSA do not foster such feelings. The Indian judiciary is notorious for corruption, delays and opaque working. There are several circumstances where a wrongfully convicted person under the UAPA and NSA spent years in jail and was finally acquitted. Pakistan is notorious for harbouring terrorist organisations and funding terrorism activities in India.

Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said that one could choose his friends but not neighbours. Given Indias present situation and its conflict with neighbouring countries like Pakistan and China, stringent laws that reduce terrorism are necessary. But caution must be used while slapping terrorism charges because these charges, whether proven or not, can destroy a persons life. A person who is convicted under terrorism charges, later acquitted, is not accepted in society. He cant avail visa, get employment in his home country and live a life of dignity and respect.

NSA is a colonial-era act that traces its history to the Rowlatt Act of 1919. National Security Act was passed in 1980 by a parliamentary act. This act aims to provide preventive detention powers to the government in some instances and matters connected. This act is applicable throughout the country. A person can be detained by the central government or state government if the government has reasonable reasons to believe that the individual is a threat to the security of India, its relations of India with foreign countries, public order, supply of essential services.

The act also allows the detention of foreigners for regulation and expulsion from the country. NSA is invoked if a police officer on duty is assaulted. According to the act, a person can be detained for 12 months maximum, but the detention can be extended if the government finds evidence.Article 22 of the Constitution, which protects against arrest and detention in some instances, states two types of detention preventive and punitive.

Punitive detention is granted as a punishment for a crime committed by an individual. A person is put under punitive detention after an offence or attempt of offence takes place.Preventive detention, on the other hand, is granted if the state has reasonable doubts and suspicion that a person will commit a crime. Preventive detention is offered to prevent a person from committing or attempting to commit a crime. Under NSA, the arrestee has no basic rights, including information about the reason for the arrest; the arrestee is not entitled to legal aid in matters connected to the proceedings.

If a person is detained under NSA, the detention is not recorded in the National Crime Records Bureau NCRB. NCRB collects data related to crime in the country. There is no FIR registered against NSA because of which there are no statistics.Experts argue that the government uses NSA as extrajudicial power. The NSA has come under scrutiny for misuse by the authorities. NSA is many times equated with anarchism. The proceedings and the final report of the advisory board are kept under wraps.

NSA was used unjustly against people like Chandrashekhar of Bhim Army, Dr Kafeel of Uttar Pradesh for protesting against CAA; it was imposed against three men in a village of Uttar Pradesh for conflict over a cricket match, it was imposed against three men accused of cow slaughter, it was imposed against journalist KishoreChandra for criticising BJP etc. The act has drawn criticisms from people inside and outside the country, stating it as a violation of human rights. Amnesty International and the South Asian Human Rights Documentation Centre have expressed concerns for the same.

The unlawful activities prevention act was passed in 1967 by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. It was passed to upgrade TADA and POTA acts which are both anti-terrorism acts. The act allows the government to declare an individual, group of individuals as a terrorist if he promotes, prepares and aids terrorist activities. The investigation under UAPA allows NIA officials to freeze and seize the financial assets of the accused. The act allows officers to prosecute foreign nationals as well as citizens of India. The act was upgraded to bring India at par with international practices against terrorism, speed up the investigation process against terrorist organisations.

The amendment in the act allows an individual to be deemed a terrorist, which wasnt the case before. The act has come under scrutiny because of its low conviction rate. The Ministry of home affairs in Rajya Sabha produced data that shows that the actress conviction rate of 2.2%. The act harms the fundamental rights of individuals for free speech as it gives absolute powers to the government for prosecution. There have been instances where people who were wrongfully convicted under UAPA spent years in jail and were later acquitted.

Bashir Ahmad Baba of Kashmir spent 11 years in Vadodara jail who was held under UAPA charges, Mohammed Habib spent four years in prison under UAPA charges, Illyas Mohammed Akbar and Mohammed Irfan Gaus spent nine years in jail under UAPA charges, Father Stan Swamy spent almost a year in jail under UAPA charges and later died, Asif Iqbal Tanha Debangana Kalita Natasha Narwal spent time under detention. All these people, after spending more than legal time in jail, were later acquitted. The courts and government fail to understand is failure of government machinery if a person is detained for a decade for a crime he did not commit.

Unlawful and wrongful detention has serious consequences on a person life ranging from mental health, physical health, social life, life with dignity, future economic prospects is. The list is endless. The Supreme Court of India, citing international examples like New Zealand and Ireland, started granting compensation for loss of liberty due to malicious imprisonment. The Supreme Court held it in cases like Khatri, Beena Sethi, Rudra Shah, Bhim Singh, Raghuvansh DiwanChand Bhasin, Babloo Chauhan and Bilkhis Yakub Rasool.

But always remember that monetary compensation can never return the life lost under wrongful detention.

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Unjust provisions of UAPA and NSA have no place in 21st century - Inventiva

Tucker Carlson says the U.S. government is trying to take his Fox News Channel program off the air. But the nations top surveillance agency says it hasnt been looking at the pundit or his primetime showcase.

After Carlson made allegations on air Monday evening about the National Security Agency monitoring him, the NSA responded Tuesday evening that it isnt watching his show and has no plans to do so.

On June 28, 2021, Tucker Carlson alleged the National Security Agency has been monitoring our electronic communications and is planning to leak them in an attempt to take this show off the air. This allegation is untrue. Tucker Carlson has never been an intelligence target of the Agency and the NSA has never had any plans to try to take his program off the air, the NSA said in a statement Tuesday evening. NSA has a foreign intelligence mission. We target foreign powers to generate insights on foreign activities that could harm the United States. With limited exceptions (e.g. an emergency), NSA may not target a US citizen without a court order that explicitly authorizes the targeting.

During his broadcast Tuesday evening, Carlson called the NSA statement infuriatingly dishonest, and continued to allege that NSA officials had read what he called private emails without his permission. He said he had spent part of Tuesday trying to reach Paul Nakasone, the U.S. General who oversees the NSA, but was unable to do so. A Fox News spokesperson declined to elaborate beyond Carlsons remarks on air.

Carlsons claims have generated social-media chatter all day, with detractors wondering why other Fox News programs hadnt picked up the anchors shocking allegations.

The anchor leads the most-watched program on Fox News Channel, and is a frequent generator of controversy, even backlash. Carlson maintains that he discusses issues and angles on them that no one else wants to, and the show draws heavy scrutiny of its hosts discussion of issues centered around race and politics. His allegations against the government threaten to kick up a discussion that borders on conspiracy theory, unless the host can offer further proof behind his claims.

Other Fox News hosts have spurred hot talk around assertions that could not be proven. In May of 2017, Fox News primetime host Sean Hannity agreed to stop talking about a debunked theory around the death of a former Democratic National Committee staffer, Seth Rich, after using his show for days to bolster the notion that Rich had been killed in retaliation for the leaking of certain DNC documents. There has never been credible evidence to support such claims. Fox News in September of last year agreed to a private legal settlement with Richs family over a 2017 report it published purporting Rich had leaked DNC emails to Wikileaks. Fox News retracted the report in 2017, just as Hannity said he would cease discussion about it on air.

Carlsons program, Tucker Carlson Tonight, reached an average of 2.9 million people in the second quarter, according to data from Nielsen.

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National Security Agency Dismisses Tucker Carlson Surveillance Claims - Variety

Momentum investing is all about the idea of following a stock's recent trend, which can be in either direction. In the 'long' context, investors will essentially be "buying high, but hoping to sell even higher." And for investors following this methodology, taking advantage of trends in a stock's price is key; once a stock establishes a course, it is more than likely to continue moving in that direction. The goal is that once a stock heads down a fixed path, it will lead to timely and profitable trades.

While many investors like to look for momentum in stocks, this can be very tough to define. There is a lot of debate surrounding which metrics are the best to focus on and which are poor quality indicators of future performance. The Zacks Momentum Style Score, part of the Zacks Style Scores, helps address this issue for us.

Below, we take a look at National Storage (NSA), a company that currently holds a Momentum Style Score of B. We also talk about price change and earnings estimate revisions, two of the main aspects of the Momentum Style Score.

It's also important to note that Style Scores work as a complement to the Zacks Rank, our stock rating system that has an impressive track record of outperformance. National Storage currently has a Zacks Rank of #2 (Buy). Our research shows that stocks rated Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) and #2 (Buy) and Style Scores of A or B outperform the market over the following one-month period.

You can see the current list of Zacks #1 Rank Stocks here >>>

Set to Beat the Market?

Let's discuss some of the components of the Momentum Style Score for NSA that show why this real estate investment trust shows promise as a solid momentum pick.

A good momentum benchmark for a stock is to look at its short-term price activity, as this can reflect both current interest and if buyers or sellers currently have the upper hand. It's also helpful to compare a security to its industry; this can show investors the best companies in a particular area.

Story continues

For NSA, shares are up 4.5% over the past week while the Zacks REIT and Equity Trust - Other industry is up 2.14% over the same time period. Shares are looking quite well from a longer time frame too, as the monthly price change of 9.74% compares favorably with the industry's 0.61% performance as well.

While any stock can see a spike in price, it takes a real winner to consistently outperform the market. Shares of National Storage have increased 24.64% over the past quarter, and have gained 78.2% in the last year. In comparison, the S&P 500 has only moved 8.33% and 44.45%, respectively.

Investors should also take note of NSA's average 20-day trading volume. Volume is a useful item in many ways, and the 20-day average establishes a good price-to-volume baseline; a rising stock with above average volume is generally a bullish sign, whereas a declining stock on above average volume is typically bearish. Right now, NSA is averaging 751,615 shares for the last 20 days.

Earnings Outlook

The Zacks Momentum Style Score also takes into account trends in estimate revisions, in addition to price changes. Please note that estimate revision trends remain at the core of Zacks Rank as well. A nice path here can help show promise, and we have recently been seeing that with NSA.

Over the past two months, 6 earnings estimates moved higher compared to none lower for the full year. These revisions helped boost NSA's consensus estimate, increasing from $1.85 to $1.99 in the past 60 days. Looking at the next fiscal year, 6 estimates have moved upwards while there have been no downward revisions in the same time period.

Bottom Line

Taking into account all of these elements, it should come as no surprise that NSA is a #2 (Buy) stock with a Momentum Score of B. If you've been searching for a fresh pick that's set to rise in the near-term, make sure to keep National Storage on your short list.

Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free reportNational Storage Affiliates Trust (NSA) : Free Stock Analysis ReportTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.

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Here's Why Momentum Investors Will Love National Storage (NSA) - Yahoo Finance

Adversaries have heavily invested in cyberspace operations and capabilities. As such, cyber operations, cybersecurity and information operations are increasingly important to the joint force, said the commander of U.S. Cyber Command, who's also the director of the National Security Agency.

"The scope of what we need to defend and protect has dramatically expanded," Army Gen. Paul M. Nakasone said today during a virtual address to the U.S Naval Institute and Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association's WEST Conference.

The Defense Department's information network is composed of 15,000 sub-networks, 3 million users, 4 million computers, 180,000 mobility devices and 605 million website requests a day, he said.

"We used to think about cyberspace as merely the need to protect these computer networks. And while it's a good place to start, the attack surface is much broader," Nakasone said.

For example, protecting weapons systems is a related but distinct challenge compared to networks, he said. They require software updates and patches. In the case of the Navy, they're onboard ships that don't return to port for months at a time, making it even more challenging to provide timely updates.

Another challenge with weapons systems is ensuring that cybersecurity considerations are implemented in the earliest phases of the acquisition cycle, he said.

Protecting DOD's data is also a major challenge, he said.

Understanding how state and non-state adversaries are able to successfully carry out cyberattacks is important, he said. "They learn over time in terms of what they can do. They're not static in the terms of how they approach cyberspace."

In about the past 150 days, adversaries have successfully conducted supply chain attacks, particularly ransomware attacks, he said. In the last several years, election cybersecurity has taken on an increasingly important role.

Terrorist groups are also mounting cyberattacks, he said. In response, the department has emphasized close teamwork between the NSA, Cybercom, and other commands U.S. Special Operations Command, in particular.

"We learned how to work closely with U.S. Special Operations Command, both to support their efforts against kinetic targets and to leverage their capabilities against virtual ones," he said.

Nakasone also emphasized the importance of working with industry, academia, interagency partners like the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, as well as with allies and partners.

Having a skilled and motivated workforce is also critically important, he said. They need to have the right training and career paths and professional development opportunities, and the DOD must be open to their new ideas.

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NSA, Cybercom Leader Says Efforts Have Expanded > US DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE > Defense Department News - Department of Defense

The Ghaziabad Police on Wednesday invoked the National Security Act against a member of the Samajwadi Party who has been arrested for making the video of the assault of an elderly Muslim man in Uttar Pradesh.

The man, identified as Ummed Pahalwan Idrisi, was arrested on June 19, three days after a first information report was filed against him at the Loni Border police station. The FIR claimed that Idrisi had unnecessarily made the video in which the Muslim man, Abdul Samad Saifi, was seen being assaulted.

Idrisi was booked under Indian Penal Code Sections 153A (promoting enmity between different groups), 295A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious belief), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) and 505 (public mischief).

The police said that the action against Idrisi had been taken against the accused under sub-section 2 of section 3 of the National Security Act.

The case relates to a video depicting 72-year-old Abdul Samad Saifi saying that he had been abducted in an autorickshaw by several men and locked up in a secluded house. Saifi alleged he was assaulted and forced to chant Jai Shri Ram. He also said the assailants cut his beard and made him watch videos of other Muslims being attacked.

Though the alleged assault took place on June 5, the video of the attack and of Saifi narrating the incident was circulated widely on social media on June 14.

However, the Ghaziabad Police, which registered a case based on Saifis complaint, on June 15 claimed that there was no communal angle to the assault. The police added that both Hindus and Muslims were among the accused who beat up the elderly man. Saifi, they claimed, had been beaten up because an amulet he gave one of the assailants had an adverse effect on them.

The police had arrested nine people in connection with the assault. However, the accused have been granted interim bail by a court in Ghaziabad.

Meanwhile, the police have claimed that the tweets and videos on the assault of the man were an attempt to destroy communal harmony.

Apart from Idrisi, the Uttar Pradesh police have filed a case against Twitter India, The Wire, journalists Rana Ayyub, Saba Naqvi and Mohammad Zubair, and Congress leaders Salman Nizami, Masqoor Usmani and Sama Mohammad in connection with their social media posts about the assault.

Also read:

Ghaziabad assault case: UP Police move Supreme Court against High Court relief to Twitter India head

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Ghaziabad assault case: NSA invoked against Samajwadi Party leader for making the viral video - Scroll.in

The vast majority of cyber attacks exploit known vulnerabilities that could be fixed by patching older software and replacing older computing gear. But that costs money, and legislation will likely be needed to force companies to make these fixes soon before the kind of AI-powered tools used by Russia and China become commonplace among smaller-scale hackers, said Rob Joyce, who leads the National Security Agencys Cybersecurity Directorate.

The biggest problem is historical tech debt, said Joyce, meaning old computers and software that arent up-to-date on the most recent patches against attackers. That means we have to be investing in refresh. We have to be investing in the defensive teams. We have to be investing in organizations that will track, follow and upgrade to close out those vulnerabilities and from where I sit, there's probably going to have to be some regulation over time. Joyce made his remarks during a pre-taped session that aired on Friday during the sixth annual Defense One Tech Summit.

In May, the White House issued an executive order requiring government entities and contractors to take steps to protect themselves from known attack tools. But the executive order doesnt extend to all businesses.

Joyce said that while its not his role to write specific legislation, it is his job to understand critical gaps in cyber defenses across the public and private sector. He said that new standards to establish a bare minimum would go a long way toward preventing the sort of attacks like the one that hit Colonial Pipeline in May by raising the costs and difficulties for attackers to perpetrate such attacks.

I look at the automobile industry and we wouldn't have gotten seatbelts and airbags and emission standards and fuel mileage as a priority without some amount of the government saying, This is the bare minimum. This is what we need to do. We're all a little better for it, right? So that's...in the lane of the policymakers and the legislatures to look at it...All the organizations that have to step up, but I can't see us moving beyond this without some of that effort.

Emerging technologies like artificial intelligence will only exacerbate the problem, said Joyce. While theres little evidence so far that AI will help attackers launch difficult campaigns against well-defended targets, the use of AI to scroll through databases of known attacks, and possible victims, is already established tradecraft. He expects the use of AI by low-level criminal groups mounting unsophisticated attacks to grow.

I think [artificial intelligence] is going to be more of an enabler in the crime area where people have that backdoor unlocked, because it'll make it so much faster [for criminal groups] to recognize and realize vulnerabilities. And we're already seeing that, you know, with these big internet-scale scanners that look across the totality of the internet, multiple times a day, and provide databases where you can search for a particular feature. So when a new class of vulnerability or exploit is out there people can immediately identify the machines that are vulnerable much faster than the teams can get there to patch. So that's where I see the near and midterm problem from the offensive application of AI and [machine learning] he said.

Of course, criminal groups often work directly with state intelligence agencies such as Russia. In fact they often operate with impunity from inside Russia or nearby states like Belarus, where they work under the tacit allowance of the Russian government, a phenomenon sometimes called safe harbor. During his recent summit with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, President Joe Biden brought up Russias relationship with ransomware attackers as a key barrier to better relations between the two countries. There is also legislation on Capitol Hill to bring in allies to better coordinate efforts to punish Russian-backed cyber criminals.

Said Joyce said the governments recent attention on the issue bodes well for actually curbing these attacks.

There's a lot of great discussions going on right now about what safe harbor looks like and whether the United States is doing enough, Joyce said. The one great thing about the current administration is that cyber is a priority...And we're seeing that on the Hill as well. There's a huge focus and desire to do this better. And I think that's a recipe for us advancing and succeeding.

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New Laws Are 'Probably Needed' to Force US Firms to Patch Known Cyber Vulnerabilities, NSA Official Says - Defense One

Back to Journals Nanotechnology, Science and Applications Volume 14

Characterising Vascular Cell Monolayers Using Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy and a Novel Electroanalytical Plot [Retraction]

Bussooa A. Nanotechnol Sci Appl. 2020;13:89101.

The Editor-in-chief and Publisher of Nanotechnology, Science and Applications wish to retract the published paper. We were notified by the University of Glasgows Research Integrity Council that an investigation had found the scientific integrity of the paper had been compromised and it needed to be retracted. The investigation found the author had published data belonging to a group collaboration effort without proper authorisation, which included the use of the image shown in Figure 2. The author had published the paper under a grant he was not entitled to access and by publishing certain details within the paper the author had breached the University of Glasgows Intellectual Property polices.

The Editor has agreed with the request to retract the paper.

Our decision-making was informed by our policy on publishing ethics and integrity and the COPE guidelines on retraction.

The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as Retracted.

This retraction relates to this paper

This work is published by Dove Medical Press Limited, and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.The full terms of the License are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.The license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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Retraction for the article Characterising Vascular Cell Monolayers Usi | NSA - Dove Medical Press

Amazon has acquired Wickr, with the encrypted communications platform being rolled into AWS. Billing itself as the worlds most secure collaboration platform, Wickr offers not only text messaging but encrypted voice and video calling, along with file sharing, and has proved a popular option among both enterprise and government agencies, along with journalists and other users.

The company offers both free and paid plans, the former limited to up to 10 registered users. At its most basic, there are encrypted file transfers, secure screen sharing, and secured voice and video calls for groups of up to 70 participants.

Paid plans, meanwhile, include support for larger file transfers, two-factor authentication, unlimited users, and more. Regardless of plan, however, Wickr promises 256-bit authenticated end-to-end encryption, features such as client network traffic obfuscation, and regular independent code review.

With the pandemic and the shift to hybrid work, businesses are facing the challenge of securely dealing with teams that can no longer count on all workers being in the same physical location. Weve seen Microsoft Teams and other platforms embrace that with enhanced security along with new video calling and other collaboration features, while Amazon has pushed its own Chime platform along with partnering with Slack. Now, it has a high-profile security platform it can potentially integrate with that.

We are pleased to share that Wickr has been acquired by Amazon and is now part of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) team, Wickr announced today. Were proud to have created highly trusted, secure communication solutions for messaging, video conferencing, file sharing, and more. From our founding ten years ago, we have grown to serve organizations across a wide range of industries, all over the world. Together with AWS, we look forward to taking our solutions to the next level for our customers and partners.

For the moment, theres no sign of Wickrs plans changing. Amazon has confirmed the acquisition terms of which have not been shared but still points potential users to the companys site in order to sign up.

With Wickr, customers and partners benefit from advanced security features not available with traditional communications services across messaging, voice and video calling, file sharing, and collaboration, Stephen Schmidt, VP and Chief Information Security Officer for AWS, said today in a statement. This gives security conscious enterprises and government agencies the ability to implement important governance and security controls to help them meet their compliance requirements.

An assessment by the US National Security Agency (NSA) in November 2020 found that Wickr was the only secure collaboration platform tested including Amazon Chime to satisfy all of the agencys criteria around encryption, secure deletion, and more. Currently Wickr counts the Department of Defense (DoD) and the DSCC among others as partners and customers.

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Amazon buys Wickr, a secure messaging platform even the NSA likes - SlashGear

Fort Meade, Maryland One of the most notoriously secretive U.S. intelligence agencies has opened a new facility that it hopes, uncharacteristically, will welcome plenty of outside visitors.

While most of the National Security Agency's (NSA) outposts are closed-off, highly restricted spaces, the agency's newly launched Cybersecurity Collaboration Center, located a few miles outside its main campus in Fort Meade, Maryland, is meant to serve as a gathering point for government and private sector cybersecurity experts to exchange information about hacking threats from adversaries in real time.

Its opening including to members of the press, who were invited to visit the space on Tuesday comes as massivecyber incursionsand multipleransomwareattackshave roiled U.S. government agencies and private sector companies, and amid an admonition from the NSA that it can't effectively protect what it can't see: vulnerabilities in domestic networks.

General Paul Nakasone, who leads both the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command, has said repeatedly in appearances before Congress that the two organizations, which are authorized to operate outside of the U.S. to track and counter foreign threats, are limited by U.S. laws and policies in what they can observe internally.

"It's not the fact that we can't connect the dots. We can't see all of the dots," Nakasonesaid in public testimony in March. Adversaries "understand that they can come into the United States, use our infrastructure, and there's a blind spot for us not being able to see them."

"Being able to identify and being able to fix those areas are part of the resiliency of the nation that has to be addressed," he said.

The 36,000-square-foot Cybersecurity Collaboration Center, run by the NSA'srecently restructured Cybersecurity Directorate, is designed to be at least part of the fix. The agency has invited cybersecurity experts from a range of industries to sit side by side with agency analysts, share what they see on their computer networks and thereby help hone the tradecraft needed to identify and counter foreign cyberthreats.

"[I]f we're able to combine our insights with what they're seeing in their apertures, we're going to have a better comprehensive picture of what the adversary is doing," said Morgan Adamski, the chief of the center. She declined to name any of the partner companies or offer details on the number of relationships the NSA had established to date.

While the building itself is an unremarkable exemplar of industrial flex office space, it stands worlds apart from other NSA facilities by virtue of having Wi-Fi, open work areas and lots of windows.

There are some classified spaces available for partners with security clearances to use, but there are alsoelements of flair that are uncharacteristic of the NSA. There is modular furniture. Columns are emblazoned with one-word slogans like "Transform" and "Imagine." There are cushy chairs upholstered in a vibrant persimmon.

"You will notice it is not the custom 'NSA beige' color," Adamski said. "What we wanted to do was ensure that our space felt like the cybersecurity industry that we're partnering with."

Though it hadn't yet opened physically, one of the center's early mitigation efforts, Adamski said, involved the NSA'sdisclosurein January of 2020 of a critical vulnerability in Microsoft Windows 10. It was also behind asubsequent public disclosure, in April, of a series of vulnerabilities in the Microsoft Exchange email app.

The disclosures were notable for how far of a departure they were from how the NSA was used to operating. In the past, the agency likely would have kept any software vulnerabilities it came across to itself, for possible use as tools to spy on adversaries. Its leadership has since acknowledged that the exponential growth in cyber threats and the need to partner with the private sector have meant transparency once an anathematic notion would need to become the norm.

"It's clear that things have to change," said Rob Joyce, a career cybersecurity official who now leads the NSA's Cybersecurity Directorate.

"The ransomware issue has hit the general population and cyber threats have spilled over from the digital realm into the physical realm, and all of us, as a consequence, either stood in line for gas, or drove by gas stations without fuel," Joyce said, referencing the attack, attributed to Russian cyber criminals, on Colonial Pipeline last month. "It is the culmination of the recognition that we've had for years that the things we're attaching to the Internet that control things in the physical world bring vulnerabilities."

"So as that threat evolves, we have to evolve," he said.

Joyce, who succeeded Anne Neuberger, now the deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology at the National Security Council, said the NSA was also drawing increasingly on its foreign partnerships, including the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance, for insights into how malign actors are operating.

"What we're finding is all our allies, whether it's across NATO or more broadly, have these same cybersecurity threats and they want to work with us, and one of the most common areas of desire for collaboration is on cybersecurity," Joyce said. "So we're pushing at an open door with foreign partnerships."

Earlier this month, the U.S. and European Union pledged to deepen existing cybersecurity information exchanges. And notably, President Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin whose government has been known to launch cyberattacks, engage in cyber espionage and to countenance the operations of criminal groups operating on Russian soil said following asummit last weekthat they had agreed to start "consultations" on cybersecurity matters.

Joyce said the NSA would inform, but was unlikely to participate in, any talks with Moscow.

"I would not expect NSA to be directly involved in big policy discussions of cybersecurity. There [are] other entities in the government that are going to do that international policy," Joyce said. "But we will absolutely use our threat-informed mission and NSA's reporting to inform those policymakers, and others in the executive branch who would lead negotiations and engagement."

Read more from the original source:
Secretive NSA opens doors to new "collaboration center" as cyberthreats mount - CBS News

Sandeep Dikshit

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, June 24

India has proposed an action plan against terror outfits like Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) as part of the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), which also includes as its members Pakistan and China.

Talking tough on lashkar, Jaish

Indias proposal was put forth by National Security Adviser (NSA) Ajit Doval at the 16th meeting of NSAs at Dushanbe in Tajikistan. India also pressed for full implementation of UN resolutions and sanctions against UN-designated terrorists and terror entities, sources said.

Doval also proposed adoption of international standards to counter terror financing, including an MoU between the SCO and FATF. At the moment, Pakistan is the only SCO member that is on FATFs grey list and a decision whether it will remain on its watch list will be announced on Friday.

The NSA also suggested the need to monitor new technologies used by terrorists, including drones for smuggling of weapons and misuse of dark web, artificial intelligence, blockchain and social media.

Originally posted here:
NSA Doval calls for action plan against Pak-based terror groups - The Tribune India