Former National Security Agency (NSA) analyst, William Binney, provides insight into the security threats governments face, and what they are doing to tackle these issues.
Binney, who will present the keynote address at ITWeb Security Summit 2015 on 26 May, spent more than 30 years working at the NSA, and has been described as one of the best analysts in its history. He left the agency in 2001, having publicly disagreed with its data collection policies.
During his international keynote, Binney - regarded as one of the highest-level whistle-blowers to emerge from the NSA - will reveal what the state agency looks like from the inside.
Binney's presentation, "Unveiling the intelligence agencies", will look at the threat posed by the NSA, how too much data could be compromising its effectiveness, and possible solutions.
In this question and answer session with ITWeb, he chats via e-mail about what challenges governments face when it comes to security, and how surveillance of citizens affects the public.
ITWeb: What, in your opinion, are the top threats facing governments across the globe when it comes to security?
Binney: The fact that intelligence agencies are keeping weakness in the communications system (encryption/firewalls/operating systems) secret and not helping to fixing them. This makes all governments vulnerable. In effect, these governments become their own impediments to success.
Further, their effort to do bulk collection of data creates its own problems; making analysts trying to make sense of it dysfunctional because of the over-powering amount of data they have to go through.
ITWeb: How are different governments tackling these threats?
Binney: Other governments are going along with the NSA. So, all intelligence agencies are cooperating in keeping weakness secret, with or without their government's knowledge. All these governments are hoping that sometime someone will solve problems that will help them find, track and remove threats, but I'm not sure they want to fix the problem securing the net.
Even the Russians are following the NSA and the UK's Government Communications Headquarters, etc, path with their programme called Sorm.
ITWeb: What effect does such governmental intervention have on ordinary citizens?
Binney: What governments are doing now is focused on bulk collection of data and establishing agreements between them to exchange data and share results of analysis of that data.
This is changing how ordinary people act and what they say on the www and other means of communications. In effect, this surveillance is undermining the foundation of democracy around the world.
ITWeb: Can you please provide an example?
Binney: Investigative reporters in this country as well as others are having more and more difficulty getting information about government activity especially in the national security area. This means governments are getting more and more secret and not open to their citizens.
ITWeb: Where can governments go from here to ensure data is protected and citizens are kept safe without their privacy being infringed?
Binney: We gave the president, Congress and the European Union suggestions on how to solve the problems that procedures at NSA are causing.
This first thing governments have to do is be honest with their citizens and with themselves.
Then, they need to find technical solutions that will secure communications networking (TOR for example) as well as content of communications (encryption that is really secure). I have also attached an outline of what went wrong with intelligence - and it continues to this day.
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