I don't understand why there are so many comments saying that the NSA needs offensive digital capabilities. What valid reasons does the NSA have to ever be committing a cyber attack?
I can't think of any good argument for why the US military should have no offensive capabilities in the digital realm. It'd be the equivalent of staying out of the skies when flight became possible.
In any war, the US is going to come under digital attack, and it should be fully capable of responding both defensively and offensively. Besides that, shutting down the power grid of a country you're at war with via digital means, sure beats doing it with hundreds of missiles.
But by stockpiling vulnerabilities they are making civilians less safe. Offensive digital capabilities should never come at the expense of fixing software.
I ended up rescuing & then adopting a German Shepherd 18 months ago, without having planned such a thing. These days I don't even bother to read the the scarevertising from burglar alarm suppliers that turns up in the mailbox every month or two. I don't want to barricade myself into my own home or have some corporation constantly surveilling it for me. While it's far from an exact analogy, I actually feel quite a bit safer with an active deterrent than I did previously.
What is the "active deterrent" analogy in computer security that makes it worth leaving vast numbers of civilian computer systems vulnerable to stockpiled 0-days, engineered backdoors, and weaknesses surreptitiously introduced into standards?
Bombs under your neighbor's porches, according to this sister comment - more seriously, the offensive capabilities outlined in the original article. I think both of you are taking an over-literal reading of my comment despite the qualification therein.
Bombs under your neighbor's porches, according to this sister comment - more seriously, the offensive capabilities outlined in the original article. I think both of you are taking an over-literal reading of my comment.
