Director of National Security Agency discusses accountability, privacy concerns

The National Security Agency must acknowledge its mistakes, be accountable to citizens, not cut corners and follow the law in the course of its duties, Admiral Michael Rogers, Director of the National Security Agency and commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, said in a lecture on Tuesday.

Rogers began his remarks by explaining the roles of both the U.S. Cyber Command and the NSA in national intelligence.

The Cyber Command is a part of the Department of Defense, and its primary mission is to defend the DOD’s cyber network, to provide cyber capabilities for the department and, under direction from either President Barack Obama or Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, to defend “critical” U.S. infrastructure, he said.

The NSA’s goal is to conduct foreign intelligence and to develop systems to protect classified information for both the government and the private sector, he explained.

After a brief lecture of approximately five minutes in length, Rogers then shifted the program to a Q&A session.

The first question dealt with U.S. citizen privacy concerns and how citizens can be sure that the NSA is respecting the rule of law.

“We have a legal framework we have to operate in,” Rogers said.

In response to the abuses in American intelligence agencies investigated by Senator Frank Church and the Church Committee in the 1970s, he explained,Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978, which created the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Every time the NSA wishes to spy on a U.S. person in connection to a foreign entity, he said, it has to gain approval from a judge on that court. The agency has to show there is a link to alleged criminal activity to receive the warrant, he added.

“There is also congressional oversight from both houses [of Congress] of the NSA," he said. "How can we create confidence in what the NSA is doing and not doing? Our confidence in our institutions is now questioned by our citizens, and it’s a fact. We need to stick to the four rules I have outlined earlier."

The conversation then shifted to how the NSA interacts with private American companies and foreign organizations as a whole.

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“We understand that every nation uses its intelligence capabilities to understand the world around them," Rogers said. "We do not share private insights with companies to give them an advantage. That’s wrong for countries like China to do that. It is not in our interest to do that.”

The U.S. should respond proportionally to cyber attacks, such as the attack on Sony Pictures last year, and the countermeasures should be “specific and discrete,” he said.

“We need to think more broadly than just cyber," he added. "Just because someone comes at us in the cyber arena doesn’t mean we need to respond there."

Many of the following questions dealt with data collection of American citizens. The NSA is not allowed to collect data on Americans “whenever it wants,” Rogers said.

According to an email sent out on Monday by organizers of the Facebook group called Guarding Liberties Against the Security State, the group planned a protest for the event "to express discontent with the NSA's current policies, specifically the incredible overreach of their surveillance the lack of leniency for whistle blowers like [Edward] Snowden, and the NSA's role in the broader moral and practical failures of the War on Terror."

Participants were instructed to wear orange shirts to express support for the protest and to ask pointed questions for Rogers to address the group's concerns.

However, only one of the questions asked during the conversation stemmed from the list of possible ones circulated by the group, and it dealt with the Edward Snowden controversy. Snowden, a former private NSA contractor who leaked classified information to the mainstream media starting in June 2013, is now living in Russia on temporary political asylum.

“Should we interpret that to mean that you are in support of whistleblower leaks [like Edward Snowden's] without which this democratic and public conversation would absolutely not be taking place?” the audience member asked in reference toRogers' previous remarks explaining that the NSA does not support abuses of its own powers.

“I have lost capability to defend the troops in contact in places around the world that I sure wish we had,” Rogers said. “What I’ve told the workforce is, ‘You must be accountable. So when you find yourself in those situations, when you believe something we do is illegal, immoral, or unethical, stand up and bring it to our attention, and use the multiple mechanisms that are in place for you to do that.’”

After the event, Dayton Martindale '15, who sent out the email on behalf of GLASS, said the protesters didn't want to be disruptive but wanted to let Rogers know that "someone was watching the watcher." Rogers' security personnel asked the protesters to put down their video cameras, he added.

The protesters were concerned about the NSA's lack of accountability, the amount of data the government collects on citizens and the fact that the NSA appears to be embarking on a public relations tour to campuses across the country, Martindale said.

The conversation, titled “Challenges and Opportunities in an Interconnected World,” was a part of the G.S. Beckwith Gilbert ’63 Lecture Series andtook place in Richardson Auditorium at 4:30 p.m.

Correction: Due to a reporting error, an earlier version of this article incorrectly transcribed a question from an audience member, as well as Admiral Michael Rogers' response. The ‘Prince’ regrets the error.