Private companies to help NSA monitor US government networks

NSA HQ

By IAN ALLEN | intelNews.org |
We have already mentioned on this blog that US President Barack Obama has decided to proceed with a Bush administration plan to use National Security Agency (NSA) assistance in screening government computer traffic on private-sector networks. NSA is America’s largest intelligence agency, which is tasked with worldwide communications surveillance, as well as communications security. Critics of the program suspect it may include EINSTEIN 3, a rumored joint project between the NSA and US telecommunication service providers, which requires the latter to route government data carried through their networks to the NSA, via secret rooms installed in exchange sites. The Agency then uses a monitoring program called TUTELAGE (which already used to monitor US military communications networks) to filter the data for activity patterns suggesting an organized attack on the networks. Members of Congress have expressed unease about the project, which President Obama has said will “not include monitoring private sector networks or internet traffic”. Meanwhile, as intelNews has already mentioned, the NSA is in the process of renovating its soon-to-be-unveiled 470,000-square-foot Texas Cryptology Center, and is now building a 1-million-square-foot data center in Camp Williams, Utah.