NSA Director says citizens’ privacy will never be compromised

Cybersecurity and citizens’ privacy won’t be mutually exclusive terms for the federal government, vows NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander.

“As the director of NSA and the commander of U.S. Cyber Command, I have an obligation to the law and to the American people to ensure that everything we do in cyberspace preserves and protects our civil liberties and operates legally under the constitution, while concurrently conducting our mission,” said the General in his address at the O’Reilly Media Gov 2.0 Summit.

According to eSecurity Planet, he followed with a general overview of the things that the U.S. Cyber Command is in charge of: monitoring the .mil domain, helping civilian agencies when it comes to matters of information security, uniting the various military information security units.

He also made sure to note that government systems are always under attack from foreign and domestic hackers – the DoD system are probed some 250,000 times per hour, and the DHS reports that the number of cyber attacks against U.S. systems has risen by 150 percent since 2008.

“Considering the body of both personal and national treasure that resides on the Internet — information, money, medical records, personal email, critical infrastructure and, most important, national security — it is not a hyperbole to say that we have as much at risk or more than any other nation,” Alexander said.