To make sure what Edward Snowden did never happens again, the National Security Agency said that it is putting in place a new rule to try and stop another person looking to leak secrets.
While speaking at the Aspen Security Forum in Aspen, Colorado Thursday, NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander said that the NSA is now instituting a new “two-man rule,” reports The New York Times. It requires two system administrators to work simultaneously if they are in systems where they can access sensitive classified material.
“This makes our job more difficult,” Alexander said of the rule. He said that other steps are being taken to make sure that what Snowden did can never happen again. Snowden was a contractor who had access to classified documents on the NSA’s surveillance programs and leaked the documents to the press. He’s currently at the Moscow airport awaiting passage for asylum and reportedly has more damaging documents.
Alexander again defended the surveillance programs, saying that, “You need a haystack to find a needle.”
According to CNN, NBC’s Pete Williams suggested that you could have private phone companies running the database of metadata - the information collected by the programs Snowden leaked information on. Alexander said he would be open to that idea.
“You could technically do that. Now, it creates some operational problems that we would have to work our way through … But that may be the best solution,” Alexander said. He said the problem might be that you would “have to change the legislation to require them to keep it and then have them keep it.” But “I think it is something we should consider. I am not against it.”
Alexander also admitted that the government should be doing a better job informing the public on the NSA programs.
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