The NSA Should Delete Its Trove of Data on Americans
It cannot reliably protect even its most closely guarded secrets from adversaries. There is no reason to trust it to store years of details about private citizens’ communications, too.
Fifteen months ago, a group called the Shadow Brokers began to taunt the National Security Agency with proof of an extraordinary breach: By unknown means, operatives had infiltrated its operations and stolen its most potent cyber weapons. Developed by the U.S. government to penetrate or attack adversaries, those weapons were then used to attack millions of innocents worldwide.
Future attacks are “all but certain,” while revisiting the matter over the weekend, yet the NSA still doesn’t know exactly what was taken, or whether its defenses were breached by an outside hacker or an insider.
