The National Security Agency is creating new processes aimed at making it harder for systems administrators to misuse privileged access to agency systems, NSA officials told the U.S. House Intelligence Committee Tuesday.
NSA director Keith Alexander told lawmakers that the agency may implement a so-called "two-person rule" to better control access to classified data and prevent the taking of data from agency systems without authorization.
The NSA is also exploring the use of new technologies that could minimize its need for system administrators to conduct certain tasks, Alexander said.
He didn't detail the new technologies or processes the agency is evaluating.
The intelligence committee called today's hearing to discuss fallout from from data leaks that disclosed a secret NSA phone data collection program and details about PRISM, a classified FBI/NSA data collection program.
Edward Snowden, a former employee of Booz Allen Hamilton acknowledged that he accessed documents about the programs while working as a contract employee for the NSA in Hawaii. He leaked the documents to multiple newspaper reporters and others.
The leaked documents included a secret court order requiring carrier Verizon to provide the NSA with daily call metadata records pertaining to all domestic and international calls made by its customers since at least April. The other classified document included a presentation explaining the PRISM program. Under the program described in a classified slide presentation, the NSA and FBI gathers information on foreign terror suspects directly from servers at Google, Microsoft, Skype, Facebook and other major Internet companies.
Snowden, currently in hiding in Hong Kong, released the documents to The Guardian and The Washington Post newspapers. The leaks fueled broad concerns about apparent widespread domestic surveillance by U.S. intelligence agencies.
The NSA is trying to learn how Snowden could gain access to the leaked data as a contract systems administrator, Alexander said.
"We are looking at where the oversight broke down," Alexander said.
The NSA director maintained that Snowden could only access certain portions of NSAs networks -- what the programs are and how they work, for example. Snowden could not access any data collected under the program, or query the data for any information, according to Alexander.
There are currently some 1,000 systems administrators, mostly contract employees, with similar access to NSA data, Alexander added,
Going forward, the NSA will put in place a two-person system for controlling access to certain systems and data, he said.
The agency is also waiting on a technology initiative led by the Director of National Intelligence that could help the NSA reduce its dependence on systems administrators, Alexander said
The two-person rule would stipulate that two individuals with similar roles and authority must act together to execute certain functions.
John Pescatore, director of emerging security trends at the SANS Institute and a former NSA agent said the two-person rule is available but rarely used as a security measure because it's cumbersome to implement.
At times, contract employees do need permission from a staffer to perform specific administrative tasks. But the rule isn't widely used as an influx of contract NSA employees in recent years has made it impractical. Such a rule slow routines tasks and makes it harder for systems administrators to do their jobs, he said.
The agency is likely looking to broaden such rules in some way to help ensure that administrators don't abuse access privileges, Pescarote said.
Alexander, Sean Joyce, Deputy Director of the FBI, and Deputy Attorney General James Cole downplayed concerns related to the data collection programs and insisted to the committee that they are vital to national security.
Alexander contended that that NSA phone data records collection program has played a key role in foiling at least 50 potential terrorist plots since the 2011 attacks on New York City and Washington D.C. At least 10 of the foiled plots directly targeted the United States, he said.
The security programs implemented over the past decade are "a direct result of the intelligence community's efforts to better connect the dots and learn from the mistakes that permitted those attacks to occur on 9/11," Alexander said.
Joyce said information found in the phone records of a known terrorist suspect in Yemen helped the FBI arrest a man in Kansas City who was hatching a plot to blow up the New York Stock Exchange. In another incident, the surveillance programs helped the FBI identify an individual in San Diego who was sending funds to a known terrorist group overseas, Joyce said.
Alexander insisted that NSA personnel does not listen to phone conversations or read emails of American citizens. The NSA also doesn't collect video or GPS data on American citizens, he added.
Alexander maintained that all data collected and all surveillance activities conducted under the phone data collection program were approved by Congress.
He denied that the agency was collects data directly servers at U.S. Internet companies, as described in the PRISM documents leaked by Snowden.
Alexander also downplayed concerns that the collected data is being misused to spy on people. Only 22 individuals at the NSA can authorize searches of an individual's phone record data, he said. There are multiple layers of oversight for each request to access such data, he added.
