Could NSA Be Involved With Very Dirty Business? If So, This Agency Is Totally Out Of Control.

NSA Engaged In Financial Manipulation?

By Robert Gehl on December 21, 2013 Subscribe to Robert Gehl's Feed

Buried within the recommendations to reform the National Security Agency by the White House Intelligence Review Task Force is something quite revealing.

Recommendation #31 reads, in part: “2) Governments should not use their offensive cyber capabilities to change the amounts held in financial accounts or otherwise manipulate the financial systems.”

This was discovered by tweeter Trevor Timm at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. His question: “Does this NSA report recommendation imply that NSA is conducting offensive cyber attacks against financial systems?”

While there have been plenty of reports about the US running hundreds of offensive cyberattacks on others, outside of things like Stuxnet, not many have been directly identified. And I’m unaware of any claims suggesting attempts to “manipulate the financial system” of any particular country and/or to “change the amounts held in financial accounts.” It seems a bit odd to come out of the blue like that, and certainly suggests that this particular bullet point likely came as a result of a rather specific thing that came up during the task force’s review.

So, now we wait for the inevitable news of what sort of financial shenanigans the NSA was up to.

The most important recommendation is removing NSA and the Cyver Command from military control and appoint separate civilian officials to command each agency. The Obama Administration has already indicated they’re unwilling to do that.