The director of the National Security Agency says he’s taking steps to curb the type of information leaks conducted at the hands of Edward Snowden from ever occurring again — by replacing workers with machines.
Gen. Keith Alexander said during Thursday remarks at Fordham University that 90 percent of system administrator positions — the job held by Mr. Snowden — would be cut in coming years. The agency is moving to adopt a cloud system that uses machines, not manpower, to move and store sensitive data, he said, Fox News reported.
“What we’ve done is put people in loops of transferring data and securing networks — doing what machines are probably better at doing,” Gen. Alexander said, Fox news reported. Morphing to the cloud, he said, “cuts down the number of system administrators. That would address vulnerabilities. It would also address the number of system administrators we have, not fast enough, but we plan to reduce the number of system administrators by 90 percent to make networks more defensible and secure.”
He also said the NSA does “trust people with data.” But “if they misuse that trust, they can cause huge damage,” he said.
CIA chief John Brennan added, Fox News reported: “There have been some recent lessons learned to make that technical opportunity less and less available.”
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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