SAN FRANCISCO—Bruce Schneier is a legendary figure in the security community, well-known for his expertise in cryptography and more recently for his insight into the surveillance activities of the National Security Agency (NSA). Schneier currently serves as the CTO of incident response management vendor Co3 Systems.
In an interview with eWEEK at the RSA conference here, Schneier detailed his views on the NSA’s surveillance activities.
When it comes to domestic surveillance and metadata collection, Schneier firmly believes that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is the right agency to handle that data. He noted that the FBI already has domestic security capabilities and is responsible for the national fingerprint database.
“The FBI is where we have laws and we have transparency,” Schneier said. “Spying on Americans is not the job of the U.S. military; it’s the job of the FBI.”
Schneier added that anything that involves actually breaking into networks should fall under a military command. In his view, the NSA should be focused on defense and communication security, making software and networks more secure.
One of the key revelations that has emerged from the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s document leaks is the fact that cryptography is still, by and large, mostly secure.
“Cryptography still gives the NSA trouble,” Schneier said.
Watch the full video interview with Bruce Schneier below:
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at eWEEK and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist