The NSA has become too big and too powerful . What was supposed to be a single agency with a dual mission -- protecting the security of U.S. communications and eavesdropping on the communications of our enemies -- has become unbalanced in the post-Cold War , all-terrorism-all-the-time era . Putting the U.S. Cyber Command , the military 's cyberwar wing , in the same location and under the same commander , expanded the NSA 's power . The result is an agency that prioritizes intelligence gathering over security , and that 's increasingly putting us all at risk . It 's time we thought about breaking up the National Security Agency . Broadly speaking , three types of NSA surveillance programs were exposed by the documents released by Edward Snowden . And while the media tends to lump them together , understanding their differences is critical to understanding how to divide up the NSA 's missions . The first is targeted surveillance . This is best illustrated by the work of the NSA 's Tailored Access Operations ( TAO ) group , including its catalog of hardware and software `` implants '' designed to be surreptitiously installed onto the enemy 's computers . This sort of thing represents the best of the NSA and is exactly what we want it to do . That the United States has these capabilities , as scary as they might be , is cause for gratification . The second is bulk surveillance , the NSA 's collection of everything it can obtain on every communications channel to which it can get access . This includes things such as the NSA 's bulk collection of call records , location data , e-mail messages and text messages . This is where the NSA overreaches : collecting data on innocent Americans either incidentally or deliberately , and data on foreign citizens indiscriminately . It does n't make us any safer , and it is liable to be abused . Even the director of national intelligence , James Clapper , acknowledged that the collection and storage of data was kept a secret for too long . The third is the deliberate sabotaging of security . The primary example we have of this is the NSA 's BULLRUN program , which tries to `` insert vulnerabilities into commercial encryption systems , IT systems , networks and endpoint communication devices . '' This is the worst of the NSA 's excesses , because it destroys our trust in the Internet , weakens the security all of us rely on and makes us more vulnerable to attackers worldwide . That 's the three : good , bad , very bad . Reorganizing the U.S. intelligence apparatus so it concentrates on our enemies requires breaking up the NSA along those functions . First , TAO and its targeted surveillance mission should be moved under the control of U.S. Cyber Command , and Cyber Command should be completely separated from the NSA . Actively attacking enemy networks is an offensive military operation , and should be part of an offensive military unit . Whatever rules of engagement Cyber Command operates under should apply equally to active operations such as sabotaging the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility in Iran and hacking a Belgian telephone company . If we 're going to attack the infrastructure of a foreign nation , let it be a clear military operation . Second , all surveillance of Americans should be moved to the FBI . The FBI is charged with counterterrorism in the United States , and it needs to play that role . Any operations focused against U.S. citizens need to be subject to U.S. law , and the FBI is the best place to apply that law . That the NSA can , in the view of many , do an end-run around congressional oversight , legal due process and domestic laws is an affront to our Constitution and a danger to our society . The NSA 's mission should be focused outside the United States -- for real , not just for show . And third , the remainder of the NSA needs to be rebalanced so COMSEC ( communications security ) has priority over SIGINT ( signals intelligence ) . Instead of working to deliberately weaken security for everyone , the NSA should work to improve security for everyone . Computer and network security is hard , and we need the NSA 's expertise to secure our social networks , business systems , computers , phones and critical infrastructure . Just recall the recent incidents of hacked accounts -- from Target to Kickstarter . What once seemed occasional now seems routine . Any NSA work to secure our networks and infrastructure can be done openly -- no secrecy required . This is a radical solution , but the NSA 's many harms require radical thinking . It 's not far off from what the President 's Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies , charged with evaluating the NSA 's current programs , recommended . Its 24th recommendation was to put the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command under different generals , and the 29th recommendation was to put encryption ahead of exploitation . I have no illusions that anything like this will happen anytime soon , but it might be the only way to tame the enormous beast that the NSA has become .
Director of national intelligence said U.S. should have acknowledged surveillance . Bruce Schneier : NSA is too big and powerful ; it 's time to break up the agency . He says all bulk surveillance of Americans should be moved to the FBI . Comment: