A draft cybersecurity executive order would mandate a review of the most critical U.S. cyber vulnerabilities, the principal cyber adversaries of the U.S., ways to incentivize cybersecurity measures in the private sector, and the capabilities of the DoD, DHS, and the NSA.

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President Donald Trump released his Making Our Military Strong Again and America First Foreign Policy last week, which hint at potential changes to the Federal cybersecurity community. Trump’s administration has yet to include any more specific details about how the United States’ cyber capabilities will be used.

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The Shadow Brokers, the hacker group that stole National Security Agency applications, are selling a package of Windows hacking tools. The group first began selling NSA tools, which looked to be about three years old, in August. The current software also dates back to three years ago.

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Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act of fiscal year 2017, which includes a provision to separate U.S. Cyber Command from the National Security Agency. Cyber Command would focus on developing cyber weapons and use them against adversaries online, whereas the NSA would focus on gathering intelligence in the digital sphere.

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President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination for United States attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., could have an impact on government surveillance power because of his full-fledged support of the National Security Agency’s spying authorities.

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Edward Snowden, the NSA contractor responsible for leaking information about the U.S. government’s mass surveillance program in 2013, spoke about the impact that President-elect Donald Trump could have on online privacy: “What we need to start thinking about now is not how we defend against a President-elect Trump, but how we defend the rights of everyone everywhere.”

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The hacker group the Shadow Brokers released files Monday alleging to show which foreign governments and organizations were under surveillance by the National Security Agency. The Shadow Brokers directly asked the U.S. government to pay for the remaining files to be returned.

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The United States has to formulate a conversation about cybersecurity breaches by foreign actors, according to Adm. Michael Rogers, director of the National Security Agency, adding that the Federal government has confirmed that Russia was behind the hacks on the Democratic National Committee.

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Yahoo last year produced a software program that would search customer emails for information specified by U.S. intelligence officials, according to a report by Reuters. Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., condemned such actions, calling them “Big Brother on steroids.”

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The investigation into the August hack of the National Security Agency’s cybersecurity tools is looking into a theory that a former NSA employee left the information on a remote server that the Russian hackers found, according to Reuters.

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The Federal government should focus more on defensive cybersecurity measures, work around the regulatory culture of government, and hire more in-house cybersecurity professionals, according to Alex Levinson, information security specialist at Uber.

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The National Security Agency is working on possibly developing software to respond to digital acts of war, NSA Director Adm. Michael S. Rogers said this week at MeriTalk’s Federal Forum in Washington, D.C. That software could help the United States respond to cyber incidents to turn the situation in its favor.

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Privacy advocates launched a new website Monday called end702.com that urges Congress to allow a controversial section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to expire at the end of next year. Fight for the Future and a coalition of public interest groups are encouraging Congress to let Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of […]

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There seems to be no middle ground in the Internet surveillance versus privacy dispute. The two sides found little to agree on at a debate hosted by the Hudson Institute. David Rivkin, a constitutional law attorney, said government surveillance “has to be indiscriminate. … We have to surveil more.”

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Secretary of Defense Ash Carter is considering recommendations for a major reorganization of the Defense Department that would make U.S. Cyber Command a full combatant command similar to the U.S. European Command or the U.S. Special Operations Command.

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Cyber Command’s influence may not be as expansive as some think, according to its commander, Adm. Michael Rogers. “The Department of Defense is not resourced, nor is it tasked with defending every single computer structure in the U.S.,” he said.

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The National Security Agency announced Monday it is moving ahead with a massive reorganization plan that will consolidate offensive and defensive hacking operations under one command—a move that privacy and civil liberties groups, as well as a presidential review board, have warned would create potential conflicts of interest.

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Ashkan Soltani, the former CTO at the Federal Trade Commission who joined the White House in December to advise U.S. Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith, is stepping down after being denied a security clearance. Soltani played an active role in the Washington Post’s reporting on the National Security Agency surveillance programs leaked to the media by Edward Snowden.

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Much of the controversial Patriot Act expires June 1, and Congress faces three choices: Keep the National Security Administration’s (NSA) surveillance capabilities intact, lessen NSA’s power, or do nothing – effectively letting the law expire.

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