Cyber Week in Review: February 13, 2015
from Net Politics and Digital and Cyberspace Policy Program

Cyber Week in Review: February 13, 2015

Lisa Monaco CFR Cyber Net Politics
Lisa Monaco CFR Cyber Net Politics
Blog Post by Adam Segal
February 13, 2015 3:36 pm (EST)

Here is a quick round-up of this week’s technology headlines and related stories you may have missed:

  • Lisa Monaco, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, announced the creation of a cyber threat intelligence and assessment center modelled on the Director of National Intelligence’s National Counterterrorism Center. The Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center will bring together cyber experts from the NSA, FBI, CIA, and Department of Homeland Security to analyze cyber threats and provide unified assessments to policymakers. While some hailed the move as long overdue, others saw it as adding another layer of bureaucracy instead of making the existing cyber operations centers at the same agencies work better together. The United States will not be the first country with a whole-of-government cyber center—Australia set up its cybersecurity center last year.

  • Twitter released its transparency report this week, which reports a 40 percent increase in government requests for data. Twitter complied with 80 percent of the U.S. requests for user data and didn’t comply with any Russian requests. Twitter didn’t provide a reason for its noncompliance with Russian requests, leaving Internet regulator Roskomnadzor incredulous as to Twitter’s high compliance rate with the United States but not with Russia. Twitter did comply with 13 percent of Russian requests for the removal of content, noting that the content removed was associated with drug trafficking. Twitter stated that many Russian requests for removal were denied as they sought to remove tweets that promoted non-violent demonstrations.

  • The Intercept published an internal NSA briefing note in which the U.S. intelligence community expresses concern that Iran was learning from western offensive cyber operations to launch their own efforts. The intelligence community’s assessment isn’t entirely surprising given the U.S. President expressed concerns back in 2012 that U.S. offensive cyber activity could set a precedent for other to engage in disruptive activity in the pursuit of their interests.