Background: The NSA has undermined the defenses of the Internet by adding backdoors and hidden weaknesses. This is a threat to the national security of the United States. Newspapers know the NSA’s secrets, and it is foolish to think that China and Russia don’t. Ordinary cybercriminals may find NSA-planted weaknesses and abuse them. Trust must be restored.
Proposal: The NSA’s mission of defending U.S. government communications should be taken away from it. Instead we should create a new agency tasked with defending all American computers and communications. It must be well-funded to have any hope of undoing the NSA’s damage, and to create trust it must foster openness. A good first step would be to close some of the NSA's backdoors and then publish their histories.