NSA Director Michael Rogers speaks on campus

NSA Director Adm. Michael Rogers recently spoke on campus. (Photo: Rod Searcey)

National Security Agency Director Adm. MICHAEL ROGERS told a Stanford audience during a rare visit to Silicon Valley that his greatest concern today is that the nation is not yet prepared to defend against a major cyber terrorist attack.

He said the growing rift among the signals intelligence agency, tech companies and civil liberties organizations over the shifting boundaries of privacy rights and secret surveillance is weakening the nation’s resolve.

“We have yet to be able to come to a broad policy and legal consensus about how we deal with some of the legal issues in cyber now,” said Rogers, who took over the leadership of the embattled intelligence agency in April.

The admiral, wearing military dress, spoke to some 300 students, faculty and tech executives in an event sponsored by the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and the Hoover Institution.

His wide-ranging talk on Monday – in which he appealed to Stanford students to consider a career at the intelligence agency – came on the eve of a hearing by a federal appeals court investigating whether the NSA’s surveillance program violates the U.S. Constitution’s ban on unreasonable searches. The Justice Department argues that collecting phone data is of overriding importance to national security.

Visit the CISAC website to read the entire story by BETH DUFF-BROWN.