A White House NSA task force report released Wednesday recommending major procedural changes seems to suggest the agency may be involved in financial manipulation through bank accounts — an as-of-yet unrevealed activity.
Freedom of the Press Executive Director Trevor Timm pointed out a subsection of recommendation 31 by the task force, which says, “Governments should not use their offensive cyber capabilities to change the amounts held in financial accounts or otherwise manipulate the financial system.“
The fact that the U.S. engages in offensive cyber attacks is nothing new, and numerous programs and capabilities have been revealed since before Edward Snowden leaked the far-reaching NSA programs the president’s task force was commissioned to analyze.
But no previous reports of such programs appear to have mentioned engaging in the manipulation of any financial sectors or changing the amounts held in bank accounts, either domestic or overseas. Though the NSA director’s position also oversees U.S. Cyber Command, the U.S.’s online warfare front, the mission of the NSA itself is to intercept signals intelligence — not act on such information.
