Spy Program to Cause Economic Damage for US Companies - Former DHS Official

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The revelations by the Moscow-based cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab of an extensive spying program will result in economic consequences for US technology companies and questionable national security benefits for Washington, former Department of Homeland Security official Jim Harper told Sputnik on Tuesday.

“The NSA [National Security Agency] has created immediate economic damage to US companies for speculative and contingent national security benefits,” Harper said of Kaspersky’s report exposing NSA infiltration of hundreds of hard drives built by major manufacturers.

On Monday, Kaspersky published a report documenting an advanced hacking operation that allowed a spy agency to control and monitor computers even when they were not connected to the Internet. According to the report, spyware was embedded on hard drives produced by major companies, including Western Digital, Seagate, and Toshiba.

While Kaspersky declined to state that the US National Security Agency (NSA) was behind the program, it did say the program was linked to Stuxnet, which the NSA designed to slow down Iran’s nuclear program.

Kaspersky’s revelations of the program will result in the NSA losing some ability to spy and may have some national security consequences as a result of the lost methods, Harper noted. However, the NSA’s deep infiltration of hard drives in over 42 countries “basically guarantee[s] that these hardware makers will lose business because their products are insecure,” he said.

The United States will also suffer diplomatic consequences for its espionage program, according to Harper. If the NSA acted alone, without coordinating with the White House or State Department, “its rogue behavior, representing a different foreign policy, will hurt the United States’ standing as a responsible world actor,” he said.

Responding to Sputnik requests, the NSA said the spy agency is aware of the Kaspersky report but would not comment publicly.

Harper was one of the founders of the US Department of Homeland Security’s Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee. He is currently a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington DC, where he specializes in cybersecurity and digital privacy issues.