NSA director promises greater transparency

National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers on Monday said he wants to promote greater transparency within the agency tainted by releases of classified documents by Edward Snowden.  

Rogers told the Reuters Cybersecurity Summit in Washington that he intends to be more candid with the public about the NSA’s activities, according to Reuters. 

“The idea of accountability and responsibility is very important to me,” he said. “We must ensure that we do not in any way abuse this capability.”

He also defended the NSA’s metadata surveillance program, saying it needed better explanation but not necessarily an overhaul.  

{mosads}”It is by design that I have tried to start a series of engagements with a broader and perhaps more different groups than we have traditionally done,” he said. 

“The dialogue to date that we have had for much of the last nine months or so from my perspective, I wish was a little bit broader, had a little more context to it, and was a little bit more balanced.” 

Rogers, an admiral, took over at the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command in April, succeeding U.S. Army Gen. Keith Alexander.

On Monday, Rogers suggested NSA’s internal security procedures need to be more robust after Snowden stole and leaked U.S. government documents.   

“Clearly we should not have allowed this to happen,” Rogers said. 

“I don’t want the events of the last nine months to result in a situation where bridges are burned to the point where we can no longer dialogue, collaborate — I would hope at a minimum, certainly understand each other.

Snowden began leaking the documents to journalists nearly a year ago.