The director of the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC), Rod Beckstrom, wants to see the nation’s traditions of democracy and human rights extend into the online world.

In his keynote at this year’s Black Hat conference, Beckstrom praised America’s founders, including George Mason, for devising the Bill of Rights and compared Mason’s ideas about human rights to “an open source module” created by an engineer for all to use.

“Cyberdemocracy — blogging — is a great use of our First Amendment rights,” said Beckstrom, who heads up the Department of Homeland Security’s new NCSC division.

He expressed optimism that one day there could be automated online elections polling. Beckstrom also said cyberjustice is critical, noting that just this week the Department of Justice moved to indict 11 individuals accused of operating a massive stolen credit-card ring connected to a number of network break-ins, including that of TJX.

In his role to help coordinate the nation’s cybersecurity, Beckstrom said he’s getting involved in projects such as analyzing how funds should be spent on protecting electronic communications. He referred to the “economics of protocols,” noting that BGP, DNS, SMS/IP and plain old telephone service may be the best basis for investments. “We want to invest in protocols because it’s one of the most-effective [ways to invest in security],” he said, pointing to work the government is funding on DNSSEC.

Rod Beckstrom, director of the National Cybersecurity Center, has resigned his position effective March 13, complaining about the large role of the National Security Agency (NSA) in a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

“The National Cybersecurity Center is the only national body created to fulfill the responsibility to protect networks across the civilian, military and intelligence communities,” Beckstrom wrote in his resignation letter. “It is the group responsible for pulling together the composite operating picture and situational awareness across government, and has the only national coordination authority on cybersecurity issues.”

In his resignation letter, Beckstrom voices objections to the role of the NSA and objects to a proposal to locate the NCSC at Ft. Meade, Maryland, the NSA’s headquarters.

Saying the NSA is dominating most of the efforts, Beckstrom adds, “While acknowledging the critical importance of the NSA to our intelligence efforts, I believe this is a bad strategy on multiple grounds. The intelligence culture is very different than a network operations or security culture. In addition, the threats to our democratic processes are significant if all top level government network security and monitoring are handled by any one organization, either directly or indirectly.”

Beckstrom said he was “unwilling to subjugate the NSCS underneath the NSA,” and pointed to achievements the NCSC, with its small staff, has accomplished during his period as director.

Another one bites the dust.