Events Calendar

On Tuesday, October 25, the Strauss Center is hosting Benjamin Kastan, Associate General Counsel for Cybersecurity, and Charity King, Cybersecurity Attorney, at the National Security Agency, as they provide a lawyer’s perspective on the NSA’s role in securing America’s digital networks, infrastructure, and elections from 2016 to the present. Kastan and King will also explain how lawyers contribute to NSA’s mission and can help improve America’s cybersecurity. Strauss Center Director Adam Klein will moderate this discussion.

This event is free and open to the public. No RSVP required. Lunch will be served. For more information on this event, contact Susan Crane at scrane@austin.utexas.edu.

Biographies

Benjamin Kastan is the Associate General Counsel for Cybersecurity at the National Security Agency (NSA). As such, he is the senior legal adviser to NSA’s Cybersecurity Directorate (CSD) and leads the NSA Office of General Counsel (OGC) Cybersecurity Practice Group, a team of military and civilian attorneys who provide day-to-day operational legal advice and counsel to NSA personnel around the world on the full breadth of NSA’s cybersecurity mission, including on-net operations, cryptography, industry engagement, Defense Industrial Base cybersecurity, and information sharing with U.S. and foreign partners. The Cybersecurity Practice Group also advises CSD and other U.S. Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) System elements on the collection, analysis, and dissemination of SIGINT on foreign cyber threats, as well as NSA’s relationship with U.S. Cyber Command.

Kastan began his NSA career in NSA OGC’s Litigation Practice Group through the NSA Legal Honors Program. He has worked on a wide range of cyber operations issues since March 2016, including as the attorney embedded with NSA’s Computer Network Operations office and the NSA attorney assigned to support the NSA/U.S. Cyber Command Russia Small Group, charged with helping to protect the 2018 elections from foreign interference. He was elevated to the rank of Defense Intelligence Senior Level in May 2021.

Prior to joining NSA, he clerked for the Honorable Donna Stroud on the North Carolina Court of Appeals. Kastan received his J.D. and LL.M. in International and Comparative Law from Duke University School of Law.

Charity King is an attorney at the National Security Agency where she provides operational legal guidance to the Cybersecurity Directorate on cybersecurity activities, as well as the collection, analysis, and dissemination of signals intelligence (SIGINT) on foreign cyber threats. Charity also advises the Election Security Group on NSA activities supporting the defense of U.S. elections.

Charity began her career at NSA through the Legal Honors Program in 2018 in the Administrative Law and Ethics practice group. Prior to that, Charity clerked for U.S. Federal Magistrate Judge Andrew Austin in the Western District of Texas. She graduated with a J.D. from The University of Texas School of Law in 2016.