Gov't Addresses Online Monitoring Fears

[Metgod]

Well, really.. the gov't is going WAY TOO FAR .... I don't care if it's in the name of 'anti-terrorism'. Invading privacy doesn't help calm down citizens.. it aggrevates them. And really.. doing anything they want to do and using terrorism as a cause is sad. Really sad. And it won't solve a damn thing.

Met




http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=528&ncid=528&e=1&u=/ap/200212
20/ap_on_hi_te/cybersecurity

By TED BRIDIS, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - The White House is proposing an Internet-wide monitoring
center to detect and defend against major cyber-attacks, but the Bush
administration sought Friday to ease worries it might scrutinize
individual users' e-mails along with other data traffic.

Some Internet industry executives and lawyers said they would raise
serious civil liberties concerns if the U.S. government, not an industry
consortium, operated such a powerful monitoring center. Such a proposal
would require congressional approval.

Under federal wiretap laws, privately operated centers can in some
circumstances analyze e-mails and other data flowing across parts of the
Internet without approvals from a judge.

President Bush's top cyberspace adviser, Richard Clarke, on Friday
strongly disputed concerns about government broadly eavesdropping on
citizen e-mails. Clarke wrote there was "nothing ... which in any way
suggests or proposes a government system that could extend to monitoring
individuals' e-mails."

Clarke sent the letter to Harris Miller, the head of a prominent trade
group, the Washington-based Information Technology Association of
America. He said the White House plan "articulates a strong policy of
protecting citizens' privacy in cyberspace."

The industry's fears appeared to stem from a subtle change between an
earlier proposal and one currently circulated within the administration
as part of its forthcoming "National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace," set
for release early next year.

The latest draft, parts of which were obtained by The Associated Press,
envisions a monitoring center to "analyze and exchange data about
attacks that could prevent exploits from escalating and causing damage
or disruption of vital systems."

It said the center "could be operated by the private sector but could
share information with the federal government through the Department of
Homeland Security."

The administration's earlier proposal, released in September as a draft
for public comment, acknowledged explicitly that such a monitoring
center "would not be a government entity and would be managed by a
private board."

A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Friday
that the administration still envisions that any such monitoring
operation would be run by the private sector.

"The latest proposal seems to make this more aggressive, put the
government in charge of it," said Stewart Baker, a Washington lawyer who
represents the U.S. Internet Service Provider Association.

"It's not envisioned as an all-purpose intercept tool, but as soon as
you put the capability in the government's hands to run a network
operations center, you're putting in their hands the ability to get to
who's talking to whom, what information is going from one company to
another, one computer to another," Baker said.

A spokesman for the new Department of Homeland Security, Brian
Roehrkasse, said Friday there was no proposal that would call for
monitoring e-mails and other data traffic of Internet users.

Roehrkasse said he could not describe specific proposals that have not
been publicly announced, such as whether the monitoring center should be
operated by industry or government.

"These are the exact questions we're grappling with," he said.

Many experts have questioned the need for such a centralized monitoring
center, even one operated by private industry. They note that private
centers on the nation's largest networks already adequately share
information about Internet attacks informally among themselves and with
the government.