Earlier this month, President Bush signed the classified National Security Presidential Directive 54/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 23 ordering the NSA to monitor the computers and networks of all federal agencies. While the directive makes it sound like the NSA is simply out to check up on its federal neighbors, the goal is significantly less creepy than the directive sounds--that's the way it usually works, though. Government computers have experienced a rise in attacks over the last year and a half with officials laying blame on Chinese websites for large attacks that targeted nuclear labs and defense contractors.
Of course, if your city's government employees are looking at porn 95-100 times per day, there's bound to be some security issues somewhere inside the Beltway.
The year was looking dim to begin with for online privacy, and this doesn't help. It does, however, make me feel safer about the attacks on our power grids, which (obvious cynical note here) were announced last week.
The "cyber initiative" is meant to secure the government's computers from foreign hackers at a cost of somewhere in the billions. Look for that request to be coming in the 2009 fiscal budget.
One goal is to reduce the number of portals to the federal computers from 2000 to 50. That will make it easier to monitor traffic in and out, but it's not clear if that will be enough for the NSA, CIA and the FBI's Cyber Division (all tied up under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence). If there's traffic going to or from China, we know that's usually bad. If we look past the direction of the traffic and see that the content is nuclear secrets, that's almost always bad.
Whitehouse pitch: "The president's directive represents a continuation of our efforts to secure government networks, protect against constant intrusion attempts, address vulnerabilities and anticipate future threats," said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel.
Counterpoint: "Agencies designed to gather intelligence on foreign entities should not be in charge of monitoring our computer systems here at home," said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.
Just remember, these are the guys that can't keep their satellites in the skies.
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