GOVNET In the Works

gtg010b writes: "According to USA Today, the U.S. government is considering a private network to be used for all government communications. This network would be "separate from the Internet to keep it safe from hackers or terrorists" according to Richard Clarke, the head of the president's "cyberspace security adviser." Whatever happened to government not being above the people?" Clarke is the guy who's been crying "cyber Pearl Harbor" for a few years; apparently if you cry wolf long enough you get promoted. His request (.doc format) is informative. I should point out that the U.S. military already has such a network (I'm not even going to ask why the Feds can't piggy-back on it), so GOVNET would be for critically-important government agencies like the Department of Agriculture to communicate.

Comments

Sure...

[dghcasp]

GOVNET would be for critically-important government agencies like the Department of Agriculture to communicate.

and get spammed with MAKE WHEAT FAST!

F. Lee Ermey, "Well...No Sh!t..."

[Dolly_Llama]

Apparently, the concept is to build a decentralized network so that government officials, academicians, and others can communicate with one another via a technology called "electronic mail." Planned but not yet implemented is a feature whereby entire files can be sent via this "Inter-network." Proponents of the decentralized model tout that communications could be routed around damage in such a network, even perhaps, a nuclear attack!

In business news, Cisco Systems stock [CSCO] rose 60% today.

Thank god for USA Today: America's Pravda

Keep those drugs flowing.

[Nathaniel]

"So GOVNET would be for critically-important government agencies like the Department of Agriculture to communicate."

Yeah, if the government isn't able to keep the flow of drugs coming into the country, society might fall apart.

Re:Why would hackers want to hack the...

[Anonymous Coward]

think crop circles.

Safeguarding Government pr0n

[Alien54]

Well, it sounds like it'll be a big intranet. We could eventually be talking about thousands of sites, all over the country. Presumably all of these links will operate over isolated (and hopefully secure) communications lines, which aren't cheap-- there shouldn't be any tunneling over other networks, otherwise it you might as well just use a big VPN setup across the public Internet.

It's part of the internet as envisioned by Clinton, a complete private government network for Pr0n. Eventually all pr0n will be outlawed, available only in special government archives for use by government investigators and officials in thier research projects.

Eventually all the best pr0n will be there, leaving all of the junk out on the net as a collection of blind links going in an endless circle.

This is as good a reason as any for this network, to safeguard the government pr0n collection

Re:SIPERNET NIPERNET

[alen]

You said it. It's supposed to be secret. No we have to kill everyone on /. without a security clearance. I wonder if JohnKatz has a security clearance?

And A New TLD

[evilviper]

And on a related story, they plan to add a new Top Level Domain just for the GOVNET. Although there is no offical word, sources claim the new TLD will be ".FU".