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NSA to Become Government Net 'Traffic Cop?'
OriginalArlen writes "The NSA may be appointed 'Internet traffic cop', overseeing data sharing among US government agencies for Homeland Security, according to an A.P. report on SecurityFocus. Apparently the aim is to improve security of all government networks." This would seem to follow in the footsteps of creating the Department of Homeland Security, since the aim is to enable better sharing of data between government institutions.
If the NSA becomes the "Internet Traffic Cop", can it be said that 99.9% of the NSA's budget is devoted to pornography?
I'm a big tall mofo.
"It also was unclear how much the effort might cost."
It couldn't happen here
"Apparently the aim is to improve security of all government networks." That does not make sense; is not the job of the NSA to brake security of any network in order to easedrop on the conversations? It is a spy agency, not a security agency.
I can't read the article, as my wonderful UK Government overseers have deemed it bad enough to go on the proxy blacklist, but... how is policing Government networks the same as policing the entire Internet???
I thought the NSA didn't have jurisdiction to spy on USA citizens?
...since the aim is to enable better sharing of data between government institutions.
The system, imperfect as it was, got information about the 9/11 attacks to the top of the political food chain in time to do something about it. The president did nothing about it.
The problem isn't reorganizing data sharing. It's reorganizing leadership.
The best cops are the ones you don't know are there.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
After reading TFA, I'm a little confused. From what I gathered, they won't be "traffic cops" so much network guards slash data escorts. It seems to me that "traffic cops" is misleading, since it implies that they'll have some sort of authority over personal data as well.
Or perhaps I read it wrong, and they'll be setting up speed traps and beating ethnic people.
They're looking for Steganography, you think they want to spend 12 hours a day looking at swollen genitals? Sure the first couple of years is great, but then the novelty begins to wear off.
I never could come to grips with creating a Department of Homeland Security when we already had a National Security Agency. It seems more like Bush had more out-of-work friends than he had positions to appoint them to.
On a side note, has anyone else heard that the entrance to the DHS building is in an alley, and the entire office space is about as big is the lobby of the CIA HQ?
Well at least we will get some regulation for all that signal intercept.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
How does this affect MRO? They're not looking at my traffic, impeding my traffic, or even thinking about my traffic. They're routing government traffic.
/confused.
And they're a government agency.
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
...you apparently didn't read the *summary*. From the first *sentence* of the summary:
"The NSA may be appointed 'Internet traffic cop', overseeing data sharing among US government agencies for Homeland Security [...]"
The way the story read at first sounded like it was the NSA reading all internet traffic..
if it's some sort of government central aggregation DB for the various agencies, I dont see why we should have a problem with it.
Isn't this idea the real-life version of the "Net Force" books?
That's hyperbole.
It's how we have debates over here in America. First we take out the facts. Look at them. Create the most extreme, yet superficially similar argument from them. Then we shoot them in the head, and bury them in a shallow grave. If anyone dares to impugn our integrity we first call them a "name-caller" but in much less flattering terms, and cite the fact that they are thus as proof of their unreasonable bias. If that doesn't work, we turn of their mic while our friends yell at them until we throw to commercial.
Why do we behave in such a course, pointless and ignorant manner? A good question. I'm glad you asked it. We do it for the children. Now I've really got to take a break.
Virtually every government agency is subject to evolution in their mission, especially when we experience a fundamental change in the technological landscape. The NSA probably has more experience, nuts-and-bolts-wise, with this subject than any other collection of humans on the planet. No question they've got the chops, but the budget warfare will be a bloody one, just like it was with the TSA or is shaping up to be on things like border crossing security or container shipment inspection. Compared to years past, these changes are happening very, very quickly. At least the NSA won't have to run out and figure out what sort of people to hire, or invent new tools to understand their mission in this case. It's more a matter of scale, and of getting, say, the IT guys at the Commerce Department to understand their nerdy new friends.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
They already monitor it all. Why expand their charter to give them offical control too?
Makes sence to me. The NSA would be the most qualifed existing governemntal agency to do this. ( at least of the agencies that are on the books.. )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'm all for NSA making these classified networks more secure.
... microsoft.com gets hacked, and they send Frank Parker back in time 7 days to fix it...
If they are sharing really confidential information across the internet irrespective of encryption it still leaves room for cracking of the data over time. Remembering that computers are always getting faster....
Good old leased lines and encryption would be a good start for security..
Not really. If you read the 9/11 Commission Report it's pretty clear that the communications were pretty fouled up. It wasn't clear until after flight 93 went down how many aircraft had been hijacked, and what was being done about it.
Best Slashdot Co
- Cryptography : the design and implementation of secret communications.
- Cryptology : the analysis of existing secret communications.
Ever since its inception, it has had these two tasks... making secure codes for this government, and breaking the codes of other governments.Here is their mission statement
There's No Such Agency.
When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat? -C. Palahniuk
Dear Kind AC,
We at the NSA have noticed a bank statement email of yours that was dropped by your ISP. We realize this is important info to you (to us too, really) and have forwarded it to you again in an act of good faith. Hopefully your ISP will get on the ball, we hate wasting our time doing these sorts of things, but realize you pay our bills and want to help!
Please let us know if there is anything further we can do for you.
This message paid for by the NSA Traffic Cop Tax.
isnt there already an existing UK government equivalent called GSI ? i understood UK government agencies had to go through this organisation to get internet/email access or presence.
Think you can program? Prove it @ the geek challenges
Securing these data is good, and NSA might be able to help. Harmonizing accessibility and authorization sounds needful, but NSA is a strange choice for that role, I'm thinking.
But it seems to me that the greatest needs are for someone to go round applying the boot to appropriate posteriors in order to actually dislodge jealously hoarded information, and for Congress to wake up long enough to tune laws regarding appropriate disclosure to be a little more subtle than the current don't-give-anyone-anything-ever approach.
Oh, and of course to sharpen our tools for removing and punishing any of our hired help in DC when they misbehave. The balance of power must remain balanced.
it's amazing how easily people will just ignore that fact. Yes - there are thousands upon thousands of threats that are made that are just noise. As Bush has said, as defenders we have to get it right *every time*, but the attackers only have to get it right once.
"It also was unclear how much the effort might cost."
And the cost will remain unclear -- to the public, anyway, and to most of the rest of government outside the spy agencies themselves -- because of black budgets.
-kgj
-kgj
In other news, three bytes have died after a high-speed internet chase that ended in a packet collision.
Film at 11.
The government should take its 'information sharing' cue from college students. You can find just about anything on P2P networks, right? So why not have a secure and authenticated P2P network available to government employees. That way, an FBI agent in Florida looking for information could fire up this application and search on the computers of everyone in the FBI, CIA, and NSA that he had access rights for. This information would be available instantaneously and freely. Think KaZaA + Kerberos. This doesn't seem to be that hard to implement. I even came up with a cute name for it: FiBbIr, the governmental knowledge engine.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
He then proceeds to add traffic cops, building standards, and interconnectedness to the mix and try to maintain the castle analogy.
I know that analogy and metaphor can be a powerful tool in helping people understand systems, but it is painful to watch a speaker twist and manipulate their explanations trying to fit things into the framework they decided to use.
It also makes me wonder if the speaker is intentionally misleading his audience.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
Subject: [SNIP] NSA Representative to speak
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2005 10:XX:XX -XXXX
From: DEPT HEAD <snip@SNIP.EDU>
Reply-To: SNIP <SNIP-L@SNIP.SNIP.EDU>
To: SNIP-L@SNIP.SNIP.EDU
The Association for Women in Statistics and Mathematics will host Chaney
Noah who will speak on "Opportunities at the National Security Agency" at
5:00pm, Thursday, February 17 in Room 407, Science-Engineering. All
students interested in this subject are welcome to attend.
DEPT HEAD
I think thats a dangerous idea. giving them that much....gaaa!... the-nsa-is-a-great-organization-lets-give-them-all -the-
power-they-want.
There is
No
Such
Agency
How could one agency manage that much network traffic? Would they black mail the governement official for all the goatS*x sites they visit?
My Sig indicates the end of the comment I posted.
Actually, NSA has been the go-to agency for computer security for at least 20 years. Look for the National Computer Security Center on Google.
I, for one, welcome our fellow super secret nerd overlords. Don't forget, the NSA gave us SELinux and their intellectual property is second to none. Once many of their technologies and software are declassified, you will see some fantastic innovations released into the free world. Read Body of Secrets and let your imagination run rampant as to the computing and information processing capabilities if focused on sheer capitalism.
Reality is a crutch for people who can't handle lucid dreaming.
I'm sure this comment won't rest well with most /.'ers, but personally I wouldn't mind seeing the NSA (or perhaps a UN version of the NSA) become the traffic cops for the internet. Perhaps we could actually cut down on viruses, worm, spyware, etc with a legally empowered entity in charge.
The first thing that came to my mind, when I saw this article, was Netforce.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
Sheesh. RTFP even if not the article. It's NSA as im No Such Agency or National Security Agency.
The innocence (ignorance) of the early Internet is long gone. The hackers and scammers and spammers and phishers and terrorists have found they can profit from the current state of the Internet. Their exploits will cost us all.
Our freedom and liberties are now fading. We will no longer be anonymous in our posts. The age-old question of liberty tempered by security concerns once again raises it's head.
The NSA may be the new sheriff in town. They will require more money and more computer power than what they have now; but given the will of a security-conscious government, it will happen. Big Brother will be born again, unless a knowledgable judiciary reigns in their power.
It was fun while it lasted. Everything changes.
If it means that the black helecopters abduct those fuckers who keep sending me Nigerian E-Mail scams and phishing scams, I'm all for it. They could stash them in the cell next to Manuel Noriega. Whatever happened to ol' Manuel anyway? Did he ever even get a trial? Is that a black helecopter? Ow! Hey quit it! #^!#@!~ [NO CARRIER]
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The original reading gives the impression that the NSA is going to be watching all internet traffic, rather than limiting their scope to traffic going between governmental offices and departments.
There's nothing about this that would seem to have a limiting effect on the rights of the general public, only the rights of those sending information from, say, their desk at the State Department to someone else's desk in the DIA.
*****
Dear Mary,
I yearn for you tragically,
A.T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.
But these are still private networks that i'm going to assume must link up with the Gov Net to share data around. This still isn't the Internet
The connected set of government intranets may not be the Internet, but it's still one of the major internets that President Bush spoke of.
Yeah, you're right - I just woke up, and only caught my bleary-eyed total mistake after hitting submit. The Slashdot CGI took forever to process it, and I scrambled to hit STOP, but too late. I'm going to get pounded for that stupid error. "Should have used the Preview button." :(.
--
make install -not war
It's not, but this is Slashdot, home of the paranoid tinfoil hat crowd. Most people not only do not read the story, they don't read the Slash dot summary either. So, they missed: "overseeing data sharing among US government agencies".
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Like hiring a hacker as a security consultant.
I see potential conflicts between NSA's security mentality and the right of the public to access data, but as long as they are restricted to network security and provide appropriate access points for public data this could work.
It would also give a central point of accountability for federal network security, which is sorely lacking in the current environment.
We are the 198 proof..
How are things in Kansas?
By now everyone should be using standard encryption e.g. gpg and make use of some of the great anonymized encrypted software packages like tor and freenet:
n et
http://tor.eff.org
http://freenet.sourceforge.
Did anyone who read the article stop to understand what the NSA is and what they will be doing?
I didn't think so.
The NSA is the last agency in the government which is not "100% Microsoft". They are the last agency which trusts no one but tolerates Unix and works on SeLinux. In the government you have every possible email server, firewall and other devices with little concern for interoperability or security. NSA is the only agency paranoid enough to truly secure our pitiful government and their contracted paper MCSEs. Expect big things if this were to truly happen (also expect to see a rise in *nix Government jobs open up all over the US).
"It was in the New York Times, all the news that's fit to print!"
Reading this thread is like watching denizens of the Matrix, speculating on the meaning of the things they read.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
You think that no slashdot readers work in government offices, or that none of your data is possible going to pass to/from/through one?
I thought the NSA didn't have jurisdiction to spy on USA citizens?
But they're not going to spy on USA citizens, they're gonna be spying on US government agencies... as an internal operation of the US govt.
Paranoid blathering by people who don't know a firewall from a fire hydrant aside, what TFA is talking about is giving the NSA authority over network security standards. This means that the NSA will CERTIFY that a particular network, say the FDA, meets the minumum standards necessary to take part in the information sharing network of the DHS. They will most likely also audit said networks regularly.
In this light, they will be much more of a building inspector than a traffic cop, ensuring that your foundation is not made out of, say, gasoline soaked asbestos.
Another important point is that they will be looking only at an organizations internal network. They can't control what happens outside the DMZ except to make sensible requirements regarding encryption and the like for sensitive information. (NOT Classified information, that's what SIPRnet is for; the actual term is 'Sensitive but Unclassified')
As TFA pointed out, they have been doing this for some time in select areas of the US Govt. They are really good at it and have the clout to keep disparate agencies in line. The main aim of a decision like this is to ensure that Agent Joe at the FBI is not reluctant to send sensitive information to Agent Laura at the INS because he is worried that their computer security standards are not up to snuff.
Does the NSA spy on the internet? well, duh, probably. Does this article have anything to do with that? Nope.
google these to be less ignorant: INFOSEC, NCSC, 'network defense in depth'
"The NSA may be appointed 'Internet traffic cop"
Internet has nothing to do with it, the word isn't even mentioned in the article.
Here is a link that tells of some of the various agencies and techniques used in survellence.
a cy _and_pc/index030220.html
http://www.guide2net.net/security/articles/priv
NSA and ECHELON is looking at all kinds of what we might term "private" communication, It does not make sense that they are not also looking at the Internet in general to gather intellegence. The FBI seems to do more of that with its new powers to listen in on traffic. With the new "Homeland Security" initiatives, don't think that they aren't opening the gates to these agencies to widen and deepen general survellance of the public.
This latest is only giving them public authority to a portion of the internet and internetworking. I suspect it is just a foot in the door. Maybe this is just a pilot for testing software and techinques for wider use.
They are after all a secret information gathering agency.
Uh, no.
Like most information intelligence agencies, NSA has two parts; they're prominently featured on the main webpage as "Information Assurance" and "Signals Intelligence." They are simultaneously a spy agency (in the SIGINT mission) and the government's security agency (in the INFOSEC mission.)
Right!?!? The agency most famous for stovepiping information so badly, and being so paranoid about security that they still to this day will not approve a reasonably priced MLS system to save their souls (or anyone elses). These folks could not come up with a credible plan to secure any system short of dropping it in the Marianas Trench.
Yeah, thats the way to securely share information (even among the intelligence agencies) and prevent a recurrence of 9/11. More of the same was really one main complaint ot the 9/11 commission by my read, and this is a perfect example of it.
If not, then you are kinda naive.
Maybe not every packet on every wire...but you can damn well bet that is their goal.
1984, 20 years late.....
One of the things he's not remembered for is his campaign to make American english more phonetic, or fonetic.
Here's the thing with spelling. It's composed of arbitrary convention. That's it. Some people, those who aren't spelling nazis, just can't bring themselves to care.