Slashdot Mirror
NSA Tasked With 'Policing' Government Networks
Novus Ordo Seclorum writes "The NSA has a new assignment. No longer merely responsible for signals intelligence, the NSA now has the task of defending against cyber attacks on government and private networks. 'The plan calls for the NSA to work with the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies to monitor such networks to prevent unauthorized intrusion, according to those with knowledge of what is known internally as the 'Cyber Initiative.' Details of the project are highly classified. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, a former NSA chief, is coordinating the initiative. It will be run by the Department of Homeland Security, which has primary responsibility for protecting domestic infrastructure, including the Internet, current and former officials said. At the outset, up to 2,000 people -- from the Department of Homeland Security, the NSA and other agencies -- could be assigned to the initiative, said a senior intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity.'"
This story is bound to make the next issue of the 360is quaterly bulletin "Executive Intelligence". AG
The FBI is the only police department, at least at this point. The FBI is the federal government's police. Most policing is done at the city or county level, some at the state level. However for crimes that span states, crimes on federal land/property, crimes against the federal government and so on there is the federal police, the FBI. The NSA and CIA are not police agencies, they are spy agencies. The CIA is human intelligence, the NSA is signals intelligence. What that means is the CIA is all about getting information from people, be it by attempting to place spys or turning other agents or whatever. The NSA is all about getting information electronically, by wiretapping, listening in on radio waves, and so on.
The reason to have these separate is in part because it is very different kind of jobs, but also to try and prevent abuses. In theory (though we've seen that it isn't obeyed) the CIA and NSA don't do domestic operations. They are for spying on foreign powers, not US citizens. By maintaining an organizational divide it helps keep abuses down.
The DHS is a good idea at the high levels in an amazingly fucked up and retarded implementation. The idea is that the NSA and CIA often know things that the FBI doesn't, and vice versa. This is not to mention other intelligence agencies and so on. So often, everyone has a piece of the picture, but nobody can see the whole thing. This was the case with the time leading up to 9/11. Various groups knew pieces, but nothing solid. So the idea is DHS helps get the information collected and formed in to a solid picture. They get facts from all groups, NSA, CIA, FBI, customs, state and local cops and so on, and to then be able to coordinate action.
In reality they are a big waste of time and money that does nothing useful.
But really we want intelligence and police to be separate and we also want the police broken down in terms of power. Having one big federal police force would be problematic. At least with local policing voters can, in theory, hold their police more accountable. They have a say in how local issues are handled. Also, laws differ from state to state. What is true in one state is not true in all of them. Law enforcement needs to be segmented to take that in to account.
As a comparison look to Europe. There you are talking about an area of similar size and population (similar as in the same basic level, not as in equality). While there are European wide things like Interpol, each nation has it's own police, and often subdivisions below that. Also those police forces are usually separate from intelligence forces.
The US really isn't different in that regard, it is just a very large nation. A great many nations are smaller than a number of US states.
The NSA has their own Linux distro, specially hardened for security.
:-)
Let's hope they start deploying it more widely...
No sig today...
I know NSA is the bad guy of the week, but this doesn't really sound like a "new responsibility" to me. NSA has, almost from the beginning, been composed of the Signals Intelligence and the Information Assurance Directorate, which does exactly what this article is talking about, and has for quite some time now.
The important government networks are on their own network, though there's some evidence that there are a few improper bridges between the two networks. The NSA has, in the past, been tasked with guarding these private networks.
This new program is tasking the NSA to also guard important public networks.
My suspicion is that this is providing funding and regulations for a task the NSA was already falling into doing. There have been some rumors going around about the NSA dropping support for SELinux because they do the bulk of the work, but that's not really their job.
Actually, there's a good chance that you will. I suspect that we'll see a resurgence of the NSA Security Configuration Guides (which already have seen a little bit of a spike in the last couple of months) as this spreads out, including information on how to pick firewalls and IDS, additional information about securing a DMZ and even when to use them, and further recommendations on how to lock down clients. Microsoft has picked up some of the heavy lifting when it comes to the major portions, as its security guides for Windows 2003 and Vista are considered acceptable to the NSA, and the follow-up for Windows 2008 will probably be similarly considered good enough. But there are still topics that are not dealt with as well (or at least as concisely) by other vendors, and as such, the NSA will probably help to pick up the slack.
If nothing else, the documents provide valuable positive public relations, and (all pseudo-conspiratorial snickering aside) are widely considered to be very well-written documents that can and often do serve as the security base for many network environments.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.