New Bill Could Shift Federal Cybersecurity Work From DHS To White House

CNet reports on legislation currently being drafted that would transfer federal cybersecurity responsibilities away from the Department of Homeland Security. Instead, they would fall under the authority of the Executive Office of the President, creating an Office of the National Cybersecurity Advisor. A tech commission recommended relieving the DHS of cybersecurity responsibilities late last year, saying it simply wasn't prepared to deal with organized online threats. More recently, the director of the DHS's National Cybersecurity Center resigned, citing interference from the NSA. The new legislation would "put the White House National Cybersecurity Advisor in charge of coordinating cyber efforts within the intelligence community and within civilian agencies, as well as coordinating the public sector's cooperation with the private sector. The advisor would have the authority to disconnect from the Internet any federal infrastructure networks — or other networks deemed to be 'critical' — if found to be at risk of a cyberattack. The private sector will certainly speak out if this provision is included in the final draft of the bill, a representative of the technology industry who spoke on condition of anonymity said."

Comments

Microsoft won't be pleased

[Anonymous Coward]

"The adviser would have the authority to disconnect from the Internet any federal infrastructure networks -- or other networks deemed to be 'critical' -- if found to be at risk of a cyberattack."

Re:Multiple fearmongers?

[AliasMarlowe]

Something tells me that the DHS "Ministry of Love" will not lose all of its capability in cybersecurity scaremongering and related sabotage of citizen's rights. Instead, the White House will just have a "Ministry of Truth" spreading its own brand of FUD and fostering oppression of legitimate activities. Expect considerable inconsistency between the two, possibly including persecution competitions: "we're tougher than them" and suchlike.

Executive branch

[eples]

Isn't the DHS within the Executive branch anyway? They do what the President tells them. What difference does it make if it's physically there inside the white house.

Re:Not really.

[WindowlessView]

everyone major three letter government agency has their own 'cyber taskforce

This is first and foremost a turf war over a potentially huge budget. Broadly speaking the battles are between civilian and military agencies but an incredible amount of infighting is being waged within each group.

It's not clear what the White House is thinking here. I rather doubt it is a naked power grab. More likely they are looking either to (a) park this in the White House until things shake out and calm down or (b) are looking to set up something akin to the National Security Council framework to oversee things.

Re:Abolish DHS

[Antique Geekmeister]

I'd support dropping DHS as a ludicrous "master agency" whose proposed components correctly ignored it. But who will handle cyber security, which is in fact a large and growing problem.

FBI? Not competent, and can't deal with international issues.

CIA? Also not competent, and can't legally deal with national issues.

NSA? They have the technical expertise, but no political sense. They're far, far, far too criminal, and primarily takes in information: they seem congenitally handicapped from giving out necessary or truthful information. (See their Clipper Chip and Skipjack fiascos, that "so complicated no one can be bothered with it" nightmare known as SELinux, their warrent-free tapping of the AT&T backbones with fiber-optic splitters and secret rooms, and numerous misadventures for the last 30 years.)

Secret Service? Less competent than the CIA, despite their existing role in handling wire fraud, which they do very badly.

DIA? Apparently competent, but _not_ legally equipped to deal with civilians.

The result is that there is no agency with the legal support and the technical capability to deal with this mess, especially since so much of it is the fault of the federal government for their history of insane policies on encryption and authentication technologies for public use. (Do you low-numbered Slashdot users remember Phil Zimmerman's PGP legal problemas, and having to sign multiple documents to get DES enabled versions of operating systems, and the craziness of 80-bit SSL keys?)

Re:Multiple fearmongers?

[BrokenHalo]

I don't have any conviction one way or another, but saying that the DHS "isn't prepared to deal with organized online threats" doesn't provide a convincing rationale for having the similarly unqualified president's office take over the brief.

Re:Abolish DHS

[amck]

Bad understanding of the purpose of creating the DHS.

To the classic question "who watches the watchers" (and avoid your govt being overthrown and controlled by the intelligence agencies, pace Putin), the traditional answer is "each other". Create mutually antagonistic agencies, preferably in triplicate, fighting over turf, and reporting as high as possible up the chain of command. Eg. CIA, reporting to Defense, FBI reporting to Justice, Secret Service reporting to Treasury. All with overlapping responsibilities. As well as looking out for mistakes made by each other, should anyone try to subvert you, they will be ripped by the others,
and no one is indispensable, as a bad CIA can be punished by breaking it up / shrinking it, giving its turf to its competitors, and the prez can do so in the name of "efficiencies".

To see how this works, consider Nixon & Watergate: Nixons gang effectively subverting the rest of the government using cronies in the CIA. But they didn't
have control over the FBI which (through the Washington Post, and others), cleaned out the white house crooks.

The same methods are used not just in the US, but in Europe (eg MI5 / MI6 / Special Branch in the UK, etc) to avoid subversion.

Now, in this light, consider a White House under Rove & many of the old Nixon gang, "merging" all the agencies under one roof, the DHS. Including the old nemesis, the FBI ... Its a method of controlling the intelligence agencies under Bush, and avoiding the same fate as Nixon.

Now consider what happens under Obama.
The DHS will be quietly dismantled; every excuse to split power back up into different agencies will be taken.