Slashdot Mirror
White House Declassifies Outline of Cybersecurity Plans
An anonymous reader writes "The Obama administration on Tuesday declassified part of the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative created during the Bush administration, outlining offensive and defensive strategies for protecting information networks. The initiative was originally intended to unify efforts of a number of government agencies into a comprehensive strategy to protect the nation's computer networks. 'One area in which the government did officially disclose new details was Einstein 3, a program to protect civilian government systems from intrusion by deploying sensors on the networks of private telecommunications companies. For the first time, the government disclosed officially that the program would use technology developed by the NSA, the nation's largest intelligence agency. It also said that the Department of Homeland Security, which would run the program, would share malicious code data with the NSA but not the content of communications, such as e-mails.'"
Reminiscent of the cold war days.
The trouble is, that while the threats are real, this isn't an XOR situation.
It is, simultaneously the case that team china loves their espionage and the case that every creepy fossil in the military-industrial complex smells profit and power.
I, for one, find phrases like "More specifically, we need to re-engineer the Internet to make attribution, geo-location, intelligence analysis and impact assessment — who did it, from where, why and what was the result — more manageable." coming out of the mouths of guys like Michael McConnell(formerly director of National Intelligence, now revolving doored to a position with Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the major clandestine contractor outfits) deeply unnerving, no matter how scary the terrifying chinaman menace may be.
Even if it did solve the espionage problem, which is by no means certain, having an internet arranged for the convenience of the NSA and the profit of its contractors would just plain suck.