US Plans Cyber Shield For Private Companies and Utilities

wiggles writes "The federal government is launching an expansive program dubbed 'Perfect Citizen' to detect cyber assaults on private companies and government agencies running such critical infrastructure as the electricity grid and nuclear-power plants, according to people familiar with the program. The surveillance by the National Security Agency, the government's chief eavesdropping agency, would rely on a set of sensors deployed in computer networks for critical infrastructure that would be triggered by unusual activity suggesting an impending cyber attack, though it wouldn't persistently monitor the whole system, these people said. How do we feel about NSA spyware in all of our infrastructure?"

Comments

Re:Surveillance

[rotide]

I'm no tinfoilhatter (see my post history) and I can easily state that the government does and has been monitoring communications of citizens since before the PATRIOT Act.

Google any of the following:
Project Echelon
FBI Carnivore
FBI NarusInsight

This isn't fear mongering against the government. Those are actual programs/projects the government uses to watch those they want to watch. Actively, passively, whatever it is it doesn't change the fact that the government has the means and the will to watch those it finds worth watching.

Now, to think that the new system will watch international connections only is short sighted. All you have to do is argue that an "enemy" could bounce through an internal (to the US) proxy and the government would have wholesale reason to peek at _every_ connection, foreign or domestic.