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New Bill Would Put DHS In Charge of 'Critical' Private Networks

Posted by Soulskill on from the too-big-to-404 dept.

GovTechGuy writes "A new bill unveiled Wednesday by House Homeland Security chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) would give the Department of Homeland Security the authority to enforce federal cybersecurity standards on private sector companies deemed critical to national security. The Homeland Security Cyber and Physical Infrastructure Protection Act of 2010 authorizes DHS to establish and enforce risk and performance-based cybersecurity standards on federal agencies and private sector companies considered part of the country's critical infrastructure. Such firms include utilities, communications providers and financial institutions."

6 of 193 comments (clear)

  1. What's the alternative by jeffmeden · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Considering how much a lot of those companies rely on their network infrastructure, if there isn't a provision for this then perhaps the alternative is to be prepared to take over the whole organization if/when they are crippled by an attack. I am not one for heavy handed government but someone needs to light the fire under these guys.

    1. Re:What's the alternative by mcvos · · Score: 2, Interesting

      My first thought was: why does national security even rely on private networks? But if there's one thing that the mortgage crisis taught us, it's that quite a lot of our economy can be easily messed up by a handful of irresponsible banks. Of course the same is true for telecommunication companies and our communication infrastructure.

    2. Re:What's the alternative by FiloEleven · · Score: 2, Interesting

      No, if the banks had been allowed to fail we would have entered a new utopia where money doesn't matter and people's net worth was based on how much good they could do in the world. As such, the "richest" people would have been the best people, and they could use the resources at their disposal to bring about world peace, the end of hunger, and OMG ponies!

      See how easy it is to make unsupported counterfactual arguments?

      --
      Your brain is not a computer.
  2. Pirates, not terrorists, are probably first by elrous0 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Why do I have a sneaking suspicion that this law will be applied WAY more often to fight torrent sites than it will ever be used to fight actual terrorists?

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    1. Re:Pirates, not terrorists, are probably first by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Why do I have a sneaking suspicion that this law will be applied WAY more often to fight torrent sites than it will ever be used to fight actual terrorists?

      Torrent sites that aren't taken over by russian virus makers, where the files you download are guaranteed genuine and not cheap porn movies that have been renamed, certified safe by the government? Yeah, I'm all for that.

      --
      "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  3. NSA should have this jurisdiction by MikeRT · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If anyone is going to do this, it should be the NSA, not DHS. Why, you ask, would I trust a military agency over DHS?

    1) The NSA is regulated by DoD regulations which prevent it from working as a domestic law enforcement agency.

    2) The NSA can very rarely share information with law enforcement because its methods are not legally admissible in most court cases (and they're not supposed to be, since the NSA's purpose is to support the military and operations abroad where civilian courts don't even have jurisdiction in many scenarios).

    3) The NSA actually knows what it's doing with its own infosec, unlike DHS.