Lawmaker Proposes Cyberthreat Sharing Group

alphadogg writes "A proposal in the House of Representatives would set up a new semi-independent organization allowing the U.S. government and private companies to share information about cyberthreats, but some critics questioned whether the group would be too removed from congressional scrutiny. The draft proposal (PDF), from Representative Dan Lungren, a California Republican, would create a nonprofit National Information Sharing Organization (NISO) that would serve as the collection and distribution point for cyberthreat information shared among the federal government, state and local governments, private companies and education institutions. NISO would also fund cybersecurity research and development."

Comments

Re:congressional scrutiny

[Ethanol-fueled]

That's what I wondered. We already have have Fusion Centers that are information hubs for Local, State, and Federal law enforcement. We already have "community outreach" urban snitch partrols sponsored by the police and FBI. We already have private security and P.I.-types doing the "intelligence gathering" and fishing expeditions and typical law enforcement can't get away with doing(yet).

My best guess is that it's all bullshit to take that 15% DHS funding and funnel it directly into the private members. From the article:

The proposal is a "positive step" toward a national cybersecurity policy, said Cheri McGuire, vice president of global government affairs and cybersecurity policy at Symantec.

There you go.

Silly noob, welcome to our world.

[subreality]

We've had CERT for a long time.

Ok, this looks alright

[Baloroth]

Well, this was supposed to be an angry rant about government forming yet another stupid and unnecessary organization, probably designed to crack down on copyright all in the name of "protect the children". Then I read the draft (or, rather skimmed a large part of it), and it actually seems focused an preventing wide-scale attacks on infrastructure and creation of more secure Internet protocols. Seems... alright, although this is, of course, just a draft. Also, it'll never live up to it's promises, but hey, I suppose trying to secure the nation against computer-based attack is laudable.

It's probably still stupid and redundant, but at least it seems redundant in the right direction, anyways.