Feds have Privacy Fears about Monitoring Program

Since hackers intruded Pentagon servers in June 2007, stealing untold volumes of sensitive and secret data, the Bush administration has resolved to close all gaps within government's cyber security. However, administrative officials in front of a congressional committee on February 28, 2008 revealed little that reduced concerns about the cost, effectiveness or intrusiveness of their program for monitoring programs they're building.

During the Congress' first discussion over the new program, called Presidential Directive 54 in front of the House's Committee on Homeland Security, Republican, Jane Harman of D-Calif., presented the argument. Harman said that all work related to the initiative for the purpose of detecting electronic threats and safeguarding US citizens against cyber espionage and attacks is progressing extremely slowly and it is highly focused on responding to threats instead of preventing the damage, as reported by Forbes on February 28, 2008.

The unclassified sections of the project, called the "cyber initiative", concentrate on effectively bringing down the number of online connections that join networks of the federal agency with the Internet. They also focus on closely regulating those networks for any malicious activity.

However, officials at the administration have not specified to what extent the monitoring would take place and whether there would be oversight of networks under operation of state, private sector, and local entities as well as contractors for government defense.

Republican, Bob Etheridge (D-N.C.) said that he is perturbed about the impact of the program on his constituents' privacy. But Director of the Technology wing of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (a think tank based in Washington), Jim Lewis, said that the concerns about the privacy are premature and exaggerated, as reported by washingtonpost on February 28, 2008.

Lewis said that tapping and reading e-mail is wide apart from reacting to traffic that suspiciously travel across the network.

Robert Jamison, Undersecretary of DHS, said that the early focus of the initiative will be to bring the government networks under strong intrusion-detection management, as reported by Forbes on February 28, 2008. Jamison also added that the DHS is very serious about the privacy and it is reviewing the system from legal standpoint.

Related article: FTC Reaches Million-Dollar Settlement For Spyware

» SPAMfighter News - 3/6/2008