Re: [A-List] US: The emerging centralized state

["Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

You ain't seen nothing yet!

Henry C.K. Liu

Sabri Oncu wrote:

> Do something about this Americans. It is getting worse.
>
> Sabri
>
> ++++++++++
>
> New York Times
>
> December 20, 2002
> Bush Administration to Propose System for Monitoring Internet
> By JOHN MARKOFF and JOHN SCHWARTZ
>
> The Bush administration is planning to propose requiring Internet
> service providers to help build a centralized system to enable
> broad monitoring of the Internet and, potentially, surveillance
> of its users.
>
> The proposal is part of a final version of a report, "The
> National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace," set for release early
> next year, according to several people who have been briefed on
> the report. It is a component of the effort to increase national
> security after the Sept. 11 attacks.
>
> The President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board is
> preparing the report, and it is intended to create public and
> private cooperation to regulate and defend the national computer
> networks, not only from everyday hazards like viruses but also
> from terrorist attack. Ultimately the report is intended to
> provide an Internet strategy for the new Department of Homeland
> Security.
>
> Such a proposal, which would be subject to Congressional and
> regulatory approval, would be a technical challenge because the
> Internet has thousands of independent service providers, from
> garage operations to giant corporations like American Online,
> AT&T, Microsoft and Worldcom.
>
> The report does not detail specific operational requirements,
> locations for the centralized system or costs, people who were
> briefed on the document said.
>
> While the proposal is meant to gauge the overall state of the
> worldwide network, some officials of Internet companies who have
> been briefed on the proposal say they worry that such a system
> could be used to cross the indistinct border between broad
> monitoring and wiretap.
>
> Stewart Baker, a Washington lawyer who represents some of the
> nation's largest Internet providers, said, "Internet service
> providers are concerned about the privacy implications of this as
> well as liability," since providing access to live feeds of
> network activity could be interpreted as a wiretap or as the "pen
> register" and "trap and trace" systems used on phones without a
> judicial order.
>
> Mr. Baker said the issue would need to be resolved before the
> proposal could move forward.
>
> Tiffany Olson, the deputy chief of staff for the President's
> Critical Infrastructure Protection Board, said yesterday that the
> proposal, which includes a national network operations center,
> was still in flux. She said the proposed methods did not
> necessarily require gathering data that would allow monitoring at
> an individual user level.
>
> But the need for a large-scale operations center is real, Ms.
> Olson said, because Internet service providers and security
> companies and other online companies only have a view of the part
> of the Internet that is under their control.
>
> "We don't have anybody that is able to look at the entire
> picture," she said. "When something is happening, we don't know
> it's happening until it's too late."
>
> The government report was first released in draft form in
> September, and described the monitoring center, but it suggested
> it would likely be controlled by industry. The current draft sets
> the stage for the government to have a leadership role.
>
> The new proposal is labeled in the report as an "early-warning
> center" that the board says is required to offer early detection
> of Internet-based attacks as well as defense against viruses and
> worms.
>
> But Internet service providers argue that its data-monitoring
> functions could be used to track the activities of individuals
> using the network.
>
> An official with a major data services company who has been
> briefed on several aspects of the government's plans said it was
> hard to see how such capabilities could be provided to government
> without the potential for real-time monitoring, even of
> individuals.
>
> "Part of monitoring the Internet and doing real-time analysis is
> to be able to track incidents while they are occurring," the
> official said.
>
> The official compared the system to Carnivore, the Internet
> wiretap system used by the F.B.I., saying: "Am I analogizing this
> to Carnivore? Absolutely. But in fact, it's 10 times worse.
> Carnivore was working on much smaller feeds and could not scale.
> This is looking at the whole Internet."
>
> One former federal Internet security official cautioned against
> drawing conclusions from the information that is available so far
> about the Securing Cyberspace report's conclusions.
>
> Michael Vatis, the founding director of the National Critical
> Infrastructure Protection Center and now the director of the
> Institute for Security Technology Studies at Dartmouth, said it
> was common for proposals to be cast in the worst possible light
> before anything is actually known about the technology that will
> be used or the legal framework within which it will function.
>
> "You get a firestorm created before anybody knows what,
> concretely, is being proposed," Mr. Vatis said.
>
> A technology that is deployed without the proper legal controls
> "could be used to violate privacy," he said, and should be
> considered carefully.
>
> But at the other end of the spectrum of reaction, Mr. Vatis
> warned, "You end up without technology that could be very useful
> to combat terrorism, information warfare or some other harmful
> act."
>
> Article at:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/20/technology/20MONI.html