Proposed Internet Monitoring Center Worries Industry
The White House is proposing an Internet-wide monitoring center to detect and defend against major cyber-attacks, but the Bush administration sought Friday to ease worries it might scrutinize individual users’ e-mail along with other data traffic.
Some Internet industry executives and lawyers said they would raise civil liberties concerns if the U.S. government, not an industry consortium, operated such a powerful monitoring center. The proposal would require congressional approval.
Under federal wiretap laws, privately operated centers can in some circumstances analyze e-mail and other data flowing across parts of the Internet without approval from a judge.
President Bush’s top cyberspace advisor, Richard Clarke, on Friday strongly disputed concerns about government broadly eavesdropping on citizen e-mail. Clarke wrote there was “nothing ... which in any way suggests or proposes a government system that could extend to monitoring individuals’ e-mails.”
Clarke sent the letter to Harris Miller, the head of a prominent trade group, the Information Technology Assn. of America. He said the White House plan “articulates a strong policy of protecting citizens’ privacy in cyberspace.”
The industry’s fears appeared to stem from a subtle change between an earlier proposal and one currently circulated within the administration as part of its forthcoming “National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace,” set for release early next year.
The latest draft, parts of which were obtained by Associated Press, envisions a monitoring center to “analyze and exchange data about attacks that could prevent exploits from escalating and causing damage or disruption of vital systems.”
It said the center “could be operated by the private sector but could share information with the federal government through the Department of Homeland Security.”
The administration’s earlier proposal, released in September as a draft for public comment, said explicitly that such a monitoring center “would not be a government entity and would be managed by a private board.”
A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Friday that the administration still envisions that any such monitoring operation would be run by the private sector.
“The latest proposal seems to make this more aggressive, put the government in charge of it,” said Stewart Baker, a Washington lawyer who represents the U.S. Internet Service Provider Assn.
A spokesman for the new Department of Homeland Security, Brian Roehrkasse, said Friday there was no proposal that would call for monitoring e-mail and other data traffic of Internet users.
Roehrkasse said he could not describe proposals that have not been publicly announced, such as whether the monitoring center should be operated by industry or government.
