-Caveat Lector-
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/4779109.htm
Posted on Thu, Dec. 19, 2002
Bush to propose requiring ISPs to monitor Net
By John Markoff and John Schwartz
New York Times
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, 2001, 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 such as 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 such as America 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 ISPs, 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.
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 Thursday that the proposal,
which includes a national network operations center, was still in flux.
She said the proposed methods do 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, 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 FBI, 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.''
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