Deliberation of "National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace"

An anonymous reader writes "Per the Federal Register the National Infastructure Advisory Council will have a public meeting (telephonically) from 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm EST on 1/8/2003 to deliberate on the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace. 'Written comments may be submitted at any time before or after the meeting.' Details can be found in text format or in PDF."

How much?

[iopha]

Yes, but how much does it cost for someone to actually read my proposal and take it seriously? iopha

Re:Securing Cyberspace

[ChrisHanel]

Someday the government is going to have to figure out that the Internet is like the oceans - it's VERY hard to sit out in the vast expanse and try to draw chalklines. :)

Re:Keep yer cool

[XaXXon]

Jesus christ, people..

This is the second anti-RMS comment I've had to respond to in the past couple hours (first one [slashdot.org]).

What the heck does this have to do with RMS? RMS talks about freedom of software. This isn't even related to him in the slightest.

If you read the article, you'd see that the National Infrastructure Advisory Council "advises the President of the United States on the
security of information systems for critical infrastructure supporting
other sectors of the economy, including banking and finance, transportation, energy, manufacturing, and emergency government
services." And while RMS might have feelings about this, software Freedom doesn't come in to play.

I really wish bashing RMS wasn't so trendy on /. these days.

*Ahem*

[Anonymous Coward]

Attention American Government Officials:

The internet is not on American soil and will never belong to any goverment, neither will you ever have the jurisdiction to secure it.

Trying to Secure the internet is futile. The internet was never created to be regulated or controlled rather, allowed to evolve free of the contraints of the non-virtual world.

So... I suggest the following.

1 - Remove your heads from your asses.
2 - Concentrate on your own Nation's concerns, like the economy, and social issues.
3 - Stop invading not only your own citizen privacy but the rest of the worlds.

Thankyou for your time.

Isnt this plan an impossible boondoggle?

[rufusdufus]

My understanding is that what they want to do is require or ISPs to monitor all users and give all information to the goverment.

Isnt this basically impossible? First off, the bandwidth requirements alone would make the process unfeasable. The whole reason the internet is a called a network and not a bus is that the information is distributed. This distribution is what makes the internet possible. Funneling all the information into centralized locations would violate the network topology.

Next, many ISPs are not registered or licenced to be ISPs. What defines an ISP? Does my wi-fi count? Policing this would a complete farce, especially with freedom advocates taking every opportunity to bypass and befuddle the law.

Next, any terrorists/criminal would start using (if they are not already using) at least simple encryption which would not generally be detectible by monitoring bots. The amount of effort to avoid even the most sophisticated monitoring would be quite small.

Also, if all this data were stored up in some central location, wouldnt that be the best place for hackers to crack to get vast amounts of info? Has anyone ever made an uncrackable system connected to the public networks?

To secure the national infrastructure...

[dillon_rinker]

...it is first necessary to secure the operating system that most frequently is connected to it, ie Windows. There's little point in securing every non-Windows server (or even every server, Windows or not) if an insecure client platform (read: Windows + IE + Outlook) permits a small group of individuals to own enough client PCs to DOS the root servers. Or the 50 largest e-commerce sites. Or the most popular intercontinental routers. This is feasible NOW; all it needs is a determined, intelligent adversary (China, perhaps?). Even scarier is the possibility that there will be intelligent use of DOS attacks (hijacking of presumed secure connections, perhaps), but I'd rather not consider that while sober.

mirror

[risk-dev]

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

Bureau of Industry and Security

National Infrastructure Advisory Council; Notice of Open Meeting

The National Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIAC) will meet on
Wednesday, January 8, 2003, from 3 p.m. until 5 p.m. EST. The meeting,
which will be held telephonically, will be open to the public. Members
of the public interested in attending by telephone should call (toll
free) 1-899-7785 or (toll) 1-913-312-4169 and, when prompted, enter
pass code 1468517.
The Council advises the President of the United States on the
security of information systems for critical infrastructure supporting
other sectors of the economy, including banking and finance,
transportation, energy, manufacturing, and emergency government
services. At this meeting, the Council will continue its deliberations
on comments to be delivered to President Bush concerning the draft
National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace.

Agenda

I. Opening of meeting and roll call: John Tritak, Director, Critical
Infrastructure Assurance Office/Designated Federal Officer, NIAC
II. Opening remarks: Richard Clarke, Special Advisor to the President
for Cyperspace Security/Executive Director, NIAC; Richard Davidson,
Chairman, NIAC; and John Chambers, Vice Chairman, NIAC
III. Presentation of draft Comments document: Mr. Davidson
IV. Discussion and adoption of Comments: NIAC Members
V. Discussion of next steps/timeline for publication and delivery of
document: NIAC Members
VI. Adjournment

Written comments may be submitted at any time before or after the
meeting. However, to facilitate distribution of public presentation
materials to Council members, the Council suggests that presenters
forward the public presentation materials, ten days prior to the
meeting date, to the following address: Ms. Wanda Rose, Critical
Infrastructure Assurance Office, Bureau of Industry and Security, U.S.
Department of Commerce, Room 6095, 14th Street & Constitution Avenue,
NW., Washington, DC 20230.
For more information contact Wanda Rose on [phone].

Dated: December 19, 2002.
Eric T. Werner,
Council Liaison Officer.
[FR Doc. 02-32435 Filed 12-23-02; 8:45 am]

Anyone planning on recording this?

[MyDixieWrecked]

For the few (many?) of us that dont have free time during those hours to listen in?

Should be simple enough with some simple serial software, a modem, and some low-end sound recording software?

yes/no? =)

Re:Isnt this plan an impossible boondoggle?

[aerojad]

I believe Yahoo, back in the 'net boom days, declared itself unhackable, about a week before it was knocked offline for a few hours from a DoS attack.

And by the way, what would happen if you DoS attacked this central uber server? If all traffic is routed through it, wouldn't that in theory turn the internet, or at least the portion controled (having traffic flow through it) by it, turn off?

Re:opinions:

[DarwinDan]

How unfortunately true...I don't know about the rest of the civilized world, but nowhere else is it this easy -- let alone possible -- to donate large sums of money to a politician and literally buy a law or other protection (like that smallpox company [cbsnews.com]). Woe is democracy...

Re:You missed the point

[LWolenczak]

I agree with you, and you kind of understand my point. My point really is, and i'm guessing i'm asking a lot of slashdot readers to try and figure it out, is that the internet, is only logically, only as secure as the local telco phone switch.

Backbone providers in some cases have their own fiber, but most of the time, it's the telco that has the fiber, because it was cheap for them to put it in (goverment paid for it to be put in).

In all honesty, your ranting is not what is necessary to convince members of our goverment, nor is stats of the past. What is needed is a convincing, why/why not argument. Reality is, that what is needed is that we need to reform things from inside the goverment outward, so what we must do is direct this agency to the reality, and try to convince them that they can't really do anything for the private sector, but they have things that they can do for the goverment, that will filter into the private sector and encourage good, responsable behaviour regarding technology.

Freedom and Safety

[valisk]

'They that can give up essential Liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety.'

Benjamin franklin.

I admire and respect the US founding fathers, something not many Englishmen will admit to, they stood for something above the petty power politics and bowing down before powerful men.
Looks like your current President and his administration have forgotten if indeed they ever understood how important those principals are.

If it was China

[TXH-88]

I think it's funny (and a bit scary) how if it was China that were enacting these measures America would be all over it and point out their stifling of freedom. However, there's not a word to be heard in the media when it's America doing it. So much for the free press.