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NSA Tasked With 'Policing' Government Networks
Posted by
Zonk
on Sat Sep 22, 2007 04:19 AM
from the grid-overwatch-division dept.
from the grid-overwatch-division dept.
Novus Ordo Seclorum writes "The NSA has a new assignment. No longer merely responsible for signals intelligence, the NSA now has the task of defending against cyber attacks on government and private networks. 'The plan calls for the NSA to work with the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies to monitor such networks to prevent unauthorized intrusion, according to those with knowledge of what is known internally as the 'Cyber Initiative.' Details of the project are highly classified. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, a former NSA chief, is coordinating the initiative. It will be run by the Department of Homeland Security, which has primary responsibility for protecting domestic infrastructure, including the Internet, current and former officials said. At the outset, up to 2,000 people -- from the Department of Homeland Security, the NSA and other agencies -- could be assigned to the initiative, said a senior intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity.'"
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Firehose:NSA to Police Internet by Anonymous Coward
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Government Networks (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:Government Networks (Score:5, Funny)
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Seriously, most of the things you now think of as common computer security were either invented at or with funding from, the NSA.
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This new program is tasking
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Let me translate from Washington-ese for you:
"we now have 2000 poeple to make sure all government windows servers are patched".
If they even do that much I'll be impressed.
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You won't be impressed, though. You probably will not find out what it is they end up doing. This is the NSA, after all.
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But there are a lot of things where you need access to the outside world, one way or another. (Thin
DHS,FBI,NSA... (Score:4, Insightful)
not to mention the litteny of local and state police departments.
Depends on what you mean (Score:5, Informative)
The reason to have these separate is in part because it is very different kind of jobs, but also to try and prevent abuses. In theory (though we've seen that it isn't obeyed) the CIA and NSA don't do domestic operations. They are for spying on foreign powers, not US citizens. By maintaining an organizational divide it helps keep abuses down.
The DHS is a good idea at the high levels in an amazingly fucked up and retarded implementation. The idea is that the NSA and CIA often know things that the FBI doesn't, and vice versa. This is not to mention other intelligence agencies and so on. So often, everyone has a piece of the picture, but nobody can see the whole thing. This was the case with the time leading up to 9/11. Various groups knew pieces, but nothing solid. So the idea is DHS helps get the information collected and formed in to a solid picture. They get facts from all groups, NSA, CIA, FBI, customs, state and local cops and so on, and to then be able to coordinate action.
In reality they are a big waste of time and money that does nothing useful.
But really we want intelligence and police to be separate and we also want the police broken down in terms of power. Having one big federal police force would be problematic. At least with local policing voters can, in theory, hold their police more accountable. They have a say in how local issues are handled. Also, laws differ from state to state. What is true in one state is not true in all of them. Law enforcement needs to be segmented to take that in to account.
As a comparison look to Europe. There you are talking about an area of similar size and population (similar as in the same basic level, not as in equality). While there are European wide things like Interpol, each nation has it's own police, and often subdivisions below that. Also those police forces are usually separate from intelligence forces.
The US really isn't different in that regard, it is just a very large nation. A great many nations are smaller than a number of US states.
Re:Depends on what you mean (Score:5, Informative)
The NSA also has the task of assisting American businesses in avoiding economic espionage. They publish specifications such as TEMPEST shielding and red-black separation which are distributed to (worthy) members of the civilian community. Though the NSA often has the reputation of being the most secret of all federal agencies, they are remarkably open in some aspects. See James Bamford's Body of Secrets [amazon.com] for a good view of how the NSA changed a great deal in the aftermath of the Cold War.
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Kinda like the average network administrator.
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Except of course when the ATF (Treasury Department), Secret Service(DHS), DEA (Justice Department), etc, etc, etc is the federal police department.
***What that means is the CIA is all
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They all need one wiretap. Re:DHS,FBI,NSA... (Score:2)
DHS is going to "monitor" your local government network. Bin Laden is a bogeyman, the goal is Total Information Awareness. They already have taps on domestic phone and internet, now they will get their taps into local networks. This is just another turn
"on government and private networks. " (Score:2)
Does this mean that DHS and the NSA will 'police' my private network?...Cool!!
But I have to ask, does it run on Linux...natively?
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Depends (Score:2)
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One agency? (Score:2)
ohh yeah (Score:2)
Well, if it's highly classified, then we can ount on the fact that it's money well spent
(/sarcasm)
As long as the scope is minimal... (Score:2)
Sigh. I wish for better days.
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NSA hardened Linux... (Score:3, Informative)
Let's hope they start deploying it more widely...
Re:NSA hardened Linux... (Score:4, Insightful)
SELinux is not a distribution, it's a security module in the kernel. These days it's part of the standard kernel.org tree, and some distributions (such as Fedora/RHEL) enable it by default.
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Or, better yet, you can get Solaris 10, add in Trusted E
Setec Astronomy (Score:2, Funny)
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See, you're confusing NSA and CIA again.
Hrmmm... (Score:2, Interesting)
It seems that this has happened before in history -- where you give one (or more) "secret police" power over everyone with no true checks and balances. From my understanding (wh
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Because you're an idiot?
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Ok, maybe not retarded, but deffinitely brainwashed past the point of logical thought when it comes to anything government related. You've now got
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How this Will Be Implemented (Score:3, Funny)
Coming soon to a network near you - NortonNSA!
Is this really news? (Score:2, Informative)
Not a chance (Score:2)
It will actually turn out be yet another way of snooping in on citizens without needing to get judicial permission first. I'm sure the RIAA will get involved too so the whole thing will be mostly twisted int
At least they're using their tech to better use (Score:2)
On second thought... (Score:2)
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I fear however with this administration that information gathered may find its way into some metadatabase where ID'ing people is standard.
Fears about this administration means you haven't studied US history too much.
As Thomas Jeffers
This might actually work. (Score:5, Insightful)
This actually makes some sense. NSA has two main divisions - Signals Intelligence, which collects information, and Information Assurance, which tries to protect US information. Traditionally, these were the codebreaking and codemaking sides of the agency.
It's a boost for NSA Secure Linux. The real intent of NSA Secure Linux, by the way, was not to plug holes in Linux. It was to get something that enforced mandatory security out into the community, so that that applications would be converted to run under stricter rules. For example, a browser should be running as several components, some of which are secure but dumb and some of which are insecure but untrusted. Few application developers picked up on this. That part didn't get enough community attention.
NSA takes a quite different view of computer security than the "security industry". They're less concerned about annoying high volume attacks, and more concerned about quiet, focused attacks aimed at specific targets. They're also very interested in who's behind the attack, and will devote collection resources to finding out more about the attackers.
This last may give some attackers something to worry about.
In other news from 1952, Eisenhower Elected (Score:2)
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Sure it will be efficient; just use an RFC 3514 Network IDS.
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America's got nothing on us, don't worry, I'm leaving my school ASAP, in
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Re:Bound to make the next issue of the 360is quart (Score:3, Insightful)