US drafting plan for Internet monitoring system (from NYT)



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## author     : declan@well.com
## date       : 28.07.99
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http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/07/biztech/articles/28compute.html

July 28, 1999

U.S. Drafting Plan for Computer
Monitoring System

By JOHN MARKOFF

The Clinton Administration has developed a plan for an
extensive computer monitoring system, overseen by the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, to protect the nation's
crucial data networks from intruders.

[...]

The plan calls for the creation of a Federal Intrusion
Detection Network, or Fidnet, and specifies that the data it
collects will be gathered at the National Infrastructure
Protection Center, an interagency task force housed at the
Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Such a system, to be put fully in place by 2003, is meant to
permit Government security experts to track "patterns of
patterns" of information and respond in a coordinated manner
against intruders and terrorists.

The plan focuses on monitoring data flowing over Government
and national computer networks. That means the systems would
potentially have access to computer-to-computer
communications like electronic mail and other documents,
computer programs and remote log-ins.

But an increasing percentage of network traffic, like
banking and financial information, is routinely encrypted
and would not be visible to the monitor software. Government
officials argue that they are not interested in
eavesdropping, but rather are looking for patterns of
behavior that suggest illegal activity.

[...]




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