[privacy] Dancing U.S. Spychief Wants to Tap Into Cyberspace

[Paul Ferguson]

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Siobhan Gorman (NSA Beat Reporter at The Baltimore Sun) writes
in The Wall Street Journal:

[snip]

Spychief Mike McConnell is drafting a plan to protect America’s
cyberspace that will raise privacy issues and make the current debate over
surveillance law look like “a walk in the park,” McConnell tells The
New Yorker in the issue set to hit newsstands Monday. “This is going to
be a goat rope on the Hill. My prediction is that we’re going to screw
around with this until something horrendous happens.”

At issue, McConnell acknowledges, is that in order to accomplish his plan,
the government must have the ability to read all the information crossing
the Internet in the United States in order to protect it from abuse.
Congressional aides tell The Journal that they, too, are also anticipating
a fight over civil liberties that will rival the battles over the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Part of the lawmakers’ ire, they have said, is the paltry information the
administration has provided. The cyberspace security initiative was first
reported in September by The Baltimore Sun, and some congressional aides
say that lawmakers have still learned more from the media than they did
from the few Top Secret briefings they have received hours before the
administration requested money in November to jump start the program.

[snip]

More:
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/01/13/dancing-spychief-wants-to-tap-into
- -cyberspace/

- - ferg

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--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawg(at)netzero.net
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/