Fergie's Tech Blog

U.S. To Pitch 'Phase One' of Net Monitoring Plan at RSA - UPDATE

Ryan Singel writes on Threat Level:

Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff is traveling Tuesday to the [RSA] conference to pitch a program the Bush administration calls the Cyber Initiative. Slated for $154 million in funding this year, the plan would put the National Security Agency and DHS in charge of cybersecurity for all federal government agencies.

That would mean that the nation's spies -- who began secretly targeting Americans since shortly after 9/11 -- will be monitoring when Americans visit the IRS or the Social Security Administration online.

This would mark a significant change in the NSA's defensive responsibilities, which have historically been limited to locking down military and classified networks and providing encryption technologies to soldiers and statesmen. Given that the federal government policy largely forbids even the use of cookies on government websites, that's a sea change in how the government monitors Americans' online interactions with the federal government.

posted by Fergie @ 4/08/2008 12:14:00 PM