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Potomac Crossings
--By George Mason
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Controlling the Internet
Tony Snow put the dilemma this way. The prosperity of the Clinton years has produced a side effect nobody expected.
It exposed the federal government as a creaky, lumbering irrelevance. Uncle Sam has no clue about the New Economy,
and most people have come to the conclusion that the federal government is hopelessly outgunned in its quest to
gum up the private sector. Capitalism moves too swiftly these days. The government is less a menace than it is
a museum piece.
Handed an opportunity, however, the government can strike back. A case in point: the early-February e-commerce
hack attack prompted President Clinton to convene a White House Summit on Internet Security, February 15th, and
Senator Orin Hatch (R-UT) to announce plans for Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Internet Vandalism.
In a similar fashion to the free market, the Internet represents the unbridled power of massive, spontaneous expressions
of public will. In his book VOTE.com (same title as his Website), Dick Morris discusses the various ways the government
will seek to limit and constrain that power.
The first attack is based on the assertion that government should censor the net in the name of public morals
and decency. It follows the strategy de jour of "defending our children." So far, the strategy has not
been overly successful. Why? The mechanisms to fight pedophiles and porn sites can just as easily be used to chill
free speech and political discussion. Any attack on some free speech is an attack on all free speech. The solution
to problems caused by free speech is more free speech. Anything else smacks of The Gulag.
The second prong of the attack is tax policy. If a need for government services is accepted, the need to fund it
becomes obvious. That which is now free should be taxed, their argument goes, so that the government can control
it. Once e-commerce has rules for any specific taxation, broader taxation is a threat and government power is established.
The third part of the attack is to seek to deny to the Internet the same free speech protections that are accorded
other forms of publication. Recent court decisions have advanced the peculiar concept that the First Amendment
applies to the spoken word but not to the same words when they are produced by a computer keyboard. The Federal
Election Commission (FEC) has drafted rules suggesting that individuals using their computers for political discussion
may be subject to regulation under political donation rules.
The standard default position of government with respect to the Net has been that the nation must be protected
from pedophiles, international terrorism and drug trafficking Therefore free speech and privacy considerations
must be held in abeyance. Now, thanks to the hacker attack of the second week of February, government has a new
reason to get involved - the protection of e-commerce. Their minions in the media have duly produced articles saying
the problems are so great that the nation needs to turn to the government for protection. In reply, Peter Solvik
of Cisco Systems urged " federal government priorities should be first to secure its own computer systems
and serve as a model."
What is the truth? Pending new discoveries about the story, a "denial-of-service" attack is an elementary
method in which the attacker cripples a network by flooding it with too much information at one time. During the
peak of the attack on Yahoo, for example, they were subjected to one gigabit of incoming data per second. The attacks
didn't attempt to gain core access nor was any proprietary information stolen. The source addresses were falsified
which basically hid the identities of the attackers. The methods used were simplistic and lacked any personal sophistication.
However, the attackers made extensive use of unsuspecting allied computers called zombies or attack drones. It
is suspected that many of the zombies were placed at high-bandwidth, low-security university networks.
The attacks did a major favor for the private sector by exposing weaknesses without doing major damage. In spite
of an annual $4.2 billion investment in security software, firewalls proved inadequate. Crisis response strategies
didn't work. Contingency plans were not in place. Redundant systems offering multiple ways to access the system
were too slow or non-existent. What was needed, but not widely available, was software that could identify messages
intended to overwhelm a site and divert or discard them before they create an overload. Digital Island, Inc., a
large company Web site host, announced that it has such software which can be employed immediately.
The Big Favor, however, was what the attacks did for the public sector. It got "air time" for a raft
of government programs designed to help. Some suggest, of course, that "government help" is an oxymoron.
Appearing before the appropriations sub-committee of Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH), Attorney General Janet Reno urged
Congress to approve $ 9 million in extra funding for the current fiscal year as a way to jump start increased requests
for the next fiscal budget. The FY2001 request is for an additional $2 billion to combat Cyber-Crime. About 72%
is for defense and intelligence budgets. Some $240 million is to assist telephone companies to rewire their networks
to ensure that police can wiretap more easily. In accompanying testimony, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
Director Louis Freeh repeated the view that encryption products in the hands of the citizenry posed a danger to
police who needed access and the ability to decode communications between individuals. The direction of the administration
programs was towards the creation of a cyber security czar to direct Federal Internet policy.
The Biggest Favor may yet prove to be shining the spotlight on existing and proposed programs to expand government
surveillance of the general citizenry. Their proposed solution of more money and greater police powers has yet
to be openly examined. Major federal programs already in place include:
FinCEN. The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is a global database processor of information supplied
to it by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA), the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and other government
agencies as needed. For almost all of the citizens of the United States, the G-7 industrialized countries and selected
developing nations, FinCEN provides access to all bank records, credit records, insurance records, medical records,
driving records, criminal records, census data and other personal records. It also performs real time analysis
of all electronic currency movement into and out of the United States.
ECHELON. Unlike many electronic spy systems, Echelon is likely designed primarily for non-military targets:
governments, organizations and businesses. Suggestions have been made that it has been used for business espionage
and the monitoring of political activists. Public hearings are coming in the Spring. Echolon is an automated global
interception and relay system operated by the intelligence agencies of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada,
Australia and New Zealand. It collects telephone, fax and Internet transmissions and passes them through a screen
that identifies pertinent information for further review by key word, name and address.
Trolling Programs. The FBI, through its Operation Innocent Images, tracks adults with a suspicious interest
in children. Part of their activity is to monitor Internet chat rooms and pose as a child. The Security and Exchange
Commission (SEC), Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have similar trolling
programs for the Internet to police their respective areas of authority.
Capitalizing on the hype of the hackers, the Clinton administration is pushing for the speedy adoption of several
new or stalled proposals to expand surveillance of domestic communications. Major efforts include:
FIDNET. The Federal Intrusion Detection Network would allow the FBI to internally monitor the flow of government
electronic data to help track down hackers. It proposes to include credit card records as well as telephone toll
records. It would monitor all Internet communications with the government, such as E-mail ending in "gov."
An E-mail inquiry about social security could put a person into the system. The stated goal is to extend the program
to private sector networks. Proposed FBI rules would mandate electronic "backdoors" to allow eavesdropping
on every home computer.
I3P. The Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection would support federal government research and
technology development for information infrastructure protection in areas where the market incentive is not sufficient.
It gives government an entrance to the private sector by creating a forum for public-private partnerships since
the vast majority of critical infrastructures are owned and operated by private industry.
CALEA. Currently undergoing a court challenge, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of
1994 requires the telecommunications industry to design its systems in compliance with FBI technical requirements
to facilitate electronic surveillance. Such a system would enable the tracking of the physical location of cellular
phones and monitoring of their use, including E-mail.
LawNet. An administration proposal, it would authorize coordinated enforcement and prosecutions around the
world.
RICO. In his testimony, Director Freeh called for putting suspected hackers under the provisions of the
Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations law. The RICO penalties of 20-life are not as significant as the
forfeiture provisions. Suspected parties are subject to property forfeiture prior to being found guilty of any
offense. Real, tangible and intangible property are all included.
Government proposals bring into play First and Fourth Amendment questions and cannot be adequately discussed in
a single column. The Clinton tactic of sowing lots of little seeds that blossom later makes a focused discussion
difficult to nearly impossible.
In today's world, the threat to privacy isn't always just from the public sector. Sometimes, the government can
sit and wait for the market place to do the work and then subpoena the results. Case in point? DoubleClick revealed
a new plan to track Internet user's decisions on the Internet and then combine that data with real names and addresses.
Their announcement drew civil suits and an investigation from the FTC. From the standpoint of the FBI, how ever,
it looks mighty like a free resource from its potential public/private partner.
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| George Mason, 1725-92, was known as the Sage of Gunston Hall.
His Virginia declaration of rights, written in 1776, was the model for the first section of the Declaration of
Independence. A friend of Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson, Mason was an original drafter of the Constitution
and the first ten amendments to the Bill of Rights. He refused, however, to sign the final version of the Constitution
because he thought it did too little for individuals and, without the Bill of Rights, gave too much power to the
government.This column honors his memory. |
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