Some observers are worried about privacy issues involved in Einstein 3, the new government program aimed at detecting and preventing cyber-attacks on U.S. government computer systems.

The new program, which is being developed by the Department of Homeland Security under the watchful eye of the Obama administration, has triggered worries that the rights of innocent civilians would be violated if the program were to go live. The pilot program was to have started in February, but the DHS is moving slowly, trying to insure a valid compromise between honoring the rights of citizens and protecting government computer installations.

Critics are primarily worried about the involvement of the National Security Administration, the primary agency used by the Bush administration to spy on U.S. citizens. Any involvement of the NSA in the cyber-defense program worries privacy and civil liberties groups, who oppose giving such control to U.S. spy agencies, especially given the electronic intelligence gathering abilities of the NSA and the uses to which that expertise has been put in recent years.

DHS officials have said that the the new project will be managed and overseen strictly by their agency, though it will use technology developed by the NSA, and that Einstein 3 will only involve the protection of government computers. Still, DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano has said, “The NSA will provide technical assistance. We absolutely intend to use the technical resources, the substantial ones that NSA has.”

Einstein 3, the successor to Einstein 1, would be designed to not only detect intrusions, but to stop them, according to an AP story. The program is intended to prevent any malicious computer programs from getting into government networks and to stop any data theft or damage from occurring on those systems. DHS has said that the focus of the monitoring and prevention program is not the content of e-mails, but any damaging code attached to e-mails that could infect the system or steal information.

Ari Schwartz, a vice president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, said last week, “There are a number of concerns that come with this process, the main one being how do you go about protecting the system in a way that insures you’re not monitoring private systems. I don’t have a full answer to that question. But the president made that pledge. That makes me more comfortable that it won’t happen.”

Citizens have a right to be worried after the wiretapping escapades and telephone record plundering that took place during the Bush years, among other abuses of citizen’s rights. Those memories are still very fresh. The Obama administration campaigned on a desire to protect the rights of U.S. citizens and Americans have every reason to be apprehensive until the administration proves that his statements were genuine, and not just politics as usual.

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Entry was posted on Saturday, July 4th, 2009 at 4:35 pm under Crime, Internet, Malware, Politics, Security.

Read more entries by Michael W. Jones.
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