03/04/10

From Wall Street Journal

Details of “Einstein” Cyber Shield Disclosed by White House


The Obama administration lifted the veil Tuesday on a highly-secretive set of policies to defend the U.S. from cyber attacks.

It was an open secret that the National Security Agency was bolstering a Homeland Security program to detect and respond to cyber attacks on government systems, but a summary of that program declassified Tuesday provides more details of NSA’s role in a Homeland program known as Einstein.

The current version of the program is widely seen as providing meager protection against attack, but a new version being built will be more robust–largely because it’s rooted in NSA technology. The program is designed to look for indicators of cyber attacks by digging into all Internet communications, including the contents of emails, according to the declassified summary.

Homeland Security will then strip out identifying information and pass along data on new threats to NSA. It will also use threat information from NSA to better identify emerging cyber attacks.

NSA’s role is a careful balance because of the political battles that ensued over the agency’s role in domestic surveillance in the George W. Bush administration. Declassifying details of the NSA’s role, in a program initially developed during the Bush administration and continued in the Obama administration, will likely ignite new debates over privacy.

The White House’s new cyber-security chief, Howard Schmidt, announced the move to declassify the program in a speech at the RSA conference in San Francisco–his first major public address since assuming the post in January. He said addressing potential privacy concerns was one of the ten initial steps he planned to take. “We’re really paying attention, and we get it,” he said.

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NSA is certainly the best there is, and quite capable of thoroughly violating our privacy in order to protect us. They lost me when they said Homeland Security was involved though; those people couldn't find a piece of chewing gum if it was under their shoe. It also sounds like they're talking about a future system, not an existing capability. That's going to be a problem. A system like this will require some top-notch computer engineers to develop it. Our engineering universities currently are populated mostly by self-disciplined Asians, many from the People's Republic of China, who are graduating and going home to perform these cyber attacks on us. The American students, those who actually survive the public education system, attend liberal arts courses and are taught Marxism by their commissar/professors. After graduation, they're not qualified for much more than driving a cab or being a community organizer.

I assume that cyber-czar Schmidt gave detailed handouts with his speech about the security program. That would be standard performance for the obuma administration, meaning that the People's Liberation Army Dept of Intelligence now has better details of the system than the NSA does.