Clinton Plan To Monitor Networks Draws Fire

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July 28, 1999 (3:44 PM EDT)

By Mary Mosquera,

A White House plan to monitor the nation's computer systems sparked immediate criticism and fears of government intrusion in the daily lives of everyday citizens.

The Clinton administration has proposed forming the Federal Intrusion Detection Network (Fidnet) to protect the nation's critical infrastructure from electronic attack.

The group, under the FBI, would monitor non-military government computer networks, such as the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Aviation Administration. It would also monitor the communications networks used by banking, telecommunications, and transportation.

The plan, which is to be put in place by 2003, was reported in Wednesday's New York Times. The published report said the newspaper acquired a copy of the proposal from a privacy group.

The White House said the plan came as a result of a presidential order to examine the vulnerability of the nation's critical infrastructure to terrorism and disruption by hackers.

"This 'big brother' approach to dealing with the technological realities of the 21st century is an affront to the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens," said Ed Gillespie, executive director of Americans for Computer Privacy, an industry group promoting strong encryption, or data-scrambling software.

Strong encryption would protect data networks without establishing a big-brother monitoring system, he said. But exports of strong encryption products are limited, which has slowed incorporation of security generally. He urged federal dollars be spent on new technologies and training that lets government deal with network threats instead of creating a new bureaucracy.

"There is a real danger that a Cold War mentality is developing within the federal government when it comes to the perceived threats to the Internet and communications technology," said David Sobel, general counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy-rights group in Washington, D.C. The group released a report last year that called the government's proposals "more of a threat to our system or ordered liberty than any single attack on our infrastructure could ever be."

The White House came in for bipartisan criticism on Capitol Hill. "We find it more than a little ironic that Tuesday the administration, through the Federal Trade Commission, testified the federal government should not act to protect online privacy, but today it is floating a plan to monitor a huge portion of the Internet," Sens. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said in a joint statement. The two lawmakers are sponsors of the Online Privacy Protection Act.