Is BIG BROTHER Y2K compliant?

One of these articles - on the Y2K bunker has been reported on other threads, but I'm not sure the other articles have been linked to it.. or that the similarity between the the Y2K bunker article, and the others focusing on BIG BROTHER monitoring has been discussed. So here they are together.

U.S. Plans Y2K Bunker, Clinton Aide To Tell Senate>

snippets:

The government is setting up an unprecedented command center.... urging critical U.S. industries to join in by funneling updates on their systems to the government.

"While monitoring and collecting information on system operations across the globe ... has never been tried before, I am confident that the structure we have put in place" will work, he said.

Koskinen said the command center was meant to keep tabs on critical private-sector activities as well as local, state and federal computer systems; on overseas developments; and on any "cyber incidents," such as attacks.... Among other tasks, it will receive information from the International Y2K Cooperation Center set up by the United Nations and the World Bank. ... U.S. officials consider the Y2K Center a test of a national "cyber defense" drive set in motion by Clinton in a May 1998 directive. ... a long-term plan to tighten U.S. defenses against threats to government and private computer networks. Disclosure of the draft plan, which would give the FBI a lead role, triggered concern that it would threaten privacy and civil liberties. ... Koskinen said the center "should serve as a framework for future cooperation between critical infrastructure industries ... and the federal government" to protect crucial communication networks. ...

Koskinen said the President's Council had been encouraging critical industries to establish their own "national information centers" to centralize information about glitches.

These industry units would collect status reports from individual companies and share them with the "appropriate federal emergency operations center,"

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FBI surveillance proposal put to privacy test

By Reuters Special to CNET News.com July 29, 1999, 4:20 p.m. PT

WASHINGTON--The Clinton administration said today that it will conduct a legal review of the privacy implications of a planned computer network surveillance system that has drawn fire from civil liberties groups.

As reported, the planned system, known as the Federal Intrusion Detection Network (Fidnet), would monitor government computer systems to detect unauthorized break-in attempts by hackers.

Civil liberties groups denounced the plan yesterday after a draft proposal dismissed privacy concerns and said the system was intended eventually to include monitoring of private-sector computers.

John Tritak, director of the administration's Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office, said today that the Fidnet plan has not been approved by President Clinton and is still undergoing legal review by the Justice Department and the White House's chief counselor for privacy, Peter Swire.

"This legal review is still underway," Tritak said, after being asked about Fidnet at a hearing of the Senate's Special Committee on the Year 2000. "It's very likely, or should I say possible, that the implementation of any of the features in that program will be shaped and determined by those reviews."

Tritak said privacy protection is a "paramount concern" in designing the program.

Civil liberties groups that have criticized the program welcomed the review but remained wary.

"We hope it will truly be a thorough investigation and that they will involve privacy groups," said Ari Schwartz, policy analyst at the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT).

The Washington nonprofit first obtained the Fidnet draft and distributed the document on its Web site.

"The draft we received made no mention of a privacy review, and civil liberties were brushed off," Schwartz added.

At the hearing, an FBI official denied Fidnet was intended to monitor nongovernmental computers.

"That's not at all true," said Michael Vatis, director of the bureau's National Infrastructure Protection Center. "The system that is being considered right now is to monitor illegal intrusions into federal government systems."

CDT's Schwartz said the draft monitoring plan discussed linking the Fidnet to key private-sector systems through voluntary agreements with companies in the telecommunications, financial, and other sectors. Raw data from all monitoring would be provided to the FBI, he said.

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FBI may widely monitor computer systems

July 28, 1999, 12:00 p.m. PT

update The Clinton administration has drafted a plan to create two broad, FBI-controlled computer monitoring systems designed to protect the nation's key data networks from interlopers.

The proposal calls for software monitoring of nonmilitary government systems and networks used in the banking, telecommunications, and transportation industries.

The purported goal is to prevent disruption of government and economic activities by foreign interests or terrorists. But critics say the sweeping plan could lead to a surveillance infrastructure with grave potential for misuse.

The stakes are obviously high, as the scope and volume of daily activities conducted over computer networks is mounting. On the one hand, security breakdowns have the potential to disrupt countless U.S. citizens. On the other, many Americans are fearful of privacy violations and heavy-handed government intrusion in an era when technology is advancing faster than laws and ethical norms are being established.

Drafted by officials of the National Security Council, the proposal envisions "thousands" of software programs looking for signs of illegal break-ins and other illicit use. It calls for creating something called the Federal Intrusion Detection Network (Fidnet), which would deposit its data findings with an interagency task force housed by the FBI.

The plan would be put in place by 2003.

"Our concern about an organized cyberattack has escalated dramatically," Jeffrey Hunker, the National Security Council's director of information protection, told the New York Times, which first reported the plan. "We do know of a number of hostile foreign governments that are developing sophisticated and well-organized offensive cyberattack capabilities, and we have good reason to believe that terrorists may be developing similar capabilities."

But some critics are warning that the proposal potentially could threaten the civil liberties of Internet users. James X. Dempsey, a lawyer with the libertarian Center for Democracy and Technology, said that although the report recognizes civil liberties implications, the federal government should allow companies and government bodies to plug security holes in their own computer systems instead of deploying a monitoring network.

Dempsey warned that excessive federal monitoring would cause a backlash among Internet users. "It's the computerized equivalent to door-to-door searches," he said. "And we have always resisted the monitoring of innocent behavior to catch the few bad guys."

Bloomberg contributed to this report.

-- Linda (lwmb@psln.com), July 30, 1999

Answers

Linda, They haven't got a snowballs chance in hell of implementing-- on a technical level. The grid is going to go and the next time we see electricity, we will have no government or a very different one. Just a guess.

-- Mara Wayne (MaraWAyne@aol.com), July 30, 1999.

Mara... dontcha hate how the good news IS the bad news?! If the grid stays up we get "BIG BROTHER and his holding company" [nice name for a band dontcha think?]... or if the grid goes down we get TEOTWAWKI.

What a choice.

-- Linda (lwmb@psln.com), July 30, 1999.

yep.. for us good news is bad news and bad news is good news. Gary's doom thingeee has me salivating though.

-- Wanting y2k (doomer@are.cool), July 30, 1999.

Big Brother and the Holding Company... good idea! Just popped Cheap Thrills into the CD player.

"Yeah, we're gonna knock ya, rock ya, gonna sockit to ya now!"

-- (dot@dot.dot), July 30, 1999.

MaraWayne.........

The problem with your little picture is that virtually all the experts agree that the grid is NOT going to go.......talk about being in a state of denial!.........how is it that you contradict the experts and are so sure of yourself?? Your pontificating that the grid is going down will not make it so you know.

-- Craig (craig@ccinet.ab.ca), July 30, 1999.

"No no, it just can't be. (no, it just can't be!)

There's got to be some kind of answer, (no, it just can't be!)

Everywhere I look, there's none around.(no, it just can't be!)

No, it just can't be!"

-- (dot@dot.dot), July 30, 1999.

"Summertime, time, time...

Shine, the livin's eaaasy,

Fish are jumpin now,

Cotton's high...

No, no, no, don't you cryyy..."

-- (dot@dot.dot), July 30, 1999.

"I guess I'm just like a Turtle,

He's hiding underneath his horny shell.

But you know I'm very well protected,

I know this goddamned life too well.

Call me mean, call me evil,

I been called much worser things,

But, I'm gonna take good care of Janis, yea,

Honey no-one's gonna dog me down..."

-- (dot@dot.dot), July 30, 1999.

"Sittin' by my window,

Lookin' out at the rain...

Storm came along, grabbed a hold of me,

And it felt just like a ball and a chain..."

-- (dot@dot.dot), July 30, 1999.

George Orwell, prophet of the new millenium...

-- Barb (awaltrip@telepath.com), July 30, 1999.

Janis Joplin, Sam Houston Andrews III and Willie Mae "Big Mamma" Thornton, profiting from the new millennium.

-- (dot@dot.dot), July 30, 1999.